>>25382952
不,我是你的冰淇淋小販。如果你路過,就把我叫住吧。

This may appear as a silly question but I may have stumbled upon a truth that many here already knew about writing workshops or MFAs or anything comparble.

Basically I was looking around out of curiosity—I don't think I'd enroll anywhere any time soon—and checked out the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a writing workshop from the uni I attended (non-American) and I came to realize that these places don't really teach you how to write per se. The Iowa workshop required for enrollment sending two short stories iirc or some excerpts of a novel written by you—the other one didn't have any requirements like that but explicitly said that you were expected to be able to produce prose at least competently.

So is this the truth for all places like this? They already expect you to be able to write at least semi-decently and just help you improve? The Iowa workshop is particularly interesting because obviously it follows that if they think your stories are bad they won't let you in.

I guess my point is is there any place where they literally teach you how to write? This may seem a rather autistic question but I am genuinely curious. Do these people just expect that the bare minimum must necessarily come about naturally before any instruction? I guess to some extent I agree—some of the most promiment writers of history started writing as a hobby as kids or young teens so I guess they are right.

>>25383563
>the uni I attended
oh dear

the truth anon is that modern education is by and large a scam designed to dump a great mass of material on you, check off an interminable series of official boxes, and collect their pound of flesh
(with a good deal of autofellatio by the dickhead in charge, along the way)
and the more artistic and non-career-related, the more retarded such workshops and courses are

you would be far better off picking up the standard /wg/ reading list, reading it yourself, practising and posting your writing here for review
at least you would probably save yourself a few hundred dollars

t. I teach

>is there any place where they literally teach you how to write?
yes, but you won't find them unless you have the cash and connections to be personally tutored by a published writer

>>25383537
Read something by some famous author you admire, (preferably short stories, if they are good they wont have even a page wasted, preferably by an author with a very unique footprint like Borges), try to imitate the style of said author, vocabulary, rhythm, intention; but to say something YOU actually want to convey.

Repeat to infinity with as many authorrs as you'd like.
If you dont have an "inner voice" or whatever guiding you this is a good method to develop some semblance of mastery and slowly approach a "personal style".

>>25383563
Academic writing is way different than fiction. They'll teach you how to write non-fiction mostly. you learn the basics like formulating a sentence, but writing fiction is ultimately an art and that comes from your own emotions and your own skills.

>>25383573
>you would be far better off picking up the standard /wg/ reading list, reading it yourself, practising and posting your writing here for review
Yeah I think I agree with this sentiment overall. It was mostly just out curiosity that I took a look at those workshops. I have my issues with them as well. I didn't study anything writing related though so don't worry about that point in particular.
>>25383618
I know but these workshops and I guess most of them also include fiction.

(1/2)
A young girl is in the supermarket unsupervised and she's looking at the lobsters, a lobster grabs her attention and he says that he wants to be released because he doesn't want to be murdered. The girl refuses and begins to leave but the lob tells her that she'll be an accessory to murder if she doesn't. She becomes scared and after a bit of sweet talking her, she decides to help. She grabs the tongs and grabs the lobster. As she's putting it in her minibag, an employee spots her and a chase ensues. After a lot of mayhem, the girl makes it into a toilet stall. The lobster thanks the child for her kindness and says he will never forget her for as long as he lives. The girl hurriedly puts the lobster in the toilet. The bid each other farewell and the girl flushes him down. With a final war cry of "LOBSTERRRRRRRRRRRR" he spins round and round until he vanishes into the siphon jet (that's what the toilet hole's called) and down the drain. The employees break open the door and the girl says he's gone. The girl and her mother are taken to the back office and the girl's mother asks her to explain herself. She says "he told me he didn't want to die and just wanted to go home." The adults in the room trade worried glances with each other. After a while the girl's embarrassed mother pays for the damages and the lobster and using innuendo and polite insinuation is asked to not return. The girl's mother sheepishly obliges and leaves. Later, the girl is taken to a "very special doctor" who likes to ask lots of funny questions, but nothing comes from it. Eventually, this event turns into an embarrassing inside joke and soon after becomes a distant memory for her.

(2/2)
Many years pass. The girl, now a young teenager, is at the beach with some friends. She is playing in the water when she feels a tug on her swimsuit. She thinks it's her classmate playing a prank, but when she turns no one is there. She continues playing when she feels a much larger tug. She kicks at the assailant, sees a familiar faces come out of the water. It's the lobster, much larger and battle scarred. The girl is shocked to see him again. The lobster is overjoyed at meeting her again and says that they've both grown so much since that day. The lobster has a gift for her. He pulls a white cloth-like object from under the waves. It's a teeshirt! The lobster says that he always wanted to show his gratitude by making a graphic tee for saving him from a graphic death. The girl pulls up the shirt and reads it. "I Lob You?" The word "lob" has a heart (in the shape of 2 lobster claws) behind it. The girl becomes tearful and thanks the lobster for her gift. The lobster says that he and his many children shall always remember the little girl that left such an impression on their hearts. The girl and the lobster hug and he disappears underneath the waves.

The girl puts on her new shirt immediately and leaves the water. Her friends ask where she got the shirt from, and she says the old grocery store lobster gave it to her. All of the children exchange puzzled glances before everyone heads home.

>>25383698
>A young girl is in the supermarket unsupervised and she's looking at the lobsters, a lobster grabs her attention and he says that he wants to be released because he doesn't want to be murdered.
Already the first line is shit.
>present tense is garbage
>POV change

Imagine if you worked for a tradpub agency. Might throw in that it's a scathing critique of consumerism. Would you read this novel, or cast it aside?

>Lǎoshǔ (mouse), by Chen Jing

>A portrait of a girl, painted in a series of vignettes.

>Lin Hui- a neurotic Chinese portrait artist- has to leave everything behind: her boyfriend, her mother, her dog, and her language, to enroll in a prestigious art programme in Toronto, thousands of kilometres away from her family.

>Cast out from her own community and in a desperate search for meaning through philosophy and drugs, she sees the hard truth, a pill she cannot swallow: that absolutely nothing lasts. She becomes increasingly desperate for something she can hold on to-- a tenuous lineage, a timeless work of art, a child of her own!

>Exploring themes of aesthetics, political polarization, substance abuse, and identity, with a surprising amount of humour and heart, this novel delves into the experience of having a heritage worth preserving in a period of excruciatingly rapid change, as the world tells you it is either trivial or monstrous.
The twist is neither the character nor the author are chinese

>>25383705
I'm not a litfag i just wrote it for fun

>>25383715
and what you wrote is still shit

>>25383705
it's really just one fat guy on /wg/ that complains about present tense huh

>>25383713
It sounds pretty generic with a sprinkle of muh dynasty. I don't find anything, heh, "novel" about it. I've seen this story play out a billion times on the internet where a millenial roastie hits the wall and tries to settle down after her ambitionless art career falls through

>>25383698
Dawg, I gotta say. No one writes stories so straightforward anymore. This story resembles a fable. Read collections of fables if that's your goal. For mainstream fiction short stories, you'll have to have a more contemporary voice to be considered decent.

