/wg/ - Writing General

[Anonymous No.22063831]

Writing Aid Edition

/wg/ AUTHORS & FLASH FICTION: https://pastebin.com/ruwQj7xQ

RESOURCES & RECOMMENDATIONS: https://pastebin.com/nFxdiQvC

Previous thread: >>22050831

[Anonymous No.22063924]

>>22063831
Nice lighting

[Anonymous No.22063932]

>sent 3 queries
this process is so fucking exhausting and agents are so shitty about saying what it is they actually fucking want.

[Anonymous No.22063948]

>>22050875
>>22062487
Massive heads up, I wrote this in a VERY bad spot in my life when I was like 18-19. I was often starving myself, not sleeping for days then sleeping for 20 hours, ect ect. So it's gonna be cringe, melodramaticm and purple as hell: it was only ever meant for my eyes only. You said you wanted something schizophrenic and delusional and here you go. So please go on easy on me. It's surprising how much I talk about suicide in the whole thing so here's one about me starving and going insane so I start rambling about nonsense.

There are plenty of entries like this although I wasn't a very consistent journal keeper

[Anonymous No.22063960]

>>22063932
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the whole publishing game has changed, especially after covid. Traditional publishers make the lion's share of revenue from a handful of ultra successful mage authors. The Steven Kings and James Pattersons and Colleen Hoovers of the world. At the same time it has never been easier to self publish. What this means is that going forward becoming a traditionally publihsed author will essentially follow the same path as mega best selling author Colleen Hoover.
1. You self publish several books and become well known.
2. Due to your success you become a known quantity and that attracts traditional publishers.
3. You sign with them, probably with a contract that requires you to pump out at least 10 more books.
4. Congratulations you have succeeded.

This isn't to say you have a zero percent chance of getting trad published as an unknown, just that it's very unlikely and if you do your advance will be very small. So don't quit and don't be discouraged that you may have to do the legwork yourself for your first couple books.

[Anonymous No.22064195]

>>22063831
>another shit OP made by the schizo
Who would have thunk it.

[Anonymous No.22064205]

>>22064195
???
its not ai art

[Anonymous No.22064216]

Remainder to ignore the AI nutcase. He’s just butter people got tired of his shit
>>22064205
He thinks people against AI art is one person out to get him. He’s the one spamming AI slop and shilling it nonstop

[Anonymous No.22064226]

Reminder to ignore the AI nutcase. He’s just bitter people got tired of his shit
>>22064205 #
He thinks people against AI art is one person out to get him. He’s the one spamming AI slop and shilling it nonstop

[Anonymous No.22064238]

>Three threads up
Which one do I follow?

[Anonymous No.22064239]

>all of the books in the pastebin came out shortly after Call of the Crocodile.

Wtf. I guess F Gardner wasn’t lying when he said he started the literary movement here. Is there any way to cope this inconvenient point away or do I just need to deal with it now that I’ve noticed it?

[Anonymous No.22064257]

>>22064239
The real question is who releases the first good book, if any of them.

[Anonymous No.22064274]

>>22064239
Yea even Jason Bryan who wrote City of Singles a couple of years before says Gardner started the trend. Just move on. Gardner is like the retarded kid who everyone copied afterwards. Gardner is nothing more than a Penny Dreadful. A pulp fiction writer. His works are goyslop.

[Anonymous No.22064280]

>>22064239
>>22064274
Do you really just come here to shill your book?

[Anonymous No.22064297]

>>22064239
Cope by posting something like this>>22064280
Unironically just ignore it and accuse them of being Frank and report them. Just because Frank’s legacy is /wg/ that DOES NOT mean I have to accept his braindroppings as books. He has been samefagging and spamming his “novels” via advertising for years which is against the rules. Why do jannies even allow this? Why bother having rules at all if you’re going to allow someone like Frank Gardner to buy ads and abuse them? And he has not gained any “fame.” It’s infamy. Which means they are bad and not real literature.

[Anonymous No.22064301]

>>22064297
>Frank’s legacy is /wg/
oh fuck off

[Anonymous No.22064309]

>>22064301
That was fucking sarcasm and you know it Frankie boy.

[Anonymous No.22064325]

>its another seething episode
just accept the fact that Gardner outsmarted everyone when it came to advertising and getting his name out there. i didnt care before but now im glad that he started our little literary movement and represents /wg/ in some sense rather than you bitter anons

[Anonymous No.22064351]

>>22063960
>At the same time it has never been easier to self publish.
By all means this is true, but it's the same shit. Nobody's going to care, read, let alone give you a dollar for your work. If you don't participate to the same pozzery the agents want, it's over before you start. It's the same shit as "art" in the indie scene: you need to be LGBTQ++++++, black, albino, on a wheelchair, and possibly a woman or a man pretending to be a woman to even have a chance. Nobody's going to give a shit about some white dude with a book unless he kowtows to made-up minorities and screeches his self-hatred on social media. And even assuming you publish the most palatable slop while dancing the monkey dance, the algorithms are rigged against you, and you will need to get one of the talking heads to shill you. How is that different from an agent except it's more work?

[Anonymous No.22064365]

Stared at my dick in the bathroom and it looks like at the tip of it. I want to write a short story about a guy who can talk to his dick. What could the conflict be?

[Anonymous No.22064368]

>>22064351
because in the self publishing scenario even if you're not super successful you can still carve out a niche
most authors throughout history did not make a living through their writing.

[Anonymous No.22064372]

>>22064365
looks like a mouth*
Sorry.

[Anonymous No.22064401]

>>22064365
The low-hanging fruit (...heh) would be a conflict between the guy and his sex drive

[Anonymous No.22064400]

>>22064365
the obvious one is his dick trying to convince him to stick it into things he shouldn't
I think less obvious is the guy forcing his dick into things he shouldn't, and his dick begging him to stop

[Anonymous No.22064428]

>>22064368
>even if you're not super successful you can still carve out a niche
I don't really care about making money from my work, but "carving yourself a niche" pretty much just means working on your thing, then slaving away at what's functionally a miserable side job to "advertise" yourself to readers who are too lazy to even look for what they want, but will feel entitled just the same to behave as the service audience you'd get mainstream. So they'll bitch about what they're getting for free if they feel like it, not to mention redistributing your shit or unloading whatever garbage runs through their head to you. It just sounds immeasurably cucked. It's not about the money, but the non-paying audience is inexorably the shittiest kind of audience you can get. You're not getting a few loyal readers who appreciate your work, you're getting semi-autistic freeloaders who feel like you owe them your time, work and efforts because they're doing you the favor of consuming your shit. I've never had a good experience with the "niche" in art, I doubt it's any different in literature.

[Anonymous No.22064463]

>>22064400
no I think the obvious one is the one you think is less so and the less obvious is the one you think is so

[Anonymous No.22064479]

What are resources for writing smut, filth, erotica, what have you? I guess I could just read a bunch and try to mimic what I like.

[Anonymous No.22064487]

>>22064479
have sex and then don't have sex. Not joking

[Anonymous No.22064506]

>>22064479
Let your dick take the wheel and wing it. It will be exactly like all the rest of it.

[Anonymous No.22064528]

>>22064479
The hardest part is how to refer to characters' genitals

[Anonymous No.22064572]

>>22064528
The hardest part is actually explaining all the positions artistically

[Anonymous No.22064589]

>>22064325
Gardner shouldn’t you be busy somewhere gagging on a black dick? You are incapable of fooling anyone.

[Anonymous No.22064760]

I'm writing about lesbians. Why are they so much more literary than the gays? Lesbianism is just classy.

[Anonymous No.22064936]

>>22064257
What is the criteria?

[Anonymous No.22064948]

>>22063948
kino

[Anonymous No.22064966]

>>22064936
If the book succeeded at doinf whay it tried to do. Most everything here is entertainment shlock and should be judged as such.

[Anonymous No.22064968]

>>22064966
So every book we wrote has been a success!

[Anonymous No.22064972]

>>22064968
Did you read them? Were you entertained? Did you tell your friends about the book?

