How's that novel of yours going, anon?
Great, thanks for asking. How's yours?
I-I'll get started soon, I swear!
>>7386757
Great, anon. Keep going. 52k words this week here. Planning to reach 70-75k until December.
AHAHAHAHAHAAAA
it's fine.
>>7386751
Love Joan Cornellà. Hilarious and surreal.
But it's going. I'm a third in. Gonna finish it, edit it, have a few people help me with a edits and then print it and stick it on my shelf where it will collect dust.
I finished one, polished and ready to go. Almost done with the sequel, but if I can't sell the first one it doesn't fucking matter.
>>7386784
>Genre fags
>>7386815
It's actually not a genre book. Just regular lit fiction.
My "novel" is "finished", thanks for asking.
It's going ok I think. It's over 300,000 words and mostly done. Still needs some editing. The length will be a big turn off for publishers, especially from a first time author, and self publishing will be shoveling it away onto the heaps of other unloved amazon refuse, so i think I'm just going o blow my brains out.
>>7386865
>300,000 words
>Still needs some editing
Gee, ya think?
Dude, the length won't be a turn off, it will be a massive fucking red flag. 100,000-110,000 is pushing it, anything over is instant death.
Why don't you just break it up into several books?
Slow, but I'm not in a hurry. About a third in, so not too bad. I'd like to finish it before the new semester starts, won't have a lot of time then for writing, but it would be ideal for polishing and editing.
Still in planning stage, but I think this could be the one.
>>7386884
It doesn't really need too much editing plot-wise. The length is what it is. A few people have suggested breaking it up but it's sort of it's own solid thing. Waddayagonnado.
>>7386922
Well i'm just letting you know that you have 0% chance of getting it published if you leave it at 300,000.
Not sure why you can't just chop it up, but what the fuck ever dude, it's your call.
quick question: how are you guys satisfied with quantifying your works based on the "number of words" that you've written? i feel as if "number of pages" is a little bit more understandable, seeing as pages in many ways can correlate to specific narrative instances, but word-based-numbering just seems a little bit arbitrary. like how does that have anything to do with what is being communicated? and i really don't mean to disrespect, i just don't get it.
>>7386949
Yeah, I'm sort of resigning myself to that fact.
Self publishing and serializing it might be a way to go, but I don't know yet.
Finished with the third and final draft this past February. Now trying to get it published.
My autobiography is about nothing
It's almost finished
>>7386968
/lit/ sometimes equates >muh big books with >muh intelligence and forgets that there might be people who want a book that's a reasonable length
Also word count is the industry standard for judging lengths, 50,000 is considered short novel length. War and Peace is a lot more than that.
>>7386968
Word count is a way more accurate measure of how long something is. Page count can be misleading, if a writer is dialogue heavy for one they'll have a pretty high page count but it's mostly empty space, so it's not a great measurement.
>>7386968
>word based numbering arbitrary
It's literally industry standard.
>>7386987
cool.
Just curiosity, what do Gui guys are writing about?
You don't need do explain the book, perhaps something like
>boy meets girl
>girl suicides
>depression and alcohol
i can't ever write a novel, finishing a ten thousand word short story takes me months and gives me anxiety attacks
finished, proofread, submitted to publishers and agents, they all rejected it, cried into my pillow, pretended it never happened and thinking about an ending for the next one.
>>7387101
What's about?
Sales could be better.
Actually I need a publisher. Agent would be useful, too. Maybe I should write a query letter. And a novel. Haven't started yet. Unfortunately, not even an idea. But, I definitely will. Tomorrow I start a course: learning to read and write
>>7386751
Really hoping to finish it this year.
>>7387101
If you believe in it, take whatever criticism you got, edit it again, self-publish, promote the shit out of it.
>>7386751
I published, saw the sales and felt nothing
>>7386865
What's it about, anon?
Almost finished the last book of the saga.
Yeah, i know writing a saga was a terrible idea. Dont even mention it.
