So /tg/, how's your novel coming along?

Isn't this a question for >>>/lit/ ?

First one largely completed, started to take down notes for a second one.

I do wish I had any idea on how to get them published, or at least to find out whether they were worth publishing.

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>>53786558

>>53786558
Great.

I have 117 pages written out with the story and world building and I just recently started writing the actual thing.

>>53786628
You can always self-publish.

>>53786610
To my knowledge this kind of thread has existed for awhile on /tg/, pops up sporadically every now and then since there tend to be a fair number of writefags on here. Additionally, /lit/ community is not the same as /tg/ community.

>>53786610
Yes. This sort of thread has exactly nothing to do with traditional games.
>b-but it's a fantasy novel
That doesn't mean shit. Go to >>>/lit/

>>53786728
>>53786610
There were weekly writefag threads some months ag, every wednesday. I know it, because I made some.

>>53786558
It's gotten to the point where I know what I want to write, and how I'm going to tweak things so I can claim copyright.
The next step is figuring out where to start, and where to go from there.

> Get published
I don't care about publishing it. I am neither good enough nor dedicated enough to produce a bestseller, and there's precious little money in it otherwise.
I'll probably put it up on Amazon for free or nearly free when/if I complete it.

>>53786833
>There were weekly writefag threads some months ag, every wednesday
There were. I produced some passable work for those off the spur of images some anons posted.

>>53786695
cool,

what about?

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>>53786610
Don't you know? /tg/ is the dedicated literature board.
/tg/ is the dedicated video games board.
/tg/ is the dedicated movies & TV board.
/tg/ is the dedicated comics & cartoons board.
/tg/ is the dedicated anime & manga board.
/tg/ is the dedicated real life history board.
/tg/ is the dedicated real life science board.
/tg/ is the dedicated tropes that appear in various media board.
/tg/ is the dedicated ">a thing happened" board.
/tg/ is the dedicated fetish bait board.
/tg/ is the literally every topic imaginable board. Any thread on /tg/ is necessarily on topic because it is a thread on /tg/ and it is IMPOSSIBLE for a thread on /tg/ to be off topic.
That is why threads on /tg/ are NEVER deleted for being off topic. There has never been a single one. If you don't believe this, you are a fedora.

>>53786628
Duotrope is a mediocre site that is servicable enough for starting authors to get shit published for; basically gives a list of places accepting manuscripts for you to select from.

The asylum did not loom, as he had been told, but instead drooped at all sides. Every stone, brick, and hall sagged like a summer squash left out far past its season. The doctor packed his bag. From a small window the doctor could see the peak of the slope where a weather vane span, pointing an accusatory iron finger towards him. That morning the nurse had left green oranges and fresh milk on the table looking out of that tiny dusted window. In the quiet moments preceding dawn, after the moans of the committed's night terrors, but before their morning exercise, he had eaten the sour fruit. A finger rooted in his cheek, picking at a seed lodged into a molar. Accompanying the fruit had been a short letter, written to him by the nurse, explaining she had picked the fruit herself. During vigorous exercise he entertained two notions, first the possibility if the nurse was sweet on him, and the second beings some kind of indirect spite pointed towards him over his sudden arrival and displacement of the chief physician. Sweat dripped from his brow, and pooled in the small of his back to soak the over sized nightdress he wore. A cool towel pressed against his eyes soothed the dull headache, and as he prepared to bathe a pounding knock disturbed his routine.

r8 my writing m8s.

>>53786558
I made a shitpost comic about a CGI tongue floating around in a void, incorporated some concepts from the novel's setting, and now the novel is developing as a pretty bad webcomic.

>>53787282
/tg/ has never been strictly about traditional games. It's more a community centered around those things but often discussing all sorts of other things, literature on top of them.

>>53787039
My story's about a high-level ranger dying in an ambush and passing his identity and mission to the 1-1 HD goblin creature that happened to be present at the time. Said creature must then pose as an epic hero in order to get to see the world and earn his share of the great golden treasure at the end.

>>53787838
truth to be told, that's how most boards work which aren't complete shit

I got sidetracked setting up my environment and accidentally created a personal Linux distro.

>>53787039
Nothing special.

Just a fantasy setting with war between some newly formed Empire and the religious folk of the world.

As an extra spicy tid bit it involves a massive laser cannon

>>53787863
As it should be.

People complaining about how something doesn't belong to a board are completely missing the point.

I'm not that bad with writing stuff, and even plotting stuff, but I'm absolutely incapable of stringing things together coherently. I can't even practice, like Steven Hawking can't practice walking. So I write mods for Stellaris instead.

Maybe when the next NaNoWriMo arrives (Is it still a thing?) I try again.

>>53787874
well, it's 4chan after all.
Anyway I come to /tg/ for the community. Which means the anons who are indeed part of the community. Not the shitposters who always argue what should be tg and what shouldn't be.

>>53786558
Pretyy good, my players are getting ready for the next session today!

>>53786558
It's finished. A 234 page sin against God. All of them.

I just need beta-readers.

>>53788196
I'll beta-read your book if you beta-read mine.

>>53788196
Why is it sin against god?

Sitting with an agent at the moment, should hear back in September or so.

Second one is in development at the moment: ~20,000 words. Am writing a couple of short stories too, while that second novel germinates.

You?

>>53788289
I have an explicit Christian learning magic and fighting against a demonic cult while trying to accept the (for him) brainshattering fact that there are gods plural, and the stories he's heard growing up are only one side.

>>53788196
>>53788274
I'll read your books alpha-mode and you'll like it.

Been doing great ever since I kicked a player that refused to play his role properly.

>>53787282
So if it's impossible to be off-topic do you think political debates and discussion belong on /tg/? Because from what I've seen they tend to lead to bans and deletions.

>tfw promised /tg/ a sequel to my storytime almost a year ago
>tfw still see "Did he post it yet?" in greentext threads
Sorry, guys, I'm lazy!

>>53788679
Those tend to be far more volatile and cause all manner of bullshit that a mere book club never is capable of. That's probably the deciding factor.

>>53788693
I know exactly who you are, spiderwoodsanon, and you better stop shitposting and get back to work right fucking now.

>>53788726
>be far more volatile and cause all manner of bullshit
Nonsense. Have you seen some edition wars threads? They are the most vicious things on the internet I've ever seen.

>>53787690
y-you too

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>>53786558
It's going. Still fleshing out all of the !vampire families and studying African/Middle Eastern myths for inspiration.

I am hoping Tingle-sempai will notice me with my new epic. Bisexual Orcs Slam My Ass-Pussy and Bang My Triceratops Ex-Girlfriend.

>>53786558
Turns out reading and writing a lot for my education kind of undermines my desire to write fiction.
I wish I wasn't salty, but I kind of am.

>>53786558
714 chapters in, I still havent figured out how mc and company are going to get around the demonspawn dragon without hitting the next cultivation level and they just broke through their last bottleneck and reached shining star rank.

>>53787778
Came here to post this.

>>53787778
>implying the drivel all you faggots """"""""write"""""""" isn't still inferior to Stephanie Meyer

I hope all of you self publish your garbage """"""""""novels""""""""""" so the world can get a good laugh at how shit you are.

>>53790568
This tbqh.

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>>53790568
>>53790711
Go away Stephanie, you're not fooling anyone.

>>53790769
How many of your publisher rejections contain the words "keep trying," "amateur," "absolute dreck," and "was this a joke?"

Oh wait, you probably didn't even try because you know you're garbage and will always be garbage.

>>53787690
B+. Purple prose is fun when done well, but get to the motherfucking point.

>>53787871
>As an extra spicy tid bit it involves a massive laser cannon

fukken dropped.

>>53790769
It's not that Twilight isn't trash, it's just that your work is sub-trash.

>>53787282
/lit is so fucking pretentious tho

>>53791034
Grow a pair.

>>53790987
I said it wasn't special.

What makes a good story? Good characters? Expectations being subverted is popular. Greyish characters are popular, but not to the point of edginess.

What else can you guys think of? Trying to come up with general guiding principles for writing

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Honest opinion: There never has been (nor will there ever be) a fantasy or science fiction novel in the same tier as academic literature.