[Anonymous No.22065007]

>>22064972
I red a few. I was entertained, and I told you guys. Since /wg/ are my only friends

[Anonymous No.22065044]

>>22065007
Well which released first then? Let's judge your taste

[Anonymous No.22065047]

>>22064760
because women are beautiful, and men are just kind of raunchy and gross

[Anonymous No.22065048]

>>22064760
lesbians are classier because they're fictional, they don't actually exist. so called lesbians are either women so ugly the kind of male attention they get is so low they prefer to date women, or they dislike men for whatever reason - very low libido, sexual assault or something traumatic - that they don't want to date men. however, if don juan came along to knock them up every so called lesbian would hop on his dick in 2 seconds flat.

gays are sort of the opposite of lesbians, but also damaged people. lesbians are often very low libido - thus the very common lesbian bed death. gays are usually extremely horny perverts who will literally fuck anything. they prey on straights and try to corrupt children, often with drugs. gays are just diseased horny, methed out degenerates that would literally fuck anything that moves.

that's why lesbians seem classy - they're pure - it's technically impossible for 2 women to have sex. they're especially classy compared to gays who are repulsive bug chasers

[Anonymous No.22065056]

>>22065048
>so called lesbians are either women so ugly the kind of male attention they get is so low they prefer to date women, or they dislike men for whatever reason
eh they're still lesbian even if that is the psychology behind it
like if a bitch is getting cunt punched by another woman and enjoys it then shes lesbian bro

[Anonymous No.22065063]

>>22065048
>lesbian
>classy
Have you ever seen real lesbians?

[Anonymous No.22065068]

>>22064257
As far as this current wave, I'd say Eggplant raised the bar first.

[Anonymous No.22065069]

>>22065056
>like if a bitch is getting cunt punched by another woman and enjoys it then shes lesbian bro
>enjoys it
nah, take a look at the relationship in another couple years. 10 cats, 2 subarus and 300 lbs each, and they're sleeping in separate beds

[Anonymous No.22065071]

>>22065048
based fag-basher

[Anonymous No.22065074]

>>22065063
they're hideous, I know. but as a platonic, male ideal they're classy

[Anonymous No.22065079]

>>22065069
ok but that doesnt mean they arent lesbians just because they let themselves go and coping that they cant have kids

[Anonymous No.22065087]

>>22065079
if a high quality man showed up she'd swear off clams for the rest of her life

[Anonymous No.22065093]

>>22065087
you can't really prove that, especially if she resents men like you've said
jordan peterson said some women mistake competency for tyranny, so they could see a "high quality man" in that way too

[Anonymous No.22065103]

I don't consider myself a writer, and for most of my life I have hated writing, but in the past year or so I have been freely practicing writing as a hobby.
Mainly as a way to unload daydreaming based autism build up over the years of not having a outlet.
Anyway I thought it wouldn't have any effect on my life and be more of a time wasting activity, but I have found that it has vastly improved my ability to tolerate paperwork and also improved my communication skills in general, especially written communication.

So writing outside of school n shit actually does seem to be useful. For that reason alone I have good enough reason to continue recreational writing.

[Anonymous No.22065113]

>>22064205
But it's anime crap.
That has never had a good reputation in /lit/ or /wg/.
Which you would know if you weren't such a newfag.
Plus, Gardner is spamming here. What an embarrassment.

[Anonymous No.22065118]

>>22065113
as long as it's not AI we don't care. fuck off

[Anonymous No.22065128]

>>22065118
so you're debating dog shit vs dog food
lel

[Anonymous No.22065141]

>>22065128
anime website
if you don't like or at least tolerate anime then why are you here? sounds like you're the newfag

[Anonymous No.22065148]

Thoughts on every chapter being ~10,000 words? Will agents have an aneurysm?

[Anonymous No.22065152]

>>22065148
I'm more worried about the poor reader. 10k words is a lot. either every scene is gigantic - and they may be - or you could easily find breakpoints and make those chapters 3-5k.

[Anonymous No.22065161]

>>22065152
It's divided this way for a reason and I can't really change it. Each chapter has scene breaks though.

Are people unable to stop reading until a chapter break?

[Anonymous No.22065168]

>>22065141
if you weren't such a newfag, you'd know /lit/ and /wg/ shit on anime
go back to /a/
>akari, akari, my one true love
>i will dry hump no body pillow before yours

[Anonymous No.22065173]

>>22065161
stopping in the middle of a scene just feels bad. if you have denoted scene breaks in the middle of the chapter that should be adequate, but stopping mid text requires the reader to backtrack some to remember the feeling of the scene when they return to it

[Anonymous No.22065197]

>>22065168
you're the outsider here btw. not that you're self-aware enough to know

[Anonymous No.22065198]

>>22063948
I like your writing style. You might say it's cringe, but reading it as if it were nonfiction, it feeks like the writer was mentally gifted at a young age but now struggles with adult life due to a lack of clear guidance.
I hope you're doing better now, you seem like a decent guy.

[Anonymous No.22065210]

>>22065197
>so proud to be a self-identified 4chan "insider"
lelelelelelelelel

[Anonymous No.22065218]

>>22065210
better to be a career retard, rather than a nurtured retard

[Anonymous No.22065314]

https://pastebin.com/bWa2x73M

I wrote a short vignette about a business meeting, as an exercise to try to write more introspectively. Any thoughts anons?

[Anonymous No.22065323]

>>22065103
>improved my communication skills
thats why I write

[Anonymous No.22065327]

how do I stop cringing at my writing so hard I lose the will to even try and fix it

[Anonymous No.22065358]

>>22065314
first sentence we should be I
there are a few instances where I felt you shouldn't have used an -ing verb, for instance
>He is deflecting my questions
He deflects my questions
Fewer -ing verbs allows you to remove instances of to be
>I look over Head's shirt open to the second button, showing his hairy chest. It's a pathetic attempt to look younger, or more casual
I look over is filtering you don't need
Also I dunno why he thinks it's to look younger or more casual. The guy just doesn't give a fuck and he's drinking on someone else's dime. I'd describe the chest hairs more nasty to produce a more visceral reaction.
>Head's shirt is open to the second button, revealing a v neck wife beater and some scraggly black chest hair.
>We're dancing a delicate social ballet
Maybe make it so the other guy isn't dancing. I'd exaggerate the negatives a bit more, in general.
>I'm trying to dance a delicate social ballet, and all this dego can do is suck down rum and leer at the waitress every time she comes with a refill.

[Anonymous No.22065393]

>>22065358
Thanks anon, appreciate it very much

[Anonymous No.22065467]

/wg/, I'm trying to write a scene but I can't figure out how to make an extremely timid side character speak up.

long story short, the MC and timid character are assigned to clean everyone's rooms together, and the timid girl is scared of the MC because he's foul-tempered and she's nervous around strangers. The room they're cleaning is shared by their team leader (who's nice to her and who the MC absolutely despises) and the timid girl's bully. Also one of the timid girl's paintings is hanging in the team lead's side of the room that the timid girl is extremely ashamed of because it didn't meet her standards

My best idea is that the MC misundertands the painting and goes into a whole completely incorrect rant about it until the timid girl becomes so flustered she screams and tells him he's wrong, finally geting his attention, but I'm not really sure how he'd even turn that into a rant

[Anonymous No.22065479]

>>22065467
what's your eventual goal for her speaking up? do you want them to fall in love, or does she need to warn him about something.
but as far as getting her to speak up make her fuck up. spill something, drop something, damage something - or make the guy mostly responsible, and they argue over who's fault it is. and she accuses him of doing it on purpose because he doesn't like senpai-san

[Anonymous No.22065494]

>>22065467
EZ, main character makes a throwaway comment about "isn't it funny they chose paintings like this to display? Surely they'd better examples" and she says it's hers. He apologizes and defuses by continuing to speak with her

[Anonymous No.22065520]

>>22065479
>what's your eventual goal for her speaking up

my goal is I want to expose more details of her character than just being nervous, and have her eventually become a reluctant rival and later a main character. Like the MC she's a loser who's desperate to prove herself, but her anxiety and lack of self-esteem hold back her significant talents.

>or make the guy mostly responsible, and they argue over who's fault it is. and she accuses him of doing it on purpose because he doesn't like senpai-san

she wouldn't do that. If something went wrong she'd likely blame herself then start apologizing profusely and crying. The only real situtation I see her speaking up is to take responsibility if somone got blamed for her mistakes.

[Anonymous No.22065538]

>>22065520
>The only real situation I see her speaking up is to take responsibility if someone got blamed for her mistakes.
From the small descriptions I've gathered from your posts, you could potentially have your MC take pity on her after she is blamed for something that was technically both of their fault, but he takes responsibility because he doesn't want to hear her cry, not out of altruism, it would just be annoying to him. She would speak up, either at that moment, or later, because him taking the blame for something that was both their fault would hit on an inferiority complex.
>If even a loser like him is taking pity on me, I must really be pathetic.
Now this could also lead into another direction if your MC either doesn't explain why they did it, or if they do explain it and the rival just doesn't believe them.

[Anonymous No.22065668]

Is it weird that I like to write about escaped slaves in high fanasty worlds?

