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>>23596415
>A sci-fi thriller where the entire first half of the story is a slice of life comedy

I raise you: A sci-fi thriller that's a slice of life comedy AT THE SAME TIME.

>>23598640
>>23598653
Can anyone read beyond the first few paragraphs (of the admittedly edgy rant that I'm removing thanks to the clearheaded advice of every single person I replied to)

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>>23598627
Posting this here for posterity. Would rather get a personal analysis of the ideas than grammatical criticism. Some of the paragraphs run into each other because of how Evernote works but that will be fixed before publication.

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s524/sh/1e49611f-f5bd-86be-a2a4-eda9cdab045e/okIEv5nzixcE6LJdqQwq9nz3o5fk2UDSukvEsdF7t7UpWQPNPQc5rHNj-A

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This is the full extent of my worldbuilding skills.

>>23598666
hm, maybe this is not what you had in mind, but i would like to have more of declan thoughts. what does he think as he listens to the birds. and his feelings. is he angry or scared as he gets in.

also he is not talking to his audience enough i feel. i forgot again that he had the helmet on. also why does the helmet have hundreds of cameras? seems like overkill. even one would be enough.

so did he just use the random extension cord that was lying there? why does he have that crazy helmet but not a garotte for example?

i don't know if the fight is very believable. i am sure the bag would have been easy to get through. and it seems the attacker has quiet a lot of time where the defender does nothing. but i guess people have been killed that way. i just don't have a lot of experience with that i suppose. i would have thought the defender would try to claw under the cord instead of just punching. but maybe you have reviewed source material for this and this is how it usually goes down, idk.

>>23598723
I know I should recognize that but so many cities look alike in these shows that I can't pinpoint it. I'm gonna guess Konosuba since that's the most recent isekai I would've seen it in.

>>23598731
iirc that's DanMachi

>>23598731
>>23598735
SauceNow says Konosuba but it's anyone's guess, they are all literally a copy paste of another.

>8k words
Bless its heart, it almost looks like a story now.

>>23598744
From the shape of the river, it looks like London encircled by a wall. Matches pretty good and the nips are huge Angloboos so I can believe it.

>>23598729
Thanks anon these are good points

>>23598627
4 out of 5 are mutts. In another 20 years 5 out 5 will be mutts

Do you guys use the Pomodoro method? It's been working pretty well for me so far. Usually I struggle to write for extended periods but by forcing myself to stop every so often I'm actually getting words out there. Genuinely pretty happy.

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>>23598627
What are some acts a former master swordsmaster can do as a circus performer, utilizing their skills for performance?

I thought of
>twirling flaming sword at night
>audience throws fruit and swordsmaster goes fruit ninja on the fruit
>juggling objects with the tip of the sword

I wanted acts that would show them to be a master of the blade to an outside observer

>>23598639
farscape is unironically one of the biggest inspirations for my book

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Is pic related a good example of where fantasy genre is going or is there something else I should read to be hip with the kids?

>>23598861
I’ve tried, but it just gets me out of my groove. Either I write for 30 minutes straight or it just doesn’t happen. Very little in between for me

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i struggle to write larger/longer word counts
if i release micro chapters of, let's say, 500-1000 words, will people kill me with torches and pitchforks?
i'm looking to upload to royalroad

>>23598915
>Is pic related a good example of where fantasy genre is going
no

>>23598881
Those are solo acts, you could have him do some group action too.
I can see him defend from other skilled sword-wielding attackers while doing acrobatics or fulfilling some other entertaining objective such as disarming the opponents with a rolling pin or judo moves. Maybe look into coliseum acts for inspiration. 3-on-1 fights, 2-on-1 but our guy is not armed, fighting animals (but not hurting them because he's so good), you get the gist.
Maybe have him teach, if he's so good, others will be raised by his attention and time. "I learnt everything I know from him!", "He's the best I've ever seen!", etc. We as humans shine in contrast to others.
Doing it wrong might make him look like Steven Seagal or the Shield Hero but if you give some credit to the attackers you might have gold on your hands.

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>>23598861
>the Pomodoro method
Intriguing, will try this

My writing is straightforward and heavy handed in its messaging. How would you go about making it more subtle

>>23598957
>will people kill me with torches and pitchforks?
They won't read the story at all, so no. 1000 is below the minimum, much less 500. I would say 1500 is the lowest you can go on average, and even that is detrimental to most readers perspective of the story

>>23598915
Does anyone ever read those recommendation quotes they put on covers?

>>23598995
>provides no specifics or even generalizations
In that case: to make a story less heavy handed and more subtle, you make it less heavy handed and more subtle

>>23598995
There are several things you may need to do; do you want to share an example?

>>23598735
I thought so too at first, but there's a bigass tower in the center of the city in DanMachi and that little circle on the left looks too small to be the colosseum.

>>23598744
For real. I think it's interesting that the least serious series in recent memory tended towards interesting city designs.

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>>23598888
Giga-based.

>>23599009
Rarely. I cared a lot about them when I was younger, didn't care for them after maturing a bit, and now I've circled back to appreciating a few of them. Generally, I dislike anything on the cover but the title and author, though. Maybe a minimalist symbol or something.

>>23599009
Do you look at ads on websites?

>>23598881
Cutting the ropes binding a buxom damsel without harming her

Lifting a necklace off someone with the sword tip

parrying arrows in flight

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>>23599107
>>23598744
>interesting city design

>>23599231
This has to be some sort of inside joke

>>23599231
Wouldn't a circle be the most inefficient design for a city? There's a reason why most don't do that IRL.

>>23599238
It's not like real cities are the shape they are on purpose.

>>23599231
looks like the walled cities in attack on titan

>>23599234
exactly what i was thinking; this has to be intentional.
maybe it's tongue in cheek nod to the other, for how little it matters, or for how the subgenre is in general.

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>>23598980
the swordmaster is a woman but thanks for the ideas of group performances

I imagine her as having fought so many battles before that she doesn't really enjoy duels much anymore, but I think that the audience (villagers) will probably have at least a few brazen challengers

>>23599220
>buxom damsel
Good idea, but I think what might be more impressive is she binds someone really strong looking with ropes, preying on people not realizing ropes are strong vs tension and weak vs shear force. Also, the strong guy can strain against the ropes and sort of "help" her cut it without being cut himself. She cuts most of the way through the rope and his muscles do the rest.

Also the idea of an ordinary looking woman cutting apart thick ropes a burly man cannot break I think is very theatrical to many.

>parrying arrows in flight
Shit, forgot about that. Thanks!

>>23599238
how would it be inefficient? it would be the most efficient way for building a wall around it.

>>23598698
>free will and jews in the first paragraph
You’re shit. Stop trying to think, get a wagie job and commit to it. Try to get a partner, have kids and see to their needs. It is your maximum level. The sooner you accept it the faster you will overcome your angst.
If you want to write, write fiction without any attempts philosophical or political undertones. You don’t have it in you and never will at the level where it will be relevant or interesting to anyone but dimwits and local pub alcoholics. Though, chance is that the latter actually surpass you.

Posted here a few days ago, starting out writing and looking on some critiques, try to be as specific as possible please. heres some shit i wrote today:

It is dark here, all alone in the great expanse, cold too. Overwhelming nothingness stretches on unyielding in every direction, infinitely. But there is one thing here though, the last thing. Or possibly the first. So tiny and beautiful, and the only thing with any semblance of warmth or light, like some ethereal amalgamation of fire and electricity, a lone beacon in the void. A Fragile spirit of existence, its efficacy waning. It is the last stand of a defiant existence against the all-consuming nothing. But it is tired, it has been for some time, or would have been if time could be said to exist in such a place.

>What’s that thing, way out there. It’s faint and you almost wouldn't notice it, if not for the complete lack of anything anywhere else. You can’t see it, no, not quite yet. You’ve not really developed that level of awareness yet. But still you can feel its energy. Another something barely keeping afloat in the sea of nothing else. “Hello” you say, or you would if you had the capacity for speech. You try to reach out, expand yourself. Can you though? Is there anywhere to expand? You push, only slightly. Nothing gives way to nothing else and it's not as cold and dark as it was before. You shift in excitement, and the other not-nothing seems to shift in recognition.

>>23598666
The rest of it is fine, it just needs more variety with how you start your sentences.

>>23599629
Nah, I don’t think I will. I accept your concession, though,

>>23599687
there is a pattern in how you end you first couple sentences:
>, cold too.
>, infinitely.
>, the last thing.
>, a lone beacon in the void.

maybe you wanted to do that, but i became aware of it. don't know if that is good. could be like saying uhm too often and you only listen to the uhms.

besides that idk if there is much to critique here. i mean basically nothing happens and you are only going for very abstract feelings in a very abstract space. usually it is easier to critique something if it makes one feel something, like if there is action going on or characters interacting.

your piece sounds a bit like one of those things that you need to be in the right mood for to appreciate.

maybe tell us what you were going for, then we can tell you if you were able to pull it off or not.

