>tfw your first draft seems just fucking unsalvageable
>>7751919
Keep trying, anon.
Not everyone is cut out for writing.
>>7751919
>20000 words or so into your novel
>realize the basic theme or concept of the story is extremely flawed and can't be fixed without deleting everything and going back to the drawing board
>that moment when you realize you should just stop immediately because what you're writing is so bad
>>7751919
>tfw first attempt at writing fiction in ten years
>tfw my prose is fucking gold without any amendments
I guess all that patrician reading paid off.
Inb4 delusions of grandeur etc.
Yeah, I can't wait to get to fixing all the shit I wrote.
I wanted to give a little sense of what things look like so I said the specific type of car the character was driving and reading it later I realized it was a shit idea and that it sounded like product placement.
>>7752075
post some or it didn't happen
>>7752075
proof please
It gets better. With every new draft you cringe a tiny bit less. A dozen passes later? You find something that just might do.
>>7752212
have a go at trying to edit something you started writing three years ago, half of it is fucking dreadful, and the other half is okay
>tfw good prose but bad narrative and dialogue skills
>tfw when ideas seem great until you actually write them
>yfw racist blacks in south carolina wouldn't vote for a jew so instead of a socialist who fought for civil rights in the 60s they vote for someone who was a young republican in the 60s and whose husband "ended welfare as we know it" in the 90s not to mentioned signed a trade agreement with mexico that exported african-american jobs
well i guess trump gonna be the next pres, i ain't even mad, but i feel bad for who vote for a zionist shill due to being too anti-semitic to vote for a jew, oh the irony
>>7752246
/lit/ you dumb fuck. /lit/
>>7752249
it's a thread for random greentexts u autistic homo
>tfw your novel is just stitched together fragments of books you've loved and admired
>tfw everyone can see the seams
I just need an idea all my own, I have the time, the passion, I just need that idea to come along.
>>7752251
no such thing as original ideas u nube all art is synthesis
>>7752255
Yes, yes, I know it's what everyone says ...
>>7751931
It's okay. I did 70,000 of a novel that I ultimately scrapped. Still recovering emotionally, but I'm a much better writer for it.
>tfw no gf
>tfw too scared to talk to a qt I see reading patrician stuff everyday
>Too scared of making a bad impression to make a good one
>>7752266
Tell her
Hey u mistress
U want coffee?
I can read ulyssex for you ;)
>>7752266
>caring about gf's
ahh to be young n angsty again
>20k into novella
>it's shit
>realize it's meant to be a poem
>months later
>reduced to an 800 word poem
>still not right
>realize the thought that inspired it is untranslatable
>scrap the whole project
>tfw this novel will never escape my head
>tfw 3rd draft is a completely different book, but still used scraps of goodness remaining from the 1st draft
Rewriting is one hell of a drug.
>>7752284
iktf
>novel is 81k words
>has an inconsistent tone, no plot, and no immediate thematic concerns
t-time to revise
>when you can't seem to get started on a shitty first draft because it hurts to write so bad
everyone with a completed draft please post an excerpt, first paragraph of page 10
OP why are you expecting to shit gold?
>>7752316
>hey I can do this
>it's a notably shit paragraph
fuck, time to rewrite
>tfw all the intertextuality seems surface level and doesn't lead to anything other than a vague reference if the reader can even spot it
>>7752324
Joyce?
Is that you?
>>7752251
Actually its okay to have everything stitched together as long as the whole is more than the sum of its parts
So see which part you stole and then purposely fuck with the theme so that the context of that part becomes completely transmogrified. Willy Shakes did it all the time, like turning the shitty morality play Romeo and Juliet into a story about the Power of Love simply by using the same story but leveling up the Romantic Poetry and screwing with the end.
The writer must bury the works he loves and cannibalize them into better stories.
>>7752329
Thank you for this, but joyce was atleast coherent
>>7752331
This is a G.O.O.D. post.
>>7752320
He could turn his shit into gold.
>tfw have cool ideas for themes and ideas but no idea how to put these into a good plot
Also, does anyone else feel like their lack of experience in life seriously holds them back from writing good stories? For example, I'd love to write allegorical adventure stories about early explorers crossing great wildernesses or other things like this but writing these stories would involve setting I've never visited, and historical periods I've never researched.
Should I go Jack Kerouac and wander the earth for years so that I can have enough experiences to write good stories? Or am I overthinking it?
>>7752364
>and historical periods I've never researched.
Gee, it's like the answer was in the question.
