How i stop my prose from being pretentious and smug?
You don't, you keep writing like that to provoke those who read your works and come to criticise by saying: blablabla pseudo-intellectual blabla you think you know it all blabla rhetorics blablabla who the hell you think you are blaaaablaaa pretentious and clichè blabla.
Laugh at their own stupidity.
The prose reflects the author. YOU need to stop being so pretentious and smug.
If they can detect it you are still pretentious.
You can do it to such a point that it just blends.
That is true mastery.
Don't. Be demure in your next book.
>>7671011
This is correct.
>>7671011
But what if the reader is smug? He will read it with joy. Keep doing what you are doing Opee
use colloquiallisms, make subtle but noticeably intentional grammatical errors in a way that signals your awareness, anticipate potential valid criticisms and have respectable charcters present them while maintainimg slight ambiguity as to whether they are embodying your views or acting as fodder for them, have a literal psychotic preoccupation with how you are perceived
Are you the guy that wanted to present his manuscript to a publisher in a used pizza box and faking an Italian accent?
>>7670978
Read more pleb shit. Avoid old classics and instead read HGarry Potter or Stephen King.
>>7671276
lol i remember that thread, was 2-3 years ago
>>7670978
it's simple: write what you mean, not what you think people will like
you can write pretentious prose if you acknowledge that to the reader.
>>7671286
It was like last week you tweedling weasel.
>>7671301
this
>>7670978
tell them you're not pretentious, they're just stupid and incapable of comprehending your great works of art. then teleport behind them and slit their throat
Read more American authors. You'll realize it's unnecessary.
>>7671331
Probably the guy hasn't tried to be published till last week or /lit/ is a limbo of unoriginal ideas.
>>7671301
Exactly this. I had the same problem. You could also be writing what you think is literature rather than what you actually want to write.
>>7670978
Be smug ironically