I have about 3 chapters left on my first draft. It's normal to think it's a complete pile of shit that will need a rewrite, right?

>>23599825
Anon. My book is with professionals as we speak and I still think it's a pile of shit.

>>23599825
yes. it probably just needs editing and partial rewrites.

and then you just throw it away and start a new book that is less cringe. this is the way.

>>23599829
>>23599831
I'm unfortunately already thinking about the next book. But thank you, I needed this validation.

>>23599238
City Walls are expensive and inefficient irl, that's why they only get put up if there's a good reason and knocked down if the burgers can do so without having the city get sacked or something.
It's almost like the decision to have a wall around your city is an entire story unto itself.

>>23599808
I didn't even realize i was doing that, thanks ill pay attention to improving that.

did you picture anything in your head? i was kind of going for the feeling of like: imagine a star by itself in space and zoom way out, and theres nothing else except that way zoomed-out star, like a tiny pinprick in a vantablack carpet.

>>23599839
well of course you would only build the wall if you need it. but seems like it was needed quite often?

but what else makes a circular city inefficient? i mean there could be things like terrain that make it impossible. but other than that, what shape should a more efficient medieval city have?

>>23599854
i think i had this picture in my mind. but no other pictures.

and i did not know what you meant with "level of awareness" so i assumed that picture is probably wrong. and saying "hello" to a start also does not make sense. so i had the typical problem of not knowing who is even talking. like who can expand themselves? or push when there is nothing to push off from? but maybe you wanted to make the reader confused and unsure. idk

>>23599908
I could be talking out of my ass here, but I believe I've heard before that city walls generally want corners for easier defense from multiple angles

>>23599921
depends on what you want to defend yourself from. but if you need an angle somewhere just put one there. like for a citadel. the round design would still be the most efficient. and the best design changed over time

>>23598698
>analysis of the ideas than grammatical criticism
Is there ever a bigger red flag?

>>23598846
There's no such thing as "mutt" because there's no such thing as race.

>>23599994
Oof moment.

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>>23598698
I have never read a more midwit text in my life. You lack critical thinking skills and clearly refuse to engage with anything that doesn't conform with your ideology and thus fallback on the ideologically issued strawmen that compile your understanding of the subject matters. My favorites were how you don't know anything about the scientific theory of evolution beyond pop culture conceptions of "survival of the fittest", how you're soft shilling for paganism because you read about it on /pol/ and how you spent most of the time ranting about how some people want to do away with American hegemony only to completely undermine America's foreign policy (and thus how it maintains it hegemony) in the last paragraph.
I've always made fun of how universities offer critical thinking classes but you've managed to turn me around on them. You know what? I take it back. My favorite part was the incel rant and how you want to restructure the government, international order and society's values in order to have state mandated girlfriends.

My advice to you, not as author but as a person, is that you should re-evaluate your beliefs and actually engage with your political and ideological opponent's beliefs. Not because your beliefs aren't coherent, but because they're so comically ignorant of their opposites that none of them can be taken seriously. This also extends to other subjects such as history and science, but it all stems from your reluctance to engage with opposing points of view or those outside of Europe.
My advice as an author is that it's hilarious that you wanted people on /wg/ to critique your ideas and not your grammar. Inb4 it's bourgeois decadence to write properly, but not like in a lefty marxist way, of course.
>>23599965
It gets so much worse if you get past the first paragraph.
>>23599629
>Incels have grasped that the different classes of people, which is not merely “cosmetic” can be divided between those who have sex and those who do not, which in order to create a just society, would have to be reorganized in a violent fashion not too dissimilar to any Marxist or anarchist ideology. The big problem is the ones on demographic decline do not fit the narrative of “poor brown people” and this angers leftists.
Get this, leftists are the ones that are opposing state mandated girlfriends because white male loneliness is not worth fixing according to their ideology. It doesn't get more pottery than this, let alone how he goes on to describe how he'd reshape even geopolitics to lowkey fix this.

>>23598698
I forgot to add:
It's foolish to seek relationship advice from other miserable men or political commentators that want you to be angry so that you can be their political pawn in the upcoming [insert cope]. If you dedicated half as much time towards how to form relationships you'd probably have a girlfriend by now or at least friends that actually cared about you as a person and you'd be way less bitter, radicalized.

I have a bit of ADHD and I keep constantly switching protagonists, I cant keep focused on one for too long, any advice and help? I just like to switch over more into a situation or be more abstract with who and what

>>23598881
Have you considered having him engage in mock duels with the clowns/fools? Imagine he's a master of the blade. Slappy opposite of him draws a turkey leg and takes a stance. They begin to cross weapons. Now, Slappy doesn't have the slightest idea what he's doing, but Sword Master is so good that he's able to consistently jump, roll, and slash as if Slappy's nonsense is the work of a genius and is actually competitive. It's just to make a show of things though, selling the duel as a professional wrestler might.

>>23598957
They just won't read most likely. I remember my fanfiction days where I took wordcounts that low as a massive red flag. Anything lower than around 3k was pretty suspicious honestly.

>>23600158
Dexedrine.

>>23599994
Oy vey

>>23598957
Depends on your upload schedule, 1000 is about the minimum if you're uploading every day

I often feel like I'm too harsh with my protagonists in the pursuit of realism. It just like, feels like a nonsense sentiment to have at times too because I'll often enjoy protagonists held up as strong, competent, lucky, and/or beloved within the narrative. Anyone know how to strike a good balance between being brutal and indulgent? I feel like you can't just torture them after making them the coolest guy, and likewise it doesn't feel right to make them super amazing just to make the enemies and challenges they face just that much more awesome.

>>23600158
Consider stepping away for a bit and taking some notes before coming back once you're ready to go back to the protagonist you were originally writing about? Maybe set up two you like and switch between them so you can show two sides of a conflict?

>>23600218
1000 is acceptable on places like webnovel but I can't think of any royalroad stories that have 1000 word chapters

>>23600259
Their own flaws should be their downfall and their strengths the solution. It excludes a lot of raining down shit for the sake of it and keeps the action personable. Like, who fucking cares about whatever fantasy bullshit you're writing, it's when the protag makes it worse and one off his friends has to fix it that makes for the story. If he's a hothead, pursuing the bandits makes it worse. If he's greedy, trying to play both sides in a coup makes it worse. If he falls in love, he makes an easy target. His better senses should allow him to get out of it and mitigate the worst of it.

>>23600291
I'm being honest here in that I think you changed the game for me, at least a bit. I've been given advice before about character flaws and mary sues and all that, but I've never been told that their flaws are why they should be ending up in these messes in the first place. It feels so obvious now. It was always presented to me as "what CAN'T the character do?" That angle makes it feel so much more like, participatory. Like, the flaws aren't limiting you, but giving you options for how to get them into trouble. That's cool.

>>23600335
There's a case for a lack of agency and outright sideswiping a protagonist with something horrible, but that's called a premise and it's how a story starts. What happens within it is all their own doing. That's what makes a novel. It's that "the only way to win the game is not to play at all" kind of thing, but your characters have decided to play and will get no more or less than they deserve from how they play the game. If you have antagonists and villains, the same applies.

I'd actually extend that to more random acts and strife. An unexpected death, or the hand of fate causing tragedy, independent of a character's own actions, is going to evoke a response in the character and that response tends to shed light on and contextualize what precedes it, while also defining consequent events and is a good place to initiate a change of character.

>Almost never make decisions for my characters
>I just build them, drop them in the setting then write down what they do
How schizo is this? Sure I'll occasionally have to nudge them in the right direction, but that's usually an issue at the design-stage.

>>23600259
My protagonists are cool, competent people, but they face tough situations and don't always pull through perfectly, because life rarely is that simple. I'm not giving them complete bullshit, but there's no indulgence either.

I don't get how this is so hard for so many writers. When I read amateur and even professional fiction, it seems to be only either flawless mary sues who succeed at everything, or else worthless retards who can't do anything right and suffer always. But such extremes should be easy to recognize and avoid.

>>23600335
Also, I think that when someone comes to the point where they say "the character wouldn't do that" and has to rewrite a passage or the course of their story, what's actually occurring is that this dichotomy of strengths and flaws that lead to varied outcomes is stronger and more interesting than a contrived theme or plot. I don't know, I've seen some total autists use quotes from total autists as an example of why the character serves the story, but they never admit that it's possible a story can be shit.

>>23599908
>but what else makes a circular city inefficient?

In theory, a circular wall is equally strong to every direction, but conversely, it can also be attacked from any direction, since no one point is more attractive than another. That makes those inside the wall pretty paranoid. The philosophy behind most walls is to force attackers into designated kill zones, where they're most vulnerable to ranged fire, such as between turrets, or where the terrain is cumbersome. This typically necessitates a lot of corners and straight lines.

