Threads reminder to please refrain from posting genreslop in this thread. That’s what /wng/ is for. This thread is for the discussion of serious literary writing.

>>25192522
What if it's not a web novel though? Just a short story?

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>>25192522
>serious literary writing

>>25192522
>serious literary writing
So go on then. Share some of your serious literary writing.

>>25192522
This except only ironically

Yeah I'm pretty uhh literate

>The first person to ever tell Timmy he had a big cock was his sister.

How's my serious literary writing?

My writing is serious shit, your writing is seriously shit

Now that I'm unemployed, I need to rearrange my desk since I don't have a work laptop anymore. Once that's done, then I can finally start writing

>>25192522
What counts as genreslop?
My newest project is about Catholic vampires but it's totally literary, I promise.

Finished my short, now I need to think of another story so I can keep writing every day. Any tips?

>>25192572
serious craft, not serious content.

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Would you continue reading?

>>25193614
I dig it, though the male perspective seems to fall off quickly rather than be properly integrated. More of a back and forth between the perspectives might be better.

I am opening my story with a quote.

>>25193614
Started really interesting than you made some phrase choices that confused me. Then the male POV disappeared. This is good but you need to set down some rules and I guess, try not too hard with the prose. First rule of prose: meaning needs to be clear. "[...]widened eyes filled the hole in which he hid himself." What does this even mean? Are you saying she is seeing him and she has big eyes? There a better ways to say a woman has doe eyes.

>>25193362
Thanks... I guess

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Finally gave up on getting the novel I wrote published. Queried about 50 agents, got 3 requests for fulls, and 2 said it was too weird. The last one sent a polite "not for me" email with no feedback, which I assume is also code for "too weird."
It's lit fic too, so I hoped that agents would be more willing to take a chance on something with an unusual structure/form than if it was genre fiction. Ah, well.

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>>25195062
What's it about?

>>25195062
Might as well post an excerpt here.

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>>25195086
Not going to give you the full cover letter, but basically a metafictional retelling of the Inferno set in a rundown boardwalk town in bumfuck New Jersey. Each chapter corresponds to one of the 34 cantos. The narrator is a self-described misanthropic, failed writer trying to make sense of her life after the recent death of her muse.
She drunkenly stumbles into the hereafter, and is guided through encounters with ghosts from her past by a Falstaffian ex who is utterly unconcerned by his own death. Believing that her way out of the afterlife is dependent on undergoing meaningful self-discovery, the form of the novel grows increasingly experimental as she becomes more ambitious and desperate in turn. This includes weird formal games, like a chapter comprised of interlinked obituaries, a chapter narrated by a different voice entirely after the narrator attempts to drown herself back to life, a series of chapters styled as pastiches of famous novels that invert the content of the original, a terza rima chapter where she meets the author, a fully-formatted legal brief arguing for custody of the novel, etc.
I referenced most of the weird stuff in the cover letter and synopsis because I didn't want an agent to think that it was one of those "girlboss narrators who behave badly while making smarmy social commentary" books, ask for more pages, and then get totally blindsided by the more eccentric material. My hope while writing it was that the reader would feel that the narrator was pathetic or sympathetic in one chapter and loathe her in the next.
>>25195096
Here's the first page. I think it's 3 strikes and I'm out for me with queries, so I suppose it's nice to get any other set of eyes on it.

>>25195217
Really like it, consider self publishing if you can't find a publisher

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>hmm told I will...
>start another sexy story that will never see the light of day except in Literotica

>>25195217
This sounds really fancy and sophisticated. Is it your first book? It sounds really hard to sell as a first book. I might be completely mistaken, but I'd guess to publish this you would need to have some reputation and great prose to carry it.

>>25195385
where else would a sexy story see light?

>>25195450
Where indeed.

>>25195217
Genuinely interested in this. Like the others have said, this is indeed “too weird” as a first attempt to find an agent. How have you been querying? Are you looking specifically for more literary focused presses or just kinda casting a wide net?

>>25181949
>>25182022
Thanks anon. I'm a thread late but hopefully you can give me some feedback. I can post the rest of the excerpt as well, as it was only half.

What about it made you like it and keep reading? I'm just curious as to what it evokes in you so I know what's "working", so to speak.

>>25182024
To put it bluntly the character is suffering a bad fever and is hallucinating so it doesn't mean much by itself. But my intention was to make it so that the character feels like the stars are mocking his suffering.

For reference, here's the excerpt:
>>25181765

Actually, let me just post them back to back:

Under those cold stars that laughed, light years away in indifference, Joam shivered down to his very bones, lying on the damp deck of his ramshackle ship. Cold sweat ran down his body and fire down his insides. He had thrown up more than enough that night, and the boat rocked sickeningly under him. The smell of the sea, once comforting to him, now gagged him like an apple stuck in his throat. Pain was on his fingers like they were hogtied— and all this, with the musk of the boat’s floorboards made him close to fainting. A convulsion went through him at the as something sang far away in the horizon. They sang:

“Red sky night, sailor’s delight!
Red in the morning, sailor’s warning!
Italy’s there at midlight!
Jas up file an’ vorin!”

And there were drums and flutes and strings accompanying this across the ocean air. Joam mumbled something.
“Quiet, now,” Areia said, taking a cloth she had cut and dabbed at Joam’s forehead, “Try and rest.”
“Tell them to stop singing,” Joam said, shaking like a leaf in a windstorm, “Tell them… Tell them that I do not want to listen.” He swallowed bile and dared to open his burning eyes towards the burning sky, “Let me sleep.”
“Shh,” Areia said, her eyes shining in the moonlight and her braid over her shoulder, “You’ll sleep soon enough. Quiet. I’ll fetch you a blanket.”
In the sky there were things that moved around like serpents that painted a vast, dark canvas. Things—not men—were riding those paint-snakes made of color and ink; songs came from them, as well, much more faraway and unearthly.
A soft rain now came (it had to be rain, though, the drops were hot!) and through the rain came stories and in the raindrops, figures formed and told stories of an angel that was not humane. That a curse had to be given to someone else and if this were to happen, Joam would have to call out so that the curse could be cast out far away.

(1/2)

>>25195544

Take this, he begged in his fractured mind, Take this far, far away.
He called out. Areia whispered. Joam closed his eyes for a long time, whispering to himself, not knowing whether to wish for an end to this or for the ship to sink with him. Either way: what would be left of him afterwards?
“I’m hot…” Joam said, voice thin as a breeze. Then he began to toss and turn. He whimpered, to which Areia said, “Hush. Let’s get you some air, yes? Get you some air. We’re getting closer to Italy, Joam. Come on.”
She began to take his shirt off, and it came off easily. His body was slick with sweat and yet the night’s cool air did little to relieve him. His chest heaved up and down just as thoughts began to flood his mind.
What a broken, wretched, broken thing he was. Would his people back home come for him, save him in this pitiful state? He had never been this sick away from Porto. This brought a flood of tears and in a moment of clarity that seemed only to come from God, he caught Areia staring straight into his eyes, just as she reached for his breeches and he caught her hand.
Her milky white hand—now scarcely tanned by their time under many suns—even in his distant state of mind and spirit felt warm and soft under his own fingers. Whether her eyes were welling up or not was a mystery to him, as he could not tell from the tears in his.
“Don’t look at me…” Joam said, bowing his head in shame, “Don’t look at me, please. Look at the ocean.” Then he cried deeply, but quietly to himself, so that Areia could not see him. All the while, the boat rocked and Areia sat back, not touching any of his clothes but occasionally dabbing at Joam’s exposed body-soul. The dawn came and the bell tolled from Marseille’s coast.

