So Veeky Forums, how's your novel coming along?

With regards to slipstream scifi, there is a very good anthology called "Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology" and it will cover just about all your bases. Either you'll love it or you'll hate it.

Now for hard far-future speculative sci-fi the first one that comes to mind is The Engineer: Reconditioned by Neal Asher. Now the genre may be debatable, but the general premise is pretty sound. He writes a bunch of body-horror based short stories about exploring an alien planet, and the entire thing is just very... unsettling. Giant flying living ships filled with parasites unsettling. I found it particularly neat how he describes applying the scientific method to the planet-seeder-type creature.

Slowly but surely, and so far fairly decent in quality, as I have a bad habit of rewriting when I should be writing. Thank you for asking my good user.

Very slow.
I like worldbuilding and can get it correct to set a mood I want. However I rarely can get myself to properly write it down as novel and the more I write it the more I start to doubt whole thing. It is like I missing a spark to start beliving into things I came up with and put together.

Are you me?

I wrote extensively in university, but I'm on a two-year hiatus. I'm seemingly incapable of doing anything without a tremendous amount of stress and a firm deadline.

I can't write worth a damn and I barely write at all if I'm not writing for specific things like Storythreads .

My current idea is about superheroes. I have an outline I actually want to write something so it's a bit better than my other attempts.

It's stuck.

Each time I'm trying to write more of it I get an idea for different story. Can't focus on a single one for the life of me.

Finished it over a year ago, had nothing but rejections from agents.

You can imagine that I'm not feeling very optimistic.

I gave up on my dreams ages ago.

I am not a naturally good writer nor do I have the mental fortitude to put the work in to becoming one.

What was some of the feedback? Do you need help?

Once they create that machine that transfers human thought to a page, I'll finish it

Say fuck it and put it online.

Nah, the feedback is that it's well-written, it's just not fitting into any existing niches, so it's entirely my fault for writing something that isn't easy for agents to sell. I just threw myself into it and produced something I wanted, when I should have been thinking more about what they wanted.

I'd rather just move on and do more traditional stuff there's more of a market for. That's what I'm doing now. At least I can say I learned more about writing and story structure from the first book.

What was the book about user?
And you never know, uploading it chapter by chapter as a blog or something could attract a cult audience.
As a guy who never gets the time to just sit down and write it seems like you're missing out on a great opportunity.

slowly... very slowly...
>have 60 pages of world building
and I am constantly in the process of updating designs and histories of the main/more interesting civilizations, and their technology... etc

Trying to make a rather hard sci fi so as a result I'm learning heaps and adding bits and pieces

I have barely anything done in terms of people or character development or a story line as such sadly. Rather I have pages and pages of in depth ramblings about the societies and the civilizations in my setting.

not sure if its going to be a novel or a heap of short stories and the such, that most likely will be sealed away somewhere so nobody reads them.

TL;DR space opera that doubles as a social commentary

Bro. Bro. I'm tellin ya, cool it on the worldbuilding. Unless you are writing an RPG and not a novel you never, under any circumstances need that much worldbuilding. Write what shows up, let the reader worry about what doesn't.

Maybe when I finally get a response from people who still haven't rejected me.

It's about an archivist who lives in a massive floating shell in the sky. He works endlessly in his prison doing busywork with books and documents until the shell's broken open one day by a clockwork knight woman who's trying to find someone. When the shell-structure collapses they both escape as it falls down towards the world below, revealed to be a large island with a giant tower in the middle.

It's kind of a mystery adventure story. It becomes apparent the inhabitants of the different parts of the island are trapped in mental "fogs" of routine and logic loops and the protagonist is one of the few free-thinkers alongside his companion, so the pair of them travel throughout the world searching for others as they head towards the tower, which is sending out airships full of soldiers to stop them. They end up recruiting a mad cannibal, a gun fanatic and a woman who's half-human, half-sword, and the focus is about the disparate personalities and perspectives of the group as they deal with traps, ambushes, conflicting opinions and so forth.

I tried to put a lot of surreal imagery and horror elements into it because I like that sort of thing but the end result is that it's kind of full of weird visuals that I bet are the reason it was turned down so much.

I'm struggling to make a unique and coherent magic system. Most of what I come up with sounds like superhero powers rather than proper magic.

I'd say do as much world-building as you can; then put the absolute minimum you can into the book. That way you have a logical structure that can be inferred from the way people behave, and give verisimilitude to the world at large without massive info dumps every 5 pages.