>>23600460
sounds normal. obviously you as god can and should deposit loads of unforeseen holy wrath down upon them from time to time if they ever get complacent

I thought I wanted to animate or draw comics when I was a kid. It turns out that writing just might be the most accessible way to tell stories for me.

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scale of 1-10, how wish fulfillmenty is having a bunch of pretty girls both older and younger try to court a sad and emotionally scarred prince?

>>23600434
Thanks, having advice like this given directly helps me a lot. I kinda defaulted to thinking a lot of what comes the way of the protagonist was fate or the workings of the enemy, and that often left them ferling detached from the story I think. I didn't really know that was the case, but if I look at the different scenarios now I believe that's where I was failing some.

>>23600476
I've had times where I had to do that and I almost always end up going the new way. Feels like magic when 'something else' is trying to cone about, and I never had the confidence to stick to my guns super hard since what makes a good story sometimes feels ambiguous or unclear.

>>23600460
Hey if you can consistently get your characters to lead the way then just do that. I only get characters that do that for me sometimes and they're the most fun by a lot. Rather than schizo I think that's just inspired. You even still have an idea of direction and you're providing that through environmental factors. Sounds good.

>>23600467
Middle ground is often hard for me because of factors like moderation and probably weaknesses in plot design. I default to the suffering, in part because when I think I've made a competent character it's hard to figure out why they would fail and make that feel natural rather than arbitrary. Sometimes things just don't work out, but I'm not very good at capturing that vibe, and so I tend towards just writing fuckups who naturally fail. Anything good they get is really hard fought for and fortunate. I'm working to change that though.

genrefags, have you ever completely changed a character's power or ability? How much rewriting did it require?

>>23600591
That very much depends on how otherwise attractive the prince or the position of hid betrothed is. If there's nothing for them to like or fight for it's pretty high on the wish fulfill scale. If he's rich and hot it makes more sense why this large variety of powerful women of status would pursue relations.

>>23600591
if your pov character is one of the girls competing with the others, very. if it's the prince... eh. it's a very female centric storyline

>>23599001
>>23600203
>>23600218
thank you for your responses - i guess i'll just bite the bullet and try to get the words in

>>23600263
would you recommend i upload to webnovel instead, then? when i was at uni my lecturer described my writing as "fragmented". i struggle to achieve longer wordcounts as i'm autistic about how things read - specifically the rhythm - it's arguably more important to me than anything else lol

well, the first draft is technically done now. It's going to need a lot of work but it's there.

>>23599908
Cities spread out along the paths of least resistance first, then fill in as they become more dense. If something limits the spread of a city, like a shoreline or a royal forest, that will be reflected in the layout of the city.
Cities also aren't usually built on an even plane where it would be convenient to build, they're built at natural gathering places, which usually means either a crossroads or a naturally defensible position that can militarily dominate the surrounding countryside.
Paris and London are built at the first point inland where their respective rivers can be bridged. Athens is built around the Acropolis. And so on and so forth. Ask yourself why there is a city there to begin with, and that will answer what it looks like.

>>23598627
21453

>>23600786
>>23600484
Based knowers
Good posts

>>23600711
>would you recommend i upload to webnovel instead, then? when i was at uni my lecturer described my writing as "fragmented". i struggle to achieve longer wordcounts as i'm autistic about how things read - specifically the rhythm - it's arguably more important to me than anything else lol
Dude webnovel has even lower standards than royalroad. They don't even care about grammar and capitalization. If your "rhythm" is>>23600711
the selling point of your writing you should be writing poetry or literature. Genre readers care about character and story >>>>> everything else
Anyway do what you want but no genre sites will like your writing as you describe it

>>23599908
>what shape should a more efficient medieval city have?
I would think in that example they would want to follow and build along the river. Right now they're only using a small portion of it and outside the city valuable riverside real estate is going to waste. Makes no sense to just ignore it like that.

>>23600602
No, I only add to the abilities. But do one ability at a time, mostly, please.

>>23600591
0/1000, oneitis'd be better.

How do you decide what your character wears? I want them to look cool but I can't draw and have no idea in my mind but just a vague blob of colors. All I have nailed down for sure is boots and a belt. Maybe a bandana. But I need them to look super cool for when my story gets turned into a movie.

What are your thoughts on Zalgo text being used in a published novel? Not as a means to make it unnecessarily edgy, but as a means to make the text on the page visually interesting.

A couple examples I've been playing around with are as such:

>a character speaks a phrase through dialogue. another character is listening and their speech comes through clearly, but for reasons that make sense within the context of the setting, a word or part of a phrase is perceived only as noise. on the page, the word is replaced with Zalgo corrupted text such as this: .̴͖͋.̴͙̎ ̵̭̇_̴͓̑-̴̟̂ ̵̣̍ ̶̟̄ ̴̥͠
>a character begins to involuntarily slip into a state of unconsciousness and as they are becoming less and less lucid, the words begin to physically drip and melt off the page into the margins
>a character is trapped within the confides of their own subconscious for an extended period of time (multiple years, but it feels much longer due to time dilation), effectively taking a back seat while some other force pilots their body. as their mental stability deteriorates, their words become more "jagged" and "feral" in appearance as letters drip up and down while phrases begin bleeding into one another, creating the visual sense that the character in question is far from mentally okay

But I feel the implementation of Zalgo text needs to follow a set of rules.

>the overall composition of the page needs to remain easily legible, so the corrupted text must be dialed down to a minimum while still being visually perceivable
>the corruption of text needs to be reserved for specific points within the narrative so the reader can subconsciously grow to understand the rules in which the formatting is used and how it's being applied within the context of the story

Over the course of the book, the reader will begin to pick up on the visual queues in addition to contextual clues in place within the story.

What do you think? Is it cringe or is it a potentially untapped use in the realm of psychological thriller?

>tfw have rough plan for story but don't know where to start it
i want to avoid flashback chapters but starting it at the actual beginning would be rather boring. Starting it where I planned to (in action) is fine, but feels like events end up too rushed without a mellow build up first.

>>23600786
you are not disagreeing with me anywhere. as i said the terrain might make it impossible. so lets say the city is on two sides of a river around a bridge. it could just spread out in a circle right? or would that be inefficient? the northern german towns i have lived in both seemed rather circular around a river and some bridges. with circular town walls as well. is that ineffcient? because this thread started with someone saying that a circular city is inefficient somehow.

>>23601004
yeah why not
I'd choose only 1 specific reason to use it. using it in all of those examples in the book makes it not special

>>23601027
if the beginning is boring that obviously shouldn't be the beginning, or likely in your book at all

>>23601068
I'd think cities around rivers would be more river shaped - as in following the river - and less round

>>23601124
It's not boring to me, but it might be too generic for most readers. I want to be a slow burn as we see the problems of society escalate over years. Just being thrown into the midst of it and saying "this problem is bad" suddenly will dilute the whole concept.

>>23601068
Circles/spheres are good shapes for cells because of surface to volume ratio. There is no need for that in cities, so there is no benefit to cramming a bunch of people in the center vs the outside, in any shape. It's just a waste of resources.

>>23601149
then make the scene interesting
you don't need explosions, this isn't a michael bay moving you're making. get your willful, plucky character to do and say some dumb, naive, willful, plucky character bullshit so the reader can see them before they get older and jaded

I also struggle with making scenes interesting.

I need to have my protagonist try to enter an office and have a short cryptic conversation with the woman in front of the door so they can confirm to each other they are part of the same conspiracy to keep gods hidden, and for the life of fuck I can't get an angle that isn't stalling.

>>23600591
I think GRRM made this pretty believable with the whole thing being a setup for the guy organizing it to have his own daughter win (she lost) after murdering the boy-king's first wife.

Plus the prince is 12, and there's reason enough for people to want in on the dynasty with dragons.

>>23601172
you'd think they'd have a coded catchphrase or a secret handsign or handshake
so just make them do that

>>23601154
they don't have to be crammed in the center for a round shape. i did not say anything about the density distribution of buildings and people.

>>23600952
>i can't draw
use an AI to draw for you

>>23601433
Yeah, and while you're at it let the AI write for you. Give yourself over to the AI

>>23601172
Add conflict

>>23599994
Language is a social construct too, so shut the fuck up already.

>>23601172
your protagonist wants to fuck her, or he's suspicious that she's not involved, or she's suspicious that he wants to fuck him, or all three

>>23599994
>mutt detected

>>23600952
what's your setting?

>>23601480
Whatever the equivalent to Ireland basically is. That kind of climate. But with more forests and mountains.

>>23601492
how historical? how fantastical?
anyhow, you don't need to be a fashion designer. think about how the clothing was acquired and what would be appropriate for the climate. was the clothing bought? stolen? what materials are available? leather? dragon leather?

for more ideas, look into people talking about historic gaelic/celtic culture/lifestyle.

>>23601435
AI can't write for shit. it can draw quite well though.

>>23601448
>so shut the fuck up already.
Why the fuck should I? You're all scientifically illiterate faggots on here and deserve to be told off.

