What are the main influences you draw upon for writing your stories? The main writers I mean.

why can't i think of anything to write about

>>23554199
God is punishing your for your sins. Repent.

>>23554210
say sike right now

>>23554210
is the board being raided or something?

>>23554219
No, I just felt like shitposting.

File: stats.png (29 KB, 943x228)

29 KB PNG

How will you overcome these odds?

File: 1704983215828073.jpg (81 KB, 998x1128)

81 KB JPG

>trying to stick to 800 words a day until I reach my 2,800 word chapter
>its killing me
>not the amount of time it takes
>but how my prose is all beige
>barely any descriptiveness
>active voice made sterile by weak verbs and nouns
>can't stick to limited 3rd properly
>spend more time taking notes to edit specific scenes than write
>want to edit so fucking badly but I can only edit after finishing a chapter
Anons, is there any visualization techniques you can share? I can't stand how many single paragraphs I have that's just -
>he said, letting the loveseat swallow him
That said, is there a list of vivid and strong nouns and verbs? I need to similemaxx too.

>>23554273
>he said, letting the loveseat swallow him
What does that even mean? That's a beat, and it's perfectly okay to have them. Assuming they make any sense.

>>23554263
>the average self-published author makes 1000$ a year
Damn really? That's way, way higher than I thought. This survey has to have some sort of selection bias. It's significantly more grim than what those stats show

>How will you overcome these odds?
By not sucking

File: 1715487065883875.jpg (91 KB, 1170x819)

91 KB JPG

>>23554284
>What does that even mean?
Exactly! I don't fucking know because I wrote it on the spot. I wanted the protagonist's guest to recline and relax. With that sentence, I wanted the reader to visualize the guest sinking into the seat, like how a cartoon character does when they lay on a cloud.

>>23554314
It's average, so it counts the one person making $200,000 with the ten million making $1.

>>23554319
>He sank into the seat, his body melting into the fabric.

What other writing communities are out there? Is it just reddit and discord for the most part?

>>23554497
/trash/

Can I be a good writer even if I haven't read a lot?

>>23554919
Yes. I am good and I hate reading. It's actually better that way, because you form your own style and don't subconsciously copy other authors.

>>23554922
>I am good and I hate reading.
But how would you know?

>>23554932
I allow myself to read my own work, that's my only exception to the rule.

I never really got an answer to my question regarding how worthwhile writing smut on the side is.

>>23555014
Maybe no one here knows.

File: maxresdefault.jpg (140 KB, 1280x720)

140 KB JPG

>>23555014
Depends on the type of smut you write. If your target audience is male then forget it.

>>23555014
if its targeted at women go for it. they'll read anything as long as you include their favorite tropes and have a good title

>>23555014
Creating porn is a kind of intellectual and spiritual self-harm for any serious artist. Find another way to get by.

>>23555205
>if its targeted at women go for it. they'll read anything as long as you include their favorite tropes and have a good title
At least they read. Men don't read at all. They watch brainrot anime and porn. If they do read, it's sandersoy or litrpg.

>>23555238
the quality of the shit your average woman reads is so low that its unironically not better than just watching regular porn

>>23555231
>for any serious artist
Is that what you're trying to be? Lmao

>>23555247
Are you implying men are better? The rare ones who do read are, again, reading sandersoy or litrpg. Would love to see you make the argument that stinky garbage has more merit than womencore fiction.
The reality is humans in general have dogshit taste. why make it a gender thing

>>23555252
we're shitty in different ways

>>23555014
>Worthwhile
Yes, we all know what you mean by that. Can totally give meaningful responses.
I hate vagueposters

File: Pepes.jpg (15 KB, 381x345)

15 KB JPG

>>23554319
>I wanted the reader to visualize the guest sinking into the seat, like how a cartoon character does when they lay on a cloud.
If it's of any consolation, while I didn't think it's anything special, I actually pictured that with clarity and even had a little leather creak play in my head.

File: 1200px-Joachim_Beuckelaer(...).jpg (318 KB, 1200x888)

318 KB JPG

Do you think it's good writing to have a teenage MC refuse sex with a prostitute someone else paid for him for reasons of self-control and "atonement"? Or is it a tired cliché? Should I just cut such a scene out?

>>23554273
If you don't have a clear vision and purpose for your book to cut down on unnecessary slop, you will suffer. I spend most of my time thinking about what to cut off and what to include in my work before i start writing.

>>23555567
What's the setting and/or context?

File: intro1.png (54 KB, 622x634)

54 KB PNG

How is this for a basic call to adventure opening?
Feels a bit off to me but rewriting it ends up being pretty samey. Im starting to wonder if I should go at it from a different angle.

>>23554263
having a real job and writing on the side

>>23555250
Say what you want to say. I could infer any number of things from this post.

>>23554497
>What other writing communities are out there?
>https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/how-to-not-write-badly.992390/
SpaceBattles somewhat counts, I guess.