Plus if you're successful your asshole kids can take your never intended for publication world building notes and shit out some cash grab sequels after your dead.

>My current idea is about superheroes
I've seen more of these recently.

He's writing hard science fiction. If such a thing is actually publishable in this day and age, his audience will want to know more about the setting and how things work.

Which is why I probably will never try to publish it.

Which is really how it goes for most of my ideas.

But it's something I want to do for fun.

But user, super hero powers ARE magic. Just use particular conduits to summon the magic, create some incorporeal force that ties all magic together, and make sure the characters don't act like super heroes. Sure, a wizard might save a castle by stopping a boulder with the power of his mind, but dollars to doughnuts he'd be a pretentious fuckwit about it. He may even be too apathetic to help in the first place.

>Fantasy Heist Novel
>Not sure how to get all the characters on the same page without them breaking character

How does a crew of thieves keep their shit together? The danger level is through the fucking roof due to them about to rob a Dragon, who is also a sorcerer, who is also the unquestioned Grorious Reader of an entire nation. How can I get them to not just immediately NOPE out and snitch on the others? At least too much so as to ruin the heist?

One of them puts a "no snitching" curse on the others?

They're stupid and self deceiving.

Put in a frame narrative were they're compelled by an ominous plot device to work together. Maybe the king is holding some people they care about hostage? Maybe it's a quest by one of the gods, and failure would result in a horrific punishment? How about it's some sort of demonic blood pact where each member is linked to the other like some sort of human voodoo dolls? You could even have the most snitch-prone characters feel some sort of honor-among-thieves thing.

I don't have a problem with behaviour, I just have a problem with the magic being so limited as to be a superpower. Like if you were Superman or the Flash, you wouldn' t call yourself a wizard coz your powers are to fly or to go fast, and a wizard does things like throw fireballs, or summon creatures, or mind control, or all of the above.

The particular conduits thing I'm not sure I understand. Like if Superman could only fly if he had a magic bracelet or something? Doesn't really disguise the fact it's a superpower rather than broader magic.

The incorporeal force thing I'm also not sure I understand. I'm happy enough to tie magic to gifts from the gods or whatever, but if you say that Superman can fly and the Flash can run fast because God made it so, I'm not sure that's convincing or interesting fantasy magic.

>have setting
>have characters
>have plot
>can't actually write for shit

Just kill me.

I sort of like this. The magic system in the story sort of encourages dickbag mind-shenanigans. But since all the thieves have some sort of magical background this might be an odd thing to do.

One of them hates the Wyrm King more than his own well being. Literally fought for 60+ years just for a shot of killing him, and only now has set up a heist that could realistically kill the King. One sees him as a father-figure and is in it to help people and to see more of the world. And one is a master-thief whose family was destroyed by the Wyrm. He's the one I worry about as he's lived on the street so long that "look-out-for-number-one" is just ingrained in him.

And he's the main POV. So...

The best way is the characters. Give them a reason why it's important. Like, maybe the dragon killed her dad. Or he's a thrill-seeker, and this is the ultimate thrill. Character driven stories are always better.

well I feel I need to know the places and events that create the characters... A lot of the plot sorta is based on how the civs and factions interact with one another and how they try to out do each other and gain an advantage/maintain power in any way they can.

>I sort of like this. The magic system in the story sort of encourages dickbag mind-shenanigans. But since all the thieves have some sort of magical background this might be an odd thing to do.

All of them curse each other in an attempt to protect themselves, but the magic intermingles and turns into this irremovable clusterfuck curse on all of them where by if one of them snitches they'd all die. The only way to remove it involves one of the treasures they're trying to steal?

Who is your main character?
What do they want?
Who or what is stopping them from getting what they want?
What state is your main character in at the start of the story, and what state are they in at the end?
What are you trying to say with this story?

These are the elements you need to bear in mind while plotting a story. Only once you've got these elements settled should you bother to worldbuild, because then you'll know precisely what elements of your world you actually need to work on and develop.

This was pretty much my logic too
>appealing to super nerds is really fucking hard they will be all over my maths if I fuck up.

that was the general idea really
I'd be ok with that desu.. I'd still be providing for my kids and their kids so... I win?

Magic in-setting is very person-dependant. No item could help them in that way...but magic is also triggerable by events, signs, and other things. Perhaps the heist itself breaks the curse? Or killing the Wyrm?

You're the writer, user.

