How can I make a point about a certain aesthetic inside my world being wasteful without resorting to exposition dumps?

The aesthetic in question is a sort of ornamental lake system where a region is flooded to make shallow lakes. Raised platforms are constructed to form artificial "islands", and connected by ornately decorated bridges.
The lakes are meant to be filled with ornamental fish, plants etc and some sections are deep enough for boating and fishing.

The thing is, water is really precious in the region, and these false lakes are meant to be an insurgency of the elites. Normal people are busting their backs for enough water to survive while the elites keep their luxury waterworks. I want to convey this disparity through environmental storytelling without needing to have characters rant about it.

>should be writing something I can publish
>can't stop writing my erotica story
Help with this?

>>25226597
You can not go against your telos

>>25226489
Some ideas
- Allude to the reality using a fairy tale or legend. Mexico was created because of the location of an eagle on a cactus eating a rattlesnake.
- Drop a small recent tragedy in a local counterculture news rag about Joe drowning in the lake.
- Write your exposition dump and your story and fix it later.

>>25226597
Depending on the kind of erotica your writing you could still make some money

>>25226689
What are places to make money writing male-aimed erotica? Incest is the most popular genre there, and Patreon bans it.

>>25226704
incorrect. Harem is the most popular genre.

>>25226704
I don't know, I've published a couple of chapters of a story I'm writing for free on Literotica just to grow a readership. Ended up getting over 15,000 readers between them. Everyone seems to say gumroad and smashwords. Gumroad offers no discoverability so you'd have to lead people to your shit.
>>25226755
This. I've seen tons of harem erotica on Kindle Unlimited, but I didn't really like what I found. Set-up takes too long with very disappointing payoff.

>>25226789
Male erotica is an open market begging for quality.

>>25226057

The jannies did it.

t. the author

It’s kind of dumb, since someone literally asked for the book.

>>25226825
It's a strange market for sure. Women will read their erotica openly and even make their get-together parties for them, but catch a man reading erotica and he's basically a criminal.

>>25226704
>What are places to make money writing male-aimed erotica?
Amazon
Amazon is always by far the biggest marketplace to make money. Everything else combined doesn't come close

>>25226755
>>25226789
Harem...
Okay, but what flavor people like with it. Fantasy, sci-fi, whatever? Since it's harem I guess we're going full wish fulfilment.

>>25226880
Yeah, thats the idea. lovey dovey everyone likes me for who i am type stuff. The male fantasy is pretty vanilla.

Go here (endure the cringe) to see what readers are into (garbage)

https://www.reddit.com/r/haremfantasynovels/

>>25226922
That sub is 90% advertising and bots.

>>25226489
If your book has enough written that shows water being scarce and hard to attain, then the contrast of these vast features by the elite will speak for itself. You don’t even need to say anything about it being wasteful, people will infer this on their own.

Oof I'm in a tough spot with some dialogue here

I'm really trying to follow the show don't tell rule, but I can't figure out a way to get this next part across without an exposition dump
I've revised the conversation 3 times and it's just so bloated

>>25227045
>I'm really trying to follow the show don't tell rule
don't. a lot of these "truisms" just clutter your brain.
just write the scene how you would best like to read it.

>>25227048
>just write the scene how you would best like to read it.
Just draw the fucking owl, eh?
There's a huge gap between being able to tell if something is good and create something that is good. Most advice and guidelines help you get closer to an ideal result.
>Don't listen to art advice. Just draw it the way you want to see it

>>25227070
don't be a goalpost moving faggot. the "show don't tell" thing is an example of a "rule" that every good author breaks constantly, and can fuck young writers up if they take it too seriously.

>>25227079
Calm down, sperg. Takes one message for you to throw a fit? Go take a walk
Show don't tell is such a common piece of advice because beginner authors violate it constantly when they really shouldn't. Obviously, there is nuance in the topic and you need to pick and choose when to show and when to tell.
>fuck young writers up
But your advice of 'just ignore all the common pieces of writing advice' is way more harmful. The better response to him would to be explain that it's situational and he should read into what that truism actually means at its core. Because there is a very valuable concept that new authors NEED to internalize there. That's why it's so insanely common to the point of becoming a meme.

You guys have no patience. Always being dragged into meaningless, hostile arguments. You have no Zen. You can't be good writers like this.

zen is for boring losers who have resigned themselves to having zero effect on the world

>>25227086
You need to learn to break rules. I use filter words every so often just to speed up the pace. I don't need her eyes to pulsate and hands sweat every time my MC feels something.

