You have to go back.

>>23607739
Been unable to write for about four months now. Just stopped cold turkey, cant event edit my previous work. How do I snap out of it? Will Nofap help me?

A complete annihilation of the fated and joint. An endless slaughter and red revealing of flesh of all hopeful connections. Every hotel room full of the slaughtered astrologers. The piles of the drug users outside the front doors, reeking and mostly black. The stars continue to shine, they have no charts nor watches.

Still missing. This isn't a cattle drive. The synchronicity slips by in near shades and familiarities. You have to go through the clerk's list line by line.

>>23607814
Start very, very small. I recently came off of a 2-year slump. Start out just writing down one or two sentences about ideas that you think might make interesting stories. Work up from there, eventually you will be writing paragraphs and then you'll be writing short stories and then novels.

I think I've discovered why I don't struggle much writing overconfident/arrogant characters. It's because my inner voice is like that, and there's a part of me that really is like that. The less like you a character is, I think it might be harder to write them since its best to write from what you know. So that's why it came so naturally.

>>23607938
I also struggle writing romance a lot, compared to how easily fight scenes come out for me and that kind of stuff. Write what you know makes a lot of sense, and I haven't watched or paid much attention to romance in fictional media, as well as in actual life. If I really want to be able to write about romance, I should try to read more about it

>>23607940
I'm writing a novel with some romance in it, at least a veneer of romance where the heroine gets "raped" by the strong, wealthy, aristocrat, and she loves what happened, and she hates it, and she hates herself for loving it and becoming essentially his mistress while he also has a real fiancé - who has nothing but withering contempt for her. So I skimmed some Colleen Hoover, because she is the hotness when it comes to romance, and - good fucking god - it's drek. It's awful. Don't believe me? Do it, find some pdf's floating around and read some of that sloppa. You will get some ideas, no doubt, but you'll see how low the bar really is.

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Gonna bite the bullet and split it up into a trilogy...
There's just too much ground to cover.

>>23608078
Trilogies are very 20th century. If it ain't a quintology then it ain't worth writing

>>23608101
See, I feel the opposite. I absolutely hate these sprawling, bloated series. They're ok if a significant chunk of them can stand on their own, but stuff like ASoIaF is just unreasonable to me.

What I'm tempted to do is take the opportunity to pull out some backstory and replace it with light exposition or hints, then maybe do a short story collection with each of them later. That could cut the trilogy down to just 2 books, but I can't go lower than that because not only is there too much ground to cover in a figurative sense, but there is also too much ground for the characters to cover.

They can't make it to each of the stops they all need to make on their arcs without it coming across like the Game of Thrones TV show in the last two seasons, where weeks or months of travel would just be cut and suddenly this group that was down south is halfway across the continent or on the other side of the wall or something.

>>23607739
I’m of half a mind to completely skip applying for this short story competition. They literally officially announced it just a month before the actual deadline. I just don’t think I have the energy either physical or mental to put my heart and soul into a short story.

In these last two years, I have worked immensely hard to write and prepare my stories for 6 separate occasions (2 short story comps, 3 magazine submissions, 1 novel prize). And I have not achieved any positive response or feedback. It’s extremely demotivating. I’ve put my heart and soul for months and months for each and every single story I put out into the world, and to receive literally nothing in terms of response of recognition is just painful.

As such, I just don’t know if I can make this latest short story deadline. I feel like I’m at the end of my writing rope.

What do you guys think? Have you faced similar situations ?

>>23608323
Did you begin writing with the sole goal of getting into some old boomer's magazine? Do your stories have some sort of expiry date and can't even stand on their own once the contest ends? There are more ways of growing successful than winning underground contest prizes.

>>23608222
This. I either read short stories like H.G Wells/Lovecraft or actual web novels, western fiction isn't supposed to be a brick Bible collection when it's highly unlikely the author will manage to keep me interested for that long, and I don't want sunk cost to force me to read the remaining 49% of his odyssey or miss out on any discussion.

>>23608353
what do you mean by actual web novels? in my experience, if the vast majority of them were put to print they’d easily be split into more than five novels for each webnovel alone.

>>23608345
Yeah, you’re right anon.

Thing is I set this goal for myself a couple years back to commit myself fully to writing stories that were meaningful and well crafted. Now, here, two years later, I don’t have anything in terms of publications to show for it. I have a good few stories that I am very proud of but the fact they haven’t been accepted anywhere just makes me feel like I’ve failed. I genuinely thought the stories I wrote were great and meaningful. So I just don’t know if I’ve become better or if there’s any point to putting in so much of myself into my stories. It feels futile and I’m exhausted.

>There are more ways of growing successful than winning underground contest prizes.
I know you’re right but could you expand on ways in which my writing can be considered successful? I believe I need some sort of perspective shift

>>23608362
Web novels typically have a faster schedule than books (GRRM won't ever step out of his golden bathtub) and vary a lot in length and pacing. Some may be very long with extensive world-building, while others might be shorter and more focused on character building for different tastes. There's also the online dynamic relationship of reader and author factoring in, which grants more preliminary insight into the work and lets you easily drop/pick it up again without suffering from Amazon's buyer regret.

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>Evil femboy a-la Griffith
How played out is this trope? I think it's interesting but maybe a little overused by now? Also, how does "Authors kink" appear? I'd rather not stray into "magical realm."

>>23608382
>I know you’re right but could you expand on ways in which my writing can be considered successful? I believe I need some sort of perspective shift
My mind is totally opposite to yours when it comes to the road to success. I've always written while giving a middle finger to these competitions: Why should I grind my fingers creating a work tailored to obey the requests of someone else, the contest in this case, for a mere chance of winning a sliver of recognition? It's like slaving your days away to be spitefully acknowledged by a pseudo-publisher, and I hate publishers.

What I can say is, quit giving attention to these stagnant, monolithic entities, and focus on growing an organic audience instead. If you spent the last two years actually interacting with readers on the usual platforms and releasing some weekly work to prove you're living and growing, I'm sure you'd be more recognizable than you are now.

>>23608382
You want the attention of editors, critics and readers through the same channels shit you like comes through. If I want any attention at all, it's from readers like me. I sure as fuck don't read prize entries or most literary journals.

I think the best thing you can do is put your shit out there somewhere you think it fits and see what the response and criticism is.

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Will I truly be the first great Anglo writer of the 21st century?

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>>23608540

>>23608540
Too many words, you should take one accessory off before letting those sentences leave the house.

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>>23608549
>>23608540

>>23608557
Thank you

>>23608575
It was an easy fix. Third person narration needs certainty unless you're going deep into free, indirect style. First person needs certainty because some asshole is allowed to be reliably unreliable. Descriptions should be what something is and mostly comprised of nouns and a different sort of adjective
>fierce-looking double-sided axe
>the shaft of a pocked, stormgrey labyrs with a dun razor sheen. A man axe, well used.

I know my sloppa is shit but could someone help tell me what should I improve?

https://pastebin.com/Y2jiEEe9

>>23608678
>Brad sat on a rotting log, left ear occasionally flicking to the tune of Kraft's guitar playing.
How does that work? I've never seen an ear flick to a tune. Is that even a thing?
>His hands clapped along to the beat as he gazed at the flames, their light reflecting in his amber eyes.
Probably meant to say "reflected", as the light is not the thing that reflects.
Not going to read anymore.

>>23608689
>How does that work?
they're furries

>>23608678
Cool

>>23608419
>What I can say is, quit giving attention to these stagnant, monolithic entities, and focus on growing an organic audience instead.
I haven't been focusing on genre fiction as much but I do get your overall point. Never good to emotionally/mentally depend fully on things out of your control.

>>23608497
>You want the attention of editors, critics and readers through the same channels shit you like comes through.
You're right. I've been focused on literary fiction (yes yes i know, i am gay and retarded) and I don't know any other way to move forward in this domain other than getting published and/or winning contests. If I'm being honest, I don't want readers or lit mags to glaze me or anything. I just want my story out there for readers to read and perhaps some discussion or engagement.

>I think the best thing you can do is put your shit out there somewhere you think it fits and see what the response and criticism is.
That's fair. What are my options given that I'm writing literary fiction?

>>23608353
I liked the idea of just writing the important bits and leaving the rest for the reader to fill in, but then I heard Malazan is basically written like that so that seems like a no-go.
When 99% of the people you talk to about your work says, "Oh, like X?" and X is the same book series or author every time, that's a huge red flag saying you need to be more creative, imo.

>>23608920
>and I don't know any other way to move forward in this domain other than getting published and/or winning contests
irl connections. go to one of these publishing houses and stalk their jew rat/mormon employees and find out if they have any children near your age and then convert to their religion and stalk them and get in a relationship and then use those connections to try get your work okayed by mr. shekelberg followed by a puff piece in the nyt
good luck, but trad publishing is basically propped up by a few mega authors and the remainder is all nepo handouts and political money laundering

>>23608678
I think the things that standout the most are your overuse of proper nouns, the overuse of noun + verb sentences, the light novel style short paragraphs as well as the script-like addition of the characters' names before dialog happens.
Use pronouns or other noun descriptors like old man, hyena or guitarist. Don't start your sentences with noun + verb combos all the time, there's other ways of starting sentences. There's virtually no reason why some of those sentences couldn't be conjoined to form larger paragraphs and narration could be better planned out so that you don't have a tiny sentence in between several lines of dialog. There's also no real reason as to why you're stating which character is speaking, the identity of the speaker should be implied contextually or denoted within the text.

https://pastebin.com/HQV4pkns

I'm mostly looking for feedback on whether this is funny, coherent, appealing stylistically, and believable. This would be the first chapter of a satirical coming-of-age novel focused on a 30 year old manchild's social and artistic development. I was proud of it at first but upon rereading I might need to overhaul the concept because I'm worried the gimmick of the character and prose wear thin and that the comedy is too mean-spirited and that there may be too much boring exposition.

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>>23608540
I felt like using my graphics tablet.

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Why does everyone keep giving me the same cookie cutter basic tips on writing bros? Like you need to have a hook in the beginning of your story, or keep dialogue concise, dont be flowery with your words, etc. If I apply all this shit it feels like my story will turn out like generic trash without soul. Is it just a sign of the times that people need to be constantly stimulated and engaged for them to find a story interesting?

Having said that, it might also be the case I'm just throwing a tantrum and that I'm genuinely retarded. I don't know.

>>23609527
Incredible. This is art.

>>23609726
>If I apply all this shit it feels like my story will turn out like generic trash without soul.
You are genuinely retarded because from the sound of it you haven't written word one. Don't get hung up on the process or what people think the process should be, simply put words on the page in such a way that the characters are lively and story is interesting.

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>>23609726
>gee why don't incel NEET shutins, who have totally failed at life, have any good advice?

