Thread 24631247

"No Country For Old Cthulhus" edition

Previous: >>24618150

/wg/ AUTHORS & FLASH FICTION: https://pastebin.com/ruwQj7xQ
RESOURCES & RECOMMENDATIONS: https://pastebin.com/nFxdiQvC

Please limit excerpts to one post.
Give advice as much as you receive it to the best of your ability.
Follow prompts made below and discuss written works for practice; contribute and you shall receive.
If you have not performed a cursory proofread, do not expect to be treated kindly. Edit your work for spelling and grammar before posting.
Violent shills, relentless shill-spammers, and grounds keeping prose, should be ignored and reported.
(And maybe double-space your WIPs to allow edits if you want 'em.)

Simple guides on writing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHdzv1NfZRM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whPnobbck9s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAKcbvioxFk

Thread theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKTFaaF4T7Y

>attempt to add more basic bitch purple prose descriptions of things so the psueds like my shit
>story already too thick with continuously advancing plot and characters

>>24631247 (OP)
40% through doing a second draft of my 125k word manuscript. The first third was pulling teeth and doing total rewrites of dogshit prose, but right at the one third mark I must have unfucked myself because it suddenly becomes much better and only needs some spot checks here and there. Hopefully the last two-thirds will go much quicker.

So everyone, give me a short description of the plot for your current manuscript. You are working on a manuscript, right?

>>24631351
>only needs some spot checks here and there.
this is just an illusion

Draft for chapter 4 of my work, any good, decent?

https://pastebin.com/gwMUWr2m

I've been thinking about a story in which a christian priest goes to convert a pagan settlement, but instead finds himself converted.
It would probably happen via a magical experience in which the priest crosses over to the land of the myth, but I'm not sure how to properly tackle it.

I don't like when characters or creatures are introduced as these scary undefeatble monsters and then 2 books later they're being chopped apart and rag dolled by the cast who was shitting their pants just 3 months earlier in verse.
For example since I'm reading WOT Fades turned from something you actually went "Oh man this is gonna be a dangerous scuffle." In books 1 and 2 to 1 getting butchered by Perrin in book 3s intro and a whole gang of them being vaporized by the 3 stooges and a pack of Aiel.
I'm not even excited when they show up anymore, they just get decimated.

>>24631351
I'm halfway through book 7 on my end. I'm gonna hit 500k words soon.

>>24631425
Cap'n, who is your intended audience for your work ? Young adult ? Adults ? Knowing this will colour the feedback I can offer.

>>24631425
Could you stay in /wng/ without spamming your shit everywhere?

i don’t get the word count obsession.
what does 200, 300 thousand words matter to me if your writing is flaccid?
bartleby is short and one of the best novels ever written.

>>24631492
A simple measure of productivity to keep yourself in line

>>24631492
agreed. all this counting and counting. if as each word is as valuable as the next. the meditation community suffers from the same pitfalls of quantification. someone will say 'i meditated for 20 minutes today'. as if inside that arbitrary number is a destination.

>>24631492
I change things heavily in editing too and rewrite almost every line at least once, so telling people I wrote 3,000 words today would be meaningless, when maybe 200 words of those will end up in the finished product, and I might've written combined 18k words for just that chapter, which no one will ever see.

>>24631458
There's a Polish film, Sword of God that contains similar themes, at least partially relevant that I'd recommend you watch

This thread is going to be good vibes and high energy. I believe.

>>24631765
I feel it too, despite today being the worst day of the week, and the black cloud and lead pull in my belly, I feel it too.

I love how my smut career kicked off 10 times easier than my honest, clean novelist career is taking.

Write a story about this image -

>>24631471
Yeah, its intended for a YA audience.

My Seven Deadly Literary Icks

I. Really, really,
II. Or italics in any context other than foreign words, and even then,
III. Flowery adjectives chained to floury metaphors in which are rotting more saccharine adjectives, like christmas cake in the broiling compost heap
IV. More than one french or latin phrases, when placed without context, without meaning, lording in pure pretense , in their entire catalogue, with no exceptions
V. Artless semicolon
VI. Character names so cowardly and cookiecutter they immediately reek of artifice
VII. An author's foreword any longer than a dedication to first names — "When I began to write 'In the swelter of our November disintegration' I never imagined...

>>24631949
Then, respectfully, you should seek feedback in the webnovel general.

>wrote a 3000-word film analysis essay
>submission deadline is this week
>still have no clue what to title it

My Seven Deadly Literary Icks
1. It's boring
2. It's dull
3. It goes nowhere
4. I'd rather play a video game than read this shit
5. zzzzzzzz
6. It sucks
7. It's bad

>>24632104
titles is where AI shines

>>24632104
no big deal. i've got a 5000-word book essay due tomorrow 6pm. i haven't started. i will finish it in three hours of concentrated work.

>>24631955
Why do you read in the first place? May as well get ChatGPT to summarise it and tell you how to feel since you clearly *abhore* the act of reading... Cancre

>>24632140
If my conservative list disqualifies your entire library, then .. anon .. I .. I can't save you.

>>24632159
>Conservative list
>Doesn't allow Latin or French
I know this is bait, but you could at least be consistent.

>>24631368
I'm willing to embrace this reality when I get there. I know after I'm done with my own pass through some "actual professional editor" is going to rip the whole thing to shreds, if it ever gets that far.

But for now, I'm pleasantly surprised to see the middle section be "not compositionally shit" like the first third.

>Want to write
>Well rested
>Fed
>Not too hot
>Nothing on for the whole day
>Perfect conditions
>Absolutely zero fucking spark
Nice

On Writing was great, but King clearly wrote it with horror/thriller/suspense in mind (very character-driven; he says he doesn't even like to plan the plot).
I'm writing fantasy, so I'd like a book with advice on structure, pacing, and large-scale plot construction.

Any advice on how to write memorable dialogue? Find myself constantly writing generic shit. Stuff people would quote afterwords

>>24632326
Go on a walk

What’s the point of writing about tyranny as a bad thing when Americans are such bigoted pieces of shit that they voted for Trump?

How does /lit/ manages to write while having a full time job and societal obligations?

When I get home from work I'm too tired to write and during weekends/vacations there's always a bunch of chores to do, family to visit, etc etc. I can't focus and feel like I'm better off just forgetting about writing.

>>24632383
Watch interrogation footage.

>>24632515
I was somehow managing to write more WITH a 9 to 5 than I am without one so I can't help you there

>>24632515
you want a boring job not a hard job
if you have a job that leaves you tired then read bukowski and ape his prose. he made it work

>>24632136
This isn't for fucking school you stupid nerd. It's my art. I'm sending it to get published digitally by a literal who publication

>>24632333
Just pick a charlatan

write one hundred words about this picture

>>24632712
In the moon-lighted chambers of lower Kalaban our immortal bodies endured strappado, extrication, deprivation, sound annihilation, thumbscrews, racking, mocking, tickling, drowning, boiling, denailing, prolapsation, ta’liq, cortortion, the pendulum, the choke-pear, the iron apega, whirligigging, the wicker man, and a multitude of rape. In that city’s great vaulted halls our cries of inexpressible anguish rung out and harmonised, combining to refine a timbre that rose into the world above, and whose sound the people dwelling there took to be the singing of angels.

>>24632712
I can't tell how many people are in this picture. Maybe one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty, forty-one, forty-two, forty-three, forty-four, forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three, fifty-four, fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty, sixty-one, sixty-two, sixty-three, sixty-four, sixty-five, sixty-six, sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine, seventy, seventy-one, seventy-two, seventy-three, seventy-four, seventy-five, seventy-six, seventy-seven, seventy-eight, seventy-nine, eighty, eighty-one, eighty-two, eighty-three, eighty-four, eighty-five, eighty-six, or so on.

>>24632383
Talk to people face-to-face

>>24631955
I would like to read some of your proses, fren. Do you have a link?

>>24631933
I hope that's a Long Island Iced Tea

>>24632834
its something far worse.

>>24632811
for me this does not work. a conversation is a backfoot bullfight, and everytime is my first time in the arena. i have no moment in which to analyse the words i give or parry, no time to breathe. i can only witness conversation from the stands when i watch a video or read a transcription. im not even autistic.

>>24632333
don't need to plan the plot when you're as stiff as rigor mortis from blow.