Arguably there hasn't even been a novel this millennium that'd be remembered in 50 years.

>>53790844
>>53791024
>Anon projects hard to feel better about his own failures.

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I started laying out the plot structure and world a year ago, I plan to spend another 9 years preparing the plot and then write it in the following 6 years before releasing all of the books at once. I've only worked on it for a few hours in the past couple days so I am really worried.

>>53786558
Havent gotten past page 1... I destroy everything once i reach page 4 or 5. Over and over and over.

>>53791757
>y-you're projecting! I'm a good writer! Really!

Anons on suicide watch

Slowly. I'll get there one day.

>>53791647
>Good characters
I wouldn't consider them part of the story. You can have a good piece with a good story and bad characters or a good piece with a bad story and good characters.

>Expectations being subverted is popular
If it's popular, then expectations aren't being subverted. You need to REALLY subvert expectations, not subvert expectations that people already expect to be subverted.

>Greyish characters are popular
I dislike grey characters, but they should still be used. If you want to go for realism, avoid grey characters and instead have almost every character be good. You can have a disastrous world of darkness without any grey or dark characters as long as there is reasonable complexity to the situation. I include evil characters that live off of the carrion left behind by the good though.

>but not to the point of edginess.
Edginess can be good, as long as the surroundings of the edgelord realistically respond to them. Most significant individuals are edgy as fuck when viewed from certain angles, especially philosophers.

>What else can you guys think of?
The unknown, leave concepts and lore vague to be debated by angry people on the internet.
Internal connections, don't try and connect a plot on a thin thread or a linear pole, make it a massive web with many causes leading to many effects. Ties into the latter point.
Write for yourself and not for others, don't try to make anything palatable or profitable.
Destroy everything and make new things, eventually you should lose your attachment to what you have created and achieve even greater freedom to rebuild the story. Things got so much better after I erased the last traces of my story after gradually replacing things.

>>53786558
First one's done, 4 chapters into second. Got rights to cover art last month.

>>53792184
>Anon continues to project.

>>53792184
Is this what you think passes for trolling? For fuck's sake, you're embarrassing yourself.

>>53787690
Lightening cracked overhead and martin ran stumbling through the rain up the slick grass of the steep hill. At the top stood a dark omen, the ruin of a black and broken tower with a great oak tree growing up through its ruined stones. From a window in the top floor dim light emitted a beacon to him and the fear of such a place was nothing to being caught by the guardsmen that had spotted him in the royal garden. Hunched, taking cover in the foot or so of space shielded from the rain at the doorway he slammed his fist against the dark wood door. After a moment a small hatch was opened in the door and a voice rung in the darkness

r8 my writing m8s.

The doctor packed his bag. From a small window the doctor could see the peak of the slope..

mentioning "the doctor" twice like that pulled me out of it

>>53792434
>>53792505
Suicide watch

Guys I need help.
I have completely and totally planned out the story for my series to it's conclusion, but I keep getting stuck on fine detail, like what occurs in a conversation, or the specifics of what happens on a journey ( My mc starts out as a cartographer working fir the government)

It's a fantasy novel btw, in case that helps.

>>53793569

Just write out one possibility for the conversation and see how it reads, if you don't like it, try it in a different way, just keep going and comparing the different versions until you get what you're looking for

>>53793770
Hmmm... that, my good sir, just might work. I tip my hat (fedora) to you.

>>53791717
>There never has been (nor will there ever be) a fantasy or science fiction novel in the same tier as academic literature.

Would argue with that. Tolkien, Lewis, Le Guin, Bradbury, Lovecraft, Dick and many more notable genre fiction writers are part of literary canon in one way or another.

Some notable "serious" writers both modern and old were writing a genre fiction. Bulgakov, Cormac McCarthy, Orwell, Zamyatin, Ian Banks just as a few examples.

I think it definitely shows something.

>Arguably there hasn't even been a novel this millennium that'd be remembered in 50 years.

It's been only 17 years, classic needs time to be recognized. I'm not into modern literature, but there are undoubtedly some modern classic books written in this millennium.

>>53792352
>I wouldn't consider them part of the story. You can have a good piece with a good story and bad characters or a good piece with a bad story and good characters.
I disagree. I think it's the characters that the reader comes for. The story is strictly secondary: it's nothing more than what happens to them, and the main draw is how they deal with all this stuff happening.

>>53796655
Fun fact: Jorge Luis Borges, without question one of the best and most educated literally scholars of possibly entire fucking history of mankind, considered Ray Bradbury on par, or better than H.G. Wells or Edgar Alan Poe.

People who dismiss fantastic literature as automatically genre fiction are morons and simply need to read more.

>>53787282
>le board isn't about what it's supposed to be about
Fuck off if you have nothing to say and don't try to pull other people in your pit of despair.

>>53787282
/tg/
/thread general/

>>53791717
Shakespeare's plays were basically trashy TV shows of his time, and look how he ended up.

>>53797461
>and look how he ended up
Dead?

>>53786558
Planning would be started, if I could write something at least substandard and was creative and motivated enough to come up with something interesting.

>>53786558
I haven't gotten started, yet, but I'm still thinking!
Maybe in a few years.

>>53797468
Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?

I'm writing a patent, not a novel

>>53786558
I just realized I was typing the same post I made in the last thread.

Hopefully THIS will be the final version and the editor my mother talked to would stop harassing me every time we meet at the store.

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>>53786833
>>53786980
There is a fortnightly thread on /tg/ for creative writing. Mostly, people use the images posted as inspiration, but you can post just about any creative fiction

current one is here
>>53711273
>>53711273
>>53711273
>>53711273
and frankly it could use some attention.

Also, all the stories that get posted in it go on a 1d4chan wiki page
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Storythread

>>53786558
accepted its death and shittiness
I'll just run a game in existing setting, and stop trying to do something I can't do

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I want to storytime out a long running (and I mean 3+ years long) campaign, here on /tg/, but I really don't have the writing talent. My prose is far too flowery and I end up just having reams and reams of exposition between anything happening.

Do people ever greentext out their tales, or recount them in an otherwise informal/ easy manner? I'm aware it may be pleb as fuck, but I'm itching to share the story with the world.

>>53796655
>Ian Banks
The only reason he gets any attention is because he could write non-genre fiction as well. It's just the snobbery against science-fiction extended. Don't get me wrong, some of his stuff wasn't bad, but his works certainly weren't classics of science-fiction.

>>53791717
The only reason science fiction gets shat on by 'academic literature' is because the sort of people who go to university to study literature are the sort of people who can't hack it in a real subject like physics or maths. Frankly, they're just not bright enough to understand the author's themes, and they hide their insecurities by relentlessly tearing down 'genre fiction' and favouring the kind of stuff they write (i.e. dross with a pretentious gloss).

>>53786558
Writing letters to agents about it, books done, just needs some TLC from an editor.

Any of you going to the Midwest Writers Workshop?

>>53797007
Ever since this was taken as a fantasy writer's creed, we've had nothing but 'lol so quirky' snarkers floating around non-threatening cliche plots.

>>53797923
Still better than the alternative, a bunch of bland and utterly uninteresting robots going through some inexplicable political intrigue that needs three full readings to understand shit.

Without compelling characters, you're just reading fictional history.

>>53797862
Storytimes are always welcome even if they are not written in the best possible manner.

Just write however you can, but keep only essential details and put most of the required exposition in the beginning. Plan ahead and create some bullet-points if you're still worried about unnecessary derailing.

>>53798036
That's a nice false equivalency you're drawing there.

>>53797923
That comes from you average fantasy writer generally having no literary education or experience beyond consuming cheap pop culture, and thus thinks snark is a manifestation of intellect and quips a demonstration of wit.

For what you are arguing, I'd like to pull Jules Verne, even though the man was a competent writer for his time. 20,000 Miles Beneath the Sea and Whatsitcalled Island have in excess of thirty characters, but Nemo is the only one that comes off as a human being, everyone else is a cardboard cutout placed there by the author to keep the story going. That's not a good way to write in 2017.

>>53798143
You started it. I said character focus, you said 'lol quirky'.

