/lit/ I want to write about shit that happened in my life without

You want to write something that isn't shit but you realise whatever you write will be shit. The only way to not write shit is to write shit and realise how it's shit. Realising how it's shit can be done by reading complex and interesting books.

take your real experiences and make them much better by turning them into a fictional story that you can add better details to.

>>9424531
Did anything interesting actually happen to you? If you wanted to read a book about someone would you pick a book about you? What happened to you that could be interesting?

>>9424531
okay so you'll start to seem like a trite motherfucker if you try to "move" your audience emotionally.

instead, think about a memory and let it move you. try to write about what you find interesting because it feels new or strange to you

a big problem with writing about sad times is that they tend to consist of the same thoughts over and over again, and people like to be surprised


basically, two criteria:
1. say the truth
2. say things that will surprise readers

Why would you write about your decadent, boring, petty bourgeois life? Use your goddamned imagination and invent something more interesting and actually worth reading.

>>9424552
Not only the realization it will be shit, but after reading quite a few recommendations from /lit/ and doing the "compare with Wattpad/Fanfic" bit, I know the ideal I'm aiming for.

I suppose you're correct and the only way to really get better is to write shit and compare to how good other works are inherently and the problems I don't notice with critical essays and the like. Thank you, Anon.

>>9424555
Well fuck me diagonally with a shishkebab stick. Did not consider fiction/fudging it because I was too busy crywanking over the past. Will combine this with >>9424552's suggestion.

>>9424571
Sort of? I lived in an illegal dump site of a local tire company with a sickly bear, with methheads, and eventually an engineering student that accidentally did weed laced with bathsalts or something (I assume bathsalts because he took a machete out at a drunk ~60 year old stranger while he was hyperventilating in a fit of paranoia).

>>9424576
So don't write contrived shit that attempts to calculate emotional impact on the reader/audience, but instead pull out bits that affect me emotionally and try to rewrite them until they're competent/cohesive?

I think.

Yeah, that bit with the looping thoughts and sadness fucking nails me every time. I'll get into a description thinking "Yeah, it went this way. It wasn't that fucked up." and by the end it becomes "Man, what the fuck is my life. I fuck up everything and make real shit choices."

>>9424582
I'm a poor motherfucker who has crazy shit happen frequently. I will admit whole-heartedly it's petty as fuck, but I want to at least get some truth or contribution to humanity out before I flipflop myself out of existence.

>>9424608
>Sort of?

Sort of? Son that's some interesting shit. Now create a compelling world and a narrative theme and say something God Damnit. Tell me the time the bear caught you masturbating. Tell me about the bath salts. Make the fucking stars fall from the sky. Let me come inside you anon, no homo. Write it up. Fucking twilight lady can make millions of dollars and she writes dumpster garbage. You lived in the dumpster garbage. This is the perfect chance to get that guy you accidently killed off your chest. Remember what he whispered in your ear as he died, what did he say anon. What did he say?

>>9424649
Honestly?

It wasn't a he, it was a she. I tried to get an education, did the University thing. Met a cute girl. Her parents wanted her to go into BioChemistry because they were some ritzy corporate fucks in a large, international MedTech corp.

She wanted to be a fucking nurse, and I, not knowing shit about what a family means to normal people, told her to tell her parents off and do it because I was impatient with her indecision/requests for support. I liked her in a childish way, but I've been self-dependent my whole life so acting as a support pillar and that empathy stuff meant fuck all to me.

Around Christmas she asked for a lot more support and I ended up nearly getting kicked out because the administration felt I "didn't belong." I told her if she's that distraught that her parents won't take her life seriously, she should just fucking kill herself when she goes home on vacation and leave a note telling them it's her fucking life.

She did.
I've been so fucking ashamed I've avoided speaking with people (I can't even look another person in the eyes). I don't know how the fuck some insignificant angsty shit like me wound up influencing a girl with what I thought was the perfect life.

>>9424691

Except she's still alive. She's burned, but its her own fault. Her parents were emotionally manipulative. You are not entirely at fault. She also blamed you for her own shortcomings, inciting more enmity between you and her parents. Ultimately, due to her rough years in junior high, she became a very psychologically damaged person. Her family dynamic and lust for wanton romanticism led her to a dark place.

So, naturally, everyone will blame you.

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>>9424738

wew laddie

She sounds so pure. I wonder how she turned out.

>>9424555
gtfo Hunter Thompson

OP: check out Henri Charriere's "Papillon". it's been discredited as fiction, but it does sound like the life story of a french criminal who got deported to the island prison colonies and spent forty years escaping. keep it simple. trying for "literary" is a sure-fire way of being pretentious.

