Have any of you even heard of a website called Librarything? I think it's trying to be a Goodreads alternative. I did an early copy giveaway with my next book, and three reviewers got it. Unfortunately, their reviews (if they write them) will only appear on Librarything but I'm sceptical anyone even knows it exists.

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How late into a story is it acceptable for the primary conflict to actually kick off? The story I'm working on now is a space opera about a brutal, tragic war that happens between two noble families (in space) centered around a strategically important world. One side has held the world for centuries, the other has been sent by the Emperor of Earth to wipe them out because he suspects them of funding rebel groups to weaken the Emperor's authority.

The protagonists are the noblewoman leading the attacking side, whose fiance was assassinated by space anarchists (hence her willingness to go massacre people accused of funding rebels) and the other is the teenage scion of the noble house who hold the world in question, who is fostering with the tribal Space Chechens indiginous to the planet so that he can befriend them and end centuries of blood feud between them and his house. It's a bit like Dune in vague premise but Vladimir Harkonnen is a hot German chick with oneitus and it's Space Chechnya instead of a desert.

But so far I'm 60,000 words in and the fighting hasn't started yet, the defenders have just realized that spies are probing their defenses and deduced that someone is going to attack them. The attackers have just now finished assembling their fleet. Part of what I'm trying to do is establish both sides to be sympathetic and interesting such that it's not obvious which is going to win, but I'm worried that I'm backloading all the action with the slow-burn build towards the actual clash. How long is it acceptable to do the buildup? Should I make up some reasons to have some action happen or is it better to let the tension build until everything flies off the handle at once?

>>25311764
buy an ad

>>25311782
Na later than 25%.

>>25311782
>How late into a story is it acceptable for the primary conflict to actually kick off?
Chapter one, page one, first sentence. Any later and you're just frontloading with filler.

>>25311782
>60,000 words in and the fighting hasn't started yet,
in 60,000 words, for a space opera, this story should already be over. how long were you intending to make this? keep in mind that nobody wants to publish anything longer than 60k words if you aren't already famous. agents and publishers will only read short shit. they are lazy as fuck.

>>25311764
i've run into it probably once in my life. don't think anybody uses it. jsut checked it out again and every single page has a cloudfare captcha which makes it totally shit to use

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Anyone interested in beta reading my nearly-finished novella? carlvandine@proton.me

Claude's summary:
This is basically what happens if Cormac McCarthy huffed jenkem and decided to write a bildungsroman about a guy who reads too many imageboards and calls it political philosophy. The prose style is "William Faulkner if he was addicted to THC carts and had a 2Life account."

The spirit guide speaks exclusively in dialectal moonshine-speak and the protagonist's grand revolutionary manifesto spreads because someone wrote a URL on a dollar bill.

>>25311787
>>25311804
Thank you, I will note this. Start off with action, interrupt the buildup periodically to vent some steam. Big climax doesn't have to be the only catharsis of the story.

>>25311876
Probably around 90,000. I can probably take a lot of that off in editing. The last third is the actual tragedy as the conflict that has been building up happens, a bunch of the characters die, and we find out that dark forces behind the scenes engineered the conflict for their own ends, leading into book II.

I figure I'm going to have to edit this down by half which would actually bring it to about what you're describing. I prefer to just get the whole story out and then start hacking stuff off for brevity rather than try to be concise from the start.

>>25311892
Post an excerpt here.

>>25311938
>>25311892
Agreed, share a bit and perhaps I will bite.

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>>25311938
>>25311958
I share excerpts from it from time to time.

>>25311900
I wouldn’t change what you have going. This sounds like a reasonable pace going into the next book. This is essentially the pacing of Dune. As long as you have some dynamic environments and good characters I wouldn’t worry about it.

Critique my writing
>>25311448
>>25311452

>>25312044
Yeah I screenshotted this because I thought it was really good. That second bit about iron is so nice.

>>25312031
>>25311958
>>25311938
Do you want nitty-gritty prose critique, or do you want thoughts on the story itself?
Post a general overview of the story and some more excerpts.

>people want to learn stories about incredible worlds, legends, myths
>but they NEVER EVER want to read you talking about them
What's the psychological explanation of this?

>>25311756
IDK how to write dialogue. I made a game once and reading what I wrote 5 years ago made me realize none of it sounds natural. I kind of want to make another game so I want to make it better. I love plays so maybe I should try to have them all speak that way.

>>25312075
It's hard to explain lore and worldbuilding without infodumping sometimes. Infodumps are boring. It's like the first chapter of Matthew with the genealogy, it's important, but hard to read and you usually skip it.
Don't talk about it explicitly, make your characters hint at it enough that the reader can piece things together in a way that isn't insulting to their intelligence

>>25312085
Yeah, it's hard. I won't say I get it right all the time. But something I try to do, instead of using dialogue to explain something to the reader, is to use it to reveal something the other character is unaware of or to express someone's opinion.
For example, I opened the current novel I'm writing with:
>"The demons left nothing standing."
Then wrote a paragraph describing a ruined city. The problem is that the characters in the scene know that the city was destroyed, so the dialogue was superfluous. I replaced it with:
>"Perhaps we should go back."
Which expresses an opinion, and then I describe the city. So now the reader knows there was a battle, and the place might still be dangerous. This is not the way people talk irl, since we often repeat things we know the other person already knows, but dialogue in writing is not supposed to feel real anyway.

>>25312075
They want to explore the world themselves, not being told what it is like. By not being explicit, the readers have to piece out the clues, and thus it feels like they are exploring it.