>>23555620
>low fantasy
>teenage boy runs away because he messed up and was a creepy horndog (not rapist)
>seeks atonement
>joins shipcrew because out of options
>gets shipwrecked
>gets saved by female stranger
>gets back to port
>bunch of seadogs think the stranger is evil and chase her away
>seadogs take him drinking
>pay for a prostitute
>boy still thinks he's too much of a creep to be engaging in any kind of this shit
>entire theme of his atonement is self-control and stalwartness
>the relationship with the stranger is entirely non-sexual
I'd either leave it in like that or cut it out, I dont think having him go in at this point is not fitting his character arc.

>>23555567
A normal person would refuse sex with whores because it's filthy, not as an exercise in Buddhism

do you think it's necessary to "master" the art of a short story first before tackling anything longer/novel-length?

>>23556062
no

>>23556062
It helps immensely. I have a lot of thoughts on it but I'll stick to this one. A novel takes themes and exhausts them while building a case and furthering some kind of point that can't be reduced to less than the collection of events presented. The short story is how you make the individual cases, "it's like this, and it's a mood" it says. Failure to do that through some kind of narrative motion that doesn't over-explain is failure to write an aspect of the novel. I think that if you aren't aware of how a short story functions, how it is similar to and different from a chapter or other division of the novel, and how to, to paraphase Pound, charge language with meaning to the utmost, you don't know how to build a novel and how much shit it takes.

I think some novels would benefit from being long short stories or novellas, because they are full of shit that doesn't add to the case and it just padding and the wrong kind of digression.

>>23556098
>long short stories
Underrated form, especially since magazine serials don't exist any more. Done right, they feel much bigger than they are. I think you're right that it gives you a sense of the scope of a novel and when you don't have one. The obsession with the novel due to market demands has been destructive to storytelling on the whole.

>>23555736
My "real job" leaves me too worn out & stressed to write. It just won't flow.

>>23556097
Good answer. Great conversation.

>>23556277
Same, sometimes you gotta push through the pain and exhaustion.

>>23555732
Sorry, but this is utterly boring. Cant you open with the meme intruiging first sentence? Its cheap but helps with generic fiction to intrigue the average reader.

>Protagonistman stood on the fast field with a gun against his temple ready to end it all.

>>23556314
If I try to write when exhausted, it comes out sub-beige, no imagination or artistry whatsoever. What's the point if I'm just going to produce crap? The times I can actually write are increasingly rare.

>>23556342
>What's the point if I'm just going to produce crap?
Well in your specific case it means you have something you can edit, rather than nothing at all.
Some tough love: I also relate to being exhausted from your job, but sometimes I was using it as an excuse when I absolutely could write. Once I pushed through that laziness for a few weeks it became a habit to write after work and now it feels wrong if I DON'T write.

Sometimes I just feel I need to regulate what books I read so I can model my writing style after the ones that I like.

>>23556281
well, to expound on my point, I'll echo in part what the other guy said. a story is a story, regardless of length, and novels and a short stories are largely different insofar as one is long and one is short. is there a particular utility in writing short stories before you start a novel? to practice, perhaps, but the reality is you'll get all kinds of practice writing a novel.
now I subscribe to the belief that individual chapters in a longer novel can each be considered a short story, in and of themselves, but even assuming that to be true, do you actually need to write a bunch of unrelated other stories first? of course not.
if you have a novel length idea, write a novel. if you have a smaller idea, write a short story. perhaps when you're writing it you'll realize it's much bigger than you thought and then you'll expand it.
but "mastering" the art of the short story before writing anything longer is unnecessary, and perhaps counterproductive if you're itching to write a novel length idea

>>23556477
>is there a particular utility in writing short stories before you start a novel?
You have more foundational skills and have gone through the drafting and revision process to produce a few final products, which allows you to see firsthand what kind of work goes into a novel that is much larger and more complex in scope. A single large project doesn't do as much for you as 15 smaller ones with the same total page count, all with unique issues and challenges.
>if you have a smaller idea, write a short story. perhaps when you're writing it you'll realize it's much bigger than you thought and then you'll expand it
This is how many stories start, even if you never see the initial short story. I read a lot of amateur dogshit and you can tell who is stretched thin and didn't have a short segment of it so strong that a novel could be developed out of it. It's not always the case, but short story writers have better pacing and interior movement in their longer works, from the start.

>>23556477
But to be clear, I'm not dogmatic about it. I just think that there's a relationship between short fiction and the novel that is one-way, similar to poetry in regard to prose.

>>23556524
>A single large project doesn't do as much for you as 15 smaller ones with the same total page count
if you have the passion and investment to write each and every one of those 15 smaller projects, then sure. that is certainly not the case for me.

>>23556352
I can try again, but I fear it'll just come out crappy, not even editable. That's been the pattern. I've also had a recurring case of "brain fog" since the last time I got sick with flu-like symptoms. Glutathione sort of relieves it, but not really.

