How many books ought I read before beginning to write a novel?
>>23778168There's no point in writing novels. The novel as a medium is dead. It's been done. It's over. Time to move on
>>23778168I’ve read about tree fiddy. My prose is flat and my dialogue is stiff but some people seem to not mind (or even mildly like) what I have to say
>>23778169>Time to move onTo what?
>>23778177I don't know. We're fucked
>>23778168Ideally none. The Gift is something that you have or don't. Writing is less about the words on the medium and more about the superstructural internal process that dictates how those words are ordered. Language has been around for long enough that it's largely genetically determined. You don't read to get good a writing--its not math or another formalization that's relatively modern, or new, and learnable. This isn't me saying don't try, this is just a realistic take on the matter. If you have something to say, say it. If you can say it well, all the better. Just don't waste your time pretending that reading what other people have had to say will give you your voice. You read to enjoy.
>Me writing the next great American novel despite my reading (audiobook listening) consisting of Harry Potter and Stephen King and Brandon Sanderson (I have the Gift).
>>23778168No amount of reading experience translates into writing experience so might as well start right away
>>23778177Nothing.
>>23778359I already do all of these things without having read Schopenhauer. It's a natural reaction to having to deal with normies for a certain amount of years. You start to do all these things instinctively
It's entirely up to you. Writing an outline will help greatly in the prolonged work that is writing a book. An outline will give you a blueprint to fill out and goals to work towards. You have to put some work ethic into it as well, some write 500-700 words per day, some thousands.
>>23778369True. I also see it as a natural progression to have this kind of attitude towards all aspects of humanity, including artistic endeavors and creativity in general.
>>23778168>ought
>>23778168Hundreds.
How are you supposed to make money writing if not from novels?
>>23778168zero, you should be the first guy to have written more books than he's read
>>23778168>How many books ought I read before beginning to write a novel?41, but they must be good.
Bout tree fiddy
>>23778177short stories. People still have the attention span for them.
>>23778626ragebait punditry
>>23778169just fuck off and kill yourselfyou have no hobbies, no talents, no interests, no personality, all you do is play the crab in the bucket of 4chanwaste of space
>>23778731On the contrary, I probably spend more time writing than the majority of the people who post here
>>23778168As many as you want. There is no rush.
>>23778736You absolutely do not write, and if you still claim that you do then you've proven my point about being a crab in a bucket.Maybe get back to writing instead of being an insecure, doomer faggot on /lit/. The fact that you even claim to be a fellow writer makes me hate you even more, acting like literature is dead on the literature board. Kill yourself.
>>23778751I said novels were dead and they are. You are probably an Amerifat who is disconnected from history and thinks the novel is some kind of universally valid medium that transcends historical and cultural considerations
>>23778764Congratulations, everything you said about me in your post is incorrect. So novels are dead, but you're like, totally a writer and write way more than other people here? Sound logic there, you fucking spastic.
>>23778768Yeah I write a lot. I don’t write novels, needless to say. I won’t stop anyone from doing it but they are undoubtedly wasting their time
>>23778777so what exactly do you write then, genius? Rage bait on twitter?
>>23778782None of your business
>>23778784>I lied, I don't write.I accept your concession.
>>23778789Motherfuckers on this board are so buck broken by the novel that they can’t even imagine another form of writing kek
>>23778191So, you just need to have the writer's gene? Also, how do you know this?
>>23778764And you're probably some shit-skin ESL who publishes shitty fanfics on SCP and thinks that short excerpts from mentally stunted manchildren is the future.
>>23778823Whatever helps you sleep at night
>>23778825Nice gaslight, must have touched a nerve.
>>23778168Gene Wolfe said the best practice is to write short stories you know from memory and then compare your writing with that of the author
>>23778168>>23778168I like to think of it more as a question of flow than how many books in the read pile.>what does anon mean by that?More important than being well-read is to take a cross-sectional view of how much you’re reading every day, and grinding out the hours on the typewriter concurrently. If you’re exposed to hours of narrative on the daily it can’t help but warp you into a storyteller.
>>23778881Gene Wolfe is not a literary master. The best way to learn how to write is to read.
Reading and writing should become a way of life. It isn't about tallying up books.
>>23778168156(not counting essays and novellas)
>>23778168I'll let you know that - after a decade's pause in active reading - I've went ahead and read most of the great novels in the western canon (just to "catch up"), and my prose hasn't changed from when I wrote in my teenage years. "reading more" does not affect writing ability, which is something you're born with, otherwise librarians would be the greatest novelists.