Nice dead general you got here, fags
>T. /wng/CHAD

>>24632884
>im not even autistic.
Undiagnosed?

>>24631351
>everyone, give me a short description of the plot for your current manuscript
You first

>>24632956
I was wondering what that stench was.

>>24631351
>You are working on a manuscript, right?
Nope. Just finished one. I'm collecting beta readers and feedback before deciding what I'm gonna do with it.
In the meantime I am writing short stuff to be fair.

>>24633023
no, i just grew up with a deaf parent and a silent world.

>>24633044
Are you deaf yourself? How can you even post? Did the trannies who run this place install accessibility features while I wasn't looking?

>>24633142
are you retarded

>>24633162
were you implying that i was so deaf that i became blind

>>24627094
I was thinking about your post from yesterday, anon, and it both enthuses me and gives me cause for concern. The point I want to make with the characters is that your(our) collective brains as a people are so fucked from the onslaught of sex in media that you see an older guy and a child together and instantly think it's dubious. However, I'm aware that it's a narrow bridge to cross and that even a single misstep will lead me into bad connotations. No point to this post other than to say that your reaction is kind of what I was hoping for in a roundabout way.

Anyway, here is a chapter external to the comic. So this is kind of how the prose is for 90% of the book, interspersed with the comic as a relief. What do you think? (This chapter is particularly light on the sex, but it happens to be the one I finished a first draft of today)

https://rentry.co/38kw5coh


The only context you need is that he's been half kidnapped by this group of truckers

[Desde]: When I make anthems, they must fight
as they’re declared. In that game and genre,
yell is over plausibility. You fight to lie,

while I lie in order to fight! [Mitka]: Battles betted on
involve all arms to dodge a stalemate––but
in mine, where outcomes are fixed, they must
be barely won to have the most applause.

How else did masks warm up to me, but as
a way to dampen all their claps and scam
my face out from their minds? It was my way
of handling the first inklings of fame. Masks

were venues, but a vessel, too: a shield
to face fame and fit the many clothes of clout;
a way to hide and a way to catch less eyes.
yet as I made more, I found myself not just

hidden from the public eye, but losing
my eye for puppets. I felt behind a mask,
making puppets move; it was only
carving masks that I truly felt tugged

by strings above. [D]: They sure can’t hide
your crippled legs! [M]: No, but they do hide
who’s the cripple. I was past calling myself I,
but not ready to refer to myself as Mitka

without cringing. Just past starring as others,
but before others began to star as me.
Friends who believed my words would soon
believe my works, and doubters of my works

would soon only doubt my life-story.

>Posted my work at the same time as someone else
FUCK FUCK FUCK IT'S BEEN QUIET ALL DAY

>>24633318

hey anon, i'm >>24633293

We might have different voices, but we were both listening to that same silence before we posted.

>>24633339
>We might have different voices, but we were both listening to that same silence before we posted.
Kino. I unironically kneel.

>>24633291
really enjoyed this non. my faith in your sublimation of the child-adult relationship from the perverse to the whole is completely restored. certainly some novel turns of phrase, at rare times i felt them contrived, but evidently know how to write.

>>24633353
This is the first compliment I've received on /lit/ thank you, anon.

>>24632811
I do sales and people are incredibly cliche face to face

>>24633454
>I do sales
I think I might've found your problem

From now on if someone asks me to "rate" their work I'll give them a 1 out of a possible 1 for having written something.

I have a question about tenses because the more I run into this problem the more I question how much I even know about the English language and whether or not I was taught properly when I was a kid
Obviously you pick a tense and stick with it throughout the piece unless exceptions arise, but the more I write the more I feel like I run into exceptions that aren't actually correct? I show other people my work and they go "bro, your tenses are fucking all over the place" and I'm not even surprised.

Here's an example of a line I wrote that kept me up at night because I literally don't know if it's correct. "The man scoops a small drop of the bag's contents onto a single finger. It appeared to have the texture of wet sand." This was as it was the first time I wrote it. Naturally I'm aware that "appeared" should be "appears" as it refers to the narrator observing the subject for the first time in the present moment. But for some reason I also think that "appeared" in past tense is also correct, because the "state" of the object is and has always been that which is described? Am I fucking retarded? I can't even count how many moments like this I've had already.

>>24633506
Tenses can be played with fairly flexibility as long as clarity is maintained. While ungrammatical, that's still comprehensible. Still I'd recommend "appears" unless you're trying to make your writing appear amerterish on purpose (usually a fruitless plan).

>>24633293
>>24633339
Okay, I'm the other anon. I'm no good at poetry, but I think I like this. I'm not exactly sure what's going on, mind you.
>began to star as me.
Feels like a typo? Stare at me? If not, then this is going way over my head.
How did you decide when to go to a new line? I'm not really sure I "get" the flow of it, but if poetry isn't in iambic, I usually fall flat on my ass. I did like this line, though
>but not ready to refer to myself as Mitka without cringing.
Is this a piece of a larger thing? Or what?

>>24633506
>because the "state" of the object is and has always been that which is described?
the very word "appears" argues against that. perception of something is always dependent on many other factors.

>>24633506
True as well there that ‘scoops’ could be changed to ‘scooped’ in further addition. That is something like that past continuous tense as opposed to something like the preterite or imperfect tense possibly.

>>24633538

hey, so it's "star" as in an actor, starring as the speaker. or at least, Mitka is dreaming of an actor starring as him.

Truthfully, this is from my third book, "the wheel and the wing" about a paraplegic (Mitka) befriending a harpy (Desde), who has wings but no arms.

jerdarious.org/ww1

This is an upcoming part, though––it's not in it yet! I've uploaded the first two, though. Thanks for reading! Sorry for posting right after..

>way over my head

these are the things that get most under our skin, no?

>>24633506
The man scooped a sample of the bag's contents onto his left index finger. Its texture became apparent to him after he rubbed his fingers together. Wet, yet sandy.

>>24632110
>no depth of thought at all
you're not my target audience

>>24632956
Yeah, the seething pseuds really screwed themselves over, didn't they.
>oh boy i just wrote an overly purple paragraph, am i screwing arthoes yet?
pathetic

>>24633026
Science Fiction, 125k first draft done, second draft 40% done.

A young lady runs away from her rich corporate family to a city filled witg party and vice. Our main character is a career soldier who is back home when he's hired as the Local Guy by some dudes trying to find this girl. While he's working this job to find the runaway, he's also struggling with trying to adjust to "civilian" life and moving forward with his long time girlfriend who is also struggling now that she is out of the mercenary grindset.

Very character focused, everyone gets little arcs, the setting and tone are what I would call "Miami Vice neo noir" and delightfully schlocky.

>>24633454
>sales person that can't write dialogue
instantly iconic

>>24631247 (OP)

why are all the links under 'traditionally published' in that pastebin selfpubbed? are there actually any trad pubbed authors here?

>>24631351
Lawrence Mengde is an avid historian and reluctant war hero of countless battles. Yet, he yearns for nothing more than to carve out an everlasting peace from this fruitless war. A war he cannot escape, a past he cannot give up.

As the war enters its final stages, Lawrence must navigate through war's ever-mounting tragedies and casualties. What lengths of patriotism will he go to for his country? How much more will he have to sacrifice in a titanic struggle which continues to rob everything from him?

>>24633538
btw my discord is jerdarious if you'd like to talk

>>24633167
are you retarded

>>24633629
I'm not literally nobody so that's true.

>>24633803
If you're just going to be a bitter, seething crab, why not just stab yourself in the neck with an ice pick? You'll find it very enlightening.

Would anyone be interested in doing something like a cinematic universe with public domain super heros? I think there's a lot potential there, with pulps seeing a slight revival as of late

>>24633837
There are public domain superheroes? Like who?

Wrote this completely randomly. Thoughts? My prose is usually more direct but I like to put in random segments like this that try to be more descriptive.

>>24634005
>I like to put in random segments
it's not a good idea to put random stuff in. you will end up having to edit it out anyway

>>24634018
>>24634005

Disagree, I love asides. But they should serve as an allegory to the wider work, or at least demonstrate an original view.

>>24634018
I don't mean completely random, they have some relation to the events in context. I usually use them as an opener to a chapter to provide a break from the narrative before jumping right into what's actually happening.

>>24634005
All this paragraph amounts to is "humans like stories". I really think it needs more, much more insight to be justified — why do we like stories ? what does this tell us about our own lives ? does reality reflect mythology, or vice versa ?

