/lit/ - Literature

All writers too busy performing Twitter follow scams to make the next thread Edition

>>19681529
I was sleeping you fucking gorilla fucker
>get yelled at for making thread too early
>get yelled at for making thread too late

Anons, I learned to speak English by immersion but never learned grammar. I don't even know what an adverb or present perfect tense is. Now I'm starting to write and realize my lack of knowledge of formal grammar is holding me back. Can you recommend me a book that deals with this stuff? The Cambridge Grammar is apparently the most complete but it's 1800 pages long and I don't have that much time, nor am I looking to become an expert; I just want to learn the fundamentals.

Good Morning Sirs

>>19681543
Holy shit I just realize the OP contains some suggestions. Never read it before.

Is Twitter necessary for authors?

>>19681552
I sure hope not

>>19681552
it's necessary to bribe people with a lot of followers

>another morning, another rejection
I can't even tell if this is a form rejection or personalized. the agents are getting sneakier.
>>19681543
don't worry fren, none of us know formal grammar either.
t. American

>>19681573
just self publish you pathetic slave

>>19681573
Don't you guys study grammar for years in school?

>>19680731
tfw
>>19679446
>I GOT AN AGENT!!!
how many queries did it take? post query letter?
>>19681579
>calling public child-prison a "school"

OH BOY
there was another rejection in my junk folder! I get two rejections in one morning! it's fucking christmas

>>19681592
Maybe it’s time to rewrite it

>>19681573
>>19681592
What's to stop an agent from publishing a manuscript he receives under his own name?

>>19681540
Thanks, OP, for baking us this delicious bread. I ran a general a while back, and it’s a constant and thankless annoyance (especially overnight). Hopefully the discussions make it worth it for ya.

Also you forgot to post the pastebin link of wg authors you fucking moron.

>>19681600
I rewrote the query already but haven't sent more with the new one, since apparently agents won't work during [random week vaguely close to a holiday] and want to take half a month off every few months.

The only thing I'm worried about is they're rejecting it because my protag (female) isn't PUNCHY, gutsy, obnoxious, FEMINIST, in your face, manic, and shouting vulgarities while knifing someone every three lines. The point of the story is she starts out emotionally weak and finds her strength through her experiences. but i feel like the current publishing environment only wants STRONG FEMALE PROTAGONISTS who are obnoxious and mouthy from line 1. the concept of dynamic characters is completely lost on the current generation of agents.

but there is nothing i can do about that other than throw the entire book in the trash.
>>19681609
the fact that you only send them the first 3 chapters at most, not the entire book. also you would easily be able to sue them since you have email records.
frankly i'd be happy if they published my ms for me and i could just sit back, let it get popular, and then sue them and collect. please, go ahead.

>>19681609
Ethics, reputation, legal risk (esp in the age of timestamped email)?
Also, they don’t need or want your shit idea…they have plenty. It’s like asking whether the dry cleaner will steal your coat.

https://www.writersdigest.com/.amp/publishing-insights/do-literary-agents-steal-ideas-what-about-editors-and-publishers

>>19681630
>It’s like asking whether the dry cleaner will steal your coat.
kek

>>19681624
Is this an adult fantasy? I’m only familiar with YA.
Are you a woman? Maybe you aren’t writing women well.

>>19681552
Twitter is on the way out, focus on Instagram instead.

Where do you guys get your writing reviewed so you have feedback to work with?

>>19681655
I post my story on Royalroad, Spacebattles, and Scribblehub.

>>19681655
I ask my mom if she likes it

>>19681657
Thanks I'll check those out.

>>19681648
>Is this an adult fantasy? I’m only familiar with YA.
neither

>>19681651
Are you sure? Booktok seems more popular than either of those two.

But can you explain why you think that?

>>19681540
Don't you know you cater to my whims OP?

>>19681667
So what is it?

>list of /wg/ authors pastebin and anonymous flash fiction anthology
https://pastebin.com/ruwQj7xQ
If you want to be on this list then reply to this post with the site you posted your novel on and your pen name.

>>19681552
>>19681651
>>19681669
The general rule is pick the social media where your audience hangs out. Instagram for picture oriented books, Twitter for genre fiction, etc. Just one or two and don't overdo it.

Stop calling these THREADS fucking breads. It’s retarded.

>>19681655
/wg/, though a shit lot of good that’s done me.

>>19681543
Strunk & White - elements of fiction.

>>19681697
>Stop calling these THREADS fucking breads. It’s retarded.
And from that day forward it was never not called bread.

>>19681724
i actually did have a beta reader from /wg/ give me advice, which i applied to great improvement. he was rude and nasty though. as expected of a 4channer.

problem is we all write different shit and hate each other's genres.
>>19681697
fuck you

>>19681750
*Elements of style. Free on gutenberg.org

>>19681579
Not that anon, but most children aren't taught grammar in school in the United States, at least not unless you consider being told how to use punctuation marks and when to capitalize words sufficient to say you've been "taught grammar".
Many people here will probably aggressively disagree with this, but I think it matters less than it used to anyway. I personally wouldn't be at all surprised if we see a landmark author do to the rigors of English grammatical canon what Goethe did to poetic meter within the next few decades.

Should you plan on how to publish, either through an agent, a magazine or whatever, before you begin to actually write?

>>19681820
pretty sure I was the last year in my school to be taught cursive. zoom zooms cant read cursive.

>>19681840
Should you learn how to sell a table before you can craft one?

I don't give a shit if you don't believe in yourself
because I believe in you

I'm writing a story about a very soft hearted tender lover of a man getting manipulated by his government into becoming an Iron hearted killer as a secret police agent, and I'm working on two endings, one where he becomes a crime lord for his government when he discovers the full extent of their machinations and gets away with it, and another where he's killed by his rival after falling from grace. Is the ending with him dying too cliche?

>>19681695
isnt booktok more popular and easier to build a subscriber base on

>>19681891
Maybe? I mean, I have a premise and I have a format. What I'm wondering is if I should look into the market first to know if my idea has a place there, and if I should take that into account when writing so as to better accommodate it to my medium. I do want to get published, after all.

>>19681960
That's a tough question. It really depends on the composition of the book. Cliches are not appealing because they don't offer much wiggle room, they are what they are and are introduced into stories when you don't have something more interesting and personal. A same storybeat can be a cliche or not depending on how it fits the narrative. Some cliches are not necessarily "get out of jail" freecards, but the inevitable development of a story. You need to think about what themes you want to convey, what tone, what purpose you'll give to his death in a way. Will his death result in a thematic or emotional resolution that is befitting of everything you've build up so far, or is it just an attempt at shock or masturbatory tragedy? I don't know enough about your story to tell, but you might.

>>19681891
>Should you learn how to sell a table before you can craft one?
More like ‘should you see if anyone wants to buy a table before you spend time crafting one?’
It’s a legitimate question.

>>19681840
Write the sort of thing you would want to read, and hope that there are enough people out there who agree. Market research is probably more if you’re trying to target a demographic that isn’t you (YA, self-help) or if you’re concerned your idea may be too similar to existing books.

>>19682035
If you’re trad publishing, ignore this b/c there’s no way. But…

What if you put both out there. Identical stories, maybe different color on the cover or something, but they just diverge at some point. It’d be the /lit/ equivalent of pokemon red/blue.

>>19682035
Well my whole concept was the character arc of the protagonist being a sensitive lover who becomes a ruthless killer, while his rival who begins as a ruthless abuser becomes disillusioned in his government, softens and rebels against them, as it's one of my favorite tropes in stories. Kind of like Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, where she originally is the calculating manipulator who talks her husband into her schemes for power but then comes to regret them, while Macbeth originally didn't want to betray his King but then becomes a ruthless psychopath beyond what she ever envisioned. Their antagonistic relationship is the core of it, so I feel like it has to end it their conflict, but I don't want it to just be them fighting on a rooftop or something. It's set during the Bosnian crisis of 1908 by the way

>>19681820
Controversial take, but I agree.

Grammar serves a purpose: to make meaning clear. Punctuation and spelling, too, makes the letters on a page as unambiguous as speech (without the convenience of tone and inflection).

In theory, as long as you can manage that (and don’t distract the reader with your shit spelling/grammar) no one should care. There’s a ton of baggage, however, that comes with poor grammar. It reads like you’re amateurish, uneducated, ESL, or lazy. You need to follow the rules of style not because the rules matter, but because following them matters. Your prospective audience (readers) are exactly the ones who know these rules and will tear you apart for not using an oxford comma or for changing tense.