I just enjoy those plot lines. but people may find it weird because... slavery

[Anonymous No.22065687]

>>22065048
I hate to psychoanalyze people on the interwebs but are you a repressed homosexual? "I can't imagine they would find women attractive", "if you're horny enough you'll of course want to fuck men"?
Pic related is what heterosexuality looks like.

[Anonymous No.22065726]

>>22065687
what? your post and that picture are incongruous.
a woman's biological imperative to have children is incredibly powerful. very extremely powerful. so powerful that the only real explanation for lesbianism would be the massive amounts of hormones medical science pumps into them to destroy that biological imperative - and even then the biological imperative shines through.

[Anonymous No.22065733]

>>22065726
If you find it psychologically implausible that someone would find women attractive then that suggests that you don't find women attractive.
If you think that if someone were horny enough he wouldn't be able to stop himself from fucking men then that suggests you have to stop yourself from fucking men.
Maybe that's not the case. But that's what it sounds like.

[Anonymous No.22065790]

>>22065668
it depends, why are you so into it?

[Anonymous No.22065841]

>>22065074
this is true

[Anonymous No.22065875]

>You will improve your sentence structure
>You will improve you similes
>You will improve your characters
>You will improve your dialogue
>You will not let the crabs win
>never give in
>never surrender
You will make it
>Whatever the cost may be

[Anonymous No.22065915]

>>22065875
I'm basically fine at all of these, it's my plotting that's a morass

[Anonymous No.22066205]

>>22065218
So it never occurred to you not to be a retard at all?
How revealing.

[Anonymous No.22066211]

[Anonymous No.22066218]

>>22066205
you type like a woman

[Anonymous No.22066229]

>>22066218
Wow...insecure, paranoid, schizo, seething, AND misogynistic.
Your parents must be so proud of you.
And everything you know about women, you learned from your anime body-pillows.

[Anonymous No.22066256]

>>22066229
im not the anon you were replying to. post your work

[Anonymous No.22066356]

>>22066256
I see you've switched to one of your schizo personalities.
Hopefully this one is less of a putz.
And I'll post my work to the non-seething /wg/ thread, not this seething, petty, mean-spirited dumpster fire.

[Anonymous No.22066379]

a 1000 or an 1000

[Anonymous No.22066387]

>>22064239
>I guess F Gardner wasn’t lying when he said he started the literary movement here
Give it a rest Gardner

[Anonymous No.22066500]

>>22064487
You gotta have the real deal, but then you need to lit it ferment in the back of your mind, letting that intoxicating details come to the surface?

[Anonymous No.22066513]

>>22066387
And the movement is dead because schizos and crabs can't help but tear people down

[Anonymous No.22066539]

>>22066379
AN THOUSAND?

[Anonymous No.22066543]

read blood meridian

[Anonymous No.22066546]

>>22066539
an one thousand

[Anonymous No.22066557]

>>22066546
are you fucking with me?

[Anonymous No.22066583]

>>22066557
>it was a thousand-person arena
>it was an one thousand person arena

[Anonymous No.22066590]

I’m always late to these threads it seems. Anyways fellas, I need some advice. When it comes to writing, I’m excellent at creating characters, naming things, forming interesting ideas, imagining and describing scenes, etc. but I struggle with actually laying out an impactful plot, maintaining a pace that will keep the reader’s attention, and keeping the pace appropriate for the shorter length of what I’m writing.

Between plotter and pantser, I’d say I lean a bit toward the latter since I tend to feel more interested when I’m discovering and developing parts of the story as I write it. However, what I’ve found is that the result of my last two short stories has been lackluster, and that the plots have a strong beginning, unclear middle, and a weak or rushed ending. Any words of wisdom?

[Anonymous No.22066601]

>>22066583
one is pronounced with a 'w' which is a consonant

[Anonymous No.22066608]

>>22066590
try a plot outline

[Anonymous No.22066612]

>>22065668
Isn't that one of the MCs from Stormlight Archives? I don't see anyone shitting on Sanderson for it.

[Anonymous No.22066632]

>>22066608
I have, and I always deviate from it or lose interest.

[Anonymous No.22066656]

>>22066632
almost everyone considered a traditional plot outline to be boring, they just find them useful. you can try your own take though. draw pictures, whatever.
otherwise you'll probably end up iterating, but that's probably ok too.

[Anonymous No.22066690]

>>22066583
It was an ahne thousand person arena

[Anonymous No.22066722]

i have 1.5~2 years to fuck around before i'm forced back out of retirement.
perhaps its time to put my head down and realize my draem of becoming a litrpg web series author with 1000 views on RR

[Anonymous No.22067060]

>>22066722
I believe in you anon. Follow your dreams.

[Anonymous No.22067273]

Editorchad will be free again in ten days. If you have any fiction or nonfiction to submit, reply to this post with a picture of a cat

[Anonymous No.22067444]

>>22065068
This.
Eggplant was the first /lit/ book to break the mold by neither being edgelord schizo posting or half-assed retard schlock. Some of the other /lit/ books are pretty good but this is the first in my mind to really set a higher standard.

[Anonymous No.22067536]

I feel like I should go into depth on the Big Foot's eyes a little more but I have no idea whether to make them more demonic or human like I have no idea which would add creepyness factor maybe more human like I suppose. I'm also thinking of writing a short novel about a group of friends who find a Big foot corpse in the woods and another group tries to claim it for themselves which leads to conflict between the two parties, might reuse this short story as a flashback scene for one of the characters who had previously encountered one in the woods before. How common is this for writers to do? I think Stephen King, and maybe PKD did something similar

[Anonymous No.22067562]

>>22063831
Post work.

[Anonymous No.22067580]

How the hell do I advertise a youtube channel? Twitter suppresses links

[Anonymous No.22067620]

>>22067444
he gave me a copy and i never read it. i feel bad but also i have mental illness

[Anonymous No.22067734]

>>22067620
Read it bro. Nesmer does mighty themes, I think it will be worth your time.

[Anonymous No.22067743]

>>22066722
I got 1800 views/clicks for my RR story. But I think many 10 of them are actual readers. How did the mother of learning guy do so well?

[Anonymous No.22067760]

>>22067743
what's your posting schedule? number of chapters/words atm?

[Anonymous No.22067771]

>>22067760
17 chapters average about 2.5k words. I screwed up because I didn't post for 4 days and suddenly my viewership collapsed. You have to post every day at the same time. Be as transparent as possible.

[Anonymous No.22067813]

>>22067771
so you're at ~40k words. you're barely a fledgling on the site. a lot - and I mean a lot - of readers won't touch anything less than 100k.

[Anonymous No.22067979]

>>22067813
Yikes.

[Anonymous No.22067983]

>>22067813
if popularity/patreon bux is anons goal, he should be on rising stars at 30 to 40k words or there's no point. ditch the story and try a new one.

[Anonymous No.22068073]

>>22067743
right on. id like to imagine that'd be achievable for me in the next a year.. if i start writing (tomorrow). name of your series?

>>22067983
are you kidding or is this at all realistic?

[Anonymous No.22068145]

>>22068073
100% you can get on rising stars if your story doesn't suck ass and you are posting daily.

[Anonymous No.22068174]

>>22068073
You need 40k words to be featured, then hope your writing isn't so shit you get 500 followers. That said "shit writing" is a much different standard in RR. What we deem as shit is considered great there, and what's great here is complete shit.

[Anonymous No.22068198]

>>22068174
Let's take this passage. Perfectly serviceable, but it won't be considered great writing.

>“Here we are!” said Zach happily, twirling around with his hands outstretched. “What do you think?”

The tell with happily, and and a passive voice. Also arms are outstretched, not hands.

>Zorian studied the meadow in front of him, his eyes darting back and forth with suspicion. At first glance the area was just a large patch of grass surrounded by a ring of trees, but Zorian couldn’t help but notice signs of obvious neglect. The grass was too wild and tall, and the space between trees was full of young saplings fighting for their own place under the sun. It was a good place to practice combat magic at, but also a good place to hide a body in. In an even remotely normal situation, Zorian wouldn’t be caught dead following a complete stranger into a creepy, isolated place like this one. Oh how far his perspective had shifted…

Lots of unnecessary sentences and for some reason an ellipses at the end of the paragraph.

That said, with his popularity, perhaps it is his writing that is correct and I am in the wrong.

[Anonymous No.22068206]

How do I convince myself to compromise on quality and shit out fiction at the same rate that I shit out imageboard posts?

[Anonymous No.22068219]

>>22068206
Be F Gardner.

