How's that novel coming?

iktf way too well. Perhaps I should write about it.

Veeky Forums is like grey goo. Even the natural enemies of Veeky Forums have been overrun. Think about the stormfront invasions from a few years back. They came over trying to influence a haven of degeneracy. Now an awful lot of them spend their time wanking to My Little Pony or traps. They likely don't realize it quite yet but they've changed from how they were before they came here.

dreaming of the supposed privelegies?

what has it to do with the original pic though?

I signed up for this year's nanowrimo. Planning on writing a Lovecraft-inspired story.

>next generation
Nigger we've already been raised. Posting on Veeky Forums is a cherished part of my childhood memories.
NaNoWriMo is utter plebness. It forces you to shit out a novel at thunderous speed. This is not conducive to quality, hence all the YA fucknuggetry (don't even touch the forums). I think I'll be signing up this year.

>NaNoWriMo is utter plebness. It forces you to shit out a novel at thunderous speed. This is not conducive to quality, hence all the YA fucknuggetry
That's why you plan out the novel beforehand and continue to edit it afterwards.

Yet it's still a better idea to write at your own speed.

If you're choosing to do NaNoWriMo then it is your own speed. It's a self-imposed deadline regardless.

>If you're choosing to do NaNoWriMo then it is your own speed.
Then why choose to do it, fucknugget?

Self-imposed deadline doesn't equal "your own speed",

Because even the illusion of competition is a fantastic motivational force for most people, which is why while all the YA fucknuggetry books are being pumped out, completed and occasionally published, ten years later you're still occasionally adding or removing a word from your first paragraph, as yet unfinished.

>Self-imposed deadline doesn't equal "your own speed",
It doesn't equal it but it is within the set of things which are.

You seem to suck at both general knowledge and logic.

>Because even the illusion of competition is a fantastic motivational force for most people
Exactly! It isn't their own pace, in other words. They need some other outside force to -- force them into writing faster. This kills the quality.
>while all the YA fucknuggetry books are being pumped out, completed and occasionally published, ten years later you're still occasionally adding or removing a word from your first paragraph, as yet unfinished.
Good End.
>You seem to suck at both general knowledge and logic.
You seem to have made this "NaNoWriMo" an integral part of your identity. It seems any insult to it is an insult to you. Perhaps you should rethink this.

>Exactly! It isn't their own pace, in other words.
If they chose to do it then it is their own pace. They will not be executed for failing. They are under no duress.
>This kills the quality.
Again, there's nothing to stop you from going back, re-working and polishing your MS. Besides this, plenty of excellent things can be and have been created in a shorter time than that, the fact that you're writing some incredibly intricate and arcane post-modern fantasy world with years of worldbuilding doesn't make it quality, it just means you're autistic.
>You seem to have made this "NaNoWriMo" an integral part of your identity. It seems any insult to it is an insult to you. Perhaps you should rethink this.
I have never taken part in nanowrimo and have no plans to, I just think you're an idiot.

I wrote two non-YA books in two years without that shit. You really don't need it at all if you actually want to write.

You don't need a fitbit to get healthy but it helps some people because our brains are wired to respond to gamification.

>if only i were a woman all my problems would be solved!
get real buddy

>If they chose to do it then it is their own pace.
Then why are they doing it?
>because it forces them to work faster
Right.

>Again, there's nothing to stop you from going back, re-working and polishing your MS
This is true, and is why I am thinking of doing Nano. But, it is a lot easier to simply have less shit to begin with.
>plenty of excellent things can be and have been created in a shorter time than that
And yet, it is better to write at your own speed.
>the fact that you're writing some incredibly intricate and arcane post-modern fantasy world with years of worldbuilding doesn't make it quality, it just means you're autistic.
Yes. This is the kind of stuff you see in Nano, as people cannot adequately reflect on what they want to say. This is why I am saying it is shit. It's also not the Veeky Forums autistic standard you'd expect me to represent -- why did you choose worldbuilding, of all things?
He just wants to be the little girl.