I'd suggest starting with a strange specific detail, some sort of imagery or commentary or a dialogue. Something interesting.

>"Sweetie. Come on." Mother called without looking, as she rummaged through a discount bin piled high with jars of chili crisp, before absently turning down the next aisle.
>Little Madeline stared into the tank at the wispy antenna of a strange and fascinating creature: a squat lobster, destined to be part of a middling seafood medley, at best.
>"Psst. You." The lobster seemed to be tapping desperately on the glass with its maroon, elastic-bound claws. Madeline squinted into the tank, perplexed. "Hey! Girl! I'm talking to you!" It reared up on it's hind legs to plead for its life.


I dunno. People will NOT see the forest for the trees. 4channers are just blunt about it. It's not easy to instantly make masterful prose.

"After a lot of mayhem" skips probably what could have been a whole scene; something amusing at slapstick. You could make it more dramatic with the "special doctor." These are barely touched on. She doesn't have a name (which could be fine).

What are you trying to say with this story? It must be comedy. There are a few decent lines

>>25383705
Nothing wrong with present tense. I find it can make narration especially of inner thoughts more vivid, and it makes it easier to have a very character driven story. If you want to get decent critiques, you can post on SCRIBOPHILE, and they will line by line give you decent advice.

>>25383760
It's just dumb silly shit I come up when I'm lazing around, but thanks for the actual review. I'll like to flesh this out one day

>>25383760
It started out as kinda a movie-like draft before getting extra shit tacked on which is why it changes style part way through. I haven't actually read a book in a good long while so it's gonna be weird

>>25383698
What a strangely structured parable. It goes unexplained how the girl understood the lobster in the first place, which is the lynchpin of the whole story.

>>25383825
I forgot to mention it's dumb spongebob humor stuff. Just cartoony nonsense

>>25383540
this string of words means less than nothing

>>25383771

Douglas squinted into a jar at a frantic one-eyed sphynx moth that Janelle held up to him eagerly. "They live their entire adult lives without mouths. They literally are incapable of eating or drinking- only flapping and fucking. Isn't it wild?" she said, barely containing her excitement.
"Wild as fuck, I guess." He inadvertently gleaned the words from what Janelle had been saying, a nervous tick of his. He just wanted her to think he's wild enough to fuck later. "So, uh. What now?"
They sat at the top of a lush vegetated ravine, teeming with lazy fluttering lacewings, fireweed, and gaudy overgrown doiley-like blooms cow parsnip, overlooking the turbid, tea-colored Sheep creek.
"Let's take a dip! I'm fuckin cooking out here!" Janelle smacked Douglas on the shoulder with the back of her hand. Even under the shade of the deciduous wood, it was sweltering and humid and hot.
"I... er... uh... I don't have trunks." Douglas muttered as Janelle started to stand up. He was wearing ratty blue jeans, and he hated how they felt when they got wet.
"Strip then." Janelle had already started peeling off her shirt. When she reached behind her back to unhook her bra, she caught Douglas's unwavering gaze for a moment. He turned away sheepishly.
Take a pic, why don't ya!" Janelle laughed, as she stripped off her denim shorts.
Douglas watched the moth bang into the walls of its solitary glass confinement. A beam of sun glinted off the corner of the jar. The moth's vibrating hind wings were pink with blue-haloed eyespots. It tapped its fuzzy spindly legs on the side of the jar desperately. Despite his protestant upbringing-- his crippling prudishness-- Douglas tore off his black graphic tee and kicked off his shoes into the tall cool grass.
Janelle was already frolicking in the frigid creek, her auburn hair sticking to her pale freckled face. She stared at Douglas, who hesitated on the cobbled margins. How he wished he could take the plunge, to feel as unrestrained as Janelle.
"What's the matter? Ain't seen a girl before?"
"No no, it's that the water is so cold!"
"Pussyyyyyy," she jeered through her cupped hands, and flicked a bit of water at Douglas. He sat on a silty bar of sediment and occasionally ladled water onto his head, letting it drip down his back and chest. Janelle finally had enough and came out of the water, covering her chest, shivering.
"I think I'm ready to head back, she said.
Douglas tried not to look.

At the top of the hill, where their clothes were, Janelle picked up the jar to look at the moth she'd caught.
"Fuck!"
"What?" Douglas asked as he wrestled with a sock, trying to get it over his wet white foot. Janelle passed him the jar. It was so hot, it almost burnt the palm of his hand.

In the bottom of the jar lay a crispy dried heap of wings.
"Looks like he didn't get to fly and fuck, hey? Life comes at ya fast." Janelle said regretfully. She already started down the trail before Douglas had finished putting on his shirt.

>>25383828
There is a certain charm to writing like a kid. But if you are gonna try that voice, that means committing to it, lest you lose consistency. Phrases and terms like "chase ensues," "mayhem," "vanishes into the siphon jet," "innuendo and polite insinuation," etc. Take away from that.

>>25383835
the foidiest foid that ever foided

>>25383760
>Nothing wrong with present tense. I find it can make narration especially of inner thoughts more vivid, and it makes it easier to have a very character driven story.
It doesn't do this at all. Present tense is an inferior way to write and is written for people with aphantasia who cannot "picture" a story being told to them without a sentence by sentence play by play. It also does terribly with POV because your'es upposed to be in the MC's immediate POV, but there's going to be awkward sentences that break immersion continuously.
>Jack is stepping to the door. He opens it and sees Jill. Jill is wearing a pink dress.
If you're jack, the first thing you will never notice is the pink dress. That is the problem with present tense. I know a lot of YA books do it it now and people read tons of YA here, but there's a reason why a vast majority of classics are written in past.

>>25383946
>gives possibly the worst example known to man

have you considered writing something intellectually honest?

>As Jack steps through the door, he sees a pink dress. It's Jill.

That's not a present tense problem, it's a low quality writing problem. I can't believe you're making me say correlation =/= causation. Project Hail Mary and Hunger Games are both present tense and they even got movies. Gold and shit can be packaged into any perspective or verb tense.

>>25383537
>>25383319
this is not a poem, its a theatrical run on sentence. Many such post modern cases

>>25383718
>>25383842
>>25383946
Your seething is not value-added. Have you considered constructive criticism?

>>25384044
this >>25383842 wasn't supposed to be an insult. It's just the plain truth of her character. It was a comment, at worst.

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Page 3 and 4 of >>25382551
I'm hoping the characters' trains of thought are easy to follow, along with the direction of the plot. Do things feel like they're going to fast or slow?