Writing is becoming more relaxed, especially in less formal contexts, and word processors will change or highlight any glaring issues. I hope we’ll become more forgiving/less pedantic in future generations.

>wake up at 4am, laying in bed
>super articulate, think about my draft, saying all kinds of amazing things, everything is coming together
>fall back asleep
>wake up at 8 am
>miserable stupid prick who will dick around until afternoon doing nothing, about as articulate as a monkey

>>19682136
Death as the end of a downward spiral is a common element for a good reason, it's, supposedly, as low as you can go. I think that in your case, I'd write the story without an ending in mind and allow the story to be told to me. Link together choices with consequences and development and let the character make his moves. If you have set him on the track for moral deterioration he'll have to either face redemption or destruction. A good starting point might be choosing between blaming him for his actions or blaming those who turned him that way. If he became a monster out of his own volition it stands to reason that he dies by his own choice. If you have him killed because of what others did to him it might end up being pointlessly cruel, although it could also work. Maybe absolute degeneration would be better shown by having him completing his transformation into a monster that rules over everyone. That also depends on what is precious to him and what he loses on the way there. Him turning ruthless and living implies that there's either hope for him or that he can go even deeper into evil. I think that's what you need to consider, whether you want him to touch rock bottom now or later.

>>19682138
>I hope we’ll become more forgiving/less pedantic in future generations.
I hope fucking not, because then those who actually went to school and put real effort into things won't get the appreciation and respect they deserve

>>19682159
Start waking up earlier and write then.

Yes, hello, newfag here. Can someone explain to me why everyone always says you need a strong Twitter game to make this work? Are you fucked if you're an introverted, 35-year-old millennial boomer who was just never interested in socmed shit? I've never even had a Twitter, Reddit, Youtube, Tiktok, et al. The only mainstream, big-site accounts I ever made were on MySpace and Facebook when I was younger (both with a mostly-unwilling heart at the behest of pretty girls who kept telling me I "should totally make one").

Am I going to have to spend as much time cultivating a "born in a marketing meeting"-grade Twitter persona and building a following as I spend on the writing itself to have a chance? And if so, why? I wouldn't be capable of doing that successfully even if it didn't sound forbiddingly painful to attempt.

>>19682190
>go to bed at 11
>wake up at 4am
>just do this every day
yeah sure
>>19682198
twittershit is cope. no one worth a fuck even has a twitter.

>>19682198
If you have talent and something worth reading, you’ll do fine. Socmeds is just a way for mid-tier writers to get a boost. If you have talent and a following, though, you’re set.

It’s a lot like asking if you need to be tall and good looking to be a CEO.

>>19682198
The short answer to your questions in order are yes I can try, no you're not, somewhat so yes if you're self publishing, and the reason being you're showing your audience the story you made. I had to change my mindset about this in order to really wrap my head around it. You're not cultivating a cult of personality; you're reaching out to readers who are interested in what you have to say. You're not shilling to drones on Twitter and Facebook; you're looking to meet fans of your work who want to read more from you.
Start with a regular author website on WordPress, something simple and clear that says a little about you and your work. It's the first thing people will see when they search for you so it's as close to a first impression as you can get. Then you can develop into other social medias where your audience collects. Simple and safe ones like Goodreads and Smashwords are fine. You only need a Twitter if you have an audience on Twitter you want to reach. I stick to FaGS: Facebook, Goodreads, Smashwords.
As an introvert, if you want to be an author, you have to accept you need to reach an audience. Without readers, you're lost in the noise. You don't need to create a shill personality, super hyper happy, sign up for my free gift card giveaway bullshit. But it can only serve you best to try to reach out to people and show them you've got something to say.

>>19681543
Elements of Style. If you understand the rules in that book you have a good foundation. Technical grammar is not particularly useful.

I might be a retard, but if I'm writing a story in the past tense, and an event or trait is mentioned that still happens in the present (the time the story is being told), am I breaking any rules by using the present tense in these?

>He couldn't remember the last time anyone's praised him for his art; it's only in times like these that he can somewhat appreciate his upbringing.

>>19682372
Yes. It should be more like:
>>He couldn't remember the last time anyone *had* praised him for his art; it *was* only in times like these that he *could* somewhat appreciate his upbringing.
It seems weird at first, but the word "had" ends up finding frequent use these situations.

>>19682276
>yeah sure
NGMI

>>19681543
Did they not teach you grammar for your mother tongue in whatever shithole country you're from?

>>19682182
Very insightful, I've been obsessing over this character for a few days now and there are so many branches to pursue. It's a struggle between wanting him to be perpetually a weak and naive man who is constantly manipulated by those he gives his trust to or have him reach a point where he breaks ethically and becomes an abuser and continue the cycle of violence. It was a pretty inspired moment when I first conceived of this idea, I was laying in bed with my girlfriend and just gently touching her with my fingertips and the whole concept suddenly sprang to mind of this arc where a man a man loves and cherishes this woman but is then put into a position where he has to kill her. I don't know why I thought of that in the moment, but it snowballed into this.

>local radio station accepted my prose for narration
>I read it aloud for them in a week
This is the year of hope bros.

>>19682923
inb4 anon chokes up mid-reading and his voice cracks
make sure to practice in front of other people and don't fuck it up.

>>19682923
This kind of shit still happens? I thought radio was nothing but by-boomers-for-boomers political talk shows nowadays.
(t. American)

>>19682974
I got told about it from a friendly librarian. It's amazing what you can learn from those gals

>>19683086
gals? you mean i can find girls at the library?

>>19683099
Not him, but I have never been to a library which wasn't staffed at least 50% by hot women, and I don't think I've ever seen a man working at one (outside of a volunteer capacity, at least). Women also read more than men, so they're common as visitors as well (it's about 50/50 on visitors, because if we're being honest, most people who go to libraries nowadays are free-wifi zombies and homeless people looking for a safe place to sleep during the daytime).

>>19683120
>>19683099
Adding to this, the common ground of books (given that you're here on this board) gives you an immediate in to ask them for their phone number if the conversation goes well. They don't feel like you're a stranger; it gets their guard down. Depending on how many weird niggas talked to them and tried to get their number before, that is.

New rejection

this one took 96 days from query sent to form rejection

If I want to get some feedback on the intro to a book I'm planning on publishing does it make sense to upload it to some free book website as a temporary test?

>>19683291
>when the rejection is more poorly written than the manuscript
3 months is pretty typical. when i get one in 2 weeks or less i feel sideswiped.

>final confrontation between two rivals, one is accusing the other of murder
>eyes are full of agents saying how they hate exclamation marks and will throw your book in the trash if you use any
>try to write scene just using periods, falls flat
why were punctuation marks made if not for me to use?

>>19683639
Agents are daft. Use exclamation marks when they make sense. A shouting match is one of those moments

>>19683639
I refuse to believe any agents provided you feedback that specific.

Stop LARPing, it’s confusing the poor guy…

>>19683758
>provided you feedback that specific.
when the fuck did i ever claim that, half-wit? i read their blogs and twitters for guidance on expectations. i bet you thought you were so god damned clever to write that. bet you thought you had me in a gotcha. faggot.

Any /sci/bros know how the world would be affected by being nearly perpetually overcast? How many plants would die off, and which would stay? How would sentient life be affected, would there be more widespread human depression?

>>19683639
by the time an agent gets to the final confrontation, they will have already come to a decision on whether they like your story

>>19681520
I am the human being, I am the past the present and the future, the mortal shall lift my veil, the immortal living in the soul must be awakened

- Rudolph Steiner

Why hasn't any of us become an agent ourselves and help other anons get published?

>>19681552
I would start migrating to gettr

How do I write a cute shy girl?

>>19684312
none of us is a well connected blue checkmark
>>19684036
well... yeah, you're right. already rewrote it to only use one exclamation mark (for other reasons too).

>>19684360
have her be cute and act shy

Is it necessary to try and describe food that is normally eaten. Do i really need to write about the chew and crust of calamari?

I'm writing a pacifist character who doesn't get a lot of time "on screen." His presence is built up from a distance and there isn't a lot of time to develop him and let the reader understand him personally.
There's one critical scene where he confronts the main antagonist and manages to sort things out diplomatically. I'm mainly stuck with how I want to portray this morally. Like, is he doing the right thing by not hurting anyone physically? Or is his psychological manipulation of the other characters more damaging than the actual fights in the story? I want to focus on the second idea because the first is a concept people will already understand, but the first more directly connects with the pacifist's character in a way the reader would not have gotten yet. Which idea sounds more interesting given that the character has not had much time to shine yet?