Sometimes it's better to write
>Joe realized James was a faggot

>>25227048
Well the real issue is I can't think of an elegant way to show the thing, but I absolutely hate that it's being said
It feels too much like a character divining information that pushes the plot forward

>>25227045
Post it. We can't help you without an excerpt.

>>25227130
>I use filter words every so often just to speed up the pace.
But that doesn't mean the truism 'avoid filler words' is therefore advice that should be ignored. Especially for beginners who grossly overuse them.
There are so many things you have to learn when starting out that having a checklist of truisms really will substantially improve your writing.
Preferably, though, you investigate those truisms and read full articles or discussions on the reason they exist and were simplified into their pervasive current form. You do NOT just ignore them outright.

>>25227143
Nobody said to ignore them. We're saying you need to learn them, but don't take it so literally that you strictly adhere to said rules. Doing so will make your writing worse.

>>25227161
>don't. a lot of these "truisms" just clutter your brain.
>just write the scene how you would best like to read it.
That's what I responded to and it does not seem to encourage learning the nuance in various truisms. It seems to encourage just doing whatever you want, which I find exceptionally bad advice for a beginner

>>25227107
So you're still pretending?

>>25227175
yes, I am an individual manifestation of God or the Tao or whatever universal spirit there is, wearing an ego mask and playing my role.
no, this realization did not make any tangible difference in my life or decisions whatsoever.

>>25227134
I'm phoneposting right now but I will later when I get home

The tl;dr is
>wizards n shit
>guy gets cursed
>later removes the curse
>the curse wasn't actually removed it was just made dormant
Nobody should have this information until it inadvertently activates again
And when it does that's a wrap for this dude

So I'm trying to get that into the reader's mind without the characters actually knowing it if that makes sense

>>25227185
Hmm, this isn't nice progression of a story, in my opinion. You want to escalate with something different, possibly worse than the initial curse. Doesn't need to be another curse, but a situation that's bad for the mc.

>>25226922
These don't look like they're erotica.

>>25227201
Seeing that's the tricky thing because The character we are following in the story isn't really the main character of the narrative, or the one that's cursed
Kind of like how the pirates of the carribean movies are primarily about Barbossa but we follow Jack Sparrow

That's the dilemma of how can the the character we are following be made aware of the situation without someone just telling him that's what's up
since he wouldn't be present to see anything happen and neither would the audience

I think I might just need to scrap this conversation all together and figure something else out

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Here's a comp of all the covers shilled last thread

>>25227274
We need a shill thread of its own...

>>25227274
so which one is half way decent based on their previews?

AI sucks as a beta reader.
But how to overcome the issue that who you have around to read your stuff is not the right audience for your writing?

>>25227445
>But how to overcome the issue that who you have around to read your stuff is not the right audience for your writing?
Two options
1. Find writing groups specific to the genre or style of writing you're doing
2. Self-improve to the point you can move copies yourself when you selfpub, then enlist beta readers you trust from that audience
#2 is admittedly only viable if you're writing genre. Won't happen if you're writing anything artsy.

>>25226880
I see a lot of LitRPG, which is just fantasy with added mention of video game stats. There's lots of monster girl erotica out there. Recently I read a harem story based in the post-apocalypse with survival elements. Didn't really grab me though.

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Finna get into screenwriting, particularly for animation, even just as a hobby
wish me luck lads

>>25227543
We have /swg/ screenwriting general on /tv/ sometimes, keep an eye out

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I haven't been here in 3 years and now I'm back. Post your novel ideas.

>>25227640
>ideas
lol lmao
If we had ideas we would be writing buddy

>>25227640
Dude I could swear I remember you posting this same image all the time way back when, or am I gaslighting myself?

>>25227355
Dark Triad is good. NJB is the modern literary prince we were promised.

>>25227640
>A KHV enters a VR chatroom and meets a cryptic avatar
>grants his wish to have the unlimited sexual attention of others
>over the next few weeks he transforms from skinny loser to femboy to big-titty bombshell
>his jock roommate falls for him
>lots of sex scenes
Haven't finished it yet. Been at it off and on for almost a year.

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>>25227662
I made a few iterations for giggles. What are you working on? I'm fighting with a fantasy behemoth

>>25227684
I migrated in the /wng/ schism, so I'm working on a long-running web novel. Fantasy too, but more tropey and pulpy than what you're writing, I assume

>>25227683
Based.