Hmm, if the character is naturally pragmatic, why not make it pragmatic not to snitch? I know it sounds kind of obvious, but perhaps the Wyrm King uses some of his dragon sorcery to try and create some sort of broad spectrum illusion as a last-line-of-defense against thieves?

In my head this played out in one of two ways:
>The Wyrm King shows the grizzled thief a future in which he succeeds in killing the Wyrm King, but is consumed by inconsolable rage and becomes a murderous dictator. In response, the grizzled thief decides he wants to reveal the party to the Wyrm King so that he can spare the world his wrath, which looks much worse than the dragon's wrath as part of the illusion. Maybe even his dead family convinces him or something, that's not important. What is important is that pragmatic main character thief recognizes that grizzled thief is possessed with dragon madness, then has an epiphany, slaps some wits into grizzled thief, and recognizes the pervasive nature of the wyrm king's evil.

or,
>The pragmatic thief experiences an illusion that compels him to snitch on the party. For some reason I really want it to be his dead family giving him an impassioned speech or something. As the master thief is about to snitch, he notices something off about the illusion. I was thinking a locket from a wif, or a rock given to him by his kid that's noticeably different. Anyways, master-thief realizes that it's an illusion and comes to resent the dragon for manipulating him instead of simply asking. You can even have him have asides about wanting to snitch and foreshadow that he's going to snitch, before flipping the script.

They all know each other, and have been working together for years on smaller jobs. They're not going to snitch on each other because they're all good friends, and are all committed to the gang's goals.

Jesus Christ, this isn't hard.

Furthermore, if you want them to be immune to the traitor-magic or whatever, just fucking make something up. Fuck canon, fuck worldbuilding, and fuck anyone who whines about "muh consistency".

Drama is king, not the fucking set-dressing.

When I read your post, I instantly thought of this guy. I don't really know why, but here you go.

I WOULD READ THE EVERLOVING FUCK OUT OF THAT

And why haven't you self-published this masterpiece and promoted the fuck out of it on reddit?

I've taken courses in science fiction and I have a professor who would literally cream her jeans if it's as fleshed out as it sounds.

Oh shut up, stop fucking whining. If you never get to it, you'll never improve your writing enough to have something published. Now shut up and get to work.

It may have been rejected because the story took too long to get moving, lingering on the life of the archivist for just a bit longer than your proof-reader was willing to put up with.

Alternatively, it may have been rejected because the main characters had no clear goal. Sure, they want to get to the tower, but WHY? Why does the clockwork knight want to get there? Why is the Archivist going with her? You need to dramatise the "why" for the character's goals to matter to the audience, because if the audience doesn't know "why" a character is doing something, they will struggle to empathise with them, and by extension struggle to get emotionally invested in their struggles.

Just some thoughts.

I don't know where to start because my setting is too goddamn big and I worked on it too long. I freeze up when I try to work on a story and not the setting itself. Its driving me crazy as i finally feel mature enough to pull of writing that isn't full of angst, edgy, too dark, and a pile of pretentious shit.

Thinking about bouncing around with short stories while I get my act together and figure out what exactly in the setting i want to write about.

It sucks.

Also fuck my setting for being so big and interesting never thought that would actually backfire on me.

I actually worried about your first point when I was writing it. I'm actually friends with a couple of published authors in my area and they've read my book, we figured that we got the introduction down enough to make it not feel like it drags after a few drafts.

As to your second point I deliberately left out a bunch of stuff from that so it's not really fair to call it a synopsis. I didn't really want to post the whole thing for obvious reasons. I'm fairly confident that my story does cover the things you've suggested, but obviously I'm probably biased.

I've never used Reddit, I'd have no idea where to start.

Hey guys, just thought I'd pop in here and gently cross-post to my spiel in a nearby thread.
We've had half-a-dozen submissions already, which is pretty amazing for only a few days of promoting ourselves. I hope you'll consider submitting something for glory and tiny amounts of cash!

You can always put independently release it for kindle user. At least that way it will bring in something.

That sounds amazing.

I just hate myself for letting my insane setting become an unholy abomination due to the size and scope of it.

Write erase write erase. Eventually you'll get something that you don't hate.

>I didn't really want to post the whole thing for obvious reasons.

Ideas are cheap. Good artists have millions of their own that they never act on. Nobody's going to steal yours. And even if they did, so what? All they've got is your ideas, not your text. Any work they produce will invariably differ greatly from your own, by dint of not being written by you.

Besides, the measure of a good work is in the execution, not in ~ideas~.