How do you get AI to draw? I only found Stability AI and I'm not paying a monthly fee.

>>23601552
Look into StableDiffusion frontends like ForgeUI and WebUI, there's guides on /g/, /h/, and probably other boards

>>23600460
Stephen King says this is what he does. Whether he's schizo is a separate question.

>>23601552
Stable Diffusion will run on any computer with a sufficient GPU.
https://github.com/AUTOMATIC1111/stable-diffusion-webui/wiki
You're not a technologically illiterate poorfag phoneposter, are you?

>>23600797
their ranking of you: ick ick ick ick ick

Can any of you FAGGOTS explain what does this mean?

Before three moons I will return for you
Before you miss me
You left sidings lying as you passed
I have never waited so long for you
One minute from you, I'm coming after you
One minute of you, I will follow you
The wind has put on its leather gloves.
He entertains himself with my hair
I drink the water that comes with me, I am
Stuck in your reflection
Only from you, drop by drop
Only from you, poison and thirst.
I will arrive, only to the threshold
No, what can I lose?
I'll dare, I count one more step
No, I'm not like you
One minute from you, I'm coming after you
One minute of you, I will follow you
I'm going to burn, spiral stroke
I repeat myself again
I'll jump, I'll glide around
No, I'm not like you
I will arrive, only to the threshold
No, what can I lose?
I'll dare, I count one more step
No, I'm not like you

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>>23599994
There obviously is such a thing as race, I don't know what you hope to accomplish by denying this fact.

For example it's difficult for mixed race people to find organs for transplant, because transplants are more likely to be successful when both donor and recipient are of the same race. If race was just an arbitrary social construct, this wouldn't be an issue.

>>23600598
>and I never had the confidence to stick to my guns super hard since what makes a good story sometimes feels ambiguous or unclear.
That's where I am and why I believe in it. I had some themes I was trying to stick to but they've washed out and fallen by the wayside in the process. What replaced it is unarguably better, but is also going to take a few drafts to hammer out the new, emergent themes and make sure the ambiguities are in the direction I want them to point.

>>23601657
It works, but other authors who do it usually final draft the first few chapters to have an absolute base to work from and have a few beacon moments they're writing towards. And then edit it back down under 350 pages.

>>23600090

War is waged not with sword and bow,
But with mind and heart.
It is in the cause, and oft one borrows their heart to another's,
Seeking to succeed the goal they have standard.
But we all wage a war, against a devil unseen by all,
And we claw and scratch to dispatch this evil thing.

Has your banner been cast aside? Or, worse yet, known your banner was taken and put to the front line
Not to solve a puzzle or riddle
but to serve as sacrifice to another's devil?
And what of the banners that are bound to you? or those who claim they will ride with yours?
What happens when the battle's fire has hit zenith,
and the banners behind you have vanished?
Like those who rode with Uriah?
Has the Bathsheba in your chest been taken before your last breath?
Were the banners ever riding with you to start?

Many ride alone gladly,
but few wolves are born without a pack,
and fewer run without it's loyalty.
When the forest turns the steppe,
and the snow sings without interruption,
how long do you ride before the sky claims you?

>>23600460
I think that's pretty normal. It's what I do, anyway.
But what I find is that if you let a story write itself this way, it can just devolve into noise, or a "this happened then this happened then this happened then this happened" kind of narrative.
The main character in a story I'm writing is a lunatic, but not all around a bad person, so he has a tendency to get caught in spirals of self-destruction if left to his own devices. Eventually I had to just say fuck it and impose an arc and a resolution to his character.
I find what's best is to run this little mental simulation, use that to generate a bunch of data, and then really work that into a story. I don't even mean like using it as a foundation to build on, but really just using it as like a brainstorming tool and constructing a solid narrative that incorporates some of the best ideas of the bunch.

>>23600460
My problem is I can never decide what my characters should do next. It has less to do with not having an idea, but which idea is the right one that feeds into the theme and symbolism.

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>>23598846
It's kind of weird how they arranged them by race

>>23602009
your characters don't have overwhelming drive and goals? sounds boring

>>23602087
How can they have that when I don't? It's such a foreign concept.

>>23602094
Your characters have to have a point to them… otherwise they’re flat, 2D caricatures and no one want to read that. What do they want? What do they do? How do they feel about those things?

This is why we say to interview your character before writing them into the story. If you don’t know your characters most basic drives within your story, how can you make readers want to know them? Sounds so boring.

>>23601755
Define race, though. Where is the line drawn?

>>23598846
1 in 1 americans are mutts

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Is there any way to write a story like Great Expectations where the childhood friend refuses the MC, picks someone bad, and then wants to be with the MC again later without having it be some cuck or betabux shit?

I was thinking the MC finds another woman who wants them, has a kid, then the wife dies, so now the Estella stand-in has to compete constantly with a reminder of how her Pip found someone else.

>>23601755
>If race was just an arbitrary social construct, this wouldn't be an issue.
It's an issue because of antigens, proteins that regulate the immune system. People adapted to different environment and microbiome have differences in their immune systems, which makes them easier to reject organ transplants from people with different antigens. Skin color has nothing to do with it. Humans are human.

>>23602218
i don't see what the difficulty is. you basically answered your own question.
but why does this need to happen? what are you trying to do with this?

>see what's happening in /wg/
>reply to one of the last few posts
>realize that it was posted over an hour ago
>they never respond
>ask your own question, continuing the cycle

>>23602339
>i don't see what the difficulty is. you basically answered your own question.
Idk, I feel the evil stepmom trope is a bit cliche

Although she could be a cool stepmom I guess

>but why does this need to happen? what are you trying to do with this?
I don't like w*men getting off scot-free for their shit

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>>23598627
Is this dialogue natural or too expository?

>>23602453
It's fine. About as natural as the dialogue between some cavemen can seem.

>>23602470
do you presume that they are cavemen because they talk about a tribe?

>>23598627
you wanna know how I know the /wg/ thread maker also makes /wwlum/ threads?

>>23602480
Yes, and because they speak like cavemen.

>>23602397
you are struggling with something you shouldn't probably be.

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When it comes to battles, I was thinking about perhaps having appendixes of unit formations and what ever, who belongs to who and so on. Does that make sense?

>>23602493
what makes it cavemannish?

>>23598627
I would let Sunisa Lee do whatever she wants to me.

>>23602514
No, I'm pretty sure that your appendix should remain somewhere up your rectum.

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>>23602540

>>23602453
>How did you get here?
>You see, in 886 Yaroslav the wise...

How much planning do you guys generally try to do before you actually start writing your story? In the past I didn't plan out that much and so nothing I wrote really had a conclusion. I've been trying to fix that with notes about plot ideas, character concepts, world building, and so on but is there a point where it's too much? Is there a point where I should just start writing? What do you think must be planned out and what do you feel is extraneous?

>>23602514
There's nothing wrong with adding pictures I think. It can even add to the story if you're trying to describe something complex and hard to picture; basically a visual reference for the reader. Add the unit formations, add maps, just make sure the images you're using are free to use for whatever your purposes are.

>>23602562
I was just going to draw it myself, that way I can control the colours, the formation, the ground, elevation etc.

>>23602556
This is a harem girl talking to a random barn that was thrown in with them.
Isn't fair to assume she would be curious by how someone who doesn't seem to know about the cutlure ended up there?

>>23602595
I'm not criticizing the question, I'm criticizing the response and the willingness to divulge so much to a complete stranger that I can only surmise as maid and butler dialog.

>>23602500
it was mostly a shitpost to be honest, I go on Funnyjunk and joining in the "women bad" crowd is fun sometimes

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I've created this whole vast world and combed over every detail. But I don't even know where to start with the story now that I'm ready to begin.

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>>23598627
Just let me be their sex toy for one afternoon, PUH-LEASE!!!

>>23602650
is the world in a state of peace? tension? on the cusp of shit hitting the fan? already in open conflict?

>>23598846
Wrong. 5/5 are mutts already, dipshit simp.

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>should work on my serious book
>the only thing filling my head is a fanfic idea that just keeps endlessly growing and seems so much more fun
Please just shoot me

>>23602601
if you tried to calm someone down, wouldn't you ask what's wrong?
and that someone else might explain why they are upset?

>>23602601
>maid and butler dialog.
how is that maid and butler dialogue?
>"Maid-and-butler dialogue is a term that originates from stories where the maid and butler would tell each other things they already both know."
In this context, it is two strangers talking who have just met and who know nothing about each other.
So, it's like the opposite of maid and butler dialogue.

Think the issue is it too straightforward, but again real conversations are often straightforward.

>>23602567
Sounds good to me.

>>23601172
>short cryptic conversation

sounds like you are overthinking it. if it's a short interaction there is no need to load it up with anything other than what needs to happen. this "scene" can literally be done in a few sentences. just write it and move on. if you can't think of the actual dialogue just put it down as narrative.

