For General Writing >The Rhetoric of Fiction, Booth >Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, Burroway >Steering the Craft, Le Guin >The Anatomy of Story, Truby >How Fiction Works, Wood
Technical Aspects of Writing >Garner's Modern English Usage, Garner >What Editors Do: The Art, Craft, and Business of Book Editing, Ginna >Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style, Tufte
Books Analyzing Literature >Poetics, Aristotle >Hero With a Thousand Faces, Campbell >The Art Of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives, Egri >The Weekend Novelist, Ray
Three days of procrastination later and I'm starting to feel guilty. But why? I've no commitments. There's no deadline breathing down my neck. I could finish any number of projects easily enough, tomorrow or the day after at the latest. Yet I don't. I let the work pile up. I make no commitment. I let it pile up. Dogs are barking. I let it pile up. Cranes flew over my house. Eight cranes. I let it pile up. Two swans flew over my house. I let it pile up. Three doves and three days. Start. No, I won't. I stare out the window. The wind blows. Rain falls on the window, little drops. The drops run down the window, following curious paths. I used to stare at the windows of dad's car and follow those droplets for hours on long drives. My siblings would moan and whine, ask if we're there yet. They thought I was looking out the window. I wasn't. Just the window itself, and the water. Tomorrow will be the fourth day of me not working. I need to give account of my conduct, if not to anyone then to myself at least. Why do I do this? I put on rubber slippers and go check the mail. Junk mail. What else? I throw it all in the recycling bin and walk back to the house with empty hands. Junk. All junk. Maybe that's the key. I sit down at my computer and look at all the junk they sent me. I prepare a simple e-mail message to all of them. "Thank you for your interest, but this just isn't what I'm lookin for, yours etc." I send it in a single mass reply, then delete their junk, all of it unread. With a sigh of relief I begin to feel pride swelling up. Being a literary agent is hard and thankless work, but I just did three days' worth in less than two minutes. I'm one of the best. Dogs are barking again. Maybe it's time for a cup of tea. All work and no play make Jack a dull boy etc. Before I get up, another piece of junk has entered my box. It keeps piling up. But surely if it's just the one, I could read it? Tea first. Maybe after. Maybe it will keep piling up and I won't have to deal with it.
All of this is pretty gay. Have you considered not dropping your book into the void?
Jaxson Martinez
How about writing your book first and worrying about marketing when you have a product to sell?
Christian Taylor
There’s a guy that can write 600 pages for his book but I can’t even sit myself down to get stared. I just want to try my hand at short stories but I can’t ever write my first line before I realize it’s too late in the night to get started. Why is it so hard to move ideas onto paper?
David Diaz
Because you have too many distractions. When you open your computer, do NOT open your internet browser. Don't play music. Don't open anything except your writing program. Then write. Write you fucking pussy.
Leo Butler
Because you're staring at a blank page. I'm at 305k right now, I have 4 chapters to go until the final climax of the book, which will probably take another 4 chapters to do. And then I'll be done. By far the hardest chapters to do were the first several. Even though I had an idea of what I wanted to write, I was purely flying by the seat of my pants.
Writing is a skill you need to work at to get better.
Daniel Thomas
Is it best to jerk off before writing a child rape scene so that you don’t get aroused?
Juan James
It is best to not write such scenes if you‘re prone to getting aroused by it you pedo.
I can imagine how that must feel. But you are right, we get better as we go. I'm only about 60 pages into my work right now and I'm trying to write a scene that's been in the works basically since the first few pages. I want the payoff to be perfect. (The funniest part is that I have the next three or four chapters basically already written in my head, I just need to muscle through).
Are you going to self-publish? What's your plan? And do you have anything to share? I'd love to take a look.
What helps me is to sort of come up with a skeleton for how I want to progress things ahead of time and then treat writing as the application of flesh and clay to those bones. Sometimes you'll even have a better idea along the way. Don't be paralyzed by inaction or the fear of being less than perfect with your efforts. There's always time to go back through.
Why would you write such a scene unless to get aroused? "T-totally not a pedo bro, just art"
Samuel Wood
I admit. I get a good laugh every time somebody in social media announces "I'm going to write a novel guys!" and gets hundreds of likes and encouragement and then just shuts up for half a year and never brings it up again because turns out it was easier said than done
Hunter King
I'm currently releasing it on RR. royalroad.com/fiction/40361/erased The chapter I'm releasing today in a few hours is chapter 80. When I first started releasing the book last year the very beginning of this chapter was where I was in the draft. It was chapter 68 at the time and I was 200k in. I've added 12 chapters to the middle of the book during this process, most between chapter 35 and here. At this point I was stuck between finishing the book quickly in a few chapters or just letting things play out. I let things play out so I ended up putting my mc on trial for 5 chapters. My plan is finish putting this thing on RR, draft the sequel until its far enough in, and then switch this over to Kindle while releasing the sequel on RR.
