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Tonight I'm wearing a fake moustache and sideburns I got from Amazon. The other night I just wore a red baseball cap. Basically you wear anything that you don't normally wear, and ideally something kind of memorable and distracting. So if someone were to report you to the police they'd say "he was wearing suspenders" or "he had a tweed jacket."

Infrasonics rumble under my feet, something I'd noticed for a few weeks. A construction project, I figure. But I never notice it during the day, and haven't figured out where it's coming from. It gets less noticeable the further you move from the river.

I never wear the same disguise. I'm always throwing out a purple wig or a red polo or a fake beard.

Somewhere around 1AM I'm feeling in the zone, so I head towards Dirty 6th. They always congregate near where people are because I guess begging is a numbers game, but I can't do my business in view of anyone, so there's a sweet spot where you're close enough to the action to find one of them alone and pretty secluded, but not too close that anyone will see.

I'm trolling the streets that run parallel to 6th when I when I see Flat White shuffling around. He sees me and comes over.

He asks me if I got a dollar, says he's hungry is all, says anything I have helps, like a quarter, even, he says.

He doesn't recognize me of course. I look around, and there's no one nearby.

I crouch and spin, delivering an expert leg sweep, and Flat White falls to his back. On his way down I can see the shock in his eyes. He never saw this coming in a billion years.

He tries to get up, but before he's standing I deliver an uppercut that connects with his jaw. A 2x combo.

Flat White musters whatever strength he has and shoots to his feet and charges a fist, but before he can make good on it I deliver my left hook to his face and bam, 3x combo.

The trick is you have to make sure you don't give any one blow too much power. Otherwise you risk a premature KO, which is so anticlimactic.

He makes a quick recovery and charges me like a bull, and I roll to the side, getting rainbow-colored gas-wet asphalt on my throwaway Fruit of the Loom T. Combo is still intact.

Now for the right hook and I'm at 4x. I once got up to like 40x, it was unreal.

He screams to leave him alone, man, to let him go, holding his arms out, groveling.

He couldn't possibly understand what I'm doing, how much I care about him. How this is just a small part of a greater process, a greater good. It's pointless to talk to him, to listen. I charge him.

They say Jesus was sinless, but he must have had a hobby like this. Only way to keep going in our line of work. Like he must have gotten mad at the disciples, he must have gotten frustrated when people would ignore his teachings. He would have needed some way to vent, to cope. I'm not saying he beat up homeless people, but there must have been something similar that they decided to leave out of the Gospels. No one wants to know how the sausage is made.

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>>23829671
all these reddit spaces are giving me a fucking aneurysm my dawg

>>23829671
I don't get it

>>23829643
The wasteland was a tired beast. Grime filled every crevice; the wear and tear of time had taken its toll. It stretched wide across vast nothingness and the rumble of an unseen battle yawned from its horizon.
If only it could have its rest, maybe it would be tranquil, but the world had other plans. All its creatures were too stubborn to escape into nothingness. No, those who remained saw something worth living for.

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>>23829771
>crevice

CHAPTER 2

YOUR FORMATIVE YEARS

1. A human in modern civilization lives on average 82 years--a year is 365 days, so a human lives 30.000 days on average. Assume this is the maximum time you will be on this earth.
However, on average, 8 hours a day are spent on sleeping, so a third of your life, or 10.000 days, is reserved to recovering your energy.
Moreover, presumably, 8 hours a day will be spent on education during your childhood and adolescence, then later on work during your adulthood, so another third of your life, or 10.000 days, is reserved to preparing yourself and providing for yourself in society.
Therefore, my son, use your time wisely and seek efficiency, so you may waste time freely on what truly fulfills you. Follow the path I have devised for you, to gain useful skills and build your character.

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Where do you find people to critique and proofread your writing who aren't reddit fags? The whole literature space is completely infested with neoliberal hogwash that throws anything out that "breaks the rules" instead of judging on actual merit.

>>23829933
Do her goggles look through her nipole cameras?

>>23829938
Nipple cameras. My phone is possessed.

>>23829938
No those are lasers.

>>23829933
Only real life, I imagine.

>>23829933
is this the girl from the last thread that can spray molten lava from her nipples?

>>23829955
Yeah. Thought she should have a smile about it.

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Bounced back up after my previous flop and got 5k words into new slop in two days. The quest for the ultimate fun story that could actually get people to read it continues.

>>23830009
Pretty cool pic

>>23829953
Genre? If you're doing something non-meta for the site 85 followers in 2 months isn't bad from what I've seen. Even some of the big names took months to get their stories off the ground.

>haven't written in exactly one week
>start up tonight and do 2,049 words
Back with a vengeance

>>23830048
Regular high fantasy. But I'm not really a beginner as a writer anymore and tried to put out my very best, so performing okayish by beginner standards is really just awful.

>>23829933
I don't. I just upload it as is.

>>23830009
thats the most demented picture ive ever seen

Is it cringe to write fantasy?

>>23830082
From what I've seen, the quality of the writing isn't one of the primary considerations for gaining a following on RR unfortunately. At least not initially. High fantasy without the LitRPG/Progression tags is a bit of a harder sell than the typical Isekai/Xinxia fare, but has a larger audience there than some other genres. What was your posting schedule like and average chapter word count? Did you do any sort of promotion like ads, shout out swaps, etc.?

>>23830090
It's true, but I don't blame anyone for not wanting to toil away that long rather than move on to something else.

>>23829830
Crevice isn't an uncommon word my retard ESL friend

>>23830187
>quality of the writing isn't one of the primary considerations for gaining a following on RR
That's just a cope. If a work is fun and compelling, of course it gets followers. Mediocre crap can get big by force of volume and relentless shilling, but it'll be a lot easier if the thing is actually interesting too.

>>23830090
It's also possible you work on something for years and it never gets very big and you wasted an obscene amount of time and effort for nothing. You'd be insane to take that gamble.

>>23830344
If it takes you years to write a novel you should consider writing faster.

>got my first fanart
I'm gonna make it bros

>>23830336
>If a work is fun and compelling, of course it gets followers.
Followers, sure. A big following in a short time frame? Not necessarily. Nice covers, having a rapid release schedule, more popular genre and tags, knowing the right people, having a prior audience, using ads, and a bunch of other factors can and do have a bigger impact on making it to rising stars initially. We've all seen plenty of stories with mediocre writing get on that list and others with better writing that don't. I did say "At least not initially", because the stories that make it onto RS but fail to meet expectations usually get low ratings and fall into relative obscurity after they drop off, while stories with good writing will continue to pick up followers.

>>23830350
Web serials are supposed to run significantly longer than one novel.

>>23830539
>a hundred things all together have a bigger effect than just one alone
You don't say? That was not the argument.

>>23830612
You don't have to put out webserials. I think only someone who's an extreme planner can put out a webserial worth a damn, because when you're writing a webserial you're putting out your first draft, with a chapter-by-chapter editing. If you made a mistake, you can't go back and change too many things, or put in foreshadowing, or make event A happen before event B, if you suddenly decide that the order is wrong. So you can just write a full novel normally, and release it chapter-by-chapter. I think this strategy guarantees the highest possible quality to your work, while also taking advantage of the algorithms on those self-publishing platforms like Royal Road

>>23830623
You post your novel. It gets big, people like it and ask for more. There is no more. You only wrote a novel. Then what? You'll write a sequel novel? Nobody's sticking around without updates every week. Your readers leave. Your story falls off the lists and cant get back there again. You're not making any money that way.

>>23830635
Maybe that's how it plays out in your imagination, but people do stick around for far longer than they should.

>>23830650
I have actually done what you're talking about. It took me five years to admit that way was fucking stupid, but now I can tell you: it's fucking stupid.