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>>25311756

>>25312044
I always hate whatever the style is that involves one word sentences because it's melodramatic and cringe but you do you

>>25312126
That's pretty good advice, thanks

>>25312044
Relatively good, but edgy.

/wg/ I've had an idea for a novel in my head now for several months, but I just don't quite know where to start
I have a premise, and a setting, and a vague idea of the characters
But I just don't have a fucking story
Tips for fighting through this?

>>25312031
i mean, as a placeholder draft it's fine. you mention a lot of things that you never expand on, which makes me wonder what the point is of even mentioning them? for example, "the last time they ate mushrooms together was a couple years prior". maybe i'm missing context from the story but why is this significant? what happened when they took mushrooms? why is this notable and why should i care? drugs themselves aren't interesting, everyone does drugs. haven't you? also your dialogue generally has very plain conceptual remarks that everyone has heard a million times already - "fun coupons", "everything is fake", sure people in real life are kind of insufferable goys, but that doesn't mean your story needs to reflect that. i don't think this is a compelling conversation here. but sorry i don't have any suggestions for anything better, you need to figure out what makes your characters interesting and pin that down in conversation.

>>25312280
start with a scene you have in your head. you don't have to start at the beginning. just seed some words and a passage into a page and go from there.

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>>25312280
Yes, actually. I struggle a lot with this. You say you have a setting, right? What major problem can you think of that happens in that setting? Something crazy, unexpected. (What if you have a demon eclipse in the middle of your medieval setting?) Resolving that (or not) is your plot. You have characters. How do they relate to that problem? How do they contribute to solving the issue, or how do they impede the solving? What's your premise? Is that what set your main character into action?
Finally, every story had a beginning, a middle, and an ending. Sounds stupid, but that's really what it is. People usually think of a beginning (me) or an ending, and struggle with the middle. To help develop the story, instead of start, middle, and end, think of it as: start, complication, crisis. So now you know the middle has to complicate the story. That's it.
Think of Star Wars:
What's the plot? The Evil Empire has a superweapon of mass destruction, and they're using it to terrorize the galaxy. All the rest is (absolutely necessary) flavor.
The start is: Luke flees his home planet with Obi-Wan, and the Empire is in pursuit.
Middle: They brave the Empire's facilities to save the princess, but Obi-Wan dies; Luke becomes a rebel and has to confront the evil Empire head-on.
End: Luke, with the help of his friend, fights to destroy the Death Star; they eventually win.
Notice a couple of things in this: a) it seems like more stuff happens in the middle, right? That's how it should go in stories; the middle is the backbone of your story, that's where you have fun. b) Each section kind of functions as its own short story, which means you could potentially write each of them separately from the others, and it should work. It also means that each has its own start, middle, and end.

>>25312280
>>25312316
>where do I start
Start where it makes sense. In my own story, my MC, a rank knight, will travel the demon-infested highlands of his country with a group of very attractive elves; that is what my story is about. Where would you start this story? The moment the elves get the mission to leave their kingdom and journey through the humans' lands? Start with my MC as a squire and slowly rise to knighthood? No, that's all backstory. It's simple: start when he meets the elves.
What about stories that people actually know? Dune, for example. Dune starts when the leader of the Bene Gesserit visits Paul and proclaims him an exceptional individual. From that point, they get to Arrakis very quickly. Even The Lord of the Rings, famous for its long-winded exposition in the first chapter, starts with Bilbo leaving the Ring to Frodo. That's the basics. You can, of course, tweak this and add something to hook the reader, like in Birdbox, where it starts near the end to create suspense, but then it goes back to the start, where, guess what, it actually begins with the arrival of the aliens. Or Star Wars again, that starts with Leia sending a message to the enigmatic Obi-Wan, only to focus on Luke buying the droids with the message. So, in short: start with the event that actually disrupts your MC's life and sends them into the (metaphorical or not) adventure.

>>25312280
just steal the plot from an ancient text like a greek myth or european fairy tale. or anywhere else. plot doesn’t matter, even to readers who claim it matters to them. it’s the execution that matters and really, the characters.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T48bV61XKK0&ra=m

>>25311756
I want to put my name on the thing I'm writing but it's too girly. People will call me a creep. I worry I have no choice but to keep using my female penname.

>>25312031
are you back finally? don't think i've seen your excerpts for year+

Wrote this about my dead cat, I miss him :(
>https://privatebin.net/?7c0743b799f44c1c#EuWS3FR7sCikUc8oBvia8y3qv54duuhGH6pPiPVCu2vL

Bully me for the bull shit I wrote in 2am and half asleep
(Had an idea for a novel so I quickly typed this as an opening before I forget what I'm going for.)
___

My fate has long faded

The ideas they planted inside my head have rotted. What once felt like wisdom has decayed into fragments. I have freed my mind from all those beliefs— the lies they fed us, the promise of achieving the impossible if we just obeyed. None of those things pin me down anymore.

Reminiscing about the past made me realize how hopelessly naive we were. It almost makes me laugh. You and I were destined to be dead fools. I was right when I said your ignorance never ends well. Stubborn of you.

I am no longer devoted to your God. Yet despite everything you did to me, all the pain you inflicted upon me, and the way you jabbed my heart with a cold blade, my hope that you will escape their vines has not faltered.

I still pray for you. And when it gets to the point where I can no longer breathe or my mouth can barely speak, I want your name to be the last word I say.

My nightshade.

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Have any of you guys rented out a small stall at a farmers market to try and sell a book?