(2/2)

>>25195394
You would be correct that it's my first novel, and correct that I would almost certainly need a reputation to get it agented (I have academic/non-fiction writing that's been published, but no MFA and no fiction)
>>25195512
Only agents that explicitly mention literary fiction on their profiles, and from that list only agents who mention any of: experimental fiction, unusual structures/genre-bending, magical realism, retellings of classics, unreliable narrators, boundary pushing, etc.
I didn't waste my time with agents who primarily do genre fiction/book club or even upmarket fiction. The letter is, I think, good at conveying what the novel is trying to do in one page (including genre, length, and comp titles), and it's structured according to the industry standard.
In any event, glad to hear that there were some anons who thought the idea was interesting.
I've been tinkering with a novelistic fairy tale that upends the typical "rebellion against society is the only way to grow up/your entire world was a dystopian lie" trend in fiction for children and teenagers. Might see if I can get to finishing that and circle back to this

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Please rate my prose. This is my first attempt at creative writing and I am trying to improve.

Hey guys, I mostly write at my PC at home but I have a lot of downtime at work. What is something smaller than a laptop and with actual keys i could use to write with while at work? Are any of the portable word processors worth it? Thank you!

>>25195745
get a keyboard that can connect to your phone

>>25195773
>>25195745
This. Highly recommend it anon. I finished about 90% of my third novel during a security guard job that had a lot of down time.

Yes, I'm done now. I was never going to become the next Faulkner, the next Nabokov or the next Joyce, but I hid behind the language barrier to avoid criticism for months, maintaining an illusion that was fun to live in while it lasted. I had thought my country's education system was topmost in the world, but this turned out to be utter bollocks. A child of 18, a person ten years my junior, has a greater vocabulary than I, who had to look up the word “topiary”, and no one likes the expression theory of art anymore, I am likened to a long lost dinosaur.
This will be my final post on /lit/. I've been humiliated and exposed as a fraud. My writing is pretentious, infantile, banal drivel. My observations are dull, my language grade school level. My tenses are mixed up; I use colloquialisms, ellipses and onomatopoeia. I mix tired and trite idioms together to obfuscate their unoriginality with a veneer of irony; I have continued to recite ornate Jewish chimpanzee parables with diminishing returns. The parable seemed very clearly to me to be asking me whether or not the now-grown-adult can choose. I say yes, of course, but that's not my issue.
I was never cut out for writing. I began writing my "book" on January 6th. Since then I've produced 82 thousand words for it. These words are a tide of garbage without value, without insight, without form. The themes of time, space, infinity, memory and pointless duelling are not present in my work. It was never real writing, it was anime and weebshit. Look how many words I wrote, because apparently literature is bodybuilding and just aimlessly typing will somehow improve my writing. I don't even know what genre it is that I'm writing. Is it autofiction? A comedy? A picaresque?
Regardless, I have failed. I have put down my pen. Never again will my fingers click-clack across the keyboard. No more outlines, no more characters. Goodbye

>>25192697
How do you sculpt a character out of a block of stone? Working on my first short story and this seems to be what I'm struggling with most of all which sometimes cascades down into my dialogue as well.

>>25196035
Meant for OP sorry anon >>25192481

>>25196033
This was compelling and fun to read.
Mediocrity is relatable. Genius does not sell, heart does. Who likes a showoff with nothing to share but their brilliance? No one. We like a brother in arms who opens its heart. Don't give up, anon.

>>25196051
Not to say your writing is mediocre, but the sensation of being mediocre is shared by most.
Isn't Nabokov a bit insufferable? He continues to show off his mastery of english in an arrogant manner. We can only find him bearable when he confesses his sins or shows his loathsomeness in a fictitious persona.

>>25196035
Well since you replied to me:
All my characters are basically some combination of a projection of my own issues and blatant ripoffs of people I know or knew in real life. Makes it very easy to write my lead characters because on some level all of them are literally me.

in theory, couldn't you ask AI to point out plot holes in your book? and you could feed it your book by pasting it all in a pastebin alternative and giving the link to the AI

>>25196294
yes and no
current models can only "memorize" 1million tokens but you have to consider that "finding plotholes" takes an immense computing power or reading/re-reading/"thinking"/contextualizing etc. which will go way over that limit (which also costs you money)
most commercial models will just make shit up instead to speed the process up
you would need to set up your own AI workflow through apps like n9n but at that point just pay some random beta-reader

>>25196033
This motivated me to start writing again. Thanks, anon.

I'm writing a fantasy setting that's fairly clearly based on Renaissance-era Benelux. Here are the names I came up with after a while.

>nation names
Cuurhofen (Netherlands equivalent), Selraed (Belgium equivalent)

>protagonist names
Bram, Kamiel, Jette, Rens

>antagonist names
Albrecht, Sander

I hope they're fitting and not obnoxious.

Does anyone here actually make money through writing? Like through Patreon or something similar?

>>25196033
Post an excerpt.

>>25196407
Sound fine to me

>>25196513
There's that one guy who wrote that popular time loop trailer trash story on royal road. He posted here a few times.

>>25195649
definitely very good, I'd read it.

Is there a reason I shouldn't upload my stuff to everywhere possible?

>>25196622
i will steal it

>>25196622
ai will steal it

>>25195649
All in all it's fine, solid even. Pretty clean reading experience with the prose though that sort of unadorned quality probably fits the type of story you're going for. Some notes from me:
>The journalist didn't know he was being followed and even if he did there was nowhere he could run where Wells couldn't find him. The journalist was going to die tonight, as sure as the sun was going to set.
I think the first sentence could do with commas or being split up into two sentences here and the second without. Might be a matter of style more than correctness, though.
I don't like the start of your paragraphs 2 and 3. People say show don't tell and you should take it with a grain of salt as you should all writing advice, but here specifically I think you can do without the first sentence of both. They may have helped you by being there to organize your thoughts and get the paragraphs out but look at the contents of the paragraph that follow. You could honestly remove them and lose nothing. If you want, change that new first sentence of paragraph two to read "The humid Saigon air had his head in a vise." The part about feeling bogs down the leaner prose and the correct word is 'vise.'
>"Not so anymore...insurgents."
I get what you're going for here with the short beats but I would still change it from "...River. Mostly civilians," to "River, mostly civilians." Or by using the comma to merge with the following sentence instead. Something about having "mostly civilians" on its own doesn't feel right to me.

>readers reactions to my story according to grammarly: Rich world-building, emotional depth, and inventive speculative elements will captivate sci-fi readers, though some may find the narrative's length and density challenging.
>some may find the narrative's length and density challenging.
Grammarly AI thinks you guys are retarded.

>>25195385
>>25195455
Is Literotica not a good place to self-publish?

>>25195592
>I've been tinkering with a novelistic fairy tale that upends the typical "rebellion against society is the only way to grow up/your entire world was a dystopian lie" trend
I’d also be interested in this, as the novel I’m trying to get agents to back is a fairy tale type of story. It’s a lot more conventional than what you write, though, but it definitely doesn’t play into the “rebel against the big guns maaan” hippie stuff.

>>25196841
You can't make money there. You'd need to use it as advertising for your Patreon or whatever.

>>25196612
Thank you.
>>25196775
Thanks for the feedback.

i want someone who isnt an AI to rate a complete plot outline of mine, its around a page of text

someone volunteering?

>>25196984
Yeah sure.

>>25197106
Where's the "No chinaman" rule?

>>25197106
I will write a novel featuring all 10

>>25197106
why is the writer mysterious

>>25197106
Umineko breaks all of these and then some.