It doesn't force them to do anything, it just helps with motivation, as I've already said and explained about gamification.
>And yet, it is better to write at your own speed.
You don't seem to understand that if you choose to write faster, that is your own speed. If you choose to write something in a month, that is your own speed.
>Yes. This is the kind of stuff you see in Nano, as people cannot adequately reflect on what they want to say. This is why I am saying it is shit.
No, that's because they're mostly young adults and teenagers who have nothing to say and are entirely happy just writing YA fiction and romance. They don't want to be the next Dostoevsky, they may not even know who he was.
Using the added motivation of nanowrimo seems to me to be a perfectly good way of getting your first draft for your MS done. Plan the story before the month, get it down on paper during, then when it's over you can reflect on what you were trying to say to your heart's content. You can rewrite it entirely, multiple times.
If you're not worldbuilding then what's taking you so long? You seem to be stuck in the mindset that you need to get every sentence right first time. That's nonsense. It's much more effective to finish the story then go back and bring it up to the desired standard.

>It doesn't force them to do anything, it just helps with motivation, as I've already said and explained about gamification.
That is forcing. Without gamification, they would not write as fast; we agree. In other words, their own speed (i.e. without outside influence, whatever it may be, and including gamification) would be slower.
>if you choose to write faster, that is your own speed
This is untrue. You can rush yourself -- you know this; this is what I am saying to avoid. To cut out semantics -- I don't care whether this is forcing, I care that it is done, because it is damaging.

>They don't want to be the next Dostoevsky, they may not even know who he was.
Right. They want to squeeze something out. They don't want to be the next Dostoevsky. I think everyone here would love to be the next Dostoevsky, so, they should not aim to squeeze something out. They should aim to be the next Dostoevsky.

>what's taking you so long?
Nothing. I haven't mentioned anything of myself.

>You seem to be stuck in the mindset that you need to get every sentence right first time
No, I'm stuck in the mindset that you should avoid rushing yourself, or producing voluminous shit. Better to get it *as right as feasible* the first time (getting it right is nonsense), in your first draft, than to fixate on simply "getting it done".

The motivation is internal and comes about because they make a conscious choice to take part. That is not being forced. That is them choosing to write at a certain speed, as it suits their purposes. Being forced would be like every actual writer struggling to meet a publisher's deadline just to make a living. Yet somehow they maintain quality. Weird, that.
>You can rush yourself
Doing it yourself is not an external force.
>Right. They want to squeeze something out.
Which is a great thing to do if you plan on re-writing afterwards it to the point that it's as good as you hoped.
>Nothing. I haven't mentioned anything of myself.
You implied it's taking you a long time for some reason. If not that, then what?
>No, I'm stuck in the mindset that you should avoid rushing yourself... Better to get it *as right as feasible* the first time
Then you'll never get it done. I refer you to my previous comment about endless fiddling with your opening paragraph.

I'm sorry but you don't seem to be understanding what I'm saying from one post to the next.

>I think everyone here would love to be the next Dostoevsky
Dosto was a pleb t b h. I'd rather be the next Nabokov.

Do you WANT to argue semantics?

>Which is a great thing to do if you plan on re-writing afterwards it to the point that it's as good as you hoped.
No, it's a mediocre thing to do. Why spend extra time sorting through your shit when you could have just written less shit and more good stuff to begin with?

>You implied it's taking you a long time for some reason.
You what.
>Then you'll never get it done. I refer you to my previous comment about endless fiddling with your opening paragraph.
This is some top-tier projection. Nano is, by it's own admission, "by the seat of your pants". Avoiding this extreme is not launching into its opposite extreme.

I understand you, user, I just disagree with you. It's possible to grasp your holy word and find fault in it, though you might struggle to grasp that.

Introduction is me being pretentious about me being self aware of how pretentious this sentence is, just like this.

And it made me cringe, so I stopped.

Being forced is being forced. Making use of a motivational tool, such as nanowrimo is not being forced.
>Why spend extra time sorting through your shit when you could have just written less shit and more good stuff to begin with?
Because that's a false presupposition. There won't be extra time spent sorting through shit, writing slowly to begin with will take demonstrably longer than just getting all the story down first then fixing it. Read any interviews with authors on the topic and they'll back this up.

Nigga you're the only one actually considering using nanowrimo, why are you so against it?

The writing of it was fine and fun. Trying to get this motherfucker published is way harder and makes me wish a few more planes fell in NYC.