[Anonymous No.22068240]

I think "start with a bang" only works if you're going to maintain that pace during future moments of conflict
if you're writing something more light hearted or slice of life type, then "start with a bang" isn't as necessary right?

[Anonymous No.22068242]

>>22068240
you just need something to hook. whether that something is a bang or something hilarious or something grossly disturbing if it hooks, it hooks

[Anonymous No.22068388]

>>22068240
>>22068242
definitely don't start with your fantasy book with knights doing paperwork

[Anonymous No.22068425]

>>22068388
a knight doing paperwork isn't bad if there's something hilarious about it, like the knight is filling out an incident report and has to submit it to his superior and he's writing down the details of what happened in this bar fight and he's thinking about what actually happened and what he's writing is completely sanitized. or maybe there's a juxtaposition and the book starts out mid fight scene and then at the climax he wakes up in his chair in his office and it turns out he's a total rookie with no experience whatsoever. a junior assistant knight apprentice squire in training

[Anonymous No.22068446]

>>22068425
i was teasing another anon, but you are right

[Anonymous No.22068467]

>>22068240
you don't need to start with a "bang" you just need to start with something compelling. Figuring out what's compelling and what's not is your entire job as a writer.

[Anonymous No.22068475]

Any crime/mystery writers here? I'm trying to make my short story more exciting because right now it's very stock and predictable.
>two business partners own a business that is struggling to stay afloat, everything they have is put into it
>their hopes are pinned on a new product line
>one business partner apparently kills himself after a failed test of the new product
>detective investigates and things start adding up in funny ways
>find out that the living business partner was embezzling money to save his family from the company collapse
>other partner found out and confronted him
>afraid for his family, the living partner killed his partner and made it look like suicide

[Anonymous No.22068488]

>>22068475
That's way too much for a short story anyway.

[Anonymous No.22068494]

>>22068475
I publish crime books, yes.

What you're missing is a flaw in the victim. Major drama only ensues when a lot goes wrong. Sure, the one guy was embezzeling, but it shoudl come out that the only reason the company was failing was because teh victim was fucking up the tests or something like that, the flare up of murderous rage was because he realized he had been commiting a crime (the embezzeling) when he should have been fixing the issue.

Finding out the guy was fucking the company over also makes for a good red herring, to imply the suicide was legit.

[Anonymous No.22068512]

>>22068388
>>22068425
sorry for living rent free in your head.

[Anonymous No.22068544]

Rate:

Kapow!
Colk smashed his fist into the wall! He couldn't believe that he got killed by some jackass named "FTZ-Powr43". It wasn't even a good kill. A complete fluke.

His character Lelia casted her ultimate spell "Lightning Dragon" but for some stupid reason the spell missed. It was a direct hit and "FTZ-Powr43"'s character, Juno should have died. Colk was sure of it. He played Power of Rings for more than eight thousand hours and have made it to the top 2000 player rankings numerous times. But for some reason he died too this particular person. Colk sat in anguish as he waited for the timer to countdown before his character could be revived.

He uncapped an old bottle of fizzy drink and unzipped his pants. He may as well do it now before he's able to return to the game. Streams of warm yellow liquid poured inside the bottle. It was relief.

[Anonymous No.22068556]

>>22068198
I'm convinced that most of the people that read this stuff are either ESL or are still in high school.

[Anonymous No.22068580]

Any Christians / Catholics here? I'm struggling to write fiction because to me part of the appeal of it is the transgressive nature of it.

Tolkien for instance told great works of fiction, and he did it without being transgressive in the slightest. I have a huge amount of admiration for Tolkien and what he achieved.

But my head is filled with stories about superheroes, or cyberpunk dystopias, or horrific monsters. I can't write the stories that comes easily to me because it goes against my faith.

Anyone else have a similar issue?

[Anonymous No.22068581]

>>22068580
>stories about superheroes, or cyberpunk dystopias, or horrific monsters... goes against my faith
explain

[Anonymous No.22068582]

>>22068580
I'm afriad I don't quite understand your issues. I'm a roman catholic, born and raised, but I don't see how writing fiction, even fiction that was quite antireligious as an issue. I also have dreams about hell and angels and the underworld so it's not like religion isn't present in my psyche

[Anonymous No.22068590]

>>22068581
>>22068582
I wouldn't write smut for instance because it would be detrimental to my faith for obvious reasons. Writing a Stephen King-like story would be the equivalent of writing smut, worse even. As a Catholic I understand that I'm culpable for any works I create that have any effect on others. If a work of fiction of mine causes someone else to deter from the faith / to be tempted to sin, then I'll pay the price for that in this life and the next. I know it may some extreme to say this for those that aren't religious (and even some who are), but that's the issue as I see it currently.

[Anonymous No.22068591]

>>22068544
it's obviously amateur, but could be fun. i'd run with it. keep writing and learning.

[Anonymous No.22068599]

>>22068590
You actually sound like larping. Like, you only found religion like this year after browsing /pol/ and /lit/.

[Anonymous No.22068607]

>>22063831
I'm watching Boardwalk Empire and the OP image makes me want to watch another episode sooner

[Anonymous No.22068629]

>>22068580
>But my head is filled with stories about superheroes, or cyberpunk dystopias, or horrific monsters. I can't write the stories that comes easily to me because it goes against my faith.
those topics dont go against the faith

[Anonymous No.22068713]

Anyone who wants to talk about writing should come join the official &amp Magazine discord server!

https://discord.gg/SJrgZJtz4E

[Anonymous No.22068732]

>>22068713
kys

[Anonymous No.22068736]

>>22068580
The solution is to write heroic characters, people with good morals in a fallen world, which is what Tolkien and Lewis did. Basically as long as your character isn't a bloodthirsty maniac or sleep with every woman he meets, you're probably good.

[Anonymous No.22068740]

>>22068580

Maybe write something dealing with first contact and how a religious family handles it how it changes their world view. To keep it more realistic never show the aliens but try to keep it grounded

[Anonymous No.22068762]

>>22063831
How does one set a consistent tone for a book? I have this great idea for a book that involves grisly murders, women in sexy outfits, and waxing nostalgic for stuff like late 1990s/early 2000s retail.

[Anonymous No.22068771]

Just hit 10k words in my next bid for RR fame. It is thoroughly saturated with my hatred of the government and glowing fedbois, so I'm having a good time with it.

[Anonymous No.22068773]

>>22068590
If this is your logic then you shouldn't do anything, much less write. Any action you take could cause people to stray from the faith. Even in making this post, you've lowered my opinion of Catholics, thus making it less likely for me to potentially join in the future.

[Anonymous No.22068815]

>>22068713
This guy literally doxxes anyone on his discords. His name is Dio. He has done this to dozens of faggots including some of the Unreal guys.

[Anonymous No.22068847]

>>22063831
maid sex

[Anonymous No.22068860]

Thank god for spell check and grammarly. I wouldn't and couldn't be writing without those two tools

[Anonymous No.22068871]

>>22068860
I turned off spell check on my PC. I get called ESL sometimes because I sometimes don't proofread but I'm gernerally more careful now

[Anonymous No.22068903]

>>22068815
my abhorrence of non-anonymous communications is vindicated.

[Anonymous No.22068911]

>>22068871
half the time i try to use spellcheck, it shits itself over words which, when i look them up, i was correct about, but it's an uncommon word or a spelling variant the program dictionary is too poor to know. spellcheck only benefits midwits.

[Anonymous No.22068948]

>>22068494
Okay, let me try to see if this works, based on your feedback.
>Joe (the killer) and Frank (the victim) are business partners
>Frank is running the tests, but he keeps fucking them up
>FRANK embezzles money as a way to protect himself, not Joe
>Joe finds out about the tests and the embezzlement, realizes if Frank wasn't around to screw them up, then maybe the company could still float
>kills Frank, frames as a suicide after he confronted him about the embezzlement stuff

[Anonymous No.22069017]

>>22068948
>Frank
As long as it's a thinly-veiled attack on Gardner, I'm all for it.

[Anonymous No.22069105]

>>22068713
please seek the warmth of canadian healthcare

[Anonymous No.22069128]

>>22068590
the bible has violence and sex in it
the point being, theres a greater purpose than it just being exciting or gratuitous. whether you're honestly using it to make a point rather than just because you're a caveman coombrain is something you gotta ask yourself

[Anonymous No.22069141]

>working on a scene with one character playfully flirting with the protagonist
>have been single for nine years and convinced it feels fake
I really don't want to start dating again just to make a largely inconsequential bit of levity come across as less forced, but I also like the idea of the scene too much to cut it.