>>7752331
Preach
>>7752364
Faulkner said that you needed 2 out of 3 these things to write well: Experience, Observation, Imagination
You should just read more adventure stories and crib those. In fact there was an interesting anecdote about I think Joseph Conrad never including any talk about his sea travels in his diaries or letters besides being like the main writer of the sea. Sometimes imagining adventure is cooler than the adventure itself. Hemingway and Orwell are the opposite examples of course. I don't think Edgar Rice Burroughs needed to be an explorer to write Tarzan or his Space Stories either.
>>7752316
>As was the popular tradition, both girls had torn strips off their clothing, baring naked shoulders and showing slivers of flat stomachs, making them look almost primitive. They reminded me of an exhibit I had seen once, at a museum, of hunter-gatherers. I envied their youth, though I myself was still young.
eh, I quite like the ideas and imagery but prob gna clean up the "They reminded me..." and make "I envied their youth" more subtle
I've also changed this story from the first person to the third person
>>7752394
it has that angsty teen smell man nobody gonna wanna sit through a book of alienated young man stuff
>>7752316
When he got there she wasn’t there. He waited. His hands clumped the dirt and grass, but then he remembered that this was close to the spot where he left his semen, and suddenly his hands felt really dirty. His semen was mixed into the dirt, flourishing with the worms into some kind of bastard life. If a tree were to grow on that very spot, what would it be like? We wish that we could see our innards in a proper form. Behind these masks were all these fluctuation and blood-coagulate matter. Inside that muck, where was the soul? The tree would become into the shape of his soul must have been latticed with maggot-chewed leaves. If it were a fruit tree, it would have borne callused peaches and avulsed apples. The bark would have been a frock of red. The branches thin and withered. A tree bloodied and bruised on frustration.
>>7752316
I call it the Story of Yeezeus
It is my masterpiece
http://pastebin.com/WgPFe1nQ
>>7752415
> It is wisely advised of us to begin an expository or argumentative essay with a summation, or a ‘topic sentence’ if you will.
first of all that's wrong, second of all that shit was fucking stupid
>>7752424
>does not understand the the incompatibility of neo-constructivist dematerialism with the post-discourse form of the meta-narrative
>>7752400
they will if its a girl, lol
besides, Catcher in the Rye is still a thing
>>7752405
>When he got there she wasn’t there
Eww
>dirty
>dirt
These were pretty awkward and stood out, rest is fine i guess
>>7752432
girls don't like reading about betas
moreover, ur like that joke from the movie "the good girl" (i guess it's a shitty book too) where there's this creepy weirdo guy who works at a supermarket or something who wants to write a great novel that's exactly like the catcher in the rye.
remember when lit used to have a bunch of annoying grad students who would write massive wall of test posts about maoism or sth, where did those dudes go? save us from these ghetto college teen shiteads...
>>7752415
Don't waste your time and energy in letting that two dollar fagbox be a footnote. Kanye is delusional white trash with a bad tan
>>7752444
you missed it
the idea was that people will read about "alienate youth" if its a female
>>7752451
there are no great or even commercially successful books about alienated women...if a woman is alienated ppl will just assume she's fat or something, the only way u cud sell a book about an alienated women if the author kills herself
>>7752490
You know so obviously little about YA and contemporary pop culture
>>7752364
who needs experience when you've got the internet
>>7752494
name me a book with an alienated female protagonist that isn't the bell jar
also,
>bragging about YA knowledge
bwahaha stahy pleb
>>7752572
Anna Kerinina
>>7752582
and u believe women like this book?
>>7752364
Same but add prose to the mix.
>>7752597
it was literally in Oprah's Book Club m9
>>7752394
The prose seems awkward.
>>7752572
>name me a book with an alienated female protagonist that isn't the bell jar
Every single YA novel with a female protagonist written in the past two decades.
>>7752605
wow cool did she have tolstoy come on her show and discuss it with the audience?
>>7752617
nah he had some misgivings about it and she rescinded the invitation
>>7752316
The skin of the sea with all its illuminant smears of sunlight, like how eyespots on the air-thin wings of a butterfly blink in and out of visibility, waved to and fro on the girl with the tail as she ascended toward the water’s surface and the first exhalation of dawn. She clenched her teeth, freeing her fists slicked with sun-stained beads, and turned briefly to latch her gaze onto each sight which the moment’s immediate freshness and brevity rendered transient in a way that felt free. Far off the black specter of a ship sat in the bay, past which was a jutting strand, a tail of earth swallowed partly by the ocean, populated by blocky shapes and blisters resembling a myriad of tiny, colorful houses. These structures interspersed the narrow landscape in a way similar to how red and purple sores manifest on the end of an infected foot or ligament.
