Writing General // Questions That Don't Deserve Their Own Thread // Stupid Questions Thread//
(All neatly wrapped in one)
Feel free to ask for critique, ideas, inspiration.
I'll start: What do you do to avoid lazy writing? I'm currently struggling with character development and the easy way out would be to orphan the protagonist. What sort of youth would be free to roam the streets to his heart's contempt?
parents are wealthy and don't care about the child?
parents have many children and can't keep track of them all?
parents are addicts and don't care?
>>8094338
>What sort of youth would be free to roam the streets to his heart's content?
One who dosent give a fuck, parents or no parents, maybe
First we need to figure out what sort of story you're trying to tell, who is this protagonist supposed to be and do?
What's a good place to buy Under the Volcano? Everywhere I go online reviews say that there are typos in the book.
>>8094345
He's a person who never wants to settle and always strives for more. The kind of street-smart who'd start from the bottom and want to own [literally be in possesion of] everything.
He has nothing to lose, but also nothing to look forward to. He just has this unsatiable drive for more. The context of 'more' is irrelevant, as long as it's 'more', 'bigger' or 'better', he'll want to have it, hence the lack of purpose.
This leads him into all sorts of situations and makes him ask himself more and more questions about the "why's" of life.
Orphaning him would be the easy way out in terms of motivating both the "nothing to lose" trait as well as his complete lack of guidance.
>holy shit I just realised it sounds awfully a lot like Catcher in the Rye
need a harsh, harsh critique of this, please:
Cormac sat, surrounded by paints: the brickish brackish reds and flying auburns sang upon the walls. I am Cormac. Cormac is me, he repeated. Picking up a wider paintbrush, he began working on the petals. With the mercy of a creator, he let the two angle down softly, intertwining. Whispering to each other, he thought. He felt the wall again. It felt white. Smooth but still, he saw the little bumps that dotted the ups and downs of the living room, sprawling out into his canvas. He was Napoleon, annexing the walls with his ink. In Cormac’s furious toil however— his wooden palette has been corrupted. Corrupted indeed! In his reds were the browns of earth, making it murky. Murky and seamless like so many swamps and dark oceans, swirling twirling and wet. He was enraptured by these swirls, with the paints going up and down, side to side, in all the ways, laying curls and little flourishes in their wake. Paints are like water, but thicker.
He remembered, licking his dry lips, when he ate glue earlier this week. Mother didn’t like that, but she would like this: a rose. Her marigolds had died. So did her geraniums. Her chrysanthemums, hostas, all the purple perennials that stood in the garden’s file died. They all died. Violet with the screened porch said the garden was cursed. Demons, no doubt about it, she explained one day. Demons and hellfire killing the plants. Cormac remembered this, and wanted to give Mother a rose. He, still dragging along his brush to the wall, let a wayward petal flow and ascend into the ceiling.
>>8094338
Normal parents who don't mind letting their kid play outside by themselves like every parent did until apparently the Gen Xers who raised the current crop.
>>8094392
How old is this kid supposed to be?
>>8094392
Orphaning as well as a generally bad experience with his parents could help then
>>8094542
Early 20s dropout
>>8094557
should i try less? settle for banal prose? am i 'trying to hard'? what would literature be if trying was subversive? instead of dismissing my work, why not try and guide me? are you so removed from the sincerity of others that you couldn't possibly regard someone's attempt as worthwhile? perhaps my works really is 'all over the fucking place.' so what? i don't claim to be a great writer, but it isn't a sin to try to be one.
>nothing makes sense
really? do you not have the slightest inkling of reading comprehension to look at my words and say: 'it's a kid painting.'? can you elaborate on what you don't like about it? tell me specifically what can be improved, what can be tossed. what shines and what is dull. your dismissive critique doesn't do anything to help me.
>cormac sat, surrounded by paints
>picking up a... paintbrush, he began working on the petals
>mother didnt't like [when i ate glue], but she would like this: a rose
> he...let a wayward petal flow and ascend into the ceiling
WHAT'S GOOD, and WHAT'S BAD
>>8094585
Not him but I liked it alot, very evocative of the oddball obsessive youth idea.
Perhaps you can play up his feelings of his mother more, at the end as it felt rather lacking. Say you can get into what more he wants to do for her or get from her.