[Anonymous No.22069143]

>>22066656
>almost everyone considered a traditional plot outline to be boring, they just find them useful
I'll add that you don't necessarily need to see the outline as separate from your current story. It can be a way of reframing ideas you got from pantsing into a more readable format. Instead of trying to write to the plot, you can look for little ways to tweak existing scenes to give them a stronger sense of momentum.

I would try to write out the chains of characters making decisions (not everything that happens, only characters reacting to perceived changes in the world around them) and see how it fits into the big story beats you already have planned. It will help you see places where character's don't have a compelling reason to get to the next story beat. It can also help you to identify the big sources of tension and play into them. Just changing the context in the first few sentences of a scene and make it relevant to an ongoing source of tension.

Unless you go hard into certain genres, plot is always going to be a secondary issue. I would just accept that and focus on filling in the gaps between the scenes you enjoy writing.

[Anonymous No.22069147]

>>22069141
just ask some normalfag about how it sounds, retard

[Anonymous No.22069182]

>>22068544
the past tense of cast is cast

[Anonymous No.22069208]

>>22064948
>>22065198
Thanks anons, one entry that sticks with me is that one time I got really close to drowning myself. This is about 4 days after the other entry I posted. Which is funny because that entry talks about how I had convinced myself against suicide. I was 19, iirc, when I wrote this entry, so please excuse the pseudo intellectualism. I don't know why but I just want to share this one, I feel like I'm lifting a weight off my chest. I've never talk to anyone about these feelings I don't think anyone even knows I walked into the sea at 6am intending to kill myself.

Hopefully this gives some insights into how a mentally ill person writes. This journal was buried in an old file because it was on my previous computer, surprised I still have it.

[Anonymous No.22069213]

Why, yes, I have written 2,000 words today.

[Anonymous No.22069307]

>>22069208
Can some rate this prose? I’m 19 now and I thought I was pretty good for my age but I’m feel like I’m getting mogged by this schizo diary. Wonder if I should take inspo from it

[Anonymous No.22069312]

>>22069147
>>22069141
how do you write flirting without it being cringe? I feel like flirting is only acceptable in movies/shows because you can visually see that the people flirting are chad and stacy so they can basically say anything

[Anonymous No.22069331]

>>22069213
Shikamori is shit.

[Anonymous No.22069334]

>>22069208
Your grammar sounds weird to me. I read it aloud and it feels very off.

[Anonymous No.22069349]

>>22069334
Nta but it sounds fine me. Maybe just because it’s very stream of consciousness

[Anonymous No.22069426]

>>22068580

[Anonymous No.22069440]

/wg/, I've written over 20 different drafts of this chapter and finished none of them. I can't get it right and every attempt came out worse than the last. I've tried taking breaks, I've tried moving to a different point of the story, and I've tried writing something else. nothing I've tried has worked and I now become so anxious thinking about working on this section that I've more or less stopped writing altogether

this chapter is a tumor and I don't know what to do. I can't cut it

[Anonymous No.22069674]

Bros, anyone got some recommendations for cyberpunk works with good environmental descriptions?

[Anonymous No.22069915]

>>22069674
Faceless by James Krake

[Anonymous No.22069988]

>>22068580
I'm a Protestant and write in a similar style. If you haven't read Flannery O'Connor, do so. Maturin is also a case of someone who wrote very dark stories but was part of the church. Also consider the Bible is horrific, and Christ lost followers when he asked them to eat his flesh and drink his blood. Follow after that same fashion, where the ideas that may be the most profound might also feel counter-intuitive. Remember that Christ also said that these are "stumbling blocks" on purpose, as in literally designed to filter people if they don't have faith.
Also, if you are religious there is also a tendency for us to emphasize how bad the world is. So as long as you aren't writing a Gothic style that is there to mock religion, you can also write something dark that supports it.

[Anonymous No.22070174]

>>22069440
May I see it?

[Anonymous No.22070282]

Herzog says films need to give us adequate images. What is the literary equivalent of this?

[Anonymous No.22070298]

What do you do for a living? I wish I had spent my life as a NEET.

[Anonymous No.22070304]

>>22070298
I deliver mail. It sucks and pays very little but takes less than 6 hours a day

[Anonymous No.22070308]

>>22068580
Somewhat. I’ve felt in the past that my brain is too filled with video games and anime to write what I want.

[Anonymous No.22070312]

>>22070298
I have a remote job which only asks for a few hours per week. I know it’s the perfect situation for writing but I still hate it so much that I want to quit.

[Anonymous No.22070690]

>>22070282
Adequate images through words
“Rich prose” one might substitute

[Anonymous No.22070720]

>>22070282
https://youtu.be/nA-UBVKQFM0

[Anonymous No.22070726]

>>22070298
I live

[Anonymous No.22070734]

>>22070726
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-53tzx69fM

[Anonymous No.22070736]

Reminder that the best writing come from getting out there and doing things. How can you write about what you know if you've never done anything? Don't shoot yourself in the foot here anon.

[Anonymous No.22070738]

>>22070720
I think I'm starting to understand, he's saying I should spend more time on 4chan
>>22070736
Nobody wants to read your diary desu

[Anonymous No.22070743]

>>22070736
I've done stuff and most of it was a waste of time. I like writing.

[Anonymous No.22070902]

>>22070736
not even going to try to analyze your brand of cope

[Anonymous No.22070993]

>>22070726
Do you feel like your being a NEET has informed your writing?

[Anonymous No.22071046]

>>22070690
Prose doesn't have to be rich to be good, and it doesn't even have to be good to be rich. Some people become worse at writing the more they try to say.
You have to use prose effectively, but different effects call for different forms. There's real craft in (and use for) text that even a blind toddler can understand.
I'm not schooled in Werner Herzog Thought however, so maybe he does mean richness.

[Anonymous No.22071076]

>>22068590
>as a catholic
as an ex-catholic let me tell you it's great not feeling guilty just for having free will. you should try it sometime

[Anonymous No.22071398]

thinking about how to say my character has a large bosom without making it sound coomer

[Anonymous No.22071400]

>>22071398
What's your non-coomer reason for commenting on your character's sizeable breasts?

[Anonymous No.22071404]

>>22071400
its an aesthetic choice

[Anonymous No.22071410]

>>22071398
how large are we talking? there are many ways to do this.. via other characters, implied through an overall appearance (borders coomer but natural enough), her adjusting or dealing with her outfit or appearance in some way that hints at it, or from her pov many possible ways

[Anonymous No.22071416]

>>22071410
larger than average, not cowtits
those all sound good in theory, but still tough in execution

[Anonymous No.22071440]

is this even worth finishing/polishing?


https://pastebin.com/xYYKwKgg

[Anonymous No.22071485]

>>22071398
I have a character like that.
I will only have to mention it once and say “enormous” to get across what the children are nursing from. If the reader pops a boner, he’s a bit young for the book, but I’ll appreciate whoever picks it up and makes it that far in.

[Anonymous No.22071507]

>>22071485
so whats the purpose for your milk queen
is it just a bit of potty humor

[Anonymous No.22071531]

>>22071507
She’s a healthy birthing momma of five. Also explained how young she looks and will likely have five more. Yes it is also to showcase how such household nudity isn’t some taboo in this setting.

[Anonymous No.22071760]

>>22071440
It's just schizo ranting. Put it on a blog

[Anonymous No.22071984]

Why can't these ugly fat whores just publish me already. What happens when all the agents die of the clot shot?

[Anonymous No.22072003]

>>22071984
see
>>22063960

[Anonymous No.22072033]

>>22071760
>be Writers
>Replaced by bots
>100% bot readership
>100% bot circle-jerk
>100% of humans still illiterate
ahaahah, maybe when the bots start making retarded videos then people will care

[Anonymous No.22072068]

>>22072033
>be earth
>blow up
>jesus smiles down from heaven that the nightmare is finally over

[Anonymous No.22072077]

>>22070993
Yes in that I have lots of time to write

[Anonymous No.22072096]

>>22072033
>humans do mundane labor tasks while creative pursuits are done by bots
Ted Kaczinsky was wrong--it's much worse than he ever imagined.

[Anonymous No.22072370]

Would you ever take a writer seriously who used "weird-ass" unironically?

[Anonymous No.22072374]

>>22072370
post the paragraph

[Anonymous No.22072383]

>>22072374
>That's why he got this weird-ass name and his little sister was called Rain… back when she still lived with them, at least. Whether it was the result of poetic imagination or simple laziness, he did not know.

[Anonymous No.22072392]

>>22072383
if its written in the first person from the perspective of a character who consistently talks that way then it could be ok.

if its written in the third person by a omniscient narrator then it sounds silly IMO.

the ellipses is weird to me but its whatever.

