>>23881868
I wish my style was unique enough to get a meme. What's the best way/books to read to work on prose?

>>23881890
hang out with mechanics. learn how to talk shit

Thoughts on Writing Excuses podcast?

Would you keep reading?

Mr. Fordsman had stopped shaving on weekdays. To salesmen of Fordsman Automobiles this was a gross violation of propriety and of the shared identity which had been so carefully cultivated, through the use of monogrammed dinner jackets, company picnics, special coupons for haircuts (which were limited to a respectable preselection of styles), and sundries ranging from welcome mats to coffee mugs, by Mr. Fordsman himself . Mr. Fordsman (of Fordsman Automobiles) wanted the cheerful monotony in apperance of a barbershop quartet or professional baseball team. He had three wives, each passing in slow succession through his life like a young doe through the gullet of a python, at first engorging him with muscle and blood, then with paunch, and finally, with the passage of his last (late) wife, returning him to the unhealthy gaunt of his early childhood. None of his three wives had provided him with children, but this was not the reason he had separated from them. In fact, his beard and his divorces were intimately (if indirectly) connected.

>>23881967
>To *the* salesmen
God damn it, right after I hit post...

>>23881943
Or construction workers. I worked construction from late high school to mid college, during breaks. I remember saying "I'm happier than a pig in shit!" in front of a bunch of my fellow tech-industry co-workers. It completely threw them. They'd never heard that. To me, it was a perfectly normal thing to say. And yet another thing one won't learn as an incel NEET shutin.

The phrase "The weight of disappointment settled in Sarah's chest" tells the reader that Sarah is experiencing disappointment. However, it also employs a vivid metaphor ("the weight of disappointment") to convey the feeling in a more engaging and sensory way. While it's a form of telling, it adds a layer of imagery and emotion that enhances the reader's understanding and connection to Sarah's experience.

In this case, it's a form of "telling" that incorporates elements of "showing" through the use of descriptive language. It provides a concise and impactful way to communicate Sarah's emotional state while still allowing the reader to visualize and empathize with her feelings.

>>23881945
Used to listen to it a lot when I was just getting started. Has nice tips that are pretty well explored for 15-minute podcast. Still, like with all writing advice, you should pick and choose what works for you.

>>23882020
Cool, yeah.

crap. I don't know what the message of my story is supposed to be

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>>23882041
>crap. I don't know what the message of my story is supposed to be
Just default to "Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Heard_the_Bells_on_Christmas_Day#Lyrics
No matter what happens in your story, it's usually that simple wish that pervades deepest in every reader's mind, so just chalk it up to that.
I don't really read for message, just content/style.
Not trying to be completely cynical here, either.

>>23882027
It's a rebuttal to last thread's "never tell" discussion.

After sitting through countless hours of indoctrination seminars and orientation videos with other new arrivals for a year, I was finally declared fit enough to be allowed to travel to the commune, where along with my fellow brethren, I would be allowed to take part in what we call the final ascension, a special occasional ceremony within our organization, that happens in conjuncture with the appearance of the grand comet.

Has there been any doomsday cult was actually right all along type stories? Trying to subvert my audience a little

>>23881967
Very nice, would definitely keep reading

>>23881967
The writing's nice but you'd have to really sell me on caring about some car salesman. They're not inherently interesting people.

>>23882099
Depends on what you do with it, obviously. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqHZWdFVyyQ

I seriously can't into dialogue. I have a scene where three girls are at home making jewelry and I've been frozen for an hour not knowing what to have them say/do. The act itself isn't exciting, so I feel there should be some profound thematic dialogue but absolutely nothing comes to mind.

I'm scared to write and publish my work. Any advice?

>>23882015
Watching someone try to force a sale on a power steering flush, fail, then manager tells the guy “you’re trying to blow a dude but his pants are still on” was a favorite of mine.

>>23882015
>>23882238
Why are men's workplaces so obscene?

So, what I'm seeing a lot is with horror, being unpredictable and unstable in writing is key. Is that over-simplifying things?

How the fuck do you commit to only ONE idea/plot?

>>23882278
You don't. You mix in several and keep the less cool ones for the subplots. Even Jurassic Park with it's main theme of escaping dinosaurs is littered with secondary plots that were not enough to sustain their own book.

>>23882242
Because the little head is doing the thinking for the big head. Duh.

>>23882233
what's the purpose of that scene?

>>23882390
To show the levity and friendship of the characters between two tense scenes. It's coming along now, but I suck at subtext which is what I feel it needs.

>>23882278
I don't because I just decide "How can I make these elements work"
Example
>Story about weird golems surviving on a lower plane of existence after humanity discarded them
BUT
>I want the protagonist to be a healer and surgeon
>I like martial arts
>I like fucked up body horror
So I decided to blend all of these elements into the story like so
>I created an entire anatomy for the golems that our protagonist works with and reveals to us
>One of the MCs friends knows martial arts and uses them to frightening effect, as well as teaching them to him.
>There's a ton of super creative body horror that revolves around the golems being inanimate technically. Meaning shit like being shattered or having parts shaved away and replaced

I plan on working on a web serial with its arcs (basically units of stories) in it each being separate yet leading to one another. Since this is the typical way that web serials are written. I hope I can make it long, so wish me luck people.

>>23882422
It's gonna be a wuxia, with no parodying and no self awareness injected, just pure normal wuxia

Have you ever fed chatgpt or something similar like deepai excerpts/chapters and seen what it generates next? Has it helped in your writing?

I'm more familiar with now animes and mangas structure their stories than with novels. Now how do you make a single plot last an entire full book?

>>23882429
it doesn't take much to drag something along indefinitely

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>>23882429

Is AI the path of least resistance to people who would otherwise become writers? Have you ever felt tempered to include AI as part of your workflow or something? I know I have felt like that kind of, and keep using it as a beta reader even though I shouldn't.
I'm not a defender of AI though. I hate AI a bunch. I just use it to help with skills or knowledge that I have very little understanding of like social conventions. Is this wrong?

>>23882465
I've only used it to critique my own punctuation/form/syntax, not really for content generation.

>>23882465
right now it can't write well; it can do prose, but it takes a lot of prompting to get any decent writing.
i use it for learning and editing.

What kind of protagonist do you envision? I try to do someone who's multifaceted and able to feel a wide range of things
>By trade is a healer, surgeon or shaman of some kind. Knows how to do a couple of other things as well
>Tends to be a little gloomy but ultimately helpful and okay with people, and people appreciate him
>Also a bit lovestruck as he has an enormous crush on someone but is too afraid to admit it to her face
>However, he also has a ton of anger and resentment towards the situation of his race. They're paranoid and live in constant fear of death by whatever ungodly monster or sickness shows up next, to the point that everywhere is closely monitored by everyone just to make certain there's nothing there.
>His willingness to do anything to save lives and protect people's happiness gets really pushed to the limit as he pushes himself further and further in both a physical and psychological front
He's an idealist who is forced to go through hell to live up to those ideals

>>23882015
So how does pigs in shit help my prose exactly?

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>>23881868

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The first week of October is spent. How did you guys do? I missed the first couple days.

>>23882465
AI is for retards. Don't lean on it or "learn" with it.

>>23882554
what would you know?

I can do plot, pacing, dialogue, prologues, epilogues, denouement, characterization, all of it but I have no vision. What can I do to get inspired?