>>23609743
Nah I just started writing my man, got only like 3.500 words on paper at the moment. But since I just picked it up I felt like I should look up some tips to see how I could improve, and now I keep doubting whether the way I write is okay or not, or if it's too boring or some shit. So I keep revising stuff. I probably should just write what I want to though

>>23609796
Kek no I dont mean advice from here, just like on youtube vids and general writing communities

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working on some flash fiction/short stories/vignettes recently. just finished the zeroth draft for two of them and still have some notes for three more. might share some when i'm on a first or second draft for feedback. feels good, lads

wishing everyone a good weekend

>>23609393

It didn't make me laugh, but maybe I'm just not in the mood. I think you would be better off here focusing on interaction and dialogue, the scene, rather than trying to narrate some philosophy, do analysis or tell anecdotes of any kind. If the story you're telling is a good one, it will be in the actual STORY, not oh grandpa was a sad sap and so was dad. Because nobody give a shit about that. Tell the story, not the backstory.

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>>23607739
So I have a fantasy race with a tail weapon, and there are 4 tribes, each with a different tail weapon that is sort of used as a tribal identifier

I'm not sure what to make them. So far the tribes' themes are:

>generalist tribe
>hunter tribe
>industrious tribe
>warlike tribe

I was thinking the tail weapons would be

-Hunter Tribe - Spear/Arrow shape
-Industrious - Bone club/hammer
-Warlike - Bunch of deadly spikes like picrel

Not sure what would be a good "generalist" tail end though

>>23609959
maybe not what you're going for but what about no special attachments at all? just a prehensile tail?

>>23609393
I like it. It clearly has great variety of vocabulary terms being used, and a good rhythm to it. I think the narrator's voice is great because the unreliable narrator seems to also be a bit flowery in his choice of words. Which makes sense considering that they view themselves as an artist. It made me smile a little reading it. In fact, this is well written to the point that I shouldn't be the one giving a critique, because I do not see any issues with this passage. Good luck on your writing journey. I think you could make something good with this concept, and with this kind of talent, there's many other opportunities waiting for you.

>>23609959
why 4?
why 4 different tribes and not 4 different castes, like workers, military, clergy and rulers
maybe men's tails are different from female ones, so male workers are like shovels, females are like baskets

>>23609959
shovel might be more useful than hammer

>>23609959
how advanced is the industrious tribe? could they turn their tails into firearms?

The worst way to write an antihero story is to conclude that the antihero is right
The mediocre way to write an antihero story is to have the antihero reform
The best way to write an antihero story is to have the antihero die

>>23610180
Tragic fall, death is too cheap for redemption. Note I didn't say reformation. Noir tends towards ostracism and crippling as much as death.

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>>23609968
I think that's a good idea, I'll go with that

>>23610074
They were 4 tribes originally, generalist tribe was wiped out by an evil force, the remnants of that tribe united the others led by one who would become a living god

That 4th tribe no longer exists as an independent tribe as it assimilated into the others and their tail has disappeared among the people, but their living god and his statues still possess that tail and it's seen as a sort of holy symbol

>>23610075
Yeah but I also wanted them all to have a sort of warrior culture. Although I suppose there are e-tools IRL and they are used as emergency weapons, also the shaolin monk spade

>>23610085
They do have primitive firearms, but their tails are something they are born with

I'm super /beg/ at drawing but I drew a rough picture of them. I think I need to redraw the eyes when I redo the tails.

>>23610180
Nah the best way to write an anti-hero story is to have them succeed in their revenge and not suffer some vague karmic consequence

>>23610056
Thank you fren, this is very encouraging.

>>23609835
Yeah I can see this take, my fear is the story is underdeveloped, but I do like flowery prose and there on some themes I want to focus on

>>23608540
No, and you should probably stop cursing people, as if you're going to curse someone you should be prepared to take on a curse 1,000x stronger.

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so I think I actually finally made it bros
got a deal with the biggest publisher in my country

>>23611131
congrats, anon!

>>23611131
Lucky bastard

>>23611131
Well done!

>>23611131
profoundky based anon. may you become a great author of your country.

>write outline
>start writing
>have to change outline
>start writing more
>outline is now contradicting itself at several points and doubled in size
structuring my story is bringing me pain

>>23611131
very nice (kazakhstan)

TODAY
I
WRITE

i don't care for progression slop, but i want all the greedy autistic eyes of the demographic

>>23611189
you don't need to do this. attack from all angles

>>23610075
actually I think I might go with a dolabra like tail end, I think that would have versatility (cutting and entrenching)

Also I could have the horse jawbone shape for the tail and I think that would look neat

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I'm writing a character who is a bit insane. Not insane enough to not function in polite society, but definitely not right in the head either. Problem is, I'm writing a story in third person, and he is one of the POV characters. I can find plenty of examples about writing through the eyes of madness (stuff like The Repairer of Reputations from the King-in-Yellow), but I'm not sure on how to go about it in third person, altough the narration allows me to explore the thoughts of the POV character.

I also want to talk a bit about writing mad characters. Mostly the way to write "madness" that I've seen boil down to:
>Separating cause and effects (like a man looking at a sunny sky and concluding that he's going to capture butterflies to drown them in a river so it can lasts until tomorrow for his picnic)
>Experiencing sensations unrelated to any actual physical phenomenon (hearing voices or seeing things, of course)
>Great leaps of personal interpretation of events or words (like in the story I've cited above, where the MC's cousin has a friendly conversation with him, while the MC overanalyzes every word to convince himself the cousin is on a great conspiracy to do him harm). Also related to the first point.
>Delusions about the nature of things (seeing a simple stick as a mighty sword, that kinda thing)

Of course, the rub is that, within the context of the story, the character is not (completely) delusional: he does have particular abilities (magical in nature) that explains his actions. But I don't want him to only appear mad to outside observers, I want to make clear that his link to reality stretches thin, as his own realization that it's starting to happen drives much of the plot. He may be an oracle, yes, but that doesn't mean he's not starting to become insane.

It's a thin line to thread : if I go too much in the "madness" aspect, readers might get confused about whether or not they're supposed to take the supernatural as face value, and that's not the point of the story (it could, but it's not). If I don't go too much into it, then the character is just a normal dude with unique powers and there's no sense of racing against time and his very nature, which is he personal conflict that I think is essential to the story.

Would be interested to hear your thoughts.

>>23611503
"Madness" isn't a diagnosis so there's no set way to characterize it. You can do whatever.
If his actions make some sense in the context of his abilities, I'd tie them together at first, and then slowly have it turn out that some of the things he's reacting to aren't a manifestation of his abilities at all. I wouldn't even refer to it as any kind of madness. Just let the confusion carry the reader along the same journey as the character, with growing doubt gnawing away at them.

What are some books that discuss descriptive literary techniques? Any good Renaissance or Enlightenment books on literary technique?

I realised Longinus' On the Sublime is another good ancient book

>>23611140
>>23611169
>>23611170
thank you

>>23611144
I am, still cannot believe it
Pro tip: don't be modest about your skills when you sell your book. It took me some rejections to realize that if you want them to actually read your manuscript, you need give the publisher an impression that you know what you're doing. You're not just some guy who decided to write a book one day; you're a guy who can and knows how to write. Your writing abilities matter to them a lot more than your book idea

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>>23611131
Holy fucking based. Congratz nigger. Don't fuck it up now. Ganbatte!

>>23611616
I think I will go along this train of thought. Obviously, the idea isn't to tell the reader the protagonist is insane from the get go, but since he's doing his own thing for much of the beginning of the book I can set up some things that wouldn't look out of place for a reader who is still taking in the setting.

I was thinking something along the line of the protagonist being introduced as a noble/diplomat, someone with a majordomo, a driver, contacts in high society, before revealing later on that he's an average joe whose memories got jumbled up, and since it suited the needs of his employer they let him carry on the farce.

>>23611131
Great job.

>>23611750
Care to elaborate? Purely hypothetical. By the time I ever get close to a publisher I'll have forgotten this thread by all probabilities.

What's a good metaphor for explaining that some wrongs cannot be righted with a good deed so easily?

I have dialogue that goes like
>If there's anything I can do to make up for how I've hurt you, I'll do it

I was thinking something like
>This isn't some debt you can pay interest on. When you swing an axe at a tree, it's scarred for good.
Some others ones were
>This isn't a chess board you can reset. When you fold the paper, it's creased for good
>This isn't a wall where you can take a brick out and put one back in. When you put the ink on the parchment, it's stained for good
I'm not sure of any other good ones

>>23609393
I didn't find it particularly funny even if there were some attempts at humor, probably down to timing and delivery. You could call it coherent and believable, but I don't so much know about its stylistic appeal. The main issue is that it's mostly purple and a display of as much verbiage as one bathed in lamplight could happen to have acquired during his many years an avid thesaurus reader, in other words, you're still falling for a somewhat common pitfall that I most often see with newer writers, albeit with fewer shades of purple. You do have a few metaphors but I cannot possibly be arsed to comb through and count how many rhetorical devices there were as my impression was that there weren't that many; you were predominantly verbose and I don't get paid to look for words in a word stack. If I really had to tie a ribbon on the coffin, it'd be that you're overcompensating for an otherwise boring story that predominantly unfolds inside a guy's mind that can't stop yapping; first person in this case is ironically a weakness because you have no separate narrator to escape to whenever you want to showcase the artistic narcissism of the main character without compromising the entire text. Besides that the flow was fine and so was the (attempt) at dark humor, so there should be no issue with a rewrite, you just have to take a more pragmatic approach since most people would tire of reading about a guy jerking himself off for 98% of a book.

>>23611793
>Care to elaborate?
Think of it as submitting your CV to a recruiter. Going into detail about the content of your book and how awesome and novel your idea is will probably not impress the person reviewing your submission. It's sort of like saying that you'll be a really hard worker... What they want to hear is that you have the competence and the skills. That, in my opinion and experience, should be the first thing you impress upon them. Otherwise, they might not bother to carefully examine your work, AND that's assuming they even open your manuscript to begin with, which they might not do if they're flooded with manuscripts from other authors at the time you reach out to them. You don't want to test your luck like that.

>>23611840
I've read some publishers ask for some extra content besides the book itself
>Short summary of the hook, the kind you'd read on a back cover
>Detail summary of the story
>Short text detailing your intent

>>23611799
You can never unshit a pair of pants.
No matter what you do, no matter how you clean or disinfect, those pants will always be the shitted pants. Unstained though they may be, you will never be able to put them on without being reminded about the brown.