>>25227673
you dont' need to shill yoruself. post an excerpt

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>>25227692
First page.

Nothing posted will ever be better than it.

I can't stand present tense

>>25227697
>Dew on blades of grass cut into uniform lawn standard.
Second line and I can see you're trying to be too punchy and ruining clarity and flow in the process
>cut
automatically assigns as a verb there, because sentences have verbs. I had to double take to realize that you're doing a sentence fragment, which means the sentence fragment is done poorly

>>25227701
I've never understood this. Why?
I can even read 2nd person no problem. As long as it's consistent I have no issue

>>25227701
This.

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>joined the writing discord
>barely anyone gives feedback

>>25227728
>the writing discord
>the
>not a
is there a 'THE' writing discord out there?

>>25227728
it's called WRITING discord, not FEEDBACK discord

>>25227744
You got a point.

>>25227728
Public feedback doesn't make sense at a fundamental level. It's charity. Spending time to benefit others at no gain of your own. It's always going to be rare.
Moreover, it's even rarer for genuinely experienced writers who know what they're talking about to be willing to donate their time in that way. Good authors are uncommon fundamentally. Most feedback will be from dilettantes that like the sound of their voice. They outnumber others by 99:1.
Serious authors are doing their own shit, not contributing to random discords. And in the bizarre exception, only once in a blue moon.

There's just not much point. Either find a writing group you vetted yourself, whose writing you respect and where you can return the favor at the same level, or self-study. You should be able to get pretty good just by using your own eyes and brain.

>>25227757
Disappointing. This is truly the loneliest hobby. Can't even talk about it.

>>25227786
There are a lot of writer discords out there being spammed at 5 messages per second. You can easily talk about the hobby in abstract, and probably even some stuff about your story specifically.
It's just that like with almost anything that's merit based, the hobby is flooded with people who are absolutely dogshit and not worth listening to. Because humans are lazy and/or stupid and only the top 1% approaches anything resembling competency.

>>25227757
Also, why the fuck would someone try and help their direct competition?

>>25227792
I'm in a small, tight-knit discord with several authors about to be published, going through editing and cover design and typesetting.. But all of them write romantasy.

>>25227796
Authors are artists and generally not sociopathic business majors like you. I constantly try to help my direct competition to my full, earnest ability.

>>25227792
I would rather get my feedback from readers, as they are the only opinions that matter

>>25227799
>I'm in a small, tight-knit discord
This is the way, as I said above
>But all of them write romantasy.
Yeah, that's reality. To be read you have to write something people want to read.

>>25227807
I agree

>>25227804
then you might be retarded no desu

>>25227811
You're just sociopathic. The vast majority of my peers are also extremely helpful and try to prop up fellow authors.

>>25227816
Really? Then there should be no issue with you posting an except for me to critique and give you help with.

>>25227826
Why would I want your critique?
If you haven't picked up the subtext, I write full time and make good money. I have a lot of author peers who helped me out a lot as I learned the ropes. I go out of the way to help others too when they DM me. That's how most author communities are. We're artists, not sociopath business majors trying to squeeze dimes out of orphan children

It is very telling that the way to get somebody to shut up here is ask for them to post an excerpt of their work kek

Stick to ai generating self-help books for max cash flow. You don't belong here.

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>>25227274
I wrote The Chemical Divorce. Readers said it's confusing, so I'm planning to make it more clear after the KDP deal expires. Anything specific that people don't like about it and want fixed? The whole thing was supposed to be a retelling of the Crata Repoa, but I guess it's a little too esoteric.

>>25227849
>Crata Repoa
No idea what this is.

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>>25227884

>>25227799
Every Discord I've been in has devolved into political adjacent spergery, both on the shitposting and writing side. This is a warning to fiction writers. If any writet you know starts talking about philosophy, the Bat is dead. Bury it.

What's your favorite word you've used recently? I just typed the word contra-expectational

>>25227908
Bijective, it's weirdly onomatopoeiac to me. Fun to say and think about.

>>25227833
My posts are my art
My pepes are my paint

>>25227831
>I write full time and make good money.
My dad also works at nintendo.

>>25227991
It's not that rare, you know, not in the big picture. I guess I'm just the only retard who chooses to muck it down here in the same repetitive discussions ad nauseam when I could have discord proles fellating me 24/7. It's very exhausting trying to bring light to the mud-rolling cave dwellers
I just detest usernames, anonymity is freedom. At least I can call retards retards here
Speaking of: you're retarded

And no one posts excerpts to support their ego trips.

