Writing a book

Hey Veeky Forums i was wondering if any of you ever wrote a book, or at least started writing it.

How did it go?

Any tips in case i wanna write one?

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If you've never written anything before, your first works will probably be utter shit. Do not worry about that, practice makes perfect, especially regular practice. If you're seriously thinking about becoming a writer you have to write a lot and write often to get good. When you're just practising and beginning, do not try to create masterpieces or your dream works, just write whatever you feel like writing, regardless if it will be good, creative, deep or whatever. Quality will come in time.
If you have this one genius novel idea that you want to share with the world and which is supposed to be your magnum opus or whatnot, wait with writing it for a moment when you are absolutely sure of your writing skills and certain that you will do it justice.
Also write first, check, correct and edit later. You won't get far if you're going to be stuck thinking about how to make this one sentence perfect for half an hour.

This seems like solid advise.

ok, but should i "waste" what i believe its a good idea on a first work that will probably be shit?
i'm not op btw

I've written three so far.

It went good.

First think one up. Then write it. If you can't think one up, try winging it. Might work.

watch a hundred hours of lectures on writing in your intended genre/s before you do anything. there are a lot of rookie mistakes you will likely make otherwise, and there's a lot of good information especially if you are intending to get published.

I wouldn't tackle writing literary fiction as a young man. it will likely come off as pretentious.

like any other skill, practice is the most important way to get better so write for hours a day every day if you want to be a good writer.

>You won't get far if you're going to be stuck thinking about how to make this one sentence perfect for half an hour.
I don't entirely agree with this, depending on the amount of time you have to devote to writing. being careful with your writing makes editing much less of a chore later. but yeah spending half an hour per sentence is no good, I just feel like taking your time isn't bad.

but what do I know, I'm unpublished.

>but what do I know, I'm unpublished.

One big tip: be very careful about who you take advice from when it comes to writing.

Make sure someone has some actual creds. Also, almost everything you read about writing on the internet is bullshit.

probably should have said this better: watch lectures from successful writers.

okay i'm getting mixed feelings right now.


Also, is dark fantasy okay for a first try?

>watch lectures from successful writers.

Eh...

Even that I'd argue. Make sure they actually ARE successful, not just saying they are.

>Also, is dark fantasy okay for a first try?

why are you so concerned about what genre you write in when you already admit that you think it will turn out to be shit?

Write what you feel like writing, and continue doing that. If it isn't what you want it to be, modify it until it is.

If you want to write fiction, try writing some short stories and sending them to some less pulpy fiction magazine in your country. Like, a one with some actual quality control. If it's good enough for them to publish it, you're probably decent enough to write something bigger on your own and you'll get some bucks. It probably won't be even close to a masterpiece or bestseller, but good enough to bearable to read.

>giving writing advice about only taking writing advice from authors you can confirm are successful
little bit oxymoronic.

I was giving advice about getting advice.

doesn't your advice about getting advice contradict your own writing advice?

It would if it was writing advice

hmm what's this

i'm writing advice

That would be a joke, in that it says nothing at all really, so it's not really advice.

See the guy asked for advice, and i pretended to give some, then I didn't. Sort of a joke, but also kind of illustrates my point because I wouldn't really give any anyway, because the dude probably won't listen anyway as he's asking pretty pointless questions.

...

I've finished three, and was working on a fourth but needed to take a break because I don't understand it yet. I shopped my third one around to a few agents, about 8 or 10, but didn't get any takers. I'm convinced it is good, and people liked it, but no takers?

Is it really possible to get published? It feels shameless to send out like fifty queries. I'm not sure about my first two at all; the first is bad and the second is okay, but I also think they're both enjoyable. They both fit in YA (third and fourth are adult.) Does YA have lower bars? It feels like a waste to not send them out, but I just am so unsure of myself, and sending aps and getting rejections is soul crushing. I'm unemployed at the moment and going through the same there, so getting killed in both realms is difficult.

My third is just so good, though. I still think about my characters and can picture all my prose. Not to masturbate, but it is legitimately good. Is 8 rejections normal? Although the one said to send him my future work.

write 100 short stories and discard them.
Read alot.
write a short novel without any intention of showing anybody or getting it published.

Then try and write a novel.

ensure plenty of time for self-reflection through this proces

Show me an excerpt from the one you sent out and I'll tell you why it was rejected. Should only take a few paragraphs for me to understand.