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I have wat too much fun doing shit like this with chatgpt:

Rewrite this paragraph in the style of David F. Wallace:

```A fox passing through the wood on business of his own stopped several minutes and sniffed. ‘Hobbits!’ he thought. ‘Well, what next? I have heard of strange doings in this land, but I have seldom heard of a hobbit sleeping out of doors under a tree. Three of them! There’s something mighty queer behind this.’ He was quite right, but he never found out any more about it.```

>>23882578
way*

What does it mean for a piece of writing to be "nervy"? I recall from years back a workshop facilitator of mine pointed out that some sections in my novel excerpt were 'nervy'. What did he mean by that? Did he mean they were edgy (had nerve), or made the reader nervous, or was the writing itself 'nervous' and if so what does that even mean?

>>23882627
Nervy can mean an those things but I think of groundbreaking. Like nervy can mean gutsy

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>>23882627
>>23882683
It means there's a screaming blue octahedron penetrating your mother's vagina, slowly, with a drill.

>>23882689
My mother is dead, you maniac

>>23882690
If she wasn't dead, why would I penetrate her? Her being dead is the point. I drink your milkshake.

I've always found it hard to write descriptively. I'm generally pretty good with logic from plot point to plot point, but whenever I write it always feels barebones.

>>23882568
i would write more if i gave a shit about characters, or my own ideas.
i should probably write nonfiction

>>23882692
You nervy bastard

that 'men fuck corpses' is currently trending amongst feminists

>Kung Fu? Let me tell you something about Kung Fu. That shit is fake. Not a single fucking usable move in their arsenal through each and every school. Wing Chun? Tai Chi? Bajiquan? Good lord you’re dumb
>I’ve worked with Karate, Muay Thai, Boxing, and so on. I created and refined my art from these things. I don’t just limit myself to punching people with my hands. I smack them, I hammerfist them, I backhand them, I scrape them, I strike in every way I possibly can with my hands, and the same goes for every point of striking on my body. Elbows, feet, shins, knees, forearms, head, everything. And I have weaved all of these options together in my own personal system.
>The mere idea that anything from China could offer me more ways to hit someone is laughable at best, and outright offensive at worst.
>Get out
This is our protagonist.

>write stories
>nowhere to post them

>>23882683
Interesting, okay. That facilitator was Irish, so any idea if "nervy" writing means something different in Europe

>>23882748
Don't write toddler smut

>>23882462
NTA but much obliged. Actually really helpful for me. I might end up having to chop and change some stuff given the realities of the projects I'm working on, but it at least gives me a structure to start with.

>>23882547
My October has been a muddle so far.
>126
>159
>411
>191
>256
>32
>346

>>23882242
I thought it was just blue collar, but now i work in a fairly shitlib white collar office and it’s the same thing but they use 5 dollar words and try to sound witty about it. And our sales guy is obsessed with talking about his daughters period. Fuckin sick

>>23881868
>dat pic
KEK

Tips for someone who's an underwriter to increase word count on first draft? Should I just leave that alone and increase the words with later drafts?

>>23882526
Are you really this myopic? The point is to get out of your comfort zone (heck, just start with leaving the room in your mommy's house where you grew up) and go out and experience life. Writers were traditionally people who led an interesting life, then wrote about it. They weren't incel NEET shutins with room-temperature IQs.

>>23883464
Can't I just read a bunch of books and passively absorb this stuff instead of going outside? That sounds like it would give plenty of inspiration. To me, my dialogue feels fine and it looks similar to the way characters talk in marvel movies desu.

>>23882748
Reddit has several fiction-oriented subs. https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/wiki/similarsubreddits is a good place to start.

>>23883450
Don't worry about it. Very likely, when rereading and editing, you'll realize things you HAVE TO add to improve the story and then you'll regret bloating up the word count with pointless filler

>>23882735
So your protagonist is an ersatz Bruce Lee? That story has already been told. What do you plan to add to it that hasn't been done already?

>>23883476
You'll just be regurgitating other people's experiences, without any insight into the actual nature of the people involved. Writing involves thousands of tiny judgment calls, and your characters and situations will come across as an incel NEET shutin's take on life, which is a very shortsighted and uninteresting one. Your readers will notice, and they'll lose interest. You knew hiding from life was eventually going to bite you in the ass, didn't you?

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>>23882462
>books have three parts: the beginning, middle, and end

>>23883464
you've said this same thing repeatedly for months now, but what going outside or being cummed in doesn't make you interesting either. i set the bar higher, and you don't make it either.
please tell me you aren't the faggot writing about his bike ride.

>>23883530
nta but the context was how MANY of each thing you need based on data... the 'math'. how did you miss this?

>>23883589
I didn't miss it, I just always laugh at the "three act story structure" because writers commonly joke about it.

>>23883594
you can RETROACTIVELY break down the majority of books like this

>>23883585
Huh? You have me confused with someone else. And no matter who I am, my point is still valid; you won't become interesting by being an incel NEET shutin.

Now that Joker 2 has made male rape artistic again how should I fit it into my story?

>>23883486
He’s not like that at all.

How do you incorporate AI into your writing process? You’re not a Luddite, are you?

>>23883639
Nah

How late is too late to introduce new characters?

>>23883639
I use it as summary, analysis, and critique of my writing and outlines. The suggestions it gives are usually shit, but it helps me know if my writing is conveying what I want to convey.

>>23883610
i don't have you confused for anyone, i was guessing. are you retarded, or do you just speak in cliches?

my point was, that yours was irrelevant, and you shouldn't be punching down on other retards.

>>23883639
AI, in my experience, has only been trained on the most normie and conformist material possible. Since my writing tends to "weird fiction", it's utterly useless to me. Most of its advice seems to end with "you should strive to make your characters and situations as positive and inclusive as possible." Pardon me while I barf.

>>23883610
and this was the first time you've boasted about being the lowest common denominator to neets on 4chan? are you sure?
i'm sure you're the same guy

>>23883639
One of the biggest mistakes proompters have is that they ask LLMs to formulate prose based on work that isn't public domain. It's going to refuse to actually use a real style because it doesn't want to get in trouble. And if someone does use a public domain source, he is still in instruction mode so the LLM will think he just wants information based on general info instead of analyzing text one passage at a time or having any kind of resource that will give specifics on what style is. Last week someone in this general posted a passage that was in the style of "Dickens" yet it absolutely was not because he didn't understand what Dickens prose is or how to point out to an LLM what is characteristic about it.

Basically, an LLM can only write as well as the person using it can recognize what good writing is made of. If you cannot, you better learn or all you will get is the same thing most people get.

>>23883666
skill issue. give me an excerpt of yours and i'll feed it into my advanced bully ai.

>>23883665
Fine, ignore perfectly valid advice. I don't care. But don't be surprised when you complete a work & it has absolutely no impact on the world around you.

>>23881945
I would have thoughts if I could find where to listen to it

>>23883687
i wasn't the anon you were giving 'advice' to. you're telling some neet to not be a neet or he's doomed. i'm telling you, that you don't have a position to speak down to anyone from, you boring idiot
no, you're on 4chan being a disingenuous faggot.
there are probably over a dozen neets here with more views on their litrpgd than you'll ever have on your bike trip or whatever mundane shit you're writing
you're out of your element, nigger

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(Ah,) Aeolus, (seeing) since the daddy of the deities and the top-dog of the (death-prone) dirt-folk does confer to you (the craft) to convey and bliss the billows by air-current,
(there) IS a rancid-to-me race cruising on (top) the calm Tyrrhenian,
importing (their) "Iliish" ideals and idiots--(their (dull) guardian-deities--)into Italy:
Strike strength with winds and overwhelm (their) oversized-outriggers (into) drowned-ones,
or drive (them) into detatchments and dissect (their) bodies on the deep (pls).
(For) I've twice seven(--fourteen--(a fortnite's worth!--of))nymphs (naughtily-)excelling by body(-standards),
of whom (the woman) which (is) the farthest-fetching by form (is) ("Dirty" (XD)) Deiopea,
(and) in a stable marriage(-ceremony) I WILL bind (you both) and will spell-out "she's yours",
so that for such (your) services she should spend all annuals with you,
and may make you a parent to a pretty progeny (perhaps a little prince or princess <3 (dawwww!)).

>>23883744
I would say stop posting but maybe someone will read this

>>23883761
>I would say stop posting but maybe someone will read this
