/lit/ - Literature

I feel the fire

I feel the flame

They comfort me

We are the same

>>15143

>>15149

He wears a mask

He has a plan

Working on a thing.

>>15150

Of master class

"Kill Batman"

Hey, /lit/

I am in need of writing advice.

See, I have been scribbling things for years and have dozen of never-finihsed stories, but now I finally got one I think might be worth finishing…and well, I'm unsure hwo to proceed.

It's basically a sci-fi novel, similar to Legend of the Galactic Heroes, with NOT EU and NOT Rome/Germany and so on. The basic story follows 3 friends who ended up on different sides. One is a captain in the not natzi navy, one is a senator in the not-eu and one is a freelancer/trader that just wants to make his daily bread and doesn't care about politics. The story is basically focused on him and how he got involved the events that started the war.

Things is, I'm trying to keep things grounded, so I'm not sure if I should be using fighters at all. So far I have kept them out of the scenes/pages/draft I written.

The second issue I'm struggling with is the scale - size of fleets. Do I do it like LOGH, with fleets of tens of thousand of ships, or do I keep it more to the size ad feel of WW2, with fleet in the hunderds at most?

And lasty, the tone and marketability.

I'm a history buff and I've been doing a lot of research and thus I fear if I make the not-nazi's anything but horrible, no big publisher would ever want to look at it.

The entire overall plot and ending is something I have a good idea off, and the ending would not be a total allied victory, but rather a costly peace-treaty in which neither side gets what it wanted. Granted, I could split it in to parts so the first parts end like it foreshadows the not-natzi's defeat and write if mostly from the perspective of others. Then if it cathes on, the second part would be the comeback and written from the perspective of not-natzis. Basically, a bait-and-switch. Make the first part something that looks like it appeals more to the liberal publihers…

>>15175

I love 90s anime but you lost me on fujoshit.

>>15211

Anon, nobody needs a grounded sci-fi novel.

As for the fleet, the size of a real feet depends on such irl factors as cost, mass, space, manpower, etc. If it's empires battling in cosmos, there wouln't exist pretty much any such limitations. A spacefleet of two hundred ships is a sorry sight unless that was the point.

As for the publisher, it's highly unlikely that any big publisher would ever get to read your anime nazi novel, you realistically can only start with small ones and work your way up, and small publishers don't really care.

Just finished my first draft of my first short story. When this project is done it'll be an anthology of short stories set in the same universe, kind of like Cordwainer Smith except all published in one book instead of various magazines. It's just neat that this sort of feels real now.

>>15179

The plane must crash

And none survive

>>15216

>As for the fleet, the size of a real feet depends on such irl factors as cost, mass, space, manpower, etc. If it's empires battling in cosmos, there wouln't exist pretty much any such limitations. A spacefleet of two hundred ships is a sorry sight unless that was the point.

I'm not sure you are are of just how fuggin expensive a spaceship would be.

It's not just he matter of having enough raw resources, it's a matter of the cost and complexity of building such vessels and training the crew.

That said, I'm struggling to decide how many ships would a average planet normally support.

>>15221

>I'm not sure you are are of just how fuggin expensive a spaceship would be.

>It's not just he matter of having enough raw resources, it's a matter of the cost and complexity of building such vessels and training the crew.

No. This is a typical mistake of correlating future technologies with current year expectations and logistic liabilities of such technologies. Or, god forbid, applying vidya logic to them.

The more time passes since we take to space, the more all space technologies become streamlined and mundane. Just like Russians were able to produce thousands of tanks during WW2 - a marvel of technology only 30 years prior - so should space empires be able to produce hundreds of thousands of spaceships. The very notion of a space empire implies that we've been to space for thousands of years at that point.

>>15223

Passive voice. Spilling out excessive description instead of letting it play out as the story moves along. Don't give people too much too fast, introduce elements as they become relevant. Yes, you've built a world. People don't need to see it all at once.

>>15223

Pretty cool, it must feel nice to have written that much, regardless of its quality.

I'd also be willing to read and critique it if you'd like.

Also:

>A dark young haired man

>>15225

>Don't give people too much too fast, introduce elements as they become relevant. Yes, you've built a world. People don't need to see it all at once.

It's probably going to be a challenge to do that. The 18 pages is only scene1-1 to scene1-5. I never intended it to be very long so it might come across as condensed. The rest of the scenes get across the plot points and need interconnecting events. I am fairly concerned if it the exposition turns out to be a giant portion meanwhile the external conflict is just brief.

>>15230

There's probably loads of similar word spaghetti's in there since it's not proofread thoroughly.

Any tips for fighting through writers block? The general outline for my story is still pretty vague and I'm not sure how to continue.

Maybe I should put my thoughts and plans into a separate file to for easier planning and hope that some new ideas appear?

>>15242

Punch yourself in the groin. With real pain comes artistry. I bet there's a market for vivid descriptions of penile suffering.

>>15256

>The separate files are because I already have the ideas, but they aren't ordered or integrated yet.

Yeah I understand that, I'm in a somewhat opposite situation though. I've written about 6k words and burnt through the ideas I had so I'm not sure how to push the plot forward in the next chapter. What I do have is already rather neatly structured over the span of a prologue and two chapters.

I have a lofty goal and want to eventually turn this into a full fledged novel. There's a general and vague outline for where I want to take everything but for the moment nothing more than that.

Though it'll probably just come to me randomly, guess there's no point in stressing over it.

Your story seems interesting but I have to echo that other anon's criticism of the introductory exposition being presented in a bit too heavy handed manner. I don't see a reason for why you would need to set a page limit for yourself, what matters more is that the pacing feels good.

At the start, leaving things a bit vague but with a good story-hook is very important in order to make the reader want to continue and find out more about the world you've created.

>>15259

Eh, I don't think 31k words in total is much even if it's fanfiction. Webnovels nowadays have like what, 3k words per chapter?

This is the whole thing, right? You posting that somewhere?

>>15263

I haven't posted it anywhere yet. The 18 pages is scene1-1 to scene1-5, and I still read it over and revise.

>>15259

well done anon, you're motivating me to finish my short story

>>15276

Well, I'll start off by saying that I completely forgot about the source material your fic is based on and wasn't particularly thrilled with it on the first read. However, on a second look, I'm growing to like it, kind of. And as a disclaimer, I really don't care for the yaoi, but regardless, I think there's a lot of potential for a good setting and protagonists.

If I had to make a general, and personal, criticism, I found it really weird that the dark haired man wasn't coming back to the plot for several pages, especially after his pretty interesting predicament within the first page. You did a good job showing how he will be important, but with the first page being an assassination attempt suffixed with a man looking for a sex slave really subverted my expectations in a bad way. If I were writing this story, I'd probably try and balance out each of the protagonists struggles early on instead of holding off on Rye's ambitions, even if they are to just get out of the slums. Lastly, I'm interested in seeing where the story is going to go, as it seems you've left it open enough to cover a lot of material: failed rebellions, mystery, AI meddling, romance, and all the cool sci-fi stuff.

>>15268

I feel the same way. Reading other peoples' stories reminds me that I should at least try to write a good story instead of just reading them.

>>15278

>And as a disclaimer, I really don't care for the yaoi, but regardless, I think there's a lot of potential for a good setting and protagonists.

That's the same way I thought about the source material, but I find its super intertwined with the setting and "predecessing" characters and hard to avoid. I also wanted to give the AI, background characters, and the diplomatic tensions a stronger presence.

Part 1 might need a major revision if the subverted expectations is going to be a turn off. Because it'll happen again, if it wasn't clear enough that letting MC1 letting MC2 go after catching his fall (& some days later drinking in disbelief), instead of outright kidnapping and chaining him up in the first place.

>>15220

When bodies fall

Fire rises up

>>15280

Ah, I recently thought of something that might help the continuity of your story. Of all the things, I recently found a story in a thread on 4chan's /lit/ board (Can you even imagine? There's still some good content posted over there, in a wasteland of shitposts):

https://lizardperson.blogspot.com/

One thing I really liked was how the story was told in two points in time, going back and forth from past to present and past again, until the main characters inevitably meet. It does a great job of building tension for the plot, and it gives us a lot of exposition in a flowing, non-exhausting way. I think this works well because of how each passage, in each time, hooks into one another. Also, each segment has one of those dividers to emphasize a change of scene, much like your story, but they are used more sparingly in the former, which makes it simpler to follow.

In your story's case, I think if you tried arranging the sections of your story in a more lengthy manner and used the dividers more conservatively, stuck to a few concurrent scenes at a time, and balanced Rye and Icarus' screen-time (I can't think of the right word here) at the beginning of the story, it would help a lot with its clarity.