>Making use of a motivational tool, such as nanowrimo is not being forced.
But it is. Firstly, it's outside influence -- it's a tool, it is not you. Secondly, it hurries your pace (if you obey it): what is this but forcing? Of course a horse can stop when it wants, but we still say the spur forces it onwards. You are rushing yourself. This is undeniable, it is the whole purpose. And it lowers quality; this too is undeniable, and I doubt you deny it. The only point of contention is that you say this can be easily overcome by post-month editing.

Certainly the fact you must have a set quantity at the end prevents rewrites or extensive reworks where it might be necessary. In ideal worlds your plans would have prevented this, but this is not an ideal world, and plans only mitigate it.
>Nigga you're the only one actually considering using nanowrimo, why are you so against it?
Because I'm considering it. If you were arguing against it, I'd argue for it.

>Firstly, it's outside influence -- it's a tool, it is not you. Secondly, it hurries your pace (if you obey it): what is this but forcing?
Okay, you keep slowly pushing nails into wood with your hands. I'll hit mine in with a hammer. Obviously I might bend a few of the nails but I can just pull them out and start over. Which of us is going to finish building our quality shed first?
>And it lowers quality; this too is undeniable, and I doubt you deny it.
I haven't denied it, I explained why it doesn't matter repeatedly. This is what I mean about you seeming to forget what we've already spoken about from one post to the next.
>You are rushing yourself. This is undeniable, it is the whole purpose.
Speed is relative. Maybe they're not rushing, maybe you're just dawdling. You are both writing at the speeds you choose. You are both writing at your own speed.
>Certainly the fact you must have a set quantity at the end prevents rewrites or extensive reworks where it might be necessary.
What? Who cares what the nanowrimo judges think at the end of the month? You're not doing it for them. Also their standards will be lower than shorty got.
>Because I'm considering it. If you were arguing against it, I'd argue for it.
Well that just dissolves any reason I have to continue the argument. Good luck with your book.

This is how it goes for pretty much everyone.

Not true retard. If you're sociable and forward-thinking you'd already have established some contacts in the publishing industry and set up a social platform (twitter, facebook, tumblr, blog) to promote your work. We (publishers) aren't here to spoonfeed you. There's nothing more pathetic than reading the over-enthusiastic cover letter of some unpublished loser who thinks we honestly give a damn about the quality of his manuscript. If I google your name and don't find at least a twitter and facebook then I'm not going to read your stuff. Sorry.

I tried reading Faulkner one time but he didn't even have an Instagram page. Shelved him immediately.

>WE

WUZ

PUBLISHING

'N

SHIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET

I hate this board so much

Not as well as it should be.

When I started, I wanted to put a bunch of twists on a semi-common plotline in order to write a comedy. The basic idea was essentially:

>Dragon appears in person's dorm
>But it turns out it's terrified of him and thinks humans are mighty warriors!
>But it turns out that it's not going to just be one dragon, but thousands of them!
>Protagonist and Dragon use social media services to become known (as insurance against any men in black that may exist), then work with the government to make sure nobody freaks out and kills dragons
>A humorous political thriller ensues, with some pop cultural satire thrown in

As I've developed and worked on it, it now looks like:

>Dragon shows up in protagonist's dorm
>But it turns out he feels terror and loathing towards humans in equal measure
>Dragon casts spell on protagonist which binds their lives together (mutually assured death, pretty much)
>Protagonist and dragon get caught by police immediately
>Over the course of a few chapters the protagonist gains dragon's trust by being a generally good person
>Dragon breaks down and admits what is actually going on: he's a test case for a banishment spell that some evil elves are going to use on dragons as a race, as punishment for war crimes
>Also details a fairly intricate backstory in which dragons were enslaved for dozens of generations by humans using a mind control spell
>Dragons are liable to attack humans, upon which they will get their shit wrecked by the military
>Protagonist and dragon first have to convince the military not to detonate a nuke the second the dragons show up
>Then they have to convince dragons not to try to fight their supposed former masters
>Then they have to broker some kind of permanent peace deal, possibly while dealing with rogue dragon and/or human actors trying to kill people
>Book is almost entirely a political thriller where any jokes are juxtaposed against what is ultimately a fairly dark and grim situation

I like my second version better, but I'm a bit worried about how readers will respond. The story starts out with a dragon shooting out of a portal, but becomes a fairly serious story, even if it's still ostensibly a comedy. At this point I'm not even sure if it is a comedy anymore, or just a dramatic story with a kind-of-stupid premise and comedic elements.

