/lit/ - Literature and Writing

>>2166
Perhaps I ought to have made this clear earlier, but I am a complete and utter hack, so most of my stories are a few decent scenes cobbled together to form a semi-coherent narrative.
Kubrick talked about 'non-submersible units': these are fundamental story-pieces, the irreducible core of a narrative when all the non essential 'padding' has been stripped away. Brian Adliss: "[Stanley] had a contempt for narrative, I was hooked on narrative. But he said to me: forget it, all you need for a movie is 6 or 8 non-submersible units."

I've no idea if this method works outside of film, but that is my approach to writing.
I am even guilty of J. J. Abrams' 'mystery box' approach: I come up with a mystery for the characters to look into/investigate, and then make it up as I write. As long as the reader can follow the logic in where the story and investigation goes, and I ground the story enough, it could work. Hopefully. I include a lot of details surrounding the case, details that help sell the idea that this is a real case, and the investigators know what they are doing and follow the leads, but in actuality I have no idea where it is going, or if there is anything of importance to a particular clue.

Some clues may end up becoming redherrings, while other may end up being important. If I, as the writer, have no real idea where it is going, it forces me to be creative, makes me think on how I can connect these clues in a logical and interesting way.

In my 'dramatis personæ' list I make sure to include their relationships to the other characters if that is important - relative, love interest, acquaintances, enemies, etc.
If you are lucky the bio you come up with for characters can prove to be important down the line, how characters interact and think about each other.

I'm betting people will overlook most of my stories' faults as long as there are a few scenes that really work, and the characters are engaging.

>>2168 i see… i am a complete hack myself without any chance of success. but curiously of course, wondering if the elements that makes stories good are all reliant on, cohesive pieces in a certain way?

otherwise things just looks like a mess… whether star trek's khan and …the main guy's duality or benedict cumberbatch casting against chris pine…
or the jedi sith relation?

maybe i wonder too much about it and it cripples me..
otherwise then wouldnt you be making and remaking a certain thing all the time without retaining come recycled elements that has somewhat "good" ratings in it? what do you think?

>>2169
>maybe i wonder too much about it and it cripples me..
That could be it. Fuck the haters and the fear of screwing up. Just write what you want.
Nothing I ever write will ever be published, so I may as well write what I want and put it online, rather than trying to appeal to some non-existent audience or adhere to genres and styles just because that is 'how it is supposed to be done'.

If you write just to have fun and get better, then just do it and see how it turns out. If you do put it up online you could end up getting some useful feedback. AO3 allows original fiction, but even fanfiction is helpful to get your toes wet. You can just use these existing characters and settings and scenarios and add your own plot/idea and just start writing without having to come up with all new characters on your own. That can take up so much time you could be using on just writing with pre-existing characters.
That is a helpful way to test your skills and scenarios.

>>2171 im not going all anarchist like that but yes you have a point, thank you

>>2172
I'm not saying go nuts and drop any coherent narrative, but to be less bound by traditional writing styles and techniques. That hampers creativity, I think.
If you are writing something for serious publication, then yes, write what you think will get published. But if you are writing something (mostly) for your own enjoyment, why not be more creative and focus on mood, atmosphere, and make some segments flow nicely, albeit in an unconventional way, and focus more on developing those special scenes, rather than adhering to conventional story structure and narrative?
Explore different writing styles for different characters - some characters might use more 'flowery' expressions, different words, and have an outlook on life that gives them a special and distinctive flare. Other characters might be more reserved and logical, and their POV would be noticeably different from other characters. Just small things that help set the characters apart and give an indication of their personality.

Personally I have tried to adopt Lucio Fulci's approach in literary form for some of my stories:
<Both [The Beyond & Inferno], intentionally, have no structure. We tried in Italy to make films based on pure themes, without a plot, and The Beyond, like Inferno, refuses conventions and traditional structures, while there are some threads in my other films: The House is about a monster, The Ripper is an Hitchcockian thriller, City of the Living Dead deals with Evil, Zombi 2 was death and the macabre. I like The Beyond very much because I think it was an interesting attempt. People who blame The Beyond for its lack of story have not understood that it's a film of images, which must be received without any reflection. They say it is very difficult to interpret such a film, but it is very easy to interpret a film with threads: any idiot can understand Molinaro's La Cage aux Folles, or even Carpenter's Escape from New York, while The Beyond or Argento's Inferno are absolute films.