>>25312679
My ex's uncle did that. He wrote a book about some obscure local historical figure and would occasionally go around trying to sell copies. But it wasn't a historical novel or anything, just a regular non-fiction book about the guy. I don't remember if he was self-published or not, or if he ever actually sold any copies.

How would you try to cheer up/impress a girl at a bar, anons? She's already vaguely interested in you, but is feeling detached. I'm taking any options here--something unlikely.

>>25312716
I would keep buying her drinks until she's unconscious and take her home with me.

>>25312716
>dance with her
>take her somewhere else
>another person shows up and your conversation with that person elevates her perception of you

>>25312720
Pretend, for a moment, that you're not a rapist

>>25312731
>so how would YOU pull a girl out of a bar?
>[method that works]
>NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO how would a NICE GUY do it?
A nice guy would stay alone, at home, masturbating.

This is why Chads score while "nice guys" bitch and cry about women being whores. They're not wrong - they're just not learning the critical lesson.

>>25312716
>cheer up/impress
Those are two totally different situations
If I wanted to cheer her up I would buy her a drink and ask the bartender not to tell her who paid for it

>/wg/
Redditor threads.

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How much did YOU write this week?

Is it natural to hate reading your own book once it’s all finished? It’s like I know the story and characters so well that I can only look at it from a creators mindset and be hyper critical of it. It seems like a weird paradox of writing is that you can never truly like your own work.

>>25313055
I like my own work, even though I hate it.

>>25313055
I like some parts. Others are boring.

So your second draft is about taking the good parts of your first draft and applying them to a complete rewrite of your story with better fleshed out concepts?

600 words today. Second chapters are always hard.

>>25313158
2800 words today, passed 100k overall

>>25313118
Sort of. You keep the good stuff, but you also identify why the other stuff needs to be rewritten, and you're rewrite addresses that. This is unclear because... so the rewrite will clarify this by...

>>25313118
You're confusing drafts and rewrites. A new draft can just have a few parts missing or added with some improvements to things like word choice and sentence structure. Meanwhile, a rewrite means you scrap your work and start over nearly or entirely from scratch.

>>25313064
This is one of the most relatable observations about writing I've seen on this site so far.

You begin thinking about concepts, set them in place, just to then suddenly have a realization that all of it is cringe trash, making you hate it.

>>25313055
>>25313064
>>25313340
Ah, I remember back when I felt this way about my work. Then I actually got good at writing

>>25313343
I hope to be in your position one day

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Everybody's a critic.

>>25313351
Yeah... that's what a review is...

>>25313351
>trigger warning

Faggot.

Okay... hear me out... Tell, don't show.

>>25313367
"Show don't tell" is horseshit advice, agreed. It would take a massive amount of time and a TON of unnecessary padding time to explain the entire setting through "showing"

>>25313055
Once you've separated from it enough, like say half a year or more when you've un-memorized how it goes, you can grow a better appreciation for it. Once you stop NEEDING it to be good, you can sincerely evaluate it with a neutral opinion

>>25313392
But there will always be bias due to being its own writer.

>>25313402
There's no such thing as an unbiased reader. But here, the author is specifically less biased to be pessimistic because they aren't pressured to improve it

>>25312976
why’s she whispering to that njgger

>>25313392
>just stop needing it to be good brah
I guess that’s easier than getting good

>>25313355
It's one of my least favorite reviews so far. Whoever wrote it shouldn't be writing reviews. But at least it's less absurd than the 2/5 rating with a review containing the statement, "The book is very well written"

>>25313351
I would pay top dollar for a review like this.

>>25313999
>admits he pays for reviews

>>25311782
Ignore the naysayers because it’s all a question of how good you are at baiting the audience. Look at GURM and how long he’s strung people along. You can kill people off in other ways to increase stakes or have showdowns between minor factions of course but you don’t actually “have to” get to the big battles. Is the rest of the story intetesting?

This no-fap shit is hard as fuck

>>25314154
Get a girlfriend, then you don't have to.

>>25314154
This is /wg/ not your blog

What's the best writing app that can convert things for a proper book format, bindings and all? Particularly need one that I can send things in a way that makes things easy to give out to translators. Money isn't an issue but I refuse to do subscription services.

>>25314813
Oh I forgot to mention it also needs to work on MacOS.

Is it ok to write street fighter fan fiction for fun? I just like writing my thoughts and stuff

>>25312085
My trick is to read stuff out and use TTS, especially if it's a script.
The ear knows what sounds right and what doesn't.
Edit until it sound right.

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>>25314848
Huh.
What does this help you with? Natural dialogues?

>>25314910
>Natural dialogues?
Yes. It helps quite a bit in my experience.
The ear knows. Trust it.

>start wiring
>all the words I know disappear from my head and I'm stuck using the same dozen or so

>>25314833
No. You may only write Tekken fan fiction for fun.
>>25314813
LibreOffice

>>25314097
so how much did it cost?

>>25314958
I'm also curious to know

>>25314958
Nothing. Everything.

>>25314975
I don't think you sold your soul for it. Or did you?

is it okay to write a transgressive character that isn't suffering from neo divergent intelligent disorder because she suffers from radicalium experiences because of her intolerant and narrow minded biological sperm dna print?

>>25314995
If your shit has trans characters I'm not reading it.

>>25314997
Not transsexual, it's transgressive.

>>25314946
Tekken lore was actually fan fiction worthy until Tekken 6 ruined everything. Jun is shockingly decently written though.