>>7752394
>though I myself was still young
noticeably bad, i'm chuckling tb'h
>>7752641
images are just everywhere, the prose doesn't read smoothly, and I get very little from a first reading--not enough to warrant a second one if this were in a novel
>>7751931
It's okay anon. John Keats's Endymion was fucking rekt by critics and still is, and he himself acknowledged that it was awful. It was a 4,000 line epic. BUT, he wouldn't have been able to write his truly great stuff if he wouldn't have sloughed through Endymion. It's an important experience even if it's not successful.
>>7752709
Thanks anon, this has been inspiring
>spend three months writing a short story about a middle class family in the days leading up to a war
>it's shit
>spend a half hour writing throwaway trash about a guy jerking off while he orders mcdonalds drive thru
>the prose is complex and flowing, the scene is at turns funny and profound
>>7751919
>Character bible written
>Detailed background and lore written
>A few chapters in...
>It's an evil wizard story and it can't be fixed without massive revision
The story has been stalled for months now and I'm either too stupid or too stuck in a creative funk to figure out a better plot.
>>7753400
You can easily just put your own spins on it
Gene Wolfe literally wrote a sword and sorcery story, complete with the asshole becoming king at the end, and now its the biggest meme on /lit/
>>7752641
slow down with the purple prose there buddy. This would be good if the descriptions were spread out across many pages
>>7752075
happen to have a book list?
>>7753406
The thing is that the "evil wizard" parts are only at the beginning but to get to the better (in my opinion) parts I have to get through them. I'm just trying to think of a way to make it seem a little more fresh and original.
>>7753429
Me personally, I feel like if a reader has to "get though" some parts for the story to get better, the writer messed up, the entire thing needs to be seamless.
So I guess you can try to find a better place to start the story and re-arrange events and details to convey the same information but in a more unique way
I've only written about 30,000 words so far of my present (third, or fourth) draft. I've been working on this for nearly four years now. In all that time I've written and thrown away probably over 200,000 words' worth of work. I don't regret a thing. I'm finally in the home stretch.
>>7753432
> if a reader has to "get though" some parts for the story to get better, the writer messed up
My problem exactly.
I've moved the starting point backwards and forwards a few times but can't find a good place to start. I've just worked on a few short stories while I mull this novel over in my head.
>>7753441
Id have to see it myself to give anything substantial, but I guess in general look for places where the characters are taking definitive action towards their goal, use that as the start of the story
>can't write dialogue for shit
Why even bother
>live in canadian north
>never lived anywhere else
>all i write is gritty beatnik fiction in 1960's new york
>a place, a lifestyle, a people, a time i know nothing about except from books and movies and music
i am a complete fraud. my knowledge of the world is a pop culture lie. anyone know this feel?
>>7753458
This is why I have no shame in writing sci-fi.
>>7753458
I live in Asia and I'm writing a story set in Europe.
>>7753458
possibly not a bad thing?
you could make of it a surreal embrace and call it a satire.
>>7751919
The hardest part of writing, at least for me, isn't coming up with details of the world and interaction between characters, it's making all of those ideas fit into the framework of a well-defined story arc. I've taken to outlining a basic story and then filling in the gaps as I go along.
Realistically, you can't expect to write a novel with a cohesive plot until you've written at least a few short stories with cohesive plots. Forget about being original, just focus on writing something that isn't a disjointed mess full of plot holes. Once you've developed that skill set, then you can start moving away from tropes and developing plots that are more complex and interesting. But until then, write something that's boring, write something unoriginal. Once you've mastered the art of writing boring shit, you can then reasonably expect to be decently proficient at writing mildly interesting shit. Eventually, you will work your way up to consistently writing shit that might actually be pretty good.
>>7753486
Good advice. Take Paul Auster's advice and practice with Detective stories.
Also Hunter Thompson's advice and type out Fitzgerald and Hemingway and Faulkner novels word for word.
>>7753486
This is why you know your ending...Progression is the real meat of the story.
>>7753449
I was planning to have the story with the MC having her leg nearly ripped off by a barbed whip thing and then beginning an investigation from her hospital bed. She doesn't actually get out of the hospital until a few chapters in, but that's another thing that's kind of up for editing.