>>19683873
Wow, that escalated fast.
Funny thing, though…not a single exclamation mark.

>>19684470
i would really appreciate it if you would describe the taste of calamari

>>19684470
Is that calamari significant? Maybe the mc doesn't have the money to go out and is treated by a plot-relevant stranger. It's not as dumb as it sounds. Is the food supposed to illicit a feeling? You could get really fun with word choice if that's important.
No, you don't need to, but it might be helpful.

>>19684475
I'd say if I came into a confrontation scene and one character is "Well I didn't physically hurt anyone so I've got the moral high ground" I immediately don't like the scene. It's just bad posturing from a weak place, unless that's what you want to set up so he can be knocked down. The second one does sound more interesting because psychological damage can have long term effects just like physical damage, but his presence needs to be constantly felt so his confrontation doesn't come off as weak and unbalanced. I don't want to get man-behind-the-curtain'd but I do like getting to see the big reveal of a built up character.

>>19684493
Like eating a breaded rubberband. You cam hear the rubber squeak behind your ear as you chew. Calamari is proof that, if properly breaded and fried, anything can make for a half-decent snack.

>>19684536
describe it as if you were writing a story about a sexy babe eating calamari

After years of doing nothing. After years of thinking I had no interest in anything creative at all and basically never trying anything. I've now turned to this board because I recall the one thing I somewhat enjoyed in high school was writing. I didn't do much of it but I always felt pretty comfortable sitting down and typing an essay out unlike everyone else. So here I am. I'll give the resources listed in the OP a shot.

Pray for me.

What if you want social media to whore your books, but they're all under pseudonyms and you don't want to use your phone to sign up?

>stop coming to these threads
>start writing better
get out of here you freaks you're killing each other

>>19684560
She loved squid, they were her favorite at the aquarium - so alien yet so graceful. She knew the ring she rolled around in her mouth was squid as well, but - as with beef and lamb - she did not dwell on it long enough to break the spell of cognitive dissonance. She probed the object with her tongue, penetrating it, pressing against her teeth until the rubber squeak sent shivers down her neck; all the while giving away nothing. She smiled and nodded and kept her jaw rigid, all the while she was creating an aquarium of her own within her own mouth. She would have to end her explorations soon, however, the muscle course would soon be arriving.

>Many novelists think that, if only they can get published, break into print, then they will have made it, then all their worries will be over. This is far from the truth. Many successfully published writers must still keep day jobs in order to support themselves. It is unfortunate, because the press tends to publicize only those writers selling millions of copies, and thus the public is inevitably presented with a skewed picture of the publishing industry. Most books do not sell more than 20,000 copies. In 1996, only eleven hardcover titles—out of some 50,000 new books—sold over a million copies.

>>19684649
It's over

>In 1969, Steps, a novel by Jerzy Kosinski, won the National Book Award. Six years later a freelance writer named Chuck Ross, to test the old theory that a novel by an unknown writer doesn't have a chance, typed the first twenty-one pages of Steps and sent them out to four publishers as the work of "Erik Demos." All four rejected the manuscript. Two years after that, he typed out the whole book and sent it, again credited to Erik Demos, to more publishers, including the original publisher of the Kosinski book, Random House. Again, all rejected it with unhelpful comments—Random House used a form letter. Altogether, fourteen publishers (and thirteen literary agents) failed to recognize a book that had already been published and had won an important prize.

FUCK, COMMA'S, RIGHT, IN, THE, FULL, STOP.

>>19684673
Yeah, trad publishing was retarded. Good thing it's dead.

This is the bulk of scene one of a short story.
The Lightshow
Pleasant Garden Heights; a turducken of contradictions. The trailerpark turned shantytown lied in the midst of what a keen observer would describe as a ‘swamp’. No building stood more than one story high, and if hubris, or a fetish for verticality, convinced some prospector to plant his triple decker plantation style mansion in these lots, well, he’d return on some damp evening to find that the swamp took her share. Then fifteen years ago something from Abbadon's bosom had come and flattened the entire expanse of Pleasant Garden. The torrential wind and rain and stripped vinvyle skin from playwood bone. Then came the swelling of the river to turn the providential and tepid swamp into a raging green sea. What wasn’t nailed down found a new home somewhere in Nebraska; what had been secured, those things sentimental or expensive, taunted them from the bottom of a riverbed, lake or ocean — unreachable all the same.
Dave Puckett’s got a proper home in the new neighborhood; one of the few that isn’t up on wheels or made from six pieces of cargo container what washed up on the shores of Gautier. Dave Puckett’s got a deck hewn from twelve unvarnished pieces of timber. He sits at it every morning, sipping severely from a large mug of bitter coffee— its cheery declaration long faded. Onlookers, two parts jealous and awestruck, have never known Dave Puckett to offer a smile save for two occasions, one of which is bounding up the pale deck steps two at a time.
Davie Puckett, son of David Puckett who is himself the progeny of Paw Paw Dave, collides with and then scrambles up Dave’s bad leg. He is soon nestled comfortably on his preferred piece of lap, cheeks rosy like smelt broze and warmed by the half done mug of coffee idling inches rightward. Dave sips a little less severely and offers Davie a smile; some chiclet, some silver.
Son David stands at the edge of the deck, one foot resting on the first step. He turns his Braves ballcap over in his hands like a policeman with bad news from the side of a highway. He turns to admire Davie bouncing on Paw Paw’s lap, babbling foolishly. He’s back to sightseeing before Dave can look him in his eyes. Davie brought the two men together, the six visits accounting for more time spent than in the previous seventeen years. Little Davie has a birthday coming up, and Paw Paw teaches him how to make a seven with his fingers between gulps of now room temperature breakfast blend.

>>19684640
hmmm sorry anon but this did not make me hungry

>>19684840
“Oh! I found that picture for you.” Dave Puckett sets his grandson on the floor and runs into his house, a combination of loud sounds and big movements that scares David to attention. He takes his foot off of the first step and places it on the next three, eclipsing the doorway with Davie in tow.
He speaks into the dank darkness that occupies most of his father’s home; “Dad? Something wrong?”
Dave answers him by appearing out of the darkness, a fat grin on his face and a framed photo of him and another man in his hands. With a nod he holds the photograph in from of the boy; “Can you read that, Davie?”
“Dave- that’s my name-”
“It’s mine too,” says Dave, breaching happier-than-usual and arriving at altogether-too-cheery-for-comfort.
“Dave, you put on one —ope” Davie stops himself and covers his eyes.
“You can say ‘heck’,” offers Son David.
“You put on one heck of a lightshow.” Davie looks up at his grandad, concerned to not find his bewilderment reflected, “Who’s Bob Dole?”

>>19681937
Thanks anon, very cool

>read 300 pages across various books
>wrote 1000 words

>>19684867
Happy for you and all, but the avatarfagging is getting unnecessary

>>19681520
I feel like a complete fraud, I know I'm an amateur but dang I feel cringe looking at my descriptions and dialogue, like I'm looking at cardboard, it's so transparent, flat and cliche

Any tips or advice to get past this apart from possibly sturdier outlines to help with direction at least?

>>19684882
yeah let me just aswer a dozen times the question, "what are you writing". and that isnt what avatarfagging is, fag.

>>19684915
what are you writing

>>19684915
well, to be fair... you haven't actually shared what you are writing. I mean, you said it was non-fiction but not so much as an excerpt or anything. The Akatsuki guy did this too, and it was kinda annoying a little.

>>19684915

It's a foux pas, you're gonna get criticized for it regardless of your reasons.

First rejection of my latest query letter draft.

16 days. It's actually one of the faster rejections i've received.

I don't even want to get published

>>19683639
I hate exclamation marks myself. I just feel like my characters sound cringe when they use it. Instead I try to do something like this.

>"I'll kill you," he screamed.
>"Die monster," he yelled as he slashed with his sword.

The dialogue tag takes the place of the exclamation. It's especially good if you can use visual descriptions to convey the emotion rather than just tell it

>>19684915
Get a trip then so we can filter you. You don’t contribute anything to this general other than word count updates. Do you honestly think that’s interesting enough to share? If so, I would hate to see your actual writing.

>>19685420
Are you an ESL or just a pseud? I genuinely cannot tell.

My scenes always drag on because I put in too much innecessary detail. Even I end up getting bored, but at the time of writing it felt necessary. Anybody else who has trouble with this or who knows how to tackle this issue?