>Also write first, check, correct and edit later. You won't get far if you're going to be stuck thinking about how to make this one sentence perfect for half an hour.
The most basic advice you can give, but also the worst. This is genuinely a bad habit to get into. Editing is not to make your writing good, it's to fix mistakes and cut out what isn't needed/add what is. Make sure that your writing is consistent and has little error before you move on. Every sentence does not have to be a masterpiece, but it should be of consistent quality. Writing a lot in a short period of time does not make you a good writer, but taking your time can. The best writers certainly did not write absolute shit then edit it into a masterpiece later: a good example is As I Lay Dying, where Faulkner wrote it in about 6 weeks and barely edited it at all. Get into the habit of writing well every time you pick up your pen; and don't get into the habit of writing like shit because you can go back later, where you'll probably still write like shit because that's all you usually write.

Of course it is possible to get published. I'll give you one piece of advice, and please for the love of God take my word for it: stay clear of vanity publishing. Vanity publishers are "companies" (I use this term loosely because I could be a vanity publisher today if I wanted to) that charge their authors to publish material.
>Pay X amount and we'll publish you
is what you need to avoid. Vanity publishing never rejects anybody, they have no integrity and will take anyone's money. Publishers that have integrity will print your material without charging you, knowing that they are taking a business risk, but are doing so because they have faith in you as an author.

Also, make sure your publisher pays you commission. None of this "we'll give you X amount for your piece" bullshit. A fair publishing company will give you a percentage of the profit of every copy sold. That way, the more you sell, the more money you get. Imagine signing a contract and selling a piece for $100k but then your book sells like hotcakes. You would have gotten ripped the fuck off.

It's fucking hard to write a decent one. Sure you can write decent, sure your smart, etc etc. But writing a full length novel well is a skill. I was writing every day bar a couple obviously for 3 months straight to get 50k words.

Write it, relax for a week, edit it. Wait a few months, read it and edit it again. Your first novel will be shit, try and write something easy so you don't get disenfranchised when it isnt very good

I can't remark on creative process very much because it differs from person to person

Working on a book of poems at the moment, pretty hard working full time

>The most basic advice you can give, but also the worst ... etc
Fuck off. The great writers of the past didn't have the ability and therefore the temptation to edit endlessly. For our generation, the greatest challenge is getting the wordcount on the page. They would write out something awful, but long enough, then come back and redraft it in a way that doesn't make sense on computers. What we have to do is get the words done, then we can go through it editing in a way that lets us turn every sentence to consistent quality.

Ah, yes the "they didn't have the ability to" meme. They did, but they generally got into the practice of writing well enough the first time. The average writer of the day also knew grammar a hell of a lot better than most of the self-proclaimed writers these days, and would make mistakes far less. But please, by all means continue to reinforce bad habits while you churn out another 400 pager that I have to drown in red ink when you send it in for editing. If you, or anyone else in our generation, has issues getting words on the page in the first place, they should not be writing anyways.

Here's the query and first section of text. I'd really appreciate some eyes on it.

At the end of a long war with the Byzantine Empire, Sasanian Dynasty Persia is thrown into discord as internal factions divide them, going through nine Kings of Kings within a few short years. The last king, a twelve year old child, is landed with an unwinnable war and a dissolving nation. This is the story of their end.

No one likes the Opulent King, Kasra. At the end of a failed siege on Constantinople, Kasra orders his premier general to be executed as punishment. Instead, General Baraz begins a mutiny and uses the army that is endeared to him and the cooperation of an old enemy, Emperor Heraclius of Byzantium, to stage a coup against Kasra and install his son, Shiroe, as Shah'an'shah. However, this triggers a series of subsequent coups and usurpations as the Persian people are broken into two factions, the Pahlav and the Parsig, led respectively by our hero Rostam and the mysterious hazarbed, Piruz, who had been in charge of the royal guard and had turned the other way to let the previous Shah'an'shahs be murdered. While the Byzantines have established an exhausted peace with Persia, a new enemy is moving in from the south. Rostam loses everything he once held dear. Finally, the last blood of the Sasan Royal Family, a twelve year old boy named Yazdegird, is crowned Shah'an'shah. The Empire is falling apart and Yazdi is surrounded by enemies both Persian and foreign with only Rostam to protect him. The Persian army fights seven battles and loses six. Now alone, Yazdi can only watch as Persia is invaded, his capital is taken from him, and he becomes a Wandering King. This is a story of heroism in the face of inevitable defeat and how pride and greed destroyed a mighty empire from within, leaving it open to the merciless advance of enemies. The Kingdom that Wore a Mask is historical fiction at 117,000 words.