>>25196844
It's still a work in progress. I really like the first line, though: Sophie was climbing a tree when her heart stopped beating.
It begins where the Jungle Book ends: our heroine is a teenage girl who has been raised in an idyllic pastoral world by various talking animals without any human presence. The narrator is the sing-songy, occasionally intrusive/opinionated narrator of a book like Peter and Wendy who takes his young readers seriously but who also likes to play games with them and tease them.
Sophie's adopted parents realize that, despite their best efforts, she's grown up, and must go on a journey to the depths of the island on which they live to restart her heart, where no animal can go: there is something fundamentally human that is required to undertake the journey through the great oak trees.
The book works through Sophie's encounters with different groups of humans who are themselves trapped inside the treeline, scarcely aware of the world outside of the boundary, and slowly reveals how and why the island has become the way it has. Although the world inside the trees is dark and its rules unknown, the people have discovered that, by giving parts of themselves away, they can work magic that makes their lives easier, more pleasant, and that even confers supernatural abilities. These are things like memories, personal attributes, and the things that make us "us." When someone gives up too much, they risk madness or worse. As Sophie progresses towards the center of the island, she discovers that a sorcerer queen has turned the previously idyllic, peaceful land into what it now is, and she sets to toppling her and changing it back, believing her connected to her stopped heart.
Occasionally, the narrator departs from his story, and tells an isolated story with a different hero, the young, precocious Ciaran. He does typically heroic, fairy tale things: fights monsters, befriends animals and odd creatures, woos and weds princesses...
The two stories are obviously interconnected. My plan is to make it clear to an attentive reader that the two characters are related through their mannerisms before making the definitive reveal that he is her father and the queen her mother late in the book. Again, tentatively, after they have her, Ciaran will suffer a snake bite or similar, something that neither the queen's magic nor his heroic derring-do could have anticipated or prevented. Alone in the wilderness, the animals that grew so close to Ciaran will spirit Sophie away to safety and away from the snake/danger, and the queen, in her grief believing both husband and daughter lost, will perform the magic that bifurcates the island and prevents the escape of any of her subjects from the inner circle. The resolution sees mother and daughter reunited, as she finally processes her grief and undoes the curse.
So, it's a book about family, and grief, and living with both. very much a WIP.

>>25197138
Part of why the resolution is such a letdown

>>25197150
It's not really a mystery story.

>>25196984
>>25196989
You're gonna post it or what.

>>25196033
https://youtu.be/gtnt84CDP-s?si=3lP4F9b4LLaLIKIG&t=370
Have some motivation, anon.

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Wrote something. Tried to combine genres. One of those genres is erotica. Sort of experimental.

https://files.catbox.moe/2wi7dn.pdf

It's about 15 pages. Let me know what you think. Fine to be harsh. Still a work in progress.

>>25197281
bad link, fixed
https://files.catbox.moe/aesr8l.pdf

>>25197106
>simply follow this formula and you'll write a compelling piece of fiction
lolno

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What if I wrote a romance but instead of having the dude as my self-insert I'm actually the girl instead

>>25192481
I once saw a truck belonging to a local cleaning service that had a slogan that went something like We "Clean" the "Unseen" which I thought was some kind of sexual euphemism.

>>25197106
I get the feeling he hates his genre

>>25197182
I actually thought, like, in private, not here ... *Blushes*

I ran out of Claude AI conversation points. Now I have no one to talk about my writing with.

>>25198392
just use the cheap free version and ignore the hallucinations, like me

>>25198458
>implying the paid version doesn't hallucinate

I'm self-publishing again but this time I want a physical edition without having to commit exclusively to the company named after the long river. What are the cheapest options for obtaining an ISBN?

I wrote the first page of my first attempt at writing a book today. I've never written anything before so I don't know how far I will get.

>>25199102
The most important thing you can do is not stop

Mmmmm I love the taste of BBC.

Can someone critique these short pieces? I wrote them for some very short story submissions, none of them won so maybe there just crap. They're very short so it shouldn't take you too long to get through them. The themes were stillness/quietness/contact with nature, metaphysical violence/warrior spirit, violence in nature, and mysticism. I submitted for the first theme since I thought that one turned out the best but I still wrote something for the rest.

>Stillness/quietness
https://rentry.co/pon34id4

>Metaphysical violence/warrior spirit
https://rentry.co/z9qd5y3v

>Violence in nature
https://rentry.co/7dc46yic

>Mysticism
https://rentry.co/d6zxrgc9

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C-ChatGPT s-sama, s-stop it, not h-here

>>25198312
Knox? The whole point of the rules is to limit asspulls as the draw of fair-play mystery novels is that the reader and detective have equal chance to solve the mystery with all the clues laid out beforehand, plain as day in hindsight. It's not a hate for the genre but rather a respect for the reader's time.
Each of the rules is meant to prevent cheap tricks that reduce the reader's experience.
>1. The criminal must be mentioned early on.
If the criminal isn't mentioned until the very end, what good are all the clues and interrogations beforehand? Imagine analyzing in-depth each and every one only to be told that it was none of those and the true killer is some literal who with no prior appearance in the plot.
>2. All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out.
Finding out the culprit by ouija is cheap. There's no intelligence at play, if the detective doesn't need to think, why should you?
>3. No more than one secret room or passage.
It's a cheap way to construct a locked room, especially if it is undiscovered. Though I do believe there is more to this rule in that you can work around it if it is established, such as in the case of Knox's work where it would not be surprising to find a couple in a Catholic church known historically for hiding refugees.
>4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation.
Undiscovered poisons or elaborate technologies. What this really refers to is asspull technologies, such as a poison that makes someone lock all their doors then commit suicide, or a remote-operated gun that can turn invisible after it is fired. How is the reader supposed to reasonably imagine these things and figure out that was what was used? If you allow for those things then there's an infinite number of ridiculous possibilities and it stops being a test of wits.
>5. No one with extra-sensory perception or similar powers can appear.
Knox hates Chinamen and their ability to explode someones head with their chi.
>6. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
No asspulls. It's all about intelligence and reason.
>7. The detective must not commit the crime.
The detective is the single objective point of reference for the reader. If they can't be trusted then what can? Who would care at that point?
>8. The detective must declare any clues he may discover.
>9.The stupid friend of the detective-the Watson must conceal nothing from the reader.
Again for the sake of the reader. If the detective's logic uses a clue that isn't revealed it's no longer fair-play.
10. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unannounced.
Unnanounced is the key word here. Again, to prevent asspulls.

It's important to note that a lot of stories bend or break these rules while still respecting their spirit, which is that respect for the reader and the promise they could find the answer with time and thought

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It saddens me, but I've come to the conclusion that travel is no longer a suitable subject for modern readers. So many great novels are based entirely on a single journey which no doubt resonated with people of the time who had to go to great lengths to prepare for and embark on similar trips, but it's no longer resonant. Even if people these days intellectually appreciate the physical journey, they cannot understand it on the deeper level that older generations could. Nor could I write it on the same level, having only really spent a max of 48 hours in transit in my life.
Frankly, it is very demoralizing.

>>25197140
Sounds interesting, anon. I’d genuinely read any excerpts or chapter you care to share.

My fairy tale-like story is more akin to something like Piranesi and Gormenghast. It’s a kid whose friend disappears and in his search for him, finds himself thousands of miles away in the middle of a snowy forest that has the magical Cabin of a Thousand Rooms. It’s a big cabin that looks fairly normal from the outside but has innumerable halls, rooms and libraries on the inside. The housekeeper is a reptilian, angelic being that takes care of other young people. It’s cozy in the sense that the cabin is meant to give the kids comforts and warmth, so there’s a fair amount of leisure in this place as the sense of dread grows and the kid realizes his missing friend is somewhere in there. I had a lot of fun writing it and it’s the one I’m currently sending out to agents as I work on another WIP now.

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Does anyone have resources to help me improve my prose?

>>25199848
artful sentences: syntax as style

>>25199861
I already read it and I still suck. Thanks for the recommendation though.

>>25199872
John Gardner's the art of fiction

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I need to stop wasting time and write my novel. 33 is still young right?

