Punctuation Edition/wg/ AUTHORS & FLASH FICTION: https://pastebin.com/ruwQj7xQRESOURCES & RECOMMENDATIONS: https://pastebin.com/nFxdiQvCPlease limit excerpts to one post.Give advice as much as you receive it to the best of your ability.Discuss the written works below for practice; contribute, and you shall receive.If you have not performed a cursory proofread, do not expect to be treated kindly. Edit your work for spelling and grammar before posting.Shitposters should be ignored and reported.>Beginner guides on writing:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHdzv1NfZRM [Embed] [Open]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whPnobbck9s [Embed] [Open]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAKcbvioxFk [Embed] [Open]>Intermediate guides on writing:https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48654.Storyhttps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3097766-borges-on-writinghttps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23056.Image_Music_Text>Advanced guide on writing:Just do it.>Previous volume:>>25175062
Threads reminder to please refrain from posting genreslop in this thread. That’s what /wng/ is for. This thread is for the discussion of serious literary writing.
>>25192522What if it's not a web novel though? Just a short story?
>>25192522>serious literary writing
>>25192522>serious literary writingSo go on then. Share some of your serious literary writing.
>>25192522This except only ironically
Yeah I'm pretty uhh literate
>The first person to ever tell Timmy he had a big cock was his sister. How's my serious literary writing?
My writing is serious shit, your writing is seriously shit
Now that I'm unemployed, I need to rearrange my desk since I don't have a work laptop anymore. Once that's done, then I can finally start writing
>>25192522What counts as genreslop?My newest project is about Catholic vampires but it's totally literary, I promise.
Finished my short, now I need to think of another story so I can keep writing every day. Any tips?
>>25192572serious craft, not serious content.
Would you continue reading?
>>25193614I dig it, though the male perspective seems to fall off quickly rather than be properly integrated. More of a back and forth between the perspectives might be better.
I am opening my story with a quote.
>>25193614Started really interesting than you made some phrase choices that confused me. Then the male POV disappeared. This is good but you need to set down some rules and I guess, try not too hard with the prose. First rule of prose: meaning needs to be clear. "[...]widened eyes filled the hole in which he hid himself." What does this even mean? Are you saying she is seeing him and she has big eyes? There a better ways to say a woman has doe eyes.
>>25193362Thanks... I guess
Finally gave up on getting the novel I wrote published. Queried about 50 agents, got 3 requests for fulls, and 2 said it was too weird. The last one sent a polite "not for me" email with no feedback, which I assume is also code for "too weird."It's lit fic too, so I hoped that agents would be more willing to take a chance on something with an unusual structure/form than if it was genre fiction. Ah, well.
>>25195062What's it about?
>>25195062Might as well post an excerpt here.
>>25195086Not going to give you the full cover letter, but basically a metafictional retelling of the Inferno set in a rundown boardwalk town in bumfuck New Jersey. Each chapter corresponds to one of the 34 cantos. The narrator is a self-described misanthropic, failed writer trying to make sense of her life after the recent death of her muse. She drunkenly stumbles into the hereafter, and is guided through encounters with ghosts from her past by a Falstaffian ex who is utterly unconcerned by his own death. Believing that her way out of the afterlife is dependent on undergoing meaningful self-discovery, the form of the novel grows increasingly experimental as she becomes more ambitious and desperate in turn. This includes weird formal games, like a chapter comprised of interlinked obituaries, a chapter narrated by a different voice entirely after the narrator attempts to drown herself back to life, a series of chapters styled as pastiches of famous novels that invert the content of the original, a terza rima chapter where she meets the author, a fully-formatted legal brief arguing for custody of the novel, etc. I referenced most of the weird stuff in the cover letter and synopsis because I didn't want an agent to think that it was one of those "girlboss narrators who behave badly while making smarmy social commentary" books, ask for more pages, and then get totally blindsided by the more eccentric material. My hope while writing it was that the reader would feel that the narrator was pathetic or sympathetic in one chapter and loathe her in the next. >>25195096Here's the first page. I think it's 3 strikes and I'm out for me with queries, so I suppose it's nice to get any other set of eyes on it.
>>25195217Really like it, consider self publishing if you can't find a publisher
>hmm told I will...>start another sexy story that will never see the light of day except in Literotica
>>25195217This sounds really fancy and sophisticated. Is it your first book? It sounds really hard to sell as a first book. I might be completely mistaken, but I'd guess to publish this you would need to have some reputation and great prose to carry it.
>>25195385where else would a sexy story see light?
>>25195450Where indeed.
>>25195217Genuinely interested in this. Like the others have said, this is indeed “too weird” as a first attempt to find an agent. How have you been querying? Are you looking specifically for more literary focused presses or just kinda casting a wide net?