Tries to restart the argument
Uses same bait as before that I've never once fallen for
Maybe next time?

>>25227274
>>25227355
I’m the guy who wrote A Maid in Four Parts, and I don’t think Amazon has a sample yet, because it’s just there for pre-order and not getting released until the 20th of May. I wasn’t even planning on mentioning it this soon, but an anon in the last thread was interested, so I bit. I know Apple Books has a sample available though.

If anyone’s interested, I could copy-paste the first 3 chapters into a pastebin/rentry if you want to judge it for yourself. I think doing that would screw up some line indents, but it’d still be perfectly readable.

>web novel books are better written than the slop i shit out.
It's over. I'll never be as good as a web novelist

he's learning

>>25227908
I make up a lot of words, neologisms, that end up in my writing. Outside of the typical in-universe lingo.
>loopless
"Alanea was equally loopless."
>needlelessly (not to be confused with "needlessly")
"and needlelessly stitched itself back together"
>brioletted
"brioletted spherical cut"
Honorable Mentions
>ragdolling
"ragdolling his limp body across half the width of the flight deck"
>chibouk-esque, hardlight, light-tight, threadmancy, anti-flared
As for in-universe terminology.
>outways, cloudside, belitboard, rhife, stine, nightset
I also tend to use normal words in a different in-universe context.
>"she danced pomme drunk"
>"you get to know guano when you hear it"
>"their birdshit is tolerated anywhere else"
Because my world doesn't have any cows, but does have riding birds; ala chocobos.
Curious if anyone else does stuff like this nearly as often as I do.

>>25227999
>I just detest usernames, anonymity is freedom. At least I can call retards retards here
It's amazing and depressing how this is the only place left where you get this kind of freedom. Poor zoomers don't know what they're missing.

>>25228076
there are enough zoomers here already thanks

>>25228078
you aren't human. you read the keyword zoomer and shot out a response that's unrelated to what you read
the post doesn't at all encourage zoomers coming here. the reply
>enough zoomers here, thanks
definitively relies on the post before encouraging zoomer presence, which it doesn't
you are an actual insect brain

>>25227728
Writers are very bad readers. They read a lot only before starting to write.

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>>25228041
Slop out better shit. Or shit out better slop. You think people are reading Brando Sando and Dresden for the prose? They are reading it for the FUN. Look at this picture. This won the Locus Award for best scifi a few years ago. You're telling me you can't write something better than this, prose wise, while still providing exceptional entertainment value? Give me a break. Go soak your head in the bathtub and then Google "wuxia" my anonigga.

>>25228168
This is humiliating. How can I think of an interesting story but somebody who writes likes this can? Am I actually autistic and never realized it?

I give up trying to agent. I think I'm going to just release Victoria into the void as an indie book.

>>25228168
>did a thing, did another thing
Do people seriously write like this.

>>25228207
The saintess story, right?

>>25228212
Anon is saying this won a fucking award. It stands among the likes of Wolfe and Asimov now.

>>25228207
Or how about just don't release it at all and never mention it again?

>>25228207
I know you did this before but post to RR first and then funnel to Amazon. It's just a more likely pipeline with no downside, even if Valora didn't work.

>>25228212
It's deliberately being le millenial quirky. Which I hate but don't pretend it's trying to be real literary prose, it makes you look dumb in turn

>>25228223
That's an idea.

>>25228225
That gets you banned from Amazon's marketplace.
>>25228216
yes

>>25228243
No it does not? Don't talk about shit youre clueless to

>>25228243
Did you get a single feedback from an agent? From what I remember, it was decently written.

>>25228217
>>25228234
The author is 56.
WANGMI

>>25228243
Amazon only has exclusivity for Kindle Unlimited from the Kindle Direct Publishing, special program thing they have. If you never check the box, you can publish KDP books all you want without exclusivity.
Otherwise you can only have 2 chapters on other platforms. Which is what stubbing is on RR. If you post to RR first, it is fine as long as it is removed before going to KU.

>>25228245
I think you have to make it not KDP exclusive or something. there was a post on RR about it from someone that got their book removed
>>25228247
>this project is not for me.