And now i started a new novel, its coming along nicely. But being inspired is difficult.
>>7387110
guy whose closest friend is a lesbian and she is dying of an autoimmune / neural degeneration disease that was given to her by an alien in order to drive them to ask the alien for help in curing it so the alien can use the woman to hack into a giant spacegoing killing machine and take it over by transferring her mind into it but she doesn't think her friend will go along with it so she makes up some story with the alien about alien drug trafficking and
yeah. that doesn't really do the story credit.
also the main characters are Subgenii.
>>7386751
I'm still in the worldbuilding/story outlining phase, but not to shabby.
I've got a rough idea of how I want the first part to go, but I'm getting stuck after a certain point.
>>7386968
>i feel as if "number of pages" is a little bit more understandable
Like hell. If I tell you my book is 300 000 pages, you will have no way of knowing whether it's a million words with font size 6, or 300 000 characters, one per page. On the other hand, if I tell you it's 80 thousand words, you should get a pretty good idea of the actual length of the text.
I think the pile of shit pages has gotten so big I think its bullet-stopping ability just went from a type 2 bulletproof vest to a type 3.
Shelved for now
>>7386884
Mine is 34,000 words. Too few?
Not even begun.
>>7387101
Self publish if you believe in it. The industry doesn't know art, they just know sales.
>>7390007
The industry really rolls it's eyes at self publishing, even though some of the best sellers of recent memory were initially self published.
It's kind of annoying because agents and publishers really have no idea whats going to be the next big hit, though they all pretend like they do. Publishing is basically just educated gambling. You make enough bets, and hopefully a handful of them will pay off big to cover all your other losses.
>>7390007
Chances are that guy doesn't know art either, and wrote a bunch of self-indulgent wank
>>7390043
That's usually the case with the "My stuff is just too good to be published," fags. It's never actually art, just plotless bullshit about guys sitting on the beach or at a coffee shop and pondering the universe.
>>7386865
>he thinks agents will even ask for the first reading when you tell them it's 300k words
>>7387101
There's thousands of agents. I doubt you submitted to ask of them.
>>7389031
lol wtf?
>>7390029
And rightfully so, most self published work is garbage.
But that really doesn't matter, from your perspective. If your work is good, people will read it no matter where they have to get it from. I'm surprised there aren't more people self publishing and linking their novels here.
>>7390112
>I'm surprised there aren't more people self publishing and linking their novels here.
That would expect people to be actually working on whatever they say they're working on and finish them too. And, well, this is 4chan, bro.
>November 2013
>develop ideas for characters, setting, style, plot
>okay I'll get to writing soon!
>write first chapter in March 2014
>its now almost December 2015
>have only rewritten that first chapter
I'm trash. though I feel attachment to the story itself I feel like just deleting everything at this point. feels absolutely horrible, I'm so disappointed in myself
2,182 words in chapter 1. My first time trying to write a book. I've literally never written anything before this.
Is it long enough?
>>7386751
This is a the first one I haven't deleted after 3,000 words after ten others so pretty good I guess
>>7386751
Got 4k words
It's about man who moves to a city from a rural setting, he gets involved with a guy he works with and he ends up in consistent bouts drinking
>>7390087
it makes more sense at 89,000 words than it does at 100. otherwise i wouldn't have bothered to write it all. i could have just tweeted it.
>>7392454
but that would have left out the robot with big tits, the purple haired elf chick sex slaves and the telepathic squid doctor. and the telepathic squid doctor implied squid sex.
and all the robot battles.
>>7392376
A chapter can be 20,000 words or 2. There's really no specific amount.
>>7392506
Thanks for believing in me. I actually think I could be a Pulitzer winner
Waiting for my friend to finish reading my work so far so I can fix what needs fixing before writing more.