Although, there's also one other thing I noticed, but I won't say it's a definite issue as I have a bit of a bias because of the subject matter, is that I really enjoyed and empathized with the characters in the story I linked above, while I wasn't able to connect with Icarus or Rye. Again, it's a bit obvious that two modern college kids and a telepathic dragon-alien should be somewhat easier to relate to than a slum mongrel and cyber-aristocrat into petplay; regardless, your intended audience needs to become invested in the characters you create. With what you've written right now, I really don't know if that'd hook them or not, but I can tell you that I'm very excited to read the next chapter of this Lizard Person story.

>>15286

I probably wasn't getting across some characterisation of Icarus right. He's not so much into that sort of stuff as it was him looking for memories that can't ambiguate with his own. He gets disturbed about having to download memories (not the content itself) and it starts affecting him psychologically i.e ~20 year cyborg having to download about ~100+ years of memories from the one he's supposed to be a body replacement for.

Another thing that's hard is the lack of definite audience to appeal to, since it's not going to be published in the conventional sense. The source material is pornographic and is of an old now-irrelevant anime. Whatever small fanbase that exists for it, probably isn't going to be interested in something without erotic segments which I'm already phasing out.

seq1 heavily follows Icarus.

seq2 heavily follows Rye.

seq3-seq5 follows both and some supporting characters.

It's probably weird to say that this was technically written backwards since seq5, seq4, seq2 were laid out completely first (still needs a sequential editing phase to guarantee consistency of minor details).

>>15287

>He's not so much into that sort of stuff as it was him looking for memories that can't ambiguate with his own.

I know, I was just using a little hyperbole.

As far as helping Icarus' characterization, I think this could be helped if the narration was more "scoped in" to Icarus. For example, I keep rereading page 2 at the part where one of his brothers asks him why he doesn't have a Pet, and instead of an exchange of dialogue, Icarus is then at his office. On one hand, it kind of works because the thought's been planted in his head and he gets to think about it in the next section. On the other, he "pondered on the thought" and you wrote a good amount of expository dialogue completely impersonal to Icarus himself. What did Icarus think of his brother's remark? Why has he neglected finding a Pet for so long? Why did he abandon the thought and then turn to Iason's memories so quickly? How does he feel about downloading someone's memories (presumably) for the first time? Is he even a little upset that his fate has been seemingly predetermined by an AI?

Giving the audience these glimpses into Icarus's thoughts and feelings would definitely help with his characterization and his reliability to the audience.

Let me know what you think. I kind of hate to keep telling you a bunch of stuff when I feel I'm the farthest thing from a competent writer. I hope that it can help you though.

>>15301

I just opened that PDF and immediately

>the capital Tanagura, it’s urban satellite Midas

Its urban satellite, anon. Not it's.

>>15302

$ diction seq1/intro.txt 
seq1/intro.txt:3: The twelfth [most] distant planet from a star was Amoi, barren and inhospitable.

seq1/intro.txt:3: The recently colonized planet [only] hosted three cities that neighbored each other- the capital Tanagura, [it's] urban satellite Midas, and the autonomous sector Ceres.

seq1/intro.txt:3: On the nightside from orbit, [they] glowed [like] a small clustered splotches of light on a dark sphere.

seq1/intro.txt:3: Midas shined the brightest and fullest of them all, [while] Ceres [only] had few and far [between] specks.

8 phrases in 4 sentences found.

Apparently that's not the only thing.

I want to be proud of something I write, but I probably dont want to write it under my own name, or even take credit for it at all. Anonymously, no credit. Any ideas what to write? Even if I write something, how do I get it published? Should I just fake controversy and spam fake leads to journalists to stir up drama?

>>15223

its readable, thank god, Ill give you that, and Ive never written anything good ever, so, good job anon.

Do you guys write fight scenes?

Part of me just wants to get across the character's fighting style, advantages, and disadvantages. Then leave the details of the movement out. Another part of me just says its weird to dedicate only a paragraph to a fight.

I imagined a load of insane sniper action like I watched an anime from another timeline, but only having it written down is probably limited.

>>15311

I see people under pseudonyms (and actual names) self-publishing their work all the time on Amazon and other sites. I don't know how traditional publishing usually goes, but I'd assume there's a tougher barrier of entry for compared to self-publishing. For exposure, I see a lot of people doing free digital/physical book giveaways, and other general procedures to drum up hype on most social networking platforms.

As for what to write, that's easily the hardest part, and I don't think anyone can tell you what you should do. Surely there's some kind of topic or classic themes you'd like to explore in your own way. I do, but I'm certainly having a hard time putting a narrative around it.

>>15354

>Do you guys write fight scenes?

Not really, the few times I've tried to have proved to be very difficult though. I feel it'd help if I could find a well-written action scene somewhere to analyze, but I haven't bothered to look for one yet. One thing I like to do was look at movement and action in other mediums and try to transpose them into writing. For an example, watch a scene from "Redline" and try to convey the smooth, fluid, and powerful action in writing. Or maybe do the same thing for a few pages from an action-filled comic.

>>15354

Do you mean a action packed firefight or a fist fight?

With what >>15356 says can work. I'd like to add to this point.

If you want to write a firefight, try working with writing out the bank robbing scene from Heat. If you want a fist fight try doing the same with a Kung-fo movie like the hallway scene from the original Oldboy.

>>15358

One scene is a rather ordinary street fight.

The other is a "jailbreak", freerunning segment that takes place on the rooftops and involves disarming a security android of a taser gun and using it on the rest. I was seriously thinking hard of Mirrors Edge when I came up with it. I have little idea how real life fighting works, but basically in that game the longer you've been running, the more momentum you get, and the kicks get more effective.

The last one the sniper character gets a shit load of top of the line military technology (e.g exosuit, cloaking device) and does some generally impossible stuff i.e insane core strength and stability while sniping at the same time.

>>15354

I'm sure you could pull it off if you knew how to write really tense, nerve-gripping moments.

You probably shouldn't if you aren't confident or trying to practice though.

Someone wanna write for me? My isekai idea that will never get popular?

>>15374

Care to elaborate? You want to an ideas guy for a writer, and you have the idea you have you won't even tell because it will never become popular?

>>15285

He has no style

He has no grace

>>15491

this cunt has a funny face

>>15512

>program being utilised?

It's 'wc'. I'm on Linux so it's just there.

First column is lines, second is words, then characters.

>>15512

That version is outdated. I reworked about half of that sequence. >>15441

Then going to rework #2. Then if I have to rework #3, I'm going to have a hell of a time because just the key scenes is amounting to 30 pages.

I'm submitting this:

https://pastebin.com/Kdn8RVFL

It's only up for two weeks. Some things to note:

1. I neologize. I like creating new words to enrich the language, so you'll see that at least once in there.

2. I sometimes write long sentences.

3. I'm not adverse to using adverbs and adjectives as I see them as a part of the language and tools to be used.

4. It becomes very expository very fast.

5. I don't think I vary up my sentences' syntax enough.

>>15512

Do you have a pdf of that book?

>>15615

No one?

>>15638

Chill dude, this board is tiny. I'll give it a read.

>>15638

I actually read it a few days ago, but I didn't read it intently enough to leave any good feedback. I'll give it another go tomorrow.

>>15658

With margins like that, the page count tells diddly-squat about how long the text actually is. If you want to brag about your (not really noteworthy, I'm afraid) autism, use the word or character count. Also, start writing something else before that turns into real autism you can't give up anymore.

>>15659

It seems to be the default setting when converting and autoformatting text files to pdfs. I can put it through a different template when everything's done.