>>53797923
>Ever since this was taken as a fantasy writer's creed,
I can assure that that has never been a fantasy writers creed to begin with. Seriously, name me all the entirely character driven fantasy books you can.

Don't blame bad writing on the focus on characters. Blame authors who don't write actual characters.

>>53798469
>name me all the entirely character driven fantasy books you can
A Song of Ice and Fire

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>>53798469

>>53786558
Um accumulating studying material and ideas for when I am capable of overcoming my crippling depression and have the time to focus on writing.
Who am I kidding, I'm never going to finish this crap.

>>53798532
>>53798514
Great. Fair enough, really.
Now should we start listing fantasy that does not follow this approach? Because where I live, there are like twelve fantasy books released a year at least, and we are a very small market. I guarantee that eleven of those twelve will not follow the character-centric formula.

>>53798214
You can still get published like that. See Alastair Reynolds

>>53798745
Are those books any good, though?

>>53798781
But do you want to get published like that?

got a world cooked up and everything, i decided i was just going to dm a session of d&d rather than come up with main characters and a narrative. no idea how its gonna go honestly

>>53798811
>Are those books any good, though?
They are shit, like 90% of all genre fiction, of course.

My point really was just the fact that character-driven and character-centric fantasy has never been the standard or the norm of the genre: not to judge whenever that is a good thing, or a bad thing. Honestly: it's kinda logical: most fiction, once becoming truly character oriented, stops being genre fiction, and becomes a classic fiction (with a supernatural element) instead.

>>53798214
Well, Verne was ALWAYS more interested in didactic dimension of his literature. His ambition was to write what essentially ammounted to more interestingly formulated encyclopedia of modern technological progress and currently available scientific knowledge.
To him, the story and the characters were pure tools to educate his audience about technical and scientific progress. It's not even genre fiction: it's didactic fiction - one step above a popularization of science or a well written textbook.

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Word of advice to all starting or potential authors of fantasy fiction:

No matter how intuitive it may seem at first glance, DON'T start your work by world-building and inventing the settings. Nothing is a more sure way to either never finish, or worse yet finish and produce a pile of utter garbage, than starting with the settings and then trying to develop the story from that settings. In this way, writing and DM'ing is pretty much the opposite: if you want to write a half-decent book, you have to come with STORY FIRST and everything else second.

Let the story form it's settings, let the world-building serve the story telling. Not vice-versa. Just... trust me on that. It's always better, and always EASIER to write.

>>53786558
What novel. My RPG development is going nowhere though.

>>53799088

This sounds good but every time I try to come up with the story first it feels like the story doesn't make sense because the plot is going to be pushed forward by geopolitical events

>>53799012
I know, I used him as an example because it illustrates my point about stories centered entirely around the plot or exploring a gimmick of the setting. Speculative fiction is very difficult to write if you want to tell a good story and not just to convey information.

>>53799159
Think about it this way: what is the POINT of the story? What is the point of those geopolitical events? Why are you telling all of it? Even those geopolitical events should have more of a purpose in the grand narrative than just "to be there", right? It seems to me that you need to just go even one step of abstraction more.

>>53798214
>everyone else is a cardboard cutout placed there by the author to keep the story going. That's not a good way to write in 2017.
Bernard Werber does it and he sells millions in 2017.

>>53799159
>>53799088

To clarify, I'm not saying I disagree with you, just that I want to find a balance

On the one hand, if the setting and world building is done entirely to fit a plot line I've already decided on, then I'm worried the whole thing will end up seeming ad hoc, like the setting is too convenient. I want my story to arise organically from the world, like history arises organically from the real world

But of course I recognize that if I try to build the entire world and all the details first I'll never finish and if I get too attached to the world building, the story might end up sounding like a tour of the world i created instead of something more meaningful

>>53799239
And McDonalds has restaurants all over the world. Doesn't mean green rubber and minced roadkill in a bun is good cooking.

>>53799244
There's no 'easy' solution. You need to have the characters, the background and the plot, and all three will need incessant fine tuning until they work well together. The only cure I can think of is to put the pen down and read works of good writers until you develop a feeling for what is important. Writing a book you can be proud of, or better yet ashamed of for the right reasons, of worth a few years of research. It will also help you develop a decent style.

>>53799234

I'm curious, could you maybe give me an example answer to that question ("what is the point of the story?") for a popular fantasy book/series like Harry Potter or lord of the rings

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>>53786558
>All of the 100 people I got to read the book loved it
>Pretty much done with the 2nd and a quarter way through with the 3rd
>Too concerned about external factors to seek a publisher or even publish it myself
Every time that I see these threads, I realize what a failure I am.

>>53799466
You got a hundred people to read it? You are better at this than me.

>>53799466
What do you mean by external factors

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>>53799475
It wasn't really a very diverse set of test readers, though. So I don't know if it even means anything.

>>53799602
Due to a few of the themes and events in my story, I am deathly afraid of becoming successful while only being regarded for those things within my following.

>>53786558
I recently left the fantasy genre and started to look into some actually good writing. Suddenly, all those writing tips that used to sound like bullshit to me make sense, and I've scrapped all my old work in favour of a new one. This time, the beginning, middle and end came to me all at once, and I finally feel like I know what I'm doing. Writing is fun again.

Still haven't gotten much done, though, but this is a hobby anyway.

>>53799792
Then use what you've learned to write good genre fiction. We desperately need more of it.

>>53800534
I know. The entire time I was reading, I was like, "why the fuck can't we have this and dragons at the same time?"

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>>53790844
who hurt you, anon?

>>53799674
>I'm afraid of being, like, so good at my chosen genre, that people just can't handle it and they hold me to unrealistic expectations
Sounds like a real problem anon.

>>53801162
I think you badly misread what he posted.

>>53801162
That's not what he's saying at all. He's probably implying that his work relies on a few prominent gimmicks.
A classic problem with gimmicks is that the writer gets tired of them a lot faster than the reader.

>>53799674
You're right, you're a giant lazy pussy who's never going to make it. You don't have the chops for it now and you never will.

>>53790844
Tell me the one about creative writing programs.

>>53801177
>>53801540
>think
>probably
If he can't communicate clearly in a post on 4chan, what hope is there that he can communicate clearly in long prose? Sounds like he had 100 people being nice, and deep down he knows it.

>>53787690
>but before their morning exercise, he had eaten the sour fruit. A finger rooted in his cheek, picking at a seed lodged into a molar.
fuck off
this adds nothing and means nothing, just annoying to read
There's zero subtlety.
All you have to write is "he picked a seed lodged in his molar" remove "A finger rooted in his cheek" and then or beforehand make him read a letter, write a part of the letter down hinting at an apple.

>>53788196
I will tear your book a new literary critique hole.

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>>53797697
>thread about novel writing
>only one post linking to /tg/s actual creative writing thread.

Come on guys, come on over and practice your craft. We really need more contributors.

>ctrl-F dialogue
>zero results
All of you can just stop.

>>53788196
>>53802379
RENDER UNTO ME YON LITERATURE, THAT I MAY DEVOUR AND SAVAGE IT, TO CREATE A GREATER WHOLE THAN WAS THE STARTING POINT.

>>53802479
No, I decided to get drunk today.

>>53797697
>>53802479
As OP of this thread, I was unaware of this thread. Will probably hop over.

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>>53801177
>>53801540
>>53802262
I probably should've explained myself a bit better, I see that now. What I was really trying to say was that I have a problem with attracting the wrong kind of people with my writing. It's a matter of it affecting my reputation if it took off. Imagine that you hit it big, and you have struck literary gold that will pretty much carry you through life. Now imagine that it's all because you've garnered the equivalent of autistic Sonic fans, and then are summarily regarded by everyone else as someone that caters to that audience because of it. Then no one else will give anything you do a chance. That's my fear, and it pierces my core every time I try to work up the courage to talk to a publisher.

>>53803374
Who cares? You'll be rich and famous.

>>53786558
On bus.

>>53803413
Not him. I really don't want to be rich and famous and would prefer to die unrecognized, I want my works to survive for a long time with a small following. Going out of my way to make sure they don't become popular.