>>7386751
It started fucking amazing for literally the first two pages, I was really proud of myself and now it's just getting shittier and shittier and now it's fucking unbearable, just 10 pages in. I can't fucking think, I can't write, there's no discernible talent. I'm serious about this shit, if I can't write a single fucking novel about the themes that I'm passionate about I think I just might kill myself. How the fuck do you even do something like writing consistently throughout an 800 page book? Is there an ABC of how to construct a novel? What is your method?
70 pages so far and literally nothing has happened. This is going to be great, I just know it!
>>7386751
i've got 3 going.
i just do a little bit in each one every night.
i don't know. it helps me to have lots going at once.
one, which is probably going to be a novella, is actually getting close to an ending.
the other two are pretty much just droning on and nothing is really happening and i've basically written them off as writing exercises.
>>7386751
Really shittily, actually. I have the story in my head and it's interesting, I think, but after a few chapters I have difficulty with keeping it fluent and not just boringly telling a tale.
>>7386751
It keeps on rewriting itself. It's gone from pile of vomit to bad fanfiction tier to good fanfiction tier over the past few months. Now on the 6th draft and reduced fifteen chapters to five chapters.
I thought I had a great start.
Then I went on an internet forum and saw a decent amount of people literally trash my themes and subject matter I had for my short description, nearly word for word.
Literally bought a bottle of booze and haven't typed another word since.
>>7394087
Not everyone is up to the challenge. At least you rely on a drug that is the same tier as your writing and ideas wololo
>>7386751
>sit down
>write for a solid 6 hours
>"I'll edit this tomorrow"
>tomorrow becomes today
>go over what I wrote
>completely unattached to the work
>gut it in editing then move on
>never return to the 20 pages that I wrote
>repeat ad nauseam
>tfw I have dozens of fragments/beginnings of stories
>tfw none of them will ever be completed
I'm starting to feel more and more like I'm a fan of writing and not a writer
>>7386751
I'm still living the plot of it, can't write it, yet. Thanks for asking, Anon.
>>7392841
I believe in you my german friendo
>>7394188
>I'm starting to feel more and more like I'm a fan of writing and not a writer
You are a writer if you are published.
>>7386751
I didn't plan on writing anything this big.
>>7386987
wow anon that was a really shitty argument!
>>7389905
Yes. Aim for 70k.
>>7391714
just write a page every night. don't reread it or anything, just keep going on to the next part, however small a step it might be. you gotta break a book down into tiny pieces in order to ever finish it. starting to write on your mega generation defining epic five story book is impossible, starting on the first scene however, is doable
>>7386815
>he doesn't write homoerotic romance novels
Do you guys have any resources for general tips for writing a novel, how to self-publish, and more stuff like that?
I don't write. It's post-intellectual.
>>7390112
or your writing can be atrociously bad on purpose for shock value. or politically incorrect comedy a la emptyhero
>>7387022
1984 with social justice, aliens, and big corporations controlling the mind of the people. Tons and tons of drugs, mind altering music and cults for hamsters and science
>>7390112
Isn't advertising a work here against the rules?
>>7387022
>guy just gets out of a relationship
>guy becomes depressed and hallucinates for a bit
>meets a new girl who can walk into dreams
>shenanigans ensue
>book is written from the perspective of a painter who describes everything that happens as if describing a painting
>>7394608
le pixie saviour
>>7387022
A group of adolescents have to fight for their survival in some form of futuristic arena which is filled with a type of monster they have to trick and forest-y terrain
There is also teenage romance
why is it so difficult to write directly into a doc or whatever text editing software you choose? more importantly why is it easier to write on paper with pen or pencil? sometimes I just stare at the little blinking bar where the words are supposed to come from and then go back to /v/ or /pol/ or /lit/ or /hm/ or whatever.
>>7394623
that's just your autism
>>7386751
I have six going at once, and most of them aren't far along. I know that's not good, but Christ, I get an idea, pursue it, and then lose it. I hate it.
>>7394665
General rule is that only the ideas that stick with you are good enough to pursue. If you find your initial idea still interesting after a week (or month) it might be worth developing further.