>>25181949>>25182022Thanks anon. I'm a thread late but hopefully you can give me some feedback. I can post the rest of the excerpt as well, as it was only half. What about it made you like it and keep reading? I'm just curious as to what it evokes in you so I know what's "working", so to speak. >>25182024To put it bluntly the character is suffering a bad fever and is hallucinating so it doesn't mean much by itself. But my intention was to make it so that the character feels like the stars are mocking his suffering. For reference, here's the excerpt:>>25181765
Actually, let me just post them back to back:Under those cold stars that laughed, light years away in indifference, Joam shivered down to his very bones, lying on the damp deck of his ramshackle ship. Cold sweat ran down his body and fire down his insides. He had thrown up more than enough that night, and the boat rocked sickeningly under him. The smell of the sea, once comforting to him, now gagged him like an apple stuck in his throat. Pain was on his fingers like they were hogtied— and all this, with the musk of the boat’s floorboards made him close to fainting. A convulsion went through him at the as something sang far away in the horizon. They sang:“Red sky night, sailor’s delight! Red in the morning, sailor’s warning! Italy’s there at midlight! Jas up file an’ vorin!” And there were drums and flutes and strings accompanying this across the ocean air. Joam mumbled something. “Quiet, now,” Areia said, taking a cloth she had cut and dabbed at Joam’s forehead, “Try and rest.” “Tell them to stop singing,” Joam said, shaking like a leaf in a windstorm, “Tell them… Tell them that I do not want to listen.” He swallowed bile and dared to open his burning eyes towards the burning sky, “Let me sleep.” “Shh,” Areia said, her eyes shining in the moonlight and her braid over her shoulder, “You’ll sleep soon enough. Quiet. I’ll fetch you a blanket.” In the sky there were things that moved around like serpents that painted a vast, dark canvas. Things—not men—were riding those paint-snakes made of color and ink; songs came from them, as well, much more faraway and unearthly.A soft rain now came (it had to be rain, though, the drops were hot!) and through the rain came stories and in the raindrops, figures formed and told stories of an angel that was not humane. That a curse had to be given to someone else and if this were to happen, Joam would have to call out so that the curse could be cast out far away. (1/2)
>>25195544Take this, he begged in his fractured mind, Take this far, far away. He called out. Areia whispered. Joam closed his eyes for a long time, whispering to himself, not knowing whether to wish for an end to this or for the ship to sink with him. Either way: what would be left of him afterwards? “I’m hot…” Joam said, voice thin as a breeze. Then he began to toss and turn. He whimpered, to which Areia said, “Hush. Let’s get you some air, yes? Get you some air. We’re getting closer to Italy, Joam. Come on.” She began to take his shirt off, and it came off easily. His body was slick with sweat and yet the night’s cool air did little to relieve him. His chest heaved up and down just as thoughts began to flood his mind. What a broken, wretched, broken thing he was. Would his people back home come for him, save him in this pitiful state? He had never been this sick away from Porto. This brought a flood of tears and in a moment of clarity that seemed only to come from God, he caught Areia staring straight into his eyes, just as she reached for his breeches and he caught her hand. Her milky white hand—now scarcely tanned by their time under many suns—even in his distant state of mind and spirit felt warm and soft under his own fingers. Whether her eyes were welling up or not was a mystery to him, as he could not tell from the tears in his. “Don’t look at me…” Joam said, bowing his head in shame, “Don’t look at me, please. Look at the ocean.” Then he cried deeply, but quietly to himself, so that Areia could not see him. All the while, the boat rocked and Areia sat back, not touching any of his clothes but occasionally dabbing at Joam’s exposed body-soul. The dawn came and the bell tolled from Marseille’s coast. (2/2)
>>25195394You would be correct that it's my first novel, and correct that I would almost certainly need a reputation to get it agented (I have academic/non-fiction writing that's been published, but no MFA and no fiction)>>25195512Only agents that explicitly mention literary fiction on their profiles, and from that list only agents who mention any of: experimental fiction, unusual structures/genre-bending, magical realism, retellings of classics, unreliable narrators, boundary pushing, etc. I didn't waste my time with agents who primarily do genre fiction/book club or even upmarket fiction. The letter is, I think, good at conveying what the novel is trying to do in one page (including genre, length, and comp titles), and it's structured according to the industry standard. In any event, glad to hear that there were some anons who thought the idea was interesting.I've been tinkering with a novelistic fairy tale that upends the typical "rebellion against society is the only way to grow up/your entire world was a dystopian lie" trend in fiction for children and teenagers. Might see if I can get to finishing that and circle back to this
Please rate my prose. This is my first attempt at creative writing and I am trying to improve.
