So how's that novel coming along Veeky Forums?

So how's that novel coming along Veeky Forums?

Fuck you.

I'm 4 pages in, I have no idea where I'm going, and I'm beginning to think YA Weird Fantasy can't be done.

Honestly anything YA can be done as long as it resounds with a target audience.

I have no idea how I could make "boy travels across planes of reality to attempt to stop avatars of eldritch abominations from tearing a hole in the worlds and massacring everyone who lives within" appeal to the 12-15 demographic.

At the risk of sounding like a jackass, make him an awkward but charming boy who likes nerdy stuff and is quirky.

I am going to make a story out of loli wizards and vampires and yuri and damn it it will work

If stephen king's weird ass shit can get published so can I

Follow your dreams, user. I belive in you.

Make the boy what that group wants to be or wants to fuck.

Lord why

Okay even I don't have that low an amount of self-esteem.

Because I've had a half-formed story kicking around my head for ages and that's just how it is

I've written almost 600 pages (about 330,000 words). Today I rewrote a scene linking up two fragmented parts and kept in an element of the story I was planning to cut out.

It's far too autistic to ever be published. As a result I am writing it entirely for my own satisfaction because the story gives me,serious feels. I've probably spent hundreds of hours working on it and I can't ever even show it to my family. No one will ever read it but I need to write it. I even won writing contests in high school and college which means fuck all.

I might write one other novel, because it's actually a vaguely original premise. But beyond that, why bother writing except for personal satisfaction? The market is flooded and over saturated and it feels like hardly anyone reads anymore.

Terribly, I have resorted to disguising my fantasy stuff as "literary" so It can get workshopped in class.

I can do "awkward but charming", but I'm not sure how to do "into nerdy stuff" when his home plane is so different from ours.

Make analogous nerdy shit that's not our nerdy shit but has the same overtures.

but it's based off the old west, though

I want to write and I have ideas but actually sitting down to write is torture since all I do is self pity about prose.

So I'm still trying but I've stalled out. Mostly because I really don't want to put in the work to establish a relationship in the book because I don't want to write mushy teenage crap.

Do homebrew rulebooks count? The Setting, races, and lore are basically done. All of my systems / diagrams are being updated every couple of days. Then I just need to hunt down and artist and make it all look nice.

Rocks. Space rocks.

I feel the exact same way as you do. I have characters, interactions, and a semi skeleton of a "plot" which is more like scenes between the characters all in my head, and at this point I'm only writing so I can get it out of my head and onto a physical medium.

Even when I look at the premise (analyzing how a clan of immortals tasked with internal peacekeeping between groups of immortals as these groups do "experiments") I get the exact same feeling of "this is far too autistic and niche to ever be published". Certainly my friends and family would never be interested.

But it's kind of fun. I like being able to get these characters down on paper, and feel like they actually exist in some sense of the word. You aren't alone user.

"Tell me about your character."
"He collects rocks."

I wrote 3 novels years ago, the creativity in me died at some point. I'm still trying to revive it.

If by book you mean a Jojo fanpart for Super Stand Sundays than I'm working right hard on it!

I'm also righting an actual book in my spare time but I'm starting to get the feeling that it'd work much better as a comic book or manga then a novel. Unfortunately my hands shake like a 90 year old man with Parkinson's having a seizure so that's right out.

I'm 200 Pages in and stuck.

I don't have the patience to write one. I'm sticking with short fiction for now.
Not like it's worth the effort of trying to make money from it, because I'm not that good a writer. I'll stick to writing what I like instead of what people want, and share it with friends.

>I have no idea how I could make "boy travels across planes of reality to attempt to stop avatars of eldritch abominations from tearing a hole in the worlds and massacring everyone who lives within" appeal to the 12-15 demographic.

Got some bad news for you friend

Some cunt already made Percy Jackson.

I'm the same as you two. But how do I start organising it all, making all these random scenes and interactions start fitting together? Where do I start? And how do I keep track of my notes ugh

31 days until NaNoWriMo baby.