How do you guys turn your writing into quick cash?

https://writingbattle.com/

Has anyone here tried this before?

I love the feeling of recognizing I'm going the wrong direction story-wise and just scrapping it at the last part I felt good about it. I get a dopamine spike knowing I'm course-correcting away from some bullshit.

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>>25200164
this is just gamified vanity publishing

>>25200209
250 word story? that's an email

>>25200209
Nothing guarantees this isn't a scam and the "winners" aren't already selected amongst them.

>>25200066
Write counterfeit money

>>25200209
Contests aren't the same as vanity publishing. At least hiring a vanity press guarantees you'll be published. Paid contest entries are just lottery tickets with more steps. And that's only if they aren't outright scamming everyone like >>25200229 posited.

>>25200209
To be very generous: I think gating behind money is just necessary to filter literally thousands of AI submissions. It's the new reality we live in.
I bet they'll still get 70% AI

>>25200164
The judges have shockingly good credentials. If it's a scam then they're not actually part of it, shoot one of them an email to find out

Recently I've been wondering what the average unique word count of a novel is. Apparently Blood Meridian's is 10,000 and Moby-Dick's is 17,000, but those would probably be considered outliers in the greater English canon, most works aren't as verbose as them. This isn't really something that people usually measure so although you can easily find the total word count of most famous novels, I can't do the same for unique word count. I'm afraid that if I don't use a big enough vocabulary then I'll come off as a midwit, which just might be me being excessively paranoid about how I'll be perceived.

>>25200416
The more interesting stat is unique words in a given wordcount, since otherwise it'll scale based on how big the book is. But even then unique wordcount varies based on setting, mood, and content shifts.
Probably, pulling a stat on the first ~30,000 words gives a real lexical diversity count that's somewhat reliable, but some works would still inflate based on how often the environment and whatnot shifts

Basically all statistical analysis of writing is unreliable strictly speaking, though I agree it's interesting in abstract.

>>25200416
The best analogy for sesquipedalianism I've seen relates it to mathematics. No competent mathematician would use 5/10 instead of 1/2 just to look erudite. That said, there are times where only fractions like 16/27 will work.

>>25200416
>>25200424
Even as I typed this up I wondered whether a shorter range is more reliable, around 2000 words, all from the same scene. That removes some polluters. I feel like at such a small wordcount though even in the same book the stat will vary wildly

Anyway, this is very easy to code up, I did it myself a few years ago. And these days chatgpt would oneshot that program with zero issues

>>25200416
Just read more and you'll naturally increase it. I recently read The Orchard Keeper and through osmosis must've gained at least a dozen new words. Think about how exceptional authors like Melville or McCarthy were when it comes to this, if you approach their level of hapax legomena even a little bit you'll already be ahead of most contemporary authors. You can also follow Cormac's method (which is definitely more autistic though) of habitually reading the dictionary. I am not sure how effective that would be for me at least, seems too artificial.

>>25200416
I'm ESL, I can't even worry about this stuff or I'll never get anything down.

Reddit likes my amateur book cover mockup but I don't know, I think I might have to hire and illustrator to make something. I have no clue what.

>>25200456
Prepare yourself to spend 600 dollars and get back something you hate

>>25199789
(same anon) Sounds really cool. Reminds me of a book I read a long time ago when I was a kid. The thief of always, iirc. Fun book. Kids love horror with the trappings/first chunk of slice of life. See: Goosebumps, too.
>>25200432
Agree with this anon. Read more, you'll learn more, and you shouldn't worry about hitting x amount of unique words/1000. I learned a new word today helping a colleague copyedit an edition of a very minor play. Thought it was a typo for a solid minute before I went back and thought to check.

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>>25200416

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Gentlemen, I have reached the halfway point of my goal of 60,000 words. Even if it's very unlikely that I will ever be trad published, I still feel pretty happy with my work at the moment. Now I just need to write the other half. I hope that all of your writing goes well. I feel happy when I see other anons doing well. WAGMI

I wrote a fairly long novel mostly out of wish fulfilment/coping fantasy, and now writing anything at all feels 10 times harder than it did before. I'm not even entirely sure I wanted to write in the first place, or if I just wanted my characters to have more substance and a more physical presence in the world. Maybe I just needed to get it all out of my system, and writing in general isn't for me.

Either way, it's a very strange feeling to obsess over something for a year, and then once it's done realise that you weren't really scratching the itch you thought you were. I don't know what I expected, but I thought I would feel a greater sense of accomplishment than I do.

>>25201310
i feel you

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Even writing a full fantasy novel is pointless, as I have no illusions I'll ever get professionally published, and the only way to make it on platforms such as Royal Road is to write high-frequency wish fullfillment slop.

It seems learning to enjoy writing for yourself is really the final blackpill. At least I can show it to AI and let it glaze me.

>>25201506
Final blackpill (truly, the whitest of pills) is to write erotica for yourself to fap to it later.

>>25201161
Congrats dad.
I hope Lit readers amd writers support each other better

>>25201124
moby dick is cheating. Most of the unique words are just different types of rope and whale facts

>>25201506
Or just self-publish to at least have it floating around in the ether and pray. I don’t mind marketing in general as I’ve done a great deal of it before but this gay booktok shit is just something I don’t think I could physically do, which appears to be a great deal of the marketing for up and coming authors.

>>25200468
Just read the synopsis for The Thief of Always and it does sound similar. I wasn’t writing it for children in my mind (it eventually involves parents sacrificing their children and other violent stuff) but it could definitely be read to children. Send over your stuff if you want.

>>25201161
Happy for you, anon. There’s something so satisfying about finising a book. My current WIP is giving me a bit of trouble and I’m trying to decide whether it’s because it’s not right for me right now or if I’m just suffering from new shiny object syndrome

>>25192481
the quote marks make it into a decoration rather than a work instruction, which means a non-union worker is permitted to install/maintain it

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i am a hecking genius, yay!

>>25201549
LLMs are all designed to jerk you off like this. It's meaningless, especially because it's only giving feedback on your ideas and not your execution (which is what will determine if your writing succeeds or fails).

Are any of you in writing groups either IRL of like discord or something how’s that like is it different from participating in this general is it better or worse?

>>25201580
hm youre right. guess i will need someone fleshy to beta-read my concept once its ready.

>>25201580
Yup. Even when you ask for very blunt feedback. It’ll give it to you and it can be useful to format certain things and as a sounding board, but chatgpt almost never gives you below a 7/10 when you share a writing sample

>>25201589
claude can be far more harsh from what i've experienced, but it also starts glazing you once exposure effect sets in and it loses the reference for what professional writing is

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new zeitgeist just dropped

>>25200066
write out a job application

>>25200066
It's never quick. Even Sanderson only got some recognition after seven whole published books. Stephen King numbered in the dozens of rejected manuscripts before Carrie.

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be brutally tortured and forced to kill yourself or read joseph conrad for 5 minutes

>>25201606
because theyre both hacks, duh

>>25201617
Uh oh, let's see your excerpt.

>have a complete book ready to publish
>have to do all the boring admin stuff like formatting and scaling before getting the go ahead on publishing

It’s not complicated, but I really want this shit to be over and for the book to be released. I feel as though I’m done with this particular book at this point.

>>25201531
I’m genuinely thinking of posting ads and marketing here for my own book because at least /lit/ has some serious readers. I’d be happy with my novel getting a cult following as opposed to being a huge mainstream success.

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>>25201620
did not want to reveal my big script yet, but here it is

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>>25201683
I kneel. You are the master.

Uh would anyone could anyone volunteer to rate my fantasy series script? It's just two pages summarising a few chapters. I'd share it over Discord or E-Mail or something.