>>25228245
>>25228243
Sorry this was maybe too hostile when you might just not know
The biggest recent indie hit in all of publishing was Dungeon Crawler Carl that's made 10s of millions of dollars by now and has a tv show coming up. It started on RR too. It did the same pipeline that many other massive successes do

You post on RR, get an audience, then stub the book before launching on Amazon. Amazon only requires immediate exclusivity, meaning you can take down the chapters before you enroll into Kindle Select (KU). By asking your existing readers to support you on RR, you get a jump in the algorithm which is extremely valuable for an indie author

It's literally a no-downside path if you intend to go indie. The only issue is if you intend to try to agent, because they care about first publishing rights

>>25228260

>>25228256
that's good to know

>>25228240
It's the best idea you've never had.

>>25228262
If you do KDP instead of KU, you don't have to stub.

>>25228272
Yes? KDP is just Kindle Direct Publishing. It's the catchall term for Amazon publishing
In my post, however, I only talked about Kindle Select which puts you into the Kindle Unlimited pool, which is the majority profit driver for midlist genre fiction

>>25228168
>This one an award
That's actually hope-inducing to me. I know that I can write better than this, and apparently consumers will accept absolutely anything, so by all means I have a shot at getting published.

>>25228296
Consumers accept what they already want, no matter how low quality. That's the actual takeaway.
Not that anything can work

>>25227185
>>25227201
could you foreshadow it indirectly? e.g.
>mc watches healer heal a disease
>mc asks how she did it "wow, how'd you get rid of (disease)?"
>healer explains you can't actually remove (disease) from the body, too ingrained, can only make it benign
mc doesn't necessarily have to realise, you can just interrupt the scene to close it or something

>>25228274
>You post on RR, get an audience, then stub the book before launching on Amazon. Amazon only requires immediate exclusivity...
>before launching on Amazon
>I only talked about Kindle Select
No, you didn't

>>25228298
>did a thing, did another thing
This is evidence that literally everything is acceptable no matter the quality or content.

>>25228309
You can post on Amazon without enrolling into KDP Select, yes, and then you're allowed wide distribution. That's also a really great way of nobody ever reading you ever
I guess I keep forgetting that I'm talking to people who really don't know anything about this at all

>>25228312
It's acceptable exactly BECAUSE of the content. It's preying on millennial "did a thing" type readers. You might be an actual hermit and not understand that that's a really, huge, massive meme in the millennial community. It's just the author dropping "then she pet the doggo" type writing

>>25228262
Is there a path like this for indie short stories?

>>25227640
3 years ago my novel idea was only an idea, now it's a finished book

I want to get my first bad book out of my system. The problem I'm having is that I want to save my best and most precious ideas for later books -when I get a grip on my style. So when I try to write one of my 'not so important' books, I struggle with staying invested in writing it. Especially because I'm just staring at lines of 'bad'. Any advice appreciated.

>>25228324
I won't say definitely no, because I'm not hooked into that community, but from what I understand and have seen, short stories have been dead for more than 20 years. Like dead dead
As far as making a living off it goes. I'm sure it thrives in very niche low-reader communities. So if you don't care about cash and readers, do some research

>>25228328
W-Wolfe got famous with a short story

>>25228327
Why can't you write your precious idea as a first draft learning experience, and then shelve it to fix later?
You're just looking for excuses not to write

>>25228207
Never give up. It took me 8 months before I got an agent to even READ the shit I posted. Keep going. Don't listen to these other fucks. Keep agenting if that's what you want to do.

>>25228333
It was a very common path to success 30 years ago. That's the issue with listening to respected established authors. Their advice is simply outdated. They're just humans, and they don't keep up with the landscape
It's not how people break out today

>>25228334
I guess I just wanted the confidence of having a completed book under my belt.

>>25228339
Now it's all about indie publishing, hope it gets big, and some big publisher picks it up.

I think Agenting is going to die out soon. Why would a publisher bother with paying a 3rd party when they can just buy it from the author directly?

>>25228344
You'll have that too with your precious idea first draft?
Or is what you actually mean is you want something to send out into the world and publish, to see how it does, and you don't want to jeopardize your amazing idea in that process. Be honest with me, we're wasting time

>>25228347
I completely agree, I think agents are gay and retarded and need to die. In the modern publishing age they exist to separate slush piles into maybe-okay stuff to then send off to publishers, and btw they don't always get approved. You can get an agent and never get published. Agents are a toxic middleman
I'm very much a believer in the age of the internet where you post your shit and if people actually want to read it, they'll read it

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>>25228339
A-anthologies then?