I can't wait, I absolutely cannot wait, to get back to drafting. Being forced to release on a schedule is good and bad. Editing is where the book really takes shape but it definitely feels more like work than drafting. Drafting you can just kind of be as loose as you want as stuff plays out. I'm also really looking forward to it because the book is in 1st person and I'm changing the mc for the sequel. I get to shape/relearn a new (well, existing) character's personality traits and quirks, and its really fun to discover how a character works doing that. I can't wait to get back to drafting, and I can't wait to really discover her voice.
Colton Murphy
The point of the scene is to show how terrible an act it is and to make the reader feel repulsed by themself if it arouses them.
Brandon Jackson
thinking of changing narration in my novel from first person to free indirect. i haven't made it very far, so the changes wouldn't be dramatic. i'm essentially trading a bit of immediacy for a load of freedom to develop and embellish, while still remaining stink breath-close. my main cope here is that if i can switch it up with such ease, perhaps my choice of first person wasn't that well thought out or even necessary to begin with, and the narrator (a sheltered, slow-witted neet) was increasingly clashing with my writing voice anyway. i really want to avoid the tone/style of similar-ish fare like convenience store woman, and this is my chance to escape
my only real losses at this stage will be the opening line (perhaps still salvageable), and the intimacy of calling characters "my mother" etc. i guess i also liked the idea of the finished work being something written and left behind "by" the narrator, but again it just doesn't gel with the overall character
>to show how terrible an act it is Like nobody gets that without a demonstration? No normal reader is going to read it far enough to get repulsed
Camden Williams
Are you earning any income from publishing your work there? Or is this strictly a labor of love for you? I'm also surprised to see just how comprehensive and generous the feedback seems to be on that site... People are leaving multi-paragraph reviews.
Matthew Reed
Maybe to explain a characters trauma of sexual abuse.
Jack Moore
>Holding stronk on 1k+ words >tfw you nail a scene I hope you all feel this feel
Brody Thomas
Reviews have guidelines that reviewers are expected to meet. If you just post "shit sucked :(" it gets deleted
Zachary Moore
>that feeling when it's a banger Sweet ambrosia.
Justin Reed
Question for gore-heavy content and racism as a narrative tool on RR; a large part of my story is that the MC and his people are very much ethnoationalistic and thus consider anyone who isn't one of them a subhuman. Granted, it is a fantasy so the 'others' aren't actually human, but my point still stands. My question is, how likely are people to freak out at finding this out since its supposed to be revealed ~10 chapters in, and how badly will they react to scenes of rape, extreme cruelty and gore?
Right now, no. I always viewed the monetary end of this whole book publishing thing to be a mutliyear endeavor. Basically build my audience by using RR as betareaders and also as an opportunity to edit. Move the first book over to kindle to monetize while releasing the 2nd on RR, maybe even start a patreon at that point and have it sitting off to the side. I initially wrote the book because I wanted to entertain myself, and it was tremendously to fun write it. So then I wanted to share it with people.
The way to make money after that, I figure, is by creating little stories, maybe 50-75k each, contained in the universe I built. Put those out on Kindle and use each new work as a marketing opportunity for the ones that have already been written. But the main reason I'm writing is because I enjoy what I've been creating, and if I make some money from it at some point that'll be a good thing, too.
Leo Wilson
Pretty poorly. Is this something you want your protagonist to grow out of, or is that just gonna be the 'thing' the whole way? Either way, you'll probably want the initial encounters with the others to be with the others being somebody your protag is justified in slaughtering. The rape is probably a bit much overall though, unless it's just alluded to as a thing.
Kevin Sanders
It's a 'thing' the whole way. I do intend on making it 'somewhat' justified, but a large part of the story is that the protag and his fellows are supposed to be seen as the boogeymen of the universe; raiders, pillagers and conquerors. The intention is to show how the protag's culture sees such things as morally justifiable and commendable, but pretty much everyone else is piss scared of them, and with good reason. It's kinda supposed to be the story from the perspetive of the 'bad guy', but calling them that is way too black and white.