Is it a bad idea to work on multiple projects at once? I'm getting a little bored with the story I'm working on because I've ran through the plot in my head a million times.

>>2125
Probably, but I am very guilty of this myself. I just can't force myself to sit down and write unless my muse inspires me. Some writers treat it is any other sort of work/job, but that seems so cold and mechanical to me.
So I end up writing on something that holds my interest for a while, then maybe I will be writing on something different, a wholly different genre and mood.

Anthony Trollope got up early to sit down and write for three hours before breakfast, but I simply do not have that kind of willpower, and I fear my already poor writing would suffer if I tried to force my way through it.

>>2125
If you actually sit down and force yourself to squeeze out a thousand words in one day for your current story, you'll discover new plot elements you didn't know about before.

>>2141
Once you start to write a story you keep thinking about it and the characters, and new interesting ideas emerge from that, but I always find that those ideas come when I am doing something else, not sitting down to write. It is very rare for me to come up with some new direction when I am actually sitting down to write. It has happened, but I find that sitting down lessens my creativity.
I always get my best ideas when I am active and outdoors; jogging, watching nature and the surroundings, and thinking about the story and the characters as I walk or jog.

>>2142
I'm the same way. What you do is you sit down, write til you don't know what to write next, then go do something else until you do know. Engaging your brain in intellectual activity is like engaging your body in physical activity; if you don't rest in between sets you'll become exhausted. I banged out over 2000 words today in this manner.

>>1903
Well how about a download like then you dumb prick

Here is the Excel File. My apologies for the delay. Doesn't start until November though, so there is no time lost.

https://mega.nz/file/vRURkK7A#mWlS9s4MUO1gR38AjihoGxaj1tWlq4k3rOo7ZPu1bf0

Here is the PDF version if you cannot open the Excel file. Excel file is better to write on & look at, as it has dotted lines in the days instead of solid lines, but some dumb pricks might not be able to open it.

Enjoy!

https://mega.nz/file/vM80mCjL#pLEPMWzMlBHbRnRxDekWAWOsTiU3XNvN6QmnN2rKudA

quality

>>2052
oh i ve heard this but then you cant always have one off characters become popular so how does those who you write up as recurring fills in all of your stories "properly"? seems kinda wild without any sort solid ideas or plan…

>>2048
I tend to make a list of the main characters at the beginning, just writing down all sorts of tidbits about them; physical description, likes, dislikes, family background, etc.
This is especially useful if you don't know where the story is going or how it is going to end.

Some, or most, of these bits of background/info may not even make it into the story, but I find it is useful to have established some sort of basic character before going into the story. It makes it easy to decide where that character is going, how they would react in a certain situation if you know a little about their background.


Came across these notes J. K. Rowling made when she started writing the Harry Potter books, detailing the blood status for each character was something she thought to include from the very beginning. The empty circle symbolises a pure-blood father, the filled square a non-magical father. The Star of David symbolises the mother's blood status, while the square with an 'N' inside means a non-magical/non pure-blood mother(?). Finally the letter at the end is the house they end up in at Hogwarts (Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Gryffindor or Slytherin).
I could not find anyone talking about the fact that Rowling used a Star of David to symbolise the mother's blood status; is she implying that the witches and wizards are like Jews? The serpent symbolism of Slytherin is also interesting, especially since these witches and wizards are die-hard blood purists.

>>2068
You take pictures like a 90s serial killer. How many people have you killed?

>>2073
I think he merely saved the pic, anon.

>>2073
As >>2077 pointed out I did not take it myself, it comes from the Harry Potter Wiki, and from the 2001 documentary Harry Potter and Me where Rowling shows off her earliest notes before she started writing the books.
Because it is a screenshot from a 2001 documentary that is probably the best image quality out there.
http://web.archive.org/web/20211020003906/https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Harry_Potter_and_Me

No one seems to have commented on the Stars of David, or the fact that Rowling thought about the importance of the blood purity from the very beginning.
The circle around the Star might mean pure-blooded mother, while a plain Star is a Muggle mother. Still no idea what the 'N' is supposed to mean…

>>2072 that is very hilarious… i cant see how potter and king's
is related though.

