/lit/ - Literature

I've spent the past few weeks working on a story. All my friends I've showed it to think it's pretty good so far, but I don't really know where to post it. Here's the first section I guess.

I posted in the last thread, almost 2 years ago, about my writing. I've written over 300k words of my autistic childhood fantasy, a huge war between two races of people on a massive planet. When I was in second grade I'd imagine these battles at recess, with trees as giant cities and twigs as huge battlecruisers flying through the air. I started out with two or three characters and added more as I got older, creating this huge narrative in my head. When I was 11 I tried writing it the first time, as a screenplay, but I didn't have the energy to write anything real back then. When I was 17 I started up again, after I left high school I was NEET for a year with no internet so I got a lot done. The story is absolutely massive, way too much plot and honestly so much of it was contrived or based on following my life (i.e. when I left elementary school they destroyed the massive "enemy fortress" after years of siege and fled, only to crashland near another one) that sometimes it seems awkward. But seeing as I've had this story with me for the majority of my life (I'm in my 20s now), I have such powerful feelings attached to it, especially when I think back to the real world memories associated with some parts, that I can't let go of it. And I won't lie, it's unpublishable trash. My plan is to go the Henry Darger route and leave it behind when I die, along with my 500+ autistic drawings of characters, weapons, battle scenes, et cetera.

The worst part is, I've written so much yet completed so little. I'd estimate I've covered about 10% of the plot. That's not because of lack of work but because of how much goddamn plot there is to cover. Not to mention loads of battles I imagined that I want to memorialize but don't want to actually write about because even though a war has tons of unimportant battles, no one wants to read a long descriptive combat sequence for every single one. So I am trying to think of how to skip past those and still mention them without it being jarring.

And the other problem is that I still imagine this story. The plot is still continuing, now on the third generation of the family. When I was in elementary and middle school, the main characters were Peter and Emily. They died escaping the second superfortress explosion, and their children Orion and Cassiopeia became the new main characters. Cassiopeia died to destroy an enemy superweapon and Orion sacrificed himself a couple years later, also in a climactic battle to kill the main villain and re-engineer the enemy's superplague to affect them as well. So now Leo and Andromeda are the main characters. The problem is that I really miss Orion and regret killing him, all the best parts of the story featured him. He died because I wanted something new, to continue the story, and I wanted his death to feel meaningful. So I've been considering resurrecting him. All the story elements fit: Andromeda (who has many elements of Alia the abomination from Dune) has visions of a way to bring him back, using ancient tech from a new faction I introduced a couple years ago, and her brother Leo thinks she's full of shit (which she may or may not be) and there will be a "quest" for her to find this device that will fit in well with my own life. The problem is that (1) it feels hacky, and (2) this will be crossing the story into blatantly supernatural territory, instead of the vague "visions" that were as far as I went before. Also, with Leo and Andromeda a third main character feels redundant. But maybe I can do something interesting with it.

Sorry for rambling, I know my story is complete trash but I felt like contributing to the thread.

>>13055

Publishing is almost out of the question…sci-fi is oversaturated as it is, and this story brings nothing new to the table. It's only "good" to me because it's mine. Best I would do would be share it online once I complete chapters.

The first chapter I am working on now starts out with everyone living in a valley, behind a wall, very idyllic 50s-ish americana lifestyle, essentially utopia but without the weird costumes and futuristic technology. It ends with the enemy forces attacking the valley, basically pic related. So there's the scene of 5-year-old Peter going to visit his schoolteacher in the middle of the night to ask why no one ever hurts each other, before his father shows up to make him go home. Then the professor dies in his sleep, and there's a timeskip to when Peter is eighteen.

After that, the only scene that really matters is the "Peter and Emily go out in the woods to make out one day, and see a bunch of cruisers floating in and start raining bombs on people. Then they run to evac and escape." There is also a scene where they fight the enemy in the forest for the first time, after escaping, and then crashland outside one of their giant fortresses, which is where the first book ends.

But starting it there seemed kind of…fast. So I wanted something in the middle to fluff it out. I had Peter as part of this "expeditionary battalion" that goes outside the valley (which no one is allowed to leave otherwise) and find some ancient artifacts suggesting people once lived outside the valley (which should be obvious to anyone who can think). I also used it to introduce his friend Thale. But honestly I'm considering deleting almost all of it. There's awkward tension between Peter and his father because Peter is directionless, but Peter's father dies in the attack so it hardly even matters. Sure there could be some character development from it but honestly writing the two of them interacting is like pulling teeth.