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>1930' setting
>Entire plot revolves around this young girl, about 12-14
>She doesn't have all lights on upstairs, she's singing over the cuckoo's nest, she's one scoop of jam's short of a proper breakfast, she's not cleaning up her room properly, if you catch my drift
>Keep referring to everyone else as knights, priests, wizards, warriors, dragons... essentially living in a little bit of a fantasy land.

Is this going too heavy? Should I tone it down? Do you have any other suggestions? My main concern in the current planning stage is that it sounds a little bit awkward and a bit too uwu moe protecc the loli

>>23830616
I didn't say all of them together. Each of them can make a massive difference independently early on. An unappealing cover alone can literally sink you. LitRPG will gain a larger following faster on average than stories that aren't. What are you even arguing with me about? Nothing you've said contradicts what I'm saying.

>>23829671
good stuff

Why should I even care about quality if I have no plans of going pro? I have much more important things to worry about than writing.

>>23830687
>An unappealing cover alone can literally sink you.
There are a lot of MS paint doodle covers in the top 100 best stories. It's completely pointless to analyze what works and how well at RR because there are a hundred contradicting works available with a click.

>What are you even arguing with me about? Nothing you've said contradicts what I'm saying.
You're the one (you)ing me nonstop despite not even disagreeing, retard. Stop it.

>>23830635
Look at nobody103. He's the fucking King of Royal Road, and that's kinda what he did. There was a huge gap between him finishing MoL, and him starting his new book. That new book, despite having chapter releases once every blue moon, and being in the very beginning of it's storyline, is right now in the top 20 best rated books, with over a million view and almost 20k followers. Sure, you're not nobody103, but the same rules will apply to you, just on a smaller scale.

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>>23830739
>You're the one (you)ing me nonstop despite not even disagreeing, retard. Stop it.
Y-you (you)'d me first...baka!

>>23830743
>look at the number one most popular western web novel in history
No. I can't believe somebody pulls the Stephen King argument here. He knocked it out of the ballpark first before you plebs even knew what the fuck is a "web novel". Not everyone can be the fucking first. No, the same rules DO NOT apply to you or anyone, RETARD

>>23830758
Cope.

I keep writing poetry instead of my book

>>23830758
Yes, retard, they do. If your first novel gets popular (reaching the top rated, getting a fan community separate from you, etc.), then you will be in the same position when releasing your second novel as nobody103. It will be proportionally easier for your new novel to gather an audience, depending on how well your first one did. Also, internet content creation is not a first-come first-serve deal. For example, look at the second-best novel, Super Supportive. It's only some millions of views below MoL, and is still ongoing, meaning it can get easily overtake even MoL. It also started 20 months ago. Look at PewDiePie and how he was the most popular YouTube channel for a while, and yet now there's dozens of channels with more subscribers and monthly views. Just git gud, and then you will find success.

I feel like what I want to write the most would fill a hole in the market but since I'd want to write that stuff so much, it would become boring.

>>23830678
>1930' setting
Where exactly? What country? Is there some plot relevancy to the historic setting or is it more for set dressing?
>She doesn't have all lights on upstairs
Is this like a coping mechanism for some trauma or is she just retarded?
What would the overall tone be like? Tragic, comedic or something else?

Kind of hard to say if it would work or not just based on what you posted, but depending on execution it could at least be a fine short story.

>>23830906
I think the context generally isn't very interesting to know for these kind of questions but you're right I was a bit too vague.

>European country. I'm a bit hesitant of the exact city but probably around Vienna
>Basic idea is that the girl is a prophet of a god who's gone totally mad.
>Gods, in this story, already cause some level of madness to their followers even when they're sane, so I want to show that she's even further along the path of cuckoo-land by making her almost entirely removed from reality
>For most of the novels, she will mostly interact with flawed people, who (at the start), mostly try to help her out of self-interest. Even the people who help her because they are kind are generally infected with a lesser sort of madness that twist their kindness into something harsher. I thought it would be interesting to contrast this web of intrigue and interests with the very "pure" archetypes of the common fairy tale (with the courageous knight, the fearsome dragon, the kind princess)

I initially planned to make her mute, but then it feels like she's really just a baggage carried around.

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Anyone got tips or resources on writing smutty porn.

I got a plan

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So I was thinking on the symbolism of the gay paladin character I had from last thread

Is a peacock effeminate enough to give a hint of flamboyance? I feel like it does for modern people but it's also a medieval setting and I'm not certain if peacocks has that association then.

>>23831064
What type of smut? Advice varies, and sorry but I'm not gonna write a shotgun post of generic tips and tricks lmao. go search for a blog or a forum post or read a book for that
Despite this site's hate for reddit, /r/eroticauthors has lots of actual working professionals who frequent it, and the advice there is pretty solid (especially compared to this refuse heap of a thread)

>>23830821
MoL didn't even start out at RR, it had a huge following already before the dude dumped it there. Super Supportive was never a novel, the author has been posting it for 20 fucking months without a single hiatus, regular as clockwork, the opposite of what you claimed is the best thing to do. Yet, he will never-ever overthrow MoL as the all time #1. You have no idea what you're talking about.

>>23830743
>>23830821
>>23831375
Why is everyone acting like MOL is the biggest web serial? Maybe one of the better-quality "big ones" but it's not the largest and definitely not by a significant measure. Lol
Primal Hunter and Defiance of the Fall have >2000 more ratings on goodreads, which is the best general objective measure for how many people have read it. And just by anecdote, I see them mentioned more than MOL. MOL just has a good reputation since it's finished and decent.
Other serials easily on the size of MOL are Worm (and wildbow's works in general) as well as The Wandering Inn, Beware of Chicken, and The Beginning After the End. As well as All The Skills and hell probably a bunch of others I'm forgetting.

Or did I misinterpret what you guys were talking about and you mean "all time #1" as literally just being the top rated fic on RR right now, which is lmao if so because RR ratings are horrible

Scamtreon earned its reputation on the back of projects that only update once in a blue moon. People stick around for the smallest crumbs.

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How would you prove that someone remained in a room for at least 24 hours?

>>23831419
The biggest writing patreons almost all release at a breakneck speed and lose massive chunks of their audience when they go on hiatus or slow down significantly

>>23831442
video camera
inb4 "they don't exist in this world, or it doesn't work for this scenario"
well how about you don't vague post then? ever think about that?

>>23830317
you dont get the reference my retard zoomer friend

>>23831446
No they don't.

>>23831442
depends on the setting. I guess they would have stunk up the room some.

>>23831449
You're right
>How would you, without using technology further along than commonly in use during early 20th century, and without using magic or supernatural means, prove that someone stayed in a room for 24 hours?

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>>23831442
Duct tape.

>>23831454
Yes they do. For example Azarinth Healer used to be a huge name in the space and when he went on hiatus he lost a huge chunk of his paypiggies. He lost like 40% in one month and these days he sits at like 30% of his peak
Which authors are you talking about that release once in a blue moon and have enormous audiences? Would like to know

>>23831456
>How would you, without using technology further along than commonly in use during early 20th century, and without using magic or supernatural means, prove that someone stayed in a room for 24 hours?

#1 Reliable alibi/observer
#2 Some event that only the person could complete, and certainly required him to be within that room the whole time (or enough of the time)

It's not easy to guarantee without going with the simple choice of #1, you'll need to get creative.
Or just allow there to be doubt as to whether he was for sure in that room

>>23830350
I saw a youtube comment where a woman said she has been working on her novel for 13 years. Has anyone heard of someone taking longer?

>>23830612
>>23830635
How is this even a problem? Write your next novel while still uploading your first one.

>>23831533
It's not necessarily a problem, I just question why you're writing normal sized traditional novels and posting them to a web serial site rather than going through traditional novel channels. The readers on these sites like huge sprawling stories that go on for a while, like trilogy sized at a bare minimum. I'm not even sure how well posting individual novels would go. Do it if you want I guess, just seems counter productive

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I'm having a bit of a trouble making a character's motivations clear. I want to avoid going for le childhood flashback.