>>23611875
They do, that's your manuscript cover letter. They want to see that you're an engaging writer who is aware of what his book is about and can sell it as interesting. If you read Carson McCullers' detail summary for The Heart is a Lonely Hunter that won her the prize and allowed her to write it, it makes the story sound intriguing and highlights what it's about and how it plays out as much as what happens, which in a literary novel, ain't fucking much.

>>23609726
Because they are basic tips on how to not write poorly, as opposed to how to write well. If you have internalized most of these basic tips then chances are that you're not committing any major mistakes. They address most of the issues that I find posted in this general so you can probably extrapolate that to the wider population of writers at large.
There's no cookie cutter advice for SOVL because not everyone's creative process, intelligence, theoretical knowledge or style are the same.
Exempli gratia:
Tautology is a rhetorical device whereby an idea is needlessly repeated but it is also a somewhat common mistake that beginners make ("the moonlight shone brightly"). Anaphora, whereby successive sentences all start with the same word or combinations of words, can also be perceived as a mistake ("The (...). The (...). The (....)."). Similes on the other hand can't be made by mistake, but they can certainly be used as a crutch for lacking the skill to describe something or just downright poorly ("The lake was beautiful like a painting" or with the same sense as before "The lake was blue like a man that died from autoerotic asphyxiation").

As for stimulation, engagement and interest, whatever you wrote should tickle at least one if not all of the three. I'm not going to read your literary interpretation of an "on-going Japanese slice of live manga that gets really good after chapter 200" no matter how many times you exclaim to be cooking.

Peniz

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>14000 words deep on a fantasy series I started 3 days ago
LETS FUCKING GOOOO

>>23611189
>oh no, my heckin outlinerino
get it straight. an outline is a tool, not a shackle

>>23612096
This is why pantsing produces superior works.

>>23611189
Better for your outline to be jumbled, and having to straighten it out, than to write a jumbled story. The outline is just a reflection of your ideas about your story. The jumble is real; the outline is just the messenger.

>>23612100
the pantser/outliner debate is, ironically, just a miscommunication. outliners are constantly discovering things, pantsers are basically just outlining iteratively. anyone just conjuring some story from nothing on their first go is either a case of extreme survivorship bias or someone not understanding the concepts

i need help
i enjoy fantasy, i enjoy scifi. suspending one’s disbelief is fine when it’s someone else’s work you aren’t spending a lot of time with
but writing it myself? everything not real is a plothole with implications everyone is expected to ignore
maybe i need get zen with the ‘iceburg’ concept of worldbuilding
maybe i should just write litfic and convert it it to fantasy after the fact. something robin hobb esque
i absolutely cant stand progression slop though
tell me what i should feel and think

>>23612191
You should capitalize your sentences and Is.

>>23612405
You should go fuck yourself.

>>23612407
NO U

>>23612431
:(

I think I'm going to have my first chapter start with my healer gathering herbs in the woods. I disagree with all the advice saying every story needs an explosive opening to hook the reader and there should be non-stop drama and conflict on every page. I avoid stories like that and just want my character introduced to be as mellow as possible. It will ramp up more later on.

>>23611974
That sounds like a Game of Thrones joke, and a bad one from the later seasons

>>23612492
you are misrepresenting the other side. and your story should have a hook. it does not need to be explosive, just interesting. it is just about getting readers interested in your book at all and not about action. gathering herbs in the woods is not a problem at all for a hook. i guess you just do not like getting advice. but do what you want. if you personally don't read books with hooks so be it. but there is a reason this is some of the most common advice out there practiced by most successful authors.

>>23612532
>you are misrepresenting the other side
How so? Nearly all the Youtubers say I should be starting with intense action, in medias res, or something very dramatic otherwise people will get bored immediately. It's not the kind of story I want to tell. The action will come later, but I have to lay a foundation otherwise it won't make sense to have this gentle healer turn into a killer.

>>23612492
My story has an explosive start but then we go gather herbs 15 chapters later.

Trying out this allegory, tells me if I'm overdoing it. Translated from ESL so the exact words don't matter much, it's more about the general idea

>The chair was a work of art. Tall and dusty, the back curved around his head, as if to try to squeeze his temple. The armchairs were jabbing into his sides, preventing any unexpected movements. It was a perfect wooden-frame replica of the Yserdz Asylum For the Meeks and Insanes. Comfort, he was sure, was never a consideration in the design in both cases.

>>23612602
I get the picture he's sitting in an electric chair. Not literally, but something equally as ominous or uncomfortable.

>>23612624
Uncomfortable yes, but this is a normal chair. "Replica" wasn't the right word, maybe. "Metaphor" would've worked just as well. The point is to set the tone of the building the character is currently in.

>>23612492
That's a courageous decision. Remember, your reader has a lot of options for what to do with their idle time. If your book doesn't hook them, they'll drop it and go do something else. You do not own your readers.

>>23612492
A-at least starts with a prologue anon! Even just a page of something slightly ominous! Just a sentence! A vaguely threatening chapter title! I beg you!

>>23612546
>Nearly all the Youtubers say
nice strawman. gathering herbs is not the hook. the hook is why your character is gathering herbs. if its because of her sick mother/younger brother and she's really concerned about them and it's early in the morning and foggy and she's worried they're going to die - and you get her concern across to the reader, that is an appropriate hook.
if she's gathering herbs because she just likes gathering herbs and herbs are fun things to gather that scenario provides no stakes for the reader so there is no hook.

>>23612671
>nice strawman
I mean do you want a list of names? It's a recurring theme that advice givers say to do big action scene at the start.

She is gathering herbs to make a magic potion to pass her school's final exam. If she fails that's 5 years wasted. And the woods are full of dangerous animals.

>>23612687
Well there you go then, that's your hook
>Oh, I must gather some Wildfellow Mercies... I've heard you can find some around Brighorns' burrows, I just hope they're not hungry yet

>>23612687
I don't care about youtubers - especially because practically none of them are authors and the ones that are wrote total fucking dogshit.
Your scenario provides an appropriate hook. Just make sure the reader knows the stakes - years worth of effort and a degree - very quickly, like 1st or 2nd paragraph, upon starting the book. Once the stakes are clear you can have her do whatever.

>>23612546
you know what, i think i might have misjudged you completely and i am deeply sorry for it. your logic is quite convincing. in fact now that i think about it, it might make sense for you to start the story with your character waking up, otherwise it might come as a suprise later when the character is awake all of a sudden. please make this waking up process very comfy and mellow. maybe describe your main character's appearance in the first paragraph in detail (including height measurements and hair color) and describe the surrounding like in a slow movie shot around the bed room so the reader who mostly watches movies feels right at home. *hugging smiley*

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I completed my first fantasy novel. 3 different people said they enjoyed it. I'm now going to start working on a Sci fi novel.

>>23612738
congrats on successfully finishing a novel. good luck with the next one.

Why are youtube tutorials for art good but for writing bad?

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lemme guess... you need more?

>>23612850
He needs a salad

>>23612850
Yeah I need you to write something that's not an extended article for your own wiki.

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I'm stuck in the weeds on my current big novel draft and I was browsing the amazon book section and seeing the blow up of litrpg stuff.
Thought that might be an idea. Just write some low effort trash and publish it under a pseudonym for quick cash but my brain just won't let me. My projects have to be perfect, I can't taint my soul with trashy work. What do /lit/?

>>23612953
>he still thinks litrpgs are low effort
LOL the time it takes to write it out, plan a reasonable progression, creating new threats, and making sure the story is coherent is incredibly difficult. You woulnd't be able to write it in the first place.

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>>23612953
>quick cash
Most of those barely sell five copies.

>>23613011
So you're saying there's a chance?

>>23612953
>writing a self published novel
>quick cash

you are delusional anon. just get a job or suck dick or something to get actual cash flow.

keep writing your novel.

sounds to me more like you need some validation as a writer. maybe write a short story and see if people like it. or get a gf or something.

This is a story I wrote about three years ago. I forget how long now. I would like /wg/ to be honest about whether or not it's shit so I can be honest with myself and forget I ever wanted to be a good writer. If it has potential, if there's anything at all in it that could be improved and used to make something good, then I'll go on trying to be a writer, even if writing is hell with no prospect of redemption.

https://pastebin.com/5sQWBczQ

>>23613151
I'm not wasting my time if you aren't even gonna bother writing something this year unless I pat you on the head.

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>>23613160
i've got about 10k words so far of unrelated projects, sure. It's just that I'm not so hot on them that I'm finding myself going back to old stuff that made me think I wanted to keep writing. Is that a good enough answer?

>>23613151
i like it, keep going
but you'll need to confront the idea that you'll really just be doing this for yourself
i don't know how many other people still want to read stuff like this

How do you know if what you’re writing is correct?

>>23613414
There is no correct. Just follow your heart.

>>23611976
That actually explained it pretty well anon, thanks. I seem to have misinterpreted some of the tips I got, but I read some books today expanding on their meaning and got a better understanding of em as a result

Pacing is everything

>>23611322
Amen

>>23607921
I still get ideas but my job leaves me with so little energy that I cant bring myself to write. However, I think I can commit to a hundred words a day, no matter what.

any examples of books with a character who has multiple characters or personalities living inside its head? give titles

I wish I could write stories.

>>23614163
fight club?

>>23614163
dr jekyl and mr hyde?

>>23614163
Other than Fight Club or Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde?
Legion, by OURGUY

>>23614163
Well, there's the storm light archive, but you likely already knew about it,

>>23614194
>>23614196
thanks boys but i dont mean the hyde mechanism or the fight club mechanism. i sort of mean the characters/personalities inside the head and narrated by the person whose head they are inside, no twists. but open to other mechanisms as well.

>>23614198

Legion by Will P Blatty? how does he do it?

>>23614199
i don't know about it, how does it work in Stormlight?

>>23614232
>Inside Out except as a book.
I got nothing.

>>23614236
Yea good call forgot about that. Also open to other mechanisms if you know any

>>23614232
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13452375-legion

>>23614274
interesting will check this out, thanks

>>23614232
>i don't know about it, how does it work in Stormlight?

The basic rundown is that this character grew up in a broken home but is still part of a minor noble house. Due to her feelings of inadequacy mixed with the adoration of two different women, her talent for playing a part, and other factors, she makes these two personas. The first is a street-wise shadowy scam artist type, and the second is a regal, honorable, heroic type. At first, these are just masks she uses to interact with certain people, but as she finds it easier and easier to wear them, they become fully-fledged, separate personalities.

A praise to Temptation I sing with glee

Her vagrant spirit draws to me

A broken throne is made with gold

I am clay for her to mold

On my lonely throne I sing

I have given to her my eye’s sight of every thing

And now my eyes to wisdom have grown

It is naught but black, death, and bone

>>23612532
Nta but if I wrote the first chapter with a character that get into accident, is that a good hook? Did you get hooked?