I feel like restarting the entire first book and parts of the second just to edit out all these useless characters I added, but that would mean deleting almost 1/5th of the entire document.

Here's an example: https://pastebin.com/iV61dxBg

I can't even nail down quite what's so bad about it, but writing it makes me want to die. So I'd complete that story except writing it is such a slog I've given up over and over.

I've also considered just turning a ton of my shitty drawings into some kind of comic or animatic, seeing how much the story is based around spectacle and action rather than deep character development, and some dialogue scenes feel so awkward to write. But that just seems like an even worse idea.

Maybe part of it is, my writing just feels boring. Imagining this story in my head like a movie engaged me, and (dumb as it sounds) is one of the more meaningful experiences in my life. But for example a scene where they flee one of the destroyed fortresses, I am working on right now. They watch the explosions and it crumbling, evade the enemy fleet, then a couple days later they catch up and shoot them down. But … where were they going? What was their plan? Why didn't they have a destination in mind?

Sorry for rambling, I should cut myself off now. Sometimes I am glad 8chan is so dead, I don't feel as bad for my occasional sperg out blogposts.

>>13074

If your story sucks, then why don't you make it better?

For real. Find a source of inspiration. Widen your horizon. My own story started out as the protagonist walking around fighting the Villain of the Week while being depressed because he has no gf. By now, it incorporates themes of social degeneration, nobility, the pursuit of happiness and others.

Your own personal demons may be helpful, for once. If there was some injustice that happened to you, try to come to terms with it within your story. If there is some fascinating insight you had, try to work it in. Ever wanted to leave home and live in the wilderness? Work that shit in, and also ask yourself why you didn't do it and if you regret it.

>>13074

with illustrations like that, I kinda feel like copious stats for characters and events are what you're really missing at this point tbh fam. Reader enjoyment would likely increase by up to 38.8%

Come on guys. You can't tell me that me and Oreo-and-Trielle-Kun are the only ones working on large, autistic projects.

>>13172

Certainly.

In 1877, Cecil Rhodes wrote:

>Why should we not form a secret society with but one object the furtherance of the British Empire and the bringing of the whole uncivilised world under British rule for the recovery of the United States for the making the Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire.

The aims of his secret society would be:

>the true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom, and of colonisation by British subjects of all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour and enterprise, and especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the Islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the Islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard of China and Japan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire and, finally, the foundation of so great a Power as to render wars impossible, and promote the best interests of humanity.

So my novel asks the question: What if his secret society was actually created?

In 1902, Rhodes forms the Rhodesian Society, a secret society of British supremacists who believe the British (specifically English) are the Master Race:

>I contend that we are the finest race in the world and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race. Just fancy those parts that are at present inhabited by the most despicable specimens of human beings what an alteration there would be if they were brought under Anglo-Saxon influence, look again at the extra employment a new country added to our dominions gives.

Unlike the Nazis, the Rhodesians favor assimilation much like the Borg. They want every single person on the planet an Englishman/woman governed from London. They are essentially the British Illuminati.

The timeline goes on from there to depict events including Reagan dying of AIDS, the Islamic Revolution failing (resulting in an Arab-Persian race war), a joint IDF/US Army invasion of Syria, and the end of the world as we know it with every single WMD in existence (in this universe) being used.

The 49,170 AD comes from the fact that the novel's narrator is living in that year. Here, the Bonapartes rule the known universe after defeating the other factions, including the Rhodesians. Earth is the main planet of the Third French Empire, with Paris serving as the galactic capital. Aliens do not exist, but since humans have spread out so much across the stars, some human groups are considered alien to the locals. The French Revolutionary Calendar is the only official calendar allowed, the franc is the only currency, and French is the only official language. France is the only country on the planet - all others were directly annexed into France, divided into departments, etc just like France is OTL.

Each Emperor has their own style of ruling, and the current Emperor, Napoleon DCLXVI, tends to spend his reign humping any woman he can get his hands on and sending the men to go find him more planets to rule over. There are only a few planets out of his hands, most notably the one ruled by the narrator's order in the style of the Vatican (any historian worth his salt studies there).