$ wc intro.txt scene1-1.txt scene1-2.txt scenea2.txt scene1-a4.txt scene1-3a.txt scene1-5a.txt scene1-3.txt scene1-2a.txt scene1-5b.txt scene1-5c.txt scene1-5d.txt 
    2    74   451 intro.txt
   24   450  2610 scene1-1.txt
   38   543  3192 scene1-2.txt
   32   477  2574 scenea2.txt
   91   934  5705 scene1-a4.txt
   75  1532  9090 scene1-3a.txt
   47   650  3666 scene1-5a.txt
    8   195  1138 scene1-3.txt
   24   413  2395 scene1-2a.txt
   39   451  2726 scene1-5b.txt
   20   446  2582 scene1-5c.txt
   40   743  4176 scene1-5d.txt
  440  6908 40305 total

$ wc ks4-ica-convo.txt ks1-midasintro-icaPOV2.txt ks2-midas-ryepov.txt ks3-midas-ryejob.txt ks5-pa.txt ks6-pa2.txt ks7-post-tx.txt scene4-2b.txt scene4-2c.txt scene4-3-01c.txt scene4-3-02.txt scene4-3-04.txt scene4-3-03b.txt scene4-5.txt scene4-6.txt
   24   236  1383 ks4-ica-convo.txt
   21   587  3556 ks1-midasintro-icaPOV2.txt
   30   445  2390 ks2-midas-ryepov.txt
   22   529  3038 ks3-midas-ryejob.txt
   16   288  1695 ks5-pa.txt
   26   305  1730 ks6-pa2.txt
   58   846  4961 ks7-post-tx.txt
   71   720  4190 scene4-2b.txt
   31   374  2225 scene4-2c.txt
   26   507  3049 scene4-3-01c.txt
   29   463  2753 scene4-3-02.txt
   47   706  4214 scene4-3-04.txt
   46   658  3764 scene4-3-03b.txt
  104   992  5619 scene4-5.txt
   42   492  2837 scene4-6.txt
  593  8148 47404 total

$ wc scene11.txt scene11-2b.txt 3a-is1.txt 3a-is2.txt scene14b.txt scene14-2.txt scene14-5.txt scene14-3.txt scene14-4.txt scene14-6.txt 3a-ks8.txt
  118  1492  8965 scene11.txt
   31   653  3912 scene11-2b.txt
   43   579  3523 3a-is1.txt
   50   487  2722 3a-is2.txt
  117  1297  7540 scene14b.txt
   54   539  3165 scene14-2.txt
   30   557  3363 scene14-5.txt
   23   183  1092 scene14-3.txt
   54   509  3059 scene14-4.txt
   17   322  1736 scene14-6.txt
   16   550  3338 3a-ks8.txt
  553  7168 42415 total

$ wc 3b-ks1.txt 3b-ks2b.txt 3b-ks3.txt 3b-ks4.txt 3b-ks5.txt 3b-ks6.txt 3b-ks7.txt 
   30   307  1851 3b-ks1.txt
   42   474  2973 3b-ks2b.txt
   46  1038  5879 3b-ks3.txt
   57   848  4952 3b-ks4.txt
   38   375  2172 3b-ks5.txt
   43   247  1436 3b-ks6.txt
   62   980  5854 3b-ks7.txt
  318  4269 25117 total

>>15660

(posting limits)

If there was some scifi manga or LN with a similar premise, even through the butchering process of translating Japanese to English, I'd legitimately be entertained by it. It's just that I never wrote anything before and this is probably the most ridiculous thing I've done.

>>15624

pffffff, I WISH

Have the physical, though. You can borrow it, if you'd like.

>>15679

I remember how I used to take photos of book pages then run the pics through a script and make a pdf that way.

Not asking you to do that, but it's an option.

byump

>>15211

>I'm a history buff and I've been doing a lot of research and thus I fear if I make the not-nazi's anything but horrible, no big publisher would ever want to look at it.

Don't make it too on the nose then. It would help if you are non-straight, non-white & non-male too as the barrier of entry for them now is pretty low. Just don't write it as a YA novel as the harpies circling that community will tear you to shreds and have your publisher abandon you post release because of some minor politically incorrect shit. I'm serious about this. I don't read YA but their scandals are on my radar.

If this is your first foray into long form fiction and no publisher wants your space nazi book, I suggest you just publish it yourself (I've been told this is a bad idea by many published authors) or on shit like wattpad just to outsource the editorial duties to some captain autismo. There's also a nice bonus that if your "free" story gets famous enough, a publisher will most likely pick it up. Remember, The Martian was just a blog post story that turned into a book deal then turned into a movie.

>>15216

>Anon, nobody needs a grounded sci-fi novel.

Those are just called hard sci-fi and they have their own niche to fill.

>>15222

There's also the high probability that space warships will most likely have only a handful of crew members if they have them at all. At least that's what the trend seems to be indicating according to history. Open space warfare is highly unlikely anyways. Why spend tons on spaceships when you can beam hyper memes into your target and have it implode by futuristic shitposting.

>>15661

>(posting limits)

"Maximum number of newlines per post: 60"

BO here. I'm not sure now why we set this limitation. Possibly an ASCII art bombing defense? I don't recall running into this as an issue, and I tend to be one of the TL;DR styled posters. In any event the limitation is now unset. Essay it up as ye will. Selah!

>>16058

>a long time ago

that almost looks like a comedic intro

>>16060

I'm a complete amateur with writing fiction so I suppose some things are going to be unintentionally corny. I'm not aware that the line is especially present in comedies either.

>>16073

So what?

>>16070

I don't think it would take any previous writing, or much reading, to see that the phrase doesn't really say anything, all the while being a variation of such a cliche that it was almost never used as such to begin with. Even if it was intentionally used to evoke a fairy tale like tone, one would expect it to be continued with something, anything, to give the audience a frame of reference to grab hold of. Alone it's pointless to a comical degree.

It doesn't help that in fairy tales, and that one seminal movie, it's used as an implicit disclaimer for that the following story is not about anything real and that it takes place in the realm of harmless nonsense.

>>16075

It's cliche.

>>16076

>>16073

I suppose that makes sense. It's located in part three (about 40 to 50 pages in depending on how I finish part two) and not actually a starter for the whole thing.

(It's started by one of the main characters sniping then jumping off a building.)

The other segments describe historical events in the setting, and this one should be the very beginnings (AI uprising -> failed human revolt -> etc). The constraint is that I shouldn't be exact with the amount of time.

The beginning paragraphs could use revision though.

>It be a dark and stormy day in a galaxy far, far away, and deep into the past. Like, yesterday, even.

Every writing craft guide labels this as cliche under the section "what not to do" early in the guide. Left unsaid, it's a reliable signpost of un-self-aware, lazy, neophyte writers.

Why do you need to point out to the reader this is all in the past? Presumably, you will have a present day scene, or chapter, in contrast? Maybe in the form of a pre-doc post-colonial thesis writer demonstrating the actualized homoerotic proto-feminist self hating oppressed minority status of our misinterpreted historic Conanesque protagonist. Mucho postmodern via a superlatively comedic satirical approach? Very creative.

Maybe via an Asimovian Media-wiki encyclopedic fan-fiction chapter introduction? Change the details of this entry with each new chapter as an ongoing edit war unfolds. God damn! Now that's creative.

You could roll with a Gore Vidal old man(TM) reminiscing about the past to some clueless historian (or simply the reader) who has it all wrong. Chapter two, enter the past POV. Not, strictly speaking, a Vidalian invention, but he was fond of this technique. And, quite good at deploying in his historic fiction. Not too creative, but most serviceable if written well.

Think of "A long time ago" as a subconscious shorthand note to yourself meaning: "revise here with details to be added later." Be creative.

>>16080

>Think of "A long time ago" as a subconscious shorthand note to yourself meaning: "revise here with details to be added later." Be creative

The file it is in is labeled draft.txt.

>Why do you need to point out to the reader this is all in the past? Presumably, you will have a present day scene, or chapter, in contrast?

It's because of who the main characters are in relation to the past. They're not writers or historians however, and throwing some in really do not fit the story and setting.

Well in this case, the present day scenes happened (attached pdfs) >>16058

then the immortal machine capital has a few paragraphs of introduction with an omniscient POV.

>>16089

>point of view of many characters, often changing POV mid-scene

I'll try to read it later but I gotta tell you, I already hate it.

>>16089

Wew 92 pages. It's going to take me a while to read this. How long did you spend writing it?

(I tend to obsessively revise and ended up with only 31 finalized pages of what I'm working on after half a year. The rest stuck in drafting. )

>>16093

>Anything longer, and I lose hope of it ever getting read or finished

Well. You're not the one writing the 30k+ word fanfiction of Ai no Kusabi.

But I had trouble following with your fic. I haven't played the game however.

>>16096

Based purely on the time it took me to write part of ch 11 today, it took 17.3 hours to write the contents of the pdf. Factor in countless edits and revisions and I'd say we're at about 40 hours, not including time spent writing in a notebook dedicated to planning the book out or time spent simply reading drafts.

Also I did a quick check by timing how long it took me to read a random chapter and then calculated the time to read all 10 chapters and it's about 1 hour 2 minutes. However, it's likely that I read my own writing faster so I'd advertise the time to read as closer to 1.5 - 2 hours.

>>16089

Anyone else have a little issue keeping track of the characters in the first chapter? There's first person POV character, then names spoken, but I go back and forth trying to identify them.

I get there's the narrator, which I guess is a woman going by the cab driver, Marcellus, and the guy who asked Marcellus to wait up.

