How is that book coming along Veeky Forums?

This, or even just a setting for existing ttrpgs.

Trying to finish school first

I really want to write a book just so i can get criticism, and get better

How the fuck am I supposed to books?

Speak for yourself.

Best FF book, fite me irl

Pretty good, I'm almost done writing the second story for the collection I'm doing and have one local store that's shown interest in stocking it. Better than nothin'.

I've started on numerous books and trashed them subsequently. One day I'll find the concept I want to go all the way with.

My problem is that I worldbuild too much and get to thinking more about the world than the characters. I'm too autistic NOT to explain how the theoretical hyperdrive works or who the entire court of planet X's rulers are. Then it turns out my pseudoscience isn't that clever and I'm just writing things that have no bearing on the plot. I get disheartened and scrap the story.

Currently working on it right now. A shared project with my friend where we took the best parts from our old 3.5e campaign and made it into a book(s?). It's coming along fine. I really liked the plotline when I was running it and the PCs were great in telling the story as well.

As for my own cyberpunk pleasure project, I'm really liking how its coming along. Just need a more concrete overarching end-game to work towards.

Other than that though I have a couple smaller projects but those two are the big ones.
Take English classes senpai and go to workshops.

You have to like the characters to get the reader interested in the world. Don't worry user, I'm the same. Story>World>Characters in my book but people simply won't read/buy if the characters aren't compelling. Just write characters you like and it should work out.

AHAHAHAHHAHA

pics or fake

viralgamespublishing.com/stores.html

it's fun

Really well, thanks for asking.

Howabout a choose-your-own-adventure?

Well I drawfag and recently I got an extremely pushy nigger on deviantart telling me to look up shit for his art request that's basically a combination of Luke Cage and Trayvon Martin with angel wings so suffice to say I'm not making a book of requests anymore.

Wrote this baby from start to finish in three months, then took a bit of a break, about to dive right in for draft three.

It's a sword & sorcery story of a zero-level little shithead picking up the mantle of a recently-dead high-level ranger and trying his best to not die on a great quest. I doubt it'll sell but hey.

I CAN'T WRITE FOR SHIT!
WHY CAN'T I GET ALL THESE IDEAS OUT OF MY HEAD!

>selling your writing

In the unlikely scenario that someone's willing to pay actual money for it, I wouldn't be noble or selfless enough to not take up on that offer.

Not good, I keep on destracking myself with work.

Also the last couple of times I wrote stuff for small writing contests I always get third place to non-fiction self bio depress feats stories. I've met the authors who legitly have depressing childhoods, which they use to make wonderful stories that people eat right up. It made me realize that I'm pretty fucking content as a hobby writer.

I'm almost done with the first draft, actually! I think it's too niche to really sell but considering my writing talents/experience aren't really book-oriented that doesn't bother me.

I take it you're a better writer than photographer.

I would strongly, strongly, strongly recommend that you write non-fiction stuff until you're comfortable with it. Don't worry about making up a story or characters or anything, just take something that actually happened to you and write it out.

Then grab a red pen and read through it as though it was written by the person in this world you most despise. If you can get some friends to read it, don't. If it's the first thing you're writing it's going to be terrible. Don't subject the people you love to it.

Some writers tear up their first drafts. Even if you don't go that far, just remember: the first draft only exists to be written, not to be read.

Then write it again. I promise you, the next draft will be better. Whenever you get frustrated while writing, thinking "oh my god this is horrible I can't even stand to look at it", drown out those thoughts with "the next draft will be better," because it will.

Rinse and repeat until you have something half-decent. Then move on to a different experience. These are practice exercises, don't worry about getting them perfect, just worry about getting them good.

I started seriously writing in middle school. The first stuff of mine that I don't think is terrible is from a writing class I took when I was 21. Obviously it's not gonna be that long of a wait if you're not also dealing with being a pretentious teenager but the point is that it's not gonna happen overnight.

"Inspiration" is stupid. Don't wait until you feel like writing, slog through. Sometimes the best stuff comes when you think you're tapped out, but even if it's garbage, keep writing. The next draft will be better.

>I [CAN'T] GET ALL THESE IDEAS OUT OF MY HEAD
Ideas are as necessary to writing as a cherry is to a sundae. Execution is the rest of the sundae. And the only way to get good execution is by writing and refining, writing and refining.

By the way, while you're turning your experiences into writing, be self-critical. Don't make a story explaining why you were actually the good guy in some situation or another. While some details here and there will be sanded away in the editing process, be truthful about what you did and what you were thinking. If you can't make a character feel real by documenting your own actual feelings, thoughts, and actions, then, yeah, that's a little pathetic. But the next draft will be better.

It can take a while to figure out the right balance of too much versus too little detail. Err on the side of too much, then pare it down from there.

I'd also recommend you practice writing poetry on the side. It might not be for you but it forces you to pay close attention to your word choice and how you express yourself.

Finally, once you're comfortable with the basic exercises of reading (and no sooner), you can dive into original fiction. The biggest trap I've seen there is relying on an outline. Remember what I said: ideas are nice but not what you really need. Make an outline for the first couple of chapters, but from there just write and see what you can make happen with the pieces you've put in motion. Once you've done that, go through and figure out what the story should be. Clean it up in the next draft.