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1.38 MB PNG

>>25383835

>>25384063
>Do things feel like they're going to fast or slow

you just wrote 2 full pages of a kid fucking with a toy nonstop. I don't care if the entire story is about the teddy bear you need to take a million steps back

>>25384071
a million steps back to what?

>>25384075
its a saying. to look at the big picture.

>>25384054
foids are a big market for books

>>25384097
What will a "big picture" give you that is missing from the first four pages? You're asking for exposition, but I have found no need to give any thus far. All relevant characters so far are 14 and under; their motivations are uncomplicated.

>>25384104
uh, I guess? but if you're catering to foids, why are you describing a male fantasy?

>>25384105
ok but there should still be a story somewhere. taking that many paragraphs fucking around is excessive. you can sum up a character and a conflict in less than 2 paragraphs. Right now I cant even tell if there is a conflict, let alone a character despite the sheer amount you typed

>>25383835
>>25383778
I forgot I quoted you, but I must've been thinking about what I'd write with the premise of a creature in a glass cage. And I did say Fuck too much, thank you, but no (YOUs) for you. And my writing is foid-coded for sure.
>>25383730
Would it make a difference if I said she was an autistic French foid and her occasionally tactless, unfettered ambition is what causes most of her trouble? A clanker told me to remove "sardonic, talented, and paranoid," from the blurb because those descriptions frontload the character development that the story earns slowly. What would get a yes from you? It's existential literature, hopefully like The Bell Jar, Nausea, or something by Miriam Towes ; very sensory, surreal, philosophical, and layered, but it's not challenging on the surface to read. I just don't know the publishing route to take, and my beta readers are taking too long to finish it.

>>25383946
After I clicked "post," I realized I was thinking about first person narration, not present tense, despite those being extremely distinct, with their straightforward names. Brain not smart no more, I agree that past tense is generally better. I used to, and I still do, accidentally slip into present tense for certain sentences (because I'm writing in first person) when a person is thinking "out loud," but it's a really thin line what the narrator says to you, with certain styles of narration.

>I opened the door and saw Jill reclining on the sofa in her pink dress. What is she even doing here? Clearly, she's waiting for me. It's not like we were going to meet up at the restaurant after this, or anything. It pisses me off when she does this; deviating from our plans and all, letting herself in. She turned to me, put down her book, clicked her tongue, forced a smile, and offered me a seat by sliding over slightly. "So," she began, vaguely.


>>25384110
I wrote that, I'm not that anon! I cater to male fantasy by writing foids, it's really that simple. It's easy for me to imagine a "manic pixie" girl; my nebulous muse. I actually LIKE women. You're just a kid: you're not cringepilled enough to get it.

i'm pretty sure this medication has been fucking with my head which is why i haven't been able to focus or write, god dammit

>>25384112
>you can sum up a character and a conflict in less than 2 paragraphs.
Doesn't mean you should. Someone who read Hamlet and someone who read the Sparknotes summary of Hamlet won't write essays even remotely close to each other.

>I cant even tell if there is a conflict
"'See? Falling apart. Just throw it out already.'"
...
"Dottie presses down a bandage that won't stay on. He might have to live like this forever thanks to her. 'I'm not gonna throw you away. I promise.'"

Do you not see any conflicting ideas/motivations here?

>let alone a character
what?

>the sheer amount you typed
wordcount: 2106 over four pages

Do you even write anything?

Excerpt from a horror story based on generational evil.

"I was a failed abortion. Did I ever tell you that?"

"I remembered you mention it in passing a few times. Never saying it out loud like this though. What changed for you?"

"I started to have dreams," Agnes said softly, calmly, almost detached.

Her slender fingers raised her half finished cigarette to her thin lips and inhaled the poison, feeling a nicotine rush hit immediately in her chest. She let it saturate in her lungs before letting out a soft sigh with smoke escaping subtly and continued on.

"It's brought back what she said. How she said it,"

"How did she say it Agnes," her therapist ventured softly, realizing obviously the door she was opening.

"Like how I'm talking now. Calm and detached. Like it was such a trivial, mundane topic,"

"I see," he looked in her calm and clear celadon eyes for a moment of recognition before writing down, Agnes is processing trauma with clarity.

He looked back up to meet her eyes as he asked softly ,"How did that make you feel Agnes,"

Expecting that same calm detachment.

"Like killing her. I wanted to kill her once she explained what an abortion was," Agnes said barely above a whisper with rage underlining it in every single syllable. Her eyes not looming at him but at her cigarette, replaying the fantasies she craved would happen.

Lingering in her head like a germinal idea. Only it never came to fruition. She honestly didn't know why it hadn't but maybe her peace was more important than wasting her potential of a life that was filled with promise. She had to think it was God saving her from being ripped apart in the womb by calm and surgical hands. "Do you want to know how she would have done it?" She said still looking at her half finished cigarette leaving wisps of smoke.

"How?"

"With a coat hanger the first two times. She used the most rustiest one so that if she couldn't reach me, she would poison me with that. Hoping it would deform me at the least. That didn't work obviously. I'm still as beautiful as ever. Still healthy. No IQ deficiencies here. Just a rage that won't ever be forgotten and a will not to waste my precious life on her bullshit,"

"I'm truly sorry that a parent can be capable of that,"

Her celadon eyes slowly looked up from her half finished cigarette to her therapist dull chestnut brown eyes and for an inexplicable moment, she feels an instant ignition in her simmering rage. From smoldering to an inferno of hatred that almost makes her snarl before an intense pain starts in the center of her head, targeting both sides. Instead of a snarl she winces as she touches her temple with a calming touch. Her eyes closed as she tries to will away the pain, her incendiary rage forgotten and reduced back to a smoldering and simmering anger beneath every syllable. She finally tunes in her therapists concerned voice as he asks again.

"One of those headaches again, huh?" He asks calmly.

>>25384130
sorry I touched your insecure nerve kiddo. To answer your genuine question yes, more than you.

If thats your whole story and conflict, its boring. everything you have so far is tedious. I cant image you doing much more with this. And in your case, yes, you should definately get to the point quickly. These two entire pages add nothing to anything besides being a slog.
google "writing 101" and get back to me

>>25384124
My good anon, let me tell you my thoughts about character motivation and action. You don't need to subscribe to the perspective, but just consider how I think.

All protagonists hold a belief (due to instinct/past experience/mentorship) that they do not see physically present and exercised in the world they live in. To try and reinforce this core belief, the one which drives the entire story, they attempt to physically manifest it. For example, a child may believe that there can be world peace, and so they try to achieve world peace. A dictator may believe they can rule the world, so they try to rule the world. A homeless man thinks everyone should be as miserable as him, so he tries to make everyone as miserable as him. Their methods differ based on their past knowledge and successes and failures, but they ultimately pursue these goals throughout the entire story.