>>53803374
>That's my fear, and it pierces my core every time I try to work up the courage to talk to a publisher.
If you're hardcore enough you could skip publishing and just upload pdfs online. That's what I plan on doing.

>>53803374
What exactly are you writing that you're so afraid of being criticized for?

4chan Unified Writing Group discord

https://discord.gg/5p5cEy

Active since November, weekly(ish) meetups to share and critisise eachothers work.

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>>53803413
I could, but then I'd be no better than Stephanie Meyer or Erika Mitchell. I never want that on my shoulders.

>>53803515
I'm not that hardcore. More power to you, though, that takes balls.

>>53803598
Without going too much into detail, it's about a small dragon with big aspirations who ropes someone into being his deuteragonist. I love them both dearly, and I love the dynamic between them, but I dread people failing to see them as strictly being friends and going full slash. I don't want to deal with that, especially when I've put so much love into my characters that I wouldn't want to be tainted.

>>53803929
So your problem is that you don't want to have gay furries being your fans because it'll make you look like a gay furry? You could probably fix that by just making them not do gay things in that case.

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>>53803893
Do you have a lot of people in there?

>>53804178
Over 100, but a smaller core of very active people.

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>>53802760
It's usually a pretty slow thread (in fact, I'm pretty sure it must hold the record for longest ever thread on /tg/ at 16 days). Which I guess is part of the reason why it doesn't get a lot of attention. So we could really do with some more people

Anyway, we get some good stuff (and some not so good stuff) and you'll usually get a response eventually, even if it takes a few days


On another note, anyone care to rate my writing? (pic related)

>>53786558
Im currently in the process of drafting it.

I'm not all that good of a writer but when the hype hits me I sit down and try and with this draft I'm making an honest attempt at writing something more than a couple thousand words long.

>>53803929
You worry about some stupid shit. Just write, nigga. You might as well worry about getting struck by lightning.

>>53786558
Working on my dissertation. It's going fine, but it hardly counts as a novel.

>>53786558
I'm writing a gay romance framed against a near future science fiction setting.

It will never see the light of day because my non-dialogue prose is shit and I kind of don't want to ever let it out.

I wrote a 210 pages worth of thesis and i'm not writing anything else for the rest of my life

>>53786558
research phase atm

>>53786558
I decided to get drunk today instead of writing. Cheers.

>>53786628
Brandon Sanderson has a pretty good series on YouTube, in one episode he talks about how new authors should go about getting published. Highly recommend it if you can find it.

>>53786558
It's not, but on the other hand I'm getting paid $15 an hour basically to make pizza for people, so pretty soon here I'll be able to find the time to work on it since I won't be mentally exhausted from bleeding myself dry just to financially survive.

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>>53786558
https://pastebin.com/bPaiKGys

You wanna fucking read it?
Its like 120 pages long book format

Go on, tell me its shit.

>>53804982
>Gay romance.
One hell of a market you're diving into biddy.

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>>53805986
Story is about a merchant caravan and the people in it.
Everyone in the caravan is either running from something or trying to turn a profit on a dangerous trip.

Takes place in the "Immortals" setting

>>53787282
//tg/ is not /a/. gb2b.

>>53806022
>>53805986
Well shit, 40 views
1 of them me hitting the refresh button.

I'd like to get some feedback, but I uploaded this as a guest.

>>53786558
I have four novel/series ideas. Bunch of plot and backstory in my head. Anytime I actually try writing anything it like giving myself a root-canal.

>>53804254
Great writing.
Well at least the first paragraph.
Problem is, you should only need/write one analogy/metaphor.
Louder than than a market square analogy, was great.
But then you write another, immediately after.
Write one analogy, then continue, but you really want two analogies, so pretend narrator "changed his mind" cause it turns out to be way louder than narrator first thought, so you add another analogy, and this one (or both) add to the world building.

You can probably find a better solution.
Great descriptive/internal monologue writing anyway.

No example of any dialogue though, and to me dialogue between well written characters, no matter how small, makes or breaks any story.

Going by the sheer size of the text, you might shorten it a bit, cause it seems to just describe a really large riot.
But if it's a strong strong "plot mover", maybe perfect size.

>>53806000
Is it a bad market?

>>53806877
Ah, I should have been clearer - it's meant to be a short story in and of itself, entirely contained and not part of anything larger. Part of the problem with doing that is that you have to be very quick and very deft about setting up the background.

>this one (or both) add to the world building.
this is what that sentence is about

I can't just take several paragraphs out of the main narrative to write all the exposition and explain that this is a quasi-Greek-city-state in a fantasy universe. I have to, for example, slip in an extra metaphor. The point of tacking on the bit about the rites of the Risen Sun isn't to add extra emphasis to how loud the crowd is, it's firstly to tell the reader that the religion of this city involves sun worship - slightly foreshadowing the coming conflagration. A particularly sharp reader might even pick up on the implications about the Christian imagery of a risen god and the pagan imagery of the sun, and might even get as far as connecting it to Sol Invictus, but all that isn't strictly necessary just so they understand it's a sun cult. Secondly, since the narrator chooses to compare it to the marketplace first and /then/ the temple, the reader might be able to infer that he is more a practical man than a spiritual (emotional) one.

Style-wise, it isn't particularly sharp. But if I don't do it there then I have to make another sentence for it, which adds bulk, which is even worse. I have to sprinkle details in here and there - the narrator is a wine merchant, and wine is generally a mediterranean thing, further reinforcing the idea of a Mediterranean city-state. If you know your history you might connect the Sacred Guard to Thebes' Sacred Band. The fact that there is an Assembly Plaza hints at democratic traditions. There are columns and porticoes, but just to remind the reader this is a fantasy realm, they're plated in copper rather than made of bare marble.

>>53807693
>>53806877

The general theme of the story is mass hysteria and its effects. Note that the narrator doesn't explicitly say that he thinks that the crowd is wrong, just that he has too many misgivings to be swept along with the emotions, as he might have been when he was younger. Note also that the fire will sometimes burn even the most enthusiastic.

THANK YOU for giving me feedback. It's so nice to be able to talk this over with someone. Frankly, I think the meaning behind my work passes a lot of people by, even when I can get someone to actually read it.

Also, it's been a while since I wrote it and I'm buggered if I can remember if the Red River was supposed to have any significance. Maybe not; sometimes a river is just a river. The worst thing you can do is get so carried away with your own cleverness in giving everything a double meaning that you forget that you're trying to create something that seems real - and real people don't generally name the things around them with complex metaphors in mind.

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>>53807504

Does it count as working on the series if I am reading fantasy novels for ideas and studying geography/cartology/ecology so I can make an amazing map for the setting?

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>>53786558
Fucking terrible. Despite livid dreaming, I still can't get my scp-682 lewd written.

>>53807767
What the fuck?

>>53807713
it's perfectly fine as it is, IF it's an important plot point.

>>53786558
Funny you mention this. I've been plotting out a book and wanted to see what the premise sounds like.

>earth 20 minutes into the future
>an immense spaceship is picked up at the edge of the solar system.
>It broadcasts messages in a number of languages, "I am the second coming" or other religion appropriate messages.
>the book follows seven characters on earth as this thing approaches, each devout in a different faith, science, Christianity, Islam, bhuddism, human decency, hidusim, Judaism.
>the world begins to break down.
>visions and miracles start happening.
>main characters all experience crises of faith as the world breaks apart.
>Armageddon seems more likely before the thing arrives.

>>53786558
Publishing industry's a bitch and rewrites are agony, thanks for asking.

>>53807767
I get the feeling I would either do well or be covered by the swarm.

>>53808312
>science
>a faith
Got to me reply, I guess.

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>>53808032
>scp-682 lewd
You know anon, I write smut, on request, most often with 40K characters.

but I have one rule, it has to be internally consistent with the setting and characters, otherwise why the fuck am I even writing fanfiction if I am just going to twist the characters to the point of them being unrecognizable.

Why, ohy why would SCP 682 do anything lewd? Its sole purpose is hatred and destruction.

Now I could imagine 682 hatefucking someone to torture them, but I wouldn't want to write that.