Or it was the narrator telling Marcellus to wait up, which I didn't figure she stopped or started lagging behind while looking at the garden, and Marcellus the man slowed down.

Then Mr. Dowbridge, which I think is Marcellus. But I imagined it said Mr Dowbridge normally then said Marcellus' last name with more trouble.

>>16102

I checked the text to see if I directly say who is speaking in each of these instances and the only one which I don't is Breena asking Marcellus to wait up. Figured that the speakers would be obvious enough but evidently that's not the case. We'll see if anyone else has trouble with it in however many months it takes for someone else to visit this board.

>>16089

Unless the narrator's inability to stay focused is a key aspect of the story, having her(/him/they??) "wake up" to the narration is pointless disorientation. In this case it really hurts the opening, as without it you could easily and unjarringly just introduce the characters present.

>>16116

>Figured that the speakers would be obvious enough but evidently that's not the case.

Precisely my case was that I read with the possibility of new characters abruptly showing up ie when another text has "yo wait up" without a specified speaker, and then the character turning and identifying who said it.

>>16127

Looks to me like it starts the first page on the right side of the book, as evidenced by page 2 having its number on the left side (meaning that page is to be on the left side of the book).

why did you put a line break after every paragraph and why isn't anything indented?

>>16130

I just have a bunch of text files that I dump into the program, but I totally forgot about indenting.

>>16120

Someone throw a book at me or call me philistine, but I went through two chapters without a strong idea of who Breena/narrator is, who she is in relation to Marcellus, and what she does.

I get that much that she's probably lower or ordinary class and she makes prosthesis. I think most detailed character so far were the rich decrepidly old guys in assists or whatever.

Well I don't have much of an idea about Marcellus either. Is he some sort of young wealthy prodigy or 30-40s something seasoned craftsman and business owner.

>>16139

This will definitely be the focus of my next round of rewrites, and frankly I'm not sure how I didn't spot it earlier. My important characters (Marcellus, Breena and Troy) have ironically got some of the worst introductions in the whole book. I'm going to try to simplify the fluff in my current drafts and make it less-worse to read.

The main issue I'm running into with my introductions is that there's about two books worth of content that would go into explaining where the hell Marcellus and Breena come from. If you're interested in helping decide how much background I give early on, read the spoilers in the post after this and think which bits could be given in the first couple chapters without overloading the reader.

>>16143

the book series starts in our world, and in 2307 the first time machine is created. Scientific texts are sent back to 1901 to multiple countries. The information is largely kept secret until 2029 when an international pedophile cult is busted and a portion of the information is recovered from a pedo politician's computer by an Australian security analyst. The analyst puts the info on the 2029 equivalent of a USB drive and tucks it in his fridge behind a few beers. A buddy of his visits, they drink a few tinnies, and the buddy swipes the USB drive thinking his mate is hiding porn on it. He finds the scientific texts on it and spams it online in typical Australian shitposting fashion.

Up until this point, the world has been practically identical to ours, apart from the information available to certain secretive government organizations and individuals. Moving on:

The scientific documents from 2307, now available online, allow research on time travel technology to leap forward about 200 years, leading to the availability of the matter-transporting facet of the technology (ability to swap two regions of space with eachother, just not across determined periods of time). In 2071, MT (matter transport) is used by a suicidal researcher to warp in hundreds of locations from around the Earth to a relatively geologically stable area in North America. The areas, all stacked on top of eachother, create a giant hole, going about 90 miles into the Earth, for a few seconds before collapsing. In his manifesto, the researcher states that there is a marvellous surprise at the bottom of the hole. This event, referred to as the 90MD incident, was impossible to black out of the media and made MT technology known to the general public. In this timeline of history, MT-TT (matter transport - time travel) is now invented much earlier, in 2112 rather than 2307.

This brings us one timeline closer to the one that Nth Sentience (name of the book I've been spamming) starts in.

Starting in 2113, a group known at the Cheerylad Committee starts haphazardly MT-TT'ing themselves and certain pieces of technology and scientific developments. Their exploits result in the world line vastly changing dozens of times in rapid succession, bringing the world very close to the version of 1890's Brighton seen at the start of Nth Sentience. One of the most important developments that one of them took was the transplanting of a hardy version of exoplant into several locations througout Europe, notably the East coast of England. Exoplant is a engineered plant which, if prepared properly, can be used to make neural connections in living organisms. The original exoplant strains took many trillions of dollars to develop and the version available to Marcellus at the start of the book is a very shitty variant, which is the only one that can survive outside of a laboratory (though just barely). Keep in mind that Marcellus is not even present in 1890 at this point, however. The discovery of this plant led one Dr. Varshef, a savant born in the early-mid 1800s, to move to Britannia and start the exoplant-based prosthetic industry. By 1890, the industry is developing heavily.

>>16144

The spoiler that follows relates to the version of Breena before her life was changed by Marcellus' time travel. Read with caution.

A young Breena Weiss, living in central Britannia with her somewhat lower-class family, accidentally kills her younger sister as they are playing near electrical equipment. While watching her sister fry, Breena realizes she has a natural understanding of electricity and its effects on living things. But, being a turbo-autist, she shows little remorse. Her mother, on the other hand, falls ill, leaving her father as the only source of revenue. She leaves her parents in their cheap house (against the wishes of her mother but with the support of her dad) and searches for a place to work on the coast (where the jobs are). She initially tries to work for the public electricity company in Brighton but, unsurprisingly, they turn down the teenage girl who has zero experience. She does manage to get a job with a lighting fixture fabricator/installer in the town over and there she learns how to work with basic circuits. After a couple years of sending money to her parents, her mother falls even more ill and her father is too tired to work any harder. She brings them over to the coast, and over the course of the next 6-7 years gradually builds more and more elaborate life support systems for her mom in their apartment. Her mother finally dies, and Breena breaks down. At the age of 25, she kills herself.

End of backstory of Breena.

Marcellus, who is one John Windsor Radleigh, born 2239 to an extremely rich family, is the black sheep of the family. He resents high society and all of the human trafficking and blackmail in it. I've already typed so much so I'll abridge his backstory: he fakes being a satan-worshipping politician like his other family members and attends cult meetings for years until the age of 50 (which with technology in those 2200s is more like 30) when he uses his influence MT-TT to about 1880, supposedly to carry a mission for the cult. He was not originally an exoplant researcher like Varshef- rather, Marcellus/John has been an avid historian his whole life, though he does have an aptitude for technology. His dearest wish is to expose the black deeds of the elites so completely, even more than the original 2029 pedo cult bust, that human society is completely changed. He puts himself into a position of influence from his company Dowbridge Mechanics (which was supposed to be a front for the precursors to his cult, who recognize his "legitimacy" because their rites have been the same for hundreds of years). He chose the exoplant industry in the 1890s-1890s because his historical studies showed that it was one of the most important times (in that timeline). During his research, he comes across an archived newspaper article of a savant girl who kept her ailing mother alive for years with some sort of tech wizardry, and so John/Marcellus chooses to establish his business in Brighton, later hiring the lighting company that Breena worked for to install a large amber lantern at the front of his shop. He fakes being surprised by her aptitude and offers her a job building prosthetics.

Troy's past starts to be revealed in chapters 10 and 11 so I won't cover it here.

So you see, there's a ton of stuff that happens before the book and I need to decide how much of this I can come out with at the start. I'm thinking I'll just give ages, physical descriptions and general backgrounds of Marcellus and Breena at the start and go from there. Sorry for spamming massive blocks of spoiler text.

>>16143

I didn't think there was an interesting perspective to her either. Besides from her feeling unworthy or insignificant, she isn't giving much of a personality that makes me want to follow her POV, and she's been passive for the first chapter.

Marcellus' POV might actually be interesting because he's the one talking with the old guys, like his thought processes. But if it really has to be Breena, I was wondering at least whether she was Marcellus' love interest, employee or whatever.

Writing anon inspired me to start writing as well.

>>16158

Post whatever you got when you're done.

>>16168

I have no idea how long Part 2 is going to be but so far I split things into five chapters.

> and now Rye has got himself picked up by some pet collecting agency.

It's an accident. Icarus is not supposed to be highly experienced so when he indirectly employs Rye he makes some mistakes.

Somewhere around page 28, I try to make it clear that it's an accident, since he issued a fake ID for Rye to carry around Midas. But the fake ID failed a private establishment's background check (it's only whitelisted among public law enforcement i.e Icarus holding a public office) causing Rye (someone who doesn't have civil rights) to be caught by usual slave traders.