>>23779366Then what causes someone to have great writing if not reading?
>>23779386Having a good story to tell does most of the heavy lifting.
>>23778168None. Keep reading, but start writing your novel. Then write a second one. Then a third one. Then a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, and so on.You need to read and write lots to make a good novel. There's no sense in keeping yourself from writing.Most successful authors don't make it before they are middle aged. Some don't make it until they are elderly/dead.
Very scary that writing ability is seemingly totally random and there is little you can do to improve it.Scrolling through r/writing and seeing how many people have sunk years of their lives into trying to write something only to fail and never improve is just sad.As that anon wrote if it was really as simple as reading a lot and practicing constantly then great writing wouldn’t be so rare.
>>23779443>if it was really as simple as reading a lot and practicing constantly then great writing wouldn’t be so rare.Not true in the slightest. 99% of people aren't doing the above.
>>23778168None. Just read your own books as you write them at mach speed, then you will be well read.
not much. read what you like or what you think will help broaden your mind and improve as a writer and person.try short stories, try thinking about experiences, try all of it. sometimes you're just limited by your own talent, which is fine. but not giving it a true and persistent trial and error run is going to hamper you.as an example, Lin Carter, famous for being an editor for fantasy series and anthologies in the 60s-80s, was a schlocky writer yet he had impeccable taste in choosing the works of the Ballentine Adult Fantasy line of paperbacks that preserved many classics of fantasy.
>>23778168start writing and reading on the same day. It's not about how many books you've read, but rather how fresh they are in your brain.
>>23778685>short stories. People still have the attention span for them.If this were true, the short story market would have grown and the novel market would have died, but the opposite is true. a person could actually make a living in the past being a short story writer and nothing else. it was an industry. novels actually persist I think in part because they are a relief from the cracked-out digital dopamine environment we're in
>>23778168Naive technique can be rectified by developmental editors after the fact. If you have the idea, put it down and make it grow. Do not wait. Rome isn't built in a day any more than novels are written in a single sitting. Non-zero, daily.
>>23778685Short stories are more difficult to write and master than novels.
>>23779963I've seen many say this. Why?
>>23779994As much to say, less words.
>>23779994>I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” — Blaise Pascal
>>23779443>Very scary that writing ability is seemingly totally random and there is little you can do to improve it.Scrolling through r/writing and seeing how many people have sunk years of their lives into trying to write something only to fail and never improve is just sad.As that anon wrote if it was really as simple as reading a lot and practicing constantly then great writing wouldn’t be so rare.>>23779477>Not true in the slightest. 99% of people aren't doing the above.I think you're both kind of correct. Stephen King said something to the effect of, "A person can work hard to become a good writer. But you can't work hard to become a great writer. Great writers are born." funny that he said that because King is almost the quintessential example of the "good writer" imo. Like, insanely productive, works hard at it, and writes good stories in decent prose, but never really ascending to the highest levels of what the medium is capable of by its most gifted practitioners
>>23778168Just write a bunch of short stories and connect them together into a novel. It will make your shit seem more interesting.>>23778169Also this. Video essayists are the new Philosophers. They say a big bunch of boring garbage for 3 hours and people in the comments just agree even if they did not even watch the video. Time to move to TikTok and Youtube chuds.
>>23778168128 and 48 pages
>>23778191I foud out I have the ability to...copy "style and tone" to a decent degreereadig a lot, led me to this "one book", and...it became my go to "style" and "tone".and, not a style of narration I was used to, and had failed trying befor.now? Its becoming my go to thing
>>23778801And yet you couldn't even name a single other medium of writing you partake in. I think you don't write at all and I called your bluff, and now you're doubling down because you realize I caught you. You're genreseether, aren't you? Got bored of trolling /wg/, did you?
>>23778764>I said novels were dead and they are. You are probably an Amerifat who is disconnected from history and thinks the novel is some kind of universally valid medium that transcends historical and cultural considerationswhat a disingenuous assit happens every other month, with ebookslast one I heard of?on here, couple years ago...everyone was buzzing about it."some woman" had written her first 125 page "ebook"it was fem-dom fetish wrotica...complete trashy....and? she got 20,000+ downloads, the first *month*which at KDP select inimum pricing? was something like 2.99... 65 percent was her take?she hit the lottery, and that was the first monthshe can quit her day job, and try writing see if she can get series going.not to mention, if she is a one hit wonder?fuck it.20,000 first month? more will roll in, and if she doesnt waste that cash? She can retire on it, if she lives normalits happening, all over everywhere.the fuck does anyone have to lose, and if you like trying to write?then write!