>>23556638
my take on this is that writing has to be trained and maintained like a muscle, so even if your writing is shit now you want to maintain the habit. Get your brain back into writing mode before worrying about quality.
Brain fog sucks.

File: 1000036401.jpg (516 KB, 1080x1938)

516 KB JPG

>>23553964
I'm writing a Sword and Sorcery inspired fantasy story, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. This is the beginning of Chapter 1, so you can sample some of my prose and offer feedback. Thanks in advance.

Happy America Day

>>23556675
I can tell immediately that you're suffering from overly purple prose. There's a lot of description in that paragraph but I still have no idea what actually happened (some men see a shooting star while at sea?)
The writing itself is good, and the second paragraph is better because what is happening is clearer, but remember that being overly descriptive can often be a distraction rather than a show of your talents.

>>23556638
Nothing is uneditable, you're just a whiny bitch seeking excuses.

>>23556692
Thanks for the feedback. It's been a consistent sticking point in my writing. I actually toned this down considerably for this paragraph, which should serve as further indictment of my purple prose. As the author, the sequence makes sense, but I can see through your perspective how the paragraph can be arcane. It's one of those blind spots I have and why I posted at all. The Maridian raiders are underwater, there's a meteor shower, they're stalking a merchant ship in the ocean, and an Etherean sky-city floats in the sky above. That's the general premise of paragraph one.

>>23556675
make it clear, very clear, by adding a sentence right near the start that these silent raiders are fish people, or people from the depths, or wherever.
how many shooting stars could there possibly be? I'd just have the light above be from the floating city.
I'd cut the 2nd paragraph - and probably half of the first - in order to get to the 4th paragraph more quickly because that's where the action starts.
I would say add dialogue to give the reader a sense of their voices, but they are, as you described them, silent
why they are super silent but then break out into song I have no idea
maybe have the humans blurt out dialogue when the fish people attack - actually a good use would be to have the humans describe the fish people - or the men of Storm current Hold - rather than you the author calling them that. like "OMG scale skins are attacking", or whatever slur they have for the fish people

>>23556675
>repeating the same word twice in a sentence for no reason
>Noun Verbed. Noun verbed. Noun verbed. Noun verbed.
>Adjective noun. Adjective noun. Adjective noun. Adjective noun.
>completely incoherent descriptions
>all of this in the first paragraph
Absolute low effort dogshit.

>>23556675
It’s shit and you’re a piece of shit for trying to writing something as trite as sword and sorcery fantasy. How about you try to write something that’s not total drivel?

>>23556549
They engage your brain differently and some people are marathon runners. I find that the lesser, or the different kind of engagement that's trying to create a singular mood, changed my approach. I could see how you could get to it over the course of a novel, but it came to me through a linked collection that still remained independent. Like, you don't have that tendency to write sequentially or in parallel and can let elements hang out in space without resolving, that's one of the things I see first novels fail at.

And 15 is probably too many, 5 is probably enough. 7 just to be sure that you can get a project done that's your best work at that point. It's total loops of the process as much as elemental differences. None of it prepares you for the scope of a novel, but you pick up a bag of tricks that are hard earned among novelists.

It was like I said above, some ideas work better in short form and don't even need to be a novel. That Calvino shit where you suggest that it could be larger than it is, but don't follow through with it. That's the thing that is hard to do without doing it in its proper place first.

>>23556740
To address your critique.

I definitely should insert some small sentence about the amphibious nature of the Maridians. They're not really fish people, and the rest of the chapter describes them more, so much as humanoids with grey, smooth skin, webbed appendages, large eyes, and gills. As far as cutting, I'll take a look as well. There are a lot of shooting stars, more than are natural. It's important for the rest of the chapter and the story going forward. The sky is ablaze with them. The transformation sequences are also utilitarian for the broader context because magic is intrinsically linked to metaphysics and understanding, a big plot point that shows the difference between the Maridians and humans later in the chapter. I'm starting to think I should have posted the whole first chapter for clarity.

>>23556759
genreseether is that you?

>>23556779
Nice strawman.

>>23556768
my critique is your start is meandering and boring and you need to get to the action quickly. if you want to describe everything above maybe do so once they're on the ship, after they've fought some. is there dialogue? because you really need to have some dialogue so we can get a sense of what these fish people are like

>>23556787
It is you! It's been a while, have you decided to try writing yet? Or still lurking here just to seethe?

>>23556760
if you have a novel length idea, write a novel
if you have a bunch of little short whatevers, write short stories
that's all I'm saying

>>23556788
Fair enough. There is dialogue, but a large point of there not being anything spoken is that they use their blue bioluminescence to communicate without the need for words. Again, I probably should have just posted the whole first chapter for clarity. I can see your point, though. It does drag in a couple of spots.