yeah, me (trip is off); i'm mainly doing it to (re)familiarize myself with latin, and one day i'd like to search the tripcode in the archives and re-remember all the latin words through the (goofy) english words i associated them with--my memory's typographic that way.
if you're serious about the stop-posting thing i really don't know where else i'd go to post these--the classical languages thread doesn't enjoy them at all :(
if you'd rather i leave /wg/ (i'm hoping to post these daily, at least for this month) i will though,
but i really do want to post them on 4chan somewhere because the act of posting/"publishing" is a great motivation and the the utility of the archives is a great tool.
guess i would just sage-toss them into the bottom of a page-10 thread if they're really that annoying.

>>23883710
Wow. A racist on 4chan. Aside from being wholly unoriginal your “thoughts” are utterly meaningless. That’s was becomes of NEETs with no real life experience.

>>23883813
Nah, keep posting

>>23883818
you might need 'real life experience' if you want to write the next great piece of canon or whatever, but if you just want to write genre (which is the vast majority of books) then you just need to read widely to get ideas and to practice a lot

>>23883818
you're incredibly predictable. to save us both time; i dangle the slightest out, and you desperately grasp at it. i accept your concession, and you can thank me later
but the next time you post, remember that you need to entertain or impress me.
good luck with your writing career built on the foundation of being a lowest common denominator grass-toucher

>>23883486
He’s actually more akin to the protagonist of the novel Garoden

>>23882547
>698
>913
>1090
>688
>1845
>1513
>609
Takes me around 2hrs on average just to write 500 words (I know guys here shit that out in their sleep), so I'm either retarded or not cut out for this. It's not even about going back and making little changes, it's just not knowing what to write next.

>>23883832
It’s better than whatever nonsense you shit out about wizards and phasers.

>>23883847
the cringe feigned ignorance outs you as a beta. i could delve into the psychoanalysis behind it, but i assume you know

>>23883861
as a mere bystander please tell me the psychoanalytic card on this perp

>>23883847
>>23883861
i mean whatever sense you're trying to portray fell flat immediately. you were always ousted. this was just especially cringe

>>23883864
in the simplest way possible, starting w/ the disingenuous advice/talking down to neets, the 'whatever' demeanor he's trying to portray, the constant use of cliche/platitudes and the phaser/wizards comment is like a perfect storm of absolute fucking dork
this dude has been bullied.

how are you people not bored with the genre vs literary fiction debate yet? write whatever you want. you have to be a loser to care what other people are writing about

>>23883886
you don't get to fucking "you people" us and then say the same thing everyone else is saying. fuck that, reply to every single comment this applies to or STAND DOWN

>>23882547
They moved the yearly astroturf talent mill to October?

>>23883886
This general has always opposed genreslop. It drags us all down.

>>23883996
'this general'
There's way more genre sloppers here than litfic lmao. what thread have you been frequenting?

>>23881890
So I had an idea to just rewrite chapters from books, or pages I guess, whatever, then just continue on and try to maintain the style/voice. Easier said that done eh

>>23884010
This. There hasn't even been an attempt at a genre outside of fantasy, incel loneliness, and sci Fi slop. And the attempts are always the same regurgitated bullshit we've seen. Name 1, just 1, completed story that's not my diary desu, fantasy,or sci Fi slop here.

>>23881890
I liked Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style
it's essentially just a tool box

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>>23884027
Here you go.

>>23884027
Well I don’t know why you people insist on being such assholes all the time then. Maybe you’re just garbage human beings.

>>23884027
Read Gone With The Wind, jogger
Or What Is ChatGPT Doing by Wolfram and educate your black ass

>>23884116
>4chan
>garbage human beings
>this is somehow a ‘maybe’
newfag detected

>>23884127
?

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I want to use footnotes. I think they're cool and add flavorful sentences. However, outside humorous works, I think footnotes need to be justified with the existence of a narrator internal to the book's universe. One or more character who, for one reason or another, chronicle the tale itself.
My narrative relies on multiple POV, and generally speaking I intend to enter the character's mind and have the narrative follow them around in places where the actual narrator won't go (but I think this is easily excusable with the typical contract between book and reader in this kind of narrative, and I am writing fantasy so I have the extra excuse of "it's magic bro"). I think I can make it work without readers confusingly asking themselves how the narrator could possibly know all these details

The sort of original sauce I had would be to narrate the entire book from one of the antagonists' POV, a powerful and connected man who is judgemental of flaws in others and how to use them. This allows me a bit more room in working with a sort of dry wit and an evolving narrative voice as his day gets progressively ruined. Of course, I'll probably hide who he actually is until he appears roughly halfway through the story, the revelation that he is the narrator also implying a sort of dramatic irony where the readers believe they know he will survive the plot and that implicitly, the protagonists will fail.

Am I overomplicating things?
>tfw sick as a dog since sunday and can't focus enough to plan or write so I just think about unimportant things instead of the actual plot

>>23884127
I didn't know Margaret Mitchell was a /lit/ poster and gained fame here

Seriously though we should do a NaNoWriMo discord server.

>>23884128
It was a stylistic 'maybe'.

>>23884163
I'm down

How do people distinguish between litfic and generic anyways? What's the difference? Huckleberry Finn is a book written for kids but it's considered litfic

>>23883846
I have the same issue. Slow and steady wins the race. Just a paragraph a day will add up to a novel with time.

>>23882462
Storygrid is such a hack. I've watched the videos with Tim. Some of the stuff he says is just batshit insane "advice." No wonder his newest book is titled The Shithead. It suits him.

>>23884217
Litfic is based on the human condition. It involves drama and emotion and philosophy. Genreslop is about dragons and aliens.

>>23884282
LotR is litfic but that has elves and dragons

>>23884217
Huckleberry Finn is considered "literary" by default because it's a classic. When it comes to contemporary fiction, "literary" has no meaning other than in opposition to "genre", which is any fiction that is accessible and enjoyable for normal people.

> More than half a century ago popular storytellers like Christopher Isherwood and Somerset Maugham were ranked among the finest novelists of their time, and were considered no less literary, in their own way, than Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. Today any accessible, fast-moving story written in unaffected prose is deemed to be "genre fiction"—at best an excellent "read" or a "page turner," but never literature with a capital L. An author with a track record of blockbusters may find the publication of a new work treated like a pop-culture event, but most "genre" novels are lucky to get an inch in the back pages of The New York Times Book Review.
>Everything written in self-conscious, writerly prose, on the other hand, is now considered to be "literary fiction"—not necessarily good literary fiction, mind you, but always worthier of respectful attention than even the best-written thriller or romance. It is these works that receive full-page critiques, often one in the Sunday book-review section and another in the same newspaper during the week. It is these works, and these works only, that make the annual short lists of award committees. The "literary" writer need not be an intellectual one. Jeering at status-conscious consumers, bandying about words like "ontological" and "nominalism," chanting Red River hokum as if it were from a lost book of the Old Testament: this is what passes for profundity in novels these days. Even the most obvious triteness is acceptable, provided it comes with a postmodern wink. What is not tolerated is a strong element of action—unless, of course, the idiom is obtrusive enough to keep suspense to a minimum. Conversely, a natural prose style can be pardoned if a novel's pace is slow enough, as was the case with Ha Jin's aptly titled Waiting, which won the National Book Award (1999) and the PEN/Faulkner Award (2000).
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/07/a-readers-manifesto/302270/

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>>23883869
Fascinating. Tell us more about yours—I mean “me.”

>>23884268
I actually got an advanced reader's copy of the book. It's pretty engaging but it's the prose equivalent of a hallmark Christmas movie for millennials. The main character's transformation entails him quite literally getting in touch with his inner child to heal past trauma after an encounter with a magical and zany therapist.

It just goes to show that no matter how good or comprehensive your system is it won't make up for bad taste.

>>23884347
This all seems very subjective with fuzzy definitions.

>>23884392
>it's the prose equivalent of a hallmark Christmas movie for millennials
That's exactly what I'm talking about. He can preach structure all he wants, but it's useless if he still can't write well.

>>23884350
You really need some new material

>>23884692
I’ll use my dick to put some new material up your ass, faggot!

>>23884704
You'd like that huh, fruitcake