>>23778784>None of your businessobviously, he writes gay inter racial porn,under a pen namewith weird fetishes to cater to the degenerate crowd.otherwise? He would B-R-A-G
>>23778820>So, you just need to have the writer's gene? Also, how do you know this?my first short story? I was told, I can write, I should writethat, was easier said then doneI made every mistake possible, not being in the field.i slowly learned the litle tricks over time, as I picked them up here and there.my writing is the same as it ever was.the experience? I feel i'm finally almost there now.
>>23779443>As that anon wrote if it was really as simple as reading a lot and practicing constantly then great writing wouldn’t be so rare.I dont need to be "great"I just want the minimum ebtry levelI seen shit novels and read them before...someone whote that, it got published.I only have to be a littl ebetter than that? To have a shotI;d be happy with "reasonable"and that is consiodered failure by todays "everythign or nothing" paper publishing.
>>23779994You still need to deliver the same level of quality, but your word count limit is suddenly cut in half. A lot of people struggle to write when the maximum length gets lowered compared to what they're used to.Why do you think people begged Twitter for so long to increase the letter limit in tweets? Why do you think Twitlonger and those "1/10" tweet chains exist?Of course, you could experience the opposite as well, struggling to come up with even more when the minimum is increased. This is something I experienced myself with college papers, desperately searching for even more sources just to have something extra to pad it.
>>23780179Indeed. Brevity is the soul of wit and all that.
>>23778177To the subject you were best at in school! Capitalize on your strengths!
>>23778635Based postive literary torrenting u:d ratio motivator
>>23780150You are a vulgar fat retard like he said and can’t even grasp what the guy you’re talking to is implying. I don’t give a fuck about money.
>>23780407who even gives a fuck who yourepffft
>>23779443Great writing ísn't rare in the long span of humanity, you just need to know about it. Get educated.
>>23779443Also, you're not supposed to sink, you're supposed to at least stay afloat. Cross an ocean if you can.
>>23778191How does one know if they have the Gift? Should your first attempt at fiction be a success?
>>23780465If someone gives something to you, it's a Gift. Protip: if even 1 person gave you a pen in primary school, you have a Gift for writing, even if the pens were state-subsidized and you got one from the teacher.With that pen, you can work your way up to talent, after that and if you work more, a degree / a specific education. Don't worry, you've got the Gift. You've been Gifted many Gifts. But a gift is just a gift; until you play with the gifts, you won't know what they're like.
21 good novel as your model, and 1 bad novel to be able to distinguish the good model as a good model
>>23778168Limit yourself to the subject thatbyou want to write about.For example, if you are a detective-mystery writer, then you simply read sir arthur conan doyle works, agatha christie, ranpo edogawa, maybe some current contemporary mystery writer as well. You can extend your knowledge in thriller genren(since detective mystery was part of thriller domain as well) by reading some of the author specialized in thriller. Other than that, its useless. Its useless for you to read work like for example tess by thomas hardy or l'assommoir by zola. At best, you can capture other author prose stylization or some other technical thing, but in terms of your works, your domain, its all useless.>but anon youre genrefagging right now! I dont want to be a genreslop authorSadly writing industry will have to disagree with you. If you want to write, following trad publisher path, put yourself in agency under someone, you'll be working in that same genre, maybe mixing it up a little bit with the other, but most of author will eventually ended up working in one genre throughout his career, same with independent publishing, except the agency will be replaced with audience. Also every novel is part of a genre, /wg/ will be malding about this but even most of literature-novel falls under drama genre, the further thing is experimental genre, so dont get too salty about genreslop and being a genreslop author
>>23778169The correct option is to post your stuff online for free and then shill a patreon to live off of
>>23780414>signing posts with shartas expected
>>23780518>Its useless for you to read work like for example tess by thomas hardy or l'assommoir by zolaWhy? What’s special about those works?