>>7387022
>year is 9015
>the last three humans (man, woman, and child) live on an island off Louisiana
>after the parents die, the child begins to keep a diary, and the story is told through its entries
>once she becomes old enough to look in the mirror, she discovers she's not a true human, but the last of a race of highly evolved, vampiric humanoids that ruled the earth and kept people as cattle prior to an alien invasion that wiped them out
>goes out into the world after being sheltered all her life and deals with the devolved remnants of humans, eventually becoming a Messianic figure among some of them
>whole book begins with her writing like a child would, and her maturing is exhibited through the way she writes as the story goes on
>tfw too intelligent to write a novel
>mfw I'm an editor at a publishing house and I'd love to think I've personally rejected /lit/'s work
>>7394689
cool
Daily reminder none of you are remotely talented and that your writings will bring both you and others zero satisfaction.
Inb4 le butthurt meme
Ask yourself if you think what I said is really true in private for yourself and i know what conclusion you'll come to despite what you may or may not reply
>>7394868
jokes on you, people have gained satisfaction from my work
>>7394868
Good thing I don't want my writing to be satisfactory then.
>>7394868
>he doesn't have online fans anxiously waiting for more
Is it bad to make up words if there's no words made in the English language to describe what you're meaning
>>7395414
If it makes sense (i.e. has a half-decent root) and it's evident what it means, go for it.
>>7395427
what about "adantequam" (ad antequam) (to before) for meaning the previous topic noun used in the same sentence instead of regarding it as "it" or the noun itself. "It" sounds so anti-climatic and using the noun itself is repetitive.
There might be a word for this already, but I don't know
>>7395438
or maybe not "adantequam" which can refer the act of using the word that I want to use instead of using it or the noun itself. I don't know any words to preserve the beauty of a sentence without using it or the noun itself.
>>7394868
Why so sour grapes lil buddy?
>>7394689
Very cool. I'm dead serious. Please pursue that. Id love to
see a link to what you have so far
Shitty. I only have some character outlines and one or two minor scene outlines. Not one word actual writing.
I think I need to do some writing exercises or somethig before I write an actual novel. Any tips?
>>7395858
stop playing with your dick and write
>>7395711
https://mega.nz/#!U9FwwJqK
!0B2Xl6wfyIz9tf4noQZodY5uovTmCZNqN-Wa0DF5QoY
Sorry I took so long. Went to sleep right around the time you came around.
Anyway, it goes without saying that I have a lot of work to do. This is only a bit of the first chapter, and the whole way I wrote it is bound to change; she's 17, and I'm trying to get her to write like someone of that age in her circumstances will (i.e. not particularly professional, serious, what have you), but I get the feeling that I'll come to a point down the road where I'll really get a feel for it and have to redo her early prose, that song she sang off the top of her head (because even a child with little to do but educate herself probably wouldn't come up with that), etc.. As it is, I'm not totally satisfied with it, but it's a start, I suppose.
Criticism would be appreciated, of course.
>>7387022
A short story a couple living in a mountain town, who get a knock on the door in the middle of a snow storm. No one's at the door, and this continues to happen and drives the women to insanity.
I had in mind that it would end up with the husband killing the wife out of anxiety and fear. After he gets arrested, he spends a night in a jail cell and the cop on duty also answers a mysterious knock, and spends the night staring at the man behind bars.He ends up breaking out, rushing to a nearby door, knocks frantically, and when they answer, no one is there.
It's probably garbage tier.I really want to write good, depressing horror. I'm struggling, and reading books to inspire me (My favorite all-time book is The Road by McCarthy), but I'm trying.
I keep trying to write a novella or a short story, but I always get stuck at about 10k words.
I've only tried writing historical fiction/sci-fi, so maybe I should try writing something else.
My life isn't interesting enough to write something based off of that, so I don't know what else I can write about.
>>7398243
Would read.
>>7394361
>/lit/ believes this
Finished. Totally shit.
>>7386784
Can I read it for free?