>>25228349
I'm being honest anon! I just don't think I will do the idea justice :( I want it cared for with my skillful words not my poopy words

>>25228352
NTA - yeah but there's a difference between wanting a nice pretty book and getting people to read it vs writing the same words and posting on webnovel and people 'actually reading' it. we want a booky book! and for it to be read

>>25228354
Ugh I can kinda see not wanting to ruin a good idea with your newbie words, artists are very sensitive like that
But you can always just do it as a first draft learning experience, then set it aside to completely rework later. And do it justice.
You need to figure out how to write, dude. It's the trap that separates real artists from people who just talk about art. And it's an individual dilemma. Creating art isn't like eating junk food and watching porn, it's not always fun, you have to make yourself do it at times (preferably with inspiration, but not always, especially for working artists)
Look into your own psychology and figure out how to write consistently or you're fucked

>>25228352
Look at all the big releases lately. They're all from random online books. Asia uses an online light novel platform. Anime are getting adapted from kadokawa who browses, buys it, helps edit it, and throws it out to stores. That's the model of the future.

Lots of anime now are from random indie one shots. Like One Punch man

So the way now if you write genre fiction is to go Kindle Select, and if you write litrpg or whatever you go to RR?

>>25228364
yeah I've been all talk for years about putting out a novel. I've just started 200 words a day at anon's advice. It's the first time I'm taking the gentle approach instead of just brute forcing x hour blocks. It's the least I've written towards this type of goal but it feels like the most transformative. Like I can actually imagine a reality where I get to the end with a finished product. It's just hard

>>25228387
no, you just toss it out there any way you can. Even having your cute sister dress in underwear dancing on a tiktok video may work

>>25228391
I wish I had a sister.

>>25228387
Is this a genuine question? Sometimes I can't tell trolls from earnest posters
There are certain genres where there's simply no functional benefit to posting to RR, like pure romance. So if you're a romance author going indie, yeah, don't bother, go straight to KU (which is Kindle Select, they're interchangeable). But if you go romance, then you probably want to hook into TikTok/booktok and get ARCs set up, which I don't know much about beyond cultural osmosis. It depends on the genre, and all I can really speak confidently about is RR-type fictions
If you write fantasy, or most things male-centric (like sci fi) you should definitely go to RR and try to pick up readers to boost your amazon launch so you don't die in the murky abyss. But depending on what kind of fantasy, you might die anyways. Trad epic fantasy with 5 viewpoints isn't going to do well unless you're a mindblowingly good author. It's not just litrpg that does well, but that doesn't mean everything performs equally
It's situational and contextual.

>>25228314
>Not enrolling in KDP Select means nobody will ever read your book.
Books that were never in KDP Select, which you can easily find because of their historical lack of exclusivity, that did fine with a KDP paperback release.
>"Solo Leveling" by Chugong
>"That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime" by Fuse
>"Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation" by Rifujin na Magonote
>"Overlord" by Kugane Maruyama
>"Mother of Learning" by Domagoj Kurmaić
>"Lore Olympus" by Rachel Smythe
>"The Beginning After the End" by TurtleMe
But nah, none of these have any readers. You might argue this is because they had readers before moving to paperback.
Lets look at some whose success is attributed to paperback sales, instead of having prior popularity on webnovel sites.
>"The Martian" Andy Weir (who was posting his webnovel on a personal blog before moving to paperback)
>"Worm" by Wildbow (another personal blog with like no viewers)
>"Super Powereds" by Drew Hayes (had a pretty popular website, but not close to anything like an RR top story)
>"The Atlas Six" by Olivie Blake
>"The Wandering Inn" by pirateaba
>"Dungeon Crawler Carl" by Matt Dinniman (whose success is attributed to audiobooks)
There are so many counter examples it is insane.
Every one of these had Amazon KDP paperbacks without using KDP Select.

>>25228404
Dude these are stories that blew the fuck up major time before ever hitting Amazon. Of course you can enlist into wide distribution in that case. I am talking to anons talking about how to go indie from scratch

Your snarky response when you clearly don't know what you're talking about is so depressing. I'm trying to be helpful as someone who actually understands the industry at some basic level

>>25228412
You didn't read the post.
The bottom half blew up because of Amazon.

>>25228415
WHAT? I know 5/6 titles in the bottom half by heart, as someone who actually is in the web novel scene, I watched their whole career. You are deranged????