Thinking about cheating and doing a second draft of last year's.

I use onenote to organize character dossiers, visio to make little character webs, and then I just start figuring out how they met, what they want out of one another, and I write snippets until it ties in to something bigger.

So far the main "chain" is a series of summoners, who after they die, turn into summons themselves, and the next generation of summoners repeat the cycle. Find a theme that you like and focus on that perhaps

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Not working on one. Does working on a short story count?

I am literally outlining it right now.

Stop reminding me of my dead dreams!

Putting the finishing touches on it now. After I hear from editors and people I asked to review it for me, I'll see if it will need polishing or more actual work.

IF I hear from the editors. The economic situation had deteriorated somewhat since the last time I sent anyone anything, and genre fiction never sold that well down here.

Writing my third one. First two didn't sold too well but I'll keep writing.

I'm still working on it. I want to finish the arc so I'm able to have some more growth with the other characters.

Shit I need to write a novel?!

Why did no one tell me?

Pullman!

Decently. The problem is wondering if anyone will be willing to read it.
It starts out fairly generic fantasy, kingdom of men beset by the undead, farmer girl is found out to be a powerful latent mage, is sent to the front lines to try and turn the tides of the war, etc.
It's later in the book when shit gets interesting, when it turns out that mages are dime-a-dozen and farmer girl is actually a pretty shit mage, they just have a super high mortality rate so they need all the mages they can get. In addition to that, the army of the dead are actually perfectly sane and have some pretty compelling reasons for attacking the kingdom.
I'm trying to make it as a deconstruction of many of the ideas and ideals of the high fantasy genre, but the problem is that I first need to set it up as generic high fantasy and as somebody who is bored to tears by generic high fantasy I could see people getting bored by how comparatively uninteresting the first half is.
But then I remember that shit like the hobbit movies made a bazillion dollars and generic shit sells the best anyway, so who knows.

Going swimmingly.

I think you need to sprinkle the generic tropes with stuff that >imply "but things aren't what they seem" in a way that doesn't insult the reader's intelligence.

I have a sweet-ass idea and now I'm trying to figure out how to get from that to an actual sensible explanation

This. Hints of things being wrong are like fucking catnip. Start lacing the first half with all that liberally.

Readers will see the twist coming, and lose interest.

Also curious if I should resurrect a dead character like the ghola in Dune,because one of the main characters dies and is succeeded by his son and daughter. I miss him badly, it was just a few weeks ago that I started to feel this deep dread and regret for killing him off even though it felt like it had to happen. Now his daughter is having visions of him and thinks she can find him even though he died falling into a pit of energy and pulled himself out before expiring. Her brother thinks she's full,of shit but I haven't decided yet. I know it's bad writing to do this shit but I'm never going to publish it so I don't care much about that. What I do care bout is that he might overshadow his son as the main character.basically there have been three different "main characters," each fathering the next. So the transition works out because the father dies around the time his son comes of age.

I really fucking regret killing that character, though. I just feel fucking,miserable about. Do you think it will pass or should I take steps to resurrect him? I've even been distracted at work. I feel like I ripped up a childhood toy, even though he had a hugely bad ass death and his wife is dead anyway so it'd be his son and daughter, and his Nick Caraway-esque friend,as the only people he knows.

Also his son is "heir to the throne" in a way so he'd probably be pissed that his father returned to overshadow him.

>French reddit.jpg

I actually managed to write 6000 words during a particularly sleepless night at the behest of my therapist.