But years of stressful, debauched ruling has led to him getting pretty sick in his old age. His heir is the first Crown Princess in many years, and he believes she doesn't have the knowhow to rule properly.

So he summons the narrator to Paris because he hears the narrator is the foremost expert on anything to do with human history up to the end of the world. The narrator is told to write a book for the Emperor's heir, the Crown Princess, that she might learn what is most important, with the implication being that he ought to write the equivalent to "France Fuck Yeah!" rather than objective history. The narrator decides that he won't do that, and writes from the POV of an American family in the decline of "Ancient American civilization," focusing particularly on the stepdaughter whose discovery as a baby on their doorstep unwittingly "changed everything" (I know it sounds cliche, but trust me, there's a reason why I put it like that).

Basically, my novel won't be so much about the wars and politics as it would be about the family just trying to survive a world going stark raving mad, and then some.

>>13175

Since you are going for space opera you might as well add extraterrestrial life, or humans who have settled on different planets and developed new languages and cultures and religions, to make it more exotic.

Space opera should have a wide variety of lifeforms, and of course not focus too much on the science. I wouldn’t mind seeing something like ‘Star Wars’ + ‘Game of Thrones’ – several factions struggling for galactic supremacy, caught in a war (like the War of the Roses), with alliances, tactics, battles, politics and intrigue.

For a more realistic, or even hard science fiction – or Lovecraftian, story, you could check out this hypothesis made to answer the Fermi paradox:

* The Aestivation hypothesis: popular outline and FAQ | Andart II: http://archive.is/hlQIV

* That is not dead which can eternal lie: the aestivation hypothesis for resolving Fermi’s paradox: https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.03394

>>14123

Well, I did finally bring him back. I went on a vacation with family and made it into Andromeda searching for the ancient ruin, guided by her visions, that contained the resurrection chamber. In the meantime, the lice were bringing Orion's body (which they had preserved after it had been burned falling into a pit of energy after a duel with the main villain, pic related). The idea was that Orion was still alive but in a coma, or maybe that he was hovering in some spirit world due to his Chosen heritage. Anyway, they finally found the temple thanks to Andromeda's visions, met with the lice on a temple build on an outcropping from a huge cliff, landed, were ambushed by the lice. Andromeda ran ahead to the temple. Hannah (Myron's daughter) and her squad gets pinned down by a helicopter shooting at them through the trees, as well as louse soldiers that have landed to keep the group from getting inside the temple. Andromeda finally makes it in, meets Dauntless (Timeless' replacement) and she shoots all four of his bodyguards before fighting him one on one. Orion's remains are pushed into the pool of resurrection. Dauntless pins Andromeda down and starts choking her to death, tells her that even though she's the paragon, the ultimate end result of her chosen heritage, she has still failed to overcome the lice. Then a hand grabs his shoulder: Orion, who tells him to get his hands off of his daughter. He then proceeds to fight Dauntless unarmed (dauntless has a knife), knocking him down, stomping on him, very powerful strong blows as opposed to finesse. Then Hannah (who Dauntless had mutilated at one point) shows up, shoots Dauntless in the head and kills him. The rest flee, a couple minor characters from Hannah's squad die, and Orion reunites with his friend Myron and his children whom he has never met. He learns his wife is dead, and that it's been 20 years. The resurrection chamber is used up, the last example of such fantastic technology.

Except when I imagined this whole thing, things felt weird. Wrong. Like it was a parody or something. Imagining Orion's return felt great, bad-ass, but it was like killing off a character for shock then later regretting it (which was sort of what I'd done for Orion in the first place, except that I was desperate to reinvigorate my story so I decided it was time to "switch generations" again). Not only had I fucked up the passing down of MC role from father to son (parent to child I guess), but my issue with having a strong main character was not resolved. I used to experience the story through the eyes of Orion from whose point of view the story really happened. It went to other characters too but it was mainly him. Killing him, then going back on it, confused the narrative, confused the point of view, made it feel disjointed. I also no longer felt the connection to Orion I had had in my teenage years. What was he now? He had done his work, so he thought. He had died in an epic battle that resulted in the deaths of billions of lice when he sabotaged their bioweapon. His "character arc" so to speak was fulfilled. So now what to do with him? He's had so many girlfriends, even a wife, and all of them died. He's had children. What does he do now? Is he angry? Or just tired? Does he even want to be alive? I'd lost touch with his identity, and I'd never sympathized with Leo's identity, who was either an Orion clone or a Chad-ish alpha male commander like Myron. Andromeda was a more thoughtful and cautious character and she was also more integrated with the Chosen abilities and that whole storyline. None of the three stood out and they divided my attention to the point that I couldn't focus on any storylines that well. Not to mention I'd just run out of interesting place to go with the story. The lice had been beaten back, they'd regrouped and now fought the whos on even footing. Okay. Now what? Every winter the lice attack, every spring the whos finally beat them back yet again. The cycle continues.