I could imagine 682 forcing the succubus to break her religious vows and gangbang under threat of death, then proceed to kill all the Class C personel after the gangbang is over just to be cruel, and I might write that.

But aside from those scenarios? It wouldn't be in character.

>>53808478
I suppose atheism and Agnosticism would have been more accurate but people put a lot of faith in science, and if suddenly your teapot starts defying all laws of physics and outright ignoring laws of chemistry, then you're going to have issue.

>>53786558

Almost as well as /lit/'s campaign.

(I'm a 7th level quillodyte!)

>>53786822
/lit/ contains people who actually think Max Stirner was a real philosopher. They're trash, I'd sooner die than spend ten minutes on that board.

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>>53807767
>turned gay by the existential dread that I may actually be a character in a Chuck Tingle book

My fucking sides.

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>>53809362
/lit/ is full of people who like the idea of literature.
They enjoy the theory of it and study how scholars think it should be written.

/tg/ is full of people who's hobby is writing and enjoying the writing of others. DMing is basically just storycrafting with unpredictable characters
Playing a character is exactly that, playing a character in a story.

So while /lit/ smell their own farts and pretend to understand "classics" while secretly hating every dry, poorly written chapter of "Catcher in the Rye" /tg/ is busy making stories that people actually enjoy.

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>>53808478
Empiricism, like all philosophic propositions except the purest solipsism, has matters that must be taken on faith because they cannot be proven--like the fact that your senses can be believed at all. Empiricism is, in fact, a sort of less intellectually rigorous offshoot of Aristotelian Rationalism. The only sort of knowledge which is not based in faith is that which is derived from reason ALONE with no sensory input.

Therefore it is quite accurate to refer to the sort of "scientific worldview," or more accurately Materialism, as a religion. It does all of the same things a religion does, just with lower birthrates, more smugness and more contempt for its fellow religions, and it is, just as with every other religion, dependent on a set of Axioms which cannot be disproven because they cannot be tested.

>>53809447
I hope the irony in this post isn't lost on you.

>>53809447
>/lit/ is full of people who like the idea of literature.
>They enjoy the theory of it and study how scholars think it should be written.
>So while /lit/ smell their own farts and pretend to understand "classics" while secretly hating every dry, poorly written chapter of "Catcher in the Rye" /tg/ is busy making stories that people actually enjoy.
You could say that about any board on 4chan, especially /tg/.
>/tg/ is full of people who like the idea of tabletop roleplaying games.
>They enjoy the theory of RPG design and study how they think they should be made.
>So while /tg/ smell their own farts and pretend to understand "mechanics" while secretly hating every confusing, poorly designed mechanic of <insert obscure RPG here>, <insert board here> is busy actually playing roleplaying games that people enjoy.
and feel free to extend that template to video games, anime, or whatever other boards you want. It will always be true.

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I seem to have reached an impasse.

>>53809585
The difference is that /tg/ storylines actually have to perform and be entertaining otherwise they get insulted of the board.

DMs and players have to provide entertaining stories otherwise they become "that guy"

/lit/ suffers from the disease that any shitty story can be passed off as good simply by saying "but its artistic" Like all that shitty art coming out of universities these days. Someone takes a literal shit in a jar and makes up some bullshit explanation why their lack of skill somehow is a metaphor for industrialization and viola! suddenly its "art"

/lit/ can take any poorly written non entertaining garbage and simply say "Its meant to be art" and suddenly its okay

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>>53808521
Just based on a very livid dream I had for a few days, and now I fucking love 682. It's hard to explain.

>>53809730
Help me understand your idea anon
In your dream, is 682 male? female?
What is the impetus for lewdness? cruelty? desire?
Who is it with? Human? SCP?

Let me get a handle on your story proposition and we shall see if it can be worked into fiction.

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>>53809779
It's hard to convey the emotions but I will try.

>being paranoid me, finally start living in the middle of nowhere, living off the land. Content but mildly depressed. Except life is what it is.
>while hunting durr, find seriously injured lizard-thing. Wtf, ACID BURNS.
>Being seriously weird and fucked up individual I am, think the poor thing is cute and bring it home to heal it.
>¿¿¿
>creature is fully healed. Being fucked up I think it is absolutely beautiful.
>Creature attacks me, get clawed up and a bite on the shoulder. For some reason accept this is, acceptable way to die, wait for death. Creature stops, looks at me curiously. Mutters something. I pass out.
> cue speedy dream sequence in with I live with 682 for a while. Every time it gets violent, I just accept it, and it stops.
> one night in bed it enters my room (I sleep naked). Looks at me curiously, then pulls off my blankets. Slowly crawls into my bed, I feel it's scales smoothly sliding against my naked body. Start kissing, dominating tongue down throat. Slides slit along my rock hard erection. Cue long, slow sensual sex. (Female or herm, unknown)

Continue???

>>53809668
The difference is that /lit/ books actually have to perform and be well written otherwise they get insulted of the board.

Authors have to provide worthwhile novels otherwise they become "shit writers"

/tg/ suffers from the disease that any shitty story can be passed off as good simply by saying "but it happened on a nat20!" like all those shitty stories coming out of reddit these days. Someone takes a literal shit on a table and makes up some bullshit explanation why their inability to make an entertaining story is just because "you don't know how to have fun!" and voila! suddenly its shared in every greentext thread.

/tg/ can take any poorly performed non entertaining garbage and simply say "no fun allowed!" and suddenly its okay.

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>>53810005
The issues I am seeing with this is that it isn't consistent with 682s behavioral patterns

Its actively malicious and does not stop attacking something (except for the little girl SCP that induced murderous rage) until it is dead.
That and 682 kills quickly and efficiently, there is no non lethal "shoulder bite" scenario

That and 682 is not stopped if "injured" it pretty much has to be reduced to bones by acid, fire, or pure kinetic force in order to disable it, which it heals very rapidly. So if it were found by someone in an inert state it would resemble a corpse more than an injured creature.

So in effect, not internally consistent, would not write lewd smut about.

>>53810094
>The difference is that /lit/ books actually have to perform and be well written otherwise they get insulted of the board.
Read "The Great Gatsby" in one sitting without wanting to slit your wrist

>>53810111
That's fine. I left out a lot because I suck at writing, and I'm not 1000% on the lore.

But thanks for giving 1/2 a shit anyway.

>>53810139
Not all books are meant to be read in one sitting. Just like not all RPGs are meant to be one shots.

>>53810162
Anon
I didn't say stop

>>53810171
Read "Catcher in the Rye" without wanting to murder the author

Or better yet, listen to someone who thinks the book is "deep" without wanting to throttle them

>>53810206
>>53810139
You strike me as insecure or a contrarian, usually contrarians are insecure so you could be both. Both the Great Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye are great novels. Just because they take a smidge more intellectual rigor to get through than RA Salvatore doesn't make them bad.

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>>53810189
Sure, anyway the dream varied slightly per day. So changes to be closer to lore is alright. And she/it was quite viscous during sex/anytime.

>living new lifestyle, 862 chilling on property. Notice veins by scars are weird color, but who gives a shit. Doing comfy shit in house, when see guy in full combat gear through window in the trees. Mixed thoughts of "It's HABBENING/I've finally lost it".
>engage stalker mode.
>grab sks, type 56 bandolier, tokarev and Gas's mask. Strip in 10 rounds, release bolt. Cuchunk!.
>wait till one enters door. Line up sights and engage. Kill one. Shit hits the fan. Fight through hallway of small cabin.
>¿¿¿
>go inna tunnels under house, bayonet scp soldier. Tell 682 to escape (can't remember how it reacts). Good day to die (hard to understand the emotions unless you are a /k/ommando) Blow up house.
>exit tunnel, they are waiting. Fuck. Get shot, pass out.
>wake up in concrete room.
>welcome SCP-682-b.
>fuck.

>>53810206
>>53810567
American classics are only classics for the reason of being old. They're either poorly written, painfully dry, horribly paced or a combination thereof.

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>>53810585
Things get fuzzy here.