The setting is light capeshit, and i'm trying to establish why a failed wagie would turn towards hobbystic villainy.
Sounds easy enough but i don't really have that much going for it aside from him failing at work so hard he gets booted, to showcase that the way he is is at odds with the way regular 9-5 world works.

One of the issues is that i intend to illustrate to illustrate it eventually, so the pacing has to be swift or else i'll shit myself time-wise trying to get it all across.

>>23831442
A polygraph test + witnesses.
I only need to prove it beyond REASONABLE doubt. Unless the setting is Umineko and i can get cockblocked by redtext or smth.

Any black comedy writers here who can electronical-verbally give me a kick under the butt to get to writing?

>>23831651
>Black comedy
I'm immediately interested. What're you writing about anon?

I finally reached the point where all my POV characters are in the same place at the same time... but I have no idea on what to make them do. They don't trust each other, they want different things, but I need to make them function as a team later on.

>>23831568
>why a failed wagie would turn towards hobbystic villainy.
>Sounds easy enough but i don't really have that much going for it aside from him failing at work so hard he gets booted, to showcase that the way he is is at odds with the way regular 9-5 world works.
Sounds like a pretty realistic and relatable cause. Most people should get it and sympathize.

>>23831400
He Who Fights With Monsters is the biggest western web serial. It has 26k ratings to Mother of Learning's 9k. Literally 3x

The eastern web serials dwarf all of them, though. web novels are still niche in the west

>>23830064
it be like that sometimes.
>>23830184
it's one of the most based genres you can write.

I want to post a short story for critique but if I do that I'll probs never be able to publish it elsewhere if it turns out to be good :/

>>23832101
dont post shit here dawg are you fucking crazy

>>23832101
>>23832129

Yeah I'll steal it and try to publish it as my own

29k words in, just wrote my first scene where my MC kills the first monster. Shot it with a bow then used magic to paralyze it and reverse healing magic to make it suffer before killing it. Not gonna lie, it's pretty cool now that the action is finally kicking in. Only two more scenes before the real monster hunt/slaughter begins.

Cirsova turned down my submission to. "We do not have space to place it."

>>23832634
I'm sorry to hear that, anon. Better luck with other entries in the future.

>>23832842
Why bother? The chances of that happening before my health completely fails (spoiler alert: it's well on its way) are nil.

is it okay if I post dialogue for my vidya here

>>23832919
yes, but doesn't mean anyone will read or care about it

>>23832956
aw...

>>23829643
I was coming up from a downed trip due to alcohol when i saw the post, "Gonzo", No one could do it like Thompson.
As i took a drag off my cigarette and began to type I thought for a minute, "this is fuckin retarded", I also thought to myself, "By God not this post, it couldve been any other". It just had to be a Gonzo one I suppose, well shit if its worth writing write it in Gonzo, pure heart, like what a good dosage of cocaine or maybe even amphetamine would do. Snapping back into reality i again come to thoughts of "this is retarded, again, yet I do not understand why I am here, but I am here, taking it all in, enjoying the scenery if you will".

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>>23833141
Wrong Gonzo, dumbass.

>>23833152
"SON OF A BITCH" I remarked, taken back by this comment. I understood yet i didn't want to understand, like a cat with water, I had gotten used to it, but id never come to appreciate it. There is only type of Gonzo to a modern retard, and that is Thompson, who made it a statement in the year of our lord, 1971.

Should I write a novel with the intent of getting it traditionally published or make a text adventure game and sell it on steam/itch?

>>23833168
Who the fuck plays text adventures game nowadays?

>>23833176
Hypnospace sold better than a debut novel probably would, and a few others have popped up since.

>>23831655
I write about the activities I undertake on a daily basis now.

>>23833176
Undertale is one of the biggest hits of the decade.

>>23831400
Yes, discussing the ways to reach popularity at RR, we talk mainly about works posted at RR, and not works posted in your mom's ass, or works rated by the irrelevant goodreads community.

>need to write from the perspective of a character who's a bit of a creep/sex pest
>know retards are gonna cringe and say I'm weird for describing women the way I do
sighh

>>23833326
I already think you're weird and creepy just based on two lines of greentext. I don't think you can escape it.

>>23833335
it is what it is, i guess

well what are you gonna do

I wrote my entire first two chapters with my female MC running naked through the woods. Looking back, I think I need to change that. It sets the wrong tone. I don't think readers would continue since it just makes her look like a wild slut, and that's the opposite of what I'm going for.

>>23833410
Just write smut if you want to dive into slut fantasies

>>23833418
I don't, that's the point. It was originally to make her look vulnerable as she fought poisonous wasps and vultures, but after that she's pretty normal so I have to revise those earlier adventures even if it doesn't make sense really for her to keep her pants on. I don't want valuable female readers to drop my book since they make up 95% of the audience.

>Characters are on the run
>Need to leave the city to go somewhere (they don't know exactly where yet), but the city is blockaded
>turn out, there's a diplomatic party this very week that will have both the guy able to tell them where to go (after a bit o' blackmail) and loads of vehicles with nice and cool diplomatic impunities to bypass roadblocks.

Does this seem too convenient for you? Obviously, the plan is going to go badly, but this seems like a good setup to me.

>>23833426
You wouldn't have even considered it if your Descartes wasn't doing the writing for you. A writer has to be honest with himself.

>>23833203
But that's not a text adventure

>>23833530
If it feels like the characters proactively made some smart decisions and cleverly took advantage of the presence of the diplomatic delegation (for example, by employing some cunning blackmail, as you mentioned), then that's fine. What would be too convenient is if the opportunity just fell into their lap and they passively went along with it.

>>23833604
I think so. They didn't originally plan to take advantage of the event, but they get their hand on a new information and the only person they think might be able to answer them will be here. So they're looking to take advantage of an opportunity because they're on a time crunch.

I am also planning to foreshadow the party itself pretty early in the story. One character is in town because he is one of the ambassadors. One other character is invited as a reward for his work but just dismisses it because he doesn't feel like going.

>>23829643
Who are some recent (2010 onwards) prose stylists of note? My prose of late has felt sorta stale so I'm curious to see what contemporary artists are up to

>>23831525
ARX-Han said he wrote Incel over roughly a 10 year period

Outside of a plea deal, would someone ever admit to a minor wrongdoing while trying to hide, or perhaps use the minor confession to distract from, some bigger fuck up?

>>23834027
Yes, you see it all the time in police procedurals
>I couldn't have murdered Johnny, you said this happened friday night, right? Well, I was stealing copper wires with my buddy Jeff the Stick on a construction site. I can give you the adress, you can confirm it with the site crew
Roughly twenty minutes (plus commercial breaks) later
>We've got you now, mister. Some kids was filming the construction site for a timelaps project, and they saw Jeff and you pull up three hours earlier than what you told us. You lied about the time of your theft so we wouldn't look too much into your alibi

>>23831450
kek. btfo

>>23830086
Upload to where?

>>23833322
ok but I named series of greater success than MoL that actually originated on RR rather than was cross posted there. ph dotf and hwfwm are all bigger than mol

>>23834027
Someone could plead guilty to a criminal offense so as to avoid being charged for a political offense. One he's served his sentence for the criminal offense, the political situation could have changed, and he'd no longer be in jeopardy. Has happened several times in history, especially when living under strongman dictatorships.

>>23834027
People do it all the time with manslaughter vs murder, but i don't think that's what you meant.