>>9424738
That is beautifully twisted. Or I am for laughing at it.

I wish she'd lived. Hell, even if she was junior high instead of a uni student, and her parents were aware of my existence, I could deal with that fucked up situation somehow. But seriously? I was completely a background character and a crap confidant for a girl I barely knew's problems, and ended up convincing her to an hero. I thought I was this strong fuck who couldn't give a damn about humanity, but it fucking hurts knowing there is nothing I can do to make up for taking her life.

I have no way to express how much I wish I could take one sentence back.

>>9424776
She's dead. :(

>>9424691
That's what I'm talking about. I think its compelling anon. If you can't look people in the eyes then write the book. You need to create a character that is you, but not you. And write his story. You will never get it done of its really your story in your head. Make it that other characters story, and her story. You were crucial to her story after all. You pushed her off the edge. Maybe your book is her story. Your simulacrum just floats at the edges and poisons her mind. Try that and if it works you can do that with a whole cast of characters and stories and people you knew. I know you want to write your story but if its not coming out, tell theirs. Then in a roundabout way you can appear as shades of other people. You might end up telling more truths about yourself by talking about them. Make thier lives better, or ruin them. You can save them if they couldn't save themselves. I believe you have a whole universe of stories, not just one indulgent book about yourself. I think you have what it takes.

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>>9424795

Its rooted in reality my man. I wish I was referring to your lost amore but I'm only drawing parallels. I had a similar thing happen, except I never told her to kill herself. I did tell her her parents were being overly guarded of her, but desu man it was a tragedy that shared many victims. I can't deny my own shortcomings. Ah, to be young. Folly and bliss.

If you are going to be confessional, only confess the things that every reader can relate to.

>>9424691
At the very end of the book you discover she was pregnant with ops baby when she killed herself.

>>9424808
Maybe you're right. That only really took feeling like shit for a couple minutes, and the lingering memory, but it's out. I don't think I could write under the pretense my book is her story, just because I was only there for a few hours of her last few months, but I've had a similar amplifying effect on other people and might be able to write myself vicariously through interactions with other people.

Almost 10 years ago there was a musician/heroin addict in a group I'd hang around with. He OD'd and went missing in the middle of February. Did manage to help the guy in the end, but his sister found him in a snowbank and gave him shit.

>>9424831
It might be cruel to say, but it was at best a crush. No pun intended.

A little relieved to know someone in a similar situation can make better choices, regardless of shortcomings. Surprising to find an iota of hope in an anonymous post, so thank you.

>>9424861
I have no idea what normal people or even sane people relate to, Anon.

I read something like Oliver Twist and wonder what it's like to be in a family, I read On Being & Time and wonder what the fuck I am to the rest of the species. I'm hoping the emotions are similar enough to be able to connect somehow, but if it's unrelatable(?) it might not work anyway .

>>9424878
I am OP. Didn't even kiss her, only convinced her to die in her parents' house on Christmas vacation. If there was a baby it was her boyfriend's, if she had one.

>>9424793
I'm not talking about journalism, dipshit, or trying to pass off fiction as nonfiction.

I'm talking about writing fiction, based off your real experiences and thoughts about life.....which is what 100% of fiction writers do.

>>9424793
Shit, I missed this one. Sorry, Anon.

The point of the thread is wariness of writing some pretentious shlock. With several in-thread noting fiction as a likely superior medium for the silly things I want to talk about, that may be the better method. Not sure how to go about it, but Papillon seems an interesting read. Thank you for the suggestion. :)

>>9424912
For some reason I'd always considered fiction writers to write... well, flights of fancy and only use bits of real life for descriptions or making the world relatable.

Wonder if that could be what >>9424861 & >>9424808 meant -- maybe I could pare it down to the remaining feelings or blueprint concepts of events and people, then rework the details into the architecture of a fictional world.

I may be reading into many things incorrectly, too. Feel like kind of a psychological mess, but starting to think all people have their own shit to deal with. Makes me wonder if that "confidence" thing is just not worrying as much about the psychological mess and simply living life as best you can. -_- ' Ehh, life lessons.

>>9424963
You're also thinking about things way too hard.

Sit down....or stand, what the fuck ever, and write.

>>9424795
>I have no way to express how much I wish I could take one sentence back.
put this in the book

>>9424975
On it, thank you Anon.

>>9424982
Will do, printed at the top of the notebook.
Thank you, Anons, all of you.
OP is out, and forever a faggot.