>beg them not to hurt 862 ??? Get used as leverage???
>just want to be left alone with it?
>get concrete room submerged in acid.
>lots of strange, comfy yet somewhat violent sex.
>682 starts carving runes and/or tattoos in me and coloring them with its blood.
>start Turing into something similar to 682 bit more bipedal. Scp reaction varies
>????
>682 gets pregnant, scp reaction varies.
????

Done. Can't recall any more.

>>53810697
Ending note. Yes I'm fucked up. Also dreams are weird.

>>53810694
You could say this about a lot of classics in general.

>>53787778
I've written 300,000 words and I'm not even close to done it even caught up, but my story is unpublishable autistic garbage. So I am and always will be inferior to Stephanie Meyers.

>>53810870
You could, but I'm specifically talking about American classics due to their relevancy here.

>>53810694
That's a hot opinion you have, but it doesn't really pan out. The Great Gatsby is still held up for its excellent prose for a good reason. I can only assume anyone who calls the Great Gatsby 'dry' or poorly written either hasn't read it, or has no sense of style.

>>53810139
You have no respect for the death of the American Dream.

>>53810567
>Just because they take a smidge more intellectual rigor to get through than RA Salvatore doesn't make them bad.
This post perfectly encapsulates what is wrong with /lit/

Those novels were dry, boring, and had downright infuriating main characters who lamented about incredibly mundane, solvable problems.

The only worthwhile character in "Catcher" was the young man Holden visited in the hospital that was nearly beaten to death for performing a good deed.

"Gatsby" was a dry, impossibly dull drama about the overindulgence of the 1% treated like they had actual problems.

Salvatore was good for a while then he got way too attached to his MC and basically gave them plot immunity.

>>53811292
Great Gatsby and Catcher are not that well regarded over on /lit/. There are many threads discussing their flaws.

But I really don't understand what argument you're trying to make by saying Salvatore is good. At least pick a fantasy author with some merit.

>>53810828
>Ending note. Yes I'm fucked up. Also dreams are weird.
Not as weird as you could be

With some more expansion this could be an interesting idea, or at least a possible fap fic

work on it.
Give 682 a reason to not kill the MC, as she/it has made exceptions for humanoid SCPs in the past.
Explore SCP status of MC without going marty stu
682s reason for not eating MC could be as simple as "tasted different" then explain why.

MC being a social outcast/hermit would fall in line with the previous SCP who 682 didn't try to murderize. I would expand on this and say MC has always had people react to him poorly

>>53811371
Salvatore had some decent character development and conflict with his first 3 books in the Drizzt series.
After that it went downhill pretty fast.

The books focusing on Jarlaxle and Entreri are a joy to read mostly because of the chemistry between the two characters.

His other writings are pretty garbage tier

>>53811292
>"Gatsby" was a dry, impossibly dull drama about the overindulgence of the 1% treated like they had actual problems.
You literally (as in literally, not figuratively) missed the point of the book.

I'd say you missed the point of both books, but I have a feeling you struggle to understand a story that doesn't involving killing a baddy wizard with the sword of just nobility any way.

>>53811292
Also, while not being correct about Catcher not being a very good book you somehow managed to miss its entire point.

Holden is an whiny bitch filled with teenage angst. You're not supposed to like him. You might empathize with him at certain points though.

Catcher was a character study more than a novel. It was a somewhat novel take on writing when it was published and that's why it is well known. None of that makes it good writing mind you. But it's certainly no worse than most fantasy stories.

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>>53786558
I love the plot, characters and world I've built but I hate my writing style thanks for asking.

So what are the plots of some of these?

>>53811461
>Also, while not being correct about Catcher not being a very good book you somehow managed to miss its entire point.

An extra not slipped in there, my apologies.

You are correct that Catcher is not a great book.

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>>53811504
>wizarding school from the perspective of a teacher as he bumbles his way through interactions with delinquent students, his coworkers and the potions professor who is completely oblivious to his awkward flirting

>>53811504
>tfw tried to write a tl;dr of the plot for an anon and it ended up 20 pages and unfinished, deleted it and didn't post
It's probably better this way, no one will know about it until it's finished.

I always feel like critique threads on /tg/ or /lit/ end up with most of the time either people patting each other on the back for no reason or shitting on each other for no reason. I see almost no one with any actual sense for writing.

Heck I used to take exerts from classics and post them in critique threads to gauge reactions and the fucking critiques of them were seemingly random.

Everything needs to be taken with a massive grain of salt. Also most of 4chan is filled with folks desperate to beat down anyone who sticks their head above the pack because someone else in their community of outcasts rising above often signals to them that it is their own fault they are stuck doing what they are and not some environmental or societal issue. This is especially prevalent on vidya makin' threads.

>>53811504
>colony ship for humanity finds planet they are heading to already inhabited
>story is split between crew sent to the surface which is quarantined and stuck there for 5 years and the people of the ark ship
>the surface is dealing with a society of reptile-like aliens who want to use the humans for their own ends
>the ark ship crew is dealing with a political upheaval that occurred back on earth and a local terrorist organization centered around a human purist movement

>>53811737
>Heck I used to take exerts from classics and post them in critique threads to gauge reactions and the fucking critiques of them were seemingly random.
But don't you know anon? All classics are universally shit.

>>53811737
>I see almost no one with any actual sense for writing.
Writing is incredibly subjective, I'd argue that as long as someone's trying hard there is no real "bad" writing, writing is just another form of entertainment and just like tv, gaming or any other form there's always going to be an audience that loves and one that gets off on criticizing it

>>53811788
I like this one. To bad I'll probably miss the link when it's done.

>>53811908
Next thread anon, next thread

>>53799674
>>53799466
Publish it under a pseudonym. If it's successful, reveal yourself as the true author. If it's hated, nobody has to know it was you.

>>53811504
Gay mascot for a mega corporation goes to Japan and realizes how much he hates everyone in the world except his boyfriend .

The gay mascots boyfriend goes around brutalizing Yakuza in an attempt to ease a minor corporate takeover by his German overlords.

This is very much a first project so I actually produce something kind of thing. The plot is a vague commentary on working at Walmart and similar corporate retailers but this is probably just going to be something to establish the world and serve as a jumping off point for an actual novel.

>>53811292
>"Gatsby" was a dry, impossibly dull drama about the overindulgence of the 1% treated like they had actual problems.

The entire point of the book is that being rich doesn't make you happy, and that money doesn't stop you from being a terrible person.

There's a reason why the most normal person in the book is a clerk. Everyone else has let their money go to their head, or is generally just a shit person.

>>53786558
I have an idea I want to write but no idea how to start

Not story wise but everything about it as a project. I don't know how to outline a long ass story, how to plan it out so I don't ride it off a rail later on. Just the shit outside the writing.

>>53799466
>>53799674
What's it about? What are these 'themes' of which you speak?

>>53811504
This basically: >>53787856
Alternatively,
>The Hobbit as written by someone huffing on Michael Moorcock's pipeweed

>>53786558
Decided to make my novel into a choose your own adventure youtube series instead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMOPI-Cz4c0

Fucking terrible. It was going great until I realized the plot was incredibly similar to the plot of Curse of the Crimson Throne.

I've now thrown myself into a loop of rewriting and brainstorming to get myself out of this unknown rut I have dug myself into.

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My novel isn't going anywhere. My quest is going fine, though. I have trouble stringing the story together because I more enjoy writing characters than progressing the story. I more enjoy writing about the irony of everyone's situation as they are rather than the resolution for whatever plot makes the main characters go out and seek them all.

>>53811637
>wizarding school
oh god not another one....

> from the perspective of a teacher
... wait, that might actually be interesting.

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>>53816523
What's your relation to Dan Kim?

>>53811504
Love story between two emotionally stunted individuals in a near future world.

>>53818302
None. My story does involve horned folk hunted by outerlanders who follow a wiseman/woman, though. Himehorns are also really cute once you disregard the setting is built like subtle fapbait.

>>53811504
>So what are the plots of some of these?
I've been playing around an idea for a less shitty Dan Brown style conspirational mystery story. Some argue that such thing already exists and it's called Foucaults Pendulum, but I feel like it's a litte too much the other drection.