[Anonymous No.22072424]

>making a popular webnovel
Is it really all luck? Because popularity and writing skill don't seem to be correlated. Is it pandering/"knowing your audience"? Is it having unique ideas?

[Anonymous No.22072530]

Crime/Mystery question again. How do I write in this genre without making it sound like a cheap imitation of Raymond Chandler? I want the gritty moral grayness of noir without the trope-y hardboiled detective stuff. I tried writing in 1st person, but it's simply too easy to slip into those tropes. I then tried it in 3rd, but it didn't feel as gritty.
What do?

[Anonymous No.22072602]

>>22072530
if we knew, don't you think we'll be writing better than Chandler and do it ourselves? Then we'll be able to get trad pubbed, and fuck off from /wg/.

The best thing for this thread is to post your shit work, get it hammered, and try to figure out how to make it better

[Anonymous No.22072656]

>>22072530
You have to inject some other influence. If it sounds like Chandler it's because you've only read Chandler. Read wide. Read extremely wide. Just look at True Detective. The author combined The Yellow King with Conspiracy Against the Human Race. Or Se7en, which is steeped in Milton and Dante.

Look into obscure sources. Stuff from the distant past, strange settings. Defoe comes to mind for his mastery of the intimate first-person pov. His apocalyptic London in "A Journal of The Plague Year" would make a great setting for a noir tale.

[Anonymous No.22072670]

>>22072530
Have you never read a novel by another writer? MacDonald, Spillane, Westlake? There's plenty of range in voice, you just need to expand your influences.

[Anonymous No.22072705]

>>22072392
>the ellipses is weird
pretty fucking weird-ass, I tell you what. the ellipses is far more egregious than the word choice

[Anonymous No.22072733]

>>22072530
i'm afraid you'll have to be creative

[Anonymous No.22072750]

>>22072705
ok why are you replying to me instead of him dipshit

[Anonymous No.22072764]

>>22072750
I'm agreeing with you and I believe, in my heart of hearts, that he's capable of reading my response to you and understanding that it may also pertain to his question. even if he's a snippy little bitch like you I still believe he's capable of that.

[Anonymous No.22072767]

>>22072764
idgaf about you agreeing with me, if you cared about helping him then you would have replied to him instead of trying to initiate a circle jerk

[Anonymous No.22072780]

>>22072767
something tells me you haven't written 2k words today. you should channel some of that aggression into hitting that goal

[Anonymous No.22072789]

Ah, the seether thread. Never change, pseuds.

[Anonymous No.22072793]

>>22072780
I apologize, I am having a hard day

[Anonymous No.22072811]

>>22072793
I hear you. I was having a few months like that, not being very productive at all, but I finally think I broke through and now my story is flowing again. only hit 750 words today to finish the chapter, but I can see and hear the next chapters scenes and I can definitely do more, and yesterday I had 1k, the day before 500, the day before that another 1k. keep pushing and you'll make it, even if today isn't your day.

[Anonymous No.22072848]

>>22072789
Do you literally leave your containment thread just to seethe about everyone moving to the sane thread?

[Anonymous No.22072938]

>>22072848
This is the shitposting thread.
It keeps filling up with useless seething, plus Gardnerspamming.
I should be thanking you.

[Anonymous No.22072959]

How do I go back to not recognizing shitty writing for what it is so that I can enjoy it again?

[Anonymous No.22073047]

>>22072959
You can't. Hope you never want to read anything on RR ever again.

[Anonymous No.22073107]

Doing nothing.
Can't fall asleep.
Another night.
1am NEET.

[Anonymous No.22073112]

>>22073107
me2
me2
me2
me2

ive squandered the last 6 months

[Anonymous No.22073118]

Is Google docs seriously the only program that can sync between phone and desktop

[Anonymous No.22073127]

>>22073112
what's important is that you don't squander the rest

[Anonymous No.22073151]

>>22063831
>>22067562

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Nkw6rQ21iRua0zR03G2ywqQrzx1BejDAVao1R4wqLHc/edit?usp=drivesdk

Probably gonna get torn to shreds like the last couple times I shared, but that's fine. This is where I'm at in the editing process. I'm really excited to get the book out there--there's a few minor plot holes I have to deal with, but other than that I'm very happy with it, even though /lit/ hates it. It's definitely not for everyone, I know there's a lot of long flowery descriptions, but that's what I like to read and I wanted to write the story that I wished I could read.

[Anonymous No.22073169]

>>22069440
You need a second pair of eyes, you can't see the forest from the trees anymore. The exact same thing happened to me with one of my chapters. I overthought it into oblivion, and every effort to improve it only dug the hole deeper. Needed a writing buddy of mine to take a look at it and he diagnosed the problem easily.

Sometimes you just need an outsider who isn't already entrenched in the work. Make sure it's someone whose skills and analysis you trust and that they know the context of the chapter.

[Anonymous No.22073174]

>>22073151
Your first paragraph, your first line, has no hook. You'd be better off relaying the important information - it's winter and they're in the mountains - a little later, and simply start with Dustin placed the fat baby pig... because the following line
>because every Freysian baptism required at least two witnesses, and everyone knew that chickens were the trustworthy friends of swine
has 1000x more charm than your first paragraph, which merely says its winter

[Anonymous No.22073187]

>>22073174
Oh, definitely. It's a starts as a slow-burner, but there's some dramatic irony at play, because the reader knows that the monastery is going to be attacked while the characters in these early scenes do not. Cover for context

[Anonymous No.22073229]

>>22073169
I'm pretty sure I know what the problem is. It's not that something's wrong with the scene (though there is), it's that the first few failures seriously damaged my morale and self-image (I was going through shit at the time) and I'm still struggling to recover from it.

[Anonymous No.22073241]

>>22073151
Gonna write thoughts as I go in a doc and paste here:
1
Wuthering is an unusable word, a bit like naming your main character Harry. Don’t use it.
Will agree with the other anon that the second paragraph is a better introduction than the first.
2
I’ve never heard of a cote-hardie before and you’ve used it multiple times now. Each paragraph you end with some unnecessary exposition.
4
Exposition that I don’t care about (yet?).
5
Everyone fertilizer? Bit of a mood shift, particularly after the first page of the sacrifice into baptism.
6
This seems like it should be important (e.g. the character is revealed as the soulkeeper because she talks to graves or something, idk) but the dude is like ok lol.

First break. Two thoughts. One, your framing creepiness of the animals into a mock baptism I liked a lot and could do with more expanding to set the mood. Two, and this is admittedly sheer guesswork since it’s all I’ve read, but it seems like the talking to graves is just dropped in there without any meaning, just so you can refer to it later when Enid gains powers or whatever. Same thing with a lot of the obscure religious trivia that is virtually the last sentence of every paragraph.

[Anonymous No.22073262]

>>22073241
Hey man, thanks for going out of your way to write all this. I'm trying to get a wide variety of opinions from different kinds of readers, so every little bit of feedback is insightful.

[Anonymous No.22073265]

>>22073229
In that case you have to remove yourself from the picture. Pretend you don't even exist; larp as a professional editor and just ruthlessly make the changes to the chapter that you know needs to be made, if you do know what's wrong with it and how to fix it, that is.

If you only know what's wrong but not how to fix it, that might be where you need a second opinion.

[Anonymous No.22073274]

>>22073262
It helps improve my own writing as well, and I enjoy it. Plus, gotta keep us anons always improving.


6
Its fine for dialogue, but the ye olde english drags a bit for me when outside of quotations.
7
Comma splice underlined.
9
Bittersweet.

Fine filler interlude. I assume this isn’t a sequel to anything, so I object to the capitalized “Truth” since it is pure artifice: “see reader, it’s a special ability because it’s capitalized.” Have one of the other characters mention it, get rid of the capitals (I am of course operating with no knowledge of what it actually is, or if anyone else possesses it, but if multiple people have it, as part of this church or whatever, that helps too, many ways this can go).

[Anonymous No.22073284]

>>22073274
I might be tainting with your experience a bit, but you should probably read the blurb on the cover >>22073187
before reading any further, because your experience going in blind will be very different from readers who already know what the ability is and what happens to the monastery.

[Anonymous No.22073293]

>>22073284
Yeh, probably should have read that. (Last sentence of first paragraph needs to be fixed).
In that case, I would just write it lowercase and provide a short explanation, a sentence or two, in the text, done.

[Anonymous No.22073298]

>>22073293
For "Truth?" That might be a good idea, but I don't want to run into problems with having to distinct her ability from the word "truth" in its general usage. But if consensus agrees with you I'll probably change it.

