The Writing Thread

[Pomniman]

The biggest hurdle is that you yourself need to have something worthwhile to say; to wit, you must have either experienced and grown past a variety of physically and emotionally challenging situations, or spontaneously thought of some incredibly novel and timely ideas to communicate to others. Without this component, regardless of skill level, one will never produce anything more than pulp literature.

That's never actually stopped anyone before and if you let it stop you all you're doing is masturbating to your cuck fetish.

 

[cigint]

If you're a midwit like me you can just create pulp

Nobody said you can't just create pulp. What was discussed there is the biggest hurdle to becoming a good writer, not a hurdle to just writing.

That's never actually stopped anyone before

I think you may be under the same misapprehension as the previous poster. The biggest hurdle to becoming a good writer isn't something that stops you from writing per se. Unless you mean to say that it has never stopped anyone from becoming a good writer. If you meant that, then you are not mistaken but just wrong.

 

[Pomniman]

I think you may be under the same misapprehension as the previous poster. The biggest hurdle to becoming a good writer isn't something that stops you from writing per se. Unless you mean to say that it has never stopped anyone from becoming a good writer. If you meant that, then you are not mistaken but just wrong.

There's nothing to "apprehend" though, it's just that questioning whether you're good or not and why this might be the case inevitably turns into an excuse to sit on your ass and do nothing. There's nothing noble or admirable about not even trying. If you're going to do it, do it and let the results speak for themselves, if not then there's no point in even thinking about it.

 

[cigint]

There's nothing to "apprehend" though, it's just that questioning whether you're good or not and why this might be the case inevitably turns into an excuse to sit on your ass and do nothing. There's nothing noble or admirable about not even trying. If you're going to do it, do it and let the results speak for themselves

There is. What I've said is that what keeps most people from becoming good writers isn't a lack of style but a lack of meaningful things to say. You appeared to reply that this doesn't stop anyone from writing, which doesn't contradict what I said and implies you probably misread or misunderstood it. Now you've moved on to posting Reddit-tier "just do it" platitudes, which have even less to do with anything I've said, and it seems you've convinced yourself we're arguing. We aren't.

 

[IamSpechal]

Allow yourself to write shitty stuff. Enjoy the process. It's literally like working out. You won't notice yourself getting better until you are.

 

[Commissar Fuklaw]

Pomniman and cigint are both correct and sometimes we need to be reminded that being 'good' and 'having something to say' doesn't stop Japslop and chinklit authors.

 

[Pomniman]

There is. What I've said is that what keeps most people from becoming good writers isn't a lack of style but a lack of meaningful things to say. You appeared to reply that this doesn't stop anyone from writing, which doesn't contradict what I said and implies you probably misread or misunderstood it. Now you've moved on to posting Reddit-tier "just do it" platitudes, which have even less to do with anything I've said, and it seems you've convinced yourself we're arguing. We aren't.

There isn't. Things like "have something to say" and "get heccin' loife experience" are thought-terminating platitudes in their own right. Someone who was going to write slop will still write slop no matter what they've gone through or what kind of "message" they're convinced they need to put out there, it'll just be pretentious slop that midwits can be fooled into thinking has substance to it. I'm pushing back on what you're saying because you're stating the obvious while acting like it's some kind of revelation or important message but it's the most basic bitch thing you'll hear a million times over as both useless advice and an excuse. "I can't do it like ____ so why bother?" "Everything worth writing has already been written" "I've never been a normal weight" all stem from this line of thinking. There's no substitute for practice and substance either exists or doesn't independent of that.

Pomniman and cigint are both correct and sometimes we need to be reminded that being 'good' and 'having something to say' doesn't stop Japslop and chinklit authors.

While I agree that there's plenty of unreadable trash constantly being pumped out, I'd still affirm the fact that they're putting something out there over the kinds of "woe is me" "why can't I get anything done" "why do I suck so much" self-pity posting that's all too common in writers/groups that take themselves more seriously. If some virgin chink NEET jacking off to cartoons can at least finish his poorly written dragonball Z fanfic, that should only make anyone who thinks they have something better feel ashamed that they can't finish whatever they're working on.

 

[cigint]

I'm pushing back on what you're saying because you're stating the obvious while acting like it's some kind of revelation or important message

I hope you do realize that saying I'm "stating the obvious", in effect is an admission that I'm right, and that saying you're only pushing back because I'm "acting like something" means you're just being cunty because of your imagined motivations you've ascribed to me. Just to be clear.

 

[Pomniman]

I hope you do realize that saying I'm "stating the obvious", in effect is an admission that I'm right, and that saying you're only pushing back because I'm "acting like something" means you're just being cunty because of your imagined motivations you've ascribed to me. Just to be clear.

You can be technically correct and directionally wrong at the same time. For the purposes of this thread, in which your line of thinking leads to ineffectual unproductive sadposting by legions of midwitted faggots who can't finish a book to save their lives, you're more functionally wrong than theoretically right, so it's incumbent upon me to tell you that you're a retarded nigger who should kill himself and tell those other cocksuckers to whip themselves into shape instead of whining so much, not in a cunty way but a principled one.