>you thought you'd sacrificed love & basic communion with humankind to become a good writer
>that's not how it works
>don't even fucking enjoy literature at all
>only reason you write is because it requires the least social interaction and has the lowest barrier for entry
>you will never create anything as masterful, enduring, or as beautiful as Princess Mononoke, or End of Evangelion, or Blue Velvet
>your happiness isn't the kind that can be converted into artistic content
>>7753505
Its a start, just keep playing around and you'll get it it
For me my issue has been properly setting up my main characters progression. I'd definitely have my ending in mind but it would always seem like a huge jump from where I started with him, almost unjustifiable. So its like I had to dig deeply into the setting and his character to get things properly arranged for him. Its coming along pretty well I think, hoping to have a full first draft by the end of the summer
>>7753532
>>only reason you write is because it requires the least social interaction and has the lowest barrier for entry
thats actually webcomics
>>7753538
even the worst art still requires more investment than the worst writing
>>7753532
>>you will never create anything as masterful, enduring, or as beautiful as Princess Mononoke, or End of Evangelion, or Blue Velvet
>tfw I know exactly what you feel but I'm still going to go ahead because I'd feel sick if I didnt
At this point doubt is useless, there is only work
>>7753551
i will kick your ass, faggot. i know you.
>>7753558
Get in line.
>>7753559
i'm going to make you into shark food, you lousy douche. i'm going to beat you up so bad you'll cry. I'm gonna eat breakfast off of your asshole. I'm gonna sleep with your mother and take her out to eat and be very sweet to her, and marry her, and stay with her for the rest of our lives. I'm gonna be a kind and loving father to you. in the afterlife, i'm gonna kick your ass though, you measly waif bitch.
>>7753562
That's the spirit. Now start those revisions.
>>7753566
nope, you're gonna get whacked. hard. i don't need to revise how much i'm going to hurt your feelings.
>>7752119
>>7752157
Lately I’ve been feeling afraid
Lately I’ve been feeling afraid. Nightblue fright hurling horses with vast horstrils holes pointing at me smiling and neighing eerish words. I believe I might be in the process of dying. Hair falling off nails turning velveteen diving off the hills of mulholland now that was a good movie but don’t believe in them bag of lies cheap images to cheap feeling death is all the more awful when you know how cheap how trivial it is. I have been feeling very afraid of these blackcavaliers interrupting my baddreams. Now that I think about it. They had to be. Filthy animals nagging me my sleep why do people baddream of ponies? From god and then john said: Impure Word beget impure thought. We say it then it gets out running wild we say it then it’s too late always too late running astray blown to life from the holestrils and back. Death in the black hole, now that’s a proper thing. Before you can realise it, erased with the universe, into an atom and then it explodes, or implodes? Doesn’t matter. The matter matters not: not mattered. Disappeared. Never appeared. Painlessly, the whole of creation ruined. Never born. Not suffered. Ever innocent. Don’t mention it. The most solidary. Don’t name it. No. Death by Melancholia. Oh.
Lately a terror has overtaken my otherwise enjoyable listlessness. I thought about it for a long while. What for since I don’t believe in them thoughts. The secret of life is in the diphthong. Do it properly or you’ll sound French. A Parisian I was and not a millionaire. Not fought she said. Not that way she said. Thought; t-h-o-u. On the tip of the. Molière won’t do. More Shakespearely: dance with the tongue. O happy this is thy sheath there rust thrust then me die. Is there anything else than the sound? All these fishy little syllables jests them mixture of sound jousting and jolting. Surely there must be more than this. You. I am talking to you. Don’t you reckon so? Thoughts, for instance. Thoughts of you. Thoughts for me. If we just repeat everything. If we keep going. Saying it again. It’ll come at the end. Don’t you worry friend of mine. Kingdom of His on earth. If we just keep phrasing the letters saying the words singing the good old prayers. Sant Jon said so. At the beginning the word then the world here within us and then we free. For Thine Is The Kingdom. On earth. The Kingdom. Amen. Don’t you reckon? Is there anything more in my head than the loopy music in circle me fragments of sounds crumbs of syllables shreds of alphabets can it please stop can I please start to. I know what I need. More. Yes, more. Keep on going. Repeat it, expand it, chant it: diptonge diphtongus diphtongos: over and over. Until the end. Perhaps at the end. The very last tale. The sound before the shadow. The last drop of it and fury. There it is. There significance. Signify. Perh. . . Even mea. Even mean. Even meani. . . meaning.
Shut up, you shut up, shut up.
>>7753574
you should be published. right away.
cont.
You who can hear me. You who are murdering me while I gently baddream. Why am I afraid? There is nothing here. You are nothing more than I. Under the socks. Above the bookshelf. I burned the books to make a fire. Naught’s had. All’s spent. Fire of my loins. No-one else. Someone wants me dead. Someone outside of myself. This my friend is quite a logical deduction. See, there is really not much to be afraid about one’s own self: the wicked always come without. So another person than I the murderer he must be. This friend you see is reassuring. Keeps me going when sun’s out. Round yellow golden circled logic. My god your god it’s all alright. No fear I am I, he who kills me is he, we have established the rules so it is perfect it is all right: I am myself alone. Not quite. Bad liar. I pale before the disagreeable idea of being pushed down the cliff by someone outside of myself. Pangs of disgust. It’s like dying when you don’t want to. When you don’t expect to. Shadows sneaking on you by the corner of a dark street. Deserted by light life and the lamppost. Cheap images to cheap death. A film noire unimportant. All the more trivial. All the more scary. The sudden drop of temperature on a summer’s night in Santa Barbara: the days are over, begone sweet warmth sweet sweet daysofyore nowtime eversleep longdream nighthorses.