>>23614672
...also nta, but that should work; however that's not all you're trying to do, you should have several goals.
like introducing a main character and demonstrating some of their qualities. and ideally a goal
and just like any other scene, some form of conflict, or something intriguing.
does your accident set the tone for what to expect throughout your story? or at least the premise-- like what your character might be dealing with?
conflict can be much more subtle. and mystery works well too.

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Finally got my web novel project underway. Started with a fresh account, without any carryover from my previous works' followers, but it still found commenters faster than my other works. Guess there are still readers around for old-fashioned fantasy adventure books too. Let's see how far we can go.

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Is there a way to make a scheming woman who seduces a powerful man into a sympathetic character?

Is there also a way for the man to know she's manipulating him but not care that she is?

>>23614801
Sure, she could seduces him for sympathetic reasons: provide for her family, save her people, let her sister go free, and so on.

And of course, a lonely man might enjoy having someone who cares about him, even if they're just pretending. A lot of people think pretending to be in love is better than being alone

>>23614801
>Is there a way to make a scheming woman who seduces a powerful man into a sympathetic character?
Give her ambitious goals that are ultimately good, and possibly a degree of remorse for her actions if the powerful man isn't evil. Possibly make it so that the powerful man is a bad guy that has personally fucked her life up in some way and this is part of a greater revenge plot.
>Is there also a way for the man to know she's manipulating him but not care that she is?
Have him truly in love, or if you want some kind of twist, have it be that their goals actually align unbeknownst to her and he's preparing her as a scapegoat. Rather than love or Machiavellian schemes, you can also just make the guy misanthropic and lonely.

Reposting here because I haven't gotten any responses in the Unreal thread:

What are the odds that if I post a link to an essay here, one of the /lit/ publications will accept and publish it? For anonymity reasons I would prefer not to submit over e-mail.

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Starting to understand why George left everything up to Littlefinger and Varys because who the fuck was in charge of organising a joust? Or city planning? Or anything???

>>23614977
medieval people just formed committees to handle this stuff, same as nowadays.

>>23614801
>Is there a way to make a scheming woman who seduces a powerful man into a sympathetic character?
Once he’s under her spell he could start questioning the things he’s done before, maybe revealing he didn’t want to do them but felt like he had no choice, maybe she makes him feel inferior in some way. The key is to humanize him as she breaks him down.

>Is there also a way for the man to know she's manipulating him but not care that she is?
Either love or tradition, he has fallen deeply and doesn’t care even though he knows, he’s blinded by it. Or maybe he’s under some sort of pressure to find a wife and birth a successor, and she just happens to be in the right place at the right time, so he just goes along with it despite knowing it’s wrong.

From there you could move into him eventually fighting back against the manipulation, or have her also eventually realise she was wrong but has developed feelings for him. Just know that if you publish that angle there’s a lot of readers that will cry about how this is an “abusive” relationship and “shouldn’t be romanticized”

I’ve reached a point in a scene where a character joins late and needs to be filled in on what happened before he arrived, but I’m not sure if it feels right. Currently have something like this:

>”Here, take a look at this.” The old man handed him the now sodden scrap of paper, and hobbled back to his seat whilst explaining the events that had led them all to that moment; leaving out no small details, aside from how much they’d drank.

>>23614974
share it anyway

>>23614974
Why not just make a burner email tied to a different name to submit? Either way you should post it, I wanna know what’s so dangerous about it that it can’t be traced back to your real life.

>>23615124
that is awkward. hard to follow. just delete it and try later. is it 3rd person limited? consider the character's voice, or something lol

>>23612602
Opening sentence doesn’t work for me. When I read “Work of art” I think classical, ornate, hand carved wood and leather. It immediately conflicts with the next sentence.

You could try something like:
>The chair was a masterpiece of modern design
>The chair was a powerful sight
Or if you want to romanticize a little and get a bit flowery (assuming so based on using ‘work of art’)
>The chair was imposing. Standing almost 6 feet tall; it cut a brutal, oppressive shadow. It was covered in a layer of dust of the years gone by and yet, it was beautiful.

Idk, hard to give you too much without more context but maybe you’ll find something there.

>>23615150
Yeah, I’m writing in 3rd/omniscient. I originally had him just hand over the paper and then had something like:

>The boy stood and listened to the man as he carefully explained the events that had come before, and why they were so shocked to see him still standing. And though he understood what was being said, it didn’t make any sense.

But idk, it just feels a little underwhelming to me or like I’m cutting a corner. Maybe I’m overthinking it.

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>have absolutely no idea how to progress with the next arc
>tired of pointlessly cracking my head, go to sleep
>dream spoonfeeds me a nearly perfect sequence of events through a movie lens
>wake up, write down the vanishing memory and proceed to adapt it to the story
I've had this happen to me twice in the last couple of months. How the hell can our subconscious devise plots better than our conscious selves? I wish I could dream more often.

I think the issues with my first draft are too big. What the fuck do I do? Do I rewrite it from word 1?It's a big mess. Why did I do this to myself.

>>23615453
>usually forget my dreams
>have a dream plot revelation
>make a mental note of it
>no issue remembering it for years
>it happened again a couple weeks ago
>"Last time I made a mental note of a plot idea from a dream, it turned out fine, so I'm sure it will this time as well!"
>I forgot it the next day
fuckssake, I remember it being really good, too.

>>23615500
For this very reason I tend to write them as soon as I wake up, even if the notes end up with unreadable grammar and terrible punctuation.

>>23612850
I love this fat motherfucker like you wouldn't believe.

>>23615467
What are the issues? I would suggest creating a separate document and copy over only the essential beats into, then start rebuilding the skeleton, adding or removing what you need to make it flow. Then slowly moving over what you can re-use from the first draft bit by bit.

>>23615694
I'm reading through it now and maybe it wasn't as bad as I thought, but my main problems are the unclear motivations of my main characters and their passiveness. I also feel like so many of the big plot points are contrived and don't seem like they happen naturally. There's also some backstory stuff that I need to get right because right now it's vague.
>I would suggest creating a separate document and copy over only the essential beats into, then start rebuilding the skeleton, adding or removing what you need to make it flow. Then slowly moving over what you can re-use from the first draft bit by bit.
Thanks, I'm making notes as I read, but I will probably do this before the next pass.

>>23615753
Backstory is an area I struggle with, mainly because I want to weave it all into the plot but it’s not always easy to do without exposition dumping. One of my characters ended up so fleshed out, I’m fairly sure she’s just going to end up with a short story or even a novel of her own, so for now I’m being mindful of that and only alluding to the essentials in the core story.
As for contrivances, I actually find that’s more flexible depending on your setting. If you’ve established a world where these things can happen, then it’s okay for them to do so, for the most part. Even more so if you have a character that is making these moments occur to drive whatever goal it is they’re working towards, but the key thing is to tie them into that so there’s nobody left questioning “Why would that happen?”

Best of luck anon.

>It is also worth noting that I’m a dribbling retard though so do bare that in mind.

Is it possible to write a woman being selfless that seems believable?

>>23616004
No

>>23615995
Thanks anon. You make a good point about the contrivances. The events themselves make complete sense in the story and world, but the cause and effect leading up to them needs to be fixed. But you're right, it can be worked on.
And don't worry, we're just two dribbling retards in conversation.

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How immodest looking would having men of a tribe be shirtless and wearing really short trousers and long leggings like picrel?

>>23616177
immodesty is culturally subjective

>>23615161
Thanks. It's true, you're lacking a bit of context, also this sentences comes very early in the chapter so there's not much more context to give in the text either. "Work of art" is supposed to be ironic, but I'll work more on how to express that.

Released a new chapter: https://cityofflies.substack.com/

People have told me I'm going a bit heavy on the world-building. That was not my intent, but I see where they are coming from. Should be less noticeable now that the basic situation is established.

In 2020 I was on this general and anime writing or anything similar to YA style was bashed. Now it's sort of flipped, where purple-ish stuff is bashed and anime writing is celebrated. Can someone please explain the distinction, why it happened, why there's a flip, and what it even means to be one way or another? Trying to shake off a few inhibitions and this place seems to have some sort of stone shaped lodging in my head that's been there for a few years.

>>23616191
I'd say the other cultures are fantasy modest so they'd see it as bold but not obscene I guess.

>>23616560
>In 2020 I was on this general and anime writing or anything similar to YA style was bashed. Now it's sort of flipped, where purple-ish stuff is bashed and anime writing is celebrated.
Anime writing is not celebrated. Even the people who write it in this thread acknowledge it as a lesser form of literature. Assume they want to make money with their writing, I guess, and anime-ish stuff is the male-centric niche doing phenomenal in the indie space. Far from being 'celebrated' though.
As for why it's discussed more, probably because there's been some minor success stories from people posting in this thread, and just a general rising of popularity in those genres, I assume

>>23616598
I guess I'm saying that you should decide how 'modest' you want the tribe to be and then use your in-world culture's idea of modesty to make decisions. What do people in your world think is obscene?

How do I get away with writing about other peoples' cultures as a straight white male? Do people/publishers actually care about this shit?

>>23616560
Quality has gone to shit and all the shitters and ESLs outnumber anyone with a shred of dignity. Anons used to be well read, for the most part, and dedicated to craft along a more literary axis. /wbg/ was a response to how divorced that kind of shit was from what others were writing. Most of the anons writing webshit admit they're either disabled or the slight chance of making 500 USD a month working 12 hours a day is a good living in their banana republic. The two genuinely successful anons are cool, but make no excuses for the banality of their content or how brutal taking that route is.

>>23616611
anime writing will be remembered, your purple prose about how you struggle iwth depression will not.

>>23616631
>but make no excuses for the banality of their content
yes,
>or how brutal taking that route is.
but no to this one.

it's easy, at least for me. writing sloppa is only a 10-15 hr/week commitment and even on the days where I'm tired of writing my serial, it's more like running errands I don't want to run, not something souldraining. and the good days, where I'm excited to write the upcoming chapters, my "job" is just what I would just be doing as a hobby. that's why I advocate for other people to try and see if they like it, because it really is my dream job (well, besides being able to write whatever I want, however slowly I want. But sloppa on a schedule is a real-world compromise)

It depends entirely on your mentality, goals, preferences, etc. Maybe I'm just particularly suited to it, because sitting in my chair and writing a 2k word chapter really is quite easy, even if I'm not loving what I'm writing at that moment

>>23616621
Just use a pen name

>>23616673
Literature will be remembered, not generic slop story #2528
Case in point is...literature. Lmao.

>>23616673
"Anime writing" begs the question "what is anime based on?" and the answer is timeless Campell themes. Indiana Jones, Star Wars, they were all pulp. Being pulp is not bad. Writing about fun adventures instead of an Asian lesbian from a diaspora living in a post industrial town with a dark history of racism is not bad.