> a.) Rye taking high profile terrorist jobs for some reason and occasionally thinking about fucking aryan robot

He only has one dream sequence in Part 2. He doesn't actually do anything, but "wtf at a talking cat". It's precursor and explanation to shit that happens in Part 3.

> b.) aryan robot stressing over pets as if his social value relies on them, and not taking any time to do any actual work of importance (do all the blondies just live off inheritance or something).

Now when you say aryan robot, do you mean Icarus specifically (he's a cyborg)? Because there's multiple, you can pretty much call each and every one of his brothers aryan robots.

I think so far with that draft I posted, it's supposed to at least indicate he:

>ambassador and diplomat functions (part 1 chapter 1 - predecessor character)

>hiring fag sniper on diplomats (what he actually does as opposed to talking things over)

>review financial reports (part 1 chapter 2 - predecesor character with the same job title)

>command military androids (part 1 chapter 2 - predecesor character with the same job title)

You are probably going to ask why does he hires human fag sniper when he can get a military android to probably do the same thing, but the whole thing with the fake ID is supposed to hint that Rye does not show up on any radars / GPS tracking because he is a natural human being without any ID at all, which makes him especially suitable for black market "terrorist jobs". There's a little more explicit detail in Chapter 4.

>make business transactions and negotiations, including in the black market (part 1 chapter 3)

He socially suffers for a lot of other reasons but it's detailed in Chapter 5 and on.

>>16169

>>16168

> Why can't Icarus just go pick up his slum slave boy without waiting for the pet agency to fill him with knockout drugs?

I checked over both parts because I really want to be solid about Icarus' characterization.

That draft at least has:

Part 1 Chapter 1, where he drives main character 2 to the border and lets him off (vs a memory backup of Iason grabbing the first iteration clone, and chaining up the original).

Part 1 Chapter 2, outright saying he's disinterested in owning human slaves.

Part 1, heavily implying he is calling these hits on the diplomats (vs Iason's smooth talking and trade conference at an embassy).

Part 1 Chapter 3, heavily implying he is at least subconsciously distressed about having to download memory backups.

Part 2 Chapter 1, where

>he is visibly (?) getting sick of this shit when asked

>where in the exhibits, he checks the documents and task statuses on his technovisors than actually looking at anything on display.

>his brothers recognizing distinterest and assuming he just wants to be around a terrarium since he's never been anywhere besides barren inhospitable home world that only hosts 3 cities on it

Part 1 vs Part 2, where it mentions Iason is diligent and competent, meanwhile in Part 2 Icarus makes slight gaffs in his jobs where:

>he issues an ID that results in his operative and marksman getting caught by slavers

>he tries to find out why these clones are appearing but a certain detail about a computer virus infecting artificial wombs completely flies over his head

There is:

Rye, who mistakenly believes Icarus is an android based on the public's incorrect knowledge.

Katze, who doesn't exactly now the process behind body replacements, but is making assumption on a matter based on Icarus' face.

>>16168

I read through the first three chapters, and I think at chapter three is when the character of Breena somewhat comes alive even though she's mainly passive observer. Or the contrast of what Marcellus expects from her and how she apparently is has a potential charm to it. But I had a hard time maintaining interest for her first chapters however, and the mystery of why Marcellus has her tag along for the fancy party isn't much of an enticing hook.

I don't mind the first person POV swapping much, but I wouldn't like having to invest much in finding out which character the POV has swapped to. The narrator at the end of chapter 3, I assume is the unnamed carriage driver from chapter 1, but I'm not too sure about that either.

>>16259

I gave it a read. The start is pretty good and flows well. I don't exactly know what you mean by Part B or C, but I did feel either my attention span was kicking in, or it didn't flow as nicely as the start.

I don't know if it was supposed to be creepy, and with the topic, I assumed that'd be the case, but I wasn't feeling it.

As for "no one wants to read this shit", I feel ya. I ended up liking my own characters (after going over multiple drafts of them) and the world they're in, so intrinsic motivation says to finish their story.

>>16260

Nice, thanks man. I appreciate it. It's supposed to be creepy, but I agree that there isn't really a satisfying payoff at the end. I'll fiddle around with the resolution a little and see what happens. I think taking my time a little bit more with the ending will make it more "relatable" and immersive.

>>16259

If I had seen this pop up in a magazine or an anthology, I would have turned pages until I got to the next story straight after the first two paragraphs. Mostly because I'm not a fan of straightforward horror stories. And in that case my instinct would have been right, because the story ends when it's starting to get interesting, perhaps in an attempt of invoking fear of the unknown, which makes for really cheap-feeling boring stories.

I don't much like the meandering way the narrator talks to themselves. Raising questions, which aren't really particularly thought-provoking, feels like the writing is deliberately avoiding evoking any sort of personality out of fear of offending the reader with too bold statements. When reading a story, I don't need to agree with the text. Getting offended is more interesting than being bored.

For the length of the true meat of the story, the introduction to ghost stories is way too long. Long-winded tirade at the start might have worked if it had painted a clear picture about the narrator or set up a mood, but it doesn't. Only thing I got out of the first page was that the weird stories exist and that narrator, who probably isn't a teenager anymore, is passingly interested in them. It didn't set up a reason for why the two guys would be anxious enough about the road to hesitate taking it, several times no less. Are the injuns like definitive experts on this stuff?

It's weird how the narrator talks about the brake lights. Aren't those outside the car, inside of which he is? First I thought there was suddenly another car in front of the one the guys were driving.

The prose is actually alright, when it's not trying to evoke terror with EMPHASIS. It flows well, has some flavour, but it doesn't have a sense of distinct style that would make me want to read more from the author based solely on it.

Now, I'm not an expert, or even a mediocre amateur, in writing horror. But I would try to create a story like this by first painting the narrator as a credulous person with too much curiosity for his own good trying to protect himself with a thin veneer of cynicism. That way the inevitable freak-out would make sense and perhaps manage to be satisfying. Then I'd make the story about figuring out if the spooky thing really is just feather-indian highwaymen or something more out there.

>As I'm sure many of you have experienced, I kept having to force myself to work on it because of the repetitive thoughts of "no one wants to read this shit".

I foremost write stories I'd want to read. For me, serving others before myself would be a really poor motivation for writing. It's not like I'm ever going to make much money out of it, but then again I write niche stories in a language with only a few million speakers, so it's not like I'm even trying to be successful.

>>16306

(different anon here)

Self motivation is definitely my most important drive for writing. It's kept me working on the same project for a couple years now. That, and I understand that most people aren't the kind who can sit still for three hours while they read my draft. Hell, I've had very limited success getting any anons to read my work here, and this is the dedicated literature board of a site that people have to read to use.

I don't expect to make any money off my writing if I ever manage to get it published, just being able to cover the costs would be great. It would also be pretty cool having a small chance to get a cult following a few decades after I die.

Where did the anon with the story of turbo autism girl and her time traveling NWO/jew employer go?

>>16308

If you're talking about >>16168

I've just been busier with work lately. Since about 95% of the writing happens when I get a random stroke of inspiration I write less when there are other things on my mind. The remaining 5% of writing is revisions based on feedback, which can inspire me even if I have been wiped out from working but the volume of feedback is pretty small so whatever writing it spurs ends up being tiny compared to the other stuff.

>>16306

thanks for the well-analyzed criticism anon. how do you think i could improve apart from writing more, practicing, and refining technique? do you think working off a stronger outline would help? i basically just started writing with a vague image in my head and went from there, which i know isnt a strong way to start, but like i said, i wanted to prove to myself that i could finish a story. from your second to last paragraph i think i should definitely flesh out the characters before i even get to starting to fill out the story.

>>16315

I can't really offer any general advice that isn't an oft repeated platitude like "learn to read like an author" (which really is good advice). You already have the basics of a good story in terms of lucid prose that can keep the story moving, you just need to turn the images into an interesting aggregate.

Some further observations, though. After the midpoint my expectations were painted by the similarities I thought I started to see to Lovecraft. There's the rather nondescript first person narrator, a basis on American folk lore (real or created for the convenience of the plot, though HPL would have quickly expanded the scope), but the main thing was that after the night time drive, the story seemed to assume the unfolding mystery investigation structure utilized by (but, granted, not unique to) HPL. The deepening of that mystery with layered and possibly more unreliable narration (the fireman's story; it has the narrator telling about the fireman talking about the police hinting to what they saw/knew) worked well to pique at least my interest, but the story disappointingly ended before that build-up got anywhere. An outline would help and it was part of the advice HPL gave about these kinds of stories: first write down what all that happens chronologically including outside the time frame of the story itself, and then write the story itself from the chosen point of view, time and place. That way you can keep the main mystery act straight while hinting to relevant and irrelevant stuff to create excitement and sense of a deeper world. Just pick up your own literary obsessions instead of trying to copy Lovecraft's.