>>25312085
I hate writing dialogue, but when I cut 90% of it and moved away from using it for exposition and had it either establish the bare necessities required for the scene (stuff needed to progress) or extremely minimal moments of characterisation (flavour), I got feedback that it "sounded way more natural".
In my own experience reading, I care a lot less about the dialogue than I do the stuff around the dialogue, so if the scene doesn't demand it, I try to strip it back and keep my dialogue "out of the way". Similar to how the attributive "said" is something your brain just glosses over (e.g. "Listen here," he said. vs. "Listen here," he chided harshly.) I try to have my dialogue OUTSIDE of key emotional moments be the same--something your brain can process easily and move on from. If you do the opposite, like have every character constantly quipping or spouting witty aphorisms it'll most likely sound less natural (in context) than if they're just speaking when actually required to speak, e.g. making introductions, small talk, ordering a drink, negotiating terms of a deal, voicing an opinion.
For me at least, there's so much more beauty in prose, and that's what I'm trying to get back to, both while reading and writing. Not to say you can't have huge sections of dialogue, but when writing I always ask myself if it's worth adding. Having a character stutter and prattle on for pages may establish them as anxious or a pedant, but asking yourself in the meta sense whether it's enjoyable to read might bw worthwhile depending on what you're writing.

>>25314255
He has a wife dork

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Rate my writing, anons?

>>25315000
Trans + Progress = Transgress

not falling for it

>>25315010
one word dialogue using disfluencies are some of the the worst things you can possibly write. especially when it's changed together like you're doing. It does nothing to advance the plot and is very annoying to read. Despite that humans do it in real life, it doesn't work well with books.

You also should try to get rid of an omniscience narrator and go for a 3rd person limited. it'll help your ability to dive deeper into your character's psyche and characteristics. I also think it'll help your story way more. Also get rid of the present tense and go with past.

>>25315024
Acknowledged and discarded anon. Thanks

>>25315010
I liked it. Tightly written. The big dialogue portion was a little annoying to read, as I tend to breeze through then forget who is speaking. An attributive with a pronoun (e.g. "he said") about halfway through to reestablish the speaking order would help. The dialogue itself is fine, I don't think there was anything superfluous.
>>25315024
Disagree with a tense change, can you explain why? Present tense gives a kind of foreboding in the sense that whatever is going to happen hasn't actually happened yet. It's a subtle distinction but if you're writing horror or horror-adjacent, the voicing makes it seem like we're experiencing it with the characters as opposed to reading a resolved flashback. I think it works well if you're trying to establish any kind of atmospheric tension. There's an underlying dread to it.

Just matched with an ULTRA CUTIE AUTISTIC GIRL

When should I send her my writing? I'm Carl, btw.

>>25315050
present tense doesn't forbode anything. What it does is give a play by play of the character without providing any time for the reader to really sit and engage with the writing and story. Present tense is also very "movie" writing, which has the author go through every scene like a movie in which, you're discarding the very thing books do better than movies. Present tense does give a "in the moment" effect, but it forces horrible sentences such as in the writer's case
>Dottie observes the commercial of a family playing board games
That sentence matters very little to the plot except trying to transition the scene. Present tense has tons of this and tends to force itself in a story

>>25315058
You trying to crawl in her dungeon?

>>25315059
Watching a commercial about family togetherness is meant to juxtapose her older brother Cad bullying her out of cookies, and also overlay how she is only partially paying attention to Wesson's exhaustive discussion of a show he alone likes.

Is the family dynamic not being well illustrated here?

>>25315003
Interesting post. I'm struggling with this because my story os about a group of people in a journey and the MC doesn't know the rest, so I've been writing a lot of dialogue for them to get to know each other (and naturally a lot of it ends up being exposition for the reader). But then I remember LOTR did the same thing and there wasn't a lot of dialogue between the companions in the fellowship and at the ends it felt like they were the best of friends. I try to recall how Tolkien did it buy my mind turns up blank. A giant fucking book I just can't seem to remember anything about.

>>25315050
I should add a few more naming bookmarks, thank you.

>>25315065
not at all. It reads like stage directions. Try writing it in past.

>>25312041
>>25314128
Thanks anons. I'm adding in some smaller events to give the buildup some air. Spies fighting, an assassination attempt. Subtle tipping at who the real instigators of the conflict are. I still like the buildup and big payoff, but I think it is also a good point that you should start the story off with an action hook.

>>25315069
No thanks. I think you're just being belligerent and stubborn.

>>25315065
Not the guy you're replying to, but the sentence doesn't juxtapose anything. "Stage directions" was 100% accurate.
>Dottie observes the commercial of a family playing board games.
You haven't described the family in the commercial in any meaningful way, let alone include Dottie's reaction. It's a pointless sentence because it doesn't add anything other than "a commercial is playing, which gives time for the characters to talk before the show comes on", or in a meta sense, exist to break up your description of the show.
The guy you're replying to gave you examples of the most common pitfalls of the tense you're using with examples, idk what else you want.

>>25315010
Dialogue tags are often doing the work that dialogue should be doing ("she pleads", "she reassures" etc.). In general the writing demonstrates a lack of confidence, i.e it tends to repeat what was already expressed. Or more succinctly: it tells what was already shown. Likely this was just an oversight as in other places you seem to avoid this just fine. Unlike the other anons I thought the line with the commercial was pretty good--a simple way to show Dottie's disinterest in her brother's rambling, but "observes" is probably not the right verb there.

That said I have to agree with the other anon that present tense just isn't appropriate for prose fiction. Unless you're aiming for a very specific effect (which doesn't seem to be the case here) you should stick to 3rd person close POV. It is the natural voice of the storyteller. Whereas, as anon pointed out, present is more like stage directions.