Isaiah Nelson
Then that'll be a hard sell. You can have ruthless protagonists easily enough, but protagonists who're so blatantly in the 'wrong' are rough to make work. Having a protagonist be part of such an ethnonationalist group and only generally agreeing with it due to a lack of outside knowledge or arguments can work, but that'd require the protagonist growing out of it most likely. Villainous protagonists tend to need to be somebody you can understand taking the dive into villainy, and most people won't sympathise with ethnonationalism. You can absolutely have the character be somebody shaped by, but not defined by that nation's beliefs, but again that makes him less of a bad guy.
Tyler Russell
I had the idea of making it a moral dilemma type of deal wherein the protag starts off as not giving a shit just like the rest of his people, but as he interacts with the 'others' more and more he reaches a point where he has a crisis of belief and starts to be a lot nicer to them. Only, his trust would end up biting him in the ass and leading to the deaths of many of his loved ones, leading the story in a full circle where their reasons for the ethnonationalism are proven to be valid, and the protag becomes a nutjob butcher, happy endings be damned. Thoughts?
Gabriel Edwards
That can work out depending on how well you write the character himself. This all said, this sounds more like a character who'd be a good antagonist, I don't really know what you get writing him as a protagonist. Hell, the prospective protagonist to his antagonist could be a person he befriends who is pushed into betraying him, leading him down that dark road. RR in general has a harder time with villain protagonists, I think. Ruthless is fine, but they have to generally be on the right side of the story. Also the whole "proving their reasons for ethnonationalism valid" stuff definitely feels like it'll be read into as you having those beliefs and that's just not something you want, regardless of your own actual beliefs. You could have him seem justified to himself, but have his unreliability at that point be clear enough that his own justifications are simply an attempt to hold the moral high ground long past the point he would have held it.
Jose Sullivan
Yeah, that bit about how it seems like it's me just projecting my shit onto the character is definitely something I'm trying to avoid. I want him to be the protag because it's extremely fun for me to write him, and the way in which he percieves the objectively horrible things he and his mates do through the lens of it being glorious conquest. And I sort of want it to be an unabashed edgefest in the closing chapters where the protag becomes deranged. Even thinking about swapping perspectives to one of his friends who's been with him through it all, just to make it clear how even they, who never had their morality challenged, see him as having gone off the deep end. Miiiiiiiiight reconsider because it's a taaaaaaaaaaad bit of an edgelord shitfest, but I'll see. Got a long ways to go anyway.
James Collins
The occasional outside perspective of "Holy shit this dude is absolutely fucknuts" can help. It's a tricky path. You could avoid the ethnonationalist stuff entirely and simply have him be "man who reaches out to an enemy, gets burned and goes crazy insane murderer on them" but that would weaken it somewhat.
Hudson Allen
I'll def have to think about certain overarching motifs like that, and I like the suggestion. It's never overt ethnonationalism, but that was the closest term I could use to describe what it's sort of like. Either way, thanks for the feedback!
Xavier Green
You will not write. You will slack off. You will shitpost on Yea Forums. You will brainstorm. If you do write, it will be awful.
A good way to make him seem way less agreeable is to have an occasional chapter from people he's killing, especially people who're completely innoncent or some such. A perspective from somebody who's justified in being killed is usually used for "Wow the protagonist is terrifying, that's cool", but used from the perspective of somebody who's totally innocent and the protagonist has no justification for going after is "Wow the protagonist is terrifying, that's horrible". And there is a certain catharsis to watching somebody go down that awful path, though you might have to question how much is what people will actually be willing to read, because seeing an unrepentant murder-man just go nuts for a huge chunk of the story is a good way to get dull, funnily enough. That sort of thing should probably be the climax.
I think you should just do it and don't apologize for it. You'll find an audience even if the pearl clutching twitter crowd hates it. Just make sure to make the book as fun and interesting as you can. Fuck those people.
Robert Lee
>You will brainstorm Close to heart buddy, imma go to sleep.
Nicholas Jones
You need to show it earlier. You are giving the readers a shock, most of them don't want to read gore porn... Atleast hint it somehow. I'll say it like this: everybody thinks they can pull off a second-act complete turn around and still be a good book but they really can't. Take a hard look at yourself and think If you can make such a turn justice.
Christian Morales
That's actually a great suggestion. And yeah, I'm well aware, hence why I want him to be a murder hobo at the start, then he undergoes a crisis of belief, then he gets burned, and then he becomes murder man two electric boogaloo. Having the occasional flip-side chapter might actually be great, especially if I don't say the protag's name, just have him be a nameless terror that the 'victim' has to describe and fight. Thanks for letting me bounce ideas off of you btw, been needing a bit of feedback as of late.