>>25228404
>>25228419
go back to /wng/ and stop shitting up our thread

>>25228404
>"Worm" by Wildbow (another personal blog with like no viewers)
okay this is the funniest one by far. worm isn't even on amazon. it's purely a web novel

wait I'm replying to some guy who asked chatgpt to refute me. I just realized that. fuck
k i'll sign off

I want to connect with people trying to write a good book. Like courageous writing. Like Life & Times of Michael K. Not webnovel fantasy scifi romance. Where do I find these people?

Low caps anon always gets triggered way too easily. You need to learn to chill out, anon.

>>25228403
Just regular genre fiction like Wolfe and may others wrote. Not this stuff that apes anime or inserts an rpg system on it.

>>25228456
well, there's not much point in posting if i don't actually care about what i'm posting about. which means i get triggered easily, i do agree there

>>25228466
It's the internet, anon, there's no pointing in winning any arguments. It took me a long time to understand the real value of this place is to see the view point of other people.

>>25228431
It looked like an AI ass response to me

>>25228473
It's not that I try to win arguments it's that I genuinely try to help people and they act like shitheads in return, and then I get mad about it
but I keep coming back for some reason. because I like being anonymous. at least here I can freak out and call the retards retards when I'm fed up

>>25228483
>I genuinely try to help people and they act like shitheads in return, and then I get mad about it
I'm a retard cut from the same genome
anonymous discussion is nice because in theory ego is completely eliminated from the equation and all that's left is a holistic conversation on the subject. however in practice, ego centric retards hold that shit entirely in themselves and other people knowing who they are and recognizing their ego is secondary to them shitting all over the discussion for the sake of it

>>25228481
We don't talk like niggers here.

>>25229101
No you talk like jeets

I'm seriously thinking of turning my psychological and highly political dystopia into subtext under a world of magic powers purely for the money.

I have this issue in which the settings I've worked on don't match the kind of stories I wanna write, you know what I'm saying?

>>25229675
The setting doesn't matter.

>>25229702
Lol, lmao even.

>>25229675
I know what you mean. But you can make good arguments for about any setting for any story. What's yours

https://thenewshadows.substack.com/p/long-live-death-part-i
https://thenewshadows.substack.com/p/long-live-death-part-ii
First two chapters of my fantasy novelette about kin, country, and catharsis through violence. Please enjoy, anons.

>>25230035
>https://thenewshadows.substack.com/p/long-live-death-part-i
too many em dashes

How's Delphine Stoica for a main character name?

>>25230166
Very flowery but could work depending on the genre. I'm thinking postmodernism, maximalist space opera, or manga

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here's a section when the main character gets contfronted by his jock roommate for spying on him by the door having sex.

I envy the anons in /wng/. I haven't watched nearly enough anime to shit out tropes and get rich in RR

>>25229894
I wanna write mysteryslop/detectiveslop in a world where there's no concept of good nor evil.

>>25230183
It's an apocalyptic detective novel.

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>have writer's block
>at a scene depicting the first meeting of two characters
>supposed to show the beginning of their partnership
It's hard to come with snappy dialogue on the spot. Plus, I've never had the kind of brotherhood-comradery depicted in action fiction. It's hard to write things I've never experienced.

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Okay, I'm dropping all my erotica stories except one: the least popular. I'll focus on serious writing from now on and go back to that when I need respite.

>>25230035
you after feedback anon?

>>25230384
have something unusual but unimportant happen that they can both talk about

>>25230457
writing erotica sounds fun until you realize that it's the same amount of headache as regular fiction except your publishing options are limited if you want to make money.

>>25230512
So it's just like literally fiction?

>>25230517
worse
There was a erotica writer on reddit bragging that he had to write 5000 words a day, every day, just to make 700 bucks a month. And this is assuming you're writing vanilla, which is the only thing they allow on KDP, which is the only place where you can make money from erotica.

>>25230384
what's the purpose of the meeting? what's the starting dynamic of the scene? are they competing?
>are they assessing/interviewing one another for a job?
are they probing each other and withholding information? is there immediate trust?
>does one help the other out randomly?
is there a debt to be repaid as a result? how do they feel about that?

>>25230527
>>25230512
Yup. That's why I'm dropping it. 300k words dropped on erotica and not one cent to show for it. I'm switching to speculative fiction and fantasy.

>>25230343
What's the higher concept? Good and evil are introduced and detectiveslop ensues? Or only moral ambiguity? Or more like angels of heaven not knowing what "wrong" is? In the second case, that's as near noir fiction as you can get.

>>25230495
If you have anything to say other than criticizing my use of punctuation, sure.