>>19685522
yes
just get all the details out of the way in your rough draft. when you come back for the edit, it'll be very easy to see which details should be removed. Usually, you'll find that most details can simply be moved to a different part of the story where they are more relevant.

>>19684649
I'm not doing it for massive success
As soon as I have captivated even 10 people with the world of my books I have made it. I don't need much else

>>19685327
>"I'll kill you," he said calmly.

>>19684840
>turducken
Stopped reading there. Why? Because i don’t know what that word means and i’ll never know.

>>19685586
It's a chicken stuffed inside of a duck stuffed inside of a turkey

Are writing classes worth it? I'm worried they're going to cater towards middle aged mums writing romance-bordering-on-erotica rather than literary fiction.

>>19685703
How many of the great writers took writing classes? I'm thinking around in the neighborhood of zero.

>>19685722
this

ugh my idea totally fell apart in my head because i applied too much logic to it
how do u suspend enough disbelief to write a fantasy?

>>19685771
make it internally consistent or gtfo. The genre is oversaturated with wannabe nobodies writing moon logic pulp stories

>>19685771
The point is to make it make sense in universe and have consequences that might be open to interpreration.

>>19685722
>>19685728
But I don't pretend like I'm a great writer, that's why I'm asking about classes.

>>19685810
Take them after you write the first draft, then you'll have a point of comparison and can pick and choose the writing/editing advices as the lessons go on.

>>19685722
>>19685728
>>19685810
Also, the first person I looked up - Oscar Wilde - literally has an education that includes classical literature.

>>19685813
What about short stories? Maybe wait until I have a collection of them first?

>>19685819
And I just found some more.
>>19685722
>>19685728
You guys are pretenders.

>>19685824
If you have several that are different enough in genres/or whatever else, it's probably enough.

The Young Couple

The world was new, and we discovered
our skin to give a tender pleasure
So lucky us to have each other
forgot that bliss won't last forever

But who would care? We did enjoy
convenient shape of girl and boy
We ate with lust forbidden apple
So heavens must destroy this couple!

A tiny seed of guilt and shame
became the weed that cursed a day
With no more smiles, or eyes to wink
we torn apart to sigh and think

Forgot with haste, but still I miss
eternal taste inside her kiss!

The Old Couple

— What's life been? — An exam of love,
smiles and tears, fighting and hope!
We've found divine two eyes that look
and read, with time, the soul of books

This only chance for being brave
before we have to close the grave!
To scream and laugh, to hug and dance,
to cry and kiss. This only chance

In the end, you'll have a kingdom:
a happy realm of memory and wisdom

Listen! The old couple under a tree
have whispered a secret for being free.

— We both, somehow awaiting our death
enjoy for now the luxury of breath.

>>19685830
>You guys are pretenders.
If you want to be an imitator whose writing is the same as everyone else's go right ahead and take conformism classes before you even get a chance to find your writing style

>>19685839
I don't read a lot of poetry so approach my advice with hesitance: I think there should be more punctuation. I read this as three long sentences which makes it feel very monotone and monotonous.

>>19685847
Let's not ignore the crippling university debt. I hear it's a great motivator to pump up that words per day metric.

>>19685847
Oscar Wilde, that famous imitator! You have things backwards. You learn how to write and then you find a voice. Babies learn from imitating those around them and then they find their own voice with experience.

>>19685703
you'd might get a feel for certain concepts and get feedback for them. it's for writing in general not genre specific.

>>19685864
the 19th century is nothing like 2022 please stop arguing in bad faith

>>19685887
Okay, let's talk about modern authors then. Sally Rooney - talked about often on here - studied English. Stephen King studied English. David Foster Wallace studied creative writing. I feel really bad for these three writers, they all took "imitation classes" and now their writing is all so similar and derivative! Or can you not tell the difference between DFW and King?

>>19685780
>>19685806

Yeah but my fantasy happens in the real world. There’s just some things that don’t make sense like how can you fight demons in 2022 with surveillance around? NOBODY ever caught it on camera?

>>19685935
internet noise obscures everything in 2022. You have access to every single piece of information in existence but that doesn't mean you have any actual means of finding anything specific or seeing the difference between truth and fake news

>>19685901
>sucking off DFW, the emperor with no clothes
Yikes!

>>19685935
You can integrate that problem into your story. Some people will believe them, others won't. We are extremely divided on almost every issue, I don't see why the existence of demons will be different.

>>19684844
That was not the ask.

Is it a no no to write an old supernatural love interest in YA? I see this more demonized but idk

>>19685847
Fake it ‘til you make it.
And learn the lingo, in /lit/ they’re called pseuds or LARPers

I want to experience things both strange and mystical, and hope to learn how to give such experiences to others through writing.
Just a thought I had.

>>19682276
Ok, bitch and moan like a faggot instead. I'm sure that will help.

>>19686116
same

>>19684360
Make her act unworthy of everyone's attention. Always ready to leave, ready to look away, stammers. Shy people feel ashamed, sometimes when they shouldnt, but some are ashamed for a secret theyre self-conscious about.

>>19686116
This is the "live. laugh. love" of writing advice.

>>19686138
It's not writing advice. It's just a thought.

is the anon here that read my idea for the magical boarding school?

also: would you guys use a pen name? why?

>>19686147
It's a thought that is very very commonly peddled as writing advice. The notion of a writer having to have lived life to draw experiences from is not in any way a new or original idea.

>>19684561
There's no need to pray. This is the year of hope. We're all gonna make it

>>19686208
What the fuck
I didn't say anything about drawing from life experiences you schizophrenic tweedletugger

>>19686193
Hello!
If you mean the chat at the tail end of the last thread, it me. How’s it coming along?

>>19684902
Send the text to beta readers first and see if someone else also thinks it's bad.
>>19685305
Why not bro
>>19686079
Old like MILF? That's a huge turn on
>>19686193
Only if I wanted to write something not tied to my real name (which I use)

>>19686310
I literally hate my idea rn! It’s nonsensical. I keep thinking about how it would be impossible for a school like that to exist in 2022.
I keep thinking about an antagonist and I’m like … why would someone want to hurt or take something from my protagonist? She’s just some random kid.

Then I was thinking about including the idea of demons and the game possibly being a curse… lord.

Or the game being part of the twisted school

Or gods wanting to watch a sick game between teens

I guess it’s good that I’m questioning buttttt it’s a hard concept. I don’t want to shelve it without attempting though :(

I’m so bad at this hhfuijbzsdd

>>19681520
Anyone have a book on writing essays and the such? I feel as if my work is generally 'float-y' and I'd love to read up on some material related to more university/college oriented writing.

>most of my editing consists of deleting redundant passages
What was even the point of writing all that shit?

>>19685935
Fake news, image doctoring, fearmongering, hype clicks, conspiracy, etc. Take your pick.

I use periods when ending quotations and no one can stop me. They look better than commas.

>>19686289
>I want to experience things
Okay. I get you want to use this place as twitter, where you have a derivative thought and you throw it out there for everyone to tell you how introspective and interesting you are, but that isn't going to happen. This isn't twitter.

>>19686348
It’s hard to make a major change to a story idea without getting really turned off by the whole thing. There’s a certain feel you have that you want to recapture, and anything less is just work. If you’re not excited about starting a book, good luck ever finishing it.

The magic boarding school was always going to be a pain to write. It made sense in a British setting, but it’s hard to pull off in a modern US context. In your experience, when (pre-college) did you have the least interaction with your parents? A vacation? a summer camp? Field trip? House party? Could the story work in that context?

Don’t dwell so much on the plot being perfect that you forget the characters, do you have some idea of them?

If you introduce the ‘game’ (through whatever mechanic you decide on, curse or magic or satanic ritual) as light and fun early in the book, you can slowly make it darker as the stakes rise. By the time the antagonist is revealed, the reader is too invested to question it. Why does Pennywise want to harass a bunch of kids? Why does a demon possess a young girl in Exorcist? Why does the President of Panam have the time to obsess about who Katniss is in love with? By the time the reader gets to these questions, they’re too invested to care.

If you’re not feelin’ it, put it down for a bit…or write out just a few of the scenes you like and you can work to stitch them together later. I still have faith that there’s an interesting kernel in there, though it may not be the one you wanted to write.

I wrote 6 novels last year, and published none of them. Now I'm trying to do that again, except publish 6 novels this year. The actual writing is the easy part. Getting beta readers, and a good editor and all that shit, that's the hard part

Guess I'm autistic

>>19686489
Shit, anon!