>>23834027
There exists a sort of folk tale approach for dealing with editors and reviewers and nosy supervisors and the like. Here's one instance of the story:
>It was well known that producers (a game industry position, roughly equivalent to PMs) had to make a change to everything that was done. The assumption was that subconsciously they felt that if they didn't, they weren't adding value.
>The artist working on the queen animations for Battle Chess was aware of this tendency, and came up with an innovative solution. He did the animations for the queen the way that he felt would be best, with one addition: he gave the queen a pet duck. He animated this duck through all of the queen's animations, had it flapping around the corners. He also took great care to make sure that it never overlapped the "actual" animation.
>Eventually, it came time for the producer to review the animation set for the queen. The producer sat down and watched all of the animations. When they were done, he turned to the artist and said, "that looks great. Just one thing - get rid of the duck."
I think it might make sense as a strategy if you know you're going to be punished no matter what, either because they're looking for an excuse or because it's clear you've been hiding something but they do not yet know what. But you have to strike an awkward balance where the suspicion caused by the smaller infraction is worth it yet there will be no deep investigation that would uncover the large infraction.

>>23834237
Royal Road.

>>23834256
>all bigger than mol

>primal hunter (stub)
>26k followers
>8.9m views
>10k ratings

>defiance of the fall (stub)
>18k followers
>3m views
>6.9k ratings

>he who fights with monsters
>24k followers
>2.9m views
>10k ratings

>mol
>23k followers
>20m views
>13k ratings

The numbers don't agree with you. MoL absolutely mogs the other stories in views and ratings. It only has slightly less followers, which is due to the fact that it's completed and there's no reason for anyone to follow it now. These on-going beasts can't rival a long-retired grandpa. Why? Because he was there before the others. You're not repeating the feat with a "novel". The end.

>>23834459
I thought you were talking about finding success on RR? These three stories have probably made 50x the money MOL has or more. And MOL's stats are so high because of age and because it was never stubbed lol. When something gets stubbed the views are scrubbed from the RR listing.

I don't mean this rudely, but do you know what you're talking about or are you a RR bandwagoner, new to the scene? You seem like one. Anyone actually in the community knows MOL is respected but not one of the real big dogs. PH HWFWM and DOTF are so enormous they top generic Amazon lists when they release, and they were actually born and raised on RR

>>23834459
>>23834489
Also you realize I'm not that other person you were arguing with right? I only dropped in wondering why you two were calling MOL the #1 goat lol, found it funny

>>23834494
Why do you even bother replying when you're too retarded to follow the conversation?

>>23834595
Yeah, bringing up a tangent isn't 'not following the conversation'. I made it clear I was commenting on something I found funny. Somehow you missed that. Hilarious you're calling me the retard
RR bandwagoners are something else

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Is there any resource, tips, or just general good practices exercices on how to write (or recognize) really REALLY good dialogue?

I've been following this webcomic, Unsounded, for years (if you haven't heard of it it's quite literally the peak of the entire graphic novel medium, at least for me). This is a random moment I pulled by clicking on a random page. Granted, this is a character that is particularly flowery in his language (and since he's most often paired up with a foul-mouthed brat, the contrast is even more severe), but I wonder how feasible this kind of dialogue is in the written form. Is this the dreaded purple prose I was told is the mark of poor writers who envelop their meager meanings with as many layers of metaphors as they can buy to make it seems bigger from afar?

How to write anime style arcs inside of serial fiction? This would be so easy if there was just like a list of templates to choose from compiled on the internet on types of conflicts that can be used as an arc. But there isn't.

>>23834733
What do you mean by "anime style arcs"? Slice of life? Shounen? Mahou shoujo? Just pick any of those types of series and it's dripping with tropes you can copy.

>>23834733
Just mimic other popular series. That's how soulless genre best sellers have worked forever

>>23834743
>>23834741
Shonen. I've just felt so uncreative when it comes to conflicts in my stories. All of them end up being simple fights against an antagonist, and I want to introduce new types of conflicts into them.

How do I make a novel about a UFO abductee AA solace meetings interesting without it seemingly like I am ripping off the AA sections in IJ

>>23834941
So, the TBS series "People Of Earth?

>>23831525
As a rule of thumb: more frequently than one a month and slower than once every five years are rare.
>Source: Gambonese vodou-inscription forum

>>23830729
Think about the future.

>>23834631
You ignore the 90% of the contents of my posts and then have the sheer gall to recycle what I said back at me, acting like you're somehow contributing anything but bad smell. This is pothead behavior.

>>23834647
>Is this the dreaded purple prose I was told is the mark of poor writers who envelop their meager meanings with as many layers of metaphors as they can buy to make it seems bigger from afar?
Why ask if you can already see it for what it is?

Im writing a screenplay about a guy who is living with 6 other people, but one of them is an alien and he has to figure out who.
Now i'd like some reading suggestions for something with paranoia, manipulation and exclusion - im still also trying to figure what the protagonists journey will be.

>>23835092
Alright I'll engage earnestly for a second despite my better judgment

I make a post about RR fictions known to be more successful than MOL, saying it's kinda funny how you two are acting like it's the King Of RR

You reply with a list of stats, saying:
- MOL mogs the stories I mentioned
- And the only reason it's not even bigger is because it's completed and not ongoing

I reply that the three other stories are all stubs who moved to Amazon, hence their own reduced stats (you can't even read the stories on RR anymore, unlike MOL). This is an even bigger drawback than 'being completed' because you can at least fucking read MOL on RR right now. So it keeps accruing stats like ratings/favorites and yes even followers as a show of support

You call me a retard for not following the conversation

I am baffled

***

Okay so where did I go wrong?

You are clearly a bandwagoner because anyone in the web serial community knows the 3 fictions I named are the actual kings of RR. with maybe beware of chicken being thrown in, and SS as a newcomer

There. I replied earnestly. You do the same

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>>23834647
There are a lot of different (often mutually exclusive) ways for dialogue to be great. I'm not sure that at the very high end ("really REALLY good") there's a lot of specific advice to give. But there is a lot of specific low-level craft to rhythm, style, punctuation, &c that you should internalize. This won't automatically give you great dialogue but it will give you an understanding of how dialogue works and how you can use it, which is a prerequisite for writing something great. IIRC Brandon Sanderson's lecture about it is a good start and there must also be a million blog posts.
I haven't read Unsounded but I don't see anything in that picture that you couldn't do in prose. You could translate it more or less 1:1:
>"Bla bla bla, bla bla. Bla bla bla," said Character.
>He sipped his grape juice.
>"Bla bla bla bla bla."
After the first two panels the imagery is perfunctory, it's just there to fill the page and pace the speech. (Which is OK to do some of the time.)
Pic related is an example of comic panels that you can't quite translate 1:1. The imagery is completely intermixed with the speech, neither one makes sense without the other. The extremely static perspective doesn't have a direct prose equivalent, and there are visual details that would take up relatively a lot more space if you decided to include them in the prose. Of course you could still rewrite the scene as prose and make the joke work and everything but it wouldn't be 1:1.
The prose from your picture is a bit purple for my liking, the metaphor is stretched, but it all depends on the context. Having it be slightly annoying can be a deliberate and useful choice, especially if it's surrounded by stuff that's easier to read. Either way it should transfer to pure prose just fine. It feels like the writer might have written all of the speech first before figuring out the panels.

>Character nodded.
>Character smiled.

How do I train myself to stop writing like this?

It was a nearly perfect September day, the blue sky overhead just flecked with soft, fleecy white clouds, and with enough breeze stirring to lift Brandie's short skirt and fan her sunburned cheeks.

>>23835398
I just read about "fleecy" clouds last night, and then you post this. Spooky.

How the hell do I write a character that's supposed to be popular in universe?

New here. Just a question: does anyone else write and then "bury" their works so that they can read them years later for entertainment? Might be weird but it's actually fun to me.

>>23829692
Can you indent on 4chan, dumbfuck? I'd rather have "reddit spacing" than a wall of text with no indentation.