It's a hard balance to strike. Do you guys think it's possible to pull off?

bretty gud

up to chapter 9 or about 35,000 words, and I've started working on Appendix A which is a scientific theory I'm attributing to one of the characters

read a few scifi books that cover some of the same subjects, I think how my novel handles those themes blows them out of the water

Are from /a/ or /jp/ by any chance? This sounds like it'd be a godawful LN plot if the dragon had a humanoid girl form.

This seems too unfocused. It's unclear what your central (thematic) conflict is. It feels as if you're clinging to your old outline for the sake of clinging.

You could cut out a lot of this.

>Also details a fairly intricate backstory in which dragons were enslaved for dozens of generations by humans using a mind control spell
Very much including this.

Work out what you actually want to write about.

Nope. Fuck weebs.

The central, thematic conflict can be essentially summed up as:

>Protagonists have to try to use diplomacy and politics to navigate a situation in which two cultures that hate each other are forced to coexist

Most instrusion fantasy solves the conflict via the exclusive actions of the protagonist. You escape the government, find the portal, send the fantastic creature back, and restore peace to the world. In this story, that's not an option—it's a society-level clash, and the only way to prevent disaster is a lot of talking and compromise.

The backstory part is mostly just setup for the conflict. It serves as a way to get dragons to loathe humans, and offers some explanation as to why they're being banished in the first place. I don't really know if it's ever going to be explicitly stated in the novel, but I feel like it's semi-important to have.

I did consider drastically deviating from my current outline and re-focusing the characters so the book followed a fairly high-level official in the State Department, but I think that keeping the outsider protagonist is most likely a better idea. It's an easier character for an audience to relate to, and easier for me, personally, to write about.

You really aren't? That's even worse because I have no idea how else someone could come up with such a generic clusterfuck of animu tropes. If that was what you were going for it'd at least make sense, but if your writing is just naturally that awful you need to seriously reconsider everything you've thought of from the ground up.

Where the fuck are the anime tropes? I don't watch anime, but my impression is that it's very "rah rah protagonist fucks everything up and is the best and we'll solve the conflict by fighting a monster in a giant robot suit," which is very obviously not what I've written.

For the record, I'm not disagreeing that it is likely bad. I just don't see how it's anime bad.

anime generally has any ya lit plot you can think of, has a young protagonist, who is usually a school student even if he or she is a some important official or a powerful entity, also anime tends to have a harem with one main male hero to identify with and several girls around him (or just several girls with no main male characters), its most literary version imo it's plotless slice of life stuff

genekrally anime is a boring shit and only good for cutely stilized characters

You're only thinking of the most mainstream animus that made it overseas. A lot of the ones that didn't involve plots almost word for word exactly like what you described: clash between two species/factions/etc. with plot twists about how the apparent good guys were really bad all along involving conspiracies wars, etc.

No, deeper than that. Like
>clashing of cultures
>friendship vs. hatred
>fear: two friends fearing each other while clinging to each other out of fear for the outside
That way you can see what you want to write about in general, regardless of setting or character.

You can see that, with this example, a lot could be removed; you don't need to dwell on why dragons hate humans if it's only hatred itself you're interested in (not its causes). I explained this really badly, but hopefully you got the point.

As it stands, your plot takes forever to get to the point (the build up is full of chaff, and...) unnecessarily keeps info from the reader (not revealing the banishment thing 'till a fair bit after the Dragon), unnecessarily GIVES info to the reader (mind control shit), and seems simplistic as fuck (the protags must convince the military to not be Big Meanies, rather than the novel dealing with the clash of cultures involved).