>>25315074
I'm going to write your story in past. Read and take a step back and listen to the prose.

>Where's Beary," she pleaded. "I need Beary."
>Her watery eyes scanned her room and recognized her friend laying in the same corner he was left in.
>Beary pressed his belly to her face and mopped up the tears. He mellowed her hiccups and dispelled her trembling.
"Dottie," said the boy, as he peaked through the small opening of the door. "Are you okay?"
"Yes." Dottie nodded.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes"
"Okay."
Dottie stood. Her lips quivered. Without a moment more, she blurted out (you can't have these internal emotions in present), "Cad took all the cookies."
blah blah blah bad dialogue.
>The siblings headed downstairs and heard the commercials grow louder. It was the Wesson the Robot show.
>Dottie shook her head as she held Beary loosely around her abdomen. "I don't like robot shows very much."
blah blah blah
>Dottie peaked through the corner and watched the commercial of a family playing board games. The flashes of light from the box hypnotized her. She couldn't take her eyes off the Giga-Gear combining into Super Giga-Gear Alpha.
A massive rocket blasted into the building. Rubble remained. Dottie recoiled in horror.
"Beary..." she said. Her stuffed animal clutched near her heart. She joined her brother Wesson on the couch. His face was only inches away from the glowing blue screen.

That's the better readability of using past tense. We actually get dottie's internal thoughts and feelings instead of movie directions. And you head hop a lot.

>>25311756
Thought that was a boofstick

>>25315066
What it comes down to is I think about what I hate reading. Sitting through long-winded backstories is one of them, especially if it's no different to reading a wiki article. The 'required reading' always ends up feeling like homework, so I avoid writing it like the plague.
Instead you can "show" things, like have a character note another's accent, or complain about the food in [different country], miniscule details that other characters can react to, establish their differences (or similarities). At the same time, you can simply skip huge chunks and manifest the results of the relationship, like that scene in the movie "die fighting side by side with an elf" "how about fighitng side by side with a friend?". You're extrapolating the entire relationship based off that and like two other interactions, and more importantly the knowledge that they've had loads of time together off-screen. Show one argument at camp and how each handles it and we can assume that's a microcosm of their entire relationship.
E.g. if your character says something like "where you from?" and the other character tells his life story, then they all go round in a circle telling their life stories, I'm probably gonna tap out. There are exceptions, like Hyperion, but they establish the need for the backstories early so to me, the reader, it never feels like it's working in support of the greater goal, not getting in the way. If you've promised me a grand adventure and I have to sit through 10 backstories, I'm more galled about the broken promise than anything else. The exception is if it's really well written.

>>25315058
>"girl"

>>25314946
>LibreOffice
Do you need to do some voodoo to get it working properly or is it pretty seamless? I'm pretty technologically deficient. I need to turn these into physical books, both English and translations.

>>25315105
pay someone then

>>25315080
There really isn't much variety of commercials where a family playing board games isn't presented in a happy, communal mood. What did you assume the disposition of the family was?

>>25315090
Assume whatever bias you want but I don't find anything significantly different from this other than "I need to know exactly HOW they say every line" and "I'm not used to present tense because muh movie". When was the last time you read a book in the present tense?

You are allowed to picture the exact way a line is delivered when it's unspecified. Multiple interpretations are designed to be valid, a la Blood Meridian. I accept your "pitfalls" and will continue to prefer my style.

>>25315113
then you do you then. We're here point out what we think is wrong with your excerpt. If you want people to dickride your garbage use Reddit or AI.

You're not Cormac McCarthy. And blood merdian is written in past too.

>>25315113
It's not about what I assumed their disposition was, it was about the lack of included information. Choosing to add a word, even if it seems redundant, like saying "whole family" as a way to mention that both parents are present, or "happy family" to show they're cohesive (and not competitive) is what I was looking for. They could've been playing something destructive like battleship for all I know. Fighting over monopoly is a pretty famous boardgame trope. A deliberate word would let me know what you want emphasised in the sentence. You don't need her to say "*sigh* when was the last time WE played boardgames as a family?" but a push in the right direction would help. Given the context, I thought it was about her longing for her parents, because you mentioned a "family" and her parents are absent in the excerpt you posted. To me that connection took precedence over the cookies thing. I get that I'm reading something out of context and in a vaccuum, but based on what you said earlier I was not thinking about Cad and the cookies at all.

>>25315109
For some translations I'll have to, but would rather have the book formatting and other things done myself since it'll save me a ton of money in the long-term.

>>25315128
then use microsoft word. it's the only program i know that can easily "microspace" with justify can leave barely a margin on the bottom of the page, and doesn't mess up fonts when converting to epub or pdf files

>>25315130
It would be a shame if it couldn't work with Pages or even Google Drive, but I suppose Word is the premier tool for a reason. I'd just have to switch to Windows to use properly if I'm remembering right which would suck.

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Well, it's June now. I've reached 60,000 words which was my stated goal, but I'm still not done wrapping up the story. Now I think I'll probably be done between 67,000 and 70,000. I'm getting slightly worried that I might enter a Zeno's paradox situation where I'll keep adding more and more plot points, leaving me continuously approaching the end of the story but never reaching It. Well at least 70,000 is a better number than 60,000. I heard that some publishers will refuse any manuscript under 70,000.

>>25315151
I see you are still using my tool anon. o7
If you have anything you want me to add let me know.

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https://www.readabilit.com/readability/lexile-measure

What's your story's readability score?