So I still imagine the story from time to time. Nothing much. Nothing significant has really happened, other than plans to go after a louse general that I haven't really done much with. Fortunately the nature of daydreaming is that real time doesn't pass and I can do what I want. But I haven't had any desire to.

I think I ruined my story, to be honest. Sixteen years of something, and it's gone. I guess I should be happy I'm finally growing out of it, but I'm not. I just feel nothing.

>>14157

I think the problem with the way you resurrected Orion is that it seemes you wanted to bring back also all of his badassery. You might need to figure out what was fun about writing him and focus on those aspect of his character. Right now it kind of looks like there was no consequences to his death, which is why it feels weird.

What I meant by Joseph Joestaring him: Joseph (pic related) was the main character who was brought back in the next part as a mentor to his grandchild (who was the new mc). He was not brought back from the dead, but I don't think that's important. Why he worked as a character:

In his youth he was a master of heat-based martial arts (which was the main way of fighting bad guys), but when the next part happens a new way of fighting is introduced: stands, which are much stronger than his martial arts. He also gets a stand to not suck during fights, but he becomes more of a guide, using his cunning and experiance (which he used even when he was the mc, so this shift is not out of place).

You might want to try something like this: bring Orion back but with a nerf that will impact his character. You can introduce a game changer, a new power or technology that changes the rules of fights and story. Show Orion maturing, changing from who he was before but not throwing away his identity.

If you want to change Leo, maybe make him less serious? This type of character could work well when combined with Andromeda's more thoughtful nature. Just don't make him a dumb-ass. Funny character =/= stupid.

Good luck with your story bro, all your posts fascinating.

>>14164

That's good advice, anon.

Right now I think he is just confused and angry, that's how I have seen him.

It really felt like his "arc" was complete.

He could teach Leo more, but Leo has become ruler of Sarengarth (the tree-city / stronghold that is the "capital" of the Who nations) and has commanded fleets in battle, driven off an entire third faction (the Progenitors, who had built the planet many eons ago but by the time they were finished they were genetically inadequate and thus sealed inside the hollow planet's interior to live on asteroids) so there's not much to change. But it is true that there is a potential "game changer", since Orion's spirit / consciousness was preserved it might be that the "spirit realm" that is only accessed by those with Chosen abilities, could allow him to preserve who he was. And he might have come back changed, with special powers. The only Chosen "powers" I've had are knowledge-based: an uncanny dodge, or shooting through smoke or even a wall to hit someone by "knowing" where they are. Maybe I could have these come out even more strongly in Orion (as they have in his daughter). I'm just not sure where to go with it and I've lost so much interest in the story. With Orion as a main character Leo feels like a dead end, but I can't kill him off. Maybe when I move out, and the Sarengarth tree is left behind, the story can move on from Sarengarth, with Orion and his daughter going to fight the lice on a new front.

I just feel like there is nowhere new to go. I've done all the tropes. Killing the MC, the doomsday weapon, a "new faction" to add spice, the secret family members no one knew out (I introduced Orion's grandmother rebecca and cousin Adrian)… it has all the desperate gasps of a dying sitcom in some ways. And even introducing Adrian was an attempt to replace Orion. Resurrecting him makes his great epic sacrifice seem meaningless, makes his wife's death seem meaningless, makes… well, so much of the story seem meaningless. It's hard to explain without a more detailed plot summary.

But reading your post and replying to it I did get a glimmer of that feeling again, of wanting to go somewhere new with it, which I haven't felt in the six-or-so months since I resurrected Orion and slowly trailed off imagining any of this. Maybe I can come up with a new direction. Who knows.

I was drawing blank with my other writing, so I decided to work on an idea I've had for a while. This propably has been done before, but I never was one for much originality.