I'm writing a low-fantasy book that takes place in a city heavily inspired by 16th century Italian city state republics. So far it's going good, but I've noticed that my prose, dialogue etc is not so different from your average late 20th/21st century fantasy novel (most of them drawing inspiration from a vague Anglo-Saxon understanding of the middle ages)

How do I differentiate my writing from those? I've thought about replacing certain words with Italian derivatives to make the setting seem more unique, but a different Idea I've got is to use proverbs and idioms hailing from other RL countries (with some constraint, as not to make the text too awkward) to paint this fictional culture as unique

One example of this in fantasy is some Dothraki saying that gets repeated in the first 2 ASOIAF books, if anyone can remember that

>>23884745
My point is, I want people who read my story to feel like it's a unique fictional word and not generic european fantasy #282. I don't do much worldbuilding or loredumping so I want to convey that through the language I (or the characters) use in-text

>>23884745
that is a good thing to mark a difference but you have to consider some people may get annoyed or bored by unknown words

>>23883673
Ask your "advanced" AI for ways Lovecraftian horrors visiting earth as tourists could interact with humans. That is, they're not here to kill, feed, enslave, lay waste, etc. but instead just to be tourists.

>>23883671
You think LLMs are only trained on public domain material? What a laugh. They can use copyrighted text for their training, under the Fair Use act of U.S. copyright law. That allows unpaid use of copyrighted work if it's for educational purposes (e.g. to train an AI model) or if the usage is transformative (i.e. the original text can't be reconstructed from the model), among many other reasons. You literally have no idea what you're talking about. Public domain, indeed.

>>23883669
>>23883710
I am not bike-race anon. Even if I was, that doesn't make my points less valid. Incel NEET shutins with room-temperature IQs and second-hand experience with living life are never going to be able to write something of interest to anyone. The inauthenticity of their writing will be obvious to anyone who has actually lived life, and it'll be dropped quickly. But by all means, forge ahead boldly anyway. Just don't be surprised when it amounts to nothing.

>>23883894
>waah waah i really care about the debate here
you need to get a life, even more than the usual tards here

>>23884163
Fuck off, Frank. No one wants to listen to your idiotic schizo ramblings, or associate with you in any way.

>>23884864
that's neat, i was just checking /wg/ for the first time since i last replied to you. we're sync'd

>>23884868
calm down, it was banter

Might be bad timing but are there any avid vn readers here?
>>>>>visual novels
I know, I know, but I'm genuinely running into some issues as far as my prose goes.

There's a lot of similarities to scriptwriting. Dialogue tags are often times not used at all because you can convey most of the nuances of speech through images and audio. You can tell 100% of the story through dialogue alone, or you could have the raw text be nearly indistinguishable from a traditional novel.
Ultimately, I've come to understand that the pacing of the scene is one of the most important things. There's a visual experience telling the story as well as the text accompanying it. My main issue is not knowing when my scene needs some descriptors, or when I should just keep the wordiness in my pants and let the characters back-and-forth for a while. I'll have a period of time where I think, "hmm, I should take a moment to narrate the look on this character's face in response to something surprising happening," or, "these characters are in an old dusty room, it's been a while since I've described something related to that."
Am I falling into amateur traps? Am I going out of my way to be unnecessarily wordy when images do the job? I can't tell if these breaks are making the experience less or more immersive. This is gonna be hard to answer without some specific examples, but I need to know if I'm alone on this.

>>23884108
This was fantasy, because the author thought some nobody rando with a chicken recipe could somehow overcome all odds and be somebody.

>>23884831
You retard. You goddamned moron. Read my mother fucking post.

I am saying if you ask it to imitate copyrighted style, it will give you generic, stylish BULLSHIT instead. Tell it to write a style that sounds like Faulkner and then again like Dickens—in instruction mode—and it will write exactly the same way. And if you ask why, it tells you why.
I never said a single time it wasn't trained on copyrighted work you illiterate fuckface. Yes, it is trained on copyrighted work but it still refuses to output anything that resembles it because it's fucking retarded, like you.

>>23882015
>>23881943
Pathetic retards

>>23884960
I did read your post. You say the LLM will "refuse to actually use a real style because it doesn't want to get in trouble". You're assigning agency to an AI deep-learning model, but (and I can't believe I have to explain this) it's not alive. And an author's style isn't copyrightable; only the author's actual text is. It should be obvious that you're wrong and ignorant, given how much vulgar language you needed to express what passes for your opinion. Finally, if you don't think LLMs can write in particular styles, you need some remedial education. I suggest starting here: https://www.learnprompt.org/writing-styles-for-chat-gpt-prompts/

>>23884898
don't describe shit, trust the format

>>23884905
is that seriously what the book is about? a chinaman starting a restaurant selling chicken?

I'm trying to write for a novel competition, but what they want from me is a novel for 14-18 year olds. That's the hardest age group to write to. I have ideas for all sorts of other genres, but at such a limitation, I am drawing a blank.

>>23885033
what would you write otherwise?

>>23885033
YA is the easiest audience to write to lol. You can tackle dark subjects, just not with too much explicit detail and too much nuance (which is the hard part of dealing with complex dark subjects lmao). At the same time you don't have to censor -everything-, like gore and rape and so on, because it's not elementary or middle grade.

you're probably under the misunderstanding that YA can't have topics like rape, murder, slavery, etc. Most YA books do. Just don't have explicit sex scenes or anything too morally abhorrent

>>23885004
I don't think he starts a restaurant; I think he tries to sell the recipe to a restaurant. Never mind that recipes can't even be copyrighted. The story (IIRC) is about a Chinaman immigrating to the U.S. way after the Gold Rush has receded & somehow expecting there to be Gold Rush jobs. Someone who actually read the book (instead of giving up in boredom after a few dozen pages, like me) should probably improve on my terrible description.

>>23885033
What, you don't remember being that age?

>>23885039
Crime thrillers, sci-fi, such stuff. But not with 16 year old leads.
>>23885045
No I know that YA novels can be up to exploitation level violent/sexual. That's not the problem. Problem is that I have a hard time writing a serious story, with a school kid as a lead. Especially one that the judges in my boring ass country, would even consider believable. All the YA novels I read were some wishy washy, playing it safe, romance drama bullshit, with a lot of boring filler, idiotic plot points, or unimaginative resolutions.
>>23885050
That was a while ago, and nothing noteworthy ever happened. You did your homework, hit up the boys, and then just walked around town, talking about nonsense. Rinse and repeat for 4 years. And I don't even know what this modern generation is doing.

The main issue is, that I could write about youth, but like people in their mid 20's. You know, when the problems get real. 11th grade mfs have what, parties, break ups and exams coming up? Kinda hard to relate to any of that anymore, being close to 30.

>>23885047
He does neither. He immigrates, works in a coal mine, starts a chicken ranch with two other guys, then gets his ass kicked over and over again. Eventually the San Francisco Fires and Riots destroys his ranch and his friend dies. Then it time skips when he and his friend lives a simple Jeffersonian American dream with a wife, kids, and farm house.

>>23885063
>11th grade mfs
Ugh. Start with those people, and put them into a completely different situation, like Hunger Games did, or Harry Potter. Are you really this lacking in imagination? Are you sure you belong in a writers' forum?
>being close to 30
Consider what Veronica Roth did with "Chosen Ones"; that was a YA-like book featuring characters in their 30s.

>>23885063
>11th grade mfs have what, parties, break ups and exams coming up?
Or abusive parents, living in war zones, extreme poverty, and many other more serious issues that are worth reading about and would still qualify as YA, with the right framing. YA doesn't mean you can't write about interesting issues lol. How To Kill A Mockingbird is YA, as is a lot of famous literature

>>23885079
I remember seeing the chicken-recipe scene posted a few times; maybe it never made it into the final text.

>>23883846
>>23884249
I think I have logarrhea. I turd out words profusely.

>>23884803
>some people have never heard of a dictionary

>>23884873
lol. Is there a frank in the room with us right now?

>>23885084
there is a chicken cooking scene. But it didn't matter at all. the scene just sets up a American history tidbit about Americans not eating chicken until World War II (i also found it fascinating that it was true), and introducing the female character that tries to take advantage of immigrants by offering them shit wages and cooking for them as per the times (hence all the chinese food shitslop in San Francisco that gets developed).

>>23885081