8 sounds pretty low. Did they ask for more material? Are you sure your query is good enough? No matter how mindblowingly good your book is, a shitty query will kill it.

Describe the third book in two sentences.

A popular writer in the past easy had the means to do tons of edits. Getting the word-count up seems easy, I spent more time on cutting it, about two days to get a 6.6k chapter to 6.4k for example.

When try to fix absolute trash, you might lose the flow, and get hundreds of better written sentences but a shit book. In the end it might take more time than being more perfectionistic during the first draft. Though obviously in the end it's all about what method works for you. All the writing advices and "rules" are just things to consider.

Not the user.

>At the end of a long war with the Byzantine Empire, Sasanian Dynasty Persia is thrown into discord as internal factions divide them, going through nine Kings of Kings within a few short years.
Not too bad at all. A pretty original setting. Hint of conflict. The biggest con I can come up with, is that it might be too original for most readers.

>a twelve year old child
I get triggered by redundancies like that. At least "few short years" doesn't sound as in the eye annoying.

>is landed with an unwinnable war and a dissolving nation. This is the story of their end.
"is landed" sounds lame and passive but overall a good bit.

The paragraph after that is ... a mess. Too fucking many names, and tricky ones at that. Reads too distant. Way too many details. "The Persian army fights seven battles and loses six." shit like that just doesn't matter at start and doesn't catch the interest, and the paragraph is full of similar stuff.

I generally don't read historical fiction so take what you can out of it and obviously it's all my subjective opinion as some unpublished dude from 4chains. Might check the writing after another cig break.

You know you're a real ass piece of shit but you're also the closest Veeky Forums has to an /ic/ style critiquer.

I'm not sure if that says more about /ic/ than it does Veeky Forums.

>a mess. Too fucking many names

I'm sorry, I tried to make the names English-speaker friendly. You should have seen the shit before I augmented them. They're all historical figures. The period is called the "Game of Thrones of history". I feel that could be a selling point but also felt it would be cheesy to compare my work to asoiaf. I wouldn't know how to work that mention in, but it's a good idea of what the plot is like, I suppose. "Everyone dies--the story."

I'll work on the second paragraph. Would you have any suggestions, other than shortening it and taking out nonessential names?

If you had opinions on the actual writing as well? Thank you very much!

>you're a real piece of shit
Maybe, but I do know how to write well. And I give whatever time I can to helping aspiring writers out on this board.


Your query letter is really bad. I feel like a lot of the agents probably read that and completely lost interest in even reading your text. Which is a shame because the premise is actually interesting, despite how small the audience for historical fiction is, relatively.

The first paragraph isn't too bad, though I don't really like how longwinded the first sentence is. You also need to drop the first s on Kings of Kings. It feels a bit trite, especially with the last statement, but that's somewhat acceptable for a query letter.

But man, you really jump off the deep end with the second paragraph. Almost all of the sentences are insanely longwinded and overloaded with detail. The point of a query letter is to give the agent a general sense of what they can expect, and interest them enough to read your text. Not to cram a bunch of detail down their throats and turn them off completely. You also have a fair amount of grammatical errors in the second paragraph, but I'd rather focus that part of my attention on your actual text.

When you're writing a query letter, just think about the 100s of garbage books and letters that the agent is regularly sent. Think about their disdain and contempt with each nanowrimo tier book that they're sent to check out. Now imagine how they would feel if out of a 100 letters, there is one query letter that actually interests them and gives them some glimmer of hope. If you can do that, they won't care if your writing isn't perfect. The fact that you were able to interest them enough to read your text without contempt and disdain will put you in a favorable position in their mind. And they know that if you can interest them, then you can interest readers as well.

Byzantine history is very interesting to those of us that love history, so you have that in your favor.

I'll finish reading your actual text and critique it in a separate post.

Oh, I'd definitely keep the names, it's just the amount and the speed at which you throw them at the reader, that could use some adjustment. Though again, I am not the typical historical fiction reader and my knowledge about the period in question is embarrassingly limited, perhaps the target group can handle it better.