>>25314958
I'm pretty sure that person got a copy from a free trial of a paid reviewer-finding service I did. So I literally didn't pay for that review, and I technically didn't pay for it either, since the service doesn't pay the reviewers and only gets your book in front of them.

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>>25315161

>>25315161
>put one thing
>get one score
>add the word "very"
>comes out three points higher

>>25313999
You literally cannot pay for reviews like that. This is what they meant when they said money doesn't buy everything.

>>25315127
Both parts could be true and are both true. Their parents aren't home, and they rarely are. It is hard to guess with little context, but you were on the right path either way. If you did choose to reread the passage, as I intend the story to have more meaning on a retrace, you'd easily find the other half as well. It just boils to down not having much to work with.

>>25315121

>Calling it garbage because you don't like the tense and some of the dialogue

kekw. You need to work on giving advice. Infinite wisdom doesn't matter if nobody wants to listen to it. I mentioned Blood Meridian because it's open to interpretation, not because of its tense. Cheers.

>>25315161
Dogshit retard site for measuring actual level of writing. This will average out to highschool, unless you are doing something terribly wrong.

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>>25315161
I decided on a whim to put Dubliners in and see what score it would give it. Might do this with other famous novels just to see the results. If you're having ai and the like judge your story remember not to get too discouraged if it says it's bad, the machines can be pretty janky when when trying to judge quality.

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>>25315192
Here's it's take on Moby-Dick

>>25315193
Now that I think of it, Moby Dick would make a GREAT book for high school english!

>>25315192
There's nothing wrong with a lower score, really; accessibility is very important for a book to flourish. But, it might make it difficult to concisely describe complex ideas.

>>25315255
"High school" is already lower score. If you somehow manage to hit lower than highschool, you might be writing in actual retard language.

>>25315265
whatever you say, anon.

>>25315265
Or you're writing something for people who haven't yet gone through high school you insensitive fuck

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>>25315161
Apparently even The Little Prince is a high school level book. I had to whip out Dr. Suess for it to get into the green.

>>25315281
I keep rereading the title as My Little Pony. I need help

>>25315292
You just reminded me that /mlp/ is still a board and not an inactive one. Autism is a hell of a drug

I'll give you a free early copy of my book if you email me and promise to post and/or make (a) thread(s) about it. You can roast it if you want, but I think you'll find it's a pretty solid book. It's that Consumptive Cur that one anon keeps posting about, the one about a literary vampire. I just need a functional email to send your file to. Learn more here:
https://forms.gle/hAenyKxfiqtZrvsy8
For the "reviews/discussions" part, just put a promise that you'll post on this website about it.

I started writing a short story. How do anons get over writers block and just being a procrastinating piece of shit? I don't have much time to write outside of work and family time. Even when I have time in the late evenings I usually just default to reading.

>>25315332
You need to know someone's really looking forward to it. when it comes to writer's block, write literally anything and revise later. Or outline. Either helps

I have ginger fetish and most characters in my novel are gingers. Imagine that.

>>25315506
Mine are tsunderes

>>25315293
Hey leave us out of this

>>25315575
You have to go back.

>>25311756
lmao

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>>25315161
>>25315165
>>25315192
>>25315193
>>25315281
This is retarded.

>>25315610
You may not like it, but this is what the peak of English language looks like.

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>>25315610
He really was a genius.

>>25315193
Mine scored higher than Moby Dick? What is this even calculating exactly? Seems like shit.
>>25315610

>>25315155
What’s the tool?

I know am going to get shit, but my freewrite has really allowed me to write in a way that I never have before. I would always open up my doc, write a paragraph, delete it, and then close it out to do something else. Now I am just putting it all on page, and then because I have been drafting without being encumbered by editing, I can edit without being encumbered too much by drafting. I am whittling mishapen pieces of wood into something at least mediocre... which is better than before where I was creating nothing.

>>25315151
What I've heard is the sweet spot for publishers is just under 100K. But that's all just hearsay and conjecture and I'm sure you can get a lot of types of stuff published if you're tenacious enough

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>>25315702
>whittling mishapen pieces of wood into something at least mediocre

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>>25315700
Unfortunately I can't post the link, it's vercel apps are detected as spam.

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>>25315749
Thanks for the cool tool anon. This information is so very vaguely interesting. If you're saving copies of everything uploaded there, I hope you enjoy my book

>>25315781
It can't store any information, it's all local.
If you are worried about that you can test it yourself by loading the page, and then disable the internet. Followed by pasting your text in.
It will still work fine.
If you find any issues just let me know.

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I wrote a (very) short story based on a prompt for college.

>>25315792
I'm going to expand on the features of the app real quick since people are actually using it.

>>25315792
You should start storing results so you can display some kind of averages. These stats don't have much context as-is

>>25315798
Was the prompt to make an adaptation of the bike cuck meme?

>>25315801
I can score the average lexical density relative to the average density of books according to research.

>>25315781
meow

>>25315809
Yeah, do that. Another brilliant idea by me.

>>25315810
Something's wrong with Kitty

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>>25315801
>>25315809
I've been putting random famous novels in to see the results and Ulysses has by far the biggest vocabulary, possibly even of any book ever published. And for any anons worried that they need to use more words, The Sun Also Rises didn't even break 5,000 unique words but it's considered a classic so don't worry too much.

>>25315843
No, yeah, tools like this are purely for research purposes and shouldn't influence your writing one way or another. Your voice can't be summarized by any number

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>>25315843
New Features:
- Added a toggle to filter common words. (Enabled by default.)
- Unique words and lexical density now show expected values for your passage length.
- Designed a 100% new reading level algo based on Heap's Law.
- Total sentence count, average sentence length, expected reading time, and average sentence length.
- Perform topic extraction based on connectivity relevance. (Your characters names will probably be there.)
- Added a word cloud visualization.
You may need to refresh the app if it already open.