Hey guys, I mostly write at my PC at home but I have a lot of downtime at work. What is something smaller than a laptop and with actual keys i could use to write with while at work? Are any of the portable word processors worth it? Thank you!
>>25195745get a keyboard that can connect to your phone
>>25195773>>25195745This. Highly recommend it anon. I finished about 90% of my third novel during a security guard job that had a lot of down time.
Yes, I'm done now. I was never going to become the next Faulkner, the next Nabokov or the next Joyce, but I hid behind the language barrier to avoid criticism for months, maintaining an illusion that was fun to live in while it lasted. I had thought my country's education system was topmost in the world, but this turned out to be utter bollocks. A child of 18, a person ten years my junior, has a greater vocabulary than I, who had to look up the word “topiary”, and no one likes the expression theory of art anymore, I am likened to a long lost dinosaur.This will be my final post on /lit/. I've been humiliated and exposed as a fraud. My writing is pretentious, infantile, banal drivel. My observations are dull, my language grade school level. My tenses are mixed up; I use colloquialisms, ellipses and onomatopoeia. I mix tired and trite idioms together to obfuscate their unoriginality with a veneer of irony; I have continued to recite ornate Jewish chimpanzee parables with diminishing returns. The parable seemed very clearly to me to be asking me whether or not the now-grown-adult can choose. I say yes, of course, but that's not my issue.I was never cut out for writing. I began writing my "book" on January 6th. Since then I've produced 82 thousand words for it. These words are a tide of garbage without value, without insight, without form. The themes of time, space, infinity, memory and pointless duelling are not present in my work. It was never real writing, it was anime and weebshit. Look how many words I wrote, because apparently literature is bodybuilding and just aimlessly typing will somehow improve my writing. I don't even know what genre it is that I'm writing. Is it autofiction? A comedy? A picaresque?Regardless, I have failed. I have put down my pen. Never again will my fingers click-clack across the keyboard. No more outlines, no more characters. Goodbye
>>25192697How do you sculpt a character out of a block of stone? Working on my first short story and this seems to be what I'm struggling with most of all which sometimes cascades down into my dialogue as well.
>>25196035Meant for OP sorry anon >>25192481
>>25196033This was compelling and fun to read.Mediocrity is relatable. Genius does not sell, heart does. Who likes a showoff with nothing to share but their brilliance? No one. We like a brother in arms who opens its heart. Don't give up, anon.
>>25196051Not to say your writing is mediocre, but the sensation of being mediocre is shared by most.Isn't Nabokov a bit insufferable? He continues to show off his mastery of english in an arrogant manner. We can only find him bearable when he confesses his sins or shows his loathsomeness in a fictitious persona.
>>25196035Well since you replied to me:All my characters are basically some combination of a projection of my own issues and blatant ripoffs of people I know or knew in real life. Makes it very easy to write my lead characters because on some level all of them are literally me.
in theory, couldn't you ask AI to point out plot holes in your book? and you could feed it your book by pasting it all in a pastebin alternative and giving the link to the AI
>>25196294yes and nocurrent models can only "memorize" 1million tokens but you have to consider that "finding plotholes" takes an immense computing power or reading/re-reading/"thinking"/contextualizing etc. which will go way over that limit (which also costs you money)most commercial models will just make shit up instead to speed the process upyou would need to set up your own AI workflow through apps like n9n but at that point just pay some random beta-reader
>>25196033This motivated me to start writing again. Thanks, anon.
I'm writing a fantasy setting that's fairly clearly based on Renaissance-era Benelux. Here are the names I came up with after a while.>nation namesCuurhofen (Netherlands equivalent), Selraed (Belgium equivalent)>protagonist namesBram, Kamiel, Jette, Rens>antagonist namesAlbrecht, SanderI hope they're fitting and not obnoxious.
Does anyone here actually make money through writing? Like through Patreon or something similar?
>>25196033Post an excerpt.
>>25196407Sound fine to me
>>25196513There's that one guy who wrote that popular time loop trailer trash story on royal road. He posted here a few times.
>>25195649definitely very good, I'd read it.
Is there a reason I shouldn't upload my stuff to everywhere possible?