>>23556793
I’ve always been writing, retard. I just don’t share it with you people since it doesn’t have warp drives and gnomes or whatever stupid shit you like.

>>23556823
>My writing is too smart
I can't believe you're so predictable that I was able to spot your post instantly again. Don't worry, I'll leave you alone this time.

>>23556823
Post your work

>>23556823
Does it have strawmen?

Hey fellow writers! I’m curious about your go-to methods for grabbing readers' attention right from the start. Personally, I love to dive in by starting in the middle or at the end of the story, then weaving back to fill in the details. Another favorite technique of mine is to kick things off with an action-packed scene that immediately pulls readers into the excitement. How do you all like to hook your readers? Do you start with a gripping dialogue, a mysterious setting, or perhaps a shocking twist? I know everyone’s style is different, so I’m curious to hear how y’all like to do things.

>>23556972
I'm opening with an argument about pissing into a jar. It really sets the tone for everything that comes after it.

>>23556972
ChatGPT post

>>23556972
>Yes, this could definitely be written by ChatGPT. The text is conversational and friendly, includes a clear question for the audience, and provides personal examples to encourage responses. These elements align well with the style and capabilities of ChatGPT, designed to engage users in meaningful conversations and discussions.

What influences do you draw upon when writing? What is your author's voice? What is your writing style, tone, and genre?

>>23557023
>>23557016
wrong! I copy and pasted it from Reddit!

File: book.jpg (334 KB, 1212x593)

334 KB JPG

What do I do with this half finished book that i don't think will ever get done.

>>23557030
why did this interaction give me deja vu

>>23557034
finish it

>>23557034
I am no critic but this is pretty good. How long's the book?

>>23557037
>>23557045
It's at 45k words. I need to end the story.

>>23556840
He doesn't have any work. He doesn't write; he just seethes, and counts his trolling posts among his "writing".

>>23555567
He should refuse it just purely on the basis its gross.

File: Alignment by story beginning.jpg (274 KB, 960x768)

274 KB JPG

>>23556972
There are as many ways to open a story as there are writers. But here's a handy 9-block based on alignment.

File: 1720098565067w.png (448 KB, 680x618)

448 KB PNG

Need help writing a character with a comically strong british accent. Since I am an ETL, I never really had that much experience with british english and would therefore appreciate some kind of collection of british slang and speech mannerisms.

>>23556675
If I just picked this up as a book going into it blind I'd drop it by the first paragraph. There's a lot of description on lighting and the setting but there's no action. I don't mean a fight, I just mean not even a character does anything. Also, it's pretty flowery in its description.
>glanced at the omen in the heavens above the firmament of air above their azure home
It's a bit thick.

What is the process for hiring an editor? Is it common to submit a chapter to them, have them do it for free, and then if you like their style you hire them? If not, how do you know you and editor like the same writing style and follow the same goals?

tl;dr a friend said they could get me in a touch with a friend of theirs who does editing. As a personal favor I feel rude turning them down, but I don't know this guy from Jack off the street and he could suck for all I know. How do "interview" him, so to say?

>>23557136
Wut, ye ne'rn't 'eard an ægnlishman gov?

>>23557136
My advice is to not go too hard in it. Just a line of narration that he has a thick accent is enough for me, and just a sparse word of it. I dropped Great Expectations like a rock because I couldn't be assed to spend 5 minutes per page deciphering the garbled lines of text Dickens wrote to convey an accent.

>>23557136
Aye an a bit o' mackerel, back-a-racken
fear 'nd a revit
din bat-a 'hed 'nd a thoit'
well i slap'd thea in a flem 'nd din an'a sade
'nd a creed, creed, creed
'da fear of fallin' dinga'
dingan nerver bought 'da raise
And den cread marie'a!
took equi-epk
lamoret 'nd a buot
And I roon-doon-doon 'da maken' stye
'n taklin' the fairy hord dat was fallen round de feet
"Never!" de cried "Never shall ye get me alayv
Ya rotten hound of de hondny free
Well I snakd for a blame 'nd a clamore cut and a crust
'nd i fell dingd befoor 'em ring'st fet
a roar-e creed!
Frae the bottom of es heart that I would nay
fall but es deed,
dead as a can by a feat
deah...
And the wind cried meth.

>>23557248
I see. But I could still use a resource like that as a point of reference.

>>23557256
That's not even english, it's scots. Closer to my own dialect of mountain talk what splits the Hebrides than anglo ramblings.

>>23557136
gotta go with the old cockney accent. watch my fair lady

File: 1564850701015.jpg (87 KB, 1024x1010)

87 KB JPG

I like this kind of stuff. I think this is Scottish but it's all the same shit to anyone from outside the UK anyway.

>>23557321
You can get the same effect by using ordinary english without changing spelling:

Why the folk ask pokeman stupid shit like "You're getting strong aren't you?" As if the wee cunts gonna be like "aye, Moira, you're spot on. Am on the exp share."