>>23601930
What I do is set a fixed event that occurs at some point and starts wrapping everything up. I don't know exactly when it's going to happen, probably when everything else starts running its course and turns into plot soup, and the event sets the end in motion. In reductive terms, it's Chekov's gun or the tragic death of a character at the end of the second act.

You can also put the fucker on a clock or structure it like something other than a novel and put limits on it.

>>23602679
The main issue is that at no point do you show she's upset nor that she has calmed down, yet you proceed to have her describe how her brothers were killed and how she was kidnapped, in passive voice, with one of the most apathetic descriptions of someone relaying how their hometown was burned to the ground I've read. Similarly the cattle thing is a detail that lends credence to the story but not one that's as relevant as anything else that she could have said about the much more important things she was talking about just a moment ago. We can argue back and forth about what she should and shouldn't have said but I don't see why she would share any of it with a stranger who did the bare minimum to calm her down. Often a story well told is about what isn't said, she could have just as easily said that she was kidnapped and then started crying and you'd have achieved the scene while having some actual follow up for when she would open up and start trusting the protagonist(?).

>>23602689
If I wanted to grasp at straws I'd say it's maid and butler between the author and the character.
Blunt dialogue is fine but this is unnatural in of itself due to the lack of context provided beforehand. When you take into consideration her emotional state and how impersonal some of the retelling is done it becomes even more unnatural.

>>23602484
I make most of these threads, and I don't even know what /wwlum/ is.

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What do you think about this for the very first chapter? I'm trying to go for a more direct prose than how I usually write, but I'm unsure if it's working.

>>23598846
are most of your thoughts about"mutts"? Do you think this is healthy?

>>23602562
once you start world building it is too much. you can do world building on the fly and later on.

endings are in general quite hard to write. so having an ending in mind is of course a good idea, it just might not be possible. so let me just tell you that there are writers who just start writing and do not plot and they still come up with endings. and then there are planners who plot up there novel before they start writing and it works out just as well. one are called pantsers, the other planners or plotters. if you can come up with a satisfying ending before starting to write i think that would be the most valuable planning you can do. but that is even the part that a lot of plotters leave out, because they can't think of something.

there might be some advantage to having a plot already in mind beforehand though. so do try that. i think it helps with writing faster. if you get stuck you look up what the next scene in your outline would be and start there so you do not get out of the flow.

also planning characters with some flaws and conflicts might be good.

>>23602650
start with the most interesting part. enter late, leave early, and all that. you can summarize the boring parts of the beginning of the story. is there some interesting part in your story you could start with?

>>23602672
just learn to write faster and do both

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>>23603039
>The main issue is that at no point do you show she's upset nor that she has calmed down
Well, just before this scene, she kicked and started to cry.

>with one of the most apathetic descriptions of someone
good point
Is this better?

>>23603199
It's better except for the last bit of dialog, sounds melodramatic.

>>23603184
So basically just get a broad idea of the kind of story I would want to write, and do my best to figure out an ending, but generally heavy planning is inadvisable? I hadn't really expected that. That always seemed more my style anyways so I'll just try to figure out the end I want and wing it from there. Thanks, I'll try it out.

>>23600591
Depends on how good your idea actually is.
Is he sad and emotionally scarred in the sense that he's an angsty teen, or is he sad and emotionally scarred because his "glorious" deployment in the war saw him get a dozen of the best knights in the kingdom killed to save his worthless life?

Are the women all courting him because they actually like him, or do half of them pursue him out of duty to their family, and one or two are just power-hungry psychos that want to marry him so they can take revenge on the other mean girls at court?

If you want inspiration that allows you to dial up your motivation game far beyond what I've said, check out some of the popular works on court life in China pre-1900. Every madame, concubine, etc, of the Emperor goes full Game of Thrones most of the time.

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>planet sim anon
>plate tectonics anon
>now also novel chemistry sim anon because I created a new mineral to explain some things in the story and I want to know how it should react with other things
>next, I'll figure out where it goes on the periodic table, possibly on the Island of Stability around 184 neutrons, but even the most optimistic predictions of half-life for superheavy elements is only a few million years, so I might have to just make it a novel compound, like a type of salt
Maybe you anti-worldbuilders were right.

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>hate writing
>obsessively imagine stories, characters and worlds I MUST get out of my head or I will fucking lose it
>Blessed with talent, cursed with hatred of the work

>>23603349
>blessed with talent
I'm sure you think so, anon

>>23603349
That's just called getting a job. Congratulations.

>>23602650
>created the world
well you missed the mark. you should have created a character with some likes and dislikes, and an immediate, and perhaps some longer term goals.

>>23602672
>fanfiction
you should channel those fun ideas into a less serious, original work

Is it possible to dislike a gay character for reasons other than homophobia? I’m trying to figure out a motivation for the antagonist and can’t come up with anything else.

>>23603500
What?
Huh?
Gay people can be disliked for nearly all of the reasons straight people can.
Why would the antagonist even dislike someone for being gay?
Is the gay character a saint or mary sue of some kind? Everyone has flaws.

>>23603125
For how heavily you rely on dialogue, that dialogue is not meaningful and often fails to move things forward. I'd first like to know who the hell these people are, before I want to hear what they have to say.

>>23603471
But when removed from the context of the established work, they cease to be any fun.

>>23603500
>I can’t come up with a single reason my fag MC could possibly be disliked
You’re part of the problem, then

>>23603500
What are you actually talking about? If the only thing the antagonist knows about the character is that they're gay then yeah I guess it has to be homophobia. Otherwise, gay people are just people. You can have the gay character be like, a murderer, or a thief, or be really obnoxious. It feels like your question is missing context because it sounds weird.

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>>23603125
Eh, I know no one asked, but here's the ending of the chapter, just in case.
>>23603513
I'm trying to avoid exposition dumping. I've never written fantasy before, and I'm not used to having to establish a setting. I'm also quite sick right now so I'm full of drugs but that's no excuse.

>>23603538
>I've never written fantasy before, and I'm not used to having to establish a setting
Establishing your setting and characters is not some trait unique to the fantasy genre, but the very basics of all writing.

God, writing is so much easier for me than drawing. It feels nice to just cut loose and write whatever wish fulfillment pigslop comes to mind. I immensely respect artists now for being able to draw now that I've tried in recent memory. I've written since 1 year ago, with half a year of practice, while I barely drew for less than a week. I just don't want to split my time anymore so drawing is going to have to go on the back-burner compared to writing. I'm more of a storyteller than an artist, anyways.

I think I'm pretty good at just spraying out words onto the page pretty fast, but the quality of them are low of course. That's just normal for first drafts.

How do fantasy/sci-fi writers come up with names so easily or without cringing at all when they do? Does it come with experience? After writing a couple hundred or so short stories, I’d imagine even a sow could get good at either inventing names or powering through the cringe typical of fictional names. Is it something else entirely?

>>23603638
when it comes to creating fictional names, the path of least resistance happens to also produce the best results. You just take existing words and mix them around in your head until you get something that sticks.
People who go full tryhard always end up naming their protagonist Shn'ufffael'laeaiu'lazuthadr'ix and fucking nobody wants to have to read that

Am I stupid for wanting to include sex scenes in my fantasy novel? It would be rare but I would want a certain level of detail as opposed to the common falling into bed together and waking up the next morning thing.
This general and thread in general seem pretty negative but theres quite a bit of it in modern fantasy, including stuff people here obviously read.
Also I have the RR audience in mind but the guidelines there are really vague about what the accept.

>>23603675
If you're writing for RR then you shouldn't be including romance, much less sex

>>23603678
Well im writing for myself above all but they do seem to like long drawn out anime-ish romance there at least.
What's your personal opinion?

>>23603675
Those are common in fantasy novels.

>>23603696
Personally I dislike extended sex scenes because in most cases they're written poorly, but also because I don't really see the "point" of them from a literary standpoint, I guess. If the point is to be titillating and arousing in a smut sense, that's fine, but then you run into the issue of it generally being cringe when someone reads it over and they're not horny. Really it depends on how drawn out it is, if it's just a paragraph or two with a little more detail than fade to black I think it's fine, when you're getting into multiple pages with explicit detail is when I think it's unnecessary.

>>23603675
You’re stupid for writing a fantasy novel.

>>23603712
this sure looks to me like an extremely good faith post made for the purposes of generating earnest discussion

>>23603722
You sound like the sort of person who would read about elf sex. You know, a retard.

>>23603324
well I posted about it a couple threads ago but he is eventually revealed to be the son of a living god who has left the world

he's basically being put out to stud after he awakens some latent abilities

girls want him for that reason and the prestige

He's emotionally scarred by the Sages who raised him cruelly and his only friend refusing his affections. So basically angsty teen.