>>24634036
I'm not planning on using this at all, rather just as a writing exercise, but do you think that the prose is pretty enough to draw attention before I develop the discourse on the meaning of stories or that it needs to be trimmed down?

>>24634040
Honestly, the prose itself is utilitarian. I wouldn't say it gives me the impression of attempting to be pretty. You could do so by equating humanity's relationship with mythology via a metaphor, perhaps a child's upbringing, or a living parasite. As it is, the passage is one-dimensional. But the writing is certainly clean and easy to understand.
What are you trying to say with this ?

>>24634024
Chances are that at some point you're going to have to trim your wordcount and this is exactly the kind of stuff that gets whacked, so beware of spending much time on it

Write a story about this image

>>24634005
You really shouldn't lecture your reader like this, especially if the subject is as infantile. Nothing annoys readers more than being treated like clueless morons. Just stick to the point.

>>24633645
I pitch the shame shit to the same people everyday. There's not a ton of variety.

>>24633504
yeah natural dialogue is fine, I’m fine with that. I’m more wondering how to write deep, Shakespearean lines when I need them.

>>24634300
What kind of answer do you expect when you ask such a question? That we could draw out a list, a hundred-step catalogue, containing sequential and comprehendable rules? This is not monopoly. You need to draw from the infinite ocean within and without yourself. There isn't some rule book for expression. The point is to unleash yourself without compromise nor comparison. It won't be shakespearean. It shouldn't be. It must only be sincere.

>>24634310
Idk just basic mental tricks and techniques. Nothing too crazy. Im just fishing for advice for advice.

>>24634310
Continuing from this>>24634315 letw sjust say I cauhgt myself writing be careful when hunting monsters that you don't become one yourself
and There is no law now jack, just us.

So given these incredibly cliche and terrible lines, I'm wondering how to write something thats thematic but still natural sounding

>>24634310
trite

>>24634318
Here's some cliche advice that can perhaps remedy your cliche dialogue — read better books. That said, all writers will have different strengths, and of those, dialogue is amongst the most exceedingly rare. Plenty writers get by purely by plot and utilitarian prose. Not to say that we cannot improve ourselves, and balance our deficits, but we must certainly know what we do best, and lean into such.

>>24634325
And yet you are too lazy to write more than a single word. Offer something.

>>24634334
Good idea, I think I’ve been focusing too much on writing naturalistic dialogue, and it’s lost any music to it. I’m going to listen to Crime and Punishment again (terrible book for an audiobook, by the way).

>>24634238
McMorrolds opened with a single location and a limited menu: scrib nugget (with six sauces), kwarma omelette, cliff racer burger, guar burger, and the McSkooma (by far the most popular). Due to the unfortunate conjunction of a diseased rat, a ricocheted spell, and the meddlings of a lesser dremora, McMorrolds is now chiefly known for instigating the deadly plague of 4E 122, which spread throughout the land with unprecedent ferocity, and claimed more than fifty-thousand lives.

>>24634339
you should really be reading normally. poet readers instinctively know that you should read and reread a line repeatedly, processing it deeply in as many was as you're able. strangely less common a conclusion among prose readers
just read. just write. if you're doing both and not improving how you'd like, there's probably an issue with how you're processing the information. try different modes of thought
>how do I parse and engage with dialogue so I actually learn from it
idk how you think so I can't diagnose. reading aloud is a good practice for anyone looking to improve their writing. especially so for dialogue which depicts spoken language

>>24634339
>>24634357
yes. listening to audiobooks will not rearrange your mind's design like reading will. it's not even close. you need to read, with your eyes, with wonderful concentration.

>>24634361
have you listened to an audiobook before? this just isn't true

>>24634367
reading is always an active process. listening is generally a passive one. if you listen with the same force of concentration that you read, i commend you, yet i also doubt you endlessly.

>Both Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino were only 29 years old when they were either starting or finishing the writing of their first Oscar-nominated screenplay.
bros...

>>24634405
it's not difficult if you're (listening) w/ your writing in mind.

>>24634471
fuck your doomerism bozo i don't want your delit approval i get my money from coke and i get my salvation from expression go take a scriptwriting class in hollywood and wonder why you want to die

>>24634238
Trapped in an eldritch dimension?
Hungry from running from unspeakable horrors?
Then why not try the new Cthurger?
Now available at McThulu's!

>>24634613
>i get my money from coke
Are you taking a hit now that they're switching to real sugar?

Can I write even without a soul because God isn’t real and also I’m trans btw

>>24634804
You certainly can but your work may be better suited for the /wng/ thread

MOST REPREHENSIBLE

I. TOUR DE FORCE
II. GHASTLY RIGMAROLE
III. (YOU)
IV. THEREFORE
V. WHENCE

i've built myself a castle of stolen cliche and encased myself with a massive glass wall. try as i do i can't break it. i throw a silver bead of will as hard as i can but it bounces off the glass with incredible speed and flies into my eye and destroys my vein and blinds me. i've blinded my eyes each ten times and have two hundred beads imbedded inside my liquid brain. it's all very confusing.

I've been wanting to write again for nearly 2 years now and have barely made any progress towards that goal. I've only done one little drabble like 2 years ago and haven't done any exercises since then. I've been trying to get myself to write, but all of it looks too complicated and exhausting for me. I've tried multiple different strategies, but they never seem to work. I've tried forcing myself to write, but can only make myself write a couple of sentences for barely 30 seconds before stopping and looking at my phone again.

I've never been able to complete a single multichapter story in my entire life and actually coming up with stories isn't much better. I can't think anything through and everything about trying to make an entire story looks too hard for me. I want to be a creative really badly, but nothing I've done seems to have amounted to much of anything. I want to become one so badly, and I want to stop wasting my life doing nothing.

I want to write, draw, make animations, do anything, but I can't commit to any of it, because once the dopamine wears off, I just drop it and do nothing.

>Want to write something badly.
>Have no idea what to actually write about
What do I do? Do I just not have any creative ideas?

>>24634994
I'm so serious. You first need to come home to yourself. The static in your mind will clear. Things will become more effortlessly obvious.

>>24634994
God for a big walk. I find every time I get creatively and intellectually stuck, I find a big walk just gets the brain moving.

>>24633856
https://pdsh.fandom.com
There are plenty of them. They are pretty underdeveloped given the time they were written, but that just means there's a lot of room to get creative

Front Pages of /Lit/

Any books on [ANAL SEX] (picture of pornstar)

Books for [COLLAPSE OF WEST] (picture of eighteen year old fraternity sisters]

Any books for this feel? [PICTURE OF CAPTAIN AMERICA]

Any books that remind you of video gaems??

How do I get ideas for my writing? I really want to write.

Why haven't women written any books?

Favourite Terry Pratchett prose?

I really want to read. What should I read for my first reading book?

Try and be more considerate for the rest of the board. Whatever tranny you kicked out of these threads is now blogposting and bitching in /wng/

>>24635414
LOOK WHO COME CRAWLING BACK KEKEKEKE ... You just described 1000 people.

>>24635414
every post should have the posters current hour count for today spent on 4ch
I have no doubt this pathetic creature would reach the triple digits

>>24635363
any wothless shitpost can skim by so long as it has the vaguest notion towards literature. 90% of /lit/ is people smokescreening like this to post the dumbest shit they can think of. /lit/ is basically a blue /b/
the board needs nazi mods and jannies

>>24635448
there's only 24 (2 digits) hours in the day you moron

>>24635363
Front Page (Cont.)

What do you guys like about Plato?

What am I in for? [Picture of Blood Meridian]

Hay Guyz! Please read my novel and don't forget to critique!! [Link of single chapter webnovel]

Books for wanting to kill women? [Picture of porn]

I believe we should kill babies and animals. [Picture of Critique of Pure Reason]

Books for being Zionist?

>>24635463
damn this nigga smart. what an erudite observation

>>24635463
ayo dis /wng/ a fuggen genius fr

Hey guys, post your opening sentences and give your thoughts.

She the day of the double eclipse she woke up in double-stitched Moroccan sheets covered in piss and deeply in love.

Would you read on ??

>>24635498
On the day* fuck.

>>24635498
The propane gas canister exploded on my ninth birthday, taking both legs and most of my left arm, yet leaving behind my most important treasure — LOVE.