As for the writing, I am getting sleepy, so will only be very, very rough feedback, hope some of it can be of use for you: Imagery could be more on point in the first 2 paragraphs, though depending on what happened before, it might be enough. Only felt really engaged from "As pleasant as ever" on and the bit with "pulled the string into a crisp V" was pretty cool. More memorable sentences like that would be great. Generally it was functional at this point and improved as it went on. In one and a half page one gets the feel for what kind of people Baraz, Yazdi and Kardarigan are, and the situation they are in.

Repeating of words was annoying at times, say you could change "Safe" to "Safety" for the dialogue and I think there is still some room left to cut 10% of words overall. The voice didn't stand out enough but with the perspective you went for, it's tricky to judge after such a short bit. I'm definitely curious to find out more, and the setting is very refreshing, though making it accessible will be a pain for sure. As for comparison, how about drawing parallels with war of the roses, not quite as cheesy as asoiaf while still hinting to the same direction. Anyway, too tired to continue, hope the thread survives till tomorrow, and best of luck.

Yes. Write it. Only by writing it will you know for certain that it is shit.

>Hey Veeky Forums i was wondering if any of you ever wrote a book, or at least started writing it
I've written 4 novels (1 was absolute shit, the other 3 are alright)
>How did it go?
I had fun with them, they were all for a literary contest and they were all finalists. The most recent one (a novel were God causes the end of the world and survivors are hunted by His angels) was a pain in the ass at the end, I didn't know how to end it properly
>Any tips in case i wanna write one?
Don't hold back. Write what you want without caring too much for "art" "literature" or other Big Words. Write what you know, but do your research. Make it fun and make it serious, but not boring, there IS a difference. Don't give up if you're stuck halfway, find a solution.
And enjoy it.

I'm aboutt to start one, or at least a novella of grimdark fairy tales before I attempt my magnum opus.

Seconding what that other user said, you're obviously a huge faggot who needs his face raped.

Thanks for the advice, almost fell for the write it completely then edit later meme.

>Ah, yes the "they didn't have the ability to" meme. They did
>A popular writer in the past easy had the means to do tons of edits
No, they did not. They worked by hand, or on typewriters. Neither of which is as easy to hit backspace on and retype a line, or quickly rearrange word order in the start of the paragraph as it is on a PC. Yes, they *could* make edits, but it wasn't as easy or as tempting or as distracting. Nor, equally importantly, were the devices they were using to write attached to the internet, so less distraction there.
There are plenty of contemporary authors who can be quoted on the matter saying that if they'd had the internet and such responsive word processors at the time they'd started off they'd never have written so much.

>wasn't as easy or as tempting
Oh yeah, dealing with a bit temptation and creating internal rules of "no edits during writing phase" would be so hard.

>attached to the internet
Disabling wifi or removing the ethernet cable is quite the task too.

The only people who bitch about it are meme writers who announce their new novel on twitter.

Yes actually it is quite hard. Disabling the internet connection is as easy as it is to re-enable it.
I take it you don't write.

Currently at the 3rd revision. Well, I should be doing it, instead I am here. Though still hitting my internal schedule with 2-4 days per chapter (each being 4-6k words) so all good and the evil Internet isn't doing too much harm.

Writing itself was even faster, about one week for 20k words. Internet isn't that distracting once you're in a mood, I spent more time on finding the right music. The worst distraction are people though, and these existed back in the day as well. If you don't live alone, getting a writing holiday in some cheap ass country does wonders. If you're lucky their wifi is shit enough to discourage you from abusing it too … though it's a bigger worry that you get distracted by it so easy. Don't you enjoy writing?

>Disabling the internet connection is as easy as it is to re-enable it.
Sure but why even bother writing if you'd rather look at cat pictures, read about tweets from the orange clown and shitpost about Rand?

Working on first novel now, currently on the third revision. Hope to release this fall on Amazon with a friend doing illustrations.

pastebin.com/T5bXw0LW

Here's the prologue and first chapter, if anyone would like to read it. The genre is urban fantasy/psychological horror.