When I read your summary, it does give a distinct belief to manifest: that something CAN last, but the way you present the scope of the story seems to branch out too wildly as if to check boxes off a intellectualist list. Instead of these subjects emerging serendipitously or consequentially, it's like you made the themes first and the character second. It compiles my suspicion over the foid leaving behind everything that seems to reinforce her core belief and makes me surmise her real motivation is something shallower.

tl;dr the author looks like they want to make a best seller instead of a good story from all the publisher lingo, unable to more concisely describe the motivations of the protagonist

>You're just a kid: you're not cringepilled enough to get it.

FUCK YOU
>Fuck you.
I'm cringepilled as hell you don't know shit about me

>>25384187
fuck off from /lit/. You ruin every thread you enter manic retard

>>25384167
>more than you.
your lack of contribution says otherwise. If your writing is as bad as what you call a "critique," then your hobby of seething in /wg/ makes perfect sense.

>Boring, tedious
>doesn't explain how or why
I can't take you seriously, man. Everyone else knows how to give useful advice and yours just boils down to "do better until I like it." Why do you bother replying at all?

>>25384187
thats a lot of unnecessary words just to say a good character has strong motivations. thats it. its not complicated

>>25384203
I take that as a compliment. It's not easy to ruin a thread in three messages.

>>25384228
If it's not complicated, then why do most stories suck? The main point is about presenting the motivations in the summary, not how they're actually expressed in the story.

>>25384227
you posted pages. I read them and all I got was a wall of text clumsily describing a child mutilating a toy. then you claimed there was a conflict. Nothing fucking happens in two whole pages m8 what are you on?
When I explained that you are taking forever to get to any point at all you compared yourself to shakespeare. I dont know what other ways I can say "you keep writing the same fucking things over and over again for two fucking pages, THIS SHIT GOES ON FOR TOO LONG"

>>25384247
because modern writers don't write character motivations. they don't understand the basic fundementals to character writing

Hi I wrote a story called Feeding Taykor Swixtz Mom 78 Borgir Krab Cheeseeses and 1 Patty McHam AKA The Penguins of Madagascar vs. Jeffrey Epstein, the sequel to Feeding Taylor Swift 78 Krabby Patties and 1 Chum Burger Act II: The Formuler of Secrets, the sequel to Feeding Taylor Swift 78 Krabby Patties and 1 Chum Burger: The Weight of Ophelia, the sequel to Feeding Taylor Swift 78 CheeseBurgers and 1 Hamburger

Take a gander if you wanna:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/80523136/chapters/211467791

>>25384262
this is why the arts were gatekept for thousands of years

>>25384252
holy tik tok brain you are miserable.

>compared yourself to shakespeare
I fucking knew you would say that. missed the point award.

Beyond a reasonable doubt you are a seething faggot larping as a high school graduate. Just move on man, you can't even control your emotions

>>25384257
This is true but also besides the point

>>25384187
The best part of my story is definitely the main character- she oozes personality. My beta reader said (hello beta reader, if you're there) that I have a good character with not enough to do. So. Now that I'm looking at it, my blurb is lacking something. It's really short. I'm going to look at a real blurb. Her motivation is that she wants to make something that can last far into the future. Mark Fisher was an influence.

I'm sure you're cool as hell.

>>25384292
Dawg just accept the criticism you're getting instead of having a meltdown. If someone else reading it thinks it drags too long and doesn't find a reason to care about what's happening maybe you should go over your piece again instead of getting all butthurt because someone insulted your precious baby.

>>25384299
I think the biggest itch to scratch is explaining why she absolutely HAS to leave her life behind, instead of just saying she does so out of a vague fear.

>>25384307
We must kill the nebulous idea that every criticism is valid. People will disparage anything and their reason for doing so can be as fleeting as a stubbed toe or a message to a girl left on read for 12 minutes.

If you can't see how spiteful he's been from the beginning then I hope you never face a critic as retarded as him one day. If he doesn't have an attention span long enough for two pages, he's probably not the target audience

>>25384292
if you are implying I need to be constantly stimulated, or I just can't appreciate some long drawn out "cerebral deep dive into the nature of childhood trauma" then you ought to know not even the most neurotic author spends this much paper to manifest his innermost turmoil, outside of a padded cell of course.

You wanna trauma dump? buy a diary. Books are made to tell stories, and stories shouldnt waste the readers time

>>25384324
What is the target audience?

>>25384344
You didn't read it in the first place

>>25384350
Anyone who doesn't complain on the internet as a lifestyle might enjoy it

>>25384358
so you have no answer then

>>25384344
"Notes from the Underground" by Dostoevsky notwithstanding...

>>25384361
that was the genuine answer. how specific does it need to be to satisfy you?

>>25384365
you attributed your target audience solely against some shittalker anon on /lit/

>>25384363
kinda hate Dostoevsky for the same reason

>>25384370
uh huh

>>25384382
thats about on par for the quality of your writing

>>25384397
your response is as evasive as your last one

>>25383973
>Movies
This is your problem. You want movie scripts not a novel.
And of course you cite a YA book. Again, present tense is written for people with aphantasia. Also the two books you cited aren't known for great writing.

what's your preferred way of writing? pen and paper or digital or a combination of them?

I use a small pocket notebook to jot down ideas and a bigger A5 notebook when I have more than 30 mins dedicated to writing. I also prefer fountain pens due to comfort, Lamy Safari is my beater as I work in healthcare and at home I use a Lamy 2000.

>>25384363
Dostoy was unironically a pseud retard just like the rest of r*ssian "authors" with the exception of Glukhovsky, who is probably ethnically Ukrainian.

>>25384465
>You want movie scripts not a novel.
nope, I just want stories. Stories can be presented in a billion different ways and do not suddenly collapse if you say they're happening in real-time.

>present tense is written for people with aphantasia
(citation needed)

You're appealing to authority and just hoping everyone will finish the argument for you. You just like past tense because you're used to it. All of the classics are considered retrospectively good because they were specifically something people weren't used to, yet nonetheless truthful and valuable. Tense doesn't determine either of those factors.

>>25384470
I definitely benefit from pen and paper writing, where I can think while my pen/cil still moves, but transferring it to an easily accessible format can be a drag. So I opt for writing on the laptop despite typing so fast that I constantly stop because my fingers are faster than my head.

>>25384480
Present-tense narration is now taken for granted by many by many fiction readers because everything they read, from internet news to texting, is in the present tense, but at this great length it can be hard going. Past-tense narration easily implies previous times and extends into the vast misty reaches of the subjunctive, the conditional, the future; but the pretense of a continuous eyewitness account admits little relativity of times, little connection between events. The present tense is a narrow-beam flashlight in the dark, limiting the view to the next step -- now, now, now. No past, no future. The world of the infant, of the animal, perhaps of the immortal.