>>23835419
Write him like Superman I guess

>>23835453
His whole personality is hating reddit and loving le superior 4chan board, don't call him out or he'll shit up the thread

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>>23835588
Then we know it's not Moot.

>>23835335
What's wrong with literally two words?

>>23835419
He doesn't need an introduction as people already know who he is. There are many rumors about him. People recognize him.

Okay I just read the first page of this “Mother of Learning” serial you were all jabbering about. Can someone quickly tell me if the MC fucks his younger sister at some point?

And the dim neon blue light fell gently upon the landscape stretching forward. Before him on the plain, a fire did glow under the crepuscule. And the orange dancing light, a ghost in a tattered shawl of burning vapor. The pleasing warm wind on the bluff blew his hair back and he smelled rain for a brief second as lightning flickered in the distant thunderhead, in the dying light. And an overwhelming sense of peace and calmness overcame him. He breathed out as he looked gently upward to see a satellite arching overhead. It's movement surreal in the dark sapphire sky.

>>23835662
MOL is fine I guess, not really something I would recommend highly

Also yes, he does

I thought writing a story taking place on a deserted island would be easy. I can't even figure out what it looks like.

>>23835653
It just gets repetitive.

>>23835761
Then use other words, other sentence structure, other actions to convey the same feelings. I.e. read more study more

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>>23835745

>>23835745
Write about a dessert island instead. Chocolate palm trees, white sugar sand beaches, gumdrop rocks, stuff like that.

Is it normal for a baby, when it begins to speak, to call it's wet nurse "mama"?

I had a story where a woman is very weakened by birth and cannot read her child for 6 months, and so a wet nurse feeds and cares for the baby instead. By the time she is well enough though, she's stopped lactating and so she has to keep the wet nurse around. She still is weak enough that she cannot read the baby much.

I wanted her to love the baby a lot but also resent the wet nurse slightly because the baby called her mama first.

>>23836007
Rear* not read fuck

>>23836007
I have literally absolutely zero experience with kids but I don't see why not. Any kid that young won't know the difference yet. Some kids call the family dog mama at first. They're all dumb at that age.

I wrote a bunch today.

>>23836149
Good job anon. I hope it all turned out good.

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I'd like to write a story with the pacing of a tragedy, but I don't know how to maintain any narrative weight in a non-interactive medium.

I'm playing Pathologic right now and getting plenty of insight, but I can't port over the droning busywork that pads out the narrative or the feelings of guilt that come with things like the stripper heart and arsonist-trigger quest. Any ideas?

>>23835588
you have to go back

>>23835453
>a wall of text

thats called a book you literal nigger.

>>23836387
>A wall of text with no indentation is a book
And they say blacks have low IQ.

Written a number of short stories and some poetry over the past year. Started writing a novel, having a lot of fun with it. I write in (american) english but I'm not from north america or any anglo country. Is there even a chance of me getting published? What are my options?

>>23835625
Who?

>>23836344
I'd like to know how your conclusion to this wasn't "I should read some literary tragedy"

>>23836250
It’s fantasy so most of you will hate it.

>>23836007
Yes. Happened to an in-law, i.e. he treated the maid more like his mother than his actual mother, because the maid did the actual work of raising him.

>>23835969
>dessert island, hurr durr le heckin original idea
You mean like that episode of "I M Weasel"? https://www.topcartoons.tv/cartoons/dessert-island/

>>23835745
I'm just an amateur, but whenever I try to figure something like that out about worldbuilding, characters, plot, whatever it is, I just ask a bunch of "why?" questions.
Why is the island deserted? Was it never found? Why not? Was it found, settled, and then abandoned? Why? Was it found, but never settled? Why?
And then just entertain those ideas. Maybe the outer edges of the island are extremely rocky and you can't get there easily by boat. Maybe it's hidden in some way, behind a thick mist or something, and no one found it before. Maybe there's a massive active volcano and people lived there, but they're all dead now

>>23836387
retard

>>23836708
It was. I just don't know my way through the genre.

>>23835745
Find a few low-population islands in the real world and decide whose dynamic and topography you want to recreate.

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My previous story was a kind of by-the-numbers routine effort. The result was okay and interesting, but there was no sincere passion in it. It didn't light the fire in me. But I managed to find a more personal approach with my new one and am actually having fun writing again. 12k words in and going strong. Hell yes, I'm not all extinguished yet, I still have more stories left in me. We're all gmi

Ι'm currently in a pickle, I need some help ironing out my story. I'm currently in late Act 2, and I don't know how to handle an "inciting incident" that will cause the escalation to the climax that's Act 3

>There's 2 characters, X and Y, who are leaders of a rebellious group that operates out of the slums of a city. X is the leader and is led astray by his enemies (the Empire which has conquered his country) while Y is forced to step up, facing his insecurities and own fears
>X meets with Z, the captain of a third faction, a group of pirates whose methods are way more inconvenient but whose goals align with X's group
>he tells him the "time is not right" to start a rebellion right away, and he needs to meet with V, their biggest benefactor

fast forward to the end of Act 1

>Empire declares war on a foreign country, something caused by the Pirates, distracting them from X and Y's city
>X and Y's group, however, is severely weakened following some events of treason and their reputation shatters
>X meets with V, who tells him the "time is not right" for them to cause out an all out independence war against the Empire
>fast forward some chapters and Y's actions cause the tensions to boil over and riots to spread throughout the city

My plan is for the "Pirate" faction (secretly controlled by V, who wants to kill every noble in the city in a faux-French Revolution) to invade at the end of Act 2, and aid X and Y's group, who eventually best the Empire's defenses and take over the city, at a great cost.

However, I believe there should be an inciting incident to spark the invasion by the Pirate faction (and their sellswords), and the declaration of war by the Empire happens a whole act before, so that can't be it. V telling X he should "bid his time" is my own way of seeing "I don't know what the inciting incident will be" and I'm thinking I'll make that the riots, but how would that justify V's and the Pirate's decision to greenlight the invasion?

>>23837369
Base it on real pirates. A rival nation pays them to be pirates.

>>23837369
Ask yourself a bunch of questions. The answer is inside you, you just gotta ask yourself the right question to find it.
Why did they have to bide their time? When would be a good time? Why will they invade? What are some plotlines that Y is involved in that could cause tensions to boil over?
I wish I could offer better questions, but I imagine you'd basically have to share your entire story in order to do that

>>23837369
Nigga, I ain't gonna read all that. Your approach to this is way, way too convoluted. Simplify your problem until you can present it in a single question. By that point, you'll likely have your answer too.

>>23837325
Good on you Anon. I wrote a passion project and it came out messy and mediocre because I didn't yet have the skill to do it justice. Now I'm writing a by-the-numbers book with hopes of rewriting my beloved when I'm done.

How do I write a book with a first person perspective from a horrible person and not have people think I endorse those views?

Do I have to film myself writing and shake my head at five minute intervals just so everyone knows that I don't agree?

>>23837493
That's what I'm doing as well, however know I've grown very attached to this by-the-numbers book.

>>23837511
I'm attached to mine as well. I'm worried it'll turn out to be slop, but it's my slop. I'm 58k words in.

>>23837507
You can punish them, either narratively or through their being miserable as a result of their actions. You can provide another character that is the opposite of your protagonist. Or you can just trust in the intelligence of your readers (good luck).

>>23837534
>I'm 58k words in.
I'm 30k in myself. Wrote about 22k in the last week. I'm trying not to lose steam, because if I stop, I might not start again. Creating is a very spur of the moment kind of thing sometimes. Especially if it's not like a long term passion project.

>>23837507
have them complain about constantly failing at what they set out to do or subtly hint that the more the people around them get to know them, the less they want to be around them
make it subtle and trust your reader

>>23837507
Better question is who gives a shit what readers think of you and your personal views. Anyone intelligent enough to read should, hopefully, be able to separate reality from fiction. If it's something extremely taboo use a pen name.