The "risk" here, so to speak, is that you'll wind up with a lot of characters standing around not doing much. That's fine. It's easier to get rid of that bulk than it is to try to cram the story through the hoops you pre-determined without it seeming forced.

As you get better, writing will come more naturally. You'll gain more of a sense of how things will work and what will sound good, but it will never stop being a process of producing raw material, revising, editing, and re-writing. Those are the skills you need to learn.

Anyone else got anything to add?

Doing okay, I guess.

Good, good. Sitting with an agent at the moment. Next novel is in progress, ~20,000 words so far.

Look at any number of publisher's websites, and see how many of them say "We don't want you and your group's D&D story".

[citation needed]

Just because you are a shit writer doesn't mean other people are ;^)

>actually writing on paper
It's the 21st century, pal.

Got too many ideas and too lazy to write them down. So pretty shitty.

I don't write books but I do write screenplays

Ayyy, mon ami(e). I'm working on a book right now but screenplays are my main deal.

VIRAL!
I AM A LIBRARIAN IN NEED OF A PHYSICAL BOOK SO WE CAN HOLD HEARTWARMING GAMES OF ROBOT FUN.

I've been highly burned out for the last five months due to work, but I quit my shit job, and I already feel less horrible.

Now I just need to do more research on french folk music.

I like writing them even though the chance they ever make me money is so minuscule I may as well just play the lottery.

That's why I let people pay me to rip into their screenplays instead.

No way, same here! It's not like I make anywhere near enough to support myself that way, but it also enables me to feel smugly superior to other people in a similar situation to my own, despite the fact that I have no right to.

It's a good high. Plus, it's fun to see where decent/great ideas go wrong and see how you (who you'd consider a greater writer) would fix them.

You're writing about french folk music?

Please do tell.

I've written three novels and hate them all. I tried to get them published back when I was a kid now I see them for the garbage they are. Writing now disgusts me, but I try anyway.

I enjoy working within limitations, so I just really like taking something terrible and making it into something good while not fundamentally changing the creator's vision. (Which admittedly often makes it harder to make it good.)

I'm writing about a setting/nation that combines the best of the French Enlightenment and the First French Republic, but with psychic powers.
Fantasy Not France battles Fantasy Not China in Fantasy Not Australia while a Demon Worshiping, Isolationist Not Ottoman Empire and a resurgent Not Ashanti Empire, coming back around from a failed attempt to start a world war with Not France and Not Turkey, both look on and wonder if they should try and make powergrabs.
With the focus of Not China shifting to Not Australia, the provinces and satraps begin to buck under the weight of 'enlightened' rule, and around Not France, there are mutters among the client states and trading partners that perhaps they should be the ones to rule their own affairs.

Tech levels are roughly that of the Napoleonic Wars, 90% of the population has magic, determined by where they were born (If you were born area A, you get magic A, if you are born in area B, you get magic B), monstrous spirit things occasionally arise and cause havoc, and in the distant prehistory a race of giants fought with the demons that Not Turkey now worships.

Pretty fuckin' well.

Dead in a ditch. I realized I'm a pretty good GM, pretty good at world building and ok at short stories but anything longer than 3 pages turns to shit. I gave up trying to write anything other than RPG campaigns years ago.

I've written more than a quarter-million words. Gave up cause I realized I would never finish it. It's autistic as fuck anyway, I was never planning to publish it. Maybe I'll get back on it tonight, there's a part I've been itching to work on. I've been considering writing some post-apocalyptic fiction in a world I've been working on but it will probably suck.

>overuse of adjectives
>all that unnecessary consonance and alliteration

Have you thought about just deleting that dumpster fire? Just being able to see 15 words tells me that it is trash.

I finished my first book a while back
since then it's just been a few pages of half baked ideas here and there that I end up discarding for the next thing
I'm trying to focus on one actually thought out plot now though. So maybe I'll be done with my 2nd in a few months.
But I wish I could actually get a response to my query letters for the first.
Maybe this one will work out better. If not,
you improve and try again

It's about magical girls.

I lol every time I see someone on here mention a book they're writing about a campaign they ran. Like how delusional do you have to be to think that anyone cares about your retarded railroad through your oh so original world?

Workin on some Age of Sigmar fan fiction; its in the concept phase at the moment, along with a few seperate scenes I've written up, but its on its way

>Have you thought about just deleting that dumpster fire?

I spent too much time on it to get rid of it. It only takes up a couple of megabytes anyways. Really, the run-on sentences are more of my problem. I started deleted the adjectives and adverbs as much as I could, getting rid of habit words, et cetera. Ended up deleting huge swathes of writing, literally 10,000 words worth, and rewriting them.

Malazan, Stormlight, and a few other larger books are based on campaign worlds. It's retarded but people will buy shit.

>Like how delusional do you have to be to think that anyone cares about your retarded railroad through your oh so original world?

I feel like that's a bit of a strawman. I might actually read a story about a bunch of murderhobos crawling their way through an insane deadly dungeon.