It's a pinch of Firefly with Weird Aliens and bits and pieces of different space opera that I particularly like.

it's probably complete garbage

If I ever wrote one, it would be hailed as either the greatest thing ever by up and coming preteens, or absolute nonsensical garbage.
Probably both. Right now I'm in a really weird state of life where if I dropped off my meds and pumped myself full of caffeine, I could probably hack out a novel of midding quality in a few months at the cost of my sanity.
Any fantasy I write would be a mixture of completely mundane day-to-day life and incomprehensible subplots, drama, and hackneyed deconstruction/reconstruction of the fantasy genre.
It would be very hard for me to not make a book I write a soapbox for me to beat the shit out of my personal pet peeves of fiction writing, specifically, the abuse of fiction to shill the author's own personal beliefs and have the hero take a moralizing stance on everything.
Especially the oh so common bullshit attempt at something vaguely resembling existentialism, which amounts to 'It doesn't matter what you believe or what you do, so long as you have friends and you're a 'nice person at heart''.

why not bring the father back, but make him act behind the scenes? So like for whatever reason, his kids don't know he's alive but then meet him later

>tfw inspiration strikes and it all starts falling into place
>racistfrogsmiling.jpg

I posted about it in the last thread about this.

Basically a series of short novellas about how a bunch of guys got recruited to a corporation security team.

I'm outlining it by selecting a bunch of scenes that pop out to me as important and I've listed them chronologically by keywords that immieditly summarize the scene to me in my head.

The tricky bit is turning out to be connecting those important scenes with the pointless but at the same time important shit in between them.

this could actually be really cool user, keep at it

Reminds me a bit of Evangelion when you mentioned that the mages have a high mortality rate and she's actually pretty shit

That's fuggin' cool.

I read these when I was 13 and fucking loved everything about them; do they still hold up as an adult? Are they worth reading a decade later?

I don't write until its November, like.

I'm considering posting a few stories on here of my group... Said group happens to be members of my Polycule, and the sessions can sometimes be ERP intensive.

>3000 words in my book about a wierd war 2 setting
>realize it's probably shit and this has been overdone probably

Well fuck it.

If by novel you mean my fanfiction of two cartoon characters I like being lesbians together and falling in looOOOooOOoove, then I'd say it's going okay.

However, if by novel you mean a supernatural young adult book that I'm gradually losing focus of, because the deuteragonist is way more interesting than anything going on with the actual "main character", then I'd say it isn't going very well. Not even to mention that as much as I love mapping out characters down to the last detail, writing dialogue, and all that jazz- prose is a bit of a chore. If only I weren't a talentless hack, maybe I'd be able to avoid it by just doing a comic. But alas I'm a """writer""". And even if I tried, I wouldn't be able to put enough quotation marks around that.

My doctor who audio-play fanfiction, you mean?

Horribly.

>editing

This is exactly what I clicked into this thread to post. You, sir, win the internet.

To answer OP's question: Haven't worked on it in almost a year now. But I still think about it at least every other day.

Yeah, I fucking hate myself.

Oh shit, two years ago I wrote 40 pages in two weeks, as a warmup for finishing my main novel that I was going to write for nanowrimo. The main novel is currently at 30 pages.

I have a lot planned out, but I finish individual scenes way too quickly and don't know how to flesh them out. Those 30 pages are about 10 chapters. I'd like to consider my conciseness as a virtue, but I know I'm not building characters up enough or using my scenes the best I can.

>3 pages a chapter
The fuck

I'm currently trying to follow my dream by writing a story about a rebellion of humanity against the High ones, that are some kind of lesser gods.
Currently developping MC and 50 pages in. Had to cut around 20 pages since childhood and training are such a hassle and a boring thing to write.

From my personal experience when you start you often do things a bit too short. I'm not surprised I had a similar problem.

well it was going good until I realized I was writing The God Emperor of Dune.

Horrible, I'm no good at narrating thoughts. The protagonist seems to just go Nanaya-mode and murder a guy who stole a car battery by leading him gunpoint into an abandoned subway a shoggoth has moved into.

original guy here, I've always been surprised because the typical thing you hear is of writers being too detailed, and needing to cut a lot of things out. That makes sense though because the most recent thing I'm working on for it is the prologue, and that's at 8 pages already. Glad to hear I'm not the only one.

The only way to get good at narrating is reading and writing as much as you can.
Keep trying my friend.