That's interesting. It's already june though, what happens if you build up a huge backlog of stories?

I thought you were guna post again in /sffg/. Also I'm just finishing up the editing for mine now, will send in the next hour or so probably.

I'm not going to give you a tutorial on groupthink because it's exactly as horrible as you imagine.

As an alternative suggestion, send it to a reputable author to get their endorsement, or enter particularly good excerpts in a contest/anthology.

I know I'm just some anonymous fa/tg/uy, but I would love to write a glowing articulate review for you in order to generate some hype.

>Thinking about bouncing around with short stories while I get my act together and figure out what exactly in the setting i want to write about.

Don't write about your setting. Write about people. Tell me their desires, their goals, their dreams. Show me them struggling for what they want. Show me them achieving or failing their goals, decisively.

And for fuck's sake, don't hobble yourself by trying to adhere to your setting 100%. Tell the story you want to tell, and adjust the world to enable it. If you say the sun rises in the east, and there are verdant plains in the rain shadow of a mountain, who the fuck can tell you otherwise? No-one, that's who. In your world, you are God, and your word is law.

We've discussed the idea of buying stories in suspension for later issues, but at this point we'd be happy just to be able to field six great stories. That's kind of a 'bridge to be crossed when we come it' situation.
I was, but I'm waiting for the old thread to die first. I'm really conscious of spamming the boards I'm posting on and exhausting everyone of my presence. I'll probably post in every second or third thread until the start of August.

How do you guys do payment? paypal?

Ah okay. I'm emailing now. Mine's The Shadow Under the Ice. I hope you enjoy it, even if it's not successful.

Slowly. I've got all the elements there, I've got it plotted out to the end, I just keep wanting to rewrite the stuff I'm working on at that moment which means I haven't gotten past the prologue.

>rises in the east
...Or north, or west, or whatever.

Sorry, forgot which way the sun rises. My point still stands.

I really should be sleeping considering its 4 in the morning and I got prior engagements.

It's not going well. I pick up steam write a bit and move on to something else and most of the time it's not even writing. Just another hobby I found interesting.

For my current one I have characters, a few basic plots and I'm going to try to rewrite some of the first chapter if I have some freetime tomorrow.

It's basically a bunch of short stories, following individual members of a social media/gaming company's security force.

The stories aren't really all that violent and most of the confrontations are solved out by talking but the characters are all weirdos who don't really get the current generation they're in. It's not a criticism of the current generation, it's just they don't get it and most of them are already pretty odd in the head.

If I ever finish it I'm probably not going to try to get it published but I like it, or at least the idea of it and will at least try to get something done.

Yep! Considering the international nature of things (We pay in $US, but are are not in the US ourselves) we have to use PayPal as a safe go-between.
Thanks for submitting! Good luck! I hope you find our feedback useful in any case.

As I spend most of my free time writing proper novel-length stories feedback on my writing style is highly appreciated.

Where are you based?

Well 750 words isn't much. I should give it a shot then.

zero chance of me doing that to be honest

I'll give this a shot. Pick a topic and I'll write about it, then submit it later tonight.

Things I like:
>body horror
>noir
>sci-fi

Things I don't like:
>bumblegum romance
>fan fiction

Anything in the middle is fine with me.

Guy wakes up after a long night with a dragon head instead of his regular one. Short story about him dealing with it while having breakfast, not burning down his house, hiding it at work, etc

That's perfect, secretly I love Kafka. Thanks user!

What you are grasping for? Is commonly called the beginning of a story. If you can't do that, you might want to try another hobby, one with lower confidence requirements.

>So Veeky Forums, how's your novel coming along?
so many ideas

so little actual writing

And when I do write something it's never for a novel, just a short exercise. Then when I read it back all I can think is: could have been better

pic semi related, it's probably the best thing I've written in a while

youtube.com/watch?v=iBG3zEEhAvw

I told my friends that I would release my novel as an ebook at some point last month. It's not released. I'm still proofreading and making small changes, adding just some more dialogue and little details to explain more. But I want to finish it so badly so I can concentrate on other projects.

I know those feels user, I've been working on my pet project for months... but yet no actual story line.. histories yeah but not a story.

You guys need to realise that writing and worldbuilding are very different things. You can casually worldbuild while watching TV or browsing Veeky Forums or half-chatting with your family. Writing is a more personal experience, and requires privacy and concentration.