The spelling differences just make it a chore to read.

>>23557329
>>23557321
Do ye?
https://voca.ro/1iRkjoy74gY4

>>23557329
>the
do
>Am
>I'm
Get your shit together, some fucking hick knows scots better than ye.

>>23557329
But if you're just using normal English are you really conveying the sense of an accent?

File: 1588796645869.jpg (356 KB, 1600x1200)

356 KB JPG

I'm writing a visual novel about reminiscing over the past, the way that memories blend together, that sort of thing. My artist thinks that it should start with a solid hook to ground the reader and make them care about the whole story (trying to remember where something missing has gone, that sort of thing) whereas I'm more for allowing it to start aimlessly and meaning to only appear later on. I'm trying to find some sort of middle ground, where you're given a lead in the start that ultimately becomes irrelevant as you get deeper into the actual story, but I'm struggling to think up something would make one go so deeply into their own memories but also isn't ultimately that important.

>>23557380
I started my current project as something like that, throw me a disco or tele link or just hit me up at laban at firemail dot cc and I'll send you some thoughts.

>>23557380
There are like 10 trillion games competing for people's attention, not to mention movies, TV, books, etc. It is definitely important to get the player hooked and invested as early as possible or else they'll lose interest and go play something else. I've refunded games on Steam in less than 10 minutes because I didn't like the beginning.

>>23557405
Naw, you got ~15 minutes on a slow crawl to set something up.

VNfags expect atmosphere and believe you me, the long openings that go nowhere are like 3 pages of real text, tops.

It can't be immediate intrigue, it's all mood and tropey hooks.

They're used to it, expect it. I don't know why but they do and it's like starting a victorian novel by some asshole with amnesia every time.

Comfort, that's the only thing I can think of. The comfort of a narrator as lost as you are. Why his memory is so fucked, few know, but the readers appreciate it.

>>23557380
I love visual novels but one of my biggest complaints about them is how long some of them can take for anything of actual importance to happen, where there's hours upon hours of establishing the MC's daily routine and their friend group

>>23557166
There is literally no reason in this day and age not to just feed your manuscript to ChatGPT with the instructions to focus on correcting grammar ONLY. That's your basic proofreading service that would normally run you $400. Then when you get everything grammatically correct, hand it off to a friend for a quick perusal for any odd word choices. Or go full-AI and have ChatGPT help you with that too. If you can write a story, you should have enough sense to know what it suggests is right or wrong, so use your own judgment.

Merrier merrier journey away.

>>23557459
What if you're the least bit of a stylist and don't care about the 4th grade audience?

>>23557282
It's Pictish. It's literally the lyrics to "Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Locked Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict" by Pink Floyd. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYfxdFZkM5Y

>>23557469
I'm saying have the AI do your grammar, like make sure your commas are in order, there are no misplaced semicolons or hanging clauses. I've run stuff through there and it catches typos spellcheck misses like putting fact instead of face. It's really quite good.

TODAY I WRITE

>>23557472
It's scots. I think it's inspired from the Wallace https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/49580/pg49580-images.html but I don't care enough to make you look like a retard.

We have no pict language in record you fucking burnout. Also the scots in that is shite cunt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4UYX2qpUK0
The english in this fucks with ESLs and yankees enough.

>>23557472
Tho' personally I'm a Budgie man. Welsh sounds like it comes from around every corner.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovBXp7lHsTw
>>23557472

>>23557506
They look like lesbians who turned me down in high school and college. I'm turned on.

>>23557135
>Chapter 1 starts with establishing surroundings as I describe in a sentence a major supernatural event of the setting
Okay, so Neutral
>But actually, just after the title of chapter 1 but before the actual story, I write a (fake) quote said by a (real) historical figure
Guess that counts as Lawful Evil then
>But ACTUALLY before even the title of chapter 1 I start with one half of a conversation none of the protagonists are there to hear
Chaotic good I suppose, bit of a wide leap
>But ACTUALLY before that I plan to draw a diagram that I assume will be ignored by potential readers, until they remember it (with any luck) halfway through chapter 5 and go check to see the visual representation of what I describe
I guess exposition so Chaotic Evil, I'm getting lost
>But ACKCHUAHLY, I will likely start page 1 with a single, mystic-sounding sentence taking the whole page, something like
>MANY DOORS
>HAS
>THE HOUSE
>OF AKASH
I give up

>>23556098
thanks for your reply and saved for future reference. You've given me a lot to think about and expressed some ideas I was struggling to articulate.
I will be spending more time working on some short stories and even some really short vignettes to get a better feel for what you're positing here.