But basically, hero - an owner of antique bookshop and colector of rare literature living in boston decides to his original birth place: Prague, at JUST opened after the Velve. and to bask int odd, early 90’s particalu. )
Stayintg in hotrl, hr aacidetlly run into an old friedn , a purely hobbidst cryptgrapher The to chat togther briefly and the cryotographe passes an envelo to out herohy. very much the next day the cryptogtaper dide in pretty murder-suspecioul fashin. Paniking and shoked, the hero takes a closer look at it'w context, only to doscover that withi, there is a photokopy of a mudled confuzing set o old iably great worth. From the few details he can infer that the page was possibly par part of those mystic books that Yung used to collect, which sends him to his next clue, which going to be Festive Berlil, full so happy becaze the wall went bomboom, in order to reach out to the Locan Jung intitu check if those few pages winz neab abything to anyone.
At the Jung's institu, our hero learns that the text he found seems to be a part one oart if three Jungian collections on Gnostic books that Jung owned.
He it is estalisheno that there were several Gnostic libraries found on several different places, and one of them was deemed to lost completely. And it turns out that documents our hero has, could be used to disvover the last of the libraries.

Situace is getting more serious, as it turnes that who ever killed the cryptologist, is probably gonna be wanting those stolen pages bak.

From there on, it's a bit of word-trotting adventure seeking remainng parts of this library which may be clue to some amazing world-shatteing discoveries, being peed on by secret agents and ninjas.

>>53799159
So just alter the geopolitics. Jesus, it's not hard.

>>53818274
I've been told by the only person that's seen it that it's pretty interesting but I always hate my own writing so who knows when it'll get done

>>53822315
>I always hate my own writing
most good authors do; the moment you're satisfied with your own work is the moment you stop trying. I know it's kind of strange to think of it like this, but if you're writing to get published and not just for your own satisfaction it really doesn't matter what you think of your work Just so long as other people like it.

Book 1: 1920s-inspired military sci fi. Novel is finished, querying agents.

Book 2: Hard science fiction about rock and roll archaeologists in the 24th century Pre-writing has begun and I've finally figured out the resolution

Book 3: Fantasy Western on a tidally locked world where the night side is ruled by vampires. Still in concept stages.

>>53811637
>>53811788
>>53812078
>>53819304
Care to expand more?

>>53822506
>Book 3: Fantasy Western on a tidally locked world where the night side is ruled by vampires. Still in concept stages.
You bastard I'm writing the same thing.

>>53822927
The two of you have a knife-fight in an alley. Survivor gets to keep writing

>>53822978
>a knife-fight in an alley
Sounds like regular publishing to me.

>>53822978
>alley
0/10. Meet me in a Denny's parking lot or better.
>>53822927
What's the light side like in your world? Mine's an uninhabitable, parched wasteland where the crust sometimes melts to lava and monsters emerge from beneath the earth.

>>53822506
>>53822927
FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT

>>53823036
>>53823012
>>53822978
Update. Turns out he was my evil clone, but now I've beaten him. Or maybe I'm the evil clone. Hard to tell.

>>53823362
Depends on who's writing the story

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>>53823362

Lurker on /tg/ for years, got my first book published last year and contracted for a series.
For those of you who think you aren't good enough to be published, remember this:
>you don't know what you're talking about.
Literally you are too biased to have an opinion on your own writing. So it's not up to you, the world needs better creativity in it and if you have anything you have a duty to offer it up.

http://aaronline.org/

Go to this website, its free to use to email potential agents, I recommend getting one especially if you have a lot of manuscripts at the ready.

There are lots of places that need fresh creatives, put yourself out there

>be strong /tg/

>>53822734
How?

I'm the gay mascot of a corporations guy.

>>53824615
How gay is it?

>>53824242
Thanks for the advice, what's your book about?

>>53824776
Actually not that gay.

I mean the co protagonist has a very gay profession when you look at it through the lens of machismo and is described heavily as a very girly looking guy, albiet one who is built, who dresses in his boyfriends clothing often but he's also kind of a competitive asshole.

The other half of the marriage is a purely masculine guy. Very macho, very proud. He's not supposed to be a subversion of a trope or the stereotype. Just a dude who beats the shit out people and happens to be married to a guy.

There's supposed to be a sort of amorality to them. They're loving and deeply loyal to each other, but the former shills for a company that he knows for a fact sends his husband out to intimidate and brutalize people and is actively making the have nots have less and the latter is paid thug with formalized training and a fancy name tag.

>>53799088
I'm suffering from this so much. I've got characters, and I know where I want to take them, both plotwise and character development-wise. I just don't know how to START the story. So, I just sit around and develop the setting. Countries, peoples, religions, characters, I've got it all, but I don't have a single word of the story put to paper, so in reality I've got fucking nothing.

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>>53822734
>>53811637
>main character is a pretty powerful wizard
>goes on some adventures and gets somewhat famous
>eventually decides the adventuring life isn't for him
>gets offered a position at a prestigious wizarding school
>thinks it'll be a great chance to pass on his knowledge to the next generation and settle down
>goes into his job optimistic thinking his students will be as eager as he was
>instead he gets stuck students who are either apathetic or just outright disrespect him, thinking he's a washed up old man
>meanwhile a lot of the professors he interacts with are burned out from years of teaching
>except for the potions professor who believes in her job, who becomes his one sided romantic interest
>main plot is him adjusting to the life of a teacher and trying to earn the respect of his students
>subplot involves him suspecting and trying to unmask one of the other teachers as a necromancer he dealt with in his adventuring days

>>53811504
Fantasy version of The Wire, with a focus on economics and agriculture in a fantasy setting. Starts off with two main characters, then expands to different people at all levels of the kingdom.

>>53825211
Two things.

Why did you decide to make them evil and you do realize how that's going to significantly alienate a lot of people?

>>53826109
Actually fuck it.

To anyone writing a villain protagonist how do you think people will react to them?

>>53786558
WHAT? was that due today? I completely forgot. Can I copy off yours?

>>53826295
Not him. I haven't really thought about it and I don't care how people react to my stuff as long as a fandom/franchise doesn't form.

People would most likely empathize with the POV villains more than the attempted heroes and secondary villains since their internal justifications and rationality are more clear and thoughtful.

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>>53786558
I've written close to 400 pages and have paused to do more worldbuilding. (When I started out I only had a vague idea of what I wanted aside from the magic underlying the core conceits of the story.)

So...good, I guess.

>>53826109
Well they're not really evil. Selfish and self absorbed. Borderline a criminal one of them but evil is a bridge too far.

They're both employees of a company and that company provides for them. The nothing personal just business cliche has really gotten toxic lately but that's what it is.

You do something, you go home and you forget about it. The fact that someone lost a buisness that was in their family for generations or a home just kind fades to the wayside of a steady paycheck and a nice home.

And honestly I think either nobody is going to read it or people are really just going to focus on them being gay instead of their individual moral failings.

What do you think about departing from climacticism and self-containment? Think of Harry Potter as a climactic series, every book as its own plot and conclusion but they tie into one greater narrative.

How jarring would it be to have a 7 to 9 book series where only the final book has a feeling of climax? Basically one very very long book too large to be printed that was forcibly split into multiple books, some of which exist only to carry on the plot and set things up for the future. No plotlines are contained to a single book and new plotlines kick off when a book is trying to end. Also, new major characters are added in every single book, in higher numbers the further you go. By the final book, the original plot is long over and the original characters are all gone.

>>53826892
Anyone who finished the first book would be hard pressed to start the second, especially if they knew ahead of time that there wouldnt be any payoff until book 9.

There just has to be climaxes. You can mitigate the lack of a plot climax by having character arcs and side plots, but that would be tough to pull off well enough to keep a reader base.

>>53807875
No, that's called reading.

>>53809447
"the wet stench of mildew emanates through the dungeon walls"'
G-guys I'm a writer!

Good. Working on it everyday with a minimum of 1k.

Weekly, to distract from the grind of it, I work on a web serial, which is also pretty nice.

What does everyone think of that whole New Weird bullshit

>>53822734
Im
>>53819304
It's a love story between two emotionally stunted individuals. I guess to expand on it I can go into detail about the two main characters.

The setting is near future. It's not cyberpunk. The world is not as broken as cyberpunk but it's not bright.