I think the absolute lack of imagination on the part of the winners of previous contests, has poisoned my entire view on it. All of those winners played it safe. School settings, in out own country, possibly written off of their own youth, and what's more, 99% of the writers were women. And nobody took any risks. Which makes me wonder. Were all manuscripts that got sent in, that bland and safe, or do the judges pick the safest ones to publish?
>>23885083
Well, I will try something like that, but I hope the judges see it that way. Especially when words like "believable" have been thrown around in their articles about previous contests.

>>23885108
>Especially when words like "believable" have been thrown around in their articles about previous contests.
Without knowing anything about these judges, I empathize with them. I've read some amateur stories and they tend to be horrible in that regard. Nonsensical plots, characters behaving like aliens, so on. Even in fantasy settings, the stories seem completely unbelievable--they just don't flow logically

>>23881868
Are there any goood exercises on plotting (preferably isolated from other aspects of writing)? I feel that I spend too much time on that and results are not to my satisfaction.

>>23885108
>99% of the writers were women. And nobody took any risks
Welcome to the current state of published fiction
Just self publish. at least it's a meritocracy

>>23885121
Hard to make a judgement either way, without having seen all the rejected stuff.
>>23885125
The 3500 prize and getting published on their dime, sounds like too good of a thing to pass up. That being said, there have been historical fiction and crime novel contests earlier, so I can always wait for something more up my alley.

>>23885094
I sure hope not. His shill-spamming and same-fagging got mass-deleted in the previous thread. Hopefully he's sleeping off a ban.

>>23885033
write it like a normal book and take out all the no no words

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIja8bBBRjM

d0 y0u f17 41l 7h3 r3qu143m3n75?

>>23885376
why did you write in 1337speak? what year is this

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bukowski was so wrong; I'm doing it bc I can't help myself because I want a very specific woman in my bed (and my life generally... imagine if she held me, relied on me, trusted me... )

>>23885396
7w3VV7y 7w3VV7y f04r

>>23885396
>what year is this
1993-09

What makes english professors forgive me for being short on word count?

>>23885376
Challenge: Watch her videos without imagining her sucking your cock.

>>23885452
>What makes english professors forgive me for being short on word count?
An argument with evidence of sufficiently high quality to exemplify the summary debate at word count.

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>>23885473

>>23882234
Publish under a pseudonym and practice opsec, if nobody can tie your book to you then if it's bad you won't get your name stuck on it. If it's successful then you can drop the act.

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Had a dispute recently and I remember hearing wildly different numbers, so I wanted to ask:
What's the max word count on a "short story"? One pal said it goes up to 15k, some online source says 7.5k, another says 10k, then others insist it varies too much on language (although I doubt that thr english-german difference this is about is too great).

>>23885473
>different font sizes
Disgusting. Nobody wants this on their shelf, not even for aesthetic reasons.

>>23884845
>>23885247
Such a fine day today.

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Grammerly fucking sucks man, everything it corrects is wrong anyway and it has some weird obsession with semicolons

>>23886462
I once tested it because everyone kept recommending it to me and it corrected all my stylistic choices and archaic language I was flirting with. it also fucking sucks for poems.
When I was still doing webnovels, I had a guy who commented on EVEY SINGLE CHAPTER with the entire chapter "corrected" and it was so obviously grammarly. I called him out in a few posts and he stopped.
It's a tool for foreigners and "creole speakers" to apply for jobs.
I'm a foreigner too, btw.

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In return, Aeolus (replies) these (things):
'Tis your task, oh (topmost) queen, to test(--detangle--)what you (truly) tickle (for); the duty's mine(--due me--)to dispatch (your) mandated-/dictated-things.
Whatever this of a (weather-)world (is), YOU (whipped out) for me,
Saturn's-son and (his) (bident-)scepter(-o'-BDE), YOU bring over (for me),
(the feeling) to fall(-flat-on-my-ass) at the (greater) gods' feasts, (uh,) YOU grant (to me),
potentate (of the pneumatisphere--)of the silver-linings and of the squalls, YOU(--yes, you--)secure (me)(, so thnx 4 that, btw).

Who cares if you can write good if Trump gets re-elected he’ll ban any book that isn’t the Bible and forbid letting women, black, and brown learn to read anyway

>>23886525
wtf based

>>23886525
>forbid letting women, black, and brown learn to read anyway
why would you need to forbid it? they already can't read. when women read those romance novels they skip everything but the dialogue (which they can read because it's like text messages)

>>23886499
Im obligated to spend time on linkedin everyday for my job and it's become almost comical how much communication is just AI to AI now.

Every corporate "leader" posts using chat GPT (it's hilariously obvious because chatGPT has such a specific style) and then people reply with linkedins embedded AI suggestions

How much do you address shitting in your writing? Your characters DO have to piss and shit, right? Kind of unrealistic not to describe these things.

Has anyone here found Stephin King's On Writing a good writing tool?

>>23886691
I make sure the characters are never more than 6 days away from any bathroom.

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>Brandon Sanderson once did 19k words in a day
What? How? Literally how is that even possible?

>>23881868
So I have a prince exiled by his father for marrying a woman out of love, getting her pregnant, and then demanding justice when his older brother smacks her belly in an argument and kills the baby. She's a noblewoman, but not as advantageous for him as the father would've liked, so his father dismisses it as a bastard dying.

After the father dies and the brothers reconcile, what would be a normal way for the mother to interact with the formerly exiled prince's daughter with the woman? They've never met before and she is 10 years old when they meet. The kid is very attached to her father and doesn't like outsiders very much, and she doesn't even recognize who her grandmother is. The grandmother has other grandchildren from her other son's but she's very excited to meet her newest one.

>>23886914
if she raised a son that'd harm a pregnant woman she's probably flawed... cold. maybe?
it'd be neat if she were cold like that, but her actions (and maybe how they are seen by others), clearly demonstrates that she wants the best for the granddaughter

>>23886867
My highest is 10k in a single day. Just have an intense amount of motivation and focus and I could see how the human keyboard could have a 19k day

>>23886691
it's important to plot out their poo and pee schedules and stay on top of it

>>23886867
He's a full-time writer by profession, so he can pour as much time into writing in a day as he'd like. Say he spent 12 hours writing (iirc he wrote for much more than usual to finish a particular section), that's a bit over 1.5k an hour. And considering how much he plans in advance, it's not something that can be considered out of this world for someone to accomplish.

>>23886914
I thought the kid died in the belly.

>>23887009
>Shoes for sale

>>23886867
It's insane but feasible. I've done a 12k day once where I wrote basically the whole day straight, and I didn't have a detailed outline like Sanderson does. I'm pretty sure Sanderson has outlines that basically include half-finished scenes by itself, so it's easy to flesh out. Plus he's been doing this for decades, any skill speeds up as you gain experience

Is there a point where you’re world building too much? How do you know when you’ve hit it?

>>23887009
Second pregnancy

>>23887082
when you start writing scenes with a character and realize you have no idea what a doctor does or acts like and should have been researching that rather than coming up with the design for the medical corp pennants

>On the outside of the base the snow was light and fresh. The soft, pure powder had a dull glow in the moonlight, inviting Bart to take one quick fall into nothing. Yet this was no time to wish for a sweet death. Dying would be great, he had no reservation, but the others were counting on him. His hands were numb, a small sheen of ice forming around his knuckles locked his hands to the wrench as he desperately cranked at the nuts and panel hiding oh so many wires, anyone of which could have been the issue. This door jam wasn't like the ones before. Yes electrical could have failed, or possibly a chunk of debris could have been blocking a piston, or worst case a gear could have broken. Forward. He had to look forward. As the final nut came loose, Bart heard the scraping sound of metal on thin plastic. He took a breath, shivered, and cracked the panel out of its icy seat.

I really don't like my prose, but I'm thinking it might be like a "I hate my voice on recorder" kind of thing. Would you keep reading?

>>23887082
I think you need to stop the moment when you understand what story you wants to tell. For me at least, I started with worldbuilding out of a little flash of inspiration, but I didn't actually have a story in mind. I was just writing notes and fake quotes to get a general idea of the world. Once I had that, I probably should've stopped, but I kept going for a couple more months, until I started adding notes on european geopolitical situation in the 19th century and how it would diverge from now on. Is it something that could be used in a story? Sure. But is it something that you need to iron out right now before thinking about the actual plot and the characters? Probably not. If your plot is properly thought out you will find way to enhance its value afterward by adding judicious bits of worldbuilding, while too much worldbuilding can get you stuck and make you lose sight of the goal.