>>23837543
That's intense. I've been writing this one since the start of this year, in between work sessions. At least I mull it over in quiet moments and can edit as I go.

>>23837433
>Why did they have to bide their time
I think I'm going with the simple solution of "we need to gather more men to take over the city"
>When would be a good time
When the Empire is deep into their war (orchestrated by the Pirates), weakened and distracted, not like 1 week after it begun
>Why will they invade?
X's actions (causing a riot by publicly humiliating and killing a legendary hero of the Empire) has forced their hand. The Pirates (and the people behind them) were hoping that X's group would be their pawns, being useful only at weakening the Empire's reputation. But X, Y and the Empire's commander (who's new in the city, following the previous one's resignation) escalate things and are too unpredictable
>What are some plotlines that Y is involved in that could cause tensions to boil over?
In a parallel chapter, Y inflitrates the ball of a wealthy aristocrat, who's married to a young Cassonova from the Empire. Through some means (extortion? torture? I do not yet know the details) he manages to gather the names of many benefactors and supporters of the Empire, and perhaps staging a mini-coup during the ball, severely weakening the political power of the Empire.

These are my solutions, this far. It's a simple as it goes, but I don't want to come up with some bullshit X factor since the story is filled to the brim with turns, plot twists, betrayals and hidden allegiances that the simplest solution might be the best one.

>>23837620
Yeah. Way I see it, I have the entire outline for the story, I just need to write it.

>>23837629
X's actions (causing a riot by publicly humiliating and killing a legendary hero of the Empire) has forced their hand. The Pirates (and the people behind them) were hoping that X's group would be their pawns, being useful only at weakening the Empire's reputation. But X, Y and the Empire's commander (who's new in the city, following the previous one's resignation) escalate things and are too unpredictable

To add to that: X's group single handedly causing a riot and overthrowing the current foreign administration of the city would cause them to become too popular/powerful for the Pirate faction, making them unable to control the future independent government

>>23837629
>I think I'm going with the simple solution of "we need to gather more men to take over the city"
You say that they're in the slums of the city, correct? And you mentioned some sort of faux-French Revolution. The French Revolution largely started due to an economic crisis. What if some sort of economic crisis occurs or is ongoing and they slowly build up their manpower because there's an increasing amount of people flowing into the slums until eventually it cannot be contained anymore? Maybe there are frequent clashes with guards or whatever the equivalent of the police is in your universe, and eventually the guards go too far and kill some people and they, with X or Y's influence of course, start the riot at that point?
Just throwing stuff out there

>>23837507
Place either a disclaimer at the beginning of the work, or an in-universe acknowledgement of the character's flaws.

>>23837652
>What if some sort of economic crisis occurs or is ongoing and they slowly build up their manpower because there's an increasing amount of people flowing into the slums until eventually it cannot be contained anymore?

That's kinda the backstory of the novel. X and Y live in the poorest district of the city, one which was beginning to pick up its industry, but most of its warehouses and factories were destroyed during the war with the Empire (15 years ago). The district became home to many orphans, war veterans (X&Y) as well as other "undesirables" fleeing from the war in the countryside (with entire villages being burnt, etc)

X&Y started their group less than a decade before the start of the novel, and their reputation begun to grow as "vigilantes" and as "heroes of freedom" among their own folk. They help their own people in their district pick up work and recover, somewhat.

At the end of Act 1, the Empire's Guards capture Y's brother, who's masquerading as X (the leader of the revolution), executing him and thinking they've won. Throughout Act 2, they begin recruiting locals against their will to fight in their own war half a world away, further increasing their unpopularity.

I've actually worked these things out, it's just that I don't know how to smooth out the Pirates' involvement in all this (how to justify not invading earlier and what makes them invade at the time they do, answers of which I mentioned on my previous post but I'm still not sure about)

How bad can the bad boy be before women no longer think that they can fix him?

>>23837821
I would say murdering younglings is the general breaking point.

>>23837821
There is no such point. There are serial killers on death row who get bags of love letters from women.

>>23837691
Maybe X&Y can provide some key intel to whoever the enemy of the Empire is that they're at war with, which turns some major battle in their favor. And when they suffer that loss, that's when the Pirates decide to strike?

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30 years of life and I've decided to pick up writing in the coming age of AI-made books. Fuck.

>>23837507
I've written a lot of horrible people and nobody was ever retarded enough to think they represented my personal views.

>>23837957
Or they did, but they just think it's based.

>>23837952
Maybe your books will have an old-fashioned charm missing in AI.

It's finally time to write my MC fighting the beasts. In my mind he just shoots them at night. Now I worry that's not interesting enough but I don't know how to spice it up.

>>23834439
>RR
>For critique and feedback

Lol. Lmao, even.

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>>23837952
I'm honestly stoked.
Any dogshit I write will very very likely be able to get turned into high quality Audiobooks in my lifetime.
AI Voices are already at the level of quality to be utilized for this purpose, It's just that it's not available to the public yet. Once it becomes commercially available to anyone and everyone, you'll be able to hear all manner of horrible fan-fiction by anyone on anything.
Imagine Sponge Bob and Gaz from invader Zim getting into a fight with accurate voices over politics and one of them supports Hitler or some shit.
It's going to be great. Even for shit-posting purposes, it's showing potential already and it's only going to get better from here.

>>23837821
Women get wet for guys who murder their own mothers and rape children, so there's really no limit in a woman's mind.
They think in terms of extremes. A woman couldn't care less about morality because she doesn't use it on her scale of value.
To a woman, as long as a man is handsome, rich, or some mix of both, he's a "High Value Male".
Then there are those who are broke a fuck, but they're hardass and masculine and handsome and women only want to get fucked by "Alpha Males" so they overlook anything that indicates he would be a bad partner because they're psychologically inferior to men.
Women simply lack essential psychological metrics which men use to determine risk and reward. To a woman, she doesn't have to justify her existence, so many many things that make up the male psyche don't exist in a woman's empty head.

That's why women think they can fix the bad boy. Because they're fucking retarded.

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>>23838136
>not handsome, rich, or a masculine hardass
It's over for me

>>23838146
Just like about being rich. Pretend you're well off and fuck her then kick her out in the morning.
It's that simple. It's not like they don't have it coming, really.
Fraud-Maxing is fair in today's dating scene. Women don't deserve a lick of sympathy they're all ran-through whores. Treat them as such. Don't feel obligated to them or like you need to hold yourself to a higher standard. There are no standards anymore. Women today don't deserve a man with standards.

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>>23838159
Just lie*

>>23837543
That's some commitment. I'm 35k words deep but I'm in this story for 1.5 years already lol. I'm done with my outlines and 90% of the story and characters arcs are planned out thoroughly so the actual writing is left to be done.

in my defense, military service took 9 months of my life where I wrote like 5k words max

>>23838000 again
Okay this is harder than I thought. Basically there is a pack of 6 wolves my MC needs to eradicate. There is bait in the field, but even if he anchors it so they don't grab it and run, how can he shoot all of them? As soon as the first one's hit the rest will scatter.

Any real hunters here got any strats for taking out multiple prey at once? With a bow, btw, not explosives.

>>23838203
You can take out two wolves with a bow before they scatter. If he's in the trees, he might swing in front of the wolves as they attempt to flee, essentially herding them. Then from his new position, he might have a better angle, and snipe one or two more.
Just a thought

>>23836802
There's a video of Singaporean children where they asked moms and maids answer various questions about the kids (what they want to be when they're older, any boys or girls they like, etc) and the moms answered mostly wrong and the maids mostly right. It was really sad to see actually.

>>23838227
I'm asking ChatGPT some hunting strats and it keeps telling me I'm violating usage policies. Goddamn I'm just trying to ask how to dispose of a corpse, what's the problem?