>tfw no writers' guild
its an abstract feel

This is what I want to do:
>find others who want to write
>all chip in for office space
>start a workshop that we can all go to
>publish a small journal every quarter

this is actually possible where I am, too

there's a great place that is about 250 a month, split that 4-5 ways and that's pretty cheap

breaks my heart that I can't make this happen

Okay, great. You're an outlier. But this isn't about you. There are plenty of potentially amazing writers who aren't outliers in the 'not being distracted' category. It is now harder.

Here's the opening paragraph to a concept for a book I have about a bunch of refugees fighting for surival against a force that wants to assimilate man and machine and destroy individuality. I literally wrote it an hour ago so it's rough but tell me what you guys think.

>The village was nestled on either side of a shallow which separated the thick gathering of forest trees. The river gave both the trees and the villagers life, like a vein streaming nourishing blood through a body. Here, in this shrouded paradise, birds chirped and flew in the trees and dogs barked and ran through grass and the villagers laughed and went about their days pretending that all was right in the world. The village was a beautiful lie that assured its inhabitants that, for at least one more day, they were safe from the danger that raged against their very existence. The villagers themselves were a medley of folk estranged from their original habitats. One villager had skin white like ivory with strong arms and a hairy chest and sat in a boat on the river holding a rod, tempting fish to their doom with the promise of a tasty snack. Another had skin of bronze and feathers in her thick hair and stewed the contents of a pot while she watched her three children play with the dogs that barked in the grass, each child with a different hue that reflected their mixed ancestry. A third villager had skin of iron, and he (if he could be called a he by any measure other than the being’s own self-declaration) sat by the river trying to mimic the beauty of nature onto a blank canvas as best he could. In truth, this villager was not a man or woman but was, like many of the other villagers, a robot. He and those of his kind represented the last of an endangered species and a lost age, where men and women and robot were alike in their freedom to live and to love.

It was going great until I got bullied in the crit threads.

I started a few books, never went far because i'm depressed and want to die.

I've written one and it's outstanding based on the three seasoned bookworms who took the time to read it. I've yet to make an attempt on publishing. I'm currently working on eleven separate projects in an effort to expand the universe.

My only advice is to avoid forcing it and write about what's on your mind if you're short on inspiration. At least with the latter your writing is less likely to suffer if you can't be imaginative.

Mozart wrote entire musical pieces about eating piles of shit when he was bored or frustrated from musical writers block. Look it up. Thats like Shakespeare writing Hentai plots in between the greatest plays ever. Never be ashamed of what youre doing, just love it.

Practice makes perfect. Do not be ashamed of what you write behind closed doors, let yourself be free. Edit later, story comes first.

Hey Patrician, what are some books you'd recommend reading to learn about writing?
Not necessarily books about writing (but those are welcome if there are any), but well written books that I could study and learn from.
I'm already pretty well read, but I'm curious what you suggest.

Ah, I find a kindred spirit.
I have so many ideas, but can barely get out of bed most mornings.

If you're looking for reading material Donald Maass's The Breakout Novelist is pretty good. He uses a lot of examples from top sellers to show what he's talking about. Might not always use the best examples, but what he talks about is usually applicable to all styles of writing.

Now I wait for somebody to tell me it's shit.

>There are plenty of potentially amazing writers who aren't outliers in the 'not being distracted' category.
There are plenty of burger flippers at McDonalds, who could be great writers if they only had the time and focus and dedication.

If someone can't focus on their shit enough, not to get distracted by Interwebz, they won't have enough focus to finish a book either way.

Always keep in mind it's 4chains, people here would shit on everything. Though do keep in mind that your writing in its current state might just suck too.

Most of Shakespeares work was anime tier either way.

As far as books ON writing go, I'd definitely recommend Elements of Style and Stephen King's On Writing. You just have to take some of the things that King says with a grain of salt, such as his view on adverbs (you should avoid overusing them, and using them poorly, but adverbs can make for very sublime writing and poetic prose when used well) but other than that it's a solid book for aspiring writers. I don't really recommend writing guidebooks personally, though. If you want to become a writing god you really have to take things many steps forward. Like you said, studying and learning from well written books is the best way to learn about writing, and how I have learned myself. Whenever I read a book I analyze each sentence and ask myself why the author phrased that in that way, why he structured the sentence like that, why each punctuation is used, etc. A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man probably had the most impact on my writing ability. I really learned a lot from that book. It's not Joyce at his absolute best, but every single sentence is solid and important. I've even taken to typing out the entirety of Portrait recently to really imprint it in my brain. As I Lay Dying; Look Homeward, Angel; and Winesburg, Ohio also had a big impact on me. All solid books that anyone can learn a lot from. If you want to become good at writing, you really just need to read every good book you can get your hands on and absorb everything from it. Ignore the memers on this board that'll tell you to spend hours every day practicing writing. You don't need to. Read as much as you can and write when you feel inspired. Think about writing always: in your sleep, when you're walking, when you're working; run sentences through your mind and analyze the best way to phrase and structure it. Reading and thinking are the best ways to practice writing, not forcing yourself to sit down for hours and writing out garbage. I'll wake up early in the morning conscious of myself having written pages in my head in a certain prose style. It has been in KJV prose lately, since I've been going through psalms before I sleep. Gets absurd after a while.