>>23556161
I agree but also think it's a difficult balance to get right. i.e. needs a lot of time to "master" (which ties back into my original question) and not everyone seems interested in paying their dues here. maybe they treat the short story as a training exercise/stepping stone to novel writing or something sufficiently different from novel writing to not deserve too much specific skill investment in the first place. i think it's more than that, and really learning the craft of a short story can have a huge benefit on storytelling ability

>>23556097
>>23556477
interesting counterpoints. i think too many people are fixated and enamoured with writing a novel. maybe "mastery" is a sensationalist way of looking at it but i think being damn good at short stories and not rushing the short-story-to-novel skill development pipeline even if a novel is the end goal is worth the delay
>perhaps counterproductive
why do you think this? i've encountered stories that were too long, too short, too convoluted, too shallow - but never too "tight". I think being very good at writing short stories would help with writing tighter stories more generally.

>>23557500
You'd only be making Pink Floyd look like retards, and I don't think they care about your opinion.

>>23557531
The chart is only about story beginnings, not every single beat within the story. You're overthinking this.

>>23556098
> A novel takes themes and exhausts them while building a case and furthering some kind of point that can't be reduced to less than the collection of events presented.
Too good for this board. In fact it makes me suspicious why you're here.

File: Untitled document-images-0.jpg (637 KB, 2550x3300)

637 KB JPG

Cross-posting from /sffg/, how does this small writing sample sound? what do you think could be better, or what do you like about it?

>>23557550
Yeah, the novel isn't the only form and knowing when you have a novel v. myriad alternatives is where writing something else and reading all the cool shit that already exists comes into play, anons here, not necessarily the one I argued the point with I kinda liked him, can't fucking read and don't give a lick of fuck about craft, whereas when I started, the genrefags were the only ones talking craft and form and format and my camp of litfucks of any note only did so in the past. Everything is fucked now, do what you should in spite of it.

>>23557581
I'm in hell too until I finish this manuscript and get an agent or go straight to small press. We're all marked by the devil and made clever by it while the rest wallow in their own shit and get compliments for it or crab bucketed. I got the greenlight from mere conversation, to the effect that I couldn't write total dogshit dumpster fire garbage, from a published author. Nice ego boost, still don't have an ego. I'm in debt here.

I want to drag whoever thinks this is a productive thread kicking and screaming into the light of day to let them wither and rot. Or make something worth their own while. I might get my 500 words in for the day after I go all introspective from holiday withdrawals.

File: Untitled document-images-1.jpg (529 KB, 2550x3300)

529 KB JPG

>>23557626

File: PXL_20240704_215144183.MP.jpg (3.49 MB, 2611x1966)

3.49 MB JPG

>90s jungle: on
>ambient passthrough so I get double rain: on
Yeah, it's time to write.

>>23557737
I wish I had a house with a porch. Looks cozy af.

>>23557626
I would start at "Harold was blinded by his monitor." You could cut everything before that. It's just too much of an info dump and feels more like an informational article than a story. Starting with a character will make it more compelling, as opposed to starting with unemotional / expository stuff about satellites, imaging systems, etc.

also there's just too much description of the monitors, exhaust profiles, etc. if this is the first page and a half of whatever someone is reading, you need to get into the action more quickly. you don't need more than a paragraph to explain the situation with the computers and ships or whatever. if you need to include that stuff, you can pepper it in later. but people are gonna wanna read action and human drama first, and will only care about the scientific explanations for things if they're already hooked on the story.

i would just go from, harold was blinded by the monitor. he saw a giant warship approaching that shouldn't be there. he alerted the captain, etc. because whatever happens after that is going to be much more interesting than the description of the monitors, etc.

>>23557745
I'm here so God can't see any of this shit. I'm looking for some clive barker tier music to get into a mood and I think I just found some white hot cringe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs4PGavKxd4
Oh yeah, this quiets all the strong voices.

>>23557028
>What influences do you draw upon when writing?
the current last book i read

Those of you looking for an online document service, one less censorious than Google Docs or Microsoft Office, may want to consider the newly-launched Proton Docs: https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/3/24190732/proton-docs-document-editor-privacy-google

I'm jealous of people who can both write and draw.

>>23557550
>why do you think [it may be counterproductive]
let's say you have your novel length idea, and while you've read a whole bunch, you don't have much experience writing so you think, okay, I will write some short stories first in order to get some practice and then when I get back to this novel I will be able to really put out some A quality material first draft
so let's say you write your 1st short story with a new idea. 10k words. you read it back and you say to yourself, okay this needs some serious work, my 2nd short story will be better than this.
so you write your second short story, 15k words, and you like it more than the 1st, but on reread you still say, goddamn I am dogshit, this first draft isn't very good. okay, my 3rd short story will be even better.
so you do the 3rd one etc. and now we'll say you've done 50k words total of short stories - all first draft, ofc. and you feel somewhat better about the process, and you feel somewhat better about your writing, and you go back to your original story idea and you start writing.
what have you actually learned? you learned that drafting takes a good bit of time, sure, but you haven't learned anything about creating longer narrative arcs and maybe, you find, that original idea you were so enamored with 6 ish months ago, you don't like it so much anymore. the spark is gone. more importantly you haven't done the most important part of story writing: editing. which is where the real work and magic happens. now has drafting those short stories helped you with your longer project? no.
but let's say you did edit. you put in all the time necessary to turn those short stories into something you like - but that took a good deal more time. so now it's a full year later. and who reads short stories? not as many people who read novels, it's not even close. novel length projects - or in the case of RR or scribblehub - big fantasy book length projects are what's popular. so for all the effort you put into writing these short stories, you don't get much out of it as far as eyeballs on the other side.