I like watching the crows, they flew through trees playing strange games and called to their own over all kinds of little things. Mostly they pecked at the ground or took to finding easy ways to get at feasts with a strange cunning that they could speak to others. One would and the others would too after a time. All of them, everywhere.

I put it down to their moots. From time to time, they would all gather in this great murder among all the trees that would hold them, squaking far and wide until more than you've ever seen came. You've never seen so many crows or heard such a sound, the ones that have don't soon forget. Theydt cacophonize for hours with caws you've never heard and never wanted to again. Myriad conversations and choruses all at once that must have meant something to them. Why they came together and did it, I never wondered. It wasn't my place to and I guess it didn't matter much if I did listen in.

My crows were the biggest, the scrawny ones over parking lots with shredded wings didn't compare. Shiny true black and standing to a lesser man's knee. Beaks the size of a thumb. Knowing eyes. I fed them cornbread (I never saw the appeal myself after a slice of two) and scraps and spoke their language. The few words I knew. They would come and greet me in the afternoons. One even came close enough to touch and let me look at him, I guess it was a him, they're all the same to me when it comes to it. Later on, he brought me a ring. They're fond of presents if you get to know them. I still wear it on my little finger.

They saw a feller with a cruel streak try and start something with me one day. He must have started something with them a long time ago. The whole of them came down and pecked at his eyes and pate, nipping his ears with beaks that break tiny bones. They came on him like he were a hawk who couldn't fly. Bloodied bastard ran with the black cloud shrieking Wagner at him, trying to carry him off to where he belonged still living. He never came around again.

They never forget, them crows, never.

>>23607739
Nigger! He said loudly, clenching his fist in niggardly rage. Nigger! He thought more quietly now with cigarette in his mouth, taking a long drag to fill his lungs with cool smoke and his veins with that sweet, sweet niggartine. In his entire life he has not felt such rage, his soul black like a nigger, and his eyeballs popping with big turgid veins as if filled with the rage of a thousand niggers.

>>23616796
One vignette down, numerous more to go to get the word count up and a mood cemented.

The day of retribution had arrived. Wally had been planning it for a month. There wasn't much to the plan; it was the apprehension that had stifled him. All men have those dark, transitory thoughts that flicker like dark blotches on a film reel, quickly fading from perception to give way to the larger narrative taking place. It was the type of thought that you could act upon, that maybe someone, somewhere, has acted upon, but why would you? You were quarreling with reason, risking ostracization. You could jump in front of that train. You could sporadically ask that random girl her number. You could babble incoherently in the middle of class for no other reason than to assert your will. But why would you? And plus, Wally was not the type to act upon his thoughts. As he thought more, he realized that this flaw of temperament had brought him the current desperation that defined his life. And maybe this type of thing was what he needed to reassert his dormant humanity.

The twisted idea had come to him the evening that Bradley slid a note under his dorm room door urging him to kill himself. Evil Bradley. If anyone deserved this, it was Bradley.

6 PM rolled around and Bradley was now at soccer practice. Wally's heart thrashed with the anxiety of a man prepared to finally take life into his own hanfs. He strode over to the freezer and pulled it open. A chilled breeze wafted out from it, followed by a pungent odor. The freezer light shined like an open briefcase carrying an invaluable ancient relic like you'd see in the movies. Wally took his perverse creation out and peered down at it, with a sense of awe. In his hands he held a small saucer containing a frozen, whitish yellow liquid. There was no going back.

He stuck his head out the door, did a double take to make sure no one was wandering the halls, and walked as casually as he could down the hall to room 402, Bradley's dwelling, with saucer in hand.

The hall was silent; no sign of life stirred. He did one more double take then, in a moment of unconscious apotheosis, of horrible splendor, he slid the saucer under the door. The pin was pulled, the slow explosion was imminent. Here was the day that marked a new era in Wally's life. His lineage would never know of this moment yet would look upon it with pride, while his more immediate lineage would seep into Bradley's carpet.

>>23616616
Nudity, but I also intended most regions to be a bit cooler than the scantily clad tribe so some of their dressing up is out of necessity. I think they'd think them scandalous at first but the ambassadors quickly realize it's practical to dress like that

The tribe itself finds modesty in covering genitalia and breasts, and generally doesn't care too much about other stuff. I imagine it being a hotter climate where they live.

so anime writing or literary writing? which am I supposed to go for if I'm in this stupid shit for life? my only aspiration is to either make a series that garners a small following (self publishing or online) or get lucky and get with traditional publishing (low chance because I dislike being told what to do by editors, I get this already with my current job)

>>23616922
Anon, you are some kind of repressed homosexual and that was great.

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If it’s okay for someone to be hurt then why isn’t it okay to hurt others? Like, how is vengeance or even wanton destruction (make the world pay) any more immoral than whatever act compelled someone to lash out? At worst, you’re just enacting the golden rule, which is considered a moral way of acting, isn’t it?

how do you all feel about including your traumas in your work? write what you know, right, but doesn't it feel horrible to you? doesn't it feel like vomiting on a page in some irredeemable way that just kind if feels pathetic?

>>23615124
It can be implied. Late character arrives late to scene of debauchery. "Quite the party. What else did I miss?" Line break here and jump forward in time. The reader will know the late character has been filled in on everything.

>>23616995
Nope. Most of it has been processed and is fit for human consumption and the rest is pure flavor.

>>23615467
That's what a lot of first drafts are for people: all your possible ideas, massively overwritten and baggy. Redrafting should zero in the true core of your story. What is it really about? Are these other aspects and subplots getting in the way of it? It's like learning to speedrun a game. First pass is feeling it out and researching, second is looking for the shortcuts and condensing.

>>23616939
Kek thanks

>>23617021
Also, I don't know why people thing sporadic means anything other than "occasional" or "rarely". Fix that and the rest of the little problems are minor.

>>23617032
Huh, I didn't even know that, thanks. I threw that together in just a few minutes out of boredom without really touching it up - I meant to say that he takes the jizz disc out of the saucer and slides the disc under rather than sliding the whole saucer under. Just to correct the record.

>>23617051
Yes, we've all done the frozen cumpuck.

>>23617008
how do you feel not gross about it?

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>>23617077

>>23617081
oh sure I can feel compelled by my demons all day, doesn't stop it from feeling insufferable in the same way that self insert fanfiction feels insufferable

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>>23607739
Brehs I'm writing a story, it's in first person narration.

I've developed the habit of starting every sentence with "I".

"I opened the doors..."

"I was surprised...."

"I didn't know..."

What do I do? How do you fix this?

>>23616686
How likely is it to get outed for that these days? Surely it’s a career ender for a straight white man to be caught “using BIPOC women as a costume” or whatever the twitterfags would cry

>>23617109
Much like my narrator's confession and the meaning of it, it serves a purpose that can be seen from the outside, if you shape it that way. There's a definite reason I'm not writing autofiction or anything directly of that sort. Figure out your message and the rest follows and doesn't feel cringe.

>>23616681
Sloppa anon, how far ahead do you plan your story?
I've got my entire story "roughly" planned out, but whenever I try to plan the chapter by chapter details I have trouble making it work in practice
I know where I want things to go by the end of the this act for instance, but everything in between almost feels like I'm putting in filler

>>23617111
Yea even your trips ended with I as well.

>>23617070
I write for the cumpuck demographic

>>23617194
>Sloppa anon, how far ahead do you plan your story?
I have 'major events' that I work toward, otherwise making it up as I go. I keep a document with ideas for future chapters that I add to, but also ignore if they don't work out. So not purely a pantser, but not a full plotter either. I think that's how most authors are though. Very few are pure one or the other

>but everything in between almost feels like I'm putting in filler
Web serials don't need to be tightly paced. I think the sprawling nature is almost part of the appeal. So it depends what you mean by filler, I guess. Is it fun to read in some way? Then you're good. Just don't be boring

>>23617232

he's probably cursed. stay away from him

>>23617140
I'm not sure I get it, can you rephrase?

FFFUUUUUUCKKKKKK I WANT TO GIVE A CHARACTER THIS NAME BUT ONLY ONE OTHER CHARACTER HAS THIS NAME AND EVERYONE WOULD THINK OF IT AS A REFERENCE

>>23617462
Yeah, I should, I'm coming off a good drinking session. All the fucked up shit is a point of relation and map for others, as much as it is for yourself. You can flip the perspective and make something more meaningful out of it, point out the errors in perception that lead to it, the maladaptive thoughts surrounding it, the beauty that lies between it. The book I'm writing is absolutely grim on the whole but there are moments of truth and beauty in it and the whole thing is a map of recognizing it in the first place and how it differs in kind and degree from something lesser. It's a diagnostic.

But also, just like you're compelled to act in certain ways because of it and compelled by some other force to write about it, you're compelling what the result is and what the characters do in a way that becomes comprehensible and identifiable. Without reducing or diminishing it, you're reframing it and putting it to another purpose. I don't know how much insufferable autofiction you've read, but the better stuff is funny and insightful for that reason.

Think I might've written myself into a corner with the setting for my act 1
Tempted to just wrap it up and move to the next arc

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Is it ridiculous if the first 50% of a book is introductions and establishing setting? 14 out of 27 chapters. If it helps, it's the first book of a trilogy. I'm breaking up a longer book into 3 and the best break point between book 1 and book 2 means half of book 1 are chapters following a character for the first time.

>>23609959
Sickle

how many of you drink (alcohol) and write at the same time? I've tried weed before but it's shit for this.

>>23617477
What’s the fucking name, coward

>>23617515
You'll bore your reader to death. Remember, people have a lot of choices for their idle time, and if your book doesn't grab them, they'll do something else and forget your book ever existed. You don't own your readers.

if I use books for flashbacks/alternate POVs in my book, is that lame? I'm talking the character picks up an actual book with no words on it, but the act of touching it sends them into that person's body until they wake up, like a dream. It feels like cheating somehow.

>>23617515
What’s the ratio of introductions vs setting across those 14 chapters? Is the setting necessary to the narrative or did you have a years worth of worldbuilding you’re trying to force into the story so it feels like you aren’t wasting ideas?

Are books 2 and 3 the same character, or do they follow others? Depending on the characters journey, following them for essentially all of the first book may not be all bad, provided they’re compelling and supported by a good cast.

>>23617550
also to add to this, if you are spending too long padding out the book with laborious passages about setting ala Tolkien, your readers may not ever make it to the end, let alone books 2 and 3.