Honestly, your original was 1'000x better. Not amazing, and could use a lot of work, but better.
>everyman protag so the audience can self-insert
>they have a normal life
>when SUDDENLY! Fantasy happens.
>the everyman is now The Chosen One
>things get excessively detailed when they really don't need to be, and the Authorities show up (they are naturally the good guys, because this is for some reason a recurring theme in bad anime)
>then it gets wrapped up, everyone has a happy ending
This is bullshit though. Tropes, cliches &c. are meaningless. Don't listen to that user.

Your plot is shit because it's unfocused and boring, not for any other reason. It is /a/ as fuck though.

kek

I'm sort of intentionally trying to avoid the chosen one trope (protagonist is explicitly not special), but your analysis is otherwise spot-on.

There is one point I'm still having some trouble with: I've received positive feedback from other people on the backstory portion (after they've seen the full outline), so I'm not sure I want to give it up entirely. Obviously there shouldn't be a shitty exposition dump anywhere in the novel, but do you think it's okay to hint at what may have happened? The protagonists are more focused on the matter at hand, so it would mostly be revealed in the context of a few throwaway lines, possibly becoming more developed if the story requires it. I could also drop it entirely, if need be.

I suppose I'll also have to come up with a way to reveal the impending group banishment, which may be tricky. I'll go back to my outline I guess.

Thanks!

I haven't started writing it, and as a straight white western man I have lost all incentive considering it probably won't get published.

>I'm sort of intentionally trying to avoid the chosen one trope (protagonist is explicitly not special)
Motherfucker he's soulbound to a dragon.

Perhaps your backstory is just well written in its own right, and a decent story with its own conflicts. But it does not seem necessary to THIS story. It just looks like unrelated explanation, which we don't need. But that might be the point. Your work is meant to look at the clash of Dragon and Human culture, but it doesn't seem to touch it.

Your story seems...cluttered and wasteful. For example: you want it to be a social satire, so make the dragons satirical. You could make them exaggerated, with bizarrely opposite features to humans (ex. a deep opposition to breakfast), but nonetheless fundamentally the same (as shown by Dragonfriend). Their past conflict could come from a huge war about whether to start eating at nine or at noon, to satire pointless wars about religion and shit.

Those are all pretty bad examples, but you know the point. Think about the dragons and what you do with them. Use the elements of your story -to make your story-, not just as cliched stand-ins.

The good parts of your story:
>the dragondude and MC must work together despite fearing and hating each other, and despite their cultural differences; they eventually become great friends (this should take the course of the whole book -- their friendship paralleling general racial relations)
>the dragons are being forced out of their home into an unfamiliar world (which is our, familiar world) by humans
>the dragondude is the first subject
>hijinks ensue

That last point is important. I think your story would work best if it focused on the hijinks produced by the DC and MC getting bound together as fuckery starts fucking shit up. For a traditional satire you'd want your characters to wonder throughout the layers of society you're looking at -- in this case, probably all of them. Using modern stuff, like social media, is a good thing I think.

Thank you very much. You've given me a lot of insight into what I should work on, and I think that I'll be able to better write my story because of it.

Seriously, if this ever gets published I'm going to dedicate it to "That one user on Veeky Forums".

My dude do not forget that I AM "that one user on Veeky Forums". Use your own judgement and use advice only if you think it's apt, and consider why people said things if you didn't, and so on &c.

Over-compensation is great, though.

How do you find your way to Veeky Forums with a normie's idea of anime?

I exaggerated my idea of anime greatly. I know a bit more about anime than that. There's also these cliches:

>Harem anime where a really, really boring protagonist somehow has every girl at school salivating over him, including one chick who's crazy and his "best friend" who's sweet and cute
>"Comedic" anime where the joke is "boobs exist" and "disgusting fat people exist"

That's essentially it, though. I have a lot of friends into anime but I personally am not.

I found Veeky Forums via /g/.

Uninstall Gentoo, you don't deserve it.

Don't worry, I'm not blindly following your advice. I'm ignoring some points. I just feel like you've really given me a sense of where to go and what's important.

One novel and novella done, both awful and in dire need of professional proofing but still available online. Yes I started with the most cliche topic on earth.

Novel goes up for free on kindle promotion thing in a few days, here comes literally dozens of reads and maybe even a positive review.

I finished a historical novel back in March and have written nothing of any worth since then.

Kill me.

ahahahahaha