>>23780558I just use them as an example. Those are masterpiece, you can read them if you want but if you for example a pulp writer or whodunit genre author, i highly doubt that you can pull anything from them aside from technical things. Tess and l'assommoir are realist fiction, it lived in an entirely different world than thriller pulp, detective novel, or whodunit genre. But if you read novel like, say, the killer inside me by jim thompson, then I believe you'll learn a lot from it.My claim on this was based on what happens with modern writers as I observed them. The problem with modern writers is that they read too much. They consoomed too much media that everything that they make is nothing more than accumulation of every media that they consoomed, they have no media consoom filter for themselves, and their work is a mutt children between different genre being mixed up together in the most irresponsible way. That's why you'll see bunch of retarded things in modern book (especially in fantasy), something that was not supposed to be there but it exist right there, mixed up use of language, and some other cross-genre being more prominent than ever before
>>23778191This is a bad opinion. All the world's best writers were voracious readers first. A voracious reader becomes a great novelist when, after he has read anything and everything he can get his hands on, he sees in his mind's eye a book he wants to read but can't because it doesn't exist. So he writes it instead.That doesn't mean you can become a great writer without talent (you cannot), but a man with the "writing gene" would be completely impotent before a pen and paper if he had not first read a great deal.
>>23778191>Language has been around for long enough that it's largely genetically determined.It's funny that you think this sentence makes any sense.
>>23781221That’s one way to go about it, but I feel that there’s another type of creative spirit who’s more youthful or vigorous and has its own vision to put forth, and that type of person’s development may be harmed by consuming too much conflicting material, as opposed to the more polished or refined kind of writer. It’s like Homer contra Virgil, or Shakespeare compared to Milton, Keats with Tennyson, Baudelaire and Mallarmé, Rimbaud and later surrealists and symbolists, etc.>>23780880Also true. Mixing things across various registers willy nilly results in a dilution of meaning (unless you’re Joyce). You have to be very conscious in what influences you as an artist of any stripe.
>>237781680.
How do you think of stories worth writing?I once took a writing class where everyone was told to write a short story in 15 minutes. I spent most of that time thinking of a coherent story to write while all the other students immediately started writing. I'm really bad at this. How can I think of a story in an instant?
>>23778685Novels require less attention span if they consist of many short chapters and it’s why this is the models currently used by commercial literature. It’s analogous to how people would rather watch 8 hours of some shitty netflix show as long as it’s divided into several episodes as opposed to watching a 2 hour movie.
>>23778168you need to be at least 40 yo to write one. yes before writers would write in their early 20s but now 35 is the new 18
>>23779963When you try writing a novel you will learn otherwise.
>>23781538I will assume this post is in bad faith unless you elaborate anon.
>>23781574When you try writing a short story you will learn otherwise.
>>23778168This is what you need to be a great writer in order>Life Experience>Studying Craft>Reading 40-50 of humanity's greatest novels (if you thought it was meh or just ok it doesn't count)>Practicing for 3-8 years>Learning and creating writing theory
>>23781441Think of the kind of thing you would find cool or compelling to read, and write that.
>>23781958>>Life ExperienceWhat even constitutes life experience? Do you have any examples? There are plenty of great writers that lived inexperienced sheltered lives.>Learning and creating writing theoryA writer and a critic are not the same thing and the two groups barely overlap.
>>23781538There’s some truth to this.
>>23781703lol. all of us have written short stories, very few people have written novels. short stories are not difficult compared to novels. it's difficult to find a masterpiece among them, but their difficulty is at the level of 1 compared to a serious novel, which is at the level of 10 (all things being equal). there's no shortage of short story writers who were never able to write a novel but wanted to.and the idea that you could distill the "essence" of a novel into a short story is absurd. I enjoy short stories myeslf, but glorifying short stories at the expense of novels is nothing more than cope.
>>23782040>What even constitutes life experience? Do you have any examples?Anything that makes you different from others and anything from your past that YOU DID that matters to you (it shouldn't be something that HAPPENED to you because while those experiences are illuminating as well, only faggots go through life like a passive character with no moment of self-reflection)>There are plenty of great writers that lived inexperienced sheltered lives.Like?>A writer and a critic are not the same thing and the two groups barely overlap.Because writers are critics on steroids. Any critic that is well respected like Bloom is a piece of shit compared to most writers.
>>23782207>Because writers are critics on steroidsInteresting way to look at it. I will think about this.
>>23782269Both need to know how to tell a good story, in order to critique or create it. Simple as that. There are underlying tools and if you are observant enough you will realize how to use them for your intent. 95% of the writers barely understand the purpose of theme.
>>23782282and also another piece of advice: Constantly stay in touch with writing by writing and reading otherwise your brain will lose it's writing edge
>>23782282But you don't need to know how to tell a story in order to critique it. Food critics aren't world class chefs and vice versa. Besides, I think you're misunderstanding the role of criticism in literature. It isn't mere review or quality assurance. It's practically an art of its own in locating and expounding upon threads within established works and their greater significance or what signs point to. I'll give you a slightly cryptic example of where the critic steps in: I don't think Melville even knew what the whale "meant."