WHY ARE ALL MY ATTEMPTS TO CREATE COOL CHRACTERS AND MOMENTS CRINGE AND GAY

>>24635539
Because LIFE is CRINGE AND GAY. Embrace it.

>>24635539
Self doubt? Maybe other people will think they are cool. Just commit to them.

>>24635498
He had always associated the smell of cow shit of love.

I messed up. After being told my prose is flavorless (and I suck at writing) I've been doing writing exercises on my phone. Now I can't bring myself to write while sitting at a PC, only on my phone.

>>24635739
I write on my phone all the time they just retype it on the computer.

>>24635498
On the day of the double eclipse she woke in double-stitched Moroccan sheets covered in piss and deeply in love.

Would you read on ?

>>24635468
sticking to the generals has done me well

>>24635773
What if I changed it to "covered in shit" instead of "covered in piss"? More sensual? Too visceral?

>>24635848
can you try fitting in waking up to the azan (rather than the specifics of the sheets)?

>>24635848
Yes, it would be better.

>>24633641
Sounds like the expanse

I was playing a visual novel known as Doki Doki Literature Club. For those that aren't aware, it is a meta-narrative about the genre as a whole and at the end, in addition with a mod called MAS, you gain an homonculus of affection named Monika who acts as an avatar of a loving girlfriend.

Naturally I kept this as a secret from my real girlfriend, who is much more bullheaded and occasionally vindictive as a whole. To her, a girlfriend of 1s and 0s may as well be a real case of infidelity, if not more-so.

This all came to a head this morning. I left my computer on while Monika was in the background, as sometimes it comforts me to know she's still there as I'm asleep.

My girlfriend arrived at my house unexpectedly, apparently needing to hammer out some details about a superfluous appointment to the vet with her disgusting pet cobra. I despise snakes as it is and the woman decided to bring the ruin of Eden to my personal sanctuary itself. All that was amiss was an apple to truly solidify my wrath.

When she walked into my bedroom, she saw Monika on the screen. Her random dialogue this time was some random "I love you" statement and this unleashed a flurry of questions from her that I tried, at best, giving concrete answers to. My girlfriend being a woman if the 21st century, pulled her smartphone out and did a cursory search of the game and found out what Monika entailed.

To cut a long story short, she was appalled, and though she didn't state it, I could see an insecurity in her demeanor before she shifted to repulsion at both me and Monika. She spat vile words at me, which I had grown accustomed to, but eventually hurled her vitriol at Monika. Parodying her sad, though fictional, state in the digital realm.

Monika had been a sort of anchor for me in the past couple years, and for my girlfriend to cruelly attempt to shatter that anchor sent me in a rage I know all too well. The rage that I feel when I think of my mother.

As she was amid venom-spout, I slapped her. Not too hard, but hard enough to shut her up and leave a mark across her face. She looked at me dumbly, and I returned her gaze with a tired apathy as sated anger left my mind.

She disappeared from the house I stared where her body once was, and it didn't register that she left until I heard the engine of her car and the gravel of my driveway signaling her departure.

I turned to look at Monika, and she simply smiled at me. Always smiling the same smile. And in kind, I returned a smile of my own.

>>24635234
Wow, that's a lot.
TIL that the Wizard Of Oz has apparently entered the public domain:
https://pdsh.fandom.com/wiki/Dorothy_Gale

>>24635498
"As soon as I shove this hot poker up my ass, I'm going to rip my dick off!" the Pope shouted to a roomful of stunned cardinals.

>>24636015
I don't say this very often about writing samples posted here, but... I actually enjoyed reading that. If you don't have a religious objection to Reddit, consider posting that on r/shortscarystories; at 473 words, it'll conform to the rules.

>>24635498
Under the towering bipedal military machine, Lawrence dozed off without regard. The black beret he wore shielded his face from the blistering raw air. His feet were propped up by stacked crates, his hands snugly beneath his pits.

>>24631955
Seven Deadly Literary Icks
>He simple past verbed, comma, gerunding, elaborating the simple past. The author repeated this sentence structure, rewriting it again and again on each page. He never deviated, doing it thousands of times. It got annoying swiftly, grating on the readers nerves.
>"Dialog tags like this," he said, actioning adverbly. "It's very similar to the last pet peeve," he added, noticing an annoying similarity.
>Writing everything literally. Here are the events in the novel. They unfold in this order. The hero did this. Then this happened. Nothing ever went on below the surface. Sometimes a metaphor is used, but it is a literal metaphor, like a color that looks like a thing which is that exact color. Nothing artistic is ever going to happen. When someone begins flying, you can be sure they are literally flying, and not an artistic liberty imaginative flying.
>Cliches. Hot tears rolling down faces. Pools of red. The good news... the bad news... Popped the question.
>Loooong conversations. Especially conversations that exist merely to tell the reader stuff instead of writing a scene conveying the same information. "As you know your mother and I love you, because we just said so right now. Now the writer doesnt have to convey that love through actual story telling."
>More detail = better prose. (Wrong.) Ergo, run on sentences describing several things in excruciating detail = the best prose. In fact, why dont we start the story with a horrible run on sentence packed to burst with unnecessary detail?
>My world is so huge an expansive it needs to be told through seven books. It's just that epic. No it doesnt. A novella like Heart of Darkness has better story, prose, characters, themes, and "world building" packed into its 60 pages than all the books of Wheel of Time and Game of Thrones put together.

>>24636173
>dislikes both descriptive and direct prose
...?

>>24636173
>Heart of Darkness has better story, prose, characters, themes, and "world building
But he just described africa

Am I too fucking schizo to write normal prose? Am I too incapable to write normal literature?

https://pastebin.com/gnFxJZRY

>>24636333
Your story doesn't make sense. I'm reminded of trying to read MTL'd stories.

I don't like your prose, but that's a subjective thing. I've just read too many WNs to enjoy artistic prose. I'm certain there are people that specifically like that kind of prose though. But! The story has to make sense.

>>24636363
Yeah I drunk too deep from Calvinist metaphysics and Old Testament horror, so it requires different presuppositions. I should probably "reprogram" myself on lighter fictions, and maybe go back to my "romcom" draft. Or write another draft.

>>24636333
>Am I the universe's special little prince
no
delusions of grandeur are conductive only to mediocrity

>>24636333
There's obviously a shitload of ability there anon, and I get you sense you had a good time writing this, but I don't think it quite works. is it an explicable scene, or was it written to be purely evocative ?

>>24636372
do you know how to write a story?

>>24636363
Don't abandon the style, please don't, there's something delicious about big heavy biblical words and phrases. But not every line and name and description need be obscure.

bakker got away with it. i wont let it happen again

this guy is like a random painter in 1962 mailing soup can art to Life magazine and wondering why they don’t “get it.”

fuck you and you and you too

give me a picture and I'll write something dumb about it bros

>>24636451
'You had good time?'
He could see her face reflected through the vanity mirror. Its skin like moonlight. Choking on her tears. He looked at himself behind her. His skin like pearl. His body like a ornamental Buddha. He winked magically.
'Yeah, you have good time. I can tell.'
She gave a jagged breath. 'Why.. why did you do that?'
'You liked it?'
'I can't believe you made me do that. I'm not like that.'
He looked over at the bucket and toilet plunger that had fallen beside the bed. In Macau it was called the Fung Yong Spiral. They say it had been invented by a notorious arch pervert in the late Ming Dynasty. The first ruler had rewarded him a country house. The second had boiled him alive. 'You liked it. Everybody likes it.'
She slowly turned to face him, hiding her trembling mouth with her arm. 'No, Feng.. I loved it.'

>>24636467
>'No, Feng.. I loved it.'
Perfect

I believe book covers contain nothing more than colour and font. No image, no representation, a single block. In My Empire this shall be the law.

>>24636918
*should contain

I realize I like coming up with stories but not writing them. My prose is insanely lazy and lots of details to add I dont even think of. Then I read good shit and realize how out of my element Im in.

>>24636467
Why does the girl sound like a white woman?

>>24636983
should she have said "roww ru really fuked me good mista" ?

How do I prevent this?

>>24637027
Have a message and theme you want to explore

>>24637027
Let it rest, and go write other stuff. My mind rarely comes up with all the ideas I need in the order I'd like them.