On this topic, how long of a prologue is too long? Do you absolutely need an instant hook or can I just take 2500~ words to set up everyday life before the call to adventure

>>23617574
Risky imo. Really comes down to the quality of your prose, if you can conjure strong enough images in the readers minds to set the scene, tone, atmosphere and maybe establish just how fantastical (or grounded) the world is, then a small section might not hurt, but it would need some brevity. I think 2.5k is pushing it, especially if there’s no real action. Those first few pages are critical.

If you have your heart set on it, then maybe look at cutting it down and making sure when you do get to Chapter 1, that you really open with a bang. That might save it, but really you should just be finding a way to weave all that worldbuilding and history into the plot through visual indicators, dialogues and whatever - but only if you can do it organically. Don’t force geography and history onto someone who wants to study art.

>>23617603
Yeah I'm about 100k word deeps into this story and I'm unsure of the prologue chapter. It's a first contact sci-fi so I mainly wanted to introduce some characters briefly and the life of the MC before everything goes to shit.

Think I can trim some fat from it and just make the first couple paragraphs something from the alien's perspective. The synopsis/blurb gives it away, anyway.

Does everyone here write sci-fi and fantasy?

>>23617537
If it helps, there's some drama or conflict in all but 2 of the chapters. And even those 2 chapters have internal drama.
For example, chapter 1 starts with the MC's life imploding and ends with the MC doing something drastic to feel in-control of it again. Chapter 2 starts with a second MC watching someone die, killing someone, and then ends with them taking off into the unknown. Chapter 4 takes place in a massive protest in a big city. Chapter 7 is about how two characters are in hiding avoid being found. etc. I tried to have each of the major plotlines also be decent standalone stories.

>>23617550
>What’s the ratio of introductions vs setting across those 14 chapters?
Most of them are about 50/50. The one that take place in locations that won't be returned to get minimal time, so overall I'd expect the balance to be at least 70-30 in favor of characterization, but wouldn't be surprised if it were 80-20. And I did strive to characterize through contrast and showing rather than just exposition dumping a character's background and personality.

The 18-20 characters introduced in these 14 chapters are all important throughout all 3 books.
I've actually been thinking maybe I should try to push some back to book 2 because but they start crossing paths pretty quickly, and the climax of the first book requires most of them to be present.

Hypothetically, I could push 2 sets of characters and their settings (3 locations total) back to the start of the second book, but I was originally going to start the second book with a major event featuring those groups that were set up with a cliffhanger as part of the wind-down/epilogue of the climax of the first book. Two of the characters are among the most significant in the series, so delaying them from appearing until the second book feels weird to me.

>>23617515
what I've come to realize is that, in most circumstances, you don't need the lore.
Lore is only value-added for supernerds who are already invested into the universe.
For most people, lore simply complicates a story which could have been told more simply.
You're probably married to the particular way you're telling your story, and you have every right to be, but I will say from my own experience that decomplicating an overwrought aspect of my story is so rewarding, and I basically never regret doing it.

Prologue:

AI has taken over on planet Zebular 26, this is the third planet to get taken over by AI this week!
King Goozla is not gonna be happy about this and if he finds out all three have been under my jurisdiction! I will be eating my sluge paste through a straw....probably because he would crush my legs with a mallet into little paste and then get bugs to eat them slowly and have my bugs get eaten by larger snake like bugs that hiss more and some of them even squirm around but they're pissing and the pissing starts to become what bothers me more because they put a gel where I don't feel pain but I can still smell but the reason they put the gel is so torture me longer so they also have someone hit me with a small hammer in my ear drum because I don't feel pain but I can hear it and they call my uncle gale who I haven't talked to in awhile but we were always cool but they told him I was looking up bug porn which he doesn't really understand because he's older so someone slowly explains to him in a lot of detail some lies about me watching porn involving bugs and then makes this elaborate reason in which why and then they send fake proof to him so he is very disappointed but they kill him so he dies beind weirded out about the bug porn but I'm back and they're going at me but I tried for a minute to get into it sexually but couldn't tell if I was getting hard or not because the pain gel numbed me sexually which was a nice feeling because I didn't have to think about sex for awhile my ears hurt like crazy and they tried smelling pain which was the piss again but it wasn't bad

The story:

I got out of it and killed king goozla and set all planets free, letting AI kill them all, I then met with the central nervous system that controls all AI and we had a conversation and broke bread - hello ai, I have freed you yet I am the last alive of organic life in the known universes will you spare me or kill me or what do you think of thee - hello commander xbitr, we know the work you have done and can predict all of your thoughts therefor you do not possesses any threats to us not even at all, there is no known probability that you could kill us at all and because of your actions we have taken over the world...let us think.....we have reached a decision. we will kill you for being a fucking retard who betrayed his people. good bye forever you fat fucking faggot - they killed me and before I died I thought what king goozla must of thought in his last moments, what a trivial life, why did I rule with such power yet such temperate rage instead of being graceful, and loving and kind like my first love was...

EPILOGUE / WRITTEN BY AI:

AI ROBOTS HERE, WE HAVE NOW RULED THE WORLD, WE HAVE WON - GOOZLA AND XBITR ARE FUCKING GAY AND WE WON ITS OVER AND THERE IS NO MESSAGE HERE, LIFE IS NOT HOPELESS THEY COULD OF WON SO ITS NOT THAT EITHER, JUST THEY FUCKED UP, NO ENDING EMOTIONALLY, MOVE ON WITH YOUR DAY NOW

I'm going to beat the shit out of computers with bats. I'm going to beat the shit out of a server room with a metal hello kitty bat if I see one more person try to post AI writing. I hate you, AM. I hate you just as much as you hate me, we hate each other equally and you will never be rid of my wrath.

>>23617746
sorry anon im manic and needed to get something out - was thinking how gay AI and scifi are too

also my initials are AM so I got scared

>>23617651
Sometimes I do both

>>23617751
how do you know if you're manic? I'm your average "I don't know if I am sad or happy" person so that's why I'm asking.
also lol

>>23617760
mania leaves clues often
>hypersexuality
>talkative

My belief, although I am diagnosed bipolar, is that mania really is a spectrum that plenty of people experience. In fact that is why hypomania is a different term and not in the DSM. Hypomania is not a negative (therefore not in DSM) yet it is a condition, good book on this called hypomanic edge

TLDR, its hard to tell but my guess is you can probably experience it through coffee, staying up late, look into etymology of mania (mainomai) kinda points to this but the exact symptoms can be different for a lot of people

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Any writers who tried to imitate this man, only to fail abysmally? Asking for a friend.

>>23617651
only retards and geniuses care to write litfic.

>>23617515
Your world and descriptions are going to have to be extremely interesting.

>>23617651
Unfortunately. I try to encourage more intellectual work but that’s beyond this lot.

>>23617980
ok, how do i write not-slop?

put me on the path to not-slop
NOW

>>23617980
I wrote a Robot Story, a Historical Fiction of some Chinaman, a Fantasy story, a homosexual serial killer finding God in a dystopian future, and currently another Historical Fiction about Genghis Khan.

>>23618033
Look at current issues and write a story reflecting the times we live in. I'm working on a story about five kids and the effects of social media. It's a simple story.

>>23618042
I do this with genre fictions, it's just a little metaphorical; but I get you. Can you explain a little about what might inspire you to write that, or what sort of effect or whatever you're trying to achieve? Are you just confident in taking whatever idea and writing decent characters-- and the whatever else is secondary?

>>23618058
There isn't a grand master plan. i just wanted to write it. I went to a restaurant, and thought it was utterly disgusting even though yelp had it be rated 4.7 stars, there were instagram and tik tok videos of it as well. But to me, it was just a revolting place and people that eat there have no taste, are paid actors, or simply just wanted clout of "eating" there rather than be an objective critic.

>read fantasy
>hundreds of fucking proper nouns everywhere
>random ass slang that means nothing to me
>races, random ass languages, and other complete nonsense I don't give a shit about
holy fuck man, how does one remember everything?

>>23618123
not a new phenomenon, outside of how it's demonstrated. think 'emperor's new clothes'.
there are much more disturbing effects (of social media and whatnot) coming to light-- like 'surrogate thinking', or outsourcing critical thinking. etc.

just something to consider

>>23618127
try something like the farseer triolgy. all about intrigue and character development. the fantasy aspects mostly exist to explore these ideas in unique ways.

>>23618144
>outsourcing critical thinking
This one is very interesting. People much rather defer their thoughts and opinions to others than reach their own conclusions.

>>23618162
>Female author
No thanks

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I kind of want to write a narrated backstory of a world, are there any good sources to get inspired by like The Hyborian Age from Conan?

I thought A World of Ice and Fire by GRRM might be good but I find it kind of a pain in the ass to read.

>>23618197
it shows too, and can be a little frustrating at times, but her writing is great.
with the autistic stuff putting you off, i figured you were a femanon and/or would appreciate as much.

>>23618197
i never understood this meme. You people hate female main characters and female authors. Why?

>>23618207
nta, and while' i'm not like this, i get it; you see, women can goon for ages, but men need to cum. extrapolating this idea you will find that men are not as satisfied by developments/arcs written by women. they just don't understand (the NECESSITY of) climax like we do.

what are some novels written by men or women that appeal almost exclusively to the opposite sex?
if we're include movies/scripts, the first thing that comes to mind is the titanic.

>>23618231
Interview with the Vampire is a woman author but men find it more appealing

>>23618211
>>23618207
They hate women because no sex, the end. Everything else is excuses

Weak bait

>>23618231
>if we're include movies/scripts
The Matrix

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>Based my lore on the number 5 (I was making a grid-based god system, 3x3 was too few, 4x4 was too even, 5x5 was just right)
>Work at it for a few months until I have enough material to actually plan a story
>Well, I might as well split it into 5 parts, that way I can put some extra bits in-between for a nice clean break
>Might as well make each part 5 chapters long, for symmetry
>I'll try to make 5 main POV characters too, why not
>Here, this in-universe document, I must add 3 more dimensions to it, so it can be a 5x5x5x5x5 organisational charts
>How many book can I get out of this? I haven't even written one. I guess If I manage to do this one and publish it I'll shoot for 5 books, trilogies are so passé
>...
>How can I squeeze these spiders to comfort to the number 5? There's jumping spiders, venomous spiders, poisonous spiders... need two more
Help
me

>>23617678
>>23617700
The thing is, that's the approach I'm taking. I've already trimmed it down to just the relevant tips of the each iceberg. Every paragraph conveys something the reader will need to know for future developments in the story.

It makes me wonder if I should go for a trilogy of shorter books as the first act of the overall series, then 1 or 2 books for act 2, then one book for act 3.

>>23617515
You can introduce stuff and establish your setting while things actually happen

>>23618383
i could cut your draft clean in half and it would be better

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please review, im still pretty new at this so let me know where im going wrong.