Ursula LeGuin

>>25384480
It's rare to make present tense good and your story has no need for it. If you insist on writing in present tense, then fine, there has to be a good reason for it and expect it to be held under higher scrutiny because it will always have a stigma and be asked "why is it not written in past tense?".

>>25384480
>present tense is written for people with aphantasia
Use your brain. It's written like a camera to movie

>>25384502
This reads like an overdramatization. Relativity of times? Little connection between events? There are a billion other techniques that affect those two perceptions more than the tense of the verbs. A book does not constrain the reader to "now, now, now" when you are free to read it at any pace and order you wish. Your comprehension of the series events barely change in the grand scheme of things, if at all.

>>25384508
>no need for it
is there ever a "need" for past tense? You're setting it as a self-evident default instead of the appeal to tradition it really is. It's just what contemporary people are used to, it's not an intrinsic, natural phenomenon. Books as a whole are a very new concept relative to history.

>>25384509
My brain doesn't work like yours. It has this crazy ability to picture a movie regardless of the verb tense OR the perspective OR the character voice. Seriously, if there is scientific evidence for the association of aphantasia with present-tense novels, do share.

>>25384508
Didn't mean to address this with hostility. There is a reason behind the present tense and it's a hidden one. The only way to dispel such an odd stigma is to proliferate it (as long as the given stigma isn't about, like, sticking a penis up a dude's butt)

>>25384502
NTA. LeGuin was a great writer, but this quote doesn't address aphantasia. I wonder what she would have thought of "Oryx & Crake" by Margaret Atwood, where the character's current actions were written in present tense, and his flashbacks to how he got there were written in past tense.

Is there any writing equivalent to Keys to Drawing?
Basically a workbook filled with exercises, with a bunch of self-assessment questions so you can critique your own work.

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present tense isn't automatically bad

however, these days, present tense is most often used by amateurs (especially in serial webnovels and fanfiction) because they're not good at narrating stuff in the classical 3PV and not good at describing emotions while at the same time having been drilled to "show don't tell", so they compensate for it by simply writing down, as if in movie script form, what they imagine, because they think that
>Watching her wife gagging herself with obvious enjoyment on the rigid shaft of the penis in 1080p HD, she felt a sense of betrayal made double by the fact that the penis was her best friend's
doesn't sound as personal and emotional as
>I watch my wife gag herself with obvious enjoyment on the rigid shaft of the penis in 1080p HD. I feel a sense of betrayal made double by the fact that the penis is my best friend's.
look ma, I showed, I didn't tell!
(wrong)

most of the time, these present tense writers will also suffer from long conversations with no dialogue tags, overuse of adverbs, and overuse of those very short sentences you find so often in chick lit because they're actually really shit at description and their novels suffer at every turn from white room syndrome, let alone descriptions of their protagonist's inner thoughts. Thus:
>My wife happily gags herself on the rigid shaft of the penis. The video is in 1080p HD. And worse: the penis is my best friend's. I feel a piercing sense of betrayal. Rage. Loss.
present tense is also often used in combination with 1st person view in these amateur works, and is often a mark of a selfish power fantasy, where the themes of the story are inevitably "me, me, me". literally ego-centric.

I keep a couple of these novels around as a guide for what not to do

>>25384502
Words from a woman who never wrote a book as good as Gravity's Rainbow

>>25384628
Earthsea is better. And LeGuin is a better writer than Pychon

Sketch of a worker grabbing a pre-work coffee

Where’ve you got to be? Where and when–can it wait? The coffee is making. It is being made by the barista who smiled at you–warmly–but you’ve got somewhere to be–where? Who what where when why? How? The coffee shop is appalling, you think. Claustrophobic. Cramped, tunnellike. Prickly and warm, too, but you need the coffee. When the barista smiled you shed your claustrophobia. Like a snake sheds its skin, you briefly shed your claustrophobia when the barista warmly smiled at you, and slithered to the waiting area where you now stand. There are others in the waiting area too. Were they smiled at? No, the smiles were all for you–you deserve the smiles and are the sole recipient. You tap your foot as you watch the coffee being made. Arrhythmically. No–rhythm in your–taps: a: frustrating order of. Things. You need the coffee to be made pronto, but where’ve you got to be? Could you answer that? Don't think about that. Observe the lady to your left, somehow scarved, must be scorching in this prickly, warm, tunellike coffee shop. Must be sweating. You tap your foot. Again arrythmically–you never were a natural drummer, were you? You would’ve played the piano, if you had the chance, if you had the time and the money and the will. But now you need your coffee to go–where? Where’ve you got to be, so desperately? Can you explain? Work? Okay, now who what when why and how? Ponder as your coffee is being made by the barista who smiled at you. No one smiles at you in work, no one smiles at anyone in work. This smile today was all for you. And it settled into your breast like something that settles softly into a medium. And it warmed your breast like something that softly warms a medium. A nicer warmth than the ambient prickliness of the coffee shop, the tunnellike blanketing thick heat, nicer than that–far nicer, and it was all for you. Yes, that’s an idea, think about it, nurse it–smile at someone in work? No one smiles at anyone in work, but you could break the mould, a trailblazer. That sounds nice. Maybe no one smiles back. Probably no one smiles back–drop the idea. Warmth is antithetical to productivity–warmth slackens. Warmth melts and makes things goopy: cold makes things firm and rigid. Firm and rigid, yes–coffee done! The coffee is made, no more prickly coffeeshop. The barista calls your name. The barista hands you your coffee–smiles again! Warmth! Sunshine and rockpools and starfish. Oh, no, you don’t dare smile back; you nod a curt thanks and take the coffee; but you had not one but two smiles, both all for you, only for you. You clutch your coffee, warmer than the coffee shop. Where’ve you got to be? Work. The smiles were all for you, but no more smiles now, just a quick five minute walk and you can be all firm and rigid. You walk to the exit, and look back. The barista is taking another order, smiling. The customer is smiling too.

>>25384902
>tunnellike
KYS

>>25384628
I take it you've never read "The Lathe Of Heaven". One of the most mind-bending novels I've ever read that wasn't written by Philip K. Dick.

>>25384502
>The world of the infant, of the animal, perhaps of the immortal.
present tense is the world of every human's daily experience. past and future literally do not exist.

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Spent an hour finishing this up just to read this thread and find out present tense is for gay retards. Back to the drawing board

>>25384902
Too much text for something that probably happened in 2 minutes.

>>25385146
>were becoming true
are
>already empty
so how can you drink the remainder? if you were pretending, say so
>the seed
of opinion

polish it a bit (a lot) and write at least 60,000 words based on a recognisable and actually insightful overarching theme with recommendations for how to solve the problem you've highlighted, and maybe you really can pull off Holden Caulfield for the 21st century

>>25385156
Thanks, I thought I was showing good restraint in not dedicating a full paragraph to how no matter how many last sips you take from a cup or can, there's always another drop left because the last drop left a trail of smaller droplets on the side which drip down and pool up into your next last sip, but now I see that was foolish.