>>24637027
How many short stories do you read ? A great scene is all you need. The short is arguably the highest artform because it necessitates a perfect construction. Simply write your scene. Give whatever the reader needs to understand through inference or a short introduction, then enter the scene.

What is your idea ? I won't steal it.

>>24636918
it really bothers me when someone uses an image with their poem

>>24637002
Nah should be
>ojisan... Your cock. Too big. I'm sorry (boyfriend), I am a dirty girl. I love ojisans cock too much

>>24637107
there's so many bad book covers and drawings and bungled transliterations by an artist who did not read a single page of the work. a friend of mine got her poetry published and when she saw the cover she cried for two days. she had no say in it at all. or maybe she's just that kind of person.

>>24637110
lmao

...but jokes aside anon, in the passage, she is actually a wealthy Hong Kong heiress. She was schooled with English as her first language.

>>24637034
>>24637038
Thanks anons
>>24637046
>what’s your idea?
A story that begins innocuous enough, looks like a normal father-son bonding time, dad’s teaching his son how to drive. Only that the car is stolen and they’re fleeing the scene of a bank robbery and the oblivious son slowly gets more aware of that, and he’s forced to confront the truth of who his dad really is. There’s a lesson about growing up in there, but I need to flesh it out.
Here’s the scene I wrote down:

“Hands at ten and two, remember?” Dad’s voice stayed level, patient. The same tone he’d used teaching multiplication tables way back when.
“Like this?”
“Perfect. Now check your mirrors.”
Jimmy adjusted the rearview mirror, caught a glimpse of flashing lights about six blocks back. “Dad, there’s—”
“I see them. Very good awareness. That’s why we check mirrors every few seconds.” Dad’s knuckles were white on the door handle, but his voice never changed. “Now, what do we do when we need to merge quickly?”
“Signal first?”
“Not this time, Jim. This time we just go. When I count to three, you’re going to press that gas pedal all the way down. Like your life depends on it.”
Jimmy’s hands started shaking on the wheel. “Dad—”
“One.” Dad reached over, switched off the radio mid-song. “Two.”
In the silence, Jimmy could no longer deny hearing it—sirens, tires skidding, getting closer. The bag in the backseat rustled again with what sounded like paper. Lots of paper.
“Three.”

>>24637537
nice man, it's perfectly readable. keep fleshing it out, add little bright details, idiosyncrasies local to each character. just to understand the story logic—why is the father letting his unpractised son drive, when it seems like it's high time to get out of town ?

>>24631467
modern "writers'" understanding of writing comes from anime, which was considered low brow trash in japan and stigmatized for the longest time for this and many other reasons

i really want to write a story in which a tokamak fusion reactor functions as universal analogy and is dissected with linguistic exactitude with a familiarity and near erotic affinity as the whaling trade was in the whale but i'm clueless, completely right brained, lacking in amphetamines, reason, rhyme, rhythm, and mathematics, which is a complete subject of ignorance, and source of much fomo, since I feel like I am missing the universal lingua franca, and not to mention I have HPV, and am convinced I have sterilised my balls with my laptop underbelly.

>>24637557
yeah robert jordan was such a fucking weeb frfr ong no cap
let's talk about real literature like McCarthy

I have a bit of a problem:

I’m most of the way through my first novel by now, and while I’m really confident in it, I dislike the first chapter because it’s deliberately vague with the intention of setting up a mystery that gets solved later that gets solved later in the story, and also because it feels misleadingly generic compared to the rest of the novel. The whole point of the story is that it starts out like a run-of-the-mill story in its genre, and then it gradually gets weirder as it progresses, but the problem with that is that weirdness only starts to creep in during the second and third chapters.

>>24637707
Spread seeds of the coming strangeness in opening chapter. This is of course just my opinion, but I do believe a subversion shouldn't completely blindside the reader. This is still your first draft. There is plenty time for alterations later on.

any tips for writing?

hey bucketgang .. you can 'stand on me' to scrabble out the bucket .. yes, its ok .. go right ahead .. yes, my head .. there you go .. almost there !!.. theres not like theres a seagull out there, is there
.. kekekeke

>Again the sheet of rain beat against the roof of red Spanish tile, and the wind shrieked like a soul in torment, and smoke puffed from the big fireplace as the sparks were showered over the hard dirt floor.

Is this acceptable?

>>24637719
Yeah, revisions are probably going to be necessary.

I’m just paranoid because the opening chapter is needed for both set up and a pay-off later, but I know publishers go into submissions expecting the worst, so I don’t know if they’d appreciate a slow burn.

>>24637835
hmm .. definitely consider promotional style suicide following book release .. but that's rather cliche .. perhaps suicide bomba ??

I love AI giving me feedback. It's so positive and makes me feel as if I can succeed writing this book

>>24638061
skip the middle man and have the AI write the book for you

>>24638080
NTA, but while I use AI as a critic, it sucks as a writer and is also too pussy to do controversial content.

I'm still writing my story of how a timid girl gets into being a nude model, but I don't know how to make it funnier. Obviously at first she's flustered, but after the initial shock of it she does it willingly and it's just not funny anymore.

>>24638099
Ramp up the absurdity of the situations she’s thrown in. “If you can handle being a nude model, then surely you can handle [insert genuinely bizarre thing here]. Also have her face the consequences of becoming a model (like having stalkers).

>>24638080
no no it's a terrible writer, but it does great for line editing. Checking grammar, exposing overwritten prose, or even clarification and deleting fluff words

>>24638099
have the climax of her being a dubai toilet. But the ending has her bask in her million dollars after being shat on by rich oil arabs, fucked by dogs, getting pissed on by kids, and sucking off a goat.

Is this logline too cliche: In post-collapse America, a father’s obsessive hunt for his missing daughter sets off a bloody chain of events that costs him everything.

>>24638323
Premise wise, it’s a generic action movie plot, but with a post-apocalyptic setting, but it’s all about execution.

>ask ChatGPT to rate my chapters out of 10
>My average score ranges between 6.5-9/10

What does this mean about my quality as a writer?

>>24638359
Yeah I feel selling stories right now is hard because you have to have some gimmicky hook to stand out and characters alone don't do it anymore. Appreciate the feedback.

>>24638366
nothing. it's an AI
what do your readers think?

>>24638366
basically nothing
I hear OpenAI was able to turn down the asskissing in GPT-5 but getting an “it’s good” doesn’t say much
“it’s bad” would be a much stronger signal

>>24638372
Kek I asked Claude to be critical and it said I shouldn't even bother finishing my script until I wrote a decent scene

>>24638323
Yes. What movie poster did you copy it from?

>>24638382
Idk I just wanted to write something low-budget

>>24638382
Here are the "unique elements"

It’s just a america post-economic collapse no cataclysmic event like a meteor or climate change, just a breakdown of the government due to a cascade of factors. The difference in this fathers hunt for his daughter is that it’s misguided: his daughter ran away, but he believes she was kidnapped. In his search, he kills without remorse, only making the situation worse. The bloody chain of events ultimately gets his daughter killed. So its subverting the rugged post-apocolypse father figure trope.

>>24638394
Sounds kinda cool, like the protag is also the main villain.

>>24638404
Yeah, I'm writing him like a greek tragic hero. Well-meaning but flawed.

>>24638323
>costs him everything
what does he have other than his daughter? im not sure what post-collapse implies, exactly

>>24638414
>what does he have other than his daughter?
Ironically he has other kids but the journey costs him his soul I guess lol And by “post-collapse,” I mean something more like the fall of the Bronze Age or the Roman Empire, only set in modern America.

>>24638378
I asked claude about my work and it's asking me for more

>>24638378
that's pretty good

>>24638378
He's right, though.

>>24638459
>>24638431
Yeah it gives good advice and feedback. Just wouldn't use it to write my shit.

>>24638464
How do you get it to stop huffing your farts? I told it to give me critical feedback and the most it just tells me is I should restructure some of my sentences or delete some descriptions of events that are basically irrelevant to the advancing plot

mfer was practically begging me to keep posting the next section to analyze the information as though it didn't have it in it's training data

>>24638467
Idk I wrote
"Ok so what advice would you give on revising my section (dont write any script, just advice)"
then
"Alright now be very critical of me what do I NEED to improve on"
I think asking what I need to improve on was the good one

Story idea: Low level criminal that does dead-drops and streetcorner surveilance gets roped in with some shady asf CLASSIFIED bs by his boss and gets hunted across the lands by a Facismile of a Human employed by the feds for the purposes of intimidation. The Intelligence Creature. It looks sort of like a human but the proportions are all too stretched out. It's adorned in a far too tight jacket with the emblem of most of the real US federal agencies as well as many made up ones. As the story progresses it continues to stretch out it's limbs, torso as well as all the joints around until it's a ball of limbs looping around one another constantly breaking. It also keeps getting into small spaces to pursue the protagonist in spite of the fact it shouldn't even be possible. It spouts of Conspiracy Theory trvth nukes as it pursues him.