[Anonymous No.22073313]

>>22073298
It won't be confusing at all. And imagine you had the same ability in your own life: you'd just say you have the ability to make people tell the truth, not that you have Truth.
9
“Particularly windy?” Define.
“She didn’t believe that claim” > “Such a claim seemed impossible” (or equivalent, the previous just makes it a bit too definite for Enid from what I’ve read so far and her obviously limited knowledge of the outside world)
I hit my “ye” limit right about here.
Hair exposition here is really awkward, particularly since Enid gets grabbed by her wrist and not her hair. “When are you going to going to stop cutting your hair in that disgraceful manner, Enid?” “As soon as I no longer have to worry about you catching me by it.” “That will happen as soon as you demonstrate to me that you have the wisdom that long hair signifies. For instance, not nearly falling off cliff-faces.” Something like that, although you’ll want to chop that last sentence up a bit, just wanted to convey the idea, not sure about your lore.
10
Really good, more natural exposition. “In a past life” > “before I joined the convent.” Too many religious concepts already, reading that and I think reincarnation even though it’s obviously not.

[Anonymous No.22073326]

>>22073313
Good stuff. I will say that this particular scene is literally my least favorite in the entire book, out of hundreds of scenes. The only reason it survived my secind draft was because I couldn't easily replace it. I quite like your hair idea, that feels natural to me.

Going to bed because it's almost 1:30 here, but I'll go through your feedback tomorrow morning before work. Godspeed anon.

[Anonymous No.22073328]

>>22073326
Will dump all my comments at the end of the doc, then. Will see how far I get before sleep. Night.

[Anonymous No.22073943]

Thinking about your character's large bosom.

[Anonymous No.22073969]

TODAY I WILL WRITE!!! AHHHHH. GIVE ME YOUR MOTIVATION BROS

[Anonymous No.22073991]

>>22073969
In five minutes, your mommy will knock on your door to say she's no longer going to support your shiftless adult NEET ass, and a large guy you've never seen before is going to throw you out the front door.

[Anonymous No.22074147]

>>22070298
I’m thinking about giving up my very comfortable remote job, which I hate, so I can write all the time for a year.

[Anonymous No.22074165]

>>22074147
With the world economy cratering, you'll very likely have that decision forced upon you anyway. Stay employed as long as you can.

[Anonymous No.22074182]

>>22073118
do zoomers seriously use jewgle docs?

[Anonymous No.22074227]

>>22074165
I’m tired of wasting my life tbqh. Part of my problem is not feeling any fire under my ass, I think. I lay in bed until noon most mornings, and 3-4 days of the week I just sit by the computer reading for the afternoon with no actual work to do. I’m so comfortable and in a rut that even write poems only infrequently. I don’t even write everyday or even every week.

[Anonymous No.22074233]

>>22074165
>>22074227
I also just cannot stand the dynamic of having a boss. Someone checking in once or twice per week to talk to me about this or check in on that is like more intolerable every year.

[Anonymous No.22074248]

>>22074233
>>22074227
i've recently lost my remote job of 7+ years. i can stay on 'vacation' for a couple years, and then i kill myself or live a life of crime. maybe even something productive, like working for myself somehow. either way, im not going back

[Anonymous No.22074263]

>>22074248
I might be in a similar position in a year or two, I'm looking to move to a cheap rural spot and start a permaculture food forest/chicken system in advance and basically live more simply.

[Anonymous No.22074287]

>>22074248
Crime is typically only sustainable as a supplement to a straight job. It's counterintuitive when you're used to the way of being successful in other fields, but the people who get into it hungry are the ones who run into consequences. When it's your primary income you can only safely get by for a few years if you know the right people. There's just too much up to luck when you can't afford to pass up the risky opportunities.

[Anonymous No.22074297]

>used to see a few excerpts posted that we can shit on
>Slowly see changes in other people's work posted
>Concepts to entire chapters
>After the discord dox drama
>Everything grinded to a screeching halt

Is the /wg/ literary movement dead?

[Anonymous No.22074310]

>>22074248
This is a writing general. Why don’t you just go all in on living off your writing? Freelance or something. At least it’s even more freedom than a remote job.

>>22074263
I’ve considered this. I live in a rural area.

[Anonymous No.22074314]

>>22074297
>used to see a few excerpts posted that we can shit on
have you considered scrolling up? or are you just trying to cope with something?

[Anonymous No.22074324]

>>22074297
I don't see why it would be. Do you want a passage?

>“So, I think we just found another weapon room,” Peter said as he strode on. The two of us stepped into a room much like the one where I had gotten my crowbar. There was even the same explanatory signboard. Of course, there were no weapons on the table.
>I found a dead Lem-cat though. I figured the killing blow was whatever had split its skull like firewood, probably another maul like Mike had. That didn’t exactly explain why the hind legs had been flattened like a piece of bloody schnitzel.

The destination for this story is Royalroad, so I'm using an intentionally casual style.

[Anonymous No.22074338]

>>22074314
Sure there's a passage, but nothing ever comes out of it. Another 3 months you expect an update, but it never comes

[Anonymous No.22074353]

>>22074182
Which alternative do you have for me

[Anonymous No.22074356]

>>22073991
That didn't motivate me at ALL

[Anonymous No.22074375]

Is it just me or are there a lot of rhetorical questions in writing now?
>How could x?
>What did it matter?
>where else would x do this?
What's the point of these sentences?

[Anonymous No.22074388]

>>22074353
>spend my freetime teaching a zoomer how to use a computer
No. I'm only here to mock you. tablet generation retard. screen-prodding monkey

[Anonymous No.22074390]

>>22074375
Why would the sole value of a question be in the answer?

[Anonymous No.22074402]

>>22074375
this is the writer asking themselves the question because they're coming up with everything on the fly. Plotting is a lost art.

[Anonymous No.22074405]

>>22074324
why do many fantasy webseries use western/english names? easy to remember? it doesn't bother me much, but there are meanings/origins to the names that wouldn't exist in the fantasy setting.

[Anonymous No.22074412]

>>22073969
where are you at in your writing? i will give you a next step

[Anonymous No.22074437]

>>22074405
My story is set in America

[Anonymous No.22074488]

>>22073328
Thanks for the pastebin. Some of this stuff is stuff that I suspected might be a problem, so I'm glad I was able to get a second opinion confirming it. Except for the flogging scene, that's definitely from you reading too much erotica lmfao. I like your idea for giving the Frost a more dramatic name, I'll play with that.

[Anonymous No.22075098]

>>22074405
Yes, for me I generally use western names because they are easier to remember, but only for the main kingdom the story takes place in, yet I also make up my own names like Jaramis or Jarrik.
I use biblical names for the neighboring theocracy because their gods are actually various fairies and gods from earth who were sucked into a portal to this world and made a religion by plagiarizing ones from earth.
Then for the beast people, it depends, the goatmen have odd names that get prefixes like Ur and Un to denote a caste system, so the first one you see if Ur'Kassivirum, hence, everyone calls him Kass. But for the owl people they have normal names, like Ibery and Sen.

[Anonymous No.22075200]

>>22075098
right on, i do appreciate the more thematic names.. and unique idioms, expletives, etc.

[Anonymous No.22075251]

>promised myself I would write today
>did NOTHING but browse 4chan and refresh various threads

[Anonymous No.22075262]

>>22075251
brother..

[Anonymous No.22075274]

>>22075251
Start writing earlier and that will stop happening.

[Anonymous No.22075281]

i don't really have an idea im enthusiastic about. and im currently speeding through books from different genres, trying to find inspiration. should i be writing anyway?

[Anonymous No.22075282]

>>22074405
Familiarity. As little sense as it sometimes makes, the majority of readers want things to be familiar, they don't want to memorize a bunch of made up names. It takes a bit of investment, or appreciation of the genre to like fantasy names, especially if there's meaning to their names that the invested reader gets out of it.

[Anonymous No.22075329]

Why, yes, I have written 2,000 words today.

[Anonymous No.22075418]

>>22075251
the most productive I've ever been as far as writing was when I swore off /pol/, and /tv/, for like half a year. there's just so much ragebait and insanity on /pol/ and I don't watch television so with /tv/ I can vicariously be entertained. if you want to write 2k words a day, swear off those cheap dopamine hits for a couple months.

[Anonymous No.22075502]

>>22074488
Yeah I was up a bit too late and losing focus. Still the point stands: it makes no sense for her to be captured unless you just want a flogging scene.