>>25196622i will steal it
>>25196622ai will steal it
>>25195649All in all it's fine, solid even. Pretty clean reading experience with the prose though that sort of unadorned quality probably fits the type of story you're going for. Some notes from me:>The journalist didn't know he was being followed and even if he did there was nowhere he could run where Wells couldn't find him. The journalist was going to die tonight, as sure as the sun was going to set.I think the first sentence could do with commas or being split up into two sentences here and the second without. Might be a matter of style more than correctness, though.I don't like the start of your paragraphs 2 and 3. People say show don't tell and you should take it with a grain of salt as you should all writing advice, but here specifically I think you can do without the first sentence of both. They may have helped you by being there to organize your thoughts and get the paragraphs out but look at the contents of the paragraph that follow. You could honestly remove them and lose nothing. If you want, change that new first sentence of paragraph two to read "The humid Saigon air had his head in a vise." The part about feeling bogs down the leaner prose and the correct word is 'vise.'>"Not so anymore...insurgents." I get what you're going for here with the short beats but I would still change it from "...River. Mostly civilians," to "River, mostly civilians." Or by using the comma to merge with the following sentence instead. Something about having "mostly civilians" on its own doesn't feel right to me.
>readers reactions to my story according to grammarly: Rich world-building, emotional depth, and inventive speculative elements will captivate sci-fi readers, though some may find the narrative's length and density challenging.>some may find the narrative's length and density challenging.Grammarly AI thinks you guys are retarded.
>>25195385>>25195455Is Literotica not a good place to self-publish?
>>25195592>I've been tinkering with a novelistic fairy tale that upends the typical "rebellion against society is the only way to grow up/your entire world was a dystopian lie" trendI’d also be interested in this, as the novel I’m trying to get agents to back is a fairy tale type of story. It’s a lot more conventional than what you write, though, but it definitely doesn’t play into the “rebel against the big guns maaan” hippie stuff.
>>25196841You can't make money there. You'd need to use it as advertising for your Patreon or whatever.
>>25196612Thank you.>>25196775Thanks for the feedback.
i want someone who isnt an AI to rate a complete plot outline of mine, its around a page of textsomeone volunteering?
>>25196984Yeah sure.
>>25197106Where's the "No chinaman" rule?
>>25197106I will write a novel featuring all 10
>>25197106why is the writer mysterious
>>25197106Umineko breaks all of these and then some.
>>25196844It's still a work in progress. I really like the first line, though: Sophie was climbing a tree when her heart stopped beating. It begins where the Jungle Book ends: our heroine is a teenage girl who has been raised in an idyllic pastoral world by various talking animals without any human presence. The narrator is the sing-songy, occasionally intrusive/opinionated narrator of a book like Peter and Wendy who takes his young readers seriously but who also likes to play games with them and tease them. Sophie's adopted parents realize that, despite their best efforts, she's grown up, and must go on a journey to the depths of the island on which they live to restart her heart, where no animal can go: there is something fundamentally human that is required to undertake the journey through the great oak trees. The book works through Sophie's encounters with different groups of humans who are themselves trapped inside the treeline, scarcely aware of the world outside of the boundary, and slowly reveals how and why the island has become the way it has. Although the world inside the trees is dark and its rules unknown, the people have discovered that, by giving parts of themselves away, they can work magic that makes their lives easier, more pleasant, and that even confers supernatural abilities. These are things like memories, personal attributes, and the things that make us "us." When someone gives up too much, they risk madness or worse. As Sophie progresses towards the center of the island, she discovers that a sorcerer queen has turned the previously idyllic, peaceful land into what it now is, and she sets to toppling her and changing it back, believing her connected to her stopped heart. Occasionally, the narrator departs from his story, and tells an isolated story with a different hero, the young, precocious Ciaran. He does typically heroic, fairy tale things: fights monsters, befriends animals and odd creatures, woos and weds princesses...The two stories are obviously interconnected. My plan is to make it clear to an attentive reader that the two characters are related through their mannerisms before making the definitive reveal that he is her father and the queen her mother late in the book. Again, tentatively, after they have her, Ciaran will suffer a snake bite or similar, something that neither the queen's magic nor his heroic derring-do could have anticipated or prevented. Alone in the wilderness, the animals that grew so close to Ciaran will spirit Sophie away to safety and away from the snake/danger, and the queen, in her grief believing both husband and daughter lost, will perform the magic that bifurcates the island and prevents the escape of any of her subjects from the inner circle. The resolution sees mother and daughter reunited, as she finally processes her grief and undoes the curse.So, it's a book about family, and grief, and living with both. very much a WIP.
>>25197138Part of why the resolution is such a letdown
>>25197150It's not really a mystery story.
>>25196984>>25196989You're gonna post it or what.
>>25196033https://youtu.be/gtnt84CDP-s?si=3lP4F9b4LLaLIKIG&t=370Have some motivation, anon.
Wrote something. Tried to combine genres. One of those genres is erotica. Sort of experimental.https://files.catbox.moe/2wi7dn.pdfIt's about 15 pages. Let me know what you think. Fine to be harsh. Still a work in progress.
>>25197281bad link, fixedhttps://files.catbox.moe/aesr8l.pdf
>>25197106>simply follow this formula and you'll write a compelling piece of fictionlolno