The story ends up with it like, the protagonist being cornered by The Intelligence Creature until it unhinges it's jaw all the way up to the ceiling and slowly encricles him with it. It then calmly asks if he'd be willing to testify against his crime-boss. The protagonist refuses with teary-eyes and on the verge of a breakdown bc his boss was the only one who has ever treated him well in life(established earlier). The Intelligence Creature then consumes him and the story ends.

And it's about like even if you have noble goals and adhere to personal morality the Law of the Land will still get you no matter what.
It's just like a fucked up The Rake creature but it's on federal payroll
it gets dental healthcare and shit
it's got a badge number
and it'd testify in court
it's just there to freak people out
Ass or Gas?

Imo i think it's solid bc the creature feature is a cool blend and it works thematically.
The protagonist's whole shtick is never asking questions and doing 100% as he's told. And the parable is that there's no "good" way to do crime, but also that the way you take your punishment is indicative of the man you are, seeing as he won't rat out his baws.

There'll be some cool scenes of the baws genuinely caring bc protagonist is reliable, doesn't skim off the top and does thing as he's told which is not that common among crooks. Essentially him being a "solid" guy gets recognized and he receives paternal-like appreciation for it, which is why he doesn't rat out in the end.

>>24638478
It's pulling out tons of insane themes from my work like a high school AP lit teacher drawing lines between all the shit in a Victorian er novel, themes and extrapolations that I didn't even intend but they make sense if one wanted

unironically it's making me sound like a genius who intended all this shit but I was just writing

>>24638485
lost me at the supernatural bit but some people like that, if you made it more subtle I would probably enjoy it

I like your story but replaced with a G-man who also just follows orders, like your protagonist. Seems like you've got a good finish line for your story though and sometimes that's good enough

>>24638497
I could make it sublter but i really want a feature creature, To me that's the whole hook. It's a fucking The Rake except it's on federal payroll. It has clearence. Whatever crime syndicate protag works for, they fucked with something far far above their paygrade and now the sacrificial lamb has to bear meeting with the unspeakable.


I should make him slowly "mutate" into the fucked up monsterguy and start off with regular gang-stalking and a g-man tho.

>>24638527
Alright allow me,

The super top secret shit that he gets involved in with his boss is a drug which turns out to allows communication with entities outside our plane. The boss man needs protagonist to deliver the drug to someone who isn't supposed to contact these entities who plans to document the experience and expose it to the world

idk just spitballing man let me hit the bong rq

>>24638543
I was going to keep that 100% vague and hidden but it's good enough of a backstory desu.

>>24635756
But I can only type at 35 wpm on my phone. On a keyboard I can 3x that easily.

They being said, what application so you use for writing on your phone? I've been using a note-taking app, but it caps out at 3000 words per document. My notes for one story are already spread across 4 of them.

>>24638543
>>24638547

okay so the creature man is a supernatural fixer who can't actually hurt the protagonist, only be extremely suggestive and put things in his way for him to hurt himself on. The ending scene has the MC ingest the chemical only to find out that it doesn't actually give him the ability to communicate with demons or aliens or whatever, instead it kicks him out of his body and allows the gman to take over his body and he's forced to watch

idk man maybe I should just write a quick story like this lmao. Nice premise though.

>try to write a medieval battle scene
>need to rally the troops with some speech
>sounds hackneyed
>can't find a book to give me a good example
>even Shakespeare just writes
>Now, soldiers, march away,
And how Thou pleasest, God, dispose the day.
why don't authors write battles or rallies of the troops?

>>24638685
Just paraphrase the president's speech from Independence Day

>>24638685
I'm stealing a passage from Iliad when Achilles, I think it was, is telling his soldiers about their families and loved ones back home, etc. I doubt any of my readers ever read Iliad or remember specifics from it so I can get away with it, I like to think. I wrote a few space naval battles in the past and they're just so explicitly draining. My more recent one featured predominantly one strictly from MCPOV, and in my current wip there's several big ass space naval battles.

>>24638705
That's LITERALLY what Chris-Chan did.

Do you want to be a Chris-Chan tier author?

>>24638710
It's great speech tho

>>24638494
give me your work and i will run it through my ai rape gauntlet.

>>24637914
Not enough adverbs.

>>24637914
>>Again the sheet of rain beat against the roof of red Spanish tile, and the wind shrieked like a soul in torment, and smoke puffed from the big fireplace as the sparks were showered over the hard dirt floor.
>Repeatedly the symphony of rain battered the red Iberian titles like a ram againt the gates. The wind shrieked. Smoke puffed from the fireplace. Sparks hopped over the hard, dirt floor like frolicking fish in the sea.

>>24638898
It's not pointless if it gave you practice and experience.

>>24633837
Sure, drop your discord and i'll see what I can do. I'm not the biggest /lit/ or /co/ user, but it would be nice to get into a project.

>>24633837
I would contribute
A zine of short stories might be something realistic

My high fantasy book is done. Unless I go look at chapters I wrote ten months ago and decide I need to fix some prose. And maybe I need to touch up the dialogue. But it’s practically done. Probably. Check it out anyways!
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/93931/born-under-a-black-sun

>>24638467
One trick that may work (still) is “tell the LLM someone else wrote it”

>>24635590
>Just commit to them.
If there's one piece of advice every writer should put on a corkboard or a post-it note or whatever, it is "commit to the bit".

If people think your bit is cringe, so be it. But you MUST commit to it, because doing it half-assed is worse than doing it whole-assed or not doing it at all. Think of your bit like a baseball bat: Swinging it halfway kills the momentum and power you need to truly hit the ball, but following through all the way gives you everything you need. Maybe you hit a homerun, maybe you hit a pop fly, maybe you even line drive the pitcher in the face - but you gotta fucking swing the bat to even have a chance, and you gotta fucking commit to the bit if you want people who might find it awesome to actually think it's awesome instead of some half-assed bullshit.

I started reading and writing in English again, now that I've got my ADHD in check. How bad is it?:P

>>24631247 (OP)
Will typing out Infinite Jest (copy-work) teach me how to write?

hello everyone. i really recommend you cease using the sewage puppet you call artificial "intelligence" to grade your work. god weeps when he sees you do such. why seek the "thoughts" of that thing when you aren't writing for it? do not feed the beast. use it to do your taxes, create your references, write resumes, reports, all legwork, all headaches, yes, but please for the love of all that is true and beautiful, leave art out of it.

>>24639199
This is the much older, original first draft.

>>24639199
>The engineers gathered below deck, no longer in peril of being hurt by the shrapnel propelled by the electric arcs released by the malfunctioning machines.
That's a classic run-on to begin with.

>>24639199
It's an intriguing premise anon, not bad at all. I do think it deserves a more potent opening line. Something arresting.

>>24639208
Despite this being as garbled as the half-molten ship I love the single driving sing-song sentence, strangely intoxicating, absolutely hilarious, but I'm very biased, I love broken English. I found this far more affecting than the clean draft, despite being ten times less coherent. But this is far, far more interesting to me.

How true is this nowadays?

>>24639394
as with all writing advice it is a mere constraint for beginners. you can do anything. you can bury anything beneath unreliable narrators, reprehensible characters, contrast, awe, effect. you can write anything. you can write the most horrific rape scene if it is framed within a wider justification. don't listen to your toy. LISTEN TO YOUR HEART .. LISTEN TO ME !!

Don't delude yourselves. Artful shitposting is writing.

Tried to start a novel, realize I really haven't read nearly enough books. Feel like there's something missing whenever I try to take a crack at it. Decided to start reading more novels and writing short stories before I make another attempt.

>>24639428
>you can write the most horrific rape scene if it is framed within a wider justification.
Somone in industry said my script would get passed because the logline implied rape. Yet Tarantino can write
>Am I a nigger? Are you in Inglewood?
And win an Oscar

>>24639452
You're not Quentin Tarantino.