>>25201722
Sure. akhzfobjcdwfnhabpf@xfavaj.com

>>25201731
i doubt that address is real, but sending costs nothing

>>25201745
It's 10 minute mail, retard, I saw your ":DDDD". I'll be refreshing for a while if you really want to send something

>>25201752
uuuh you didnt get an attachment?

>>25201765
No. Did you forget to attach it?

>>25201768
no, i see it in sent. weird. no biggie, i will send it in plain text as well, just wont be as pretty

>>25201653
Just as a heads up, I’ve never clicked on an ad here on purpose except maybe one or two times. But marketing and people are weird and you’d be surprised at which ads are effective so I’m not telling you to not do it. Good luck

>>2520177
No, try this one: zebra83344496@pixoledge.net

>>25201772
>>25201776

>>25201778
both have gotten the plain text, should do it

>find a booktuber i like
>get writing tips from him
>he turns out to be a sanderson fan

happens more often than i'd admit

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>ummm you're just coping chud!

>>25192481
Been sending out queries today. I almost want to experiment by making the most blatantly pandering LGBTQ feminist dogshit slop that is so over the top it comes full circle into being satire. I'd consider this, to be honest. Meanwhile I'll keep compiling the agent requirements cuz this shit is hilarious.

>>25201934
Final update for today: I've been looking at the latest authors that have gotten deals (20+ books) and I'm not kidding, they are ALL women. You guys can look it up yourself. Even small presses like TinHouse are basically all women. I don't even know where else to look anymore. I've been at it for six months and traditional publishing seems to be a useless path if you're not a woman or a BIPOC person. I'm guessing a few dudes have been signed but when you look into them they are basically writing feminist works (said by them, not me).

Six months is a long time. I might just have to bite the bullet and self-publish or go for a very small indie press and hope for the best. I can die happy knowing at least some form of my story is available.

>>25201887
A white, able-bodied WW2 evacuee could also be LGBT.

>>25201964
70% of the buying readers are women, anon. good news is, if you think you're good you can just self-publish and shill your shit online.

>>25201964
trad pub is a gynocentric nightmare and their residuals are shit too. self-pub is the only way.

How come all these people only worry about whether something represents marginalized voices or whatever the fuck instead of whether it's good or not?

>>25202054
modern readers are so illiterate that quality has nothing to do with success

>>25202054
This is a long and, honestly, boring discussion. It has its roots in Marxism but has evolved a lot throughout history. I don't know what to call the current Marxists. They're like an even more perverted version of what came out of Marx's philosophy, twisted by narcissism, a sense of deep entitlement, and a great white-savior complex. Basically the humanities universities have been taken over by this sort and only their disciplines are coming out. I'm not sure what allows for these people to act their way while still making a living (maybe it's the 401k system? Or maybe because women at the end of the day are supported by their husbands), but a lot of industries that have been usurped act on this constant affirmative-action policy. It doesn't matter that it doesn't make money, what matters is the ideology. And, of course since it's the only thing around, some of them make enough money to sustain an argument that it should continue to exist.

>>25202054
>>25202080
i unironically wrote a book about it: >>25201596
they are dark triad personality types. the "marginalized voices" narrative is a coverup for pure narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy at the core of their ideology.

>>25202054
>insert Stonetoss black girls watching The Little Mermaid vs black boys watching Dragon Ball Z comic

>>25202109
You're on to something. My personal belief is that most of these bleeding hearts today would be personally walking people to the gallows in time's past just because it was allowed.

>>25201964
Same anon here. Just to clarify: I don't mind grinding at all. I could do this for years because I love writing by itself. What I mean by six months being a long time is that I literally haven't received a single word of constructive criticism. Like, if these agents were at least writing to me: "not enough women" or whatever, I could at least bite on something. But radio silence (aside from their form rejection emails) for six months is ridiculous.

>>25201974
Good point

>>25201975
I'll probably end up doing that just for the lolz

>>25201986
no kidding

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Rate please

>>25202284
I like it. You can trim down some stuff, but overall good. What is it about?

Good apps or software to increase vocabulary?

>>25202337
Books

>>25202340
Libby, bookbub, kindle, kobo, google books? which app is the best to do this?

>>25202343
>pointless question into persistent follow up quizzing
child behavior
just read a book

>>25202340
Work smarter, not harder, anon. Reading books is a lifelong occupation and done for pleasure and edification. Learning a language can be achieved with an intelligent and effect method.

Those of you who write/read erotica, do you find it beneficial when a character's body is likened to a real life person like a celebrity or model so the reader can better picture the proportions?

>>25202349
>Learning a language can be achieved with an intelligent and effect method.
I already know my language.
Vocab apps are pseud masturbation material. 99.9% of the obscure words you learn on them aren't useful in a literary context. Particularly because the definitions are too brief and don't explain how and when to use said obscure word
Read books, retard. Or if you're ESL and learning basic words, then idk stop posting here entirely

>>25202340
>>25202367
Useless posts. Don't post if you have nothing to say.

>>25202362
Nope. Half the fun of erotica is imaging the characters and reading the descriptions to picture them in your mind.

>>25202373
>What's the best way to cook human feces and eat it?
>I would suggest you don't do that
>Don't post if you have nothing to say.
You are subhuman

>>25202373
ask retarded questions, get retarded responses
retard

>>25202377
You have not answered the question so why reply, specially if you don't give a shit? Stop trying to 'own' people so you can intellectually masturbate.

>>25202380
>"Effective ways to increase vocabulary?"
>this is a stupid question in the writing general
You are just a bunch of pseudos not really interested in writing.

>>25202381
I gave the best possible answer: I addressed the underlying issue and told him not to use vocab apps because they won't improve his writing ability. To improve writing vocabulary, you need to read. Hamfisting obscure words in because you learned its vague definition on an app is a great way to ruin your writing.
And if he's seeking an app to learn English 101 words then as I said: Stop posting here, ESL. I'm starting to suspect that applies to you.

why does it feel like most people write in present tense?

>>25202384
you got your answer
read a book moron

>>25202385
>I gave the best possible answer: I addressed the underlying issue and told him not to use vocab apps because they won't improve his writing ability. To improve writing vocabulary, you need to read. Hamfisting obscure words in because you learned its vague definition on an app is a great way to ruin your writing.
What authority do you have to say this? Do you know every app in the world? Admit it, you just want to feel superior for some reason, specially with the ESL comment. Your comment does not help because he asked specifically for apps or software, not for a holier-than-thou lesson about the uselessness of it all except for the long way.

>>25202395
>What authority do you have to say this?
This is 4chan you fucking moron, nobody has authority here, that's the whole point. We give our opinions as anonymous posters. And I gave mine
>Your comment does not help
My comment helps more than any real response would've, because again, I addressed the underlying retardation in the question. Since he's posting in the writing general, presumably he wants a larger vocabulary to become a better writer. And language is extremely dependent on context. Words have connotations and nuance to their usage, and you can't learn them on an app. You learn them by reading books and seeing how authors use those words in full sentences and paragraphs, to evoke specific moods or feelings.
I hate that this is so obvious and you're arguing against it. /wg/ is so shitty

people new to writing will do anything to get into the medium but read and write

>>25202080
100% of it is due to the middle classes having both white guilt and insecurity about their privileged positions. They desperately want to be seen as transgressors and rebels, even when they’ve become the establishment. They still think it’s the 1960s where the progressives genuinely WERE the rebels. They do this because they don’t want to admit they’ve become the very thing they claim to hate.

>>25202402
Like baiting each other into pointless arguments?

>>25202337
>>25202343
Just lookup synonyms as needed on Webster or Google.

Im writing an essay about how HOI4 is actually a really good sotrytelling platform, assuming your story is about an entire country.