[Anonymous No.22075574]

>Mister, no. I'm sorry Mister.
>You've got such a big cane and I don't think my tender behind can take it.
>Please, Mister, anything but that, anything but-
>Owie!
>My little tushy. That hurt so bad, mister. Please don't give me-
>Ow! Ow, that's hurts. Stop it! I'll do anything.
>Please mister, I'll do anything, just stop paddling my sore, little bottom.
nothing wrong with flogging scenes. and she makes people speak the truth and she can only speak the truth? huh.
>Gosh, mister, you're soooo big. Go easy, you're going to destroy me!

[Anonymous No.22075584]

>>22075574
And this is my point, if the writer anon is still here.

[Anonymous No.22075598]

>>22075574

[Anonymous No.22075599]

>>22067536
>thicket of woods
>nostril's
>most foulest
Anon...

[Anonymous No.22075642]

>flogging scene
okay, let's take a look
>The thought of being punished publicly was mortifying, the pain and shame she was to endure too much to bear, and it took all she had not to break down. She wanted to be on the other side of this sentence as soon as might be. She turned her back to the little crowd and shed the faded tunic, crossing her arms and clamping shut her eyes. She made herself small, imagining that none could see her. Every second felt excruciatingly long and humiliating, and it seemed to her that the jailer was hesitating.

>She felt a slight wind across her back and shrunk affright, imagining it to be the first blow.

>“Torment me no longer with this idleness, get it over with,” she said bitterly. Someone behind her laughed, and another whistled lecherously; she tried to block it all out, but felt herself burning up with indignation.

Enid anon, I honestly hope you and your wife enjoy your fetish. To be fair, she probably does, she probably likes it more than you. But you may want to follow the other anon's advice and make a couple changes. Either cut it, or really lean into it. Like I ran across an erotica series based on Nancy Drew novels called Girl Detective Gets [In Trouble, Humiliated, etc, changes based on the book] It could have been better written, but it was titillating enough.

[Anonymous No.22075699]

>>22067562
Subject matter aside, I'm going to focus on the second paragraph.

Do not introduce him as the mine owner. The reader discovers that in the dialogue. Avoid telling the reader he is angry. Do something to show that he is angry. My rewrite as an example:

The man grit his teeth around his cigar, a stray ember dancing brightly in his monocle. He raised a wide hand and wiped his sweaty jowls with a handkerchief whose corner read "MR CAPITALISM."

[Anonymous No.22075825]

>>22074405
because reasonable people cringe when fagtasy authors name their protagonists shit like "Xalkrix".

[Anonymous No.22075858]

>>22075642
Okay, so here's my thing--I appreciate good honest criticism, but I genuinely can't tell if this is a good take or whether you guys are both just porn-addicted. I had two other beta readers (one male and one female) and neither left that scene with that impression. The first anon also mentioned in the pastebin that it seemed dull because he reads hard-core erotica.

If normal people agree then I'll definitely have to change it, but when the only two people to take issue with the scene are both avid erotica readers, I have to assume they see things through a coomer lens.

That being said, it's not supposed to be titillating, but I want the main character to suffer a lot. There's a line that I won't cross (rape) but short of that, she endures a lot. 1/3rd into the book she loses an arm to frostbite and becomes an amputee.

Either way, I'll have to be careful about how male readers and female readers will interpret scenes differently.

[Anonymous No.22075890]

>>22075825
You don't need to smash your keyboard to come up with a fantasy name, you can still follow real world conventions while making up fictional or at least rare names. Correll Marlson might not be anyone's actual name, but it sounds similar enough to plausibly be one. If you want to go more fantastical you can stretch it further without throwing in a bunch of apostrophes or having an X, Q, or Z every other letter.

[Anonymous No.22075897]

>>22075858
I am a woman and not porn addicted, and it definitely reads as humiliation fetish. I think it's because you focus on describing the feelings and anticipation of humiliation rather than a steeling of nerves or carrying herself with dignity despite the circumstances, etc.

[Anonymous No.22075899]

>>22075825
ok but naming your aliens and wuxia characters after dudes in the bible is not great for immersion

[Anonymous No.22075922]

>>22075890
>you can still follow real world conventions while making up fictional or at least rare names.
You certainly can, but I don't see it done well very often. People usually use lots of latin-sounding syllables in these cases for some reason, even for names that aren't supposed to be latin. That, to me, is just as unimmersive as the Xalkrixes and Zunathorgs of the world.

[Anonymous No.22075923]

>>22075897
>I think it's because you focus on describing the feelings and anticipation of humiliation
this is a good way of describing it. being flogged may be humiliating, but way more than that the goal is extreme physical pain. the pain and resulting scars are way worse than any temporary humiliation. a public spanking would be humiliating, a public flogging is to inflict excruciating pain

[Anonymous No.22075944]

>>22075922
Well that's just because writers will always be limited by what they know, and the people writing in English are presumably most experienced with English or some Romance language. If this was a Chinese shitposting forum where wannabe writers congregated, we'd be talking about how everyone always uses Chinese sounding names. Obviously people can do research into other languages, but that takes time and effort for something most readers aren't going to care much about. Plus then you just get the Darth Vader or Voldemort problem, where people who know the language will be taken out of it

[Anonymous No.22075958]

generic western/christian names for characters of a fantasy world is generally amateur oversight. i wouldn't encourage it as acceptable on account that they'd fail at giving them decent, appropriate names anyway.

[Anonymous No.22075976]

Why do people use generic dialogue tags like said, replied, answered, responded, etc., even when it's very clear who the speaker is? I would rather let my dialogue lines stand alone by themselves 95% of the time than add these needless embellishments.

[Anonymous No.22075984]

>>22075976
Clarity for people that easily lose attention.
Also the tag "X said" is "invisible" so writers don't feel guilty employing it. Personally I am with you though, if I think it's clear I don't add tags. I only add actions around the quotes if it's necessary to give context

[Anonymous No.22075985]

>>22075976
to give characters physical actions to give them some personality
"blah blah blah," he said, before taking a puff on his cigar. "blah blah."
a little of that is good for getting the reader to see the characters. too much and it feels like they're all covered in fire ants from all the shifting and squinting and grimacing they're doing.

[Anonymous No.22075987]

>>22075976
going to need examples, because it sounds like you're describing the poor bastards on RR or something similar-- in which case you should only bother pointing out when they aren't fucking up, or there'd be no end.

[Anonymous No.22076016]

>>22075897
Oh! Okay, that makes sense. Originally, the scene was different. In the previous draft there were no witnesses, so the element of humiliation was non-existent. A beta reader pointed out that it didn't make sense for something like that to not be public, because then it would be ripe for abuse (it doesn't take a detective to imagine what the result of that would be).

In the last draft I copied and pasted the scene but changed the setting from her cell to a public courtyard, since I thought that made more sense logically. But you're right that I failed to think about the differences between focusing on the internal aspect rather than the humiliation. I'm actually going to rewrite it later now that I've learned something.

[Anonymous No.22076048]

>>22075976
If it's a back and forth or you don't feel the need to tell the reader what change of action or mood their is, there's no need to ever use stuff like said or replied ect. If there's 3 people it's important to make it transparent when a new person pipes up after an exchange between two
x: "I like donuts" said x, eating a donut
y: "I hate donuts" said y, crushing a donut
x: "kill yourself"
z: "can I hav a donut" asked z, picking up a donut

[Anonymous No.22076067]

>>22076048
I think the issue with this is that
>"statement," said x, action
is repetitive. If it was written with some more variety or with other things between it might be alright. And even that alone is fine if it's not every single part of the story. But I think even roughly three times in a row is so clear that it comes off as facetious.

[Anonymous No.22076070]

>>22076067
obviously this is just a demonstration for the imporatance of tags

[Anonymous No.22076107]

>>22075418
I just closed all my /pol/ tabs after reading your post. Hate that board, don't know why I go on it. I think being so fast and easy to bait is just dopamine slop. Including this one I have 17 4chan tabs open between 9 boards. It's over

[Anonymous No.22076122]

Baked Bread
>>22076051
>>22076051
>>22076051
>>22076051

[Anonymous No.22076245]

Annnnnnnnnnd I just creampied the thread

[Anonymous No.22076695]

Thank goodness, the seething schizo samefagging pseud thread is grinding to a halt.
There was never a reason to seethe anyway.
"Technology has always created the wealth and time to free up labor for alternative more productive employment and created industries and jobs we never knew we needed at the time." -Jim Reid, head of global research, Deutsche Bank

[Anonymous No.22076792]

>>22074356
>implicitly admits this is his situation
lel

[Anonymous No.22076844]

>>22076695
Yeah, that thread’s been up for like 6 days. Don’t know why that schizo keeps bumping it.