>>25230344
Detective fiction is also big on odd names, though one might wonder about the link between the apocalyptic setting and the character's name evoking an existentialist e-thot.

>>25230319
I know dignity doesn't mean much nowadays, but being able to sneer at weebs and romance readers keeps me from an heroing over my fiction going nowhere fast.

>>25230589
I haven't even clicked on the link but this seems to imply you regularly get complaints about fucking up punctuation
How about you go back to third grade, retard? It's formulaic and retard easy. Stop putting your periods and commas in the wrong place

>>25230616
You've got it twisted. My only sin against grammar is that I like semicolons and emdashes too much.

>nowhere to post my short fic to ask for feedback in fear someone might steal it
>no friends that would be interested or even capable of giving useful feedback
>editors take a billion years to reply
This is frustrating. Is this common for every writer?

>>25230035
>>25230589
nice work, i liked it, would read more. feedback is all for ch1, i thought ch2 was better
>Yalruen, Lueleskor, Dosueft
annoying to read names break the flow of reading, weird vowel combos and not immediately phonetic so my eyes tend to gloss over them. any reason you can’t introduce Yalruen then switch to a shorthand nickname like Ren? could Lueleskor become Skor or Luskör or something easier to parse/more obvious to pronounce? if my reading flow is broken every few sentences with a new weird word i’m more inclined to drop, especially if you haven’t captured my interest at that point. i’m way more forgiving when i don’t have to sound something out in my head a few times before continuing.
>Dosueft and Yalruen were town watchmen
you say this, then in the immediate next sentence talk about their watchmen surcoats. it’s redundant and you’re leading with the boring sentence.
>hangman tightened the noose around the innocent man’s neck
i don’t like the narrator outright telling me he’s innocent upfront especially when your characters say (or at least imply) as much at the end of the first scene. detracts from the impact of his uncle saying ‘(the magistrate) decided he was a murderer’
>Dosueft rebuked him, sharply enough that Yalruen was taken aback.
idk how to explain but it's like you're describing how he reacted instead of showing his reaction, e.g. ‘…’ Dosueft rebuked, Yalruen flinching at the sharpness of his words.
>In short, he didn’t kick dogs, but more than anything he disliked seeing dogs that had been kicked.
i dislike these kinds of summaries. give the reader some credit. if you wanna punctuate the previous paragraph of him being a bystander to injustice, why not just summarise with something like ‘he’d since made tenuous peace living with the guilt of inaction.’ or some such instead of rehashing the same thing you've already said

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>>25230712
>in fear someone might steal it

>>25230723
I appreciate your effort, low caps anon. I think you're one of the only ones giving serious feedback in this general.

>>25230723
Thanks for giving it your time, anon
>names
I'm hopelessly autistic and in love with my perverse phonemes. I've done a lot of writing in this world and have long since accepted that any proper publication would require a pronunciation guide.
>otherwise
Solid advice all around, you have a good eye for brevity and pulp-style impact. I'm not looking to revise this one atm since it's already out online but I'll keep your critiques in mind.
As I said, the story's all written, I'm just posting it intermittently. Thanks again.

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>>25230728
I AM A WRITER!

>>25230760
no probs
yeah a pronunciation guide would be great, like a preface by an in-universe historian or something

I give up. Writing is a waste of time. Nobody will ever touch your work, everything is stupid and all it brings is misery and hardship.

>>25230556
It's simple. It's a civilization that didn't develop those concepts.
But after thinking about it, a civilization like that may be impossible to exist because a civilization eventually develops a law system, independently of whether it fits western concepts of good vs wrong or not. So, maybe that's the problem to begin with.

>>25230834
I feel that.
Maybe you should just write because you like it?

Someone contacted me asking to buy my AV book. I told them it's too expensive and recommended they buy the cheap audiobook instead.

>>25230849
I think so, unless you want to do "find the missing item/person" mysteries as a vehicle for world exploration fiction.

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>>25230290
Realized, wrong part. Here's the part I was referring to.

>go back to read first draft
>ridiculously overwritten and full of meaningless shit

>>25231505
sovl...

i love moving units, bros. just sold a 99c ebook and my entire day is made.

>>25231520
Based
WAGMI

>>25231505
as a "word vomit-er" I have the opposite problem
it's very bare-bones just so I get shit done

>>25231520
Dang it's going to be so sick when you get that $.35 like 3 months from now. It's the gift that keeps in giving.

>>25230597
It's a dystopian world where stupidity is state mandated.