One good trick for short stories is to pick a theme, no matter how lowbrow you are aiming for. If several separate aspects of the story tie into each other thematically, it creates an aura of a deeper purpose, even if there really isn't much meaning to any of it. It also makes the writing process easier, as when you struggle coming up with anything, you can consider what would further the chosen themes and build up from there. And you can always ditch the initial theme if you come up with something better. It's not like you need to explicitly tell the audience what the themes are.

Fleshing out characters usually is good, but short stories lack space for extensive characterization, so in my opinion it's acceptable to keep even the main character simple (but they should at least be distinctive in their simpleness) if the rest of the story is interesting. Removing superfluous characters is generally a good practice. In this story, there might not have been need for James for at all. On the other hand, he could have been used to quickly characterize both the narrator and himself with some dialogue (for example, narrator puts on a tough guy act, James shows he sees through it, as he knows their deliberate intention is to get spooked, so he psychs out the narrator with his indecisive driving. Later he rationalizes away what they saw on the road, leaving the narrator alone to doubt his perception of reality. Eh, a formulaic example, but flops forward).

I'd recommend you write something completely different with a different narrative point of view next. Just to keep writing fresh for yourself.

any criticism would be fine, btw.

>>16322

Essays aren't quite my thing so I can't quite give objective feedback that forwards you as a writer, but I'm reading through it.

Generally, what I don't like is an abstraction from data and the observations presented based on Preface, Chapter 1, and Chapter 2. But that generally extends to my POV on essays. Suppose you were to convince me of your stances, which I guess is the intent. I can't concretely defend your beliefs should I debate them because the data is not there. The language is florid and references Greek myths, but that's not quite defensible in a modern debate.

e.g

>To kill useless people, to create

>chaos, so that maybe, just maybe our world can reduce the number of consumers and

>providers to a small minority so that humans can actually "live life" instead of just

>merely existing.

There's no demonstration or proof that this accomplishes the goals in mind. Who are the useless people, and how would you distinguish the useless from people who are slackers, demoralized, but otherwise useful (i.e the case of unrecognized talent)?

>>16324

Most people aren't motivated unless conflict arises, to answer your question. Plenty of people have useful skills or a will, but unless something catastrophic happens they aren't motivated to do anything. Myself included.

My life sucks. Fuck my life. Bazinga.

>>16349

I can't tell if you're the essaywriter or just someone passing by on my post.

But if you are essaywriter, I'm not entirely certain, but you may want to start with essays on specific studies and statistics that influence your worldviews. Overall easily, anyone outside of your social circle, internet community, et al, is not going to be convinced.

For example, Chapter 3 Page 12 broadly addresses women kind of as the conglomerate "Stacy" imagined by /r9k/ users and feminists or similar low skill women overnetworked / overpublicized by feminists as imparted to /pol/ users by online magazine articles. But any believability is shattered by real life interactions with people that contradict those stereotypes.

>>16355

its pretty self-evident I have interacted with a lot of women in real life and find them abhorrent. stereotypes do not exist for no such reason.

I'm the essayist. I've come up with some odd concepts like Foucauldian Christianity. the subject of the mentally ill as God's chosen people, rather than jews who try and silence them.

as far as I can see, (and I've had interpersonal experience with modern women), is that women are social creatures that thrive off being oversocialized to the point where they gossip and pit everyone against each other (both men and other women) only to cause intense conflict where there shouldn't be and would be better off being more 'productive'. When you get to my age (37) and you become as blackpilled as I, you will see. of course I've been in plenty of relationships, but life is less dramatic without them in my life, show me a woman who is not oversocialized and lets their emotions override any critical thinking and I will hand you 30k.

>the subject of the mentally ill as God's chosen people, rather than jews who try and silence them.

wanted to elaborate on this, but its mostly due to institutionalizing those who are different, popping them with pills and being forced into confinement when they shouldn't be and I see them (as well as myself) a struggle. God put us through hell because he wanted to toughen us up for the holy war, both mentally and physically.

>>16360

You probably aren't going to make an effective case if your essay is heavily reliant on anecdotes regardless of the subject.

>>16395

but how does anyone know they're anecdotes if the behavior of common women is self-evident?

I mean if you look down to the bare essentials of female behavior you'll notice some peculiarities.

>>16398

>>16399

Not even about women. You don't seem to be writing an essay on anything specific. There's definitely style and voice, but my impression is that without concrete fact and data, you're just being a bit pompous about the presentation of your blog. (Blogs are actually more specific and commentate on real life events, and statistics however combined with author's perspective and expertise, but here its all broad perspective.)

Are these really collected essays? Where over time you wrote full length commentary on recent events, new published statistics, and collected them. Or did you more or less write multiple essays in one go?

>>16401

over the period of three or four weeks. its a collection of essays on how to perserve America, even using gaslighting, violence, ethical solipsism and ego unions.

>>16401

i wrote some on a blog I handled I should put those in another pdf but I'll link you. (it hasn't been updated in awhile)

https://disintegrationsystem.blogspot.com/

>>16321

I think a number of your essays are too unsubstantiated to be called essays, and too meandering too. They're closer to reflections than to essays.

>>16469

>In my first essays I explained the methods on how to achieve a government that

would be of great essence to the people of this country

Translation:

>Hey come dey hifalutin, yo!

While I hold in high regard Nabokov's ideals, caution in one's word choice still matters. Inviting a reader to chase after meaning only works when the reward justifies such. Here I am using the Goldendict aplication attached to a relatively recent version of Wordnet.

essence ~ noun. A toiletry that emits and diffuses a fragrant odor.

With all due respect to writerly license, I'm getting the impression of an ESL crossover. Or, a Mille Bornes addict. With toungue firmly in ironic cheek, I get the sense this really is the most proper definition, in spite of the writer's intention. Yes, there are other definitions that capture the essence of the idea he was trying for. It's still a godforsaken poor choice of a word to express merit.

>And all the rest of the introduction.

Reflections? Maybe. Essays? No. I would call this a manifesto.

Ain't gonna waste no more time wading though this. Do me a favor. Suggest one essay you think worth reviewing. I will give it a go. Otherwise, no.

>>16472

>essence ~ noun. A toiletry that emits and diffuses a fragrant odor.

Nah, he's using it to mean "importance", "something of vital necessity" (<—my words).

>>16473

The next paragraph states the same, although I spiral around the subject, approaching it indirectly. To be direct and clear:

>he's using it to mean "importance", "something of vital necessity"

Yes, I understand. His unusual word choice obscures meaning for a general reader and is a red flag to the more discerning.

Fappy fan-fiction does not write itself, and so, as such, I find myself rather busy. I will waste no more time on this nonsense. My offer remains, if someone may suggest a piece of the whole that stands on its own, and is not a complete waste of time for a general reader.

>>16471

Fair enough.

>>16472

No one is forcing you to read it. And I plan not to do any favors for you unless you do one for me: if all you do is plan to criticize my work, don't bother reading it.

>>16474

And Tbh literally criticism, and any kind of critical theory has only pre-desposed use, and that is to be used against itself as I suggested in my previous "reflections" as you call it.

Essence is used as in "essence preceedes existence" if you knew what I meant in the usage of such wordplay this is not a manifesto for a toilet but since people such as yourselves infest earth, you might as well lace up that shoe and wear it

>>16401

>>16403

Yeah you wrote this in one go… >>16311

>>16481

Also the last most chapter is still WIP.

>>16478

Get your jelly beans back in your jar. By being as sensitive and defensive of your work as you've been, you dissuade others from reading it, besides the few of us who have skimmed sections. What's more,

I am still working on Nth Sentience and the recent shootings make it look like we are going to lose Cloudflare's protections. If 8ch starts having problems, you guys wanna move our literature to lainchan? Aryan robot guy and I are writing scifi anyway, should be a decent fit.

>>16486

I opened up 08chan in the first time in like forever. Didn't lainchan split in two a while back?

Plus, in the meantime I outlined some weird ass crossover fanfic of Nth sentience and aryan robot's story. For no reason specifically.

>>16472

>>16474

>>16476

>>16477

>>16478

First off, allow me to thank the participants of the late discussion. This has been the most lively one the board has witnessed in a very long time. Kudos to one and all.

Second, heated banter on an image-board is the norm. It's a feature, not a vice. Such is the nature of the beast. The piece was attacked by one poster, and the writer defended, as both are entitled to do. At this point the two have fallen into a gruesomely funny pattern of willfully misreading each other's words. All great fun, but it hints the usefulness of the discussion is done. Done, as if. There was no attempt at discussion from the start. Read on.

