It's been my dream to be a writerI've written like 20 novels and I can't get a single person to read my shit, I've been indie published, put my shit up for free, I've won contestsnot a dime made,fuck, I don't even care about money anymore I just want some comments, just some fucking validation, fuckI LOVE writing, when I sit down and pound out the pages I feel wholebut no one will even look at my shit!I've tried writing to the audience, I've tried to make my stuff as marketable as possiblebut even if I give it away for free I get a dozen views and no feed back (On royal road right now)What the fuck do I have to do!?It's making me seriously depressed, I work so hard on this shit and I can't get ANYTHINGwhat do I do guys?
Post your shit, I'm curious. Anything short? What genre?Have you tried branching out into fetishis content?
This may be a case of 'project to product' failure. Sounds like you can produce, but a combination of luck, skill, salesmanship or identity politics (straight/white/male) is keeping you out of the club.Any success with collaboration(s)?If you're helping someone realize their vision or adapting an extant story (especially someone who already has a foothold), then that might be a way though...Shit, you could even try being someone else's biographer/ghost writer.Cold comfort: if you do manage to break through, all the old stuff could have some value, so it wouldn't be a total, demoralizing waste.This 'project to product' idea has helped me with my own work, but I've made some other (fateful/foolish) decisions that are whipping my ass right about now
>>24991314https://www.royalroad.com/profile/289754Here you go going to start adding to the lit rpg today as that seems to have at least a little tractionAnd yeah swm so I know I'm at a disadvantage why I'm writing lit rpg the powers that be javent tried to take it yet
>>24991309Share something short, something just for me. I'll connect wires between our brains and cease the crystalline anthem slowly ossifying you into malady. The chorus of our shared screaming will be exquisite, the repugnant pugnacious effervescence of a sparkling water left with lime in the sun to ferment and mold until something entirely new blooms forth from the pulp with an unseen life incapable of difference.You see, I am in the same boat, but rather than going upstairs and upstream, I go down stream and continuously consume and refract until iteration blooms something entirely new, and I'd like to see what a similar mind in a seperate body has done with our shared spare parts.
>>24991513This is your writing, yes? I'm reading some things right now.
>>24991577That's me, op
>>24991607Hmmm. Want my thoughts? I'm the cybernetic weirdo.
>>24991636Want anyone's thoughts
>>24991714Fair. I read the first few chapters of your first thing on that site. Gotta say, you write a metric fuckton. I am the exact opposite, I write short stories for the most part. Lots, but still. Anyways, let's get into it, and as a forward I'm not being a dick, I'm trying to be constructive.First things first, you cannot fit a dimebag of weed in a pen, any pen, unless it's preground garbage that nobody would buy outside of a reputable dispensary, and if you did you certainly wouldn't be able to get it out. A dimebag is roughly an inch and a half square by about a half inch thick for a reasonable .5, a gram is close to an inch, but that's a minor complaint. As I was reading your prose was very YA: clean, competent, but beige. Heavy exposition dump. Very little character. You're telling, you aren't showing, and that doesn't make a compelling narrative. This creates a bit of a gap, who are you writing this for? Seems mostly yourself, and I can tell an editor has never touched this because the structure betrays that a little bit. Toast anime montage, Franz Ferdinand, 2004 car, Welcome to The Jungle. No teenager interacted like that, particularly not a cool one. It reads like this placeless 70's derivative late 2000's pastiche. At that age I was reading Paradise Lost and Fear and Loathing, as was the style at the time, so the target audience actually skews younger by a few years for people who want to read prose like that. 17 or 18 is like Fight Club, this is targeted at like 14, and the tone/content is a bit of a mismatch. As a person who was a teenager at the time everyone was either death metal themed with like Suicide Silence/The Faceless/Lamb of God and fringe bangs, or the rock revival kids were like Queens of the Stone Age and Tool fans. Maybe Primus, but that's nitpicky and stoner themed. This is also the time of nascent 4chan and everyone being able to get basically anything they want online, but it was also when extreme edgelording was cool with like zombies everywhere, affliction shirts, and the last vestiges of lolrandumb humor, with memes starting to bleed into reality, just from a conceptual point of view.Now here's the kicker, during the exposition dump I didn't care about anyone. Nothing happened. The protagonist showed up at breakfast like a good little boy, his parents had some weird sexual tension, and he sold some weed. Fair enough. But it was just... explained. You didn't show the tension, you narrated it. You didn't convey the duality of the situation, you just presented it. The Vincent Vincent thing is neat, but it's just like "here read about this thing I set up in parallel", which is a fine way to do some things, but it isn't overly technical or nuanced. Better story boarding would help out significantly, this reads like you wrote it before you planned out the beats, one chapter at a time. You need to start with a hook. A linear story is fine, but there needs to be something to catch the audience's attention.
>>24991309Just say you're Latino or Native American and voila
>>24991803>>24991714If you want me to read something in particular or you have specific questions, let me know. My advice? It's going to be hard to get someone invested in something like this. I can share my writing to contrast if you'd like, but the main thing is that you could succeed; there just needs to be someone else helping you get your foot in the door first.
>>24991513Do you have any philosophy, ideas that you value a lot and have incorporated into your works? Do you love or hate any of your characters because you have instilled in them so much specific sensibilities that they rise above hollow shells of plot? From a glance your work just looks like description mania
>>24991903>description maniaGreat way to put it.
>>24991803Appreciate you the job books were early in my writing career my problem is since no one fucking reads I don't get needed feedback like thisTry winter hunter or donner and ThaliaAgain preciate you, starting a new book tonight will work harder
>>24991971Here, I have a challenge for you that will help instead of just jumping into a new book. 750 words MAX. Write a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. No exposition dump. Make me feel or think about something specific. Include the following elements: an unexpected surprise, a hidden message, a flawed but likable character, and something using 3 senses in it's description. I can give you theme, style, and technical prompts as well, or specific lines and titles to guide you, but I presume you write quickly. Crank something out and let me see; it'll give me a good assessment of your current chops and I can give more specific feedback.
>>24991309No-one is obliged to read your work. Stop craving validation. Write because you enjoy it, or not at all.
>>24991309>been indie publisheddoes this mean you self-published or you were published by an indie publisher?
>>24991309The 2020s is an attention economy.You need to do everything you can and then some to promote yourself. No other way,
>>24991513I know this sounds dumb as fuck but my first impression was that your covers look shit. Most of them remind me if inherent vice, which triggers me specifically because I hated that book, and the first one is obviously AI generated and thus screams low effort.Since you didn't point anything out, I'll read The Maiden Voyage and tell you what I thinkOh another thing, yeah, your titles could be more original, though IDK how to make them better so this is pretty dogshit advice.
>>24993371Thanks, Maiden Voyage was just a short thrown together for a contest with a prompt for RRI absolutely SUCK at covers, I'm not an artist, like how TF are these other writers getting these amazing covers if they're putting stuff up for free on RR like I am?
it doesnt seem like the worst writing ever but it doesnt really seem worth reading either
in agreement w the othersread more, write less, make art friends
>>24991309>I've written like 20 novels and I can't get a single person to read my shitYour professional network sucks. You need to meet people in the industry who can connect you with those with actual power.