>>23603675
I get why you would do it, but me personally I just wouldn't. If you have issue with rolling into bed and fading to black, maybe you could focus more on intimacy and how the individuals in question choose to display it? Who is leading who? Are they talking or following non-verbal cues? Is it more passionate or gentle? That would likely be able to help with characterization without drifting into the issue of writing out an extensive sex scene that would be boring or offputting to anyone that isn't specifically horny for the pairing depicted.

>>23603125
all those proper nouns in that 1st paragraph are awful and unnecessary to drop on the reader right there.
>Lu huddled next to a fire for warmth while chatting with the guard. A gust of wind blowing in caused the conversation to lag as the two men shielded themselves from the chill. The small, one horse town on the northern/southern/eastern/western edge of (the kingdom of?) Durand returned to it's customary slow stillness after the wind had died down.
>"Do you think that she..."

>>23603708
extended sex scenes are pointless, agreed, but the buildup to, and the pillowtalk after, can be very good for character and plot development

I've been offline for quite a bit and just got back, does anyone have an alternative for z library? Looks to me like it's subscription-based now. First vimns lair now this, I hate the internet.

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I'm deep into this novel project and sometimes it feels like an absolute chore. But today I was writing a few paragraphs over my lunch break and had such a moment of joy in writing. This segment probably has no emotional punch without the 50k words leading up to it, but I'm sharing it because it made me go "wow, I really do love writing".

I hope all of you experience a little spark of that as well. It doesn't have to be good, as long as you're getting something out of it.

>>23603752
I dont really have an issue with the fading out thing per se but I want to use the sex scenes as an opportunity for extra characterization between the main characters.
Simply rolling into bed is fine for keeping the reader up to date and aware that their relationship is progressing physically, but by showing some examples of sexual dynamic it fleshes out their power dynamic at the same time.
With what I have so far a protracted will-they-or-wont-they just seems dishonest and unnatural but as long as I establish that they do eventually become physical the story and interaction between them stays mostly the same, but including insight in the way they interact sexually could make the reader feel even closer to the characters aswell as giving more insight to the way they feel after the emotional turmoil after major events in the story.

>>23603792
>Proper nouns
That's a fucking good point.

>>23602202
You’ve never met a single American in your irrelevant third world domicile that hasn’t escaped the Stone Age and you haven’t escaped either.

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>>23600042
My job here is finished. Bravo. Never in my life have I witnessed paragraphs of endless tranny seethe in my life. Mission accomplished.
This place never ceases to amaze me. Usually I tend to think Dunning-Kruger is pseudoscience but you might make me a believer yet!

>>23602650
Same. The most interesting part, like the anon said, is midway through the story so it makes no sense to start there. I want to build up to that event, but that might bore modern audiences.

In my case, i want my character to have already finished magic school, but there are important events that happen at graduation that would be awkward in a flashback. Maybe I should just do a prologue, even though 90% of people don't read those.

>>23602672
GRRM get to work

>>23603865
NTA but what you wrote is so cringe it's nearly physically painful.
It is painfully obvious that you get all of your opinions from shitholes like /pol/ and haven't read an actual history book once in your entire life. I wouldn't be surprised if 100% of your exposure to philosophers was in the form of youtube video essays by redpill channels.

What you wrote comes across like the ramblings of a stunted 20-something, frustrated at their lack of accomplishments or progress in life, replacing it with hours of youtube videos and shitposting on /pol/. You have no identity because you haven't done anything, so you seek credit for accomplishments by others you share an identity with. You also don't actually know anyone in these groups you vilify so much, so rather than make pointed, detailed criticisms, you make broad generalizations and attack them as a class.

You're too stupid to realize that they're not the source of your problems, let alone the fact that the people feeding you them as scapegoats are the actual source.

You are the personification of the Dunning-Kruger effect. The fact that you see it in everyone else is pure projection.

>>23603900
I’ve never been on /pol/ once in my life and I probably read a lot more than you do. I’d prefer you didn’t insult my intelligence by bringing up an irrelevant 4chan boogeyman. You, of all people should know better than that.

>>23603284
well heavy planning is fine. as i said their are both types of people. or a spectrum if you will. but quite often people come up with an ending while writing. or they had an ending but come up with a better one.

this comes from the ending being something people usually want to nail and at the same time everyone having to make the actual written text up as they go, so new things emerge. in a way every one is a pantser once they start actually writing.

the only "planning" i would see as often unnecessary is world building. your story does not get better because something you did not put into the story was thought out in detail. and your world building should make the story more interesting. but you cannot plan exactly what is written in the end before you write it. so coming up with interesting details that fit what is written is better done on the fly.

>>23603909
Hmm. That covers 2 sentences I wrote. What about the rest?
Regardless, the fact that you come across this way should alarm you.

My advice would be to sit down and make a list of pain points in your life. What actually makes your day to day life worse? For most people it's things like rent, work hours, healthcare costs, childcare, etc.

After you have that, look into things like median expenses, median compensation, etc. Look up how they've changed over time. Then look into why. Look at how these trends have developed elsewhere in the world. Look at which nations handle them the best and what kinds of policies they use to do that.

Spoiler: You'll quickly notice that the same people telling you who to blame for your suffering tend to be the ones causing it and/or the ones voting against every single proven solution.

The theme of your writing isn't poor. But the fact that you live in a propagandized alternate reality and are essentially swinging at scapegoats trivializes it. It makes you just another wind bag repeating the same talking points we've all heard a million times before.

>>23603671
idk i like dragon names and menzoberranzan (even though i had to look up menzoberranzan to see if i remembered it correctly.)

so when the other culture where those names are from are especially magical or alien i think it is fine. of course a bit annoying maybe if the whole book is full of that.

other than that i would agree that easy names are better. and it is important they all fit together. not like anime fantasy names.

grrm characters have some clear patterns in them. aegon, aemon, aemond. tywin, tyrion. euron, balon, theon, victarion. i guess if the story is good enough you just don't notice. it is when you become aware of the cringe that it is bad.

>>23603854
i have met many americans online and in real life, you are culturally and genetically mutts in every sense of the word

>>23603796
you looked at the sticky?

>>23603959
even with alien stuff, there's always a tendency to either use really strange sounds, or otherwise to chain a whole bunch of random sounds together to create something that seems "different," but haven't the aliens (here meaning both little gray space aliens and also just people from other countries) also got an interest in not having stupid names and in not saying overly-cumbersome words?
You can achieve this same mystique with using simple, maybe even somewhat familiar names, and then having the character/culture actually be, you know, alien.
A hivemind martian bug creature flying around in a UFO is equally as alien whether he's called something basic like Dem or Non or Ze'emborpulon.
It may just be a "me" problem, but stupid names really start to feel like they're encroaching on sparkledog-territory for me.

>>23603875
just open on the magic school graduation
for the life of me I can't actually recall what a magic school graduation would look like, and it'd be easy to get a good snapshot of what the previous school years looked like - rivalries, bullies, w/e - and then you find out what people are doing after school. then you can skip ahead when your mc decides to do some dumbshit like a year abroad or they start working as a clerk or in a magical shoestore

>>23603125
1. Hate Exposition. Not racist, just don't like 'hem.
2. Based and YJK pilled.
3. We learn some stuff about Lu along the way but by the end of part two we don't actually know what him or any of the other characters look like.
4. You might be rushing along the story a tad too much since you're constantly doing time skips and running all over the place. I say this because you're most likely going to miss opportunities to slow down and build upon the characters or the setting if every single moment needs to be about solving this murder mystery. I think this is most apparent when the next morning comes and the first thing that he does is stand over the corpse with the butcher.
5. I like it but it could use some more work.

>>23604049
That's kind of what I was thinking. Start with the final exam that ends up going wrong but my MC covers it up and graduates anyway, then fast forward a year or two to working but having to hide the fact she never actually learned the magic (from failing the test).

>>23604129
I find it incredibly weird that after failing a single final exam she not only doesn't know that magic - okay, I suppose I can see that - but then she decides to work in that specific field despite not knowing how to do that magic - which she somehow also didn't manage to pick up with 2 additional years of practical experience.

>>23603973
sure, z library got seized. I was around for the second round, but recently the place doesn't allow for downloads unless you sign up with a plan. Is libgen the only way to go now?

>>23604176
anna's archive also exists. i don't know about any better sites.

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>>23603197
Did 2k words of the serious book this week and 7k of the fanfic shitfuck

>>23603538
>>23603125

if you want people to read your slop at least use proper formatting

>>23603678
Thought Romance was common in RR, am i wrong?

>>23603675
If you think they either add to the characterization of the relationship or are important toward driving your plot: go for it. Just know that explicit sex will limit your viewership. I know a lot of people write almost two versions if they want sex: a sex-having one and a sex-less one.

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>have some characters I love
>not enough foils to go around
>think up some more
>add to my outline to accommodate each of them
>estimated word count is now ~300k
>estimated chapter count is ~80
>plot isn't suited to being divided across books
>hate GRRM's massive tomes

>>23604286
Embrace the fat fuck.