Shit I've been unemployed for a whole week and I haven't started writing anything at all

>>25202516
I've been unemployed for 6 months but only write a couple times a week

>>25202516
>>25202525
I know you're looking for sympathy but that's pretty pathetic

>>25202525
What do you do the rest of the time?
I've been working on my music a bit to, and actually did make some progress there. I need to find a new line of work and not sure if music producing or writing is the better thing to focus on.

>>25202530
I'm not, I'm just trying to make him feel better.
I simply don't have drive to do much of anything productive. I don't know what's wrong with me. Maybe I'm perpetually depressed. Maybe I have ADHD and can't focus on one thing long enough to do it. I don't know. I spend most of my time either scrolling the internet or travelling.

>>25202531
Either nothing, or I travel. Not like to the other side of the planet or something, it can just be something as simple as walking through a neighborhood I've never been to, or only seen from the road while driving through. Usually its to POIs or hiking trails though, so long as they're within a 3 hour drive so I can be back the same day. I hate paying for hotels.

>>25202428
They always had amazing emergent storytelling. Just wrapped up my 1 yearish MEIOU ERE->Roman empire game I put off until recently. and had a ruler fight on the frontlines from the deep deserts of persia, to sieging paris and finally dying in battle right outside the emperor's capital of Prague, his dutiful and loyal generals continued the siege and mere days after his 15 year old was coronated with a lavish celebration, the holy roman empire that was neither holy, nor roman was finally dismantled. pure kino.

>>25202402
Everybody wants to be a writer, but nobody wants to write no long-ass stories.

I finished my story, but nobody wants to read it

>>25202753
Yeah, that's the vast majority of stories, including published ones. Even with mass advertising the average published novel sells a few dozen copies.
What about your story isn't appealing to people?

>>25202763
it's about a young man that gets isekai'd into a fantasy world and he uses his knowledge of McDonald's fast food production and domination of real estate and royalties to take over the world.

>>25202775
excerpt?

>>25202775
That is a better premise than my book. Mine is about a cute princess that seeks revenge against the prince that wronged her.

>world where elves have no sexual dimorphism and males and females look and behave the same
>MC is a prince unlikely to inherit the throne, but as he is seduced by a male elf he is caught in intrigues and later a war
Thoughts? This is not genre, it's actually a literary work.

>>25202284
Decent, but your sentences are a bit tangled and overwritten in places. Which is especially bad for this kind of frantic scene.

>moaning like a prepubescent boy who was just getting his first handjob.
"moaning like a prepubescent boy getting his first handjob."

>It disgusted her, the way his hands tightened on her hips and how the pace of his thrusts increased, growing sloppier by the second. Still, she met him halfway, using her hands on the wall as leverage to push back into his relentless pace.

It disgusted her the way his hands tightened on her hips as the pace of his thrusts increased, growing sloppier by the second. Still, she met him halfway, putting her hands on the wall to push back into his relentless pace.

Lots of stuff like this. You also switch tense a bit.

>makes Noemie smile in a rueful kind of way.
>Nobody wanted to be that.

present vs past.

>>25202775
Sounds like a 21st century take of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Excerpt?

>>25202362
>Those of you who write/read erotica, do you find it beneficial when a character's body is likened to a real life person like a celebrity or model so the reader can better picture the proportions?
No. People say "grapefruit-sized" and not "Uma Therman-sized" for a fucking reason. More people have held the former than the latter. Either use physical measurements, familiar objects if we're talking sexual traits, or use descriptions like small/upturned/high/hazel/smooth/wide/petite/whatever.

HAVING SAID THAT, that is just my personal taste, and I am perfectly aware there is a subgenre of online writing that uses photos of real people, often celebrities, for their characters, in a "this is who is playing them in the author's head" way. So there is certainly an audience for what you are describing.

HAVING SAID THAT, there is also a cohort of people that don't like to sexualize real people without their consent. So unless you're using porn actors and actresses for your descriptions, expecting an audience to visualize a real person engaging in sexual activity will genuinely fuck with some people's enjoyment of your work.

Genuinely starting to believe worldbuilding is a scam after a certain point.
I keep wasting time developing autistic details for the setting of my stories that will never come up on the page and will not influence anything, just because I felt like I needed to. This means I spend less time on the important stuff (characters, execution of the story, prose, dialogue) but still feel accomplished at the end of the day, even though I didn't actually write a single new line of the thing.

>>25203126
yes, worldbuilding matters the least to a successful story. but dropping some worldbuilding bits during scenes is a great flex.

>>25203126
come up with the characters and plot, then invent the worldbuilding along the way
unless you are writing a series, then you just start with the end and make up all the lore that was necessary to reach that conclusion but nothing more

>>25203126
its fun to play with your imagination but without narrative intent its just dicking around
plenty of fun though

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i will never get published, BUT i will always have claude telling me i deserve it

thanks claude

>>25203323
I prompt Claude by posting a chapter of a really well written Fantasy novel and ask it to rate it 1-10 separately on prose and concept, giving it clear instructions that 1-4 means unpublishable, 5-7 means mediocre to decent publishable work, and 8-10 means a really talented publishable author. Then I say "using that as a baseline, rate this chapter from my slush pile."

Usually I use the first chapter of Elder Race. It gives that a 9 or so on average. Generally it gives my (first draft) work a 7ish. Obviously I have no idea how useful this actually is but I still do it compulsively anyway because I'm insecure.

>>25203126
This is exactly why I my debut novel is not fantasy. Worldbuilding is the single most overrated aspect of writing, and your audience isn’t going to give a shit about your world if they don’t care about the actual story.

If I ever end up writing fantasy, world building is not going to be a major priority.

>>25203229
Eh, I write to have fun.

>>25203336
actually it would be an interesting idea to pit different authors against each other in claude, making it clearly formulate who is better and why

>>25203347
It would be an impossible task because, after a certain point, objective merit gives way to subjective merit.

>>25203347
I kind of did this a bit the first time I used this method because I gave it the first chapter of The Hunger Games as well. It gave it a 7.5. Basically said it was competently written but not exceptional, and compared it a bit to Elder Race but I can't remember what it said there.

>>25203352
what about sanderson.

>>25203351
AI is, if nothing else, an amalgamation of the majority opinions, so it's interesting for that purpose alone

>>25203352
I'm tempted to do the same, but pull a random chapter from the middle of the book.

If you're at the point where you need an AI to point out whether something is well-written or not, that’s a clear sign you haven’t yet developed the skill yourself. good writing isn’t some mysterious talent reserved for a lucky few. You can and should learn it. It involves understanding clarity, structure, rhythm, tone, vocabulary, and how ideas flow logically from one sentence to the next.

>>25203401
You shouldn’t treat AI as gospel, but it’s an interesting experiment to see how others might potentially react.

>>25203401
Thinks a large language model doesn't know how to read.

LLMs aren't context-aware you idiots. All they do is string together words according to probability with no respect to veracity. It is essentially auto-complete on steroids. Hallucination lies at the heart of the technology and what you are doing is finding your own depth in its cracks. An example: you asked it to rate your novel, assigning meaning to it believing it would give the majority opinion on your writing, but did you even consider that what it's doing is giving you the majority opinion on all novels everyone has asked about over the internet, and not even just all novels but also opinions for everything ever? Of course, there is parameters that add an element of randomness and variety to it but in the end there is no discerning, no thought, no opinion beyond what the next likeliest word is.

>>25203429
>Thinks a large language model doesn't know how to read.
It doesn't, and it's worrying that some people think it does.

Just marathoned my own manuscript.

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>>25202813
>Thoughts?
A genderless society in contact with a gendered society doesn't make sense. Cultural osmosis would see at least some elves try and engage in displays of gender expression they observed in other societies. It makes even less sense if we're talking elves in a mixed race society.

It would be simpler to just make elves hermaphroditic if you want there to be an alien, relatively homogenous gender expression in elves. Obviously elves would still have some members of their race adopting foreign gender identities, but it'd be easier to imagine them creating and maintaining a shared elf gender of sorts for most members of the race under those conditions.