I find it a huge missed opportunity that the years long seasons in Grumm's meal journal don't really have much an effect on anything except in the most arbitary plot device way. In my opinion something like that should have fundamental effect on almost everything, from cultures, to ethnicities, to economy and to even the whole planetary ecology. My first assumption is that any area that experiences long breaks in growing seasons would, without advanced technology, only have almost exclusively nomadic (pastoralist, hunter-gatherers) or semi-nomadic (practicing agriculture in their summer lands) settlement. Because those areas would be all that ever experience anything but the shortest winters, it means a relatively immense proportion of the global population is on the move for half of the year at least. Life would be an extremely dynamic struggle as every autumn would be like the Migration period and Mongol invasion at the same time, and every spring would be time of (re-)exploration, (re)settlement and new frontiers. I determined the solar year is about 32 years, so that every spring-summer nomad women would have time to push out several new healthy warriors for the upcoming autumn wars.

The premise is already exciting enough without more blatantly fantastic elements, so for an excuse why humans are mostly normal humans, while other life forms have adapted to the bizarre climate, I decided that the planet had been settled and terraformed by a generation ship a couple of thousand years earlier. A collapse, or several, happened, and because most of the advanced technology was biotech, not much of it remains (not that any normal tecnology would have helped rebuilding the society, as the planet, having been a lifeless rock, lacks easy energy sources for kickstarting industrialization). This also gives an excuse for featuring weird critters if the plot ever demands such, and shoggoths are always a good reason for featuring massive ruins of megalithic architecture.

Of course, good settings are those with good stories. Considering writing well is hard, for now I'll try to get a feel for the setting with a simple travelogue short story: It's winter and one nomad tribe is in deep trouble. The men of the ruling family are all dead from disease, fighting and general niggerish behaviour. Being a superstitious lot, the tribe only accepts chieftains from one blessed family, and preferrably of patrilineal descend. In unexpected wisdom the elders decide that instead of risking the tribe splintering in such dire times with their internal power struggle, they'll send someone to fetch the last known member of the ruling family. This guy, a popular warhero, is leading the garrison through the winter at the tribe's summer homeland. To fetch him the elders send a team of warriors and two remaining men of the ruling family, both young lads with "royal" mothers.

For a theme, I'm going with paranoia. The point of view character thinks he's the last honest one left in the power struggle, and thinks his partner is going to betray him any minute. Not to mention the elders only have to gain from getting them both killed in the icy wasteland. And the new chieftain is propably dead anyhow; if the supplies run out, only few can survive years with ice fishing and hunting meagre winter game. It quickly starts to look like the only way to survive is to strike first. Though I don't know which tweest would be more unpredictable; that the partner turns out to be trustworthy after all or not.

>>14206

You kind hearted reply moved me, anon. It truly an honor to awaken even a glimmer of the writing spark in someone. I hope you'll find peace of mind.

I advise you to take a look at how JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is structured. The more the autor goes, the more self-contained his work becomes. Each part becomes its own story, even if the universe and its rules remain the same (although eventually the story shifts into an alternate timeline, so he can play with the old characters in creative ways). Sometimes the main character becomes so over powered that its impossible to bring him back in the next part because he would just mop the floor with whoever is the new antagonist.

I think you have to sit down and think about what story you want to tell with Leo and Adrian. What are their conflicts about? What is the nature of their antagonists?

In JoJo, for the first 3 parts the antagonist were typical power-hungry bad guys, who were incredibly strong. In the fourth the antagonist is someone not really strong, but extremly intelligent and cunning. So the main conflict shifts from overpowering the bad guy to out-smarting him. Because the antagonists become so different from each other as parts go, it also changes how each part plays out, changes the journey of the hero.

I think once you flesh out the conflicts of Leo and Adrian, they will become more human and feel less like copies of Orion. Generally what makes us resonate with a characters is the struggles they face, not the badassery. Good luck, anon!

I don't want to get banned for being off topic, so I'm gonna say that I'm currently working on a couple of loosely connected short stories in modern world with magical powers (I'm yet do decide the general rules of those powers). Each short story focuses on different character and different setting but they take place in the same world, just different time. One story I'm writing has the protagonist kill his friend, who then becomes the mc of his own short story. I'm not going to spell out who's who, so the reader can figure it out himself. It's pretty early in development, I have rough drafts of first three stories (I have no idea how many I end up writing) and not all of them are complete.

I always wanted to write, but I'm too autistic for those grand, long adventures, so I'm starting small.