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>>23604191
I hate you so goddamn much. I can barely squeeze 500 words out when I have the time and inclination on any given day. Still, respect for that kind of output is necessary. I'm in awe of your prodigious output.

I will say this. I had a realfic idea that was basically fanfic tier cringe and working on it for so long finally broke me of the habit entirely once I saw it for what it was. Nothing against fanfic, but it comes down to that after a certain point either way. I don't buy into imagined audiences and rockstar fantasies but eventually you may get a real audience and you have to explain the other one. I'm just glad I was so repressed it wasn't furshit, as much as I love those fuckers. They're hilarious at times and some of them are as literary as they are fucked up.

>>23604271
Incorrect

>>23604271
On Royal Road? Very fucking common.

>>23604286
>disliking tomes
why? brick-shaped is the best form factor for books.

>>23604286
>estimated
good luck with that

>>23601540
>science
another social construct that's probably not real. Niggers, on the other hand...

>>23602322
Ah yes, melanin. The skin pigment whose presence and absence famously has absolutely no correlation to the environment one's ancestors adapted to.

>>23604162
You need to concoct a special brew to make the magic permanent - that is the test. It got knocked over and spilled on the floor, but through other means she is able to use it temporarily. She just has to disguise this fact until she can secure enough ingredients to re-make the brew.

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>>23604316
I have entire ouvres with a shorter page count than the first volume of that kind of garbage. A novel should be a thin but substantial little thing.

What's a material that melts like chocolate or wax? I wanted it to be sort of a thick and gloopy for the purposes of a metaphor

>>23604512
Wax or chocolate

>>23604512
metal

>>23604086
Oh shoot I forgot to respond. Thank you for the tips anon, nice to know not everyone hated it. I'm really struggling getting the hang of fantasy to be honest.

>>23604311
not really, and 100% no if you mean something beyond a small subplot

>>23601752
I'm going to be back in 3 days and I'm a huge faggot.

>>23604316
>>23604414
Thank you!
All 3 books of The Lord of the Rings have like 480k words between them.
GRRM's books each being about half that size is absurd to me.

>>23604191
congrats my doggo

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>>23604620
Yeah, my doorstopper pile is either cheap paper, loaded with annotations, or multiple books masquerading as a single volume for the most part. Otherwise, the longer ones top out around 600 pages. I don't see the point in logorrhea if you're not Joyce about it.

>>23604303
big bro you are a beast and i believe in you

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>>23602133
Come on, we all know it when we see it. Look at that vase picture I posted. Do the two faces look the same to you? A race is an extended kin group, like a family but larger.

>>23602322
I'm not denying that humans are human. But if different populations adapted themselves to different environments, then there are going to be some average group differences. And some of these differences might be fairly significant.

Early in my novel, my protagonist witnesses many lived members be massacred. In grief, he hangs himself, trying to end his life, but fails. One of my main goals for this is to show the protagonist giving up on life essentially, with him being at his very lowest.
Is this too visceral? Would, say, trade publishing advice against having this?

>Villain is easily distracted because it spent 99% of its existence borderline-omnipotent and doesn't understand that now, in its weakened state, it actually has to prioritize goals correctly
How believable is this?

>>23604855
Sounds interesting. I can't think of anything that's done it.

>>23604809
Generally speaking, I think jumping is a more common method of depicting suicide since it's over quick, and there's rarely a corpse left behind to gross people out (there is but it's so mangled or lost you can treat it as obliterated). Jumping in front of a train, or off of a bridge or cliff, that is. Jumping off a building is worse. Hanging, wrist slitting, or shooting themselves are also often used but they're usually in more mature works since the character is taking a more active approach in self-termination and leaving a corpse behind. If the novel as a whole isn't focused on death and/or other confrontational imagery, then you may want to change the approach. Alcohol and sleep meds is also potentially viable since it can be described more gently and doesn't involve gore. That's my two cents anyways.

>>23604855
It's plausible, but you would probably have to work pretty hard to show the reader that this specifically is what's going on rather than the antagonist just being stupid.

>>23604512
Tallow? Suet?

>>23604597
I thought a "moon" was a month?

I hate editing.

>>23605022
the first editing pass is always the worst. you come across sections where you're like, wtf was I smoking when I was drafting this garbage holy shit.
later editing passes when everything is basically together are so much better

>>23603500
Maybe he's just a generic asshole who takes 11 items to the 10 items or less quick-check line. People like that deserve the death penalty.

>>23604303
>I can barely squeeze 500 words out
I don't get you people. You just squeezed out 150 words, more than 1/5 of your quota, and it doesn't seem it took much effort. You're talking about half an hour of work.

>>23605291
Speaking as someone else who has difficulty getting started or tolerating their work, sometimes you manage a couple hundred, look at your writing, and it looks so bad or unnatural that you scrap it all while trying to think about where you went wrong. I can write when I get in the groove, but outside of that, that's what if feels like a lot of the time.

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>>23604916
nvm I think caramel also works

>>23605080
I enjoy the first pass infinitely more than later passes.
It's amusing to hit obvious malapropisms or sentences with random words just sitting in the middle of them because you rewrote the sentence 5 times at 2am.

It's much less amusing when you're down to the "ok, let's look up the actual rules on how to use a comma to make sure this is grammatically correct, and let's double check whether it's 'gleen' or 'glean'," phase and you have to start waiting a day between edit passes because you're starting to overlook obvious errors because the text is too familiar to you.

>>23604943
Yah I suppose, technically you only have a new moon every 30 days so that would make it 3 months.

fantasy worldbuilding is so gay. i can't get over it.

How do you write the sound of someone yelling and panicking as he drowns?
Would "AGH-AGH-GHHH" work?

>>23605946
you could just use descriptive language. you aren't expected to phoneticize the noises they make lol
if that's what you WANT to do though? respect

>>23605782
Just the thing for you then

>>23605979
I want the focal character not to sound like he's passively describing his own near-death experience as an entirely unremarkable event.

>>23606086
do you want an example?

>>23606139
Sure.

>Write a character suffering from a wound
>Feel pain in that same area
Is that supposed to happen?

>>23606174
the shock of the cold water hit me, stealing my breath as the world blinked out in a rush of bubbles and muffled sounds. thrashing towards wherever the surface might be, i opened my mouth to scream, but only swallowed more of the dark, choking liquid

>>23606267
Nice. Thanks.

>>23605291
I'm very meticulous. It also takes me a while to shape a narrative towards the core moment within it in a way that supports it.

>>23598723
Walls like that are weak

>>23606534
PYW

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I have a huge problem with characters regarding their physical description. See, a lot of authors describe what outfit, hair color, et cetera a character has in the descriptive paragraphs following their first appearance. Yet I feel unable to frontload and just resort to drip-feed their looks throughout the entire chapter, like only mentioning a character wears boots when they step on dirt 2000 words after they showed up:
>"Take a hint." Mary lit a cigar and nonchalantly began to scrub the blood off her jet-black boots.

I'm afraid this style may blueball the reader by eventually giving him a "canon visualization" opposite to what his imagination first used to fill the blanks.

>>23606233
lol might actually be psychosomatic. also sounds like stigmata, which are wounds that appear that mirror those of jesus.

here is the relevant part wikipedia has to say about your condition:
>A high percentage (probably over 80%) of all stigmatics are women.

good luck anon :)

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Launching new web slop tomorrow. Instead of playing it safe, I once again wrote a work disguised as innocent escapism, but which more or less openly taunts and screws with the reader and is asking for a thrashing. How do they always turn out like that? I must be suicidal.

>>23606609
That can be pretty annoying, yes. I think it's better to give the details you want to give right away, and then not bring the looks up again.

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>general heads project that creates superhumans
>works on some dude, not military
>forcibly recruits the dude, he's seen as a living weapon
>the dude impregnates the general's daughter after she falls for him
What are some reasonable ways the general would deal with this? I wanted him to be torn on having this guy he doesn't like with his daughter, but also realizing being grandpappy to a supersoldier would be very beneficial

>>23606609
you can drip-feed granular details, but get a rough impression of the character down first of all.
You don't need an exposition dump on the first page that mentions that Amy has a scar on her left ass cheek from when she mistakenly jumped into an empty swimming pool in the 7th grade, but you should mention that she's a tall, young brunette in her mid-20s.
What you don't want is readers creating their own mental image of a character because none has been provided as of yet, only for subsequent chapters to shatter that image.
If all the characters just refer to their kindly friend Jesse, and you get it in your head that Jesse is maybe a young-ish white male with a beard and then discover Jesse is actually a 90 year old black woman, that's going to recontextualize everything you thought about Jesse up to that point, and that's a really frustrating feeling.