this thread yet again, and all the pseuds rushing to advise the merry prankster cum potential writer (in case he wanna write like) like so many flies flocking to a fresh pile of shit.

I enjoy writing and I think I'd have what it takes to be a professional writer at this point, if only I'd spend some time reading, too.

I've written like twelve, but there's not a whole lot of advice I can give. If everyone did it the same way, it wouldn't be any fun.

>I've written 12(twelve) books.
Jesus christ. At what point do you sit down and say "Well I've written this much and have gotten nowhere with it. It's probably time to accept that I'll never make it." I cannot fathom why you guys force yourself to write when there's no talent involved.

Maybe he just enjoys doing it for the sake of it.

Yes, 8 rejections is pretty normal.

let's say a book has 200 pages average, that's 2400 written pages total. Personally, with all the work that goes into it I can write 3 pages a day. That means I'll write 2400 pages in 800 days. Let's double that and assume I earn my money somehow else so I am busy half of the day, 1600 days. That's not even 4 and a half years.

If you walked to a video game dev or movie director and said you'd go from zero to pro in four and a half years they'd just laugh at you. If you said that to an artist or musician they'd even tell you to rather put those hopes in your kids instead. Four and a half years is a joke in the art industry.

Not him and I really don't like the quantity approach but come on, mate.

For one, some people learn and work differently. Some need decades to finish THAT novel with enough edits, that could be more pages than from 12 books. Others go at NaNoWriMo speed and puke out a novel in a month and spend one more for the edit. Actually finishing one or two books and letting go is better for learning than trying to make an idea work that just doesn't. There are enough successful examples for every method.

Other than that, most probably write because they enjoy it, even if their result is shit, and if they result is still shit after a while, their taste is fucked enough to enjoy shit. Most won't get published either way, no matter how much they try and how much talent they have. Might at least enjoy the writing.

Besides, Amazon opened up the market for basically everyone. If people can make a buck with dinosaur porn, there are no limits.

>Tfw you've drawn easily ten thousand circles in the last four years and have thousands more
>or at least I would have if carpal tunnel hadn't gotten me

Switching to writing isn't hard but fuck me it's frustrating having to learn from the ground up.

>force yourself to write

If you ever feel this way, you're doing it wrong.

Thanks for the response. Maybe I'll have to pick up King's On Writing sometime. And I'll have to reread Portrait and really focus on the writing.

Don't try.

No shit, that's the point. A guy who has written twelve books in a few years without any progress is obviously forcing himself to write far too much. Same with that other guy above who churns out garbage zombie or whatever books and shills them on this board constantly. I was actually concerned that maybe he had died a few weeks ago because I had not seem him shilling in a while.

any advice for someone who wants to write epic poems based off European cultures? I've been reading them for some of my college literature classes and enjoy them very much. So far I've bought viking sagas, Illiad/Odyssey, and a few Anglo Saxon poems.

>written twelve books in a few years without any progress

You're making awfully lot of assumptions there, m8

You need to read novels you like very carefully to understand how they work. Think of a novel as an engine. You want to build an engine you need to study other engines (break them apart etc) to know how they work. In the case of a novel you should begin at the most abstract level and work your way down. I don't think you have to write too too much to become very good. But you do need to know what you are doing. You need to know why certain information is being placed where it is placed and what its significance is. Look at the way paragraphs are developed. There are certain logics governing their development. For example a room...a group of people in one corner of the room...a particular women in this group of people...her hand...a bracelet on her hand...the gleam from such a bracelet. Etc...... The logic here is analogous to the structure of a Russian doll. But there are other logics too. Like the alternation between the material world (saw, ran, heard, hit, drank,etc) and the mental world (imagine, think, remember, feel, etc). It requires work. It's pointless to write all day if you don't know what you are doing.