>mfw I thought I was a wierdo for trying to write a novel for so long
>actually I'm not alone

It seems that most people take several years to finish their first book, and then write several more much more quickly. Just gotta power through that first one

>(analyzing how a clan of immortals tasked with internal peacekeeping between groups of immortals as these groups do "experiments"
This sounds interesting!

I had the surreal experience of having dinner with a well-published author with a friend who knew him a few years ago, and he started to talk about a premise involving immortals too. I started to realize that published authors are really no more gifted or talented than we are, just perhaps more practiced or more connected?

This actually fills me with determination.

What are your main character's goals, why do they want to achieve those goals, and what's keeping them from instantly and effortlessly achieving those goals?

If you know that, then plotting your story becomes easy. It's purely a case of asking yourself "what does this character want?" and then having them chase those wants through every single scene.

If you can't answer that question, then you do not have a story. You have a big pile of nothing that will never get anywhere.

>Also, if your character's only motivation is "it's their destiny", just kill yourself right now, you fucking hack.

What if their motivation is "It's their destiny, and they're trying to screw fate over to gain free will while on the surface trying to meet the conditions of the prophecy to prevent them losing all control over their body and being turned into a living puppet?"

That's one interpretation of that initial premise, out of a countless number of others. Fuck "it's been done". Has it been done by YOU? Then it hasn't fucking been done yet.

If I wrote a story about a girl falling in love with a vampire, I can guaran-fucking-tee that my interpretation of the premise would be original, because I'm the one writing it. I'm the only person on Earth with my life experiences, my perspective, my creative biases. No-one else can write like me, so no-one else could write the story I wrote before I did.

still sounds like some mary sue bullshit but it all depends on how it's written. I'm personally adverse to any strict rules to story, since there are several popular novels that seem to break any rules of good storytelling and still become huge hits

Then that's not their motivation. Their motivation is "I want to be free". Their destiny is an obstacle in the way of that goal that they need to overcome, not the goal itself.

Any tips on constructing a story where both the "hero" and the "villain" (quoting because I mean to make it more shades of gray than morally black and white) and their respective milieus get equal screen time?

Does anyone have any recommendations of books that split screentime between the protagonist and antagonist?

why not just toss it out here for quick stress test?
you're user, nobody will give you shit personally either way

>What are your main character's goals, why do they want to achieve those goals, and what's keeping them from instantly and effortlessly achieving those goals?
I'm actually struggling to answer this.

I got a motivation, a desire to do something, but actual goals are nothing. Which is kind of the point of the character but still.

they could have visions of each other at night, thus you could give both of them screen time without really changing the point of view

Your character could want a goal he could pursue in his life.

>What are your main character's goals, why do they want to achieve those goals

How do I proceed if my MC left his home because he was fed up with his father's bullshit. He didn't really have a goal beside getting off the planet on first transport.

Wouldn't fit for him.

He's supposed to be this drifting guy whom people kind of push along roads. No real purpose or goals in life beyond a vague murky desire to do more martial arts.

Which is a goal that can be used for by the original post but one that doesn't connect to the story bit because he easily accomplishes it within a chapter.

well, what now? Does he need to find a place to live? A job so he can eat? Does he have to steal food to get by? Are there immigration laws where he's going? Cultural differences? Racism (against him or others)?

If there's no conflict after he leaves, then the whole story is probably just him dealing with his shitty father and the resolution is him leaving, and it can end there.

I got stuck on a plot point.

The Queen has these two mages in her service that never take their hooded robes off and always wear these masks that hide their eyes, leaving only their mouths in view. They are both named Sam. One is male and the other is female, but their voice is identical, so nobody knows which one is which.

The Queen is able to tell the difference between them and she has become quite fond of the two of them, but right now, the plot is at a point where powerful political figures are demanding to know the truth about them. Many people in the court don't like the Queen's very unsettling companions and want to know where they came from and why they're so goddamned creepy, but I'm drawing a blank.

Look up the reluctant hero archetype