>>25385179
>no matter how many last sips you take from a cup or can, there's always another drop left because the last drop left a trail of smaller droplets on the side which drip down and pool up into your next last sip
lmao
no, that sort of autistic observation would in fact be very Caulfieldesque in my opinion
the challenge is doing all that while not sacrificing pacing too much

I'm a voice guy. All I care about when I write is my voice. Luckily, I found my voice already, unlike most writers who can't find their voice.

I guess it sucks to suck, voicelets. Eat your shit prose!

>>25385150
This took a very long time to describe, but it actually happened in an instant.

>>25385236
Without helpful advice, this comes across as arrogant seething. I'm sure you didn't mean to do that, so follow up with something more constructive.

>>25385236
>Luckily, I found my voice already
Why does it sound like a gay nerd pushed into a locker?

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For those of you who know what to say, but struggle with how to say it, especially in nonrepetitive ways, the Writers Helping Writers group has a series of topic-specific thesauri that you might find useful. I started with the "Emotion Thesaurus" and found it very helpful. All are available on LibGen.

>>25385298
It may appeal to some but for me, personally it's not the kind of thing I would read, doesn't seem engaging and it's just over analyzing some basic actions.

>>25385048
And telling a story is a past activity

>>25385323
>emotions, traits, vibes
clearly made by women or effeminate men, where’s the logic thesaurus or business thesaurus?

>>25385706
One of them is clearly labeled an "occupation thesaurus". The latest addition, not pictured, is a "fear thesaurus". In any case, there's no reason to denigrate what is obviously a potentially useful resource, unless you plan to release your own volume to complement the series. I'd hate to think you were merely seething.

>>25385146
>taking the opinions of 4chan to heart
you won't get anywhere like that

>>25385706
women write too much about emotions, but men don't write enough about it; the Emotional Wound Thesaurus book would actually be quite useful to most /lit/fags

>>25385706
>logic thesaurus or business thesaurus?
you're not wrong to point out that it comes across as tasteless schlock but this is a very gay complaint
>where's MY inane bullshit?

>>25384902
>Arrhythmically. No–rhythm in your–taps: a: frustrating order of. Things.
cute sequence, worked for me
fine piece but as far as pontificating antisocial schizo babble goes, this was mediocre. I appreciate that it's wrapped in a conceit. that puts it above many similar pieces
the most noteworthy thing about this is how unobtrusive the second person perspective is. I think it's because of the rhetorical nature of the voice. the framing of insistent questioning fits the second person address, and the delusional reasoning and conclusion makes it clear that the narrator is self addressing in the second person, which distinguishes the artifice of the story world as something self contained rather then some silly metafic meme
I'd expect something written in the second person to be utterly dogshit drivel so the fact that this is mediocre is probably something to feel good about
pointless nitpicking but
>Oh, no, you don’t dare smile back; you nod a curt thanks and take the coffee; but you had not one but two smiles, both all for you, only for you.
this pissed me off. the semicolons should be em dashes and I can't imagine why you used semicolons for an interjection like this

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>>25385795
Don't worry I'm finishing it

How do you decide the format for your ideas? I feel like I'm constantly burdened by images. I jot the visions down in my notebook like a nascent schizophrenic but they sit and gather dust. Do I just pick one at random and write without premeditation? When should it be a book instead of a short story? Do you just decide to write a book and then fill that desire with ideas?

>>25385919
I just write when I feel like it. My ideas percolate and bubble forth, then are pruned at random by time.

>>25385797
The primary purpose of fiction is to invoke emotions in your reader. People read "American Psycho" for the tension, not for the autistic descriptions of high-end clothing.

>>25385961
I disagree.

>>25385797
you are conflation emotion with low range dramatics. you don't write "emotionally" you write with substance, and with a wide vision.
most drama writing today is comprised solely of peaks and valleys, cranked up to absurd degrees all the time. it would of course, in order to sell. But emotion is often subtle, and not 1 dimensional

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>>25385146
I never read present tense books so I couldn't tell you if one was good or not. It doesn't help nearly every amateur author writes in it for some godforsaken reason.
Maybe I'll look for a good one someday. Even though I have zero interest in writing present tense ever

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>>25385323
nothing like using terms and phrases totally out of context and without relevance instead of just experiencing them first hand throughout your life

For people that claim to be writers, some of you are sure bad at communicating.
>>25385971
If you don't elaborate on that statement, you're not contributing to the knowledge of others, and come across as a crank.
>>25386002
Not sure why you're jumping to conclusions here. Why are the terms and phrases totally out of context and without relevance?

>The Dark Triad
>A Maid in Four Parts
>The Chemical Divorce
>Corndog Zen
>Consumptive Cur
>Sinner’s Descent

Is it just me, or have there been ALOT of /lit/ authors being published recently compared to most other years? Why this little mini-Renaissance?

>>25386026
Emotion is such an incredibly shallow use of fiction it needs no further comment. I like fiction as parable and metaphor, some others like it as a technical exercise, and others still like it for the historical significance. "Emotion" is a bland tasteless sentiment for stunted dorks that is either too broad to be useful as a critique, or only absent in a narrow band of angsty philosophy-inspired highschool writing.

Emotion is subjective and can change with added context.

Keep the windows closed.

11 pm.
Got work in 6 hours, I toss and turn.
My mind is on all the things my life should be, all the problems I should solve.
For a moment it pauses on a recent tragedy that happened in my neighbourhood the other day: a football hooligan found dead nearby.

Heart attack they said, but I know now that there’s… things.
Things that wander nights and minds, that live among us, that ordinarily can’t perceive or be perceived.

Midnight.
I think I heard that man die. I think I heard his drunken celebration while I was in that state between worlds, before sleep.
Money is tight so I keep the AC off and the window open. I live on the ground floor, I have thick bars at my windows. I’m safe but sometimes noises wake me up.
Sometimes they almost do.
That man’s last gasps must have entered my sleeping realm, my brain must have incorporated him in a dream or another, I can’t remember. I toss and turn

1 am.
I am back in my parents house as a kid. I’m sleeping in their bed. The AC is on but I left the window open. My body struggles as I try to wake myself up and go close that window. Mom is gonna be mad if I don’t. Gotta open my eyes… Anxiety rises, my breath…

Where am I?
This is the kitchen table… I’m on the floor, I look up.
There’s a shape at the window, staring at me through the bars.
I can only see its eyes, red and bright.
It’s pulling me closer somehow.
I can’t breathe.
Gotta wake up, this is a nightmare isn’t it? Gotta open my eyes…

Adrenaline surges and I’m suddenly snapped backward like a rubber band all the way to my bed, I wake up as if I dreamt of falling. I gasp for air and get up immediately to see if the figure was still at my window. Nothing’s there. Not in the waking world at least.