Third, let us critique the original attacker with some perspective on satire from two accomplished American writers. In his autobiography, Steven King details his own methodology on how best to deploy satire. He relates a painful sequence of events whereby his first grand attempt at writing such was also his last. In a word, "don't." King makes a good point. Such a writing form is a slippery pit at the bottom of which lies a tar-pool of pure harm for harm's sake. However, King's is not the last word on the subject as America's most grandiloquent of satirists would attest. To King he might reply how satire is one of humanity's most original, and most deeply powerful of tools for seeing the world clearly. Still, Gore Vidal would meet with King halfway. Vidal would agree to defining a precision instrument as being the one most likely to be inartfully slashed around.

I stand by my criticism, but not form in which it was delivered. An unhelpful critic makes not a proper critic. That is not an apology, but is as close to one as one is ever apt to see on an image-board.

>>16483

>What's more,

Note: this is a third party poster and one most sober. I agree with the what poster says earlier, but I'd like to take this amusing glitch in particular as a metaphor for where we now stand. Chan banter and personal attacks are all that are likely to remain past this point. So I'll be keeping my rot shut on this subject and moving along.

Happily for the busy lunatics who rule over us, we are permanently the United States of Amnesia. We learn nothing because we remember nothing. ~Gore Vidal

>>16504

You are getting there. I might have paid money to read this, once upon a time. Nothing jumped out at me to cause any annoyance. I would also say this is a good example of how to interleave background world building with story such as to keep the reader's interest.

Some topics are kept isolated by memory erasure. While world governance is of a highly democratic nature, this speaks volumes. It hints at something greater inherent in the limitations of mere participation in such an ideal. The pending reconstruction project of the memorial site plays with this theme as well.

One item missing, it might be interesting to explore what impressions are allowed to remain from his work in civics. Not a complaint, but it demonstrates a build up of readerly interest.

I would rate this as publishable in a collection or magazine format.

As they say across the lands of chans: more?

>>16509

Thanks for the critique.

>it might be interesting to explore what impressions are allowed to remain from his work in civics

Ah, I meant for it to come across as everything was forgotten, not just the sensitive stuff. I'll have to either change that or make it more clear I guess. The idea was to have an exaggeration of tedious service labor, where it seems like nothing worth remembering is accomplished. Maybe I was drawing a little bit too much from personal experience and not drawing enough from the scifi potential.

>As they say across the lands of chans: more?

I've got four unfinished short stories and an unfinished novel sitting thoughout my hard drives. Nothing more worth sharing as of right now.

>I might have paid money to read this, once upon a time.

>I would also say this is a good example

>I would rate this as publishable in a collection or magazine format.

Holy fuck this feels like high praise for a rough draft. Thanks. That's actually really encouraging.

Do you guys have any preferred methods or strategies for organizing your writing and notes related to it? I have the habit of jotting down ideas, anecdotes, scenes, moments, and really anything of the sort that I think might be related to a particular writing project on one long running page for each project respectively. Inevitably, I end up with an absolute mess of thoughts. So, while I may have a fairly good idea of what I would like to write for a particular story and what I would like to include in it, I am still all over the place.

I'm aware that you can't plan for everything and I am familiar with some methods of organization/planning for other genres beyond creative writing, but I feel like my current methods of outlining are failing me at the moment. I've read a few blog articles (e.g. [BO edit. Linked site is throwing a PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR. Link removed pending someone fixing their shit.]), but I still feel like I am ineffectually scrambling in the mud. Perhaps I just need to put more time into the process of organizing, but I don't know. Any thoughts, even if it's just your preferred methods, would help.

Is anyone else having trouble with images and files on this site? Also I wrote this short while 8ch was down. If it's too long, I'll put a paste, but it's just under 750 words.

_____

"Cyborgs never did anyone wrong. Human just like you and I, all that matters is the brain, no?" Zico said.

Psh. Rye scoffed.

In the past, like a gift from heaven and the dawn before darkness, Rye, shortly after being evicted from Guardian, picked up a job from Katze. In truth, this was work in the black market, but his early jobs were mere delivery in and around the slums. The basic income as an outlier from the universal strangling poverty slowly healed the wounds from looking eye-to-eye with his block mothers' second faces. The attentive care they gave in his earlier years, even admiring the obsidian hair as unique— they pushed him out to the tumultuous scorned corner of the world at the age of thirteen.

An eager face cleaned of dried tears, Rye, still thirteen years at the time, ran on foot with a satchel from the main sector of the slums to the eastern district, Nier Darts. At normal hours, Nier Darts was a dangerous place to walk alone, but the early morning at 5:30 AM— except for the rubble, grime, and bare wires of crumbling infrastructure— the streets were clear. Treading the edge of danger like rising starlight at the horizon, and later making his wage became a common routine that fulfilled his sense of adventure.

At the residential block, dim lighting of unreliable reserve power flickered. Rye ran to apartment in the complex where his delivery was addressed to. He rang the door bell, and waited for it to be answered. The footsteps behind the door drew close and the door opened.

"Delivery!" Rye said as he turned from his bag and to the one who answered the door. "For Mr. Gle—"

The man answering had no face. Looking down upon the boy, two eyeballs socketed in a bare metallic skull— red veins and fleshy sides of the spheres were visible. A broad toothy grin that lacked the natural coverage of lips.

The immediate response from Rye was a shriek, and he sprinted back down the apartment complex's halls.

Rye heard from the distance, "Box!"

Behind him he saw the faceless man chasing after him. The light that flickered from above popped him in and out of sight. Darkness then visibility, the faceless man approached in ambiguous increments.

Stumbling in terror, Rye threw the parcel down the hall before getting back up, running again, and daring not to look back.

The faceless man picked up his package from the floor.

5:15 AM

Glen soaked a towel under a sink, wrung out the excess water, and walked out of the bathroom.

"Fucker," he said under his breath. "Son of a bitch."

He crashed on his bed and covered his face with a damp towel.

A bar fight from the other day gone wrong, he and his friends ended up in a free-for-all street brawl. The fuckers from western Ceres picked a fight, and general, half-brained violence erupted. The majority of the participants didn't recognize who was from where, and the last thing Glen expected was someone to throw acid.

He took a direct hit to the face. He lost his original skin a long time back as well as his original skull. To the credit of prosthetics, the synthetic skin that coated his current face guarded his still-organic eyes. Nonetheless, acid rendered his entire face model unusable.

"Ugh," he groaned as he pressed the towel against his face.

There was a particular idleness that gnawed on his consciousness. Lacking eyelids and being inable to blink left him largely inable to do much. To soothe his burning nerves, Glen reached for the nightstand and finished the anodyne ale he poured himself earlier.

The doorbell rang.

Glen shot up and eagerly went for the door. The towel slipped off his face and fell to the floor.

When he answered the door, he looked down to the delivery boy with the package.

"Shit," he thought to himself. "Is it the ale or does this kid have black hair?"

"Delivery! For Mr. Gle—" the boy said before looking back and growing a disturbed stare.

Fuck… the towel. Shit. Shit. Just don't—

The boy shrieked and ran away.

"Hey! Kid! Come on! The box!" Glen ran after.

The boy stumbled and hastily threw the parcel before running away. Picking up what the boy left behind, Glen opened the packaging, saw his face model and a round container of unoxidized synthetic skin.

"About time this came in," Glen said.

>>16523

>Some sexi Cyborg shenanigans mayhaps?

If you're talking about >>16517

It's something goofy I wrote around Halloween.

Off topic question, what happened to cyberpunk? The /cyber/ board I mean. While we have a potential alternative for /fanfic/, where did /cyber/ drop anchor?

>>16517

>Rye ran to [an/the] apartment

>Rye threw the parcel down the hall before getting back up, running again, and daring not to look back.

>

>The faceless man picked up his package from the floor.

Logical POV error, as the story appears being told from Rye's perspective. He would not have seen the faceless man pick up the package as the action is described.

Ah. Then you switch POV. OK, drop that last sentence and yer good.

Overall the piece has an improving rough draft quality to it. I am willing to read more.

>>16513

There is a continuum of basic writing technique writers fall under, ranging from outliners to discovery writing. You would be considered an outliner. The advantages of this methodology should be obvious to yourself without further explanation.

A typical criticism of this technique from a discovery writer is you spend more time writing about the writing instead of, you know, writing. It's also too easy to fall into world builder's disease where you build an encyclopedia instead of a story.