>>23606643
You're irony poisoned and afraid of writing something honest because you don't want to receive critique on something that you actually put your heart into, so you instead write work that just lets you hide behind the excuse of "lol I don't care, it's slop :)" when someone insults it

>>23606643
>>23606695
Unironically this, not that you will be self aware enough to realize it

>>23606695
>>23606709
You misunderstand me. It's not parody, or ironic shitposting, but a 100% serious work. But instead of a story that gives uplifting experiences and makes you feel better for having gone through it, it's the kind that seeks to hit you under the belt when you least expect it. Half-assed slop doesn't upset anyone, most people love that. It's only works that can make you care and then betray your expectations that really get under your skin and earn shit ratings.

Right now I'm conversing with ChatGPT and we're coming up with ideas for how my character should look. He's proposing clothing ideas and I'm Google image searching them to see how they look. Mix and matching like this is turning up some good results for a potential outfit. I just wish I had a character creator I could plug the articles of clothing into to see how it actually looks since I can't draw.

>>23606938
You’re already using AI, don’t tell me you’re morally opposed to AI art?

>>23606966
I don't know how to do AI art, let alone transfer what's in my mind to an image. I found my old drawing tablet and maybe I can do some caveman sketches of it for now.

I only use ai for fun but never do anything it tells me. Like when I'm done with my story plugging it in to make someone talk to me about my story without actually submitting it out for others to see.
Is this a bad habit I should stop?

>>23606966
Not that anon. Tried using Stable Diffusion for character design. Not quite as desired.

>>23606772
I feel like you're fishing for compliments or something, but I doubt your premise to begin with--that your "web slop" is anything close to being capable of producing a meaningful impact on the reader. You present it as slop, and the reader gets weird limp "subversive" content instead. They rate low because it sucks not because you had an impact on them, at least not anymore than the average person is upset when a retard confronts them on the street and acts like a nutcase

Odds are high you're just another ego case, and that previous anon is still correct

>>23598627
I have a background in science and want to write a piece of fiction in the format of a scientific journal article. How much interest would there be in something like that? Would it go over peoples heads, or would it even be readable to general audiences?

>>23607039
There's plenty of interest in that sort of thing, it's frequent enough that it has its own name - "hermit-crab fiction". From what I've read, the main thing to be careful about is not compromising the proper format of your medium (scientific report, shopping list, examination) just for the sake of delivering necessary exposition, although I guess that's just "show, don't tell" in a roundabout form.

>>23607039
Real scientific journals are dry and boring as fuck, and barely comprehensible. I don't know what you have in mind, but the ones I had to read were mostly just text explanations of math which made me want to quit school.

Since it's fiction you are free to spice it up and commoners wouldn't know the difference, but hardcore Ph.D.'s would, but at the same time they'd probably get a kick out of it. Might as well go for it.

>>23607047
>hermit crab fiction
Never heard of the term, preliminary google searches are promising though, thanks anon
>>23607054
>spice it up for the plebs
Most definitely. I have a rough idea in mind for the experiment but because I’m writing for “commoners” as you put it the creative liberty I’ll have should be fun to explore

>>23606647
>>23606676
I do present the reader with a first impression of the character in question through contextualization, e.g a mechanic working on a lathe before I go on to mention his beard. My nitpick with this style is that I myself used to be deeply pissed when I had a mental image of a character and the hairstyle the author mentioned a few chapters later gave off completely different vibes from what I had imagined. That was rather helpful, thanks.

>>23607184
When? We should all go and show our support?

>>23606994
it's a good sounding board and learning tool.
i am somewhat coming to rely on it for editing/grammar (mainly sentence structure)-- is this a bad thing? probably. but as an indie/hobbyist with no editor? fuck it

https://pastebin.com/tCwjq1y9

Something I just here wrote to display my writing style, with no editing. I think that I like the way I write dialogue, and the way I did it was on purpose. If it sounds overly stilted and like it needs work, tell me how I can fix it.

Give me a critique, so I can improve my writing on my personal works. I'll try to discern whether the critiques works for what I'm trying to do with my writing, and apply it accordingly. I've only been at this for a few months, and I've not really had much outside critique about it yet. So I have no clue if it's really bad or something.

>>23607313
i'll be honest, the whole thing mostly feels like the
>"heh, nuthin personnel, kid"
>*teleprots behind you*
meme in tone and execution, or maybe a newgrounds flash game

it isn't quite sharp or sardonic enough to work as a parody either. the action itself is okay and you don't veer too much into blow-for-blow territory which is good. i'm not sure what you're going for

>>23607326
The way I wrote it was completely coming up with stuff as I went along with it. I had nothing in mind while writing it, so the protagonist started having the personality of one of the characters I wrote a lot, because I'm used to writing narration and dialogue in the style of that.. Maybe I should've written the characters with a specific personality in mind. I think my dialogue can come off as cartoony at times because of that, because I exaggerate character's personalities too much.

Also I barely ever read anything on these threads, and most of the stuff I read is pretty lowbrow. I take more inspiration from visual stuff I've seen like anime, video games, comics, cartoons, instead of books.

>>23598666
Fwiw, I actually prefer the original opener, I’m a fan of the “arrive late” approach to action, it’s hookier.

It’s hard to say without more context or background on the character or his “plan” but I feel like it would be a good moment to explore some feelings here - was the Janitor one of the targets? It feels more like he’d be collateral (merely an obstacle between the shooter and the keys), how does Declan feel about that? Unphased? Guilty? Shaken that his plan isn’t going as smoothly as anticipated?

If you didn’t want to lose some of that extra stuff you tacked on (excluding the schizo rant about the zoo) you could pepper in parts of it as time goes on, maybe he looks out of a window at the treeline where the fence he got in through was, or something. Give the reader clues about the planning he’s put into this without just giving a play-by-play.

Conceptually this is a cool idea. I think whether you can pull it off is very, very dependent on your abilities though, one wrong move and you’ve basically just written edgelord gun-porn and your reader base will be filled with people who lack the critical thinking skills to take in the message you’re trying to tell and will only share it for the violence.

I’d be curious to read some more passages if you could post some.

>>23607449
He’s the best writer here, that’s for sure.

How long is too long for an unreadable shitpost of a book?

>>23607527
in what way

ChatGPT is great. It helps me come up with recipes all the time. Just tonight I tried mixing ground pepper, thyme, and garlic powder in mayonnaise and putting it on a turkey sandwich. Great result. There's no reason not to use it to help your writing too.

>>23606537
But I already posted my wall...

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>>23607175
>>23607184
>>23607187
>>23607309
>>23607449
>>23607527
You sure have a big attitude for someone who lives in a studio apartment on the 38th floor of a 100-year old building in a run-down part of Chicago. it's like you have no self-awareness at all. And if anyone out there wants to see what's behind this pathetic ego, but understandably doesn't want to pay money for it, you can read it all for free at https://files.catbox.moe/d9sukc.zip, or if you prefer, you can read two mean-spirited parodies of his cacas librorum: "Call Of United Airlines" at https://files.catbox.moe/aw9gz2.pdf
or "Call Of Wells Fargo" at https://files.catbox.moe/rpuvnd.pdf

>>23607739
>>23607739
>>23607739
hopefully groundkeeper-free...

>>23607039
More common is the monograph format or similar. Those also tend to pull no punches when it comes to specialized information and random diversions and musings. Maybe it's just having a psych background, but journal articles not written by total spergs tend to require clear language that an intelligent but uninformed layman can understand. Some are even amusing. Anthropology papers are some of my favorites.

>>23607313
It's fucking ass, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. You're basically just retelling the anime sloppa that came to your head, in real time, without any regard for anyone else's braincells. My feedback is that you should read an actual book if you're at all serious about writing. And please for the love of fuck don't just read some shitty light novel thinking it's anywhere close to what a novel would look like.

>>23607028
>I feel like you're fishing for compliments or something,
How am I fishing for compliments when I've carefully avoided telling you nothing about the work itself? What do I expect you to praise? My scathing wit? Retard.

>>23603972
I refuse to believe it. Good thing we remain on your soil until you learn otherwise.

>>23600070
I don’t even watch political commentators. Wtf are you even smoking? I come here to read, dude. I have no interest in following anyone except myself. As far as girlfriends, I’ve had numerous ones, I just think I have a duty to eliminate years of brainwashing of other men due to filthy resentful academics who want nothing less than to make men chattel slaves to women just because *allegedly* one of our ancestors made some poor sambo shit his pants because he wouldn’t get off his ass and work. Besides, the real redpills aren’t found in self-help gurus or anything like that, but by studying history, Annales school history or general economic history is good for this, despite people saying “money won’t solve your problems” it solves a good deal of world problems, and economic patterns in history are a good indicator of what to expect for general well-being in future endeavors. Pairing it with psychology and psycho-history can help understand the mindsets of leaders, mass movements and the flow of ideas from era to era. So you end up getting a rough picture and go from there. So, no, I don’t watch those aforementioned videos for my “redpill” knowledge. It’s just entertainment for me, and a very minute form of it. I’d rather watch old films if I want something better.

>>23608176
yes please send mre golems mr america