The male half of the main duo is a freestyle wrestler bound for the Olympics. Raised by the definition of domineering parents their recent death has exposed how badly they fucked up with their kid.

He's not mentally ill. It's just that when you dig past the athleticism and picture ready smile his life is sort of empty. No friends outside his team. No real hobbies outside of exercising. He does pushups for fun and the biggest display of personality he has is a slight interest in art.

The thing I wanted to do with him was avoid the nerd or unspecial individual is the guy who suddenly has an adventure thrust into his life cliché. He's a guy who is living an extraordinary life but one that has very empty pauses in the ebb.

The female half of the duo is an internet personality. A teenager who went from being a girl being taken care of her parents to one being taken care of by the world.

The thing with her is that she's sheltered. She's not a manic pixie girl who makes friends with everyone she meets. She's never left America before. She's never left her hometown before and similarly to the male when she's not on camera she's empty with her hobbies being chores to keep current not actual hobbies.

With her it's just that I really don't like the maniac girl cliché. The one who suddenly enters your life and changes it massively. With her there's a lack of depth to her social butterflyness and confidence. Stick her in a room full of people that are famous she'll befriend half of them. Put her in a room full of true strangers she kind of falters.

This is a first story thing for me so its simple.A romance. After I wanna do something more ambitious in terms of plot and character.

It's in like 500 parts, scattered across text files, serviettes, note paper and shoes, mostly unrelated to one another, mostly written in sleep deprivation.

I mean, they're mostly just snippets for GMing that I figured I'd use and recorded for 'later'. If you actually cobbled them together it'd resemble something written by a schizophrenic with a penchant for flowery language.

>>53827896
New what?

>>53827896
>What does everyone think of that whole New Weird bullshit
I don't know what that is. At all.
>>53826892
Not going to lie, that sounds annoying as fuck unless it would all be released at once. There's a reason why books end the way they do and it's so that you have a sense of closure to tide you over until the next one comes out.

This sounds like it would just piss a lot of people off and make it not all that fun to follow it.
>>53828564
Okay but what's the plot?

Plot before characters isn't good but a character without a plot is kind of worse.

I almost refuse to start until I actually have a central conflict. Which I am reeeaaaally struggling with.

I have no idea how to start.

>>53828691
Write the cool part first.

>>53828613
>unless it would all be released at once
it definitely would be

>This sounds like it would just piss a lot of people off and make it not all that fun to follow it.
alright cool, thanks

>>53786558
I have an idea. I have random chapters written.

It's better than last time.

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>>53828888
praise kek, this anon speaks truth

>>53802365
I'm not even sure what you mean by the second half of your post. Though it's probably too late to inquire further it's been actually days since you replied to me.

>>53811504
Alright heres the plot.

Nerd is convinced by his online gaming guild into looking into an urban legend of an online presence that might or might not be an AI.

Turns out the legend is true and he becomes embroiled in a conflict against an evil organization.

That's the plot of the story but what its actually about is the main characters descent from nice good natured boy into a man of violence and how it effects him.

I'm not a good writer and I'm kind of worried that the point of it, a sort of sad story about a boy realizing how much violence he's capable of , is going to be lost because of my shitty prose.

>>53810694
>>53811292
>Dry
Please fuck off, every post you make is so clearly identifiable by the use of this word and the need to be a uniquely contrarian intellectual.

Wrote it, realized it sucked, burned the result.

>>53830906
Retard, no first draft is good. You edit the shit out of it until it becomes good.

>>53826636
>You do something, you go home and you forget about it. The fact that someone lost a buisness that was in their family for generations or a home just kind fades to the wayside of a steady paycheck and a nice home.
That's basically what evil is

>>53786558
Pretty well actually, just a bit slow because I want to make sure I'm doing it right.

>>53822978
Someone should write a book about this.

>>53830930
I was like 13 at the time of writing and realized the entire premise was terrible at a later date.

Fuck off.

>>53828691
start at the beginning, continue on through the middle until you get to the end, and then stop.

>>53830579
That your too forthright in your writing.
You write a "question" or a hint at something, then immediately answering it in the same paragraph.

Also repeating yourself, nurse left oranges and a letter, then that the letter said she left oranges.

This entire sentence can be removed and you lose "nothing". I don't even know wtf it's trying to say.
>That morning the nurse had left green oranges and fresh milk on the table looking out of that tiny dusted window. In the quiet moments preceding dawn, after the moans of the committed's night terrors, but before their morning exercise, he had eaten the sour fruit.

>>53830906
>>53831412
you'll regret that once you're older. Shit or not, it's still your work, a part of you.

>A thing isn't perfect when there's nothing to add, but whenever there's nothing to take away.
Some wisdom for any creator; less is more.

>>53828691
Just write random scenes to get to know your characters. Chances are you will probably scrap the first 100-ish pages anyway.

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>>53786558
>invent huge, detailed setting
>create interesting characters with individual voices and complex motivations
>conceive sprawling epic with clear beginning, Act II and conclusion
>too shit at writing to clearly convey any of it
Where my idle dreamers at?

>>53787282
Except quests. Quests are not /tg/.

>>53835166
Correct. Quests aren't /tg/ because there is a board specifically for that.

You could have a thread to talk about quests, in theory. In practice you moobs would try to run a quest in it.

>>53797714
weak willed fuck
get your ass in your chair and bust your ass and make it happens. finish the thing. if its shit then you have experience and can make something new or re-do it

>>53831057
It is?

>>53835091
I won't end that way. I won't have practically thousands of pages worth of world building and brainstorming and random scenes and gigabyte after gigabyte of carefully sorted artwork, quotes and research only to never write a cohesive storyline. I just have to figure out how to get from point a to point b in a narrative fashion. I just.. Why can't writing just be about ideas?

>>53828608
>>53828613

it's the stuff china mieville writes? the one where they're trying to get away from the usual fantasy tropes and weird it up by inputting some sci-fi and cosmic horror?

some (maybe bad) examples: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NewWeird

>>53830706
Then git gud.

>>53827896
>What does everyone think of that whole New Weird bullshit
eh. at least they're trying something different. Or sometimes just ripping off from lovecraft and putting into a steampunk setting, but oh well

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>>53786558
Like i have the writing capabilities to write a novel

>>53841373
If you can string sentences together, you have. It might not be the best novel, but it will be a novel of sorts.

>>53841520
if my writing skill is arse i don't think i should be writing novels

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>>53841599
You train your writing skills by writing. Then you develop them further by editing and getting feedback from beta readers. Then you realize that there are published works with even more rubbish writing.

These are just excuses. You probably won't be the best writer out there, but you can be good enough that it won't make your readers eyes bleed.

>>53841653
No i mean, if i should write, i should not start with a whole bloody novel.

>>53841663
Oh well, that's understandable. You can start with short stories for example. But at some point you need to tackle these novels.

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>>53841707
That is, if i even want to write.

>>53841599
It's the job that's never started as takes longest to finish.

>>53841736
If you don't want to write, then I don't know what you are doing in this thread.

>>53841739
Better to have nothing, than to be made fun of for something completely arse

>>53841785
Reading what people are writing about.

>>53841795
Okay, you know what?

Fuck off, you self-defeating prick. Boo hoo hoo, your ego is so fragile that you can't even handle being a beginner. Fuck you. Stop fishing for sympathy replies. Either start practising. or shut the fuck up.

>>53841860
Okay then.

>>53786558
I have a text document open with the title on top, the synoposis below it and the plans for each individual chapter below that.

I'm actually finally going to post about it because I have a question.

How long does it take for something you figured out but the characters are in a position where they can't learn the answer to get annoying?

If the inuniverse justification for why is decent enough would you eventually move to rooting for them to figure it out or would you just start getting impatient?

>>53786558
217k in on the initial manuscript.

detailed outlines on characters, overall events and stroyline progression plus interconnective references for the next 4.

small details or design ideas for 19 potential others on various sequels, spinoffs and informative almanacs.

currently compiling hundreds of small documents with notes into an MSD for an editor to use properly.

>>53843028
Are you asking if an annoyingly obvious twist is annoying?