A typical counter argument is the discovery writer spends more time in revision hell and dead ends instead of moving toward the finale.

A third option is a mix of the two methods, a hybrid writer. This is my method. I'll make some character sketches and story notes at the beginning and then jump in. I may update the notes a bit, but, as time goes on, the notes cease to be updated to the point they may be badly out of sync with the finished story. This marks me as leaning more toward discovery than outlining as my overall method.

Anyway, my tool of choice for keeping notes is though a personal Mediawiki installation. One page for general story notes and a plot outline, and separate pages for more centrally specific items such as characters, etc. I can't generate enough energy or commitment for anything more organized.

>>16530

I definitely am more of an outliner. Usually I will go ahead and try and string together a loose chapter outline (and even the larger story arc) before diving into the meat of a work. I ought to remember that at the end of the day you just need to sit down and write, especially since that is a great way to discover things and simply work it out as you noted.

>One page for general story notes and a plot outline, and separate pages for more centrally specific items such as characters, etc. I can't generate enough energy or commitment for anything more organized.

Perhaps I should split my notes into more sections; if I did so, it would probably make them more managable. Of course, that would just be even more outlining and it might be better to just ignore 'em and start writing.

>>16532

>I definitely am more of an outliner.

>I ought to remember that at the end of the day you just need to sit down and write

Caution is advised here. Writers at the opposite ends of the continuum have great difficulty understanding how the other end gets their job done. As noted, I lean more towards discovery than what I perceive as over-organization. Makes it a bit difficult for me to accurately represent the benefits of the other side. I'm reflecting my mindset and personal bias here, not what is right, nor which is better.

Under a pseudonym (Edgar Box) I wrote three mystery books in 1952—I was very broke. Halfway through the last one I forgot who the murderer was and had to find a substitute. ~Gore Vidal

Writing yourself into these sorts of dead ends along with some outright logical idiocy goes hand in hand with discovery. There are benefits to being an outliner.

However, I do stand by my warning about world builder's disease. That's usually more of an issue with inexperience than method. Among my personal observations of other writers I have noticed it poses a much greater degree of danger to outliners.

Anyway, above all else, keep writing.

How do I into writing? I have trouble with creating stories, but worldbuilding and characters come along just fine. Frankly, I have no idea how to start, maybe I'm not cut out to be a writer and I've just idolized the whole concept. Any tips would be helpful though, I've found that writing out various dreams I've had has been a good way to start, but those often have no characters or are in first person.

>>16542

Well what are your character's motivations? "Utopia" implies that this society is a pretty good place to live. What makes it such a utopia? Why would a utopia need bounty hunters? And what kind of man must your bounty hunter be to suddenly get into conflict with the government, and ultimately give up his pursuit of profit to destroy this utopia? What sort of men do the rebellion leaders have to be to have organized a campaign to destroy a literal utopia? Just a thought here, but what if your character had some inter-personal conflicts with fellow members of the rebellion. Perhaps he criticises a leader whose motives are less than pure, or perhaps he receives criticism from a rank-and-file grunt whose motives are totally pure? Setting up the battles and shit is all well and good, but the story is going to be told from the perspective of a character, and a character must navigate, learn about, and cope with the world through personal interactions with other characters. You can drive the story along by introducing smaller-scale conflicts, which may end up coinciding with, aggravating, or helping to relieve the big large-scale conflict of the civil war. Maybe the bounty hunter is initially driven to join the rebellion to spite his dad or something, or maybe because someone he personally hates is in the government, or maybe somebody in the government - doesn't have to be a high-up bigshot, a civil servant with rubberstamp authority could fuck your mc over just as well - personally hates him or what he represents.

TL;DR your setting sounds like a breeding ground for moral grey areas so you should consider using that, and also your plot could be driven along by writing more more internal and personal conflict.

>>16534

>Anyway, above all else, keep writing.

That's definitely the goal; I just have to find the time for it.Thanks for the advice, anon.

A little tangential to writing: how do you guys or writefags find an audience for your work? A basic web search is going to yield something along the lines of social media, blogging and platforms, but something about that doesn't seem right to me.

I don't mean it from a business perspective. I think I'm wedged in an odd scenario where: I'm writing fanfiction; however, the fandom isn't something I can join (plus their interest is too narrowed down for my work).

I think I'd enjoy a writers' community like here or /fanfic/, and the basic trade of feedback is enough for me, but the problem is that activity on both is stranglingly slow (just like my connection to this website).

>>16535

It sounds like you just need to design scenarios for your characters and world. If you think about how to demonstrate the world, characters, and setting, without explicitly telling it like a Wiki article or a history book would, you could come up with basic short stories, and then move up from there.

>>16546

Catfish people into reading it. By the time they figure out it's fanfic, maybe you'll have interested them in your writing.

>>16546

I'm more or less interested in the world itself and how these creatures live and how various things in the world came to be or function, it's a psuedo-fantasy esque concept and I'm trying to avoid conflicts or scenarios that could eventually lead into other races genociding each other, but it seems impossible to avoid. The concept is basically following multiple intelligent species from their earliest form of civilization to when they become capable of living on other planets or achieve a higher plane or state of existence, so the idea is to convey how it's possible they all managed to live in their own ways without genocide or getting assimilated.

I guess I'm struggling because I've presented this world to a couple of people, but so far none of them have told me what they're interested in, so I don't know what to delve into and expand upon.

>>16601

You don't need to go large scale civilization style conflicts. You can probably start off with something easy like a daily life in an ordinary fictional fantasy intelligent species' life, but you'd need a human character to provide a frame of reference.

Like this hentai comic I read was about some alien species that immigrated to Earth, and the primary conflict in the story was that the alien main character that works as a college professor couldn't go a day without fucking multple humans regardless of gender, age, or how many at a given time.

>>16533

quality shitpost

Do people like poetry? I enjoy using rhyme/meter, but those don't seem to be too popular these days. Don't really know if my stuff's shit or not, so feedback's appreciated.

A passing breeze disturbs the sea,

The boundless field of deepest blue,

Which breaks a bit but stills anew,

And, truth be told, disquiets me.

For in that ocean, would there be

The swallowing abyss soon due,

The choking shock that chills me through,

The breathless death that snuffs my plea?

But time works strangely under there;

Perhaps I’d have a peaceful dream,

Which overcomes my frail despair,

That wrapped in roiling currents fair,

I’d let my thoughts leave in a stream

And live my life all without air.

>>16487

Dude writing Nth Sentience here. It's kinda surreal winding up on a carbon copy of the board I thought was nuked but here we are.

I have plans to restructure my novel in a way that I'll actually get some sections complete. Mainly, typing up loose ends in the framework behind the plot, culling plotlines that lead to nowhere, and developing my characters before throwing them all at the reader at once. Instead of starting the book with that weird cultist party at Valdoris manor, I'm writing a short story for each major character. Following the basic world-building in these short stories will keep the full novel internally consistent and hopefully avoid "wide but not deep" lore bloat. In Nth Sentience, I introduce concepts like animal-brain computers, exoskeltal limbs, and a means of time travel, but I hardly address how a society including these things would actually function, besides dismissively putting them in a "only the 1% elites have access to these things therefore I don't have to consider how they effect the rest of society" trap.

The short-story approach is partially inspired by the work of Cordwainer Smith, who set a series of short stories in his "Instrumentality of Mankind" universe. The scope of each story is small enough to be manageable in 20-40 pages but they are consistent enough to be grouped into one body of work. I've also found it to be very difficult to get people to read a novel draft (even if it's not the whole thing) due to the length.

Also hello again aryan robot guy. I hope to have some time later today to revisit your work. Whenever I read it the world feels oddly familiar even if I sometimes can't understand what's happening.

>>16533

I updated this short with an extra chapter and a little more editing.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/23078542/chapters/55206544

How many writefags do we still have around here? I'm thinking anyone with with something complete or more than a few hundred words to share should make a thread for their work.

(That's being generous as some OPs people tried to start either don't share anything at all, or just share one paragraph.)

Let me write you all a story.

Fuck you.

>>15218

>>16721

?

>>16790

(same guy)

My only explanation is that I got sidetracked and wanted to write a novella instead of a short story, then remembered what my original intentions were. Since that later post, I've written a short story in the same setting, though it hasn't been posted here.

I suppose this sort of thing makes sense for a thread that's two years old. Perhaps I should skim my previous posts for inspiration…

also, thank you for pointing this out, it will encourage my memory to work better

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-DUykbknlQntxq5ZpZCjM_OQnTiohQeC3RY6s9pjK0w/edit

Idea for a book I’m going to write. Is it any good? Tips?