What are the premises for the six? Are we talking real novels or novel-length anime fanfic?

>>19684561
I've started reading consistently, a lot actually. I'm proud of that. My writing isnt consistent yet, but I can change that. At 30k words in novel, all I need to do is spend more time with that document open with other stuff closed. Even if it takes me another year that's okay, but I can do this in 6 months if I stop rationalizing why Im busy and just write regardless.

>>19686478
Why are you making things up to get mad at them? Is there no better use for your time?

>>19686502
Well one of them was an anime fanfic because I was trying to win an anime contest. I write at about 75k in length, so not the most enormous of novels.

I write science fiction, cyberpunk, and one epic fantasy anon, I've been here the whole time. You've probably clicked on my royalroad link

>>19686408
I thought you were supposed to?

>>19686482
The whole reason I had the boarding school idea in my head is because my original idea for the boarding school was going to really be about classism. There are boarding schools in my part of the US and they admit students who are lower income (and usually POC) through scholarship programs. I just wanted to bring in class disparity with the idea that these old money Americans who made their money through ancestors who colonized people, owned slaves, stole art and items from so many different people and I wanted to have it so that the scholarship kids were trying to get back these stolen items, few of which are at the school and have magical properties.
I hope that makes sense.

I don’t even know how I came up with the current idea at all but it’s way deeper than this one. I just wanted to see teen drama + magic + a lil depth.

I want to write a good story. I think I’m caught up in not having most perfect, charming antagonist. The conflict makes the story.

Anyway thank u for talking about my probably stupid ideas with me. People hate YA here.

When Darkness incarnates in a knife
Willing to avoid growth of future life
When the womb is destroyed by an iron scepter
When you feel rape inside of your soul
Then, tell me
Will you still be loving God?

>>19686531
>People hate YA here.
People hate everything here, but you gotta respect someone who actually seems to want to write.

>A women with a tormented childhood, recently starts to live with her son and grandson. Seeing how her son is abusive to his junior, she tries to be the force she cried for in her younger years.

how is the plot

>>19686566
Is the implication that she raised her son poorly, perpetuating the cycle of abuse, and is now trying to undo the damage? Pretty solid, I like it

>>19686531
Interesting. Boarding is non-existent in my experience, and i may have assumed that to be the case everywhere in the US. Maybe I grew up so rural/low-income I never even heard of them.

The themes you want to explore sound like a strong foundation. I like the idea of the objects trying to return to their rightful owners. If you do go down the ‘cursed object’ route, rather than ‘magic kids’ you could set up the objects themselves as the ones who brought the kids there. The stolen objects could have historical reason to want to punish the children on some families and help others (solving the ‘why would the antagonist care about kids’ issue).

What about:
>New kids at fancy school, intro to world/characters
>bullied/teased, ‘scholarship kids’ seek each other out
>stumble upon a strange ‘initiation ritual’ among uber elite kids using said slave artifact (think skull and bones). May actually be magic, but unclear
>protag+friends investigate further and learn origin of artifact (info clearly trying to be hidden from them)
>protag (alone) tries to find it again, passes out when she touches it, flashbacks of slavery how the thing stolen and how it’s been misused to empower the school elite [unknown to her, she was seen]
>goes again with friends to steal it, but is ambushed
>forced into ‘game’ concept explored earlier
>somehow manages to escape using secret knowledge from the dream
>destroys/frees object, returning magic and perhaps ruining many of the elite families (perhaps it granted them luck or connections or a channel of communication that was severed)

Whadda ya think?

>>19686566
If he’s her son, it may be hard (due to the implications >>19686621 raises). What about son-in-law, with her daughter in denial and their relationship too tenuous to broach the topic?

Why even bother with publishing when you can just write something marketable to a specific niche, set up a patreon and boom let the cash roll in, dropping a chapter here and there

>>19686665
Genius! I’m off to start my gay furry psychological thriller novel OnlyFans page now - here I come, millions of dollars!

>>19686688
At least then you'd have cash to fund a proper project.
Gotta meet your needs before you can address your wants.

>>19686649
>Whadda ya think?
That’s…actually not bad.

>>19682184
"High standards of needless useless pedantry for my sunk cost fallacy!"
– the rallying cry of every decadent scholar class in history (mandarins, brahmanas, scholastics, etc.)

>>19681543
>adverb
It's like an ADjective, but for a VERB

>present perfect
1. This tense can describe past events where exact timestamp is unimportant:
>I saw a squirrel YESTERDAY
Focusing on the exact time
>I have seen a squirrel before in my life
Focusing on the fact that this took place at all, doesn't matter when.

2. Actions that took some time and are now complete...
>I have finished my homework
Nobody uses this one, even native speakers, they just use Past Simple because they are gay and retarded.

3. Actions that started in the past and aren't completed! Contrasted with Past Simple, where they are completed and no more.
>We have been friends for ten years.
We are still friends.
>We were friends for ten years.
We are not friends anymore.

Perfect tenses are cool and underrated. I barely ever see one.
My favorite quote using a perfect tense, from a RedLetterMedia episode where Patton Oswalt uses it for emphasis:
>"I want to have always been dead"

I have realized I am not that creative because I haven't really lived life at all( shut in socially anxious turd) so now to understand the human condition the best practice will be to journal every interaction I experience and observe. Be it in real life, books, great cinema.

>>19686352
To have stuff to delete or change rather than stuff to add

>>19686780
Wow, you sound like a lot of fun.

Will you write “today someone was sarcastic to me on /wg/” in your journal?

>>19686912
this isn't an interaction
this is just dicking around on a taiwanese pen collecting forum

>>19686649
This is actually really good anon! Fuck I hate those kids already. Thank you so much for piecing together my mediocre ideas.
Do you write? What genre? Actually IDK, /lit/ hates genre fiction.
Thank you again!!

With a sigh and a stale cigarette
In the glow of a peeking sunset
Her small child at her breast in the bed
With a lover asleep as if dead,
She keeps thinking of rent and the car
And the end of the week, once so far;
Now too near. Her old husband: he's fine,
And what comes from his work in the mine
Is enough for some food but no fun
And the pleasure of together undone
But she needs all those checks for her babe.
But how bright can aloneness be made?


Poem I wrote while out today. Hope you guys like it! I've loved the flow of the first couplet for so long but never had the poem for if.

>>19686926
Haha, glad to help!

These days I have more ideas than time (crazy busy consulting job, young kids, life stuff) but I’ve been pretty active with the flash fiction anthology stuff, experimenting across many styles and genres.

Plotting is fun, you can do that anytime, actually finding the time to write (usually on my phone) can be a chore. So I’m having fun just talking through these ideas with you…I get to do the best part of writing with no commitment.

I lurk here pretty often, so pop back up with any new ideas or questions.

>>19686780
I like to refer to William Faulkner on this topic. He said a writer has three resources at his disposal. Experience, observation, and imagination. Someone who has had interesting experiences can rely on memory to tell a fascinating story. But you can also be an acute observer and take note of the world around you. Finally, you can be a hermit shut-in with a powerful imagination and conjure your own weird literary hallucinations like Emily Dickinson or Kafka.

>>19687095
Ideally it is best to have healthy amounts of all three, but Faulkner said you can compensate for a deficit in one resource with an abundance of another.

>>19687028
Thank youuuu. Let me know if I’m ever really annoying.
I guess my next question is do you think an antagonist has to be fleshed out? Some books have charming, likable antagonists and others are like unlikable, evil, scary but not that deep.

>>19687095
That’s a great quote, anon, I’ve got to remember that.

I’m not >>19686780, btw, my situation is:
>Imagination > Experience > Observation
I’m good at worldbuilding, I’m an older anon (at least for this board) so I have a lot of references from life and lit to draw on, but I’m shit at reading people so my characters all become a big room full of clones.

I might suggest adding one more element to the experience / observation / imagination, and that’s ‘craft’. Not ‘talent’, exactly, but the ability to take whats in your head and (through text) put those images into a reader’s head as well. Im sure there are many would-be authors out there brimming with all the imagination, experience, and observation in the world but who couldn’t express themselves if their life depended on it. I’ve seen thousands of bicycles, spend hundreds of hours riding them, but damned if i can draw one well.