>>23778168Somewhere between 3 and 12,479. Its more about how many short stories you should write before you write a novel, make your mistakes and learn on the short form where mistakes are less costly.
>>23782308nah you don't get it. Critics can't judge a work of art without knowing how they are created. Melville felt and communicated what the whale meant more deeply than any critic can relay, that's why we care about Moby Dick and not someone's analysis of Moby Dick.
>>23782399>Critics can't judge a work of art without knowing how they are createdNo. You don't get it. Critics don't take apart a work, explain away its anatomy and origin, and "judge" it mechanically. If they do, then it's merely incidental to their craft. Literary criticism in its essence is a subjective form of essay writing with literature as its object of focus. Really, it's a mongrel medium that falls somewhere between poetic essaywriting and didacticism and arises in symbiosis as part of an ecosystem of the arts.>Melville felt and communicated what the whale meant more deeply than any critic can relayThe critics job isn't that of a puffed up high school teacher. He isn't supposed to 'teach you what the whale meant.' He's supposed to take the whale as a phenomenon, work with it, and create a piece of his own. Read Montaigne on Virgil.
This guy gets it.
>>23782449>Critic isn't a writer>Critic is a writergreat argument
>>23782457He moved the goalposts from>example of where the critic steps in: I don't think Melville even knew what the whale "meant."to>He isn't supposed to 'teach you what the whale meant.' a complete failure of an argument. I like reading such essays but at that point the critic levels up to being a writer.
>>23782471You're dumb
>>23782505>namecallingthat's a concession ain't it?
>>23781654nu-males are out of touch with reality, this due to numerable causes such as profane mentality, mass entertainment consumption, technological alienation, female castration, lack of father figure etc. as a consequence he is less mature, he is a puer aeternus. why would a nu-male write in their 20-30s? he is strictly nothing. optimistically we can hope by the 40s he (we) will have achieved some maturitythat's why i mostly just read dead authors too
>>23778177The epic poem.
>>23778168Do you have anything to write about? Any life experience?
>>23781441>How can I think of a story in an instant?Why do you want to? If you have no stories to tell why do you even want to be a writer?
>>23778168YOU ARE IN THE GLUTTONY CIRCLE OF ART HELL. YOU DO NOT NEED TO CONSUME TO CREATE. ONCE YOU SET OUT TO READ 100 GREAT NOVELS BEFORE YOU WRITE ONE, YOU WILL INSTEAD FIND THAT ONCE YOU’VE READ THOSE 100 YOU’LL WANT TO READ 100 MORE. WRITE NOW. WRITE ANYTHING YOU DONT NEED AN INCENTIVE. JUST CREATEEEE
>>23782700Because it would be cool to write something good even if i dont know what it is yet
>>23782659Obsolete and dead format that means nothing and says nothing of the human experience today.
>>23782754That makes no sense at all turbopseud
>>23782862You’re just retarded, but go ahead try writing your epic poem that no one will be bothered to read.
>>23782207Life experience is simply being alive. Once you have lived long enough, you have life experience. You don't have to jump on a boat or conquer primitive peoples. At 20, you have little life experience. At 40, you have a lot. This is just obvious, adn why 20 yo zoomers should not even be dreaming about writing a novel.
>>23783107Yeah people are fleeing to media that actually do say something about the human condition like video games and self-help slop
>>23783163Thomas mann wrote buddenbrooks when he was 22 years old zoomer though
>>23778168I think you should just write the damn novel. Doing nothing but reading won't help you, not as much as just sitting down and writing will. You could read hundreds of books, but when you sit down to write something yourself, you're still at square one. The idea that you'll become a better writer just by reading is a fantastical shortcut that isn't really viable, at the very least it's no where near as effective as people make it out to be. You learn by doing, not by reading.
>>23779963This is absolutely true especially in genre fiction. The best short story I've read is Harrison Bergeron. It's only a few pages long, but it has enough material to feel like an entire novel, just compressed.
This doesn’t make any sense.If writing is disconnected from reading and the more practice you do the better you become, why isn’t everybody a great writer? If it was just a case of writing and writing and writing then Stephen King would’ve written the greatest novel ever by now.
None. Write it. It will be shitawful though. And you will quickly see that>you don't have a technique>how_doitransition.scenes.jpg>IsthisOnecharacter_ortwo.html>you will think you invented something new>whatifimakeitonelongrunonsntenceUsually you are to love what youll ask people to love you for but fuck it do it and see what comes out