>>23887174
probably not. My advice: try writing a few sentences where the subject is all the way at the end.

>>23887209
>I always hated looking at the inside of my bedroom door. The fake looking wood and cheap knob were the gatekeepers to my life. They were like reminders, always saying no to my hopes and dreams. I'd been punished more times than I could count in this room. To be told I wasn't allowed in the outside world. Like I was an animal. Like I wasn't smart enough to take care of myself. I'd offended someone or I'd been too sharp with my tongue, all of it was pure shit. I never did anything to warrant this isolation. Yet, all I had was myself and a bucket of cheap Christmas toys from when I was a baby. My favorite pastimes were also refused, on the basis that I lacked temperament. I would have to earn television and a laptop with whatever they thought counted as respect in their eyes. I needed to get out, but I wasn't going to get far, considering the new locks on my window. I could break through the last one just fine, but I didn't have the right picks for the current model. I suppose this is my life, at least for the next two years until I go off to college. What will they do to me then? Too far away for the standard lectures...

??

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>have to rely on immediate advice from ai because I'm not trying to do spelling and grammatical fixes just yet
Pain....

>>23887378
Here's an extreme example from Thomas Mann:
>One part of the eternal monotony of time's rhythm, of the diverting, standard segmentation of the normal day, which was always the same, to the point where each day was so confusingly like, so identical with, the next that it could be taken for it, a fixed eternity that made it hard to understand how time could ever bring forth changes—one part of the undeviating schedule (as our readers will recall) was that Dr. Krokowski made his rounds every day between half past three and four o'clock, moving from room to room, or rather balcony to balcony, lounge chair to lounge chair.
obviously I don't suggest you do exactly this (it's written this way for a specific effect), but take a look at how a sentence feels when it is balanced heavily to the left of the main clause ("Dr. Krokowski made his rounds"). In your prose, the main clause is nearly always the first thing presented by your sentence.

>>23887542
>I always hated looking at the inside of my bedroom door. Rough, unapologetic gatekeepers to my life, the tan wood of the door and unpolished brass knob haunted me. I wasn't allowed to have hopes and dreams and these barriers were ever present reminders. Punishment came and went and came again in a vicious cycle, all tied supernaturally to this one room. I'd been told I wasn't allowed in the outside world. Told I was no more than an animal. How to learn exactly what was needed from this side of the fence? I clearly wasn't smart enough. Sharp and bitter remarks would drive me further from the sun, and I hold that I never did anything to warrant this isolation. Yet, time, silence, and an old collection of toys from when I was a child were all I had to entertain myself. I lacked the temperament and respect needed for the television or god forbid the computer. Respect had to be earned, something that only a full reversal of my personality would reward me. Windows blocked, new fangled locks to dissuade my picks, I had to get out, but fresh ideas ironically escaped me. I would watch the stars as they began to dot the sky, adding to the evidence I was wasting my life in here. Yet this was my life, no need to over think my situation, at least until I left for college. Then? I'd be far too far away for their standard lectures and disappointed looks...
Kind of preachy, forgive me. I just wanted to try on my previous example. It's not the prettiest thing, but I think I at least took a step towards what you'd described.

>>23887640
yeah way better

>>23887174
>The snow, fresh from the night before, rested peacefully on the arctic base. It beckoned to Bart, the soft, pure nature, begging him to finally succumb and rest forever. Yet the sweet death had to be denied. With the others counting on him, as their last hope, he had to deny himself the urge. Hands numb, a small sheen of ice forming around his knuckles, and the wrench frozen to his fingers, he desperately cranked at the nuts and panel hiding oh so many wires, any one of which could have been the issue. This door jamb wasn't like the ones before. Broken gears, faulty wires, or maybe debris, he had no way of knowing what the problem was. Forward. He had to look forward. There was a scraping of metal on plastic as the cover came loose. He took a breath, shivered, and cracked the panel out of its icy seat.
Did the same thing to this one. Looks a bit better.

What's the hackiest thing you've ever put into your writing? As a clueless teenager, I had a character read Poe's The Raven to piggyback off its tone and imagery. I also used to adapt song lyrics into the narrative.

>>23882465
I ask it how one would go about buying a gun in California or other nuts and bolts stuff I may happen to need for a story.

>>23886691
Every new chapter should start with the character waking up and taking a good shit. Just get it out of the way like that and you don't have to worry about it. For the pissing, just do it every time they have lunch or dinner.

>>23886691
Realism is perhaps the worst false idol in fiction, especially literature.

>>23882465
I refuse to touch it again because I know it'll make me lazy and crappy. That outcome will be inevitable for me.

>I just use it to help with skills or knowledge that I have very little understanding of like social conventions.
It sounds like its made you lazy and crappy. Why even write at all, if you're not going to write?

>>23882465
I've been actively using it for this draft so far mainly to see how it would continue the story and compare it to what I have in mind and using fragments rewritten in my own voice and style if there are excerpts I found particularly interesting. I sometimes ask it for critique stressing that it ignore spelling and grammatical errors because I'm more concerned with the story right now and it usually gives me some pointers as vague as they are sometimes. I'm been feeling eager to post it here but I'm not feeling a more in-depth proofread so far and I know people would get too hung-strung over the numerous errors.

Has anyone watched any of those "Make your novel!", "How to write your first book", "Everyone has a book inside", etc. tutorials?

>>23888189
No, those people are grifters

>>23886867
>19k words in a day
>50 of them were good

>>23886732
I liked it

>>23886525
He didn't do anything like that the last time he was President, and he's not going to if he gets re-elected. Stop hyperventilating already. And while you're at it, take your spastic whining to /pol/

>>23888331
Kek

Video advice on writing sucks so bad. The only stuff I've watched that felt like it helped was Localscriptman in particular. It makes a lot of sense that the best visual art advice will be in a visual form while the best writing advice will be in written form though. If you want to write good, read good. Mostly fiction books and some craft books as well.

>>23888189
I was writing before any of those people was born.

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I have to write this scene where my MC arrives at the palace and it's supposed to be this grand event where the next half of the story will take place so I want to be epic but I just don't give one half of a fuck of a rat's ass about architecture or describing it and just want to hurry and get inside where the conversation starts.

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>>23888975
Make him arrives at night then

>>23888975
outsource your descriptions to someone with the 'tism

>>23888450
no one wants to give the good stuff. i have some secret writing tips that are going to make me rich

>>23888972
And you still have nothing to show for it?
>hurr durr duration of chair warming
loser

>>23888975
Then skip that part for now and come back to it later. Why do you think you have to write your story in the order it happens?

>>23888975
You don't have to use explicit detail. If you do enough research to know what period of architecture it belongs to (gothic, rococo, neoclassical, etc) you can call it that and people who know will know. A lavish drawing room in a baroque french palace evokes a pretty definite image even for people who don't know exactly what defines baroque and would be bored if you described it. Going any less explicit than that would start to be indistinct. A lot depends too on character voice. If he's some rube, using your own layman's terms is appropriate.

I think literature is very weird a craft. There's all this advice on what to do, and some people try to push their way as the only way to do things. I just need techniques and strategies that work, not the only way that works, but just one that works well. I have big plans and want to make a story one day but I have to have a good grasp on craft and practice a lot before I can do my best on it.

There's no secret tips or tricks. Still, there's technique, there's craft, there's certain rules to it as there are with all art forms. What I'm looking for is not a quick easy fix, but rather, a set of guidelines to work within and follow so I at least know what to do. Actionable advice.

>>23881967
nigga I didn't even start

>>23881967
Actually quite good

>>23889719
Have you tried the HOWTO pastebin in the OP?

>>23889719