But thanks. I got him hiding out in an abandoned mill by the creek, firing onto the field. As long as he can take out at least half maybe that's enough of a deterrent the rest of the pack won't come back.The bigger issue is MC accidentally shoots the governor's pet who gets tangled in with the rest, so I have to figure out how to get that one involved.

>>23838125
retard

>>23838107
Better than this place.

>>23838107
I don't care about feedback. I just upload it.

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The go game matches the text for reference.

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$9,000 per month for 1,000 words a day of prose like this. You can do it.

nobody gives a FUCK about prose

>>23838406
I give a MASSIVE FUCK about prose. If your prose isn't 11/10 then your story isn't worth reading.

>>23838176
To be fair, I'm unemployed rn so I've got plenty of time to write and lurk. I'm trying to knock it out now so that when I go to work in the next month or so, I won't have to put this on the shelf so it can be unfinished forever.

>>23838427
While I wouldn't go that far, I feel like a book with bad prose CANNOT be 10/10. Or even 9/10.

I just finished reading a book with a good story, but the prose read like ChatGPT wrote it.

Prose is to a book is what graphics are to a video game. You're going to spend all your time looking at it, so it better be fantastic.

>>23830687
what makes an appealing cover? to my eye they're practically all unappealing

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>>23838535
This is the best cover. Feels old and epic.

>>23838322
Well, I guess.
Sometimes I get solid feedback on here, sometimes It's just an obvious narcissist looking to get his one-up.
If you learn to differentiate constructive feedback vs deconstructive discouragement you might be better off here, though.
Royal Road doesn't really provide much in the face of feedback itself unless your genre hits the most popular demographics then suddenly everyone has something to day, however worthless.

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>>23838318
Nice argument, faggot.

>>23838339
it's not about the prose tho. prose is like 9th place in importance for web serial success

>>23838339
where can I sign up?

>>23838778
it's only for good writers

>>23838803
good thing im great

>>23838805
disqualified then. good not great, I said

>>23838808
oh

>>23838805
>>23838808
I think he meant "Good thing: I'm. Great!" As in, there is a something which is good, and I'm it, which is great fortune for me. You may be a good writer, but you need to work on your reading.

any LITRPGs with a subtle/minimal stat system? as opposed to popup info box type things. stat systems that make sense with/are mostly fully integrated into the world it takes place in? meaning not an overt video game

>>23836706
Oh, nobody, just the guy that founded 4chan. Freaking newfag.

>>23838888
don't call someone a newfag when you're taking obvious bait

>>23836881
Maybe the area is subject to horribly violent storms, e.g. hurricanes.

>>23837952
Maybe you could write a book about someone who comes of age in the era of AI-made books, and other AI dominance. Make some lemonade with this!

>>23838894
He may be a cunning linguist, but I'm a master debater.

What software do you people use to write? Ideally something with built-in encryption.

>>23838999
Why do you want encryption? Lose the password & it's gone forever.

>>23839027
Better than having someone stumble upon whatever cringe that I write.

>>23838483
It doesn't need to be perfect, it can just have a unique style

>>23838999
I use LIbreOffice

>>23838339
Nothing to laugh about there. It's simple, clear, natural, painless to follow, universally relatable, grammatically correct, has a consistent voice. Better than anything I've seen in these threads. You should be taking notes. The quality of web fiction has gone up pretty dramatically over the past few years, when semi-competent writers realized there's money to be made there.

>>23839500
>"mines out of ink"
>grammatically correct
it's facking shite, mate

>>23839555
oh no...missing apostrophe...he will never recover from that

>>23838877
why bother if you want to obscure it? just scale your characters normally

I only wrote 400 words today. But I spent 4 hours on planning and research, so the next 1000 will be done right the first time.

>>23839609
i wouldnt say i want to obscure it. i'd like to check out some examples in which it's not done as in a game but integrated into the world so that it makes 'sense' but still functions as stat/info/achievements

>the entire field of self promotion
Oh god I hate it so much. Making quirky tweets, doing those stupid fucking moodboards, shilling my webnovel for a week and getting like one more follower of it. The fucking false positivity everyone has, telling their literal competition that writers are one big happy family and we're all going to get published even though we're very obviously fucking not.

>>23838742
or any book's success in general

>>23839995
Surely prose matters at least a little bit?

>>23840015
not to anyone who reads

Is 5000 words per day feasible?

>>23840328
Yeah. A lot of work though. You probably won't be able to pivot as much as you could with two thousand words. But 5k is doable.

>>23840328
I've had streaks of days where I wrote that much consistently, though it does take a good chunk of your day and I could see burnout hitting if you make it a habit.
It depends on what you write (genre slop vs well researched historical fiction will vary obv) but imo:
1k = relaxed
2k = good consistent pace, rarely feels like a grind
3k = productive pace, can be days where it feels like a grind/hard to meet quota if you're in a sticky part of the plot
4k+ = doable short-term but will cause burnout long term (for me)

I personally like writing between 2-3k on days where I'm not feeling it and 3k+ on days where I am

Brigham hasn’t texted her first in three days. He still texts her, sure, but only when she initiates a conversation –, yes, he only reacts to her, and this makes her feel very much like a pestering horsefly. She wants to conduct an experiment: don’t text him at all, don’t call him, don’t initiate contact whatsoever . . . just wait and see how long it takes for him to notice she’s not there. She’s tried this experiment many times, and the furthest she’s gotten before breaking down and sobbing and calling him up even when he’s at work is, like, six hours. He hasn’t once yet sent her a goodnight text. She’s got a photo of him for her phone’s wallpaper, for Christ’s sake . . . he just stares out wordlessly, and when she turns her phone off he’s veiled once again in darkness.
She thinks perhaps he’s cheating on her. They aren’t officially boyfriend-girlfriend yet, but I mean if he’s sleeping with other women it’d still be technically cheating, right? Well, to her it’d feel that way. She’s already decided: if he cheats on me, I’ll break into his house, go into his bedroom, tuck myself all cozy up in his bed, and shoot myself in the head with a shotgun. Even when it’s all cleaned up, my death’ll still be splattered invisibly on the sheets and headboard and walls and. . . . He’ll never sleep in that room again. His parents’ll have to buy him a new house. Would he even care? Brooke’s beginning to cry again. Her mother stands outside her locked bedroom door and thinks, very much erroneously, that she’s mourning the passing of her little brother. Downcast gaze, ear to door panel but not quite touching, raised hand and curled index finger, about to knock on the door with second knuckle . . . she pauses . . . “Brooke? Sweetie?”
The crying stops with a long sniffle, like all the spilling sadness is being sucked back into her through her nostrils.

>>23840328
5k per day was my standard quota until I wrecked my hands

>>23840745
how wrecked? have you looked into the ergo boards like the glove 80?

>character is told that something will happen in 1.5yrs. and he should tell others
>character essentially falls into a coma for 1 year, but is unaware of it, thinks it's only been weeks
>character tells others of what will happen in what he thinks is 1.5yrs, but others are not quite receptive
>character realizes that he actually been in a coma for a year, he is shocked
How likely is it for someone dealing with trauma and general loss of reference in life and timeframe to forgo the detail that the thing that will happen in 1.5yrs will actually happen in half a year? If it has weaknesses, how could I go about improving them?
It is a fairly minor plot point, but I feel like it could be an equally-sizes plot hole.

>>23840328
you're gonna have to refine like crazy, but yeah. that's what i've been doing for the most part this past month.

>>23839636
What's ur book about

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Did anyone ever write a fanfic/use characters or settings from another anon story?

>>23841125
That would expect someone to post their work

>>23840769
I get intense muscle/joint burn if I write for more than two hours per day. Not strictly limited to writing, but anything involving excessive finger movements, so the keyboard doesn't really matter. But I can still dish out 2-3k words on a good day. Just, not every day.