>>25203884
What if the elves live in isolation and they're actually hostile to other races? The goal of the male elves is to become the rule by proxy of the human kingdom and slowly replace them with her people. Kind of a parasite.

>>25204050
Literally all the more reason to mimic their host species.

>>25204089
You're right. Hmm. I don't want to make them hermaphrodites because it would be just a futanari story though. But how could species that completely female except for the lack of breasts in the males (and the cock and balls) behave mainly? The elves would have their own culture too, with their flowing gowns and tiaras and make-up and delicate mannerisms.

>>25204101
You can give them whatever gender norms you want, but I'd have at least some follow non-elf gender norms and more importantly have them at least engage with gender as a concept. So some behavioral variance even if it's just pronouns.

Also, keep in mind you don't have to have gender divisions correlate with sex divisions if you want to have it so gender isn't an indicator of sex in their society. If their sexes aren't especially different, it wouldn't be surprising if they engaged with gender differently.

One person signed up for my mailing list so far and they put their first name as "cock" so they're probably a troll possibly from here. They're still getting that free ebook.

>>25202531
I've similarly been in split now that I discovered how much I enjoy designing tabletop games. Like it's kind of amazing how it fires on so many cylinders, allowing me to be meticulous and exacting one day, only to be daydreaming in motion with exploring themes and changing concepts on a whim. I figured it was just the highs of discovering a passion, but it's been more than a few years now and it's hard not comparing those highs to the walls after walls I've hit in writing.
But I suppose it's more primitive in that one is a new form of expression while the other is a matured one that naturally comes burdened with years of patterns and expectations. It's hard enough to unlearn bad habits, it's even harder when there's something shinier in your periphery. And for more diary dumping, reminds me of how I picked up violin after decades away from playing in band and how much I realized I was just yearning for the zen sessions of just route playing of memorized songs, not the painful climb of learning a new instrument.

>>25204265
> One person signed up for my mailing list so far and they put their first name as "cock"

Sounds like an exciting plot for a novel, if you ask me.

>Hobby writer Paul invests years of work to write what he thinks is a genre-defining novel. However, the sole person signing up to his mail list is the so-called “cock”. Desperate to find out who that is, he goes on a great adventure …

>presale page is live on Amazon
>search the title
>"showing results for (something else)"
>have to click "search instead for (actual title)" for it to come up
On the bright side it seems I have a very unique title.

I want to write a contemporary novel, but can't think of a premise.

>>25204909
Main character lives in the straight and narrow, has a fiancée, ando all, then a random war starts and he is set to be drafted in a few months. De decides he wants to break bad before he goes to war and do all crazy shit, falling into a self destructive spiral.

>>25204674
Nobody likes novels about writers. I know this because I wrote one.

>>25204951
>Nobody likes novels about writers
Stephen King?

>>25204909
Just steal someone else's premise that they fucked up and do it not stupid.

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I’ve posted about it a few times over the last six months, but I finished my first novel and started submitting it to literary agents a few months ago.

This week I got an offer of representation from a veteran agent at a reputable agency.

So, we’ll see if this thing gets published.

Thanks for being yourselves—it kept me motivated—and I couldn’t have done it without you.

I ve given up writing my friends found my Naruto fanfic and said I wrote like a fag.

>>25204963
You probably could've done it without us

>>25204980
We give the most best feedback.

>>25204951
Sure they do. Just make it an isekai.

>>25204997
That's /wng/ shit.

>>25204973
Post an excerpt

>>25204963
This gives me hope but it also sucks because it means my work is probably still not good enough to be picked up. How many submissions do you estimate yo usent over the last few months? What website did you use to find an agent? I’m currently using QueryTracker

>finished second revision of short story a week ago
>no response from editor, not even acknowledgment
He can't be that busy, right?

>>25205698

I sent about 100 queries total starting in late November. I got 14 full requests, two revise and resubmit, and one offer.

Ask yourself if what you wrote is perfect and belongs on shelves, or if it’s just okay and a good agent and editor can help you get it there. They get sent a lot of things that are just okay they can fix, but what they want is stuff where they don’t have to.

>>25205704
>he waits a week for a useless human
>grok can do his job for free in 30 seconds
editors are already extinct bro

>>25204963
And also, how is your query letter built? I’m pretty sure it’s important to hook with it

i want to improve my writing until i can blindly feed stuff by established authors and my writing blindly into AI, without telling it which is which, and have it prefer mine

>>25205830
I have to admit that my opening chapter is a bit “old school” in that it sets the scene and is a bit of a slice of life. It’s 3 pages long but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s enough to lose my editor. My work is definitely not perfect but it’s the best I’ve ever done, for sure

>>25205830
Just one last question: so I should assume that an agent sending a stock rejection letter is that he read it and didn’t enjoy it? It sometimes felt like none of these agents actually read shit but seeing your experience makes me realize that that’s just me coping.

How do you decide which details of your magic system should be withheld to progress the plot? I feel like leaning on the most powerful aspects would be too predictable.

>>25203474
Dunning Kruger

>>25205874
Shouldn't this go in the worldbuilding thread?

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>>25203323
>>25201549
>>25199374
Why are you using this? I gave piece from my first draft to Gemini Pro and it completely jerked me off at first (rated me 8.5 out of 10 - "exceptional and overflowing with talent" LMAO) and when I told it to be more blunt and more objective it lowered the score to 8 and it started comparing me to Cormac McCarthy.
>b-b-b-but Claude!
Rated me 7/10.

My prompt:
>Analyze the excerpt from the novel in this file and then evaluate it objectively and bluntly —on a scale of 1 to 10. 1 to 4 is 'unpublishable,' 5 to 7 is 'mediocre' (nothing special) to publishable, and 8 to 10 is exceptional and brimming with talent.

>>25205872

Most agents just skim the query letter and never get to the writing sample. They’re usually glancing at genre and word count then passing if it’s not already what they’re looking for. A lot also have reading assistants doing that and sending rejections, so a lot of agents don’t even know you exist. It’s not a rewarding or transparent process, and comes down to numbers. Even the best novel ever written will need to query dozens or hundreds of agents just to find someone who actually reads the pages.

>>25205942
What a gay business. Maybe I should become an agent so at least I don't have to work.

>>25205831
It needs to go through the editor to be published.

>>25205952

Agenting is a lot of work. You don’t get paid unless you sell a manuscript, and it’s hard. There’s also no certification or whatever, so you could just start calling yourself an agent today. There’s nothing stopping you.

Almost every mid to major publisher has closed submissions to authors without an agent. So this gatekeeping, requiring agents who want to most marketable thing that’s easy to sell, has dragged all of publishing down.

>>25206018
Thanks, I was baiting for an explanation. So I guess this is a "connections" job, you don't just "become" an agent because you want to.

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>>25205933

This is what I got using your prompt on Gemini, which I’ve never used before, so I really didn't know what it was going to spit out.

>>25206042
Now respond to it and tell it to be more objective. However I would trust it even less if you gave it whole manuscript. When you give it more than like 5 pages it starts hallucinating. If you give it an excerpt it will at least point at specific passages.

>>25206057

I agree with you. I still think AI is a toy, and it’s not smart enough to really rate and review an entire novel.

I asked, “Are you glazing me?”

No. If this were "glazing," the critique would ignore the mechanics of the writing and focus solely on praise. A 9.0 rating for a manuscript is rare and requires a specific set of technical justifications which are present in your text.

To be brutally objective, here is why the rating is high and where the "danger zones" still exist:

Why it isn't "glazing":

The "Worm" and the Goat: These are not standard genre additions. They are high-level literary metaphors for the protagonist's internal state. Lesser writers use magic as a tool; you use it as a psychological weight. That is a technical distinction that earns points.