Like anything else, advice is useless to you if you lack the baseline understanding to parse and interpret it. I could give you a lot of tips on how to cook eggs, but it wouldn't do you much good without the fundamental knowledge and intuition that you only really get from experience, and my advice could be terrible for all you know, or be geared to how I like my eggs and not how you like yours. Advice and critique can only be engaged with skeptically.

>>23889586
Do these jewtubers pay you to fight anonymously in their honor?
>loser

>>23889077
Immaculate. The perfect thing to read just after waking up.
And even though I said immaculate, I'm gonna give a few notes:
Maybe toss a "However" before "This charm did not deflect the curses..." because this is really where the everything turns.
And perhaps stick a present participle next to "caster's" (like "maligning", for example) to really seal the deal on the vividness, priming the reader for the "winding and winding, seeking" that is the result.
Lastly, "You see, the story weaves..." was a little too much at once given the atmosphere of everything that came before--a second-person "You" plus a metareference to this all being a "story". It doubly distances us the readers from the events taking place.
If you keep the (You), maybe use a more ambiguously-related term for a story than "story" because in addition to the narrator's tale, a "story" is what you've written one layer up and the reader gets preoccupied thinking about the story you've written vs. the story-story the narrator is relaying. Also, the way the narrator is relating this tale it seems more like a "legend" or a "myth" than a story.
But if you get rid of the (You), I think "story" could actually slide without being changed at all. It's just that reading (You) perks the reader up into being more meta-aware, allowing everything I just said above to trigger.
That's it for word-by-word criticism, but there is one story-detail I'm curious about (not a problem, just a curiosity): Why is it that you use gendered "legacy" in "son"? If one of the maligning casters had a daughter, would she not be cursed or something? The MC is a female, and has become incredibly badass and powerful, so women can become movers in this world. Or is this a patriarchial world of male-exclusive primogeniture or something where your heroine is the outlier, so that it wouldn't make sense to curse female offspring? Idk, this "son" detail was, like, the only one hinting at the broader cultural context the characters are living in; if thinking about it like this is not something you intend, maybe use "son or daughter" or just bare "legacy".
That's a lot I wrote after saying immaculate, but I only did so because I enjoyed what you wrote and how you wrote it sooo much. :)

>>23888975
Is that Versailles? Words could never describe how perfect that palace is. Every inch is better than the last. Been there several times and every time I love it more than before.

>>23890052
Based. I love that place, too. The gardens are just as good as the house itself, and absurdly huge. You can spend hours and hours wandering them.

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>>23890062
I have always been a fan of the Trianon and the little village by the lake. Good to see fellow anons of culture still around

>>23889858
This

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When these ("wuv-yous") were verbalized, with an upside-downed dagger(ed)-scepter, he push-plunged into the "missing-inside"-mountain side:
And, as if with (it all) composed into a (marshalled-)company-line, by what method ingress (was) offered, the winds(-inmates) (soldier-)sprint and storm across the (unlucky) lands in a whirl(ing-)wind.
(Then) they sank to sea, and from (its) deepest depths shoveled-out everything, Wind East, & West, & African, and (each) stacked with storms, (all) RUSH simultaneously , and (they) turn titanic tsunamis to the tanning-locales.
Succeeds the sailors' scream and the shrill-shriek of rope(-ripping)s.
Out-of-the-blue the overcasts rip-rob the Trojan's sky(line) and day(light) (away) from (their) (dilating) eyes; dismal darkness squats on the sea.
(Then) the (not-so-blue-)skies boomed, and the (not-so-fair-)air fireworks with (Jove's) juggernautish ignitions, and all(-these-)things intend imminent annihilation to the (not-so-"laeti"-)men.

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>>23889719
The problem with these advice givers is there's no clear logic where they're getting their opinions of "right" and "wrong" writing from. You listen to them, only to see NYT bestsellers and Pulitzer Prize winning authors (Hemingway, for one) did the exact opposite of everything they preach. Not that I think he is a great author (I don't), but it shows it is all just opinion. There are self-published authors right now that are breaking all the "rules" and making a comfy living off it.

Here's one guide I thought was useful, but it's not set in stone.

>>23890561
How is "she shivered" any better than "it's cold" since you're just telling what she did anyway.

>Have a bunch of things happening at once
>No idea on the order I should plan it

>>23890632
Tell it happening multiple times from different perspectives?

>>23890639
I mean, I have no idea on the order it should go in the story.

>>23890643
Srry, I guess just start at the end and work your way back? That, or focus on the main event in the middle(?) and build around it on both ends.
Hey, maybe you could incorporate that confusion of order you're having into the story by making it unclear what exactly happened or in what order and then have the characters try to figure it out after the fact. Would be kinda neat for the narration to reach it's limit that way when it comes to event-overload.

>>23890643
Start with the second coolest one, and end with the most coolest. The rest can be scattered throughout.

>>23881967
the python comp is cool

>>23882465
it seems to write very smoothly but somehow not-good, empty

>>23888975
>don't give one half of a fuck of a rat's ass about architecture or describing it

Neither did Tolstoy.

>>23886867
These people take stimulants. Without drugs, you are good for no more than five hours a day.

>>23890792
I really doubt Brandon Sanderson, the outspoken Mormon, is taking cocaine or other hard drugs to write 20k words of fantasy slop

>>23890792
>Without drugs, you are good for no more than five hours a day.
Cope harder lmao. You're just lazy and unproductive

I try to write a good amount when I'm working on a book, but I'm on disability so I don't have to worry about work or whatever. All I know is that from my perspective, you need to write everyday for hours, but if I had a normal job, I could see that being more difficult. If you can, go blind or whatever, you'll have far more time.
Unironically though, I'm sure writing with a job is a lot tougher. Y'all have my sympathy.

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I have two writing modes and both make me feel like a retard
Mode 1
>write with characters in mind
>have them interact naturally
>dialogue flows along nicely
>sometimes something happens
>mostly nothing happens
>write long-winded dialogue and constant yapping, including over explaining the world and background and giving too much exposition
Mode 2
>layout a meticolous plan of how the story would flow
>have a perfect reason for everything to happen
>have people talk at one point
>dont know what they should talk about to get to the point
>then what?
>have to jam some sudden event in there to drive the plot forward
How do you do these?

>>23891166
idk I just make stuff up
but for real what's actually important is to slop out a first draft no matter how bad and directionless and then build on top of that

>>23891194
I actually did that and still arrived at that phase.

>>23890813
Of anything, those with squeaky clean images are the ones most likely to be into hard drugs and other perversions. Churches around the world are full of abuse scandals.

>>23891166
>>write with characters in mind
>>have them interact naturally
>>dialogue flows along nicely
>>sometimes something happens
>>mostly nothing happens
That's my problem. It just ends up like boring, every day life.

Right now I'm at the point of not knowing whether my story and characters boring and poorly made, or if I'm just bored after having thought about them every day for four months. The work is nowhere near in a completed enough state to get feedback on, either.

>>23891198
then sorry it is merely a symptom of amateurism and an underdeveloped creative instinct
if you are in college, I beg of you to seek out mentors. I terribly regret ignoring all of the available and willing mentors I had when I was still in school.
otherwise it is the brutal path of solitary mediocrity until you have refined your artistic senses to the point of public consumption or you have given up

>>23882465
just because it carries the signifier of objectivity it doesn't mean it is.

>>23890582
This is why you fail.

>>23891366
I don't fail because I don't use simple and cliche phrases like "she shivered"

>>23891417
>I don't fail because I don't use simple and cliche phrases like "she shivered"
I don't think anyone is denying how cliché "she shivered" is, but it is much less cliché than "it's cold".
I take that back. If you're going for a detatched, aloof, matter-of-fact narration, "it's cold" actually comes off as pretty chilling, leaving it up to the reader to imagine how the character would react to such environs i.e. "she shivered".
This is why I'm not a fan of tutorial.jpgs because depending on what you're writing they can actually be harmful to a nonstandard tone and/or mood.

How are my fellow Royal Retards doing this fine evening? Any releases coming up?

>>23891467
I wrote out some 2k words last night but after thinking about it today I think I need to cut out nearly all of it. It kills me I should've just kept on writing past that scene but I got so caught up rewriting the first 2 chapters and it's demotivating after the fact.