Still, what do i do? how many character? how big of plots? what are the environments?

>>2075
>i cant see how potter and king's
is related though.
by being the same thing: slop

>>2076 ok sure. stil, what do i do then? climax or whatsoever, intros and exposition, how do i fill in the blanks? i cant seem to decide other than filing in names of objects but not sure how are they arranged to

Disclaimer: I have no experience writing for money or working with people who do and are successful at it.

In my opinion it's only not about how well you can write but about how well you can sell it.
You could have some awesome story and if you have no way to promote it it'll just be another work lost in the sea of self-published garbage with other gems floating around.
Find a way to cultivate an audience or find a way to get your work promoted by a publisher. Best ideas I can give.

>>2042
ok, some question:
how do you cultivate audience usually?
and in these days, what kind of "publisher" can help your writing busness… which is online now, to improve?

Submit something to the littyzine if it's worth I'll tell you the genre you need to write

>>2046
wheres littyzine

all left wing ideologies are controlled by marxists, even if they oppose marxism, they will ultimately act in a way that benefits marxists and marxism among you, once they are no longer useful as cover, they will be discarded, but only after you had been.

two of the core elements of marxism is that it requires the elimination of all non-marxist elements and that it will use any means, including grandiose acts of deception, to achieve this end.

they are a cancer that will go to any length to seek out and destroy anything that does not conform to it's very strict standards, you let them in, even a little bit, and they will metastasize and grow until you are pushed out, they cannot tolerate the existence of dissent, even if it is only limited to a small insular group in a remote and isolated location that communicates in secret, all who do not conform must be found and purged before their promised utopia can be delivered, all failures of their ideology are put down to outsiders or a lack of faith on someone's part.

the left prioritizes the most dangerous sources of dissent first if the left is coming to you for access, it means yu have been identified as a worse threat than whatever they haven't sought out yet, they will talk about acceptance and tolerance and freedom, but once they get their feet in the door, they will focus on building themselves up and then pushing you out of the space you built for yourself, look around at all the other things that gave coexistence with them a chance every time letting one in allowed them to take over, it was inevitable.

the right can tolerate a large range of disagreement, the left cannot, they are obsessed with growing their numbers, aand as their numbers grow, they develop a strict conformist ideology that eventually becomes full-blown marxism, and they become more and more fixated on purging those who disagree, do not let one of these vermin in, or you will end up swarmed by them.

do not make the mistake so many others have, you cannot inhabit the same space as these sorts of people, even the most liberal looking ones eventually turn against you once they feel the pressure to transform into their worst forms for fear of being given the same treatment they would give to you (and they fear rightly)

>>1706
damn, not good!

As with a lot of these books on the kikes, I buy them and can't read them.
They're so dense, and this whole topic is so overwhelming.
It's not a red pill. It's a red dumptruck full of dirt being poured on me at once.

>>1669
You can't really understand why the 20th century went the way it did without understand the role of its Jewish intellectual movements. I don't know how accurate the idea of Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy is, but The Culture of Critique does a good job of showing how they were all had at least some element of pursuing Jewish group interests. I'd recommend going with Jewish History, Jewish Religion by Israel Shahak first. It focuses on how Judaism has historically been aggressively self-aggrandizing and extremely hostile to outgroup members. The author was a Jewish liberal, but he was the consistent kind.

>>1708
>doesn't understand what marxism is, confuses it with communism
>doesn't understand that both marxism and communism lost 40 years ago and are now dead and buried
>thinks muh right can tolerate dissent better than muh left, because ideological content totally has something to do with ideological structure
Let me guess, american?

>>51
what if I have really ugly teeth?

For those that want to become an ubermensch:
>48 Laws of Power
>Prometheus Rising
>Convict Conditioning
>Phd of persuasion

>>78
haven't heard of prometheus rising or Phd of Persuasion. I've read 48 Laws, top tier book. Isn't Convict Conditioning only about bodyweight training? I'll take a look at it regardless.

>>78
skip the pseud shit in this (i won't tell you which are and are not) and instead read 'The Pocket Oracle and Art of Prudence'. it's much better, addresses more areas of life and scenarios, doesn't rely on forced anecdotal bloat, and has no silly sociopath larping.