2 am.
I warn you all.
I turn the AC on.
From now on I’ll sleep with the windows closed.

>>25386031
Show me some examples of fiction without emotion. I promise you it'll be dry and boring, and will put the reader to sleep. Also, readers don't read fiction "as a technical exercise"; I think you're speaking of writers here. You appear to be mixing up your arguments, and engaging in bad faith.

>>25386034
Nope, I was telling you to fuck off, because of exactly what you just parroted back to me through your ass trumpet; writing without emotion is extremely rare in fiction because it's trivial to include, thus not "the primary purpose". It's like punctuation and voice, a feature of fiction. Purpose is a broader category, and invocations of emotion depend on style, because entire epochs are defined by the mechanism by which they work on the audience, with emotion being but one charlatan-kun.

>>25386029
>being published
I wouldn't call dropping shit into Amazon as "publishing".

I can at most give it a dignified label of self-publishing. That's the best you'll get from me without immediate disdainful scoffs.

>>25386034
>Show me some examples of fiction without emotion.
Unironically the thing I'm writing because the MC is a heavily traumatized survivor who saw some shit most people would prefer avoid seeing, so now he represses a lot of emotions and minimizes things.

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>>25386039
So, you're a mean-spirited, smug seether. Got it.
>>25386042
Depicting the repression of emotion is a very emotional experience for the reader. I would guess you maintain the feeling that his emotions could escape containment at any time, as opposed to depicting your MC as a bland robot.

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>>25386040
One should give these writers kudos for being able to complete a cycle of action, producing an artifact that can be self-published. Tradpubbing is not only dead, but it excludes a large portion of potential writers, i.e. straight white males. They do so deliberately.

>>25386047
No, you just lack an adequate understanding of the medium for reasonable discussion, and are mostly here to shitpost after tasting the sour sweat of my nuts upon your forehead.

Just because faggots wax poetic about the ephemeral and personal nature of emotion doesnt mean it isnt incredibly simple to use as a technique, and just because I am an ass to your passive aggressive faggotry doesnt make me incorrect because your emotions arent validated.

>>25386052
Emotion in fiction, wielded badly, will come across as disjointed and unsatisfying, as will any other literary technique done sloppily. It is anything but simple. The rest of your response is just juvenile potty-mouth, a prelude to having a meltdown (if you're not having one already).

>>25386052
I think you're just a seething faggot, anon. Too wrapped up in your own pretentiousness and emotion to even try elucidating on any opinion. Why are you even on a discussion board?

>>25386066
Some people just like to see the thread burn, I guess. Too bad that was the theme of the previous thread >>25373491, not this one. In any case, the reason for his failures in writing are clear...lack of emotional maturity.

>>25386070
>>25386066
>>25386065
Samefagging and replying to yourself is not an effective counter argument, charlatan-kun, and neither is focusing on the nature of the acusation.

Now tell me, oh wise internet faggot, what are the epochs I mentioned as defined by other techniques of persuasion, and what are those techniques?

And anything in fiction weilded badly is bad. That's what being bad is, which is why it's a technique.

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>>25386073
Nope, we're two different people
inb4 NOOOOO u edited out the other (You) WAAAAAAH
Cope more, crank.
>acusation
>weilded
illiterate
opinion discarded

>>25386073
The fuck are you even going on about anymore? Completely sidestepping giving an example just to mumble on about inane semantics. Can you give a good example of emotionless fiction or not?

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>>25386086
What an odd and low effort thing to say considering the very clear and direct question. Begone, if you wish to learn you may ask another time.

>>25386031
>"Emotion" is a bland tasteless sentiment
lol
emotion is the basis of sentiment
stemlords are so stupid. the phenomena of literalists trying to redefine art to be more in line with natural laws is utterly bizarre
nigga its art. you're trying to make art into a technical document. nigga what the fuck you doing

>>25386100
Because litrpgs

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Where's a good starting point for movie script writing?
My experience is I wrote but never finished editing a novel and I'm retarded.

>>25386105
What do you mean by "starting point"?

>>25386097
Your question contained an implicit assumption, which is that fiction is meant to persuade. I think you've missed the point. And I see you have no reaction to being called out for your false "samefagging" charge. You're a seething ass, and now you're deflecting desperately. Sad, really. Come back when you want to learn some of the basics of fiction writing, instead of writing fictional arguments.
>>25386100
I _am_ a STEMlord, and even I know emotion in fiction is important. I don't get the impression that the seething ass is a lord of any intellectual subject, much less STEM.

>>25386096
Do you need a flowchart? You got a very clear answer. The point I was about to make before all the masturbation and shitposting was that a post modern response is the invocation of a feeling given disparate elements, and given that context, ethos and logos are equally important, so second order emotional effects from things not present in the text but the recombinatory effect in the reader can apply "emotion" even to something dry and semantic.

There are a variety of ways to get to "emotion" but there are also a variety of ways to produce a thought in the reader (subtext, symbolism, yadda yadda), so saying it is the purpose of fiction is either a broad category for any kind of response, thus meaningless and present in basically everything, or a categorical error in definition.

>>25386108
That's nice. And wrong.

>>25386026
if you need a fucking arsenal of books to express concepts, emotions and everyday settings, reconsider your life

>>25386111
Sounds like you agree that emotion is important i fiction, even though you're employing a lot of handwaving to pretend you don't.
>>25386134
Arsenals of books are very useful for anyone in the technology field. I guess this is your admission that you're not in a field that prizes knowledge and learning. Also, there's a big difference between "these books may help you" and "you need an arsenal of books". There's no call for such extreme jumping to conclusions, unless, as I suspected long ago, that you're not debating in good faith. Something something sour sweat of your nuts.
>hurr durr ur wrong
Inarticulate as always. Why do you even want to be a writer? You don't appear to possess even basic skills.

>>25386134
learning is a good thing

>>25386111
I might have actually thought you wrote that response with your own fingers if you ironically failed to invoke any concept of logos or ethos in >>25385971 . Only after hours of pointless complaining can you get your hand off your dick, wipe away the mess, and say something useful and also non-hostile. And even then, defaulting to calling emotion a "bland tasteless sentiment" because you think it's too broad is a dishonesty that stems from the fear of being unable to use it skillfully. His original claim may not have hit the exact target but your disagreement was ultimately vain. Emotion encompasses all of your supposed counterexamples for fiction.

>>25386105
damn that chick is p hot does she have a of

Holy fuck it's not fair! The Viagra is too powerful!

>>25386150
That's Vivien Leigh playing Scarlett O'Hara in 1939's "Gone With The Wind". She died in 1967, so I hope to God she doesn't have an OF. That would just be gross.