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>>25315885
- Added branding to browser tab so it doesn't say "My Google App" anymore.

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>>25315885

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>>25315909
Not sure why that screencap didn't capture the frequency list, works fine here

>>25315749
>got middle school
I should just give up.

>>25315909
>>25315911
Do you feel it is working as expected?
>>25315914
How long was your text?

>>25315924
>How long was your text?
Tried one about 10k words and another about 100k. Got middle school for both.

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See, I was taught that character and plot are the same thing. A plot is made up of the choices a character makes, and a character is made up of the choices made. So this review is kind of confusing to me.

>>25314958
>>25314970
As it turns out, I was wrong, and picrel is one of the reviews from the service I mentioned here>>25315162. So yeah, I didn't even come close to paying for that glowing review. That's pure grassroots admiration you're seeing right there.

Still, picrel review is much better than the glowing one. It could use more detail, but it's not awful. It gives you a sense of what you're in for.

>>25315930
10k middle school is normal for shorter texts as their sparsity tends to be higher. Its generally accepted that 10k long texts are about middle school level reading. So this is expected.
100k words though? Ehh, that's a solid reading level sample, longer words are often skewed as more difficult to read.
I might add a secondary "length agnostic" score for shorter passages.

>>25315924
>working as expected?
I mean I don't really have any expectations out of this I just think it's neat

>>25312976
2400 words.

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>>25315937
>100k words though? Ehh, that's a solid reading level sample, longer words are often skewed as more difficult to read.

>>25315956
>longer words are often skewed as more difficult to read.
I meant longer works*

>>25315798
I think it is very good anon!

>>25315010
This is quite good. It's mysterious and shadowy. I'll max out on the creepiness more. But good job. Best shit posted this year

I just went back and introduced the main villain. I was going to go the whole story without a singular lead bad guy, just lots of anonymous bad guys... but... eh, whatever.

>>25315999
>his story has an antagonist and not an antagonistic force
you are like little baby

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Here's translated bit of my writing into english. Currently at 46k words, aiming at 60k to 70k. This portion is located somewhere along the 40k mark.

Trap elves novel is coming along. Slowly. It's not terribly sexy so far, but I'm thinking of making it more of an adventure with erotic content. Aiming between 80-85k words and end with a sequel bait just in case people get interested. Then I'll drop it on Amazon and forget about it.

>>25316007
I know...
But it's a screenplay, and audiences need something to latch onto I guess. I was planning to maybe reveal the lead villain at the very end as the guy who was coordinating everything, but I figured might as well cut to him a few times in act 2 as well. Besides, it fills time, took up a half-page.

>>25315130
what about libreoffice? i think it can do all that. i typeset my book in libreoffice and have no complaints.

>>25315610
"I don't fucking understand any of this. Esoteric."

>>25315798
Yum. The character voice seemed self-absorbed at first, but the later two-thirds justifies it excellently. Eloquent pontification.

>>25315931
It might be a commentary about idea vs. execution. Like a murder mystery on a helicopter may sound interesting, but there's still a million ways you can fuck it up and turn it into the most poring story imaginable.

Characters are a product of circumstance and plot is about a character in a circumstance, so they are indivisible, yeah. Their critique could be how a character was shown to care too much or too little about something to the point they couldn't rationalize their decisions.

>>25316136
you cannot do microspacing with libre office unless there's an update

>>25315988
"Shadowy"? you mean because the page is dark?

>>25316230
>microspacing
what do you mean by that? is that a microsoft term?

if you want fine-tuned spacing between lines in libreoffice you can play with font-size. that will actually change the amount of space between lines (even if there is no text). if you want to adjust spacing between letters, there is a control for that too.

caveat is that you should do none of this until you are at the typesetting phase

>>25316241
>font-size
if line spacing alone is not doing it for you, obviously

>>25316010
I'm so glad the exposition is brief and concise. It's not at all exhaustive or over-the-top or self-insistent. The world of the character, his immediate surroundings, is all that matters and it's all that's illustrated.

It might be because of the translation, but the repetitiveness of "laughed" and "cried" made the emotional beats same-y and redundant. It's more about being sad/showing sadness rather than fighting a difficult/hopeless battle which naturally produces sadness. Without a variety of words to specify the nature of the crying, I can't tell how the first tear and the last tear are different.

But yeah, the overall narrative direction is solid. It's clear what the characters want, what they don't have, and what they're afraid of.

>>25316241
>>25316243
word and letter spacing. there is no control for that

>>25316284
i had no problem adjusting both of those in libreoffice

>>25316528
>>25316284
>>25316243
>>25316241
Microspacing refers to justified text, in the insertion of characters smaller than a spacebar character to better fit justified text more densely. Fuck do people use search engines anymore?

>>25316232
No. It's simply good writing. Period. As good as Consumption cut and dark triad

>>25316668
>As good as Consumptive Cur and Dark Triad

the magic words to make any /lil/ writer kill themself

>introduce titular character/love interest in the second-to-last chapter
>kill her off in the same chapter

I know this won't go over well with anyone who reads it, but it's the only way the story can be told.

Just saw the Maid In Four Parts ad. Kek. How much does it cost to advertise on /lit/? I might do it too for my erotic novel.

>>25316729
Then she's not really the love interest, is she? Maybe an obsession of the MC.