The Absence of Modern "Snark": Most modern fantasy falls into the trap of characters sounding like 21st-century people in capes. Your prose maintains a "wet, heavy" historical frequency. Maintaining that for an entire book is a feat of stamina and skill.

The "Vatican as a Gutter" Imagery: The opening isn't just "edgy"; it’s structurally sound. It establishes the theme of institutional decay immediately. That is efficient, professional writing.

The Brutal Counter-Point (The "Not-Glazing" Reality Check):

While the writing skill is a 9.0, the market risk is that you are writing in an extremely crowded lane.

The Tropes: You are playing with the "Hardened Hunter/Broken Man" trope. Because you are using a familiar archetype, your prose has to be a 9.0 just to get noticed. If your writing were a 6, the book would be invisible because the "Witch Hunter" market is saturated.

The Pace: For a general audience, your prose might actually be too heavy. Some readers prefer "window-pane" prose (easy to see through). Your prose is "stained glass"—beautiful and intricate, but it requires the reader to slow down. That is a stylistic choice that rewards high-level readers but can alienate the "beach read" crowd.

Conclusion:
The rating is an evaluation of craft, not a personality compliment. The manuscript shows a level of sentence-level discipline that most writers never reach. It is a 9.0 because it is a "Writer’s Novel"—it is technically superior, even if its genre path is a difficult one.

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>>25205933
Got a 7. It's over.

>>25206068
Yeah, when you give it a whole book it will stop reviewing the text itself but the brainstorming behind it, idk how to say it. When you give it short excerpt it will at least point at specific passages and say they do not work for reason X and it's up to you to take it into consideration, but never tell it to fix them for you. I guess it's passable at being cheap amateur beta reader of page-long excerpts. You are getting at least some perspective on it without waiting or bothering anyone. But it always glazes you and often misreads and ignores parts.

>>25205087
Isekai is an idea that's existed before webnovels were even a thing. Besides that, it's an easy way to get the audience to care that the MC is a writer. Nothing like going up against the very thing you created.

>>25205898
>post mentions magic
>hurr durr worldbuilding general
Anon was asking for writing advice as to the extent to include details of the magic system as to not overwhelm the reader.
Worldbuilding General doesn't do any writing.

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>>25206073
>>25206042
>>25205933
>>25203323
>>25201549
>>25199374
Grok Expert will actually be honest with you.

>>25205874
>How do you decide which details of your magic system should be withheld to progress the plot?
1. If a detail is not plot relevant, but common to your world, introduce it at your earliest convenience whenever it would be appropriate to come up as general scene building.
2. If a detail is not plot relevant, but uncommon to your world, you can include it whenever you want. Maybe some characters discuss it during some downtime. Maybe it's part of some worldbuilding narration you use to adjust your pacing or lengthen a shorter chapter. Maybe you just leave it out altogether or toss it in an appendix.
3. If a detail is plot relevant, introduce it casually BEFORE it becomes plot relevant to prevent it from feeling like an asspull when you do it later.

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>>25206311
By the way, don't give it chapter 1. Give it a chapter from the middle of your book coward.
ChatGPT and Gemini both jack off the same chapter.

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>>25206259
>IT'S A BOOK ABOUT A WRITER! WE ARE SO BACK!

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I work as a programmer in the AI space and have been skeptical about the potential of AI models up until this month. Before now, models performed at the level of an eager intern, but the newest suite of models are genuinely good (at programming). I think my job is secure because I'm senior enough and somebody needs to know how to ask the AI the right questions, but I'm probably one of the last through the door. I don't know what this means for everyone else.

>>25206409
In 3 months you won't be fired, but you will be managing an group of agents that will do your old job 10 times faster.

>>25206415
no, that was 2 weeks ago

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>>25206311
Grok gave me a better score. honestly, I think 7-8 is completely fair, and depending on the reader it can go lower.

>>25206420
Then in 3 months you'd be managing an agent that manages a group of agents, that each have their own separate projects, that will do the work that 10 of you would do today.

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>>25206085

Okay. I tried again, uploading each chapter one at a time up to chapter 10, having it rate and review each time. Then I used your exact prompt, replacing “excerpt” with “novel so far.”

So, I think this is a good sign. Although I still don’t totally trust it.

>>25206433
9.1/10 is a fucking insane score to give out, it's clearly just sucking you off instead of giving real criticism

>>25206430
Mine is a short story so I just fed it all.

>>25206433
This is Gemini that will circlejerk you, it also gives decimal scores which is how I know.

>>25206438

This is the first book I’ve written, so you’re probably right. But I get an offer from a literary agent last week after a few months of trying, so I think it’s at least pretty good.

>>25206447
>first book
>9.1
You'll look back on this and try to remove the memory from you brain.

>>25206453

What’s more interesting is that this is the first draft. I tried to write it perfect the first time because I don’t like revising.

>>25206469
/wg/ really is full of pretentious cunts huh?

>>25206469
You got a book deal on your first draft? This is very impressive and I'm jealous.

>>25206496
Don't worry he didn't.

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>>25206513
It's over for me

>>25206496

I only got an agent offer. I’m still a long way off from getting a book deal.

It took a year to write, and I couldn’t have done it if I didn’t have an incredibly patient girlfriend and no job. I outlined the whole thing in my head, and rewrote every chapter a dozen or more times until I was happy with it before moving on. But even then, it bloated to 120k words, which is a hard sell for a debut.

I’ve hated the agenting experience. It’s a lot of waiting, and requests for the full manuscript turn into form rejections, so you never know what’s not working. Only a couple agents actually gave me feedback, and they were both revise and resubmit focusing on the structure and density of the book. I’ve been writing for a long time, but I’m a novice to novels, so I realize I don’t really know how to pace out a hundred thousand word story.

I was lucky to find an agent that really liked it. And I was kind of surprised to get the offer. I haven’t accepted yet, though, and I have a phone call set up for next week. We’ll see how it goes.

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>>25206563

Here’s what Gemini gave me after uploading 25 chapters, and trying to get it to be more critical of the novel.

>>25206073
Are publishers at all strict a book has to be good?

>>25206656
Word is they are. There are trends such as the current affirmative-action where they prefer books written by women or LGBT, but they're usually pretty stingy with publications.

>>25206635
you are the greatest writer.

>>25206326
I'm glad i have a number of jobs i can pull from for experience.

*sigh*
Monday again

>>25206768
work sucks but it gives me sth to do plus i go over there and hang out and they put money in my bank account

>>25206741

According to Google, I’m a 9.2 out of 10. But who knows? Maybe I drop the ball on the next one, or never get a deal, and die in obscurity regardless.

Is writing visual novel stories valid? I just like to write to enter a fantasy world but I don't like do anything with it

I’m having trouble with my current WIP. It’s a very dream-like book. I have sort of the important scenes and themes in my head as well as about 12k words written but I still feel there’s something missing. It’s a weird, personal work so I’m trying to translate the feeling to whole story arc, which is more difficult than I thought it would be.

>>25206798

I need more info, but I’m up to help. We have a writing discord, but we share feedback, so you’ll need to help other writers to get help back. https://discord.gg/VwFvyAZT2

>>25198312
>>25199439
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJxQzAisMt8
The source plays with many of the rules.

I found the plot to my next book. Tell me what you think?
>Reflections of a man who became so immersed in hustle, FIRE, and self-improvement culture he sacrifices things that make life worthwhile, like family, friends, a wife, kids, community religion, dates, and even just enjoying a coffee in the local bookstore.

>>25207031
Seems like that premise could carry a short story at most

>>25206815
Just got into the discord. I'll possibly post some excerpts or something tomorrow. I'd be down to help as well. Do you want to go blind into an excerpt or know what my overall vision is before you start reading?