>>25386146
Never said it wasnt. It's a technique, just like using a semicolon. It's just not THE purpose of fiction. I just think it's decentralized and can be taught mechanically, even if hippie types disagree. Anyone can make an arc to a story with various highs and lows to sollicit emotion in context, it's not magic. You can even do it in subtext or in combination/juxtaposition of things if you dont want to be direct about it.

>>25386149
And you did not understand the post you're replying to at all. Or any of the posts you quoted. But you really want to argue.

>>25386157
Emotion in fiction is not a mere technique. Fiction without emotion doesn't move the reader, and they drop your work. I still say the primary purpose of fiction is to evoke emotions in the reader, and that everything else is at best secondary, given the outsized importance of emotion in fiction.

>>25386157
>you really want to argue.
only as much as you want to present yourself as sophisticated. We've been saying the same thing this entire time.

>>25386107
Learning format, the sort of building blocks (dialogue to scene, scene to act, etc. if that's how it works), best programs for writing one (if there's one that can auto-format), that sort of stuff

>>25386165
So, with modernism the invocation was the thought in context, which is just as valuable. This is why like 2 hours ago I said parables and metaphor were important. Moving a reader, entertaining a reader, teaching a reader, all this is up to the reader, and if a reader doesnt experience something it isnt the mark of failure in fiction if they experienced something they found worthwhile. Like tone or voice. Or pacing. Or even world building.

My criticism is that art has an ineffable quality, but "emotion" is fairly easy to produce from a mechanical perspective. Capturing the human experience consicely and artfully? Not so much.

>>25386170
You can format your screenplay pretty easily with an OpenOffice/Word template. I have one with named paragraph styles for three different types of Title text (bold/underline, plain, and plain with extra vertical space after it), Act, First Act (just Act without a page-feed), Transition, Slugline, Description, Character, and Dialog. All are set up to set the next paragraph style automatically, i.e. Title -> Act, Act -> Transition, Transition -> Slugline, Slugline -> Description, Description -> Character, Character -> Dialog, and Dialog -> Character. This lets you write most common screenplay elements without having to change paragraph styles by hand. I also have character styles for Detail, First Character (the first appearance of a character is always capitalized), and Parenthetical. Setting up your own stylesheet will be a good learning experience, plus then you won't need specialized software, and your named styles will contain semantic information, not just formatting properties.
>>25386039
Let me guess...you think this advice is "gay".

>>25385978
>you don't write "emotionally" you write with substance
yes, and that book helps you find that
or more accurately, that book helps budding writers ARTICULATE that
which men need, and /wg/fags need, because most of us here have difficulty articulating the emotions in novel form

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>>25386202
Thanks for the advice, so I should find sone examples of script pages and make my own stylesheet, I can do that.
Anything on where to 'begin', or is it as simple as "write a scene"? I don't know almost anything about script writing, except that it had a wonky format and that dialogue isn't the same as a novel lol.

>>25386170
Learn by reading screenplays that already exist. Don't think about the format, write everything in a plaintext markup, like fountain, and use a tool to automatically format things at the end when you're done.

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>>25386170
here's the copypasta for /swg/ - Screenwriting General we occasionally have on /tv/
Also: be careful about reading online screenplays, a lot of them are "production" versions which are written very differently from how a screenwriter trying to sell/submit a script would. Even the ones in the copypasta below are like that.

>Resources
https://thescriptsavant.com/movies.html - A library of scripts (an anon tried the "service" though, said it was a scam)
http://www.wordplayer.com/ - Terry Rossio & Ted Elliott's old blog
http://www.thefutoncritic.com/devwatch/
https://una.pressbooks.pub/fade-in/

>Some Good Scripts
https://thescriptsavant.com/movies/Chinatown.pdf
https://thescriptsavant.com/movies/Die_Hard.pdf
https://thescriptsavant.com/movies/Inception.pdf
https://thescriptsavant.com/movies/Avatar.pdf
https://thescriptsavant.com/movies/My_Best_Friends_Wedding.pdf

>Some YT Channels
https://www.youtube.com/@Scriptfella
https://www.youtube.com/@BigRedStripe
(they're selling consulting, but have useful videos)

>Recommended Books (by some anons)
"Writing Screenplays That Sell" by Michael Hauge - a good guide on structuring screenplays, developing characters, using themes, and the business
"Story" by Robert McKee - guide on creating stories using classic films as examples
"The Hollywood Standard" by Christopher Riley - definitive script formatting guide

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>>25386233
That makes sense
>>25386240
Damn, should have gone there to look, thanks for that, anon

>>25386242
>Damn, should have gone there to look, thanks for that, anon
/tv/ is too fast. We only have a /swg/ like once or twice a week at most, so you probably wouldn't have found it. The rest of the time, we hang out here annoying the "literary" writers

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I think I should add another 10k words. 80k words seems too short

>>25385732
>>25385797
>>25385835
guys i was being facetious

>>25386230
Sounds like the other anons have you covered. Reading existing scripts is a good way to get the basics down. I personally find screenplays very easy to write, because I just visualize what I want to see on the screen & I write it down. So, of course, I obsess over novel writing, since that doesn't come to me as easily, so I overvalue it ;-)

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>>25383537

>>25386289
Then you admit to trolling. That's against the rules on /lit/.

>>25386300
take this to >>>/pol/

>>25386300
Holy fucking slop tl;dr.

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>>25386300
fixed

>almost finished with the first chapter of a new story
>No idea what the main character's name is or where the plot is going
This is what I get for skipping my usual six months of day dreaming

>>25386382
I don't understand people like you
How do you decide to write a story but don't know what it's going to be about?

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>>25386385
>know where the plot is going
>know what I want to write
>still don't know MC's name
This is the worst part of everything ever.

>>25386388
>Plug it into ChatGPT
>You have a name now
Literally no need to bother if you don't feel it's important.

>>25386385
I have a strong grasp of the general concept and aesthetic. It's about a magical assassin in a vaguely middle eastern city. I just have no idea how I'm going to get from one action scene to another. I was planning to let the idea marinate for a while, but I had to abruptly drop the other story I was working on so now I'm left with either day dreaming and getting nothing done, or throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. Personally, I think the latter is more productive

>>25386399
Worked well enough for 2 characters, but that's because I wanted names that were reasonably common for a certain year.

>>25386146
>these books may help you

no they won't. you need to go outside. you need a fucking life. books wont help that

>>25386289
it's difficult to distinguish ironic idiocy and genuine idiocy

So I started posting short stories. I'm getting basically 0 response so I think I'll probably have to post serials or at least try for a novella. I was trying to get my feet wet without posting a whole novel but it seems pointless at this rate.

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>>25386385
There are as many ways to write as there are writers.

>>25386674
>education works in every field except writing
sure buddy

>>25386741
>Being this retarded
Get out of your house

>>25386795
read a book