Also, with worldbuilding, you're constantly going back to add more details or write new stuff. With a story, my strong advice is to not look back on it until you're done. Leave editing until the editing phase, which comes after the writing phase.

Magic """""""systems""""""" ruin the mystical feel

CHARACTERS.
GOALS.
CONFLICT.
RESOLUTION.

These are the building blocks of all drama, and all storytelling. If you do not ground your action in solid character motives, slam those motives into conflict, and then figure out who's left standing at the end, no-one will ever give a shit about your precious worldbuilding.

Change your magic system

I agree, I want to keep it mysterious. But there has to be some underlying consistency, especially since my plan was for the protagonist to learn it eventually.

pactwebserial.wordpress.com/

There are two hundred of those and I don't even like webcomics. You'll have to actually say why you linked it.

Novel? Y'mean campaign setting?

Stop systemising magic.

Not a webcomic. Pact's entire deal is that it's based around a magic system that's as far as someone can get from superpowers but remain internally consistent. If you are willing to read a novel that's around half the length of game of thrones and is also deliberately written in a way to make it a struggle to read, you will find what I consider to be the best magic system ever written.

CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL!

thank you anons
I have a weird habit of researching everything... so I can/ have spent a few hours a week doing nothing but reading/world building

is it wrong to flesh out the world building before characters ? I kinda stated here why this is taking me forever ( although I admit I'm being an assburger perfectionist when it comes to details )

I do have a goals, conflict and half a resolution though

this is and will always be my main concern, hard sci fi audiences are super harsh of handwavium... plus Its a uncommon genre these days.

Take a look at Unknown Armies for some ideas about magic systems that don't seem at all "systematic".

Hmm I see, it's a series of short stories. I'd be willing to read it if it were printed, but I hate reading on my computer screen. I appreciate the suggestion, but is there a tl;dr anywhere?

If you're writing hard science fiction, you shouldn't use handwavium. The whole point of the genre is that its internal consistency is its main drawing card. It's like writing a psychological story but not having any character consistency.

Thanks, I'll look into it.

Remmber: outside of games magic is exactly one thing: A plot device. Consistency is good, but is actually not required, despite what Veeky Forums has brainwashed you into thinking. Internal inconsistency is perfectly acceptable and is a plot device all it's own (see P. Anthony's Xanth, Changeling and Madwand by Zelazney, The Shattered World by Michael Reaves, Harry Potter series, etc.

It's actually one long novel written on the internet, and there is not a tl;dr over the magic system since the whole thing is an exploration of how the magic works in action. It's difficult to explain and the story has the main character learning how it all works as a main component.

what would be the limits of tolerable handwavium in a galactic setting with aliens n shit ( I have ftl but its nerfed to the extreme )

Harry Potter series is exactly what I'm trying to avoid. There's no explanation of why Dumbledore is a good wizard. I mean you can say it's his bloodlines or his dedication, but I mean what does that give him?

If you're a good guitar player, it could be your long fingers or the hours of practice, but those things give you the ability to move your fingers quickly down the fretboard and pluck the right string without hitting any others. Surely there's more to it than saying the word right ("it's leviosa, not leviosa") and moving the wand correctly ("swish and flick"), or else Hermoine would be Voldemort's nemesis.

Well thanks for the suggestion. I wish I could say that I'll try and find the time to read it, but anything longer than a few thousand words is basically a no unless I can pick it up from a bookstore.

I don't know m8, I haven't read your story. Even in non-hard sci fi, it's good practice to set up later developments so they don't come off as deus ex machina. If we need to hand wave away a smaller ship beating a larger ship, it's better to say earlier in the story that the larger ship was experiencing technical difficulties or that the smaller ship's captain is an experienced space combat fighter than to say that they simply fought harder or something. It rewards the reader rather than frustrating them.

Sorry, I got sidetracked talking about how much I hate Harry Potter magic. Lord of the Rings is a better example: magic is still mystical in that, but the internal consistency is that it's given to the wizards by higher beings and they're entrusted not to use it to alter the sequence of events in the world. The other end of the scale is Eragon, where the magic system is basically mathematical and it's all about where he gets his mana from.

I'd like something like Lord of the Rings, where it's mystical, but it still has to make sense, especially if my protagonist learns it. I don't think that consistency is not required, and that such an approach would alienate the protagonist from the reader because he can suddenly just do whatever he wants on some occasions but not others.

oh there's none of that handwavium ( plot armour )
I was talking about tech handwavium ( things that cant exist )