>>19687153
Antagonist a la carte menu:
The noble antagonist
>defends protag from bullying early in book, close to the MCs. But they discover she’s part of the whole secret society (not a bad person, but one who puts family, friends, and status quo above the new kids)
The back-stabber
>Same as above, generally nice and friendly but when MCs confide in him/her, rather than come clean this one gets closer to them and betrays them at some key moment
The temper
>one of the MCs has a friendship/relationship with someone who turns out to be in the conspiracy. They try to isolate or turn him/her against the others, and make their cause seem more benign than it is
The villain
>a bully from the start, the MCs already hate this person and are not shocked to find him/her at the heart of this whole plot. Generally well-connected, even among adults/teachers, they can’t say anything bad about him/her without seeming vindictive. This is pretty much Malfoy.
The big bad
>what are the odds this whole thing is student-led? Perhaps a teacher, parent, or rich donor is actually pulling the strings. You could discover that the antagonist early in the book was being forced into it.

>>19684673
I just glanced at a preview of that book on amazon and I can see why it was rejected by all those publishers. If anything it shows the corruption of the national book award. Apparently also recommended by DFW, so there's that.

>>19686079
Tamora Pierce LOVES for her heroines to hook up with the mentor figure

>really like pigeons
>think they're special and important - we creatd the perect habitat for them and it's because of us they thrive, they have helped us in all eras besides the modern
>have no idea how to write anything about pigeons
help

>>19687301
call them rock doves so that your descriptions don't carry the innate, cultural disdain for them

>>19687343
What if I want to destroy that disdain?

>>19686566
>A women
Off to a great beginning

>>19687368
The plot is that pigeons don't really shit everywhere and it has been a centuries-long conspiracy by bad people who spread fake bird poop in towns worldwide under cover of night because they're envious of how masterracial pigeons are. The pigeons tolerate this, because they are enlightened Christians and believe in turning the other cheek and being patient as humans learn the error of their ways.

>>19687411
Oh yeah, also Christ was a pigeon, and that's like the big reveal as the story nears its end.

>>19687411
>>19687414
Gotta say, I don’t hate it.

I often hear the refrain on /wg/ that every idea has already been written. There’s nothing new under the sun, so why bother writing at all.

Anon, you’re a light in the darkness. Maybe not the light we were looking for, but it’ll do just fine.

>>19687411
>pigeons don't really shit everywhere
>bad people spread fake bird poop

Wait, where DO pigeons shit, then?
Do they shit at all?
What about other birds?
The seagulls definitely shit. Lucifer?

>>19687554
They shit exclusively on gargoyles, which were constructed for them in the middle ages in times at a time when the Catholic Church still knew the true nature of Christ and respected them. In fact, church personnel considered it an honor to scrub pigeon shit off the gargoyles everyday.

>>19686912
You sound obese

>>19687554
Other birds are irrelevant, they fly around and shit wherever just like regular animals. However, other birds were created by Satan to give birds a bad name as chronic shitters to hide the divine nature of Christ the Pigeon from humanity.

>>19687597
>>19687608
If you wrote this as a comedy I would definitely read it

>>19687411
>>19687597
How did you just spitball this?
How did the nature of pigeons come to be known by the Catholic Church? Could they communicate in times past and now don't? Is it an allegory for God's silence?

>>19687192
Craft is more of a verb than a noun, an activity or mode for deploying "resources." I suppose another word for it would be "execution." I firmly believe that a good enough writer can make anything seem compelling. And a bad one can make the most fascinating and unique idea soporific.

I like to refer to Flaubert and Madame Bovary as a canonical example of the former. Objectively it's a boring subject. It's just about this one woman sitting around wishing her life was more interesting than it is. But it's executed beautifully. It's so good that even what Flaubert omits adds nuance. Sometimes he describes a simple gesture a character makes, or declines to make, in response to another character's action, and it speaks volumes with no extra prose necessary. The way this story is told and the sheer mastery displayed by Flaubert's prose makes even the most mundane subject matter mesmerizing.

Of course Flaubert is in the 99th percentile of all writers in terms of talent so it's not realistic for most to aspire to his level of craft. The lesson should nevertheless stick. Execution, how the events of the story are framed and situated, goes a long way.

How do you properly write laughing? Do you say "character laughed" or do you put something like haha or hehe in their dialogue? How about if they have a very specific sort of laugh?

>>19687622
>How did you just spitball this?
I'm just trying to help the anon who said he was really into pigeons.
>How did the nature of pigeons come to be known by the Catholic Church? Could they communicate in times past and now don't? Is it an allegory for God's silence?
Well, there would have been witnesses to the original pigeon Christ, so that knowledge was simply passed down through the ages. The whole Avignon controversy might make a good historical point at which there was a church civil war to try to obscure the true nature of pigeons, and the bad guys who wanted to bogart the church's power and hide the nature of Christ won out. The compromised Catholic Church has been spreading fake pigeon shit everywhere shortly after this time. The fake shit could possibly haalso ve been an alchemical concoction made for them by Nicolas Flamel, who was going to go public about it when he found out what it was being used for, and there could be a whole thing about his backstory and career being revealed as the story develops, too.

>>19687633
I would say Falubert is in the top 90% talent but top 99.9% in percent in dogged persistence/obsession, rewriting things over and over until he got them right. I think it's really the latter which constitutes true genius--particularly for long forms like a novel. The race is not always to the swift, endurance is more often the key.

>>19687652
What about doves? Carrier pigeons?
Could pigeons read messages?
Are there references to pigeons anywhere prior to Christ’s ascension? Doves certainly were.
Are ‘angels’ and ‘angel wings’ just a mis-translation of references to pigeons in early eras?
What to make of hawks?

Anon (or anons), this is a goldmine worthy of its own thread.

Over 1% of the year is already over. Get to writing or see the whole year pass you by.

>>19687651
I put Haha only occasionally, usually when the laughter is forced or uncomfortable. My go-to laugh verb is chuckle.

>>19687262
Draco was annoying, I don’t know why so many girls love him

I’m thinking the noble antagonist (love interest) has a mom or dad who is a donor and also the big bad. The parents are just manipulating the kids… it makes more sense like that.

I guess these crazy people just lure poor kids in hoping they’ll help them use these artifacts. They’re crazy.

Okay now I have to write a pitch. I need to be able to sell this concept.

A witch and her friends are tricked into playing a deadly game by the wealthy benefactors of their elite boarding school.

A witch must compete against her fellow classmates to win back an ancient artifact/talisman/magical amplifier/whatever that belongs to her ancestors.

IDK
I’m not a marketing expert.

Can I talk about a past idea I had? This is so fun to me idk why

>>19687633
>99th percentile of all writers in terms of talent
To modify this a little. The idea of "talent" is a bit misleading. It suggests some secret wellspring of raw genius that is either completely innate or partially innate and cultivated through practice. Flaubert's talent however was the product of his relentless devotion to style and his pitiless editing process and ruthless standards. He poured tremendous amounts of thought and energy into every word and sentence. He could spend an entire week on a single paragraph. The reader only sees the end result once all the scaffolding is stripped away. What they don't see is all the painstaking hours long labor that went into what their eyes glide past in mere moments. Talk about "talent" obscures the role of effort.

If you're mediocre or can't quite get your ideas off the ground naturally, keep plugging away at it until it improves. What you need most of all is some vision in your head of what you want to see, so that you can measure the discrepancy between what you have done and this ideal. If you have no vision, you will be aimless. But if you have an idea of what you want you can keep scrubbing away the difference until the two dovetail and become one. The realization of this ideal vision by chipping away all defects is the key to literary competence.

>>19687663
Maybe. I'm certainly a Flaubert fanboy so I am biased. As a stylist he is in the toppest of top tiers. Though he may have his flaws as any mortal does.

>>19687726
Stop asking if you can ask questions and just fucking ask them, Jesus Christ

>>19687720
I've already written 7000 words

>>19687651
>Anon chortled nerdily through his nose. There was no onomatopoeia that could describe the result.

>>19687735
omg i don’t want to annoy the anon. that’s why i ask. he’s nice :/

>>19687689
So far, I'm just one anon making this shit up. Carrier pigeons likely would be where the notion of angels came from at all (Hebrew Mlḥ Greek Aggelos just means "messenger"). Pigeons would have been around since before Christ, and all references to angels would be to them (they also figure more directly in certain old stories like Noah's).
No particular ideas about hawks at this time, aside from them being one of many birds created by Satan, and it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that he'd have specialized pigeon-hunting models in his bestiary.