Hello, I have accomplished nothing. Let me advise you

Thank you very much for the help. I've reworked the query; is this better? I'll start revising the text as well.

In Sasanian Dynasty Persia the long war with the Byzantine Empire is drawing to its conclusion. Persia's siege on Constantinople has failed. Their King of Kings, Kasra, orders his premier general, Baraz, executed as a scapegoat. Instead, Baraz strikes a deal with the Byzantine Emperor, taking himself and the army into rebellion and convincing our hero, Rostam, to join them. Left with no resistance, the Byzantine army advances all the way to the capital of Persia, striking a message to the nobles that their nation is no longer impervious.

Rostam and Baraz manage to overthrow the now universally despised Kasra and install his formerly imprisoned son, Shiroe, as the new King of Kings. This causes a sequence of events to rip apart the last of Persia's stability as they go through nine kings in a few short years. While the Byzantines have established an exhausted peace with Persia, a new enemy is moving in from the south. Rostam finds himself as the sole protector of their new child king, Yazdi, who inherits a dissolving nation torn by infighting between two factions. Weak and divided, Persia scrambles to put together a last defense.

Rostam has lost everything he once held dear and is landed with an unwinnable war. The leader of the opposing faction, Piruz, is a man who has been at the center of every political murder that has hounded Persia and is a bitter personal enemy. Rostam is pushed into a battle he knows they cannot win. Now alone, Yazdi can only watch as Persia is invaded, his capital is taken from him, and his last armies are defeated. This is a story of heroism in the face of inevitable defeat and how pride and greed destroyed a mighty empire from within, leaving it open to the merciless advance of enemies. The Kingdom that Wore a Mask is historical fiction at 117,000 words.

Added a phrase in the third paragraph.

Rostam has lost everything he once held dear and is landed with an unwinnable war. The leader of the opposing faction, Piruz, is a man who has been at the center of every political murder that has hounded Persia and is a bitter personal enemy. **At the end of a catastrophic campaign,** Rostam is pushed into a battle he knows they cannot win. Now alone, Yazdi can only watch as Persia is invaded, his capital is taken from him, and his last armies are defeated. This is a story of heroism in the face of inevitable defeat and how pride and greed destroyed a mighty empire from within, leaving it open to the merciless advance of enemies. The Kingdom that Wore a Mask is historical fiction at 117,000 words.

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I want to give this a revision and send out another query batch, then resume working on my next one.

New one involves ship battles and I was having a hard time on it as I only know land tactics. Guess I'll ask Veeky Forums for resources. But the main character for it is great, sort of like Count of Monte Cristo but quiet and demure instead of charismatic, working from the shadows instead of throwing money at it, and is ostensibly a villain (he has an innocent guy everyone liked assassinated in order to gain power for himself). Revenge plot where he causes the downfall of an empire and then brings about his own demise by getting exactly what he wanted, but it goes afoul like a genie's wish. Yet another story where everyone dies.

Nigga is that you?

Read "How to Read Like a Professor". Novels are works of art and has to mean something. To get yourself to cleverly install meaning through your words is by mastering symbolism. I wrote a short story for the first time not too long ago and I actually am proud of it.

>respond and tell me if you want to read it

I will not claim it is great, but in writing your story, it helps to consult others for revisions. Only people you trust. People rarely accept the opinions of those they don't trust. It's really fun to write a story user, and it made me understand so much more with plot lines. It helped me see good and bad plot lines in other stories I have read. Seen laziness, and cleverness all the same.

>Prologue
I'd imagine you've already earned the annoyance of many readers on Veeky Forums

I'm actually worried if anyone's bothered to look at that pastebin since I looked it over and found some errors I hadn't noticed before.

What's the point of it? I am not the typical Veeky Forumsizen but prologues are fucking cancer in 99% of cases.

Feels like reading a writing exercise to get in the mood.

>250 a month
the fucking what? where do you live

>What's the point of it?
beats me I was just pointing it out.

Well, in the case of my writing, the point of the prologue was to introduce the concept of the mythical creature that the book focuses on using a familiar event, and give the reader a quick 'preview' of the type of content the book will contain.