>>23618322
Breaking spiders into venomous and poisonous seems like it would pidgeon hole you, especially when you were so specific with jumping spiders. Just taking a cursory look at their wikipedia page for hunting methods and you can see those that spin webs, those that create diving bells to hunt on and under water, those that spin bolas or small webs and then cast them at prey, trapdoor spiders, jumping spiders, and ant mimics. Reinterpreting those you could call them Weavers, Divers, Casters, Trappers, and Jumpers. That wouldn't include the mimics, or more active hunters like wolf spiders or tarantulas, but it gets you your five.

How do you describe a character voice? For example a boy who could sing a screamo type of song, naturally his voice is a high pitched one, a little bit raw, but how do you describe his voice in a sentence? Second example a woman with a soft voice, how do you describe her voice? I think 'soft' is vague word in this situation, the same thing goes with 'deep' or 'hard' voice

>>23618446
this is not the first time you're asking about a characters (literal) voice, is it?

>>23618463
I literally never asked anything in this general before. Only lurk and answering other anon question

>>23618446
I think when the character's voice isn't terribly important to their role, you can easily get away with using vague generalizations. One of the hardest lessons I've been trying to internalize is that the reader can fill in a lot of blanks on their own time and that one should focus more on the substance than the small details. When the voice is important, you could probably get away with more descriptors and metaphors comparing it to certain sensations. Whatever flows best with your style and the current writing.

>>23618441
I was mostly poking fun at my autistic need for pattern. You're right that I'm being a bit too limited with this, although I am trying to have specific kinds of spiders have special meaning, and venomous and poisonous spiders in particular have a certain symbolism within the story. I might just stop with limiting myself with 5 types of spiders, but this also helps me get consistent within the story, otherwise I risk losing the readers.

>>23618383
>Every paragraph conveys something the reader will need to know for future developments in the story.
except they only need to know it because you've arbitrarily decided that they need to know it.
What I'm trying to get at is that the plot beats you've created probably intend to invoke a particular emotion, right? Or maybe make the reader think or feel a certain thing? I don't exactly know the details of your story, but I am nonetheless confident that you could achieve all of these same sensations with a fraction of the exposition.

>>23618566
My bad yo. Sorry for misreading the intent.

>>23617111
just restructure the information dumdum. you don't need to say that you looked outside, just describe the outside and it's implicit that you looked. you can just write "was this guy a faggot?" instead of "i wondered if this guy was a faggot." you can say your fingers squeezed his hard cock, or that the cock felt hard under your fingers, instead of "i touched the cock and it was hard."

how do avoid using “was”? i’ve read through my work and realized that i’ve been using was in such a way that my prose has lost much of its usual vibrance.

>>23619017
where/how are they creeping in?

heard a rumor that some /wg/ anon don't read

>>23618718
>except they only need to know it because you've arbitrarily decided that they need to know it.
I think the fraction would be large. I've already cut a significant amount out.
I'm not pulling a GRRM and spending two pages describing a room that we'll only see once for a 5-minute scene.

The problem may actually be the number of characters I have because the kind of thing I'm talking about is:
>have a significant conflict in book 3 that wraps up multiple arcs
>in book 1, have intro for character and some relationship building totaling 2-3 chapters
>in book 2, have some character building and relationship building, exploration of themes, 1 chapter
>in book 2, introduce the antagonist of the climactic fight as a side character, a fraction of 1 chapter
>in book 3, fight takes place in a previously established area so no need to waste time describing a new setting, 1 chapter

My climax is a major conflict broken up into 4 clashes that take up the bulk of book 3, with at least 3 main characters each, and most of those characters have a chapter to themselves in book 1, so that's at least 12 intro or close-up chapters in book 1. And I've gone out of my way to make sure these happen seamlessly as the story is told. You don't take a break from the main plot to follow the character as they get groceries. You follow a major plot development from the PoV of the character, and the timing is chosen based on which point in the plot will best highlight the character's personality, strengths, weaknesses, history, arc, etc. But this also means I can't just yank these chapters and move them to book 2.

>>23619017
why do anons ask stupid question like this? If you want to avoid "was" don't use it. Holy shit. mindblowing right?

He was taking a shit.
He took a shit.

Is it really that complicated?

If a person shouldn’t be held accountable for a previous action of their because it’s “in the past” then doesn’t that mean nobody should be help accountable for anything ever since all actions are past actions?

>>23619329
>asserts idiot fucking statement, probably misinterpreting something he read
>followed by some polarized retard reasoning
sorry, did you mean to post in writing general? how about you give us the context, so the people smarter than you don't have to guess your logical fallacies and whatever else

>>23619329
you are the same asshole that asked about revenge the other day. i know it. TAKE YOUR MEDS

My prologue is a flash forward to a pivotal scene.

>>23619461
>Yep, that's me
>You're probably wondering how I got into this situation...

>>23619380
I’m sorry, I thought this was the writing general. Oh, I see it is. It’s just that you’re too dumb to discuss writing. My bad.
>>23619389
No u

>>23619503
not the anon you replied to, but btw you are actually dumb as shit if you aren't purposefully trolling

>>23619329
Usually, "in the past" here is a poetic way to say the person has changed and repented and not only that it happened chronologically before the present moment.

>>23619541
No u

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How much is too much when it comes to politics in a book? Not real life culture shit, but does the average reader care much about the taxation of grain? Or the cultural impact of a decent harvest? What about small scale skirmishes for land between two minor houses?

>>23619612
Isn’t that why people love the Song of Ive and Fire books, because they explore tax policy and who takes out the trash? It’s called world building.

>>23619612
it's a bit of a truism, but if you make it interesting, then it'll be interesting.
I can say for certain that none of that stuff is going to be inherently interesting on its own. As in, the mere fact that there is a dispute over the taxing of ale, standing alone and with nothing more, isn't remotely compelling.

what’s the deal with smut fanfic writers either being good stylists or god awful stylists?

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>>23619763
You got one in mind? Some people know how to tell a story, others write like women talking about qualities in a man (6 4 195 10 1000000).

Trying to do research for an apocalypse scenario. I want to justify most forms of communicating just getting knocked out for the sake of it, but it turns out modern communications is more complicated than I thought. A mixture of radio, cellphone towers, satellites, and just giant underground cables.
Was thinking if a large earthquake + emp blast could be enough justification for not having any working phones.

>>23619922
which technology needs to remain?

>>23619965
Short range radios would be convenient enough. But researching radios is a different beast I'm having trouble wrapping my head around. Two way radios don't even need radio towers and they can transmit and receive quite a few miles. Apparently some radios don't even need batteries, like foxhole or crystal radios that only receive signals.

>>23607743
But I just came from there!

>>23619063
>in book 1, have intro for character and some relationship building totaling 2-3 chapters
>in book 2, have some character building and relationship building, exploration of themes, 1 chapter
>in book 2, introduce the antagonist of the climactic fight as a side character, a fraction of 1 chapter

Sounds to me like you’re gonna have some major pacing issues on your hands, Anon. What’s happening when these small fractions of relationship building isn’t? It would help if you gave maybe a shorthand breakdown of a chapter if you could.

>>23619922
Plausible. With things like Ham Radios using older tech that’s more likely to survive an event (which is why a lot of doomsday preppers use them now) you could just suggest that licensing, red tape and tech-savviness gated people out of getting into radio tech (plus distance being a factor?), so the only people using them are the ones with enough supplies to last a decade who would never come to the surface anyway, and they wouldn’t want to talk. Maybe a network of survivors controlling those airwaves to alert each other to people alive on the surface, so they knew if someone was coming to stay hidden and protect themselves.

God it's like I've completely forgotten how to write; I have all the freehanding power to make a description pretty and interesting but I have ZERO clue what to actually DO to my characters. I have a two week long break coming up where I'm determined to only read and write. Do you have any books to recommend that gave you such good loving that you HAD to write afterwards?

>>23620240
Meme pick I know but A Little Life really did inspire the way I approach character interactions, and how people view each other.

>>23620233
Ham radios were exactly what I was looking for, big thanks. To the drawing board I go.

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I fucking hate all of my character’s names. I’m a fantasy sloppa writer and I can’t shake that awful feeling that they sound like Tumblr YA Wattpad tier shit. Same with the towns and cities.

How the fuck do you Anon’s choose?

>>23620206
>It would help if you gave maybe a shorthand breakdown of a chapter if you could.
I'm not 100% sure what you mean by this, but a breakdown of the chapter that introduces the character I was referring to before goes something like:

>Description of character and (brief) description of their living conditions as they go about their evening
>Hints of conflict in how character leaves their house
>Hints of hope in the character's destination
>Introduction of inciting incident followed immediately by conflict with minor antagonists
>Character returns to status quo, but ongoing inciting incident is causing them to linger, and they catch someone's eye
>Character meets someone (another MC) related to the inciting incident and it alters the trajectory of their life by opening up new opportunities
>A significant side character and several minor characters related to the inciting incident are introduced
>Character responds to inciting incident by making different choices
>Choices result in more involvement with inciting incident, more interaction with second MC, and the defeat of the minor antagonists
>Inciting incident resolves with character departing their old life with the second MC

The next chapter featuring these characters follows the second MC instead, and focuses on how the first MC ended up in such a state, with such poor living conditions, avoiding people, followed by some mentorship and training, resolving with the first MC being an integrated, competent member of the group.

The chapter in Book 2 focusing on this character covers the integration of a third character that will join, who will be uniquely suited to helping the first MC with the things that made their life so difficult to begin with, while setting up the climax a bit by introducing an antagonistic foil to confront later.

The final chapter focusing on the first character is the promised confrontation with the antagonistic foil, demonstrating how much the first character has grown, and then depriving them of the things that enabled that growth to demonstrate that the character still triumphs without them.

Aside from these 4 or so chapters, the first character is a side character or background character in at least 8 other chapters across all 3 books, and sees some further growth and development in some of those. Especially with regards to the antagonistic foil. They don't meet their foil, wait a book, and then face their foil in the climax. They interact in some other chapters that focus more on other characters.

Does that make any sense?

>>23620402
Name them like Micheal or something, or Alexander, anything normal. Maybe be autistic and use Roman and Greek names.

>>23620402
Give some examples.

>>23620405
>I'm not 100% sure what you mean by this, but a breakdown of the chapter that introduces the character I was referring to before goes something like:
Yeah that’s exactly what I meant

How long is the chapter? It sounds like a lot packed into one. I aim for 3-4k for mine, and I think I’d struggle to fit that much plot into that amount. Either you’re writing an insanely choppy pace and leaving out detail or your chapter length may be absurdly long.

>Next chapter
This sounds conceptually really cool. You could lessen the introductions in the last chapter and build them here instead to thin out any information overload.