>>19687726
to reflect the zeitgeist you need these kinds of antagonists:
1) the self-righteous, out-of-touch demagogue who hurts others out of indifference, lack of accountability, and decadence.
2) a peer with just anger who lacks traditional mechanisms for challenging power and is attempting to do so in morally reprehensible ways
3) a system itself which once had mechanisms for safely challenging power as a cornerstone of its principles that now has had those mechanisms ripped out

>>19687726
>Okay now I have to write a pitch. I need to be able to sell this concept.
No you don’t…just write it.

If you like, you can write it up for your own benefit, but an outline is just as good.
Writing a short, simplified version may help you work ideas out first, especially if you’re new to writing book-length stories. You can also write a few key scenes just to make it more solid.

>A witch and her friends are tricked into playing a deadly game by the wealthy benefactors of their elite boarding school.

Why does she need to be a witch? The stolen object has magic, and it’s more powerful to the story if magic like that is rare.

>Normal kid, fish out of water, stumbles upon a secret network of students using a magic object for personal gain. Finds she has a personal connection to stolen object and recovers it to right past wrongs.

I mean, do what you like…but making her a witch adds a lot of complexity and logical holes into your world, while removing the reality and power of the main plot. In a world with both magic people and normals, who cares about racial or wealth inequality?

There is the possibility of making her a witch later. Maybe the artifact (a necklace, a carving, a weapon) was a tool used by priests/healers in Africa. It came to America on a slave ship, and was kept secret for generations until someone was betrayed and the slave owners discovered it. They used it to become wealthy and powerful, founded the town and school, and gave its gifts out to only those they saw fit. When she reconnected with it, she learns this past and becomes the first priest/whatever in 400 years. Maybe book 2 is learning powers and seeking out those to train her.

When writing, my goal is to make the manipulating hand of the author as invisible as possible. One issue I've come across is that this makes it tougher to write stories that take place over a longer space of time. When you describe something directly, it's easier to create the impression that the viewer is observing something that's actually happening, with no intermediary, but when you summarize, it's harder not to introduce a narrator's voice that the author will notice.

>>19687301
i love pigeons too, anon. people are so mean about them. but theyre pretty and helpful.

>>19687805
This is the ‘nice anon’.
I agree with >>19687735 (though I’d say it nicer, of course). Just ask/share what you like :-)

>>19687805
stop giving a shit what anons think

>>19687892
This brings up a tough question I can't answer myself. If you have a section of writing that details a series of events, are you describing or summarizing? Moreover, is 3rd person limited omniscient commentary a summarization of character thoughts or a description of them?

Anybody else save snippets about other authors for inspiration when you're feeling a block?

e.g I just found this in the introduction to a book I'm reading:

>Before he was twenty-five he began to compete for the tragic prize, but did not win a victory for twelve years.

>>19687876
This checks a lot of marketable 2020s YA boxes:
>protag is teenage female POC
>Author is female
>The rich/powerful really just stole their wealth
>There’s a secret society to exclude the poor
>White slave owners bad, black girl is magic

You prob have a better chance of trad publishing than the rest of this board combined and idk if you can even write

>>19687992
Dostoevsky going to prison for 10 years after writing a book, only to write even more after he got out is inspiring. Those years made him far more thoughtful man.

>>19687876
Thank you! The reason why I wanted to pitch is because I read an author’s twitter days ago where she says she writes a pitch to make sure there’s enough stakes in the story! I will outline though. I don’t know how people discovery write and make something good.
The reason why she’s a witch in my head is because my first core idea was just a witch who goes to a magic boarding school with peers but you’ve raised good points!
>>19687866
All good points to consider. Thank you.

>>19687913
Thinking about this idea now, it’s weaker than the other one and also toxic lmao

This idea is horror/sci fi/fantasy (?)
Basically teens are put into a VR game they’ve played every day for months by a malevolent entity who wants to keep the protagonist in the game forever. He even allowed her to have her friends in the world. But she and her friends can get out if they beat the game… on hard difficulty/nightmare mode. Die in the game and u die fr.
I thought about making the antagonist a sentient AI but that’s really complicated.

>>19688027
>inb4 some autist here commits murder to go write in prison
honestly probably better for your soul than wageslaving

>>19687903
Thank you anon, I greatly appreciate it. I find that grey and purple iridescence charming.
>>19687652
That anon was me. It seem like you have a wellspring of knowledge about the catholic church that you can use to tap into. It's a type of syncretism between the silly plot ("world where pigeons deserve respect" and "history of Catholicism"). You even toss in alchemy, etymology of ancient Greek,

>>19688167
oops! forgot to finish. but ultimately your ideas aren't coming ex nihilo you have a lot that you've known and are able to synthesize that information because you know it in your heart (maybe an overly sentimental phrase?).
Basically "read moar" as advice for how to create a literary tribute to the pigeon.

Would there be an audience for a fresh version of young aryan hero like Conan but with like laser guns and atom bombs? This contemporary POC fever warrants an antithesis or a punk statement against it all.

>>19688167
have you seen what i term 'dalmation pigeons' around? they're white with either gray or tan spots. i love them. there are also cream-tan pigeons.
google images is so fuckign gay how it tries to stop you from saving the image. even after using rightclick view image to circumvent them they want to save it as webp shit that wont upload to 4chan. what faggots. google is an awful company. i hope pigeons shit on them.

>>19688002
Yeah it’s marketable but white = evil and poc = good makes it a bit problematic.

How can I make it so my book will be memed like Call of the Crocodile? I unironically want this to happen.

>>19688269
Just run an ad campaign for like half a year. Worked for the Son of Sun guy too. More controversial take is I guess not taking your meds and having a notorious presence with meme topics like Flat Earth also helps too.

>>19688238
Rich, (mostly) white, well-connected elites, decedents of slave owners = evil
Low income, bright, female POC = good

I don’t see the problem, as long as it remains subtext. I’m sure there’ll be good white kids in the group of main characters, and a few POC among the bad guys to add some nuance/gray.

The only ‘problematic’ aspect I see is if anyone discovered the idea for the book started on 4chan.

>>19688279
Is the F Gardner being a flat earther thing actually legit? I’ve seen posts about that before. But I cannot tell if that’s a joke I’m unaware of or not.

>>19688269
Gardener is literally an insane richfag. So develop schizophrenia and buy ads all year. I think he’s just a really rare anomaly. It makes sense that there would eventually be someone like that to come out of this place. But it doesn’t mean you have to replicate it. Just work on revising and you’ll be fine.

>>19688294
Sorry i don’t know who that is and i will never know or care.

>>19688269
The writing is shit (and yes, F Gardner, if you’re lurking here I actually did try to read some of it), but the cover art and marketing was legit (if ironically) good.

The chalkboard art thing was distinctive, and low effort enough where you get what you’d expect. Has a low-budget, pulpy feel to it. What sort of work do you want to promote, and what’s your target audience?

He’s probably shelling out a few hundred dollars a month on ads (I tried to run ads on lit before and kept getting outbid by him) and there’s no way he’s getting that much in revenue. I think it’s a labor of love (or an elaborate trolling campaign)…but meme fame can turn to real cash quickly if stars align.

>>19687922
> If you have a section of writing that details a series of events, are you describing or summarizing?
Well, when I say "summarizing," I'm talking about (for example) a paragraph describing a train ride in a way that gives the reader an impression that they're an invisible observer on the inside of the train carriage, as opposed eliding it like, "After a brief train ride, he dismounted and walked up the steps to Wayne Manor, etc." When you read something like that, you inevitably feel the guiding hand of the author at least a little. The stories I admire the most are the ones where you feel like you're just observing events that are "really" happening without an author contriving them for your benefit.

>Moreover, is 3rd person limited omniscient commentary a summarization of character thoughts or a description of them?
I think it depends how you do it.

>>19688289
> Rich, (mostly) white, well-connected elites, decedents of slave owners = evil
Low income, bright, female POC = good
This trope is drying up. If you’ve started milking it, better hurry up. If you’re thinking about it, don’t.

>>19688138
Yeah, it is weaker but it has many of the same elements of the ‘game’ you want to explore in the other story. Take the best of the VR thing and plop it into magic academy.

