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I've always had a problem finding an audience for what I write -- I have a habit of writing what I want to write, and not what others want to read. Aside from "READMOREREADMOREREADMORE," what else could I do to alleviate this? Should I even worry about alleviating it, and instead focus on writing the story, and finding an audience afterward? I'm not rushing to be published, but I'd like to write things worth reading.
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Jun 2, 2015 14:43
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 01:37 |
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What do you do if you want to branch out, though? Say you get by on publishing sellout stories, and then you decide to publish something you like, something entirely unlike the stuff you churn out. If your audience knows you as the guy who writes about books with abs pounding you in the butt, what will you do when you publish your book about European railroad engineers who find love in the American midwest?
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Jun 2, 2015 15:34
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angel opportunity posted:I use pen names for erotica. Even if I wrote what I love I would use a pen name because my IRL name is more generic than John Smith. I wasn't implying any sort of shame from writing sellout material, by the way -- erotica is as valid a genre as any. It's just that there isn't a genre that isn't over-saturated; my concern was how to transition what notoriety one might possess to one's preferred work.
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Jun 2, 2015 16:09
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Dr. Kloctopussy posted:If you haven't actually finished a story how the gently caress do you expect to find an audience for it? There aren't audiences for imaginary stories. I've finished several, actually. I've got folders full of works that I wrote, edited, and then forgot about because I have no idea what to do with them. For the longest while my only source of entertainment was a vast library of schlock science fiction and fantasy, every episode of Red Dwarf, and my word processor. You get some stupid smoothies out of that mixture. Sitting Here posted:Scridiot you are typing your psots while attached to the biggest aggregate of human knowledge ever compiled in history and you're telling me you can't google some keywords from your plot and find some successful books and short stories that are doing something similar? I guarantee there are plenty of things in your novel that are similar to novels that have come before it, because that's how human brains work, they absorb poo poo and then spit it back out in a slightly different format. Thank you. My biggest worry wasn't that I'm a ~=special unique snowflake=~, it's that everything I've written has been done better by other people.
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Jun 3, 2015 22:58
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I just lost about eighty pages of material due to a mixture of fat-finger stupidity and a lovely laptop. Should I go back and try to replace them with what I remember and think of it as an editing experience, or should I work on something else in the meantime until the irritation dies away?
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Jun 15, 2015 19:58
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Spongebob Squarepants has the best dialogue. It is thought-provoking.
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Jun 21, 2015 05:29
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Look, I'm sorry if the tasteful innuendo and simple -- yet incredibly deep -- humor of the show is above your head. It truly captures the spirit of the generation, and it's an inspiration to men and women everywhere. It's not quite as culturally relevant as My Little Pony or Homestuck, but it has its place among modern works as an item of great media significance.
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Jun 24, 2015 02:54
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jimcunningham posted:What's the best way to tackle short dialogues in with telepathy or the like? Currently I have it as In Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, Death speaks in bold lower-uppercase without quotation marks, and it gets this point across beautifully -- it lends his speech pseudo-gravitas, emphasizing his dry humor. Did I mention Death is the best Discworld character? Because he is. It's a shame about his granddaughter, though. She's insufferable and brings down whatever book she happens to end up in.
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Jun 28, 2015 21:19
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I'm going to stream myself as I stare at a blank wall and make vague sobbing sounds to myself. And for every donation I'll mutter a nursery rhyme as I put out lit cigarettes on my arm. I'm nothing if not avant-garde.
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Jun 30, 2015 19:46
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Martello posted:just stream yourself explaining to the thread your top-secret chosen snowflake genre So you essentially want me to fart wetly into a microphone for an hour.
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Jun 30, 2015 23:44
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Whenever I have writer's block I usually eat a lot of fiber.
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Jul 2, 2015 09:53
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dude stop posting my manuscript, or at least get to the good part where the clown car driven by the book with abs shows up
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Jul 23, 2015 19:41
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22 Eargesplitten posted:Lately I have been feeling the melancholy that comes with not doing enough with my time. I want to start writing again, but I am the opposite of an idea guy. I have two ideas for novels, but I want to start with shorter works. Does anyone have a recommendation for a book or website of writing prompts? I tried that seventh whatever site in the resources thread, but I really didn't like its style. I know that's a useless criticism, but I'm not sure how else to describe it. Maybe too Mad Libs? Check out Thunderdome. Nothing like a deadline and a weird prompt to get you to write, and sometimes the microfiction you churn out can blossom into a larger work. There's a couple of Thunderdome entries that actually managed to get published.
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Sep 16, 2015 22:20
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Here's a twist ending: I'm a dog. A dog that can type. Also, has anybody here ever written for comics? There's a project I'm working on with a friend and while he says the short story format I'm working with has worked for him, I'd like to send him something nice and clear so he doesn't have to waste time jumping through descriptive hoops and unreliable narrators and just be able to draw the comic with straightforward descriptions. I know Alan Moore used to write his scripts panel by panel with excruciatingly detailed descriptions, but I don't have the talent to do that and I want to give the artist plenty of room to innovate on his own since he's a professional artist and I'm just a dog that can type. Any suggestions on how to write a good script? Or should I listen to my artist buddy and stick to short stories?
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Sep 17, 2015 23:42
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22 Eargesplitten posted:Put giant robot erotica on Amazon and brag about being a published author.
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Sep 20, 2015 05:53
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Tyrannosaurus posted:Nothing matters, you're unimportant, and you'll never write anything worth reading. Don't I know it. 
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Sep 20, 2015 08:49
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Peel posted:Literature is vital, you are its beating heart, and the next great American novel is inside you yearning to break free. 