Overall solid work, keep writing anon
>>8094568
Thats a grown ass man
>>8094625
that excerpt turns into a flashback where, the mother paces in front of the garden, arguing with her husband in front of cormac. cormac's painting of the flower is as much an obsession with the arts as a way of caring for his mother, who as we learn, is being cheated on by corm's father.
while in reality, the garden is dead, the painted garden is alive. the 'paint is thicker than water' statement is echoed at the end when the 'flashback' ends, making it somewhat symbolic. this is a set up for a memoir-like short story collection, kicking off the protagonists association with beauty and art. glad you like it!!!
>>8094760
Sounds great dude, keep us posted, I wouldnt mind reading the full version
>>8094568
That's not a kid anymore... I know thi sis hard for the millennial mind to grasp, but after 18 you're an adult and should and can make adult decisions. By your description it sounded like the kid was maybe 5-10 years old.
>>8094760
>>8094585
It's like you're really an MFA student. It's garbage, the concept is garbage, the execution is garbage, the """symbolism""" is forced and garbage. It just plain sucks. It's like you're trying to imitate every author from the early 20th century all at once. You have zero voice that's your own.
>>8094835
Stop posting
Not even that guy but its clear you're too stupid to clearly articulate anything that's wrong with the piece in a way that's actually useful.
>>8094860
Because there's nothing worth going that in detail over. I'm not going to write a 400 page review of Twilight just like I'm not going to post more than a few sentences about that pile of try-hard garbage.
>>8094874
so do i quit? you've already invested time being a cunt, the least you can do is give a fair critique. i genuinely want to be better.
>>8094874
You could barely write a sentence, dont kid yourself.
>>8094493
Very pretentious, is this a school assignment?
I pasted some of my writing into iwl.me and it says I write like Stephen King
Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
I don't know anything about the man or his books
>>8094338
How do you avoid legal trouble when you realize your character has traits, or did things you've heard of one person doing? And they're essential to that character?
>>8095505
you put a disclaimer in the preface claiming that any resemblance of names, events or people in the book with IRL are pure coincidence.
Or you just don't give a fuck
What do you do with books you hate?
Burn them? I mean truly horrible books, ones that you wouldn't want other people reading for the effect that it might have on them.
Has anyone here tried writing whilst drunk? How did it go? How drunk were you?
Where can I download audiobooks? I wanna give it a try and I don't feel like wasting money right now.
Hey /lit/, just read Ai's the kid. Trying to figure out why he goes axe happy, only to run away with his dad's suit, mother's dress, and sister's doll. Any insight?
>>8096402
>Trying to find meaning in nigger scribblings
>>8096294
librivox.org has a pretty big data base of public domain audiobooks. There's also a very comfy app for it.
>>8096110
I try it all the time. Works really well when it comes with getting the ideas going. The way I do it, I drink about 150ml of whisky over the course of 2-3 hours. Every 15 min or so, I take a fag break to recollect my thoughts and plan the next scene. Afterwards I switch to coffee for another 2 hours.
Obviously, it needs a bit of editing in the morning because drunk writing is like drunk socializing: you say things that perhaps you didn't mean or things that sounded better when you were drunk. It depends a lot on how you hold your liquor. If you're the kind of person who babbles nonsense after 2 pints, drunk writing is not for you. For me, this method has proven very efficient, and I finished the second half of my novel in just over a month.
Obviously I don't recommend it becausealcoholism
>tfw trying to right a novel with a vaporwave aesthetic
>tfw I just can't seem to do it
Am I proof that passion doesn't replace talent?
>>8098363
not sure if it can be called "vaporwave aesthetic" but try reading Froth of the Daydream by Boris Vian, it has that surreal feel that you might be looking for as inspiration senpai
>>8098479
ty friend
>>8097051
I'll check it out, thanks.
Can someone please tell me who they're refering to here:
https://youtu.be/YWi0AMyniYc?t=592
i can't seem to get the spelling of his name right, and i don't find him in any list of knights.Bonus Question: I thought only people from britain could be knighted, am i mistaken?
did we already die?