Landon Phillips
A twist shouldn't fundamentally alter the reason the audience gets into something in the first place, is the general rule. You won't get people who like the post-twist stuff because they won't read the pre-twist, and the people who liked the pre-twist will be turned off by the post-twist changes.
Andrew Murphy
I'm a font of ideas, some of them are sometimes even good and then I keep those to myself and don't actually write them.
Nathan Fisher
Hinting at it through contextual clues in the world is definitely something I'm doing. It ain't just a hard 180. Dialogue, descriptions and worldbuilding are all geared towards making it seem like there's something off about the protag and how he sees certain stuff he comes across. Hell, I've even got a scene where he sees something 'objectively' horrible happening at the hands of one of his comrades, and he just reacts like it's a normal, everyday thing, which is kinda supposed to be the moment the reader realizes "oh shit, these guys are kinda fucked up.". Might post it here down the line but for now I'm still kinda trying to figure out how to properly arrange the whole thing so that the twist is a good payoff for all the prior buildup. Pacing's also a bitch.
Eli Martin
I get people are gonna shit on me for this, but Stormlight Archive has a similar, though nowhere nearly as extreme thing going on. The majority of the main characters are from Alethkar, which is the nation basically every other nation on the continent is afraid of pissing off because they're functionally the Mongols. It actually takes a fair bit for it to really sink in that "Oh wow this country is awful", even with the protagonists being in shitty situations because of going against their country.
Isaiah Johnson
I want to write but have no ideas even writing prompts don’t seem to help what do I do
Nathaniel Price
hello. how are u? i m fine. i dont write, but i was thinking about maybe considering writing something someday. does n e 1 have any tips? i want my work 2 b as epic as lord of the rings, as timeless as crime and punishment, as influential as atlas shrugged, n as best selling as harry potter. n mebbe a choreographed dance # in the middle. i luv dabbing. i dont have a lot of time n motivation 4 practice, and i dont read n e thing but isekai self inserts on wattpad. ok, i dont read them, i just kinda skim them. i get the gist. im looking 4 a quick fix so i can skip the boring middle part w all the work n sacrifice. if u help me, i promise 2 remember u when i become rich n famous. u can come over 2 my mansion n e time. thank u n have a nice day.
Luke Price
Ok yeah, if you're building up that's a better way imo. Drop a hint or give clues, no matter, just don't shock the reader for purely for the sake of shock itself, unless you want to write shock fiction. Game of thrones used shock rather well and it granted the series its infamy, maybe give him a look? If you want pure shock fiction to look at the very edge of possibilities I can recommend "perverted" shock - the books "necrophiliac" and also "ass goblins of Auschwitz". Necrophiliac is more of a perverts book than pure shock, and ass goblins try to make you puke. Ass goblins also push all the horror/disgust/pity buttons over and over, it's like a masterpiece of being over the top. Personally I couldn't read more than a few chapters.
Jose Bennett
What do you do when you really want to write a story set in a specific genre but have never read that genre, only experienced it in movies and games?
Joshua Hughes
This may sound crazy, but you should read a book from that genre.
Juan Cox
Wouldn't I simply be a ripoff artist then, easily influenced by what I read and writing a copy with a couple twists?
Caleb Green
Does it matter? My gramps wrote like 60 books and the main thing he does all day is read and research. Writing seems to be a third to a half of his time spent working.
Juan Long
>i dont write, but i was thinking about maybe considering writing something someday. welcome home brother
Ian Ramirez
Anyway you can try to write it without preresearch but then comparing it to already written work will show you other angles.
Luke Carter
Put the pen down, Mr. Biden.
seethe
Nicholas Hughes
You will get your ass up and sit down at the page. You will work hard because it is worth your time. You will get your act together because you love the hobby. You will seek to improve and disregard your ego. You will write. You will make it.
Uhm ACTUALLY it was Drumlf who had accusations of pedophilia pinned on him.
Jonathan Ortiz
based
Carson Jackson
Does anyone have any good resources on how to properly think out the clues and pacing for a mystery?
I have an idea of all of the different red herrings, different suspects and of course how to make the actual final criminal having an interesting motivation, but getting the right pacing and way of unraveling clues in the middle parts of the story is something I'm trying to sort out. My biggest influence right now for the "tone" of the mystery is Father Brown if that helps.
Caleb Ortiz
I've read all of GoT, so I know what you mean. The Ass Goblins thing I've only ever seen posted as a meme but since you've brought it up, I'll check it out just for fun. Love me some disgust baiting.