The stolen artifact could take someone into a dream world (may have originally been used to communicate across long distances or share memories). Maybe it could even be misused to trap someone in there against their will…

>visual artist and not a writer
>think most artists can't do storytelling and rarely have something worthwhile to say
>can't take comics and manga seriously because one man can rarely do both well
>still want to make a comic myself

I was thinking of pretending I have a writer in order to increase the perceived value of my writing and to increase the mystery a bit, and maybe later reveal I did the whole thing myself, can anyone think of a way this could backfire or otherwise be a bad idea

>>19688294
Yea ive seen him talk about it on discord. He never shuts the fuck up about it. In any other server his ass would be banned for spouting such stupidity. But the jannies will never ban him because they don’t want their eceleb to leave

>>19688419
Most readers just assume one person did it all. Only people who know the industry care, and there’s zero upside in lying or misrepresenting yourself to them.

The whole plan is cringe. Just do good work, no gimmicks.

>>19688434
what happens in lit discord? i assume it's like the worst of /wg/ but ten times worse and faggier

>>19688269
Idk but I love the memes

>>19688223
>dalmation pigeons
that's a cute name for them. I haven't seen one that's white with gray spots. The more cream tan/white tan like your pic, I always called "rusty pigeons" .
I hope pigeons shit on google too for all the reasons you say and a great many more.
>>19688194
Yeah there's a niche. That "Turquoise Serpent" guy has found a little niche. You have a built in audience of the RWBB types. Will you be the next big financial success? Eh...

>>19688330
>I tried to run ads on lit before and kept getting outbid by him

He's literally funding multiple peoples projects on this site. Just ask him on the Discord to not outbid you. I've seen people do this before and I think he complied. I still don’t know if he's really a schizo or if it's all an act for his persona. But he seems to be surprisingly cordial about things.

>>19688756

there's a lit discord?

>>19688522
as with all para-/lit/ chatrooms it selects for the kinds of people who want to be tripfags and weird lurkers who are literally too scared to post so they want something "4chan-adjacent" that is less intimidating to use

those places usually have extremely reddit/twitter vibes but everybody talks and acts as if they're the acme of 4chan culture, it's really weird

>>19688769
>weird lurkers who are literally too scared to post so they want something "4chan-adjacent" that is less intimidating to use
Not him, but can you explain this headspace to me? I've never been in a Discord group before (not one of those "lol trannycord" people, just never saw one that interested me), but there is almost no conceivable medium of interaction less intimidating than 4chan. You don't even have a reputation here, the stakes could not be lower.

>>19688784
there is a huge portion of the social media internet that sees 4chan as some kind of mecca of based shitposters since most other social media sites are at least dimly aware that 4chan originally generated 90% of the funny shit they are regurgitating into eachothers mouths over there

at any given time while you are browsing here, for every you, there are 1 or 2 "alt left"/lowercase writing twitter girls whose bf or ex-bf was a 4chan guy and who want to be part of the kool kids klubhouse, but they leave as soon as they see the word NIGGER or something. for every 1 of those, there are 4 or 5 high schoolers who mostly watch twitch and youtube for vidya culture stuff and are dimly aware that all the cool namedrops and references of the (probably reddit) streamers are emanating from 4chan. they lurk for a while and either become nigger sayers over time or get scared and run to reddit/twitter to make suspiciously newfaggy posts like "Yea x I used to use 4chan back ^_^ in the day but it just got really transphobic?? Like what's the deal w that -__-?? I like, outgrew it??"

then there are other people who enjoy 4chan and have been around for a while but who are scared of posting or prefer not to post for a variety of reasons. some people were just born to lurk.

>>19686138
i first saw this phrase on my cat's litter gallon ten years ago

>>19688815
>lurking for over 5 years
>still overthink every post I consider making (this one included)
>consider myself too dumb to be able to properly contribute (I get that there's a lot of retards around, but I don't want to add onto the cesspool)
>any discord participation would make it worse, since now I have a name attached

I don't get it.

>>19688784
>>19688815
it's hard for me to comprehend as well, but from what i have observed there are about 4 lurkers for every 1 poster. (if there's a thread with a poll, for example, there are more votes cast than unique posters in thread.) meanwhile i won't post anywhere except 4chan due to extreme paranoia about doxing, and frankly even here i resent archiving services. imagine if some stenographer followed you and everyone else around 24/7 your entire lives and wrote down and published every last single god damned thing you ever said for the whole world to see. that would be enough to drive anyone insane. that's what posting non-anonymously is like. and i've never seen any namefag account on any website (other than kf) that didn't self-dox eventually over time from cumulative hints in posts. account based websites are literally demonic. especially shit like when normies post they're going to go on vacation on x day, for example, that's asking for your house to get burglarized. and normies post that shit all over their fagbook and insta without a second thought. social media causes brain damage.

i will always associate pisscord with mentally ill trannies.

>>19688888
Checked but wasted

>>19688815
Former lurker here. I used to avoid posting because I didn't want to be made to look like a fool. Then I decided fuck it, my self confidence isn't linked to this website. But I still don't let getting in arguments in case I'm wrong or mess up. I avoid threads in shame for days after that. That's why I no longer go on /ck/

>>19688888
>posts once in five years
>quints

Behold, I will share with my frens. An actually good writing guide.
>>19688888
wasted. remain lurking.

>>19688919
>>19688902
>bullying a man who strikes quints that easily

>>19688888
>the lowest-effort post I could've shat out
No no no no no this can't be my legacy...

>>19688919
Tell me one (1) thing from this book that you actually used and that you didn't know before. I feel I've come to the point where I've become exhausted by these kinds books and that their advice very rarely accords with actually published material.

>>19688888
In light of your quints:

Thanks, anon 19688888, for both your thoughtful contribution/effortposts and (more importantly) your discretion in not just shitting out whatever comes to mind.

The lurkers and the considerate posters are some of the things that keep this “slow board” one of the best on 4ch.

All that being said…omg you idiot. What a waste!

>>19688888
Live every day like it’s your last.
Write every post like your digits will be checked.

If you want to write apocalyptic/post apocalyptic fiction, what's a good resource for understanding it?

>>19689178
Look out the window…

>>19681657
Name?

>>19689216
Saga of the Cosmic Heroes https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/31062/saga-of-the-cosmic-heroes

>>19689091
read it or don't.

>>19681630
>It’s like asking whether the dry cleaner will steal your coat.
Not a good analogy; The dry cleaner really did steal my coat.

where are you lads submitting your genre fiction stories?

>>19688002
>Author is female
"female" doesn't mean shit anymore, anyway. Any man could claim to be a tranny just to get published, and there would be no way to disprove it.

>writing sex scene
>mind wanders off every few seconds---at worst, get sleepy
>0.1 words per minute

Why? I'm able to focus anywhere else.

>>19689351
Sounds like you might be embarrassed, I know that's what happens to me when I try to write anything lewd

I want to write a story about a thief. Should I be looking to heist stories for inspiration or something else? To be clear, this is about understanding the action side, figuring out what it is I should be having the thief do instead of summarizing it as "He sneaks in and steals the item without any elaboration like a chad".

>>19689231
>buy this random book!
>cool, what is a useful topic it covers?
>Just, just buy it okay!?
I'm on to you Noah

>>19681520
What do you think of writing in first person present tense? Is it too amateurish?

>>19689451
I write mine in first person present tense. But it's usually frowned upon, however.

>>19689451
Kafka's chapters are written in first person present tense in Kafka on the Shore

If your book is antisemitic, please delete my contact information

>>19689437
One thing i like about heist novels/scenes is learning about inside info. The way a casino stores it’s cash, the security at a museum, learning guard shifts. The train heist in breaking bad, so many of the cons in ‘the gentleman bastard’ series…all rely on obscure knowledge.

Don’t start by reading about heists, start by picking your venue. Have you ever worked somewhere you have an unnecessarily detailed knowledge of? Is there some unusual/clever place you want to learn more about?

>>19681676
>https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09MV7G9CJ
>ogden nesmer

>>19689451
Third person present tense is a fucking breeze to write. So much fun.

>>19689443
who said anything about 'buy' you tremendous faggot?
>>19689451
the worst tense

>>19688585
Now i need to know more about this turquoise serpent guy. No shame having fanmail from right wing bodybuilders instead of basedlatte-gulping strawhands.

>look up site of ancient city my characters pass through
>it's all completely destroyed now, hardly a column left standing, not one rock left stacked upon another
well that is horribly depressing.

>>19689724
Just go to the nearest rural town where they almost certainly boast about their beautiful 1000-year-old stone churches. You can still see the reliefs and stamps on the reused blocks. Maybe even a bit of torso from a statue.

>>19689788
To piss anon off, bread is baked

>>19689791
Fuck yeah, OP!

>>19689764
the oldest building in my town is a mcdonalds

>>19689854
Well? Find the reliefs and statue parts?