It all depends on the campaign.

>you see I didn't keep the whole pile of shit, I carved out less than 1% and then jizzed into the holes

Just delete it. It's as worthless as you are.

What's a good cheap laptop to write on?

You sound like a twat, but you are mostly right.

should I kill myself, too, reddit-spacer?

No. Just destroy your shitty attempt at writing. Why wallow in being useless in a skill that a 10 year old could do better than whine like a little cunt when proven wrong?

>le reddit spacing meme

And a fucking cancerous newfag.

>It only takes up a couple of megabytes anyways.

Yes, and the Ring is just a tiny piece of jewelry.

Hey, you're that asshole that puts a line after his quotes
Everyone knows who you are, and we all think you're a dick

There's no point in deleting your writing
You can always learn from it or go back and laugh out how bad you where and how much you have changed

maybe try fixing it?

Fix a quarter-million-word garbage? It'd be far more productive if you learned from your mistakes and started a whole new, almost certainly better story.

>that artisanal autism

Sure thing sperg.

I'm really enjoying it, the guy that wrote it did a good job.

what if that's the story i want to write and I have no motivation to write otherwise?

Then, sorry to say and trying to be as nice about it as possible, you're not much of a writer. Writers are a font of ideas, and starting to put them down on paper will only open the floodgates of inspiration.

I get far too many ideas to ever write anywhere near all of them, even though I'd love to write every single one.

i have a dozen other pieces that i've started, some probably with much better premises than that one. yet after a few pages i no longer feel any motivation to write them

Yes.
Thank you, user-kun

Well, keep trying. Jot down every single idea. Write them as far as you can go without the motivation dying out. Make a game out of it: try and write each a few words more than the last.

Eventually, probably, one actually picks up and you'll get it all the way to the end. It happened to me, after all. It was unreadable shit.

booksofm.com/2009/11/why-your-dd-game-doesnt-make-a-great-novel.html

Thank you for making your own, well thought out response. Really appreciate it.

What's it about?

>I take it you're a better writer than photographer.
I didn't take the picture; somebody just saw it at that store in Canada and emailed me the pic. I did take the picture of the robutt on the cover though.

>VIRAL!
>I AM A LIBRARIAN IN NEED OF A PHYSICAL BOOK SO WE CAN HOLD HEARTWARMING GAMES OF ROBOT FUN.
Okay, email me and I'll get you some copies.

What if, as it has happened before, I decided to DM the story I had for a book? Railroading aside.

And now it's time!

Well, the rulebook (attached) is coming along. Need to add shotguns and finish some of the fluff. Then move on to more Equipment and go over the mechanics again to ensure that it all makes sense.

The novel is shitty and never getting finished.

I'm almost finished with the prologue.

oh and I am gonna go over and finish up the species and environment bonuses.

Also, I have got to actually write down the android components instead of just have them as post-its and mental notes

About to get published next month

Congratulations!

Androids/cyborgs seem to be OP?

they are powerful out of the box, one of the reasons i am redoing the races/region thing

's good.

sci-fi western noir about a space cop and his pink gf pilot who meet God.

going much better since i started ripping off Stephen King.

Got about 75k words into a fantasy novel.
Mostly just a coming of age story so have struggled with coming up with some kind of overarching villain or adversity.
I also have countless other beginnings written - from 80s style no noire, to modern military about a Chinese invasion of the pacific.
Loads of stuff but I end up feeling like each idea lacks something.
I have decent characters as far as I can tell, but the drive to tell a longer story than perhaps is necessary kicks in and I feel like they wear thin.
Ah well, it's a fun way to pass the time on my hour long train rides to and from work!

A young guy and his obsession with a god of war who is actually a pretty nice guy, a world-spanning cult that of course does some evil rituals deep down under the earth and fantasy-Greeks taking Archimedes too far and inventing togate steam-punk.

Writing a novel is the white man's equivalent of waiting for your mixtape to drop.

>Friend makes his own rulebook
>won't shut up about it
>brings it up at every opportunity
>no one even cares

>"Inspiration" is stupid. Don't wait until you feel like writing, slog through

Seconded. No seriously, just think up a sentence or two and start typing. You're fingers should start moving on their own, at least for a bit.

>I'd also recommend you practice writing poetry on the side. It might not be for you but it forces you to pay close attention to your word choice and how you express yourself.

Or any kind of game that limits you in some way. Try and tell a story with only 100 words. I promise your thesaurus will be laying a puddle of it's own tears before you're done.

>Anyone else got anything to add?
Show, don't tell. Example

He stood up, angrily.

He stood up abruptly, knocking his chair back. He stared at the man, nostrils flaring and eybrows drawn down.

Notice in the second example I never declared his mood, but you'd know right away. Once you've shown, THEN you can tell, especial if the narrator is also a char in the scene. For example:

He stood up abruptly, knocking his chair back. He stared at the man, nostrils flaring and eybrows drawn down. I felt my pulse quicken as I realized there was a good possibility he was going to start throwing punches.

Why not try your hand at short stories rather than novels? Might help if you feel the stories drag on too long.

Already published.

I'm two pages in!

... the fuck.

Any good?