>>25316729
what, you couldn't find any better way to hurt your protagonist?

>>25316729
>introduce a recurring but relatively minor side character
>MC just likes her because she does stuff he appreciates
>dies brutally in a really senseless way which is pure ragebait for the MC
Heh.

>>25316719
those two are part of /lit/ and /wg/'s big 5 published books

1000 words but it took a long time. Another chapter down at least. It's probably a bad idea to idea a child character in an erotic adventure right

>>25316530
>smaller than a spacebar character
you can do that in libreoffice. spacing is not based on the width of a spacebar character when you do kerning

i havent been writing for awhile now, and i actually feel a building existentialism as a result... so, i will write (soon)

>>25316792
Kerning is spacing between all letters, not dynamic spacing between words. Unless you are specifically highlighting and adjusting the kerning of the spacebar characters.

>>25316887
i will have to take a look at it again, i guess. i thought it could handle both spacing between words and spacing between characters, but i could be wrong

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>>25316908
Here, I spent the last 10 minutes making this diagram.

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>>25316910
Added additional information

>>25315982
>>25316217
Thank you for the kind feedback.

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>Reread my manuscript
>Notice he great majority of my protagonist's dialogue is questions
I wish I knew how to write better conversations that flow naturally.

>>25316910
ok thanks. i see what you mean. so just adjusting the kerning on the word "over" wouldn't get a similar result, in terms of getting the "r" over to the edge?

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>>25316995

>>25316668
>>25316719
You people haven't even read my book yet, you have no idea how good it is

>>25316995
a lot of the stuff i've been reading just doesn't do conversations where this might be an issue. they just skip it. if the dialogue does show up, it's for good reason.

>>25316018
>audiences need something to latch onto
Make stuff for low-brow viewers and something crazy will happen: only low-brow viewers will like your shit

>>25316995
Try writing detective fiction

>>25316268
Yea, lexicon is my biggest weakness I think. Lot of the book and character interaction is intentionally based on small movements and silence but it translated into too many sighs and too many looks etc. This will need polishing in the second draft (not by replacing the sighs, looks, laughs with synonyms but different small interactions that do not break the pacing).
However it is also partly intentional as it takes place in country and time when there was no written word. And importance of speaking/weight of words are a motif throughout the book.

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The current chapter I'm writing is getting a little. As in it'll probably be 15 or 16 thousand words long once I finish it. I think it might be time for me to split it up.

Would writing help me become a better reader as well? Like noticing story themes, etc.
I watch movies, I read books, but I don't notice things like motifs, themes, story construction, narrative etc.
I want to be able to understand that, and I also think writing is useful as a skill as well.

>>25317251
Yes, it both made me more critical of written stuff and made me appreaciate good writing more. Especially made me appreciate Hemingway, I fell like before writing I didn't have the 'feel' for his skill of leaving shit out, saying just as little as necessary.

Be honest:

The only reason you’re writing literature is because you don’t have the resources to make your story into a movie, TV show or game. I feel this is something a lot of writers won’t admit.

>>25317287
Yes. The low barrier to entry is very appealing to flex my creativity

>>25317093
The ideal chapter is 1500 words. Readers don't like long chapters.

>>25317324
Yup, was about to say this. Even most chapters in Anna Karenina are like 10 pages at most (3000 words). 15k words per chapter is crazy, that's not a chapter, that's a 'book 1' or 'part 1' of larger novel.

>>25317026
That's fine because I'm only in it for the money

you have a better chance of getting your novel turned into a movie, tv show, or game, than you do a screenplay.

>>25317287
I could make 3D animation but it's an assload of fucking work. I'm also working on a VN.

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How do I become a good writer? Genuine question. These zoomer directors make me want to create but I also don’t want to release dog shit.

>>25317512
>didn't create the idea
>didn't write the screenplay
>let James Wan and Oz Perkins "direct" for him
Kale Parsnip didn't do shit

>>25317287
this is a loaded suggestion/projection; most anyone would drop (anything) they're doing to instead work some big ambitious project (if they had the resources-- that implication alone means something)... but my writing/story is for the medium and doesn't translate like that.
i say this is loaded because if you read more and were thinking about the craft as a writer you probably wouldn't have made that assertion

not hating, just... it is what it is

>>25317388
Checked but I literally do not care if they are made into anything. I just want to cash a check

>>25317287
Eh, kinda? I have a background in filmmaking and the fact that I don't have unlimited resources means I have a lot more free time to devote to prose. But I see the interests as seperate and distinct. I'd probably find time to write lit even if I did have unlimited resources.

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99% of great movies started as books

>>25317380
Why did you pick creative shit as your get-rich-quick scheme? It's easier to pass a camel through the eye of a needle than to get rich quick as a creative.

>>25317651
>“This is probably a very unpopular thing to say,” the director Peter Greenaway has said, “but all film writers should be shot.”
>The provocative call to arms, although not literal arms, was made by Greenaway to an audience at the headquarters of Bafta.
>Greenaway was speaking at a ‘Life in Pictures’ retrospective event celebrating a career which has included films such as >The Draughtsman’s Contract; The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover and The Pillow Book.
>Nearly always outspoken and controversial, the Amsterdam-based Greenaway did not disappoint at Bafta when he complained that cinema was always going “back to the bookshop” for its content.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/apr/14/film-director-calls-for-image-based-cinema

>>25317324
>>25317340
Stop trying to turn it into math, faggots. You could have no chapters at all, just one long block of text, and if the writing is good the book is good.

>>25317093
Do what works.