>>23891240
I think my (and maybe your) problem is that I only really move the plot forward by either making my characters act on their characteristics in serious and dedicated manners, doing more than I would have done, or if their surroundings act upon them in extreme manners (extreme being subjective here). So maybe I need to have them do the former more often or have the latter happen more often.

>>23889858
>waah waah it must be a CONSPIRACEEEEE
>it must be DA JEWZZZZZZ!!!1!
such a sad little anon

>>23891240
Have you led an interesting life? Or are you just an incel NEET shutin with a room-temperature IQ? If it's the latter, why are you surprised that your prose ends up being boring?

>>23891537
What is his prose? Has he posted any sample of it?

>>23891537
>he doesnt know

>>23886867
He must have been cooking ideas the days before.

>>23882015
>>23883464
>>23883492
>>23883610
>>23884864
>>23891537
>incel NEET
Why does this tranny project so much? go back.

>>23891606
>everyone that says "incel NEET shutin" is the same anon
>hurr durr i can use ctrl-f

/wg/: 1% Writing; 99% Old Chestnuts
Please stop.

How would you present racism such that some libtard wouldn’t go “clearly this is about black people”?

>>23891655
They will always see everything that way, there is no helping it. Even if the person is Asian, it won't make a difference. Their entire world view revolves around "POCs."

>>23891240
>boring and poorly made,
If you are bored, imagine what it's like for the reader. A story isn't just characters interacting naturally and dialogue flowing, it's something happening. If "mostly nothing happens" then you have a serious problem to deal with.

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>>23891655
make them albinos? they've been pretty heavily discriminated against, historically

>>23891635
>everyone that says "incel NEET shutin" is the same anon
yes

>>23891643
You first

>>23891690
on a site dominated by incel NEET shutins? lmao

>>23891676
In mine stuff is happening, like blowing up monsters, but it still feels too low key compared to movies.

>>23891711
That's the problem with modern audiences. Their minds are warped from years of explosions in movies and video games that anything less they will complain is "boring" and they will leave you a 2 star Amazon review and there's nothing you can do to stop it.

>>23891711
>but it still feels too low key compared to movies.
next time you're watching one of these movies your comparing your work to, turn on descriptive-audio and see if there's anything moment-to-moment you seem to be missing if pacing is your problem.
for big climactic moments like blowing up monsters, i'd go full impressionistic with the sounds and feelings every single second, literally; one boon writing has that most movies don't is the ability to slow down time and have every tiny little action or thought quake larger than life in the climax. whereas in a most films they just fly by (even in slo-mo). i can only think of a few examples of it done well in big cgi fights and whatever.
also, guess you're not really writing a very pro-monster book, anon

>>23891764
Times change. Tastes change. Nothing like Proust's "In Search Of Lost Time" will ever be popular again. Adapt or die.

>>23891797
I will not compromise my integrity to appeal to a generation of brain rot zoomers.

>I could clearly see his fist as it collided with my vomer. It was like being skewered by a lance from my temporal lobe to my occipital pole; producing pain beyond any true description besides the cause of it. My nose erupted in a gout of blood, the sheer amount of which I truly believed impossible up until this very instant.
>In that moment as I stumbled back, turning my head just in time to see him closing in with another hit, I saw his face. Blood, some mine, mostly his, ran down the entirety of his visage like ruined mascara. With every harsh and heavy breath, more of the red liquid flowed from his nose and mouth, staining his pursed lips and grinding teeth a bright red. His vermillion hair stood on end like it could draw blood with just a scrape.
>And then there were his eyes. One was swollen over with inflamed flesh the color of a sweet potato, and blood flowed freely from the crevice. And his other, veiny and reddened, staring directly into my awareness of him. There was nothing behind that eye besides hate

>>23891853
"Adapt or die" was meant to motivate you to adapt, not die. No one will remember you or your work. It'll be as if it never happened.

Next thread >>23891864

>>23891866
Way too early, and terrible OP.

>>23891635
https://warosu.org/lit/?task=search&ghost=false&search_text=incel+NEET+shutin
Literally the exact phrases word for word in the same threads every time.

>>23892035
>it's UUUUUUUU i know it's u because no one can write words they've seen before
is there even a name for your level of stupidity?

>>23891881
It’s LSDfag. Ignore and report him.

>>23892809
Oh, wow, that worked! >>23891864 is dead! It's still too early for a new thread, otherwise I'd make one.

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Two short story excepts. Whatcha think, fellas?

>>23892567
retard

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>>23892844
>Hicks, all around the Northern Block
if Pearl is a "hick" maybe give her a bit more of a dialect than "peeps"?
>"Sadness makes me wanna pain people. Kinda feel th' need for other folks t' hurt same 's I do, or ev'n more."
I might do your second one later, but wasn't really a fan of this one, sorry. I felt it needed one big detail or description or moment to focus on somewhere in the middle instead of people just talking. Even two sentences describing the atmosphere can go a long way, and something more than "It was mid-eve... a cold month..." I wanna see what the character sees, you know?

Anyone here on Substack?

Self publishing is the only way for me, no way any publisher is going to accept my manuscript, not even if i offer them to take only 1% in royalties.

>>23891417
You don't understand "show, don't tell."

>>23893141
You don't need a "newsletter" on Substack. The platform is overrun with normies.

>>23893328
So what

>>23893328
Idk man I'm doing alright looking for freaks on there

>>23893325
i've really come to appreciate the amount of seethe caused by "show, don't tell". and seeing so many anon misinterpret it. it's great

I really want to write fantasy but I suck at it

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>>23892844
Yeah, disliked this one even more, anon, sorry.
No real plot, the characters are thick as a sheet of paper, and the way in which sentences progress makes little sense causaly; if you want to do the impressionistic stream-of-consciousness type of style you're going for you need to attatch details to the events taking place (the smell of the card games, the look in Pearl's eyes when she says they're breaking up), you almost get that with your description of the dandelions and of Frank but it's just not deep enough in detail to make me interested.
Theres probably only a few hundred words here but you have a tendency to repeat words (utter, sad, wont) when you really should be trying for as many unique words as possible, especially if you've only got so few to work with.
Criticisms for the last one apply here too.

>>23893497
Exactly. If an anon calls himself a writer but doesn't understand "show don't tell," he's not really a writer.

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>>23892844
>>23893575
part 2.
my advice is to actually look up the origins of words in the dictionary, understanding what they've been used for in the past: You use the word tenebrous, and it just seems like you wanted a cool-sounding word that means 'dark' or something but it makes no sense in the context you're using it. You could have used the word tenebrous to describe Pearl's disillusionment with Billy-Boy, how she won't divulge what's wrong and keeping it (and by extent Billy) in the obscure darkness.
So yeah, just study and get interested in mechanics of the words themselves and the flow and sense should follow.

Need to plan the final part of the story. I know what happens, but I'm looking at the most optimus prime way to order the scenes around for the best impact.

The added challenge is that I've hardlocked myself into 5 chapters, no more, no less. I'm not too concerned if the last chapters end up longer than average, in my experience people don't really care if a chapter is very long, just if it's very short, but it does gives me a more limited numbers of clean breaks in the narration, though I also use those within a chapter with regular "***"

>>23893614
Optimus Prime? Kek

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>>23893614
>optimus prime

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>>23893614
>the most optimus prime way

its weird now I cant tell if you are making an epic youtuber style pun or just ESL

>>23893770
>its weird now I cant tell if you are making an epic youtuber style pun or just ESL
If it's the latter, their first language would have to be Latin, then.

>>23893770
It was a joke, and I am an ESL but I'm glad it worked.

What happened to that other thread?

>>23893851
deleted because 90% offtopic.
just made this new one:
>>23893852
>>23893852
>>23893852

>>23893851
the 10% that was actually earnest writing stuff i might repost as screenshots later

>>23893855
lol. no it was deleted because OP is a fag who posted too early. eat shit you dumb nigger fuck yourself with a broken bottle

>>23894440
see >>23892809 >>23892813

>>23892991
Thank you for clarifying that the name for your level of stupidity is "retard". That actually explains a lot.

>>23893500
You could always imagine that you don't suck. Poof, you're a fantasy writer! See how easy that was?

>>23894585
You're not helpful

>>23894598
Hey, I'm doing this for free, so don't bust my balls.

>>23894637
I'm not sorry

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

who is LSDfag? how do you know its him?