now let's contrast simply jumping into the novel idea you had instead of "practicing" with short stories. you draft your 100k novel. you have your ups and down getting your voice right and getting characters right and filling in the big noticeable plot holes and you get to the end your draft and you have a big pile of something. something with a big plot you love, something with all these cool characters you made, something that absolutely needs a lot of time editing. so 1st draft turns into 2nd turns into 3rd. and now let's say we are 1 year in, maybe a little more, and your novel is done - or done enough - and people will actually take the time to at least glance at it because it's not a short story.

> i've encountered stories that were too long, too short, too convoluted, too shallow - but never too "tight"
in this instance too tight you can equate with too shallow.

Is it hard to learn how to write.

>>23558356
Just watch tutorials on Youtube like I did.

File: 1.jpg (69 KB, 662x632)

69 KB JPG

dicking around with a short story about a demented young phrenologist

throwing it up here to see if anyone thinks it has much of anything

File: 2.jpg (31 KB, 669x277)

31 KB JPG

>>23558556

File: 3.jpg (92 KB, 702x759)

92 KB JPG

>>23558556
>>23558558

>>23557626

you are talking about antimatter so this is clearly in the future (and in space) and yet all your other vocabulary is using terms like aircraft carriers, battleships and warships. How does that make sense? Even terms like supercomputer and computer do not at all invoke the future. It's very unlikely that terms like that would continue to be used at a time when people are looking at "antimatter exhaust fumes."

File: White_lotus_tornado.png (53 KB, 200x150)

53 KB PNG

>>23553964
What are some good ways to show someone as competent and pleasant enough but doesn't take things seriously enough to be considered a good partner?

I was thinking
>He's skilled at the valued skills of the community
>He's competent at planning and strategy
>However he always goofs off whenever he can and has a tendency to sneak around and do forbidden things or play pranks

I have 145 followers, and somewhere in those followers is a die-hard fan invested in the story. That's who I write for.

>>23558597
Which site do you use?

>>23556324
>>23555732
I was already thinking I could paste my most intriguing action section before this paragraph and then follow up with this.
Do you (or anyone else reading) have any comments or complaints about the content here? I was trying to give it a little bit of atmosphere and feel for the world along with a some characterisation.

>>23558585
Don't say 'goof off', establish him as flaky and unreliable, and make him give excuses that don't hold water to anyone else.

Have him arrive late to important events and cause trouble for everyone else by being late. Make it consequential. Readers will notice that this character is inherently selfish and thus not a good partner, romantic or otherwise.

>>23555567
Hart's Hope by Orson Scott Card had a chapter like that. He pays for a prostitute, too limp-dick to do anything, then meets a disgraced goddess in the brothel.

File: Screenshot (12547).png (75 KB, 696x510)

75 KB PNG

Regained the will to write (and live), tell me how shit I am.

>>23558660
The second mention of the mast was supposed to be a sail >.<

>>23558597
same but i have 18 followers and the one most invested is my friend

Is there a /wg/ discord?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJC41394MyE

>>23554073
I draw on everything. In other words, nothing in particular

>>23558823
There was one but the feds had to shut it down and most of the users got arrested. I only got away because I used it in an incognito window

>>23557987
bro wtf are you writing that you're afraid google is gonna come after you

>>23558660
Those are some nicely combined words

>>23558823
You're posting on it now.

I did the unthinkable, perhaps never done before. I adapted Hamlet.
https://pastebin.com/UASLpNyZ

What are your thoughts on fan service scenes in novels? Whether intimate or if im writint with a boner I always feel like a stupid fag describing ample bosoms or scenes involving two characters getting closer in their relationship. Am I just overthinking like an autists or should I say fuck it and write in my barely disguised fetishes

>>23559082
I can't speak to the baseline level of fan service or sexy scenes in modern lit cause i dont read that much of it. But i will say that if you're writing from the point of view of a person, than portraying how they look at people and think about them sexually can be a good way of demonstrating that they are humans with human instincts.
However if you go too far with it i think the audience might get tired of it.
You don't need to worry about those annoying r/menwritingwomen-type criticisms because they basically don't understand what theyre even criticizing.

>>23559082
Fanservice is anime bullshit by definition. Superfluous content detached from everything else, only there to pander to the audience. If a character being attracted to another is part of the story, then it's not fucking fanservice, it's the meat and potatoes of your goddamn book.