Then I think about pushing myself. Handtwisting backwards like a bell. The very word is like a bell. My head is like a bell. Dinghollowdulldongdingdulldongollow.
Lately the possibility of the two terrorises me: either there is more than a sound, or there isn’t more than just a sound. Either I am, or there are two of me. The bellpaper words flourishing into a mantra. Word within a word, unable to mean a word. Mother I am scared. My mouth in my brain chewing it out. Could it be that my mind is trying to murder me? William it’s called. William the other I am called. And Wilson I am. William Wilson, nice meeting. I waiting to be murdered. Squandered for eternity. Son of my mother, flesh of my flesh, body and blood and wounds. Surely there must be more frightful deaths. Everything else. I’ll take everything else. Never baptised. Would like to. Really I don’t wish to be killed that way it’s too disgraceful. Don’t kill me when I’m scared to die. Dying whilst afraid of death and moreso afraid of dying like everyone else kneedeep both ruined hands rigor mortis is the meanest of all. I lay on my pillow, imagining the grey colour of the word colour and down the stairs the horsefaced nightnag rummaging baying for blood of my blood.
>>7753551
How long do you write every day?
cont.
The two of us cannot coexist: one has to die first. Birth of the twins: who’s elder? Fake twins it must be. Tainted placenta and womb and all. The vengeance of the unborn child. Why does something as quaint as that had to happen to me? I don’t even believe in shit movies. Bag of lies. Why did they invent them anyway? Now ashbooks riding the dustwind of mumbled and ignored aaaaah words.
So yes, I’ve come to the melancholic conclusion that I am killing me. It is a rather detestable sensation. The applewaves drowning the wet ball of fire at Santa Ana by five o’clock. Here it sets down early. Here they don’t wander off at night. Country of squares: luxury, peace, and pleasure: there all is order and geometry. Sure. The land of happy happy happy happy logos. Despair of finitude is due to lack of infinitude. Say it again. Sure: The happy land happy logos happy. Now it’s definitely coming. Despair of finitude is due to lack of infinitude. Despair of finitude is due to lack of infinitude. The jest is infinite. O it is come now I can in my mouth this moment chew it in my house heat flows in. The vice. Is in. Herent. It is come yesterdays like Santa Ana it is flowing in: O we walked on the beach I was happy then not having any ringing and tingling in the head music coming from the outside and dead in the inside music of the applewaves caressing gently rolled oceans of hands harvesters of sunlight music of paperlike birdies high combing my thick hair telling me to hush petting the top of the head Motherly music of all these travellers barefooted the sandgrit ticklish waters filling the void in between toes nails in between gazes halfcircles of fullsmiles silently fulfilled as the salmonsky dries itself with the music of time an immeasurable bliss I them us with me like me notexactlyme but sharing and echoing back me nothing to justify nothing to be had nothing to be spent everything in the music silent. Then the ball died off swallowed by the whalesea. Splash the sound it made ticktock in my brains all resumed when the eggyellow sea battered by the big and flat whisk. She went back to Newzealand back to the mundane el gran teatro del mundo. He went back to Berkeley back to defy geometry with a bunch of pills and syringes, now that I, he probably is. i have loved u sam. The sea turned evilish and yellow. Two yolks mean unborn twins. Hopefully they won’t twitter. Mother needs rest or else. Mother. Two. If you’re two you’re not lonely. If I’m two I’m not alone. The shellshocked ringing deathly hissing at my ears: not silent.
Well, rate my patrician fiction story shitlords. I am a connoisseur of literature and my prose is Joyce-tier.
Inb4 delusions of grandeur etc.
>>7753574
self-indulgent stream of consciousness nonsense
>Shut up, you shut up, shut up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRzMtlZjXpU
>>7753591
pretty much every day im working on the thing, bouncing between outlining and actual prosework
>>7753608
Shut up kiddo.
>>7753596
this uuhhh
needs work
>>7752572
The girl with the dragon tattoo
>>7753596
lmao
>>7753574
Are you mcride? This sounds like death grips lyrics
>>7753854
>being this jealous
>>7753835
He's right, though.