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Sep 21, 2015 01:08
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Bobby Deluxe posted:Typical, content is gated behind the ability to already do that content. Just like videogames. Ugh. *pushes glass up nose, snorts loudly* now see here maybe if you weren't a FILTHY loving CASUAL you might get to see the content, but instead you want people to carry you with your welfare purples and your cliffsnotes GET GOOD DAMMIT But yeah, that book looks awesome and I want to give it a read. Instructional books have been my thing, lately.
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Sep 21, 2015 23:04
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The Saddest Rhino posted:lol if u do not just hallucinate ur words into existence A proper first draft is smeared in a noxious mixture of blood and feces on a fungus-stained cell wall or screamed again and again in a language known only to you in a feverish, high-pitched singsong cackle.
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Sep 30, 2015 04:44
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I have a terrible story with an even terribler prologue that adds nothing to the story, but I would like to set up a bit of worldbuilding and maybe introduce the antagonists before the story actually starts, something as a teaser to get the reader interested in the story. Would a short story-style thing work?
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Oct 12, 2015 18:35
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spectres of autism posted:"Read this story I'm in," he said, smoking a cigarette in a cool fashion. stop stealing my thunderdome entries spectres of autism (just kidding, there are no robots in this)
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Oct 12, 2015 18:57
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Bobby Deluxe posted:I've always been a big fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's penchant for Watson ejaculating in surprise. Coke's a helluva drug, man.
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Nov 1, 2015 22:56
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I don't know if anyone's read Joe Abercrombie's Best Served Cold, but one of the gimmicks I enjoyed about it was that every chapter centered around a different character, and the narration switched to that character's voice. NiffStipples' remark about his narrator being a  -faced neutral made me think -- as "wacky" as I've tried to make my story and my characters out to be (alcoholic demon lord! giant robot angel! telekinetic cyborg parrot!), the narration is stiff at best and cripplingly, cringe-worthily awkward at worst. Would changing the narrative voice to fit the current character POV work better, or would I be better off trying to fix the narration on its own?
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Dec 8, 2015 11:25
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NiffStipples posted:What if the book was being written WHILE a small, nerdy kid read it. He'd not know this obviously, untill he has to give a name to some dumb whore princess who just shows up - thusly, creating an interdimensional wormhole where he terrorizes highschoolers on a flying dog dragon. That sounds like the sort of story that would just go on and on forever.
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Feb 29, 2016 22:46
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change my name posted:Also, how do people come up with good titles. This is one skill I am sorely lacking. Look up Chuck Tingle and use his seminal work as inspiration. But for us mere mortals, the easiest way is to take the general theme of a story and summarize it into three or fewer words, or give an ironic spin on the story's concept if it works in context. Also, most writers with addictions only get better after they kick said addictions, save for those rare cases where the writer's stream-of-consciousness rambling are the results of a drug or booze-fueled fugue state, and even then the writer has to be intensely talented to begin with in order for that to work. Screaming Idiot fucked around with this message at 00:43 on May 10, 2016 |
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May 10, 2016 00:41
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"Slammed in the Ham by a Manly Man"
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May 10, 2016 00:45
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"Pumped in the Rump by Forrest Gump"
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May 10, 2016 11:21
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Hey, I have a backlog of finished-but-unedited stories I need to, well, edit, but I also have a bunch of fresh ideas for the next story in the series. Should I work on the next one, or drop the ideas and focus on un-loving my shitpile first? Thanks in advance! Love, Screaming Idiot PS, the new story will also, most likely, be a tremendous shitpile.
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Jun 1, 2016 22:37
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Thanks for the advice. It'll also give me a chance to ensure a little consistency between the old work and the new, because I'm a loving nerd and I'm the kind of guy who agonizes over little things like that rather than, say, the plot being interesting or exciting. "Yes, we get it, the demon lord wants to rule the universe with his army of mutant cyborgs, bla-bla-bla. Does the hero like sour things or not? On page 314 he says he doesn't like sour things, but on page 567, 759, and 1,987 you explicitly state his favorite soda is tart in flavor! Make up your mind, idiot!"
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Jun 2, 2016 03:36
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I know this question has been answered enough times in the past, but I've dug around and I can't find it and so I'll ask again and maybe tattoo the answer backwards across my forehead: How long should a manuscript be before and after editing? The current one I'm on is 9078 words long and 379 double-spaced pages at 13pt. Times New Roman. I'm working to reduce the wordcount while completely rewriting some scenes -- and cutting out the more obvious, cringeworthy pop culture references. This story is a labor of love, but I want to polish this turd enough to send to publishers someday. If genre matters, it's comic sci-fi with elements of fantasy, and it's not YA because I'm fond of naughty language.
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Sep 17, 2016 04:59
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Sailor Viy posted:On the one hand, I think editing shouldn't be a matter of reaching an arbitrary number like '20% less than the first draft'. It should be about tightening the novel up so that it reads better. Oh, length isn't the entire goal, I'm just trying to pare it down to something a little more manageable while working out the kinks in the story. I've actually removed about three chapters worth of useless fluff, including a spectacularly stupid introduction that had absolutely nothing to do with the story. I know the quality of the book's contents is the most important thing, but I want to keep my work short enough to be interesting not just to the reader, but to a potential publisher. I know a lot of budding authors want to be the next Tolkien or GRRM, but those guys got to where they were in spite of their books being large enough club buffaloes to death, not because. Also, where do you guys stand on illustrations? After I get my first book edited I was toying with the idea of hiring and artist to draw some of the more important scenes, either as inserts for the book itself or as potential covers.
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Sep 18, 2016 04:22
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anime was right posted:*just DMed in thunderdome* heres some dope advice from an idiot stop quoting me you bastard
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Nov 4, 2016 07:03
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The roots of a utopia society must sometimes be watered with the blood of redshirts.
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Jan 11, 2017 23:02
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