>From the woods behind, the gutteral croaking of ravens foretold of what was to come.

Does that make sense? I want it to be like in those old movies, where ravens cawed in the graveyards at night, creating a spooky and ominous atmosphere.

>>23841369
Only if your narrator knows what's to come

>>23841369
fun tip: to make a scene more engaging (in this case to add tension) for the reader, just present things as they happen instead of explicitly interpreting what it means. This allows the reader to make connections and implications on their own as the scene progresses.
i.e. "the sound of crows... the wind was still."(event occurs)
vs
"The sound of crows meant some shit gun go down homie"
thats sort of the heart behind the reddit advice "show dont tell" but really what that means is not taking the reader out of the world by being too explicit

>>23841395
Well, the whole chapter is a lead up to a big showdown, so I think people will know shits about to go down. But I did go back and tweak it to remove the foreshadowing since it was redundant.

>>23841395
Good advice, but I'll also add: there's more than one way of being engaging. Having a world where everything is inherently symbolic - the sort of enchanted world that the average medieval person would have felt around them - is engaging in its own way. In OP's example, the narrative voice is less like a modern-day camera trained objectively on a scene, with the reader left to add subjective meaning, and more like the voice of the world itself, a world that's already made up meaningful symbols without any interpretation required. It's not a popular style currently, but it's still one viable style among others.

Hello, I just finished with the sixth chapter of my story. It's the first one heavy with dialogue and an action scene so I'd appreciate some feedback regarding those things, as well as prose, etc.

It's 5k words, so beware.

https://medium.com/@panosfrag/chapter-iv-echoes-of-the-past-9f0020a5c658

>>23841369
I'd drop 'guttural' from it. It's already implied by the word croak and anyway the sound a raven makes is very well known. I'm on the fence about 'behind' without the context of whatever came before. In isolation, I would drop it, too.

>>23838460
Yeah I'm not excusing myself - even someone who works 9-5 can put out 500 words a day without too much effort, which equals to a long novel. But sometimes the thought of writing can be daunting to me, especially my prose and my descriptions which are the weakest part of my writing.

anyone use chatGPT to review their work? Not to assist in writing, but to just give a review and then give you points to improve upon n stuff?
Never used it for writing, but i send it my visual work and either i really am that good or it is a serial dick-sucker. Takes several attempts to even get something slightly negative.

>>23841522
it is a dick sucker. you could submit actual trash and it would still be nice about it

>>23841545
any free AI that wont suck my dick then?

>>23841522
I use it to arrange my themes and offer suggestions, historical parallels, and allusions.

>>23841545
>>23841549
>>23841522
Easy fix - tell it to CRITIQUE your work, not just "give feedback."

>>23841561
I want it to just openly review what i present it, nothing more. Will send it something and report back what it does and how hard i'll have to work to get it to actually say something

>>23841522
It's given me good advice (mixed with bad advice) for cover letters and such.
I haven't had much luck using it to edit fiction but I haven't tried very hard. I bet it can be moderately useful if you know how to prompt it well but without getting it in the right mood you shouldn't expect it to be more useful than basic proofreading.
Definitely don't trust its opinions.

>>23841522
Yes, I use it every day. I write a line and I ask it to proofread it and usually it makes some suggestions anyway that make the sentence more streamlined and fluid.

>>23841522
You'd have to be completely retarded to trust your work to something that can't even count the Rs in strawberry.

>>23841574
I'm sure it knows there are two r's in strawberry. ChatGPT is very intelligent.

>>23841574
I don't trust chatGPT with objective truths and critique isnt exactly and objective truth.

I asked it and honestly it's both sucking my dick, encouraging me, giving actual critique and at points ripping me to shreds so i'll keep testing.

>>23841635
...its between the lines calling my dialogue autistic

>>23841635
You might as well be asking a magic 8 ball for feedback.

>>23841641
its not that bad at it tho

>>23841643
it perfectly recognizes what i am going for and thats good enough for me.

>>23841643
use the advanced models and it's actually quite good

>>23840038
If you're a pleb just say that

>>23841647
Yeah it gave me "revised" versions and they just sound so generic. Otherwise alright

>>23841658
oh i use chatgpt for bouncing ideas around, not for like actually writing the shit. its prose is absolutely shit. like they trained it on YA novels.

>>23841662
i didnt ask it to revise anything it did it on its own to prove a point

anyone here actually publish the stuff they write? where and how do you go about it?

>>23841662
>>23841669
...i would never sully my ESL prose with anything dont worry

>>23841574
It does that because it can't actually see individual letters, its input is tokenized first. As if it's using a different writing system. It's funny but doesn't really matter for this purpose, there are far bigger problems

>>23841669
dickhead AI lol

>>23829933
>Where do you find people to critique and proofread your writing who aren't reddit fags?
There's a small forum called The Sietch or something like that. It's a splinter from a larger Reddit-minded place called Spacebattles because they got tired of the Redditness.

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>be black author
>someone points out all my stories have black main characters and too little white people
>currently writing a book with zero black characters
we play both sides over here. a little something for everyone.

>>23841730
Write your Yakubian masterpiece

>>23841730
...
father??

>>23841730
>currently writing a book with zero black characters
It's gonna be real funny when readers accuse you of being racist for that

>>23841779
There's an in universe justification for it that's pretty "woke" and powerful. so I'm pretty sure I'm going to be okay. So long as the audience isn't completely retarded about it.

In 10 years it will be impossible to tell AI written books from human ones.

I hate AI so much. This is one pandora's box humanity should have kept closed.

Got a positive rather than boilerplate rejection for my novel. Baby steps, I suppose.

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>>23829643
Some draft I did a few weeks ago

>>23842064
great prose

>>23842073
Thank you anon. This is a small snippet and it might be hard to digest without context but I like how it built to the last line, which I love a lot

>>23841730
I always knew you were one of the good ones

>>23842064
That's a long sentence.

>>23841941
I'll bet you wish you hadn't bullied all those nerds in middle school. AI that can replace people is part of their revenge.

>>23842117
I live for long sentences, especially in this case, because it’s supposed to be sort of overwhelming sensationally given the action she’s undergoing

>>23842114
I have another story where the white genocide is completed, so i wouldn't go that far.

How much better will my writing be once I’ve transitioned?

>>23842171
transitioned where?

>>23842177
Trans

>>23842264
anon your spirit will just die if you do it

>>23842171
It's about the only way a trad publisher will pick you up these days, so take heart, it doesn't matter if you're writing on the level of a grade schooler. As long as you are a minority you will get a book deal.

>>23842269
I’m not them, I just clarified for the other anon

>>23842308
That’s not even close to being accurate lol. Plenty of “le straight white men” get published everyday. Stop being a crab and go and network

>>23842323
>go and network
No. I hate people. That's why I barricade myself in my room and write and complain on the internets.

>>23842171
Please don't cut your dick off, anon! You can't get it back!

>>23842326
Then enjoy being a shitty artist that can’t connect to anybody and dies alone

How could I go about networking with agents and such if I live in the end of the fucking world?

>>23842395
Use X, the social network formerly known as Twitter. Follow authors. Then their agents. Then their agents’ children.

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>>23842407

>>23842410
>>23842410
>>23842410

Is it even worth publishing on Royal Road if I'm not writing LitRPG? It feels like the only other financially feasible option (not that I'm starving for money) is KDP.

>>23842556
If by "worth" you mean, "will it make me money", then the answer is most likely no.

>>23842395
have nepotistic connections like me

wow, look at this pile of crap: https://files.catbox.moe/d9sukc.zip
and these bundles of joy: https://files.catbox.moe/aw9gz2.pdf https://files.catbox.moe/rpuvnd.pdf