"Beneath my feet lay the records of eons. In its expanse birth and death. Not celebrated and revered. Not anguished and sorrowed. As foliage took hold and dissolved the records, sustaining themselves off the prior, no creature stirred in protest or in joy. Above my form stood the symbols of civility. Not the arability of the memoirs of past life, but the sterility of the new. No longer could one call it a source of life for it was in all true form not to be regarded as such. This amalgamation of metal and scaffold was where life was forced to take hold. And it would be celebrated and revered by all who inhabited. And it would be anguished and sorrowed by all who labored. For both protest and joy would be endured."
Plan on writing more or less about 3rd world urbanization and all those soulless commieblock cities.
How should I name my cat?
>>8098978
An name from Egyptian Mythology, because they worshipped them. Both gods and cats.
Is my book concept worth exploring?
I'm working on a horror novel where the villain is a modern version of HP Lovecraft. It won;t mention Lovecraft by name, but the character is what I imagine Lovecraft would be like (the socially autistic and racist fellow he was) if he had been born into our progressive, socially liberal times. His character lives in a crappy tenement building and hates all his neighbors for being on drugs, black, gay, trans, etc. When an ancient, non-corporeal evil, reminiscent of C'thulhu, wakes from a long slumber, the two meet and form a villainous bromance and begin terrorizing the low-class neighbors, who are the actual main characters.
>playing piano filled with flames
I understand now
>>8099318
Eh, sounds a bit childish.
>>8098771
I like it. Smooth flow. Get the whole thing out before you edit.
https://youtu.be/bo_xPtZn3x0
From Min 3:50 where can I learn more about "we relate to the world in a meaningfull way only through a fantasy ,or glass"
Or any other thing he talks about in the video
>>8094493
Ornamented prose like this is only acceptable if there's clearly something consistent leading somewhere through perhaps lots of good subtle references or implicit linking. Yours is just a heap of pretentious phrases that are nothing behind their per second rhythemical value, you're trying too hard that it strains even yourself so please stop
I just finished writing my first novella and I'm kinda torn on whether or not I should edit and revise it. I know it's not complete shit, but it's still the first thing I ever made. Every writer out there says that the first few books are always shit, so I guess I just want to finish as many stories as possible to finally write something worth publishing.
My characters are a "Doctor Who/Emmett Brown" mad scientist type, a cowardly physics graduate student that has a crush on him, and an arrogant philosophy major that's always running his mouth.
They go on a strange journey through a dimension of dreams to save the universe from non-existence. In this place, any rule you impose on it becomes as real as you believe it to be, meaning that your powerlevel is basically determined by how creative you are. The fights are very anime-ish and the characters are nerds that love fiction, so they're basically incredibly powerful once they arrive.
Still, it's a very weird mix-match of everything I love so I don't know if anyone will actually like it. The philosopher even quotes Schopenhauer while telling a beautiful redhead why he doesn't believe in love and shit! I wanted to do a Neon Genesis Evangelion type of thing where it gets progressively darker and metaphysical, but since it's the first in a two part series, I never got to the really dark shit I wanted to write about.
Does this sound like something any of you would actually enjoy? Should I just shelve it and move on to other stories?
>>8096110
Last New Year's Eve I was alone in my house and drank half a bottle of Black Label out of boredom. I ended up writing a poem about losing purpose in life. I'd never written poetry in my life, and haven't since, so that's my experience. Writing drunk might lead to poetry, so be careful with that.
Artificer’s Death (Bright and Gleaming)
Shining spikes of Giza stripped of quarry edge,
Glory flayed as skin, skin a hoary casing.
As the quarry was left a gash, you a skeleton—
Mountainous bones housing bones housing nothing.
Timelessness brought to an abrupt
End. The four humors became misaligned
As blood wore down the mountains,
And as men of blood trod down the banks.
The Nile became of blood, both vein and artery.
That cardinal humor spread blackward.
Wroth wine spilled from the hand of Mars,
Fermented mythologies ache, aching to speak.
Artifex working in Corinthian brass, your cannon
A trumpet, sound off as I strain my ears,
Yet still I fear that I may not hear
The writhing of Philomela.
>>8099625
Edit it after writing something else to give yourself distance, and The premise is weird and would require some really good writing for me to be seriously interested.
>>8098771
I tend to prefer longer sentences, but you did the start-stop thing pretty well. The flow in the later part is pretty great, but your word choice isn't my cup. 'Foliage' and "No Longer [...] as such" were my only problems with it that were worth mentioning. They felt legalese-y in a way you may have intended.