>>7386842
What do you mean by saying "finished"?
>so many cactuses in capcha...
>>7386865
It's like shoving a horny matermelon into anon's ass. Too big man, split it into three or four vols.
>>7389905
double it or trash it.
>>7386751
First book is waiting for third revision. Plotting second half of the second book and rewriting the first chapters now. It's not going very good, sat like two weeks on the opening paragraph and don't want to skip it for now ... time to buy some wine and get it done with.
>>7386884
Seconded. 300k is commercial suicide, even a published author would have a hard time selling it. Find a way to split it in three books and you'll be fine.
>>7386968
>"number of pages" is a little bit more understandable
Assuming people use norm pages. They usually don't. 400 pages could be 50k words with a lot dialogue and shitty formating or 150k words with a small font size like 11 and 40+ rows on a page.
>>7387022
>naive/kind girl has crush on a terrorist and wants to get his attention
>stuff happens
>she ends up on the opposing side
Though it's just a side plot line I use for world building and as writing practice for more normal characters.
>>7390029
>Publishing is basically just educated gambling.
That's how any industry works, welcome on Earth, enjoy your stay.
>>7392841
>zahlenmagische Anspielung
Huh?
>>7395414
In your case it sounds more like lacking vocabulary. Nothing wrong with making up words if they transfer the meaning better and add to the works atmosphere though. (see A Clockwork Orange)
>>7386751
I finally started. It's shit, but it's started.
>>7400307
That's the main thing man. Keep it up!
>want to write a lowbrow fantasy
>have had the idea since highschool, still make some development and changes to this very day
>have a third outline written, plus a reference for characters, historic dates, battles, etc
>have written a few sample chapters plus a few revisions
>too scared to actually write it since I can't handle major rejection
I am literally George McFly
>>7401391
So you need your son coming back to tell you to write?
>>7398863
I wrote it for NaNoWriMo. It was basically the partial memoir of a diagnosed psychotic with a 40 page dream in the middle that I had previously written as an attempt to transcribe a series of four related dreams. I subsequently took the dream out and as a result the novella is only 80 pages or so.
It's going alright. I've made a basic plot outline and some rough notes. Started yesterday. I've written the first paragraph of the first chapter. It's a magical realism, post-apocalyptic chivalric romance with focus on religious themes and social satire.
How you uh, how you comin' on that novel you're working on? Huh? Gotta a big, uh, big stack of papers there? Gotta, gotta nice little story you're working on there? Your big novel you've been working on for three years? Huh? Gotta, gotta compelling protagonist? Yeah? Gotta obstacle for him to overcome? Huh? Little story brewing there? Working on, working on that for quite some time? Huh? Yeah, talking about that three years ago. Been working on that the whole time? Nice little narrative? Beginning, middle, and end? Some friends become enemies, some enemies become friends? At the end your main character is richer from the experience? Yeah? Yeah? No, no, you deserve some time off.
>>7386751
Got about 7k words so far. It's about a guy who moves to the city, drinks a lot and lives a bit of a party life with a friemd who is also his co worker, be grows tired of it eventually and moves back home
It has a bit of a rum diary vibe to it, a coming of age, going over the hill theme to it
>wanted to write a story about loneliness, and how different people react to loneliness, react to others being lonely, and find solace in each other even through all the loneliness
>Most importantly, that it's okay to be lonely and that no one has the right to tell you that you shouldn't feel lonely
>Worried it's gonna be perceived as YA bullshit simply because the characters are 17~
Oh well, I like it. It's giving me a lot of emotional closure anyway. Even if it never sees the light of day, at least I got that from it.
>>7402106
fuck off tao
>>7402119
:-(
b-but m-muh new sincerity!
>>7402098
sounds boring as fuck.
>>7402125
It won't be particularly long, it will pretty much be detail a few wild nights then focus of his he is over it. I don't think it will be too boring
>>7402132
>I don't think it will be too boring
what's the project?
>>7402136
What do you mean?