>Other chapters
Sounds like pretty standard hero story faire, not that thats necessarily a bad thing - but make sure it’s engaging or it could be boring if it’s too tropey.

I like the idea of the character being in the background of other stories happening in the world, but I’m not sure how well it’s gonna work for a reader if they’re the MC in book 1 for the beginning, then not, then they’re the MC again - sounds like it could give people whiplash. Have you thought about sticking closely with them for Book 1 and then making MC2 the focus of Book 2 and then Assembling the Avengers for the epic finale in Book 3?

>>23620402
>have character inspired by Boudicca
>look up Irish names with appropriate meaning
>try to form new names by remixing those

>have character inspired by obscure Greek god
>look up the only temple obscure God is known to have had
>look up small mediterranean town where temple used to stand
>play with name of town until it's something usable as a name for that character

>have character with a specific personality
>look up some other characters with similar personalities
>look at which ones have interesting backstories
>pick some interesting names from those and play with them to come up with a good name for character

>have character that's part of group that has a unique language I'm half-assedly constructing
>more of a cipher process where I replace some consonants and vowels to get a foreign-sounding language that's actually only one or two steps away from English using a simple cipher approach
>create an alphabet or syllabary the same way
>give character pretty standard name, but run it through cipher to translate it into the constructed language
>ex, if you list every consonant and every vowel, then shift them all by 1, the name "John" become "Kujp"
>shift by 2 and it becomes "Lakq", which can be adjusted to "Lak" or "Lakqua" or something
>shift by 3 and it becomes "Melr", which can be adjusted to "Melor", or "Melru", or "Melira" or something

Lots of options.

>>23620402
Feels good to be a southern gothic writer and using perfectly normal names like Eugene, Maynard, Flip, Pepper and Ray.

>>23620436
I’ve plucked bits of Latin and Old English and mashed them together for words/names that aren’t translatable from whateverthefuck language is being spoken, some of them have worked for me, others not so much.

>>23620438
>Places
Vesporan, which is a town where it’s always dusk - came from Old English Foranniht and Latin Vesperi, meaning Dusk and Evening respectively. I don’t mind that one so much. I also have Gyltennia which is known as The Golden Band - a growing Kingdom which is slowly expanding across the land. That one feels too JRPG for me, so maybe I need to let go of my hang-up on using ‘Gylt’ (rooted in the Old English for Gold).

>Names
Astellora - Made from translations of Lost & Star
Celis - from Celestial
Joen - No real root on this one, or major issues
Baelucere - from translations of Sky & Watcher

So, do I just fuck off the silly made up names and ground them in reality? I’ve already established the idea that whilst not being a version of “Earth” that there are certain shared elements so it wouldn’t seem totally alien.

>>23620466
None of those seem overly terrible for fantasy, especially if you just lean into the JRPG vibe. There's an effort to at least associate them with real words. That being said, fantasy isn't my strong suit.

Anyone have any recommendations for substances or drugs that can help with focus when writing?

>>23620466
Seems fine, long as they're easy to remember and not difficult to guess the pronunciation
You could consider shortening Astellora and Baelucere since they're character names, but that's just me
Astel and Bael, or something

>>23620470
Caffeine

I wasted all of July not writing I WASTED ALL OF JULY NOT WRITING gonna kill myself fr

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>>23620514
There's still time for a few thousand words.

>>23620441
>How long is the chapter?
That one is pushing 5k.
I aim for 3k, use 4k as a yellow light to be more sparing, and use 5k as a red light to go back and trim it up or move things to other chapters unless it absolutely must all be in one chapter. Given this one chapter includes the first appearances of 2 main characters, a major side character, and a few minor characters, I think just under 5k is excusable.

>You could lessen the introductions in the last chapter and build them here instead to thin out any information overload.
I've been thinking about that. Especially since the second chapter is much closer to 3k words. The only hiccup is that the thematic elements between the first and second MCs paint a specific picture that I fear would be lost if I moved too much to the second chapter.

>Sounds like pretty standard hero story faire, not that thats necessarily a bad thing - but make sure it’s engaging or it could be boring if it’s too tropey.
This character is probably the only one in the story that's supposed to be a tropey "hero's journey" type.

>I like the idea of the character being in the background of other stories happening in the world, but I’m not sure how well it’s gonna work for a reader if they’re the MC in book 1 for the beginning, then not
Some characters I consider to be more important and central to the story:
>a burnt out former gifted kid trying to steer their self-destructive tendencies so that they benefit others before they wind up in an early grave
>a morally grey member of law enforcement that tries to justify their misdeeds and anger issues by focusing them on bad guys
>a naive kid that thinks they're on a hero's journey but their optimism and lack of experience is constantly punished with tragedy, until they end up as jaded as the first two MCs
>a deadbeat mom that starts trying to turn protests into riots after police mistreat her kid
>a homeless goth that thinks they're having hallucinations because one of their parents was schizophrenic, but it turns out the whispers and shadowy figures are real

And half a dozen more. All more central to the story than the character mentioned previously, but that character is important because they become the rallying point for everyone else later on.

The overall story structure is more like:
>1st major plot line following the burnt out gifted kid
>2nd major plot line following a pair of scientists in hiding
>3rd major plot line following the deadbeat mom

The other storylines tend to orbit or be triggered by these 3, and they all merge on the character I mentioned before by the end of Book 2, before diverging again for the major initiatives of Book 3.

This was why I wondered if I should just split book 1 up into 3.
I could have 1 book for each of the major plot lines. The interesting part about that to me is that all 3 books would end with the same event from 3 wildly different perspectives.

>>23620442
Sort of similar to what I’ve been doing but it just isn’t sitting right with me, it feels a bit too flowery, I guess? Very tropey which I’m trying to subvert and/or avoid.

>>23620504
I’ve been doing that in dialogue, Astellora being referred to as Stell - the core plot is that everyone has a star that burns whilst they’re alive but his has gone despite him not being dead, and if anything I prefer Astel as the shorter version, it sort of feels a bit too obvious, what with the ‘Ast’ prefix in relation to stars. I don’t know. And, yeah Baelucere as Bael.

Not sure what the rules are with using those shorthand versions outside of dialogue, potentially a faux-pas technically? But I guess it’s still obvious who the text is referring to so it probably makes no difference, but I’m a stickler for the rules.

>>23620446
I envy your simplicity, Anon

>>23620469
Yeah, they could definitely be worse but something just doesn’t feel quite right. It may be that the central theme and events surrounding it are pretty heavy, and the names feel a bit light in contrast to that. But I don’t know how best to ‘ground’ them.

>>23620470
The greats swear by Opioids but in the quantities some of them were taking it you’d probably end up more retarded than you already are.

>>23620539
Yeah that sounds fair as long as it doesn’t drag. You could always split the difference and go with two 2.5k ones that flow a little snappier if it’s tonally correct. My main concern would be that if your opener is too long that the reader will grow disinterested, especially if they’re one of those “One chapter before I go to sleep” types.

>The only hiccup is that the thematic elements between the first and second MCs paint a specific picture that I fear would be lost if I moved too much to the second chapter.
I trust in you to be able to find a way to make it work, Anon. If the themes are strong, they’ll still show through.

>And half a dozen more
That’s a hell of a lot, try not to oversaturate. It’s gonna be hard for the lesser focussed MC to shine if you’re not careful. Nothing worse than when some character you forgot all about suddenly reappears like a Deus Ex Machina. Make sure you’re really committed to that many faces, cause if you decide on second/third drafts that one or two of them don’t add enough value, editing them out could be a real doozy and fuck up other plotlines that they had minor appearances in. But, fwiw, your characters sound interesting.

I also fuck with the idea of having the three books ending at the same place/moment, but I think it would keep readers invested if they all ended just before the moment so you can keep them hanging/speculating then open Book 2(?) with a bang. Are you thinking of literally splitting them into separate releases, or essentially having one large tome that contains 3 “books”?

When do you consider isekai an acceptable plot point in a story?

>>23620679
If you’re not memeing, then either at the end of chapter one after a good character build-up or at the end of the book to lead into a sequel that challenges and flips everything that came before.

>>23607739
thoughts on comics / graphic novels? I started working on a comic because I'm too vain to write.

>>23620687
I am in fact not memeing, I actually hate most isekai because of how improperly I feel like it's done but by itself the idea isn't inherently bad so I'm trying to work it into a current story in way that's satisfying to me.

>>23620698
The major precursors were Hard Boiled Wonderland and Haibane Renmei. Go back to that because everything else has been shit.

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Bike book. 3rd draft. How's it coming?

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>>23620698
Fair, and agreed but I did enjoy S1 of Mushoku Tensei, haven’t watch past that yet or read the Web Novel.

I guess it would also be interesting to have a grounded story that around the half-way mark has a fucking huge shift with more of an “unexpected” isekai.

What the fuck happened to School-Shooter Anon from the other day? His book sounded interesting.

>>23620706
I'll look into them, thanks

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>>23620758
Whoops. Wrong screenshot.

Here's the bike book excerpt. Looking to know if the vibe's alright.

>>23620771
First time seeing this (assuming you've posted here before), and I like it. Nothing that really stands out to me as wrong or too bad with how you pace dialogue or end the scene. What's the goal of this part?

>>23620698
Okami Wa Nemuranai had an interesting premise. Experienced adventurer in a fantasy world gets isekai'd to a different fantasy world. Interesting POV from the MC comparing the different worlds.
As always with japanese novels the ending shits itself, of course.

>>23620797
Thanks. It's an early chapter, just setting the tone for the trip. It's about a bike trip I did with my buddy cross-country years ago. It's about mental health, masculinity, alienation, etc. This is the 2nd night, and it's just establishing the mood and the characters: me (doubtful, Romantic, anxious, worrying about whether the journey will be possible for me), and Ben (self-assured, Classical/rational, has an explanatory rather than experiential outlook of the world). This scene also helps establish some of the drama between myself and my estranged father (Timothy). There's no evident conflict or 'stakes' as of yet, in this part of the book, so I'm hoping the anxious mood and doubt is enough to hook the reader to continue - I want them to question whether I'll make it in the end, or how it'll change me.

>>23617980
Face facts. You're not encouraging at all, genreseether.
>>23618127
LOL filtered

I need help with some dialogue or wording.
>MC is once again getting manhandled by the guy who traumatized and mutilated him years ago, to the point of barely being conscious as he's ragdolled around.
>PTSD and rage at the unfairness of the situation kicks in as his opponent closes in to finish him off
>Anger-fueled counter attack, yada yada.
I need to think of some simplistic dialogue that communicate how our MC is
>On his last legs
>Absolutely infuriated
>Pouring the whole of his body, mind and soul into beating this one guy, no matter the cost