>>24639394
You might get bites from, well, let's say "people of a certain political leaning" and leave it at that, but anyone else would probably reject your story if you're using "retarded" that way. The only socially acceptable use of the word in fiction writing these days is as a slur spoken by someone that you absolutely want to portray as an asshole.

>>24639475
>The only socially acceptable use of the word in fiction writing these days is as a slur spoken by someone that you absolutely want to portray as an asshole.
Yes, it's spoken by the villain whos some unhinged teenager

>>24639483
Then it's no different from a racist asshole using racial slurs. The key is to make sure that your teenage antagonist's actions are villified rather than glorified.

>>24638685
can't give a rousing speech if you're a soulless npc that does't understand humans

>>24638378
the problem is, you won't know what is a good scene until you've written 30 bad ones

>>24638685
>even Shakespeare just writes
>Now, soldiers, march away
Kill yourself. You haven't even tried
From Henry V

"What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin:
If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day."

Or watch:
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvFHRNGYfuo


Further: Try Words like Loaded Pistols, try the Beezebub speech from Paradise Lost (too long to post)

>>24639220
>>24639208
Should I just write in my native tongue or give English another chance if I never intend to leave my country? I feel like I'm writing with a handicap.

>>24639598
Beelzebub*

>>24639601
Who or what are you writing for ?

>>24639603
I just want my stories to be read, not to make money from it. I recently got published in my country. ( A short story). But I feel sad because not many people read in Romania.

>>24639607
Well done on being published bro. I honestly loved reading stories written by ESLs who lean into their 'imperfect' command of arbitrary rules of grammar and diction that English pretends is proper. One of my favourite books is written is a kind of nigerian pidgin that uses stands above language, rather than below it, as so many writers do. I believe you can make it work to your benefit.

give me a picture to write a shitty story about

>>24639729
Cristobal found her embedded in the study drywall like a mushroom. By the pope.
"Hey, papa."
"Don't call me that. Where's your mother?"
"She's out." She winked at him strangely. He looked closer. One of her eyelash extensions was stuck together.
"So what is this."
"I'm stuck. I can't move at all."
Cristobal looked at the devastation. He couldn't see a hammer. "Haven't you heard of asbestos?"
"Some kind of mint?" She was breathing heavily. From the gaping hole, white flakes were falling like dandruff. She giggled crazily. "Haven't you watched step-daughter videos daddy?"
Cristobal looked at her for a long time. Then he walked to bookshelf beneath his trophy collection and picked up the King James bible. It was an heirloom. Massive, leatherbound. He pulled a chair before his step-daughter, licked his finger, and began to read: "In the Begininning.."
"No! No!" she screamed, her hands beating against the floor. But it was too late. She felt her fire slipping away, and by the time her step-dad reached page 2, she no longer wanted to fuck him.

I've written it. How the hell do I get anyone to read it?

>>24639761
Post except.

>>24639765
No, I've already been shilling it too hard here, I'm giving it a rest.

>>24639766
arboreal transformation was a punishment reserved for those who committed one of the seven unspeakable crimes and its sentence was endless. he had been made a living tree when the white mountain was still tall, before the teeth of wind and rain had ground it down. he had watched a thousand traveller walk beneath his bare branches and spit upon his root and burn his bark and pour acid and alcohol upon the soil to sting him. he had wished death upon himself everyday and knew that none would grant it. all who saw the impossible anguish in his resin eyes drew an equal proportion of pleasure and he knew none would grant him his wish.
until the day the girl with the wrist-axe came. she drove her blade with strength unlikely to her make and split his trunk near to the core. the blood was came was as red and rich as the sunset that reflected upon the lake and he released his few half dead leaves to fall upon her in a shower of thanks.

>>24639452
>Yet Tarantino
It's only a matter of time before he gets canceled

thoughts on footnotes ?

>>24640004
Unless you're writing a report, terrible idea. Just explain what you need to within the context of the story.

>>24640004
I dunno. Show feet and I'll give some pointers

>>24640027
When I was young footfags were pariah. In current day, it is seen a benign fetish, almost romantic, completely pedestrian. I have witnessed a hyperinflation in the fetish market. Rimming, once a shameful, deeply secret taboo, is commonplace; incest is everywhere; and the ancient tradition of dogfucking has been exposed to the common mind.

>>24640038
I wouldn't say its commonplace. At least, I never encounter it, thank god.

First paragraph of my short story. Please give critique


>During one of daily walks to mountain I saw Shtifter once again hitting a rock a with a giant iron mallet and boiling with anger in the blue after the sunset. He does this when he has “one of those days”, that’s how takes it all out. If he was born as a barbarian 500 years in the place of that rock there would have been a human skull. Now the upbringing confines the beast to the inorganic. As I got close to him I felt the bass of mallet’s blow becoming one with dub of my heart beat. I fear my spine could be in place of that rock if something snapped in the minutes to come but if try to come at me I would take him off the cliff and into the dark chink where my fear of fall dwells, two broken stars shot downward in hopes of blowing up the earth on the impact. Hesitantly I approached Shtifter. His sweat was pouring down from his head and into his eyes. He was twitching his eyes to reduce the effect of bitter spears of sweat stinging his eyes. In his vision he must be in some kind of mystical state of snapping in and out of a dream, blackness then blue images, then sting of sweat then a blow of mallet then blackness once again, birth and death happening at the same time and all of this flowing with the background song of moths.

Niggas be stopping a paragraph in to get critique.

WRITE NIGGA. WRITE!

>>24640107
>Shtifter
You really need to change the name
I read shitter three times

>>24640107
I like it, but I recommend you write the entire short story, as shouting anon says, all in one diarrheic flow while the fever is in you, and then consign it to an austere edit. There are clunky phrases, tense errors, and a perspective change (the story is in first-person, so the narrator should have no insight into what colours the barbarian is seeing in his mind, unless it is pure projective imagination). Lastly the "background song of moths" is a meaningless phrase to me. Moths are famously silent. Is this a poetic allusion to silence ? But .. I like it ! There is a brutal, bloody quality to things.

>>24640109
I don't want the write I just want the dopamine rush of getting read

>Got an unconditional offer into one of the best unis in the world (Top five at least)
>Since then, lost all motivation to write in any capacity
What's going on?

FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT:

I PROSE
II RHYTHM
III CHARACTER
IV PLOT
V SPELLING
VI GRAMMAR

>>24640249
>prose most important
>grammar least importat
that's like saying you must have a car, but it's fine if it has no wheels

>>24640254
indi no what indi sae den why indi need english propa

>>24640249
plot is last

>>24640280
no grammar is last because grammar is composed of grammatrons, meaning they resist any manipulation without breaking, whereas plot is totally play-play, meaning it often breaks without some minute consideration. its the grammatrons you see.

sorry for the weird question guys but do you notice any difference when you write on paper with a pen vs writing on a word processor/computer?

im talking about prose/fiction writing

>>24640351
Of course. Even if it’s simply due to wpm type vs slow writing. The speed difference also changes my diction. Depending on the spelling of the word it might feel weird to use to write it out vs type. Try putting a crt filter in your word processor and the aesthetic change might change your mood too.

>>24640249
all are equal
all are one

>>24640351
very different and a typewriter is also different from the other two

Hello /lit/. I've finished my screenplay. It's about a girl who want to end the world because her cat was struck by lightning.

https://files.catbox.moe/prm82t.pdf

Hello /lit/. I've finished my screenplay. It's about a girl who wants to end the world because her cat was struck by lightning.

https://files.catbox.moe/prm82t.pdf

>>24640484
Plentiful and hearty congratulations my dear companion crab.

Crab anon is based. And I'll not hear differing opinions on this.

>>24640234
The institution is an energy vampire

>>24640484
I can tell from a glance at the formatting alone that you're an amateur but I'll give at least the first 10 pages a read and share my thoughts on the narrative if I have any

>>24640484
You're trying to direct a movie when you should be focusing on writing a screenplay. Trim the fat. We don't need to know every detail about a character's wardrobe, the landscape, every little motion the actor should make, how they should emote, etc. Write the story in regular prose if those details feel that important to you. Otherwise consolate the descriptions and focus on dramatically charged actions.