>>23558556
>>23558558
>>23558560
i really like it
maybe it's deliberate but for someone practicing "human taxonomy", his thoughts and observations seem a bit scattered. i think a bit more rationality might make him more chilling. maybe i'm just misunderstanding what you're trying to do

>>23556675
The first paragraph is overly purple; by overusing adjectives you overwhelm the reader and give an equal amount of importance to every noun, thus diminishing the effect that adjectivation should have.
>the light of a full moon's glow
Is redundant. Light and glow already express the same idea.

The other paragraphs are far more enjoyable but they still suffer from other issues.
The last four sentences of the second paragraph have an anaphora which you ultimately fumbled by making the first of them too long, the third not match. The fourth seems to be somewhat subverting the trend but it's not really worth doing in that particular context since it undermines the pre-existing pattern with no payoff. For the same reason the second sentence of the second paragraph shouldn't start with "each man".
Most of your sentences also seem to start with either "the" or a pronoun so you should explore other avenues for mixing that up. Repetition should always be avoided unless it's expressly intended for rhetoric or aesthetic purposes since our brains are far too good at pattern recognition to not notice such things.

There might be other mistakes but I don't have time to fully read and critic everything. I hope this helps nonetheless.

>>23558556
Pretty good. You have an ear for the turn of phrase. This style is definitely suited for short mediums only, as this voice in a longer work would quickly become grating.

The recommendation I have is to ground the reader a bit more in the beginning and maybe play around with pov. Try writing this in first-person, for example. There also needs to be some discordance near the end. As it is, it's the same beat repeated over and over, and without some kind of reversal or surprise, you have only your prose to fix the reader's attention. If that's what you're going for, just write poetry instead. A work of fiction operates via expectation and anticipation in narrative, not just language.

How do authors write characters and dialogue?

I have an outline of the story, I have several minor and major events planned out. The issue here is characters and dialogue, mc is the silent protagonist type, man of few words (like me) so writing him is easier but writing other people is beyond my capability.
Should I collaborate? How does that even work?
I know an older guy from my previous job, he has some Italian ancestry and can talk non stop for hours, and it's not just some retarded stream of conciousness speak but often valid semi serious critique of every day people, events and other things with jokes in between and breaks at the right times. He has a way with words (I fucking told him to go on yt or something and just make vids), should I hire him to act out various situations from my story (and record his dialogue, speech, expressions) ?
Would that work?

>>23558873
As if. This place is COMPLETELY irrelevant.

>>23558878
I've heard reports of Google Docs censoring words and topics they don't consider "woke" enough.
https://www.bing.com/search?q=google+docs+censored+my+work
https://support.google.com/docs/thread/131359259/i-get-the-message-this-item-has-been-flagged-as-inappropriate-and-can-no-longer-be-shared?hl=en-GB

I think I have finally and completely given up on the idea of an audience. The likelihood of my book being read by anybody is so low that I'm no longer going to consider the audience or what they are thinking as I write. No I don't care that you don't understand my prose, I don't care if there are "plotholes" and that "breaks your immersion", I don't care that characters make decisions you don't like. I'll do what I want because this is my story.

>>23559926
Great. Make sure it's a literary novel and not some paint by numbers fantasy heartbreaker.

>>23559926
As long as this is a promise to yourself to make something quality and not "actually, I give up, I'm going to shit on the page and do whatever I want."

>>23559951
It's certainly an attempt at a literary novel. I couldn't tell you if it's good enough to count as literary but who cares any more anyway.
>>23560042
>"actually, I give up, I'm going to shit on the page and do whatever I want."
Definitely not. But I overthink the criticism that people put online. There is no point in trying to please everyone but I constantly feel like none of it will please anyone. Not because I don't believe in the story but because of the things I mentioned before; plotholes, weird projections onto characters, being quick to call anything "pretentious". Why should I care? It's my story.

Who chooses the chosen one and who chose them to choose?

>>23560167
I like it when the protagonist gets told they're not really the chosen one and it pushes them to truly become the chosen one.

I have three brief stories here
https://litter.catbox.moe/o7mczx.pdf

Let me know which one is best thanks
https://strawpoll.com/Q0Zp74reJgM

>>23559926
anon, you just woke up from the matrix

File: 1702920359519808.jpg (23 KB, 236x263)

23 KB JPG

Is there anything worst than finding plotholes in your rough draft?

>>23555200
Literally just write incest smut and you will rake in the money.

I want to write mass appeal slop but it must also be slop on my own terms

I like prompting chatgpt to write short stories. Can someone please reassure me that its okay?

>>23560219
Finding them in your final draft.
>>23560270
How does it do with characterization? Do the characters have consistent personalities?

today...

>>23560243
wouldn't there be lots of competition?

>>23560270
what for?