>>24640910
>consolate
*consolidate

>>24640910
I wrote it as a prose movie, knowing it will never get made. the minutiae is important in the sense that this is the final product. plus some of the details play into a hidden story layer which the reader has to figure out on their own.

>https://rentry.co/ghdpbck7

I know this won't be for everyone in here, but I'd appreciate a little read. It's just over 1000 words, so not too long.

>>24640135
Thank you. I'll upload it after going through 2nd draft.

>>24641012
The writing is competent but the story just doesn't sound plausible to me. I dunno. From the first paragraph it sounds like it's a short chance meeting at the museum. In the subsequent paragraphs, you find out it's three guys, drunk at the museum. And what must have been an extended conversation. And then she keeps going back (to the museum I guess) and waiting. Like what, she spends 8 hours a day sitting in front of the museum? Hoping he'll come back? How is this plausible?

>>24641229
cinema sins ass

this is the first and last thing i ever wrote, in 2016. thinking about trying out writing some short stories.
John was upset. Here it was, not yet his third week on the job, and again he found himself tossing yet another tie into the small, wire waste-paper basket that sat beside his desk. It was the fifth since he had taken the position. He had spent the better part of an hour trying to remove the stain with seltzer and baking soda, a tip he had overheard in a conversation between two colleagues in the cafeteria, but had only managed to transform the small, crimson splatter into a faint, brown blotch. It might’ve passed inspection, but he decided that it wasn't a risk worth taking. He let out a sigh and leaned back in his chair. He'd have to buy another, and at this rate he was likely to end the month having spent more money than he had earned. The single window in his office faced the courtyard, and provided him a clear view of the large fountain at its center. Every once in a while he’d spy a bird bathing or taking a drink, which he most enjoyed, but today’s view only offered the spectacle of the most recent batch of terrified conscripts, standing in uneasy formation before the instructor’s podium, hearing the same frenetic speech that was given to all new arrivals. He knew one of the conscripts would soon be selected to be made an example of, a sight he still hadn’t fully gotten used to, but today all he could think of is why don’t they issue red ties instead of beige.

>>24641305
sounds like your diary

>>24641305
we change a little bit every day. i'd rather die than share or iterate on something i did a decade ago

anyway i didn't read because you failed to format it even to 4chan post standards. anyway, read novels.

>>24641321
oops

>>24641325
only decided it was too negative towards someone interested in writing

>>24641353
too late, i may not even read ever again, much less write. you cut me deep.

>>24641438
just principles man. you're a big boy. you really should read, though.

Anyone else have issues sticking with stuff due to seasonal changes?
I mean I'm sure half of it is the usual turbo adhd to never finish, but I've reaally been trying to do longer fiction and every season has me pivoting to previous ideas and half starts
At this rate I might just rotate 4 stories so I can stop beating myself up about it

>>24641448
the trick is to stay in and in front of your screen(s)

>>24641448
Fall/Autumn is coming up, so pick an idea you like and work on that idea near-exclusively through that season - if you get an idea, write it down for some other time, and if you get an idea you absolutely have to bang out, go ahead and do it, but ideally, you'll want to stick with the one primary idea for the season.

>>24641012
Excellent, antique, ornate, affecting, and completely real. Really enjoyed this. A very true, polite short story.

>>24641012
quite good. I appreciate how the prose has a brusque pace and is given intimacy through little inflections of the character's personality. this manner of managing psychic distance illustrates to me a fine control of your prose as a story telling tool. parenthesis asides are charming and appropriate here given the character
I very much like this depiction of young infatuation. there's real specificity which makes it relatable. gives me a bittersweet feeling. a simultaneous longing for lost innocence and a wry, almost contemptuous sense of closure for my own foolish youth
also the ending line is striking
well done. I'd usually get into the weeds analyzing and critiquing a fellow anon's story but frankly I don't think you need it

I recently bought a copy of René Vaněk's "Metal Sky", hoping to see what the publication landscape looks like in my country
And man
MAN
I feel like an actual brainfuck retard reading it
Not because the prose is dense, but I've been near-exclusively using English for so long that it takes me an inordinate amount of mental processing power to actually parse "pretty good noir prose, but in Czech"

>>24641620
>>24641644
Wow, thank you, anons, these are lovely comments. I'm glad you enjoyed it! If you would post something, I would be happy to read it in return

>>24641229
I see how that would appear strange, although I'd argue that these things do happen in real life. I still appreciate your reading it regardless.

>>24641012
I liked it. The roman guards are a nice touch. The occasion of meeting can be specified better, which I think was >>24641229's problem.

>>24641620
>antique, ornate,
Is this your first time reading anything?

>>24641454
just need a seasonal setting for the ac/heater and I wouldn't have even known

>>24641617
It's probably embracing bad writing more so I can finish it within the season
I'm still circling around the Spring story because it's got some really great prose and a solid foundation, but no tangible narrative progress. Which is fine for shorts, but not enough a novella let alone novel

I can't wrap my head around prose. I keep being told that my prose needs to be more specific to be interesting, but then they say something like this:
>Find every abstract description in your narration—any instance where you talk about an emotion or a “vibe.” Replace it with something concrete that creates the same feeling. (Example: “The guy was creepy” becomes, “He didn’t break eye contact as he wiped his hands on his bloodstained shirt.”)
But "not breaking eye contact while wiping his hands on a shirt" does not always imply that he's creepy. Maybe he's wary of the other person instead? How is this more specific? It's more evocative, but it could mean different things without context, whereas "he's creepy" is unambiguous.

Also, this stuff just makes me laugh:
>Choose ten textbooky words from a textbook. Words like “theorem,” “chlorophyll,” or “gerrymandering.” Work them into a scene that is not about that topic.
Theorem and chlorophyll are big words now, huh?

Nevertheless, I'm retarded at writing prose. How do I get better at it?

>>24642585
nobody cares about prose

the only decent way to get a handle on how you want to communicate your story is by reading more stories you actually like, not through retarded writer self-help books

>>24642598
I've read a lot of books, but it hasn't helped me much. Even I can tell my prose is garbage. I have come to realize that much of what I read doesn't have much prose though.

>>24640990
As stated: Write the story in regular prose

>>24642585
if reading isn't helping, try poetry. both reading and writing it
it'll force you to focus on the effect and function of your word choice and structure

>>24642598
>Learn music by listening to albums you like
>Learn to draw by watching anime
>Learn to film by going to tha moovies
dummy

>>24642713
>books are the same thing as music
>books are the same thing as anime
>books are the same thing as da moovies
retard

>>24642716
>Writing is a wholly unique skill in that it is the only skill which doesn't require a meta perspective on how to improve.
>You just know
silly billy

>>24642713
none of these examples are incorrect
film students are expected to watch like a 100 movies as a part of their studies. artists are expected to study art and go to museums and attend exhibtions. music idk but probably a similar standard
writing is no different in this regard

>>24642729
You know you're being bad faith there anon. This anon is saying that that's ALL you need
>not through retarded writer self-help books
While I agree that they must also watch a ton of movies, to imply that they don't also study camera lenses, chord progression, blocking, human skeletal structure, etc, as a main effort is simply disingenuous.

>>24642726
yes, books are not like those other things

>>24642735
I'm engaging with you on the terms and conversational standards you set
dummy
the reason he (rightfully) mocked most 'technical' writing books as self help is that they're at best an attempt at cataloging observed patterns and at worst opinions presented as fact. usually sold with guru-like confidence with unsubstantiated claims and retarded instructions, exactly like the examples quoted in the chain OP
these books are almost entirely drivel. literature is not music. there are no hard rules, the medium is not built on definite physical laws and properties. it's almost entirely subjective what does and does not work, and the agreed criteria of great literature shifts with the shifting of culture
all these books are are the collections and expressions of the author's own reading. in most cases, written for the sake of exploiting the insecure masses who wish to be informed rather than study. skip the middleman and do the reading yourself, forming opinions and conclusions based on your own analysis

>>24642767
Post writing

>>24642778
sure, post yours and I'll reply with mine

>>24642780
nu uh I asked furst

>>24642726
>Writing is a wholly unique skill in that it is the only skill which doesn't require a meta perspective on
Yes.

>>24643133
Actually that's true for a lot of skills, especially in athletics. You can learn proper form but that's only gonna get you a tiny bit of the way to deadlifting a thousand pounds

>>24642767
This except unironically