 

[cigint]

Well, that story sure changed fast. First I was saying something obviously correct, and you were just being cunty because you didn't approve of the sinister motives you invented for me. What a reversal, now you're saying I'm incorrect and you were being cunty because of your selfless, principled love and care of the thread's midwitted legions. Can't wait for the next twist.

your cuck fetish

you're a retarded nigger who should kill himself

not in a cunty way

lol ok

 

[Pomniman]

Well, that story sure changed fast. First I was saying something obviously correct, and you were just being cunty because you didn't approve of the sinister motives you invented for me. What a reversal, now you're saying I'm incorrect and you were being cunty because of your selfless, principled love and care of the thread's midwitted legions. Can't wait for the next twist.




lol ok

There's no "twist" or "reversal", I've been saying the same thing the whole time. Writers are prone to mental masturbation so it's necessary to remind them that writing is a physical discipline in the stupidest bluntest way possible because unless you move your hands it's not going to happen and too many of us seem to be allergic to doing that. To me that means literally, physically, idiotically, walking around for miles and writing first drafts of my novels by hand in a graph paper notebook. I've done this over and over again for a bit over a decade because I'm completely insane and don't care about convenience. To those less psychopathic than me, it just means focusing and actually finishing your drafts before you get lost in airy fairy queermo notions of how or why you should/how to improve them. That's it. It's that simple. But what makes it necessary to say all of this so harshly and bluntly is that these simple things are harder to do than just jacking off to theories about them.

The final solution to thinking yourself into stupidity/paralysis is taking action and thinking as little as humanly possible.

 

[cigint]

And I'm sure those drafts are very competent prose. But any old idiot can be taught to write competent prose.

From the very beginning, this was about what is the hurdle to becoming a good writer. Not about how to defeat writer's block, or even becoming an active writer, or a prolific writer. "Just start doing it" is irrelevant in this case. What matters is a person's ability to deliver what Jung called the emotional catharsis of artistic expression.

You either have or haven't read Crime and Punishment. But whether you have or not, you have been necessarily impacted by this work, because of its influence on other works. A work like this cannot arise from the disowned part of the self. This is what I mean by experience and growth past emotional challenges. Imagine a precocious teen on a Harry Potter forum disagreeing with someone out of vain spite, and letting loose with endless spastic insults and circular ad hoc reasoning. Is he a child in his own mind, or an epic euphoric atheist who totally owned that faggot queermo midwit? He could practice writing action-reaction units (or whatever is the current fad) for a decade, but you'll probably agree he has nothing teach us.

Writing a lot and being a good writer are orthogonal. We can make a Venn diagram and then argue about where Stephen King belongs in there.

 

[Pomniman]

And I'm sure those drafts are very competent prose. But any old idiot can be taught to write competent prose.

From the very beginning, this was about what is the hurdle to becoming a good writer. Not about how to defeat writer's block, or even becoming an active writer, or a prolific writer. "Just start doing it" is irrelevant in this case. What matters is a person's ability to deliver what Jung called the emotional catharsis of artistic expression.

You either have or haven't read Crime and Punishment. But whether you have or not, you have been necessarily impacted by this work, because of its influence on other works. A work like this cannot arise from the disowned part of the self. This is what I mean by experience and growth past emotional challenges. Imagine a precocious teen on a Harry Potter forum disagreeing with someone out of vain spite, and letting loose with endless spastic insults and circular ad hoc reasoning. Is he a child in his own mind, or an epic euphoric atheist who totally owned that faggot queermo midwit? He could practice writing action-reaction units (or whatever is the current fad) for a decade, but you'll probably agree he has nothing teach us.

Writing a lot and being a good writer are orthogonal. We can make a Venn diagram and then argue about where Stephen King belongs in there.

The irony here is I would've probably made a post that looks exactly like yours here in my early 20s and thought I was onto something. I can still go back to that headspace, make myself even more pretentious than you and say Dostoevsky was a hack in the same way Nabokov did. There's an element of vanity at play in chasing ethereal notions of substance that precludes attaining them; catharsis is something you eventually arrive at either by skill or coincidence rather than pursue for its own sake because the act of seeking it from the outset is a form of hubris unto itself and turns you into your own nemesis because your ideals will either kill you or be killed by you. I'm not an atheist, but at the same time I'm not what I've seen referred to as a "religionist" either in that my God is a tangible personal reality entirely alien to the abstraction of God as you might define Him through doctrine and theology.

To get less metaphysical and more literal, I've seen and done all sorts of things; one of them being attending to dying and dead bodies, some of them with permanent bone deep sores, all of them with all kinds of fluids draining and seeping out. The stench is what you never forget if you decide to get into that line of work, in whatever capacity, for however long you stick with it. Did this improve my writing? Did it build any character in me? No. No it didn't. I could wax poetic about it. I could and have contrived various half-assed philosophies out of the intersection between life and death, but there's always an aspect of farce to doing that. When you really approach the void within or the void without, when there's nothing animating the spirit behind your flesh, when it's all you can do to just keep moving in spite of the fact that you have nowhere to go and nothing to do, you laugh. That's catharsis. It's not a theory. That's just reality. I've been there. I've done that. I'm still doing that every day I draw breath, because there's nothing else left. You can too if you want to, but I don't really recommend it.

 

[cigint]

I would've probably made a post that looks exactly like yours here in my early 20s and thought I was onto something. I can still go back to that headspace, make myself even more pretentious than you

Did it build any character in me? No. No it didn't. I could wax poetic about it. I could and have contrived various half-assed philosophies out of the intersection between life and death

What I said was not at all a suggestion for people to "wax poetic" about "half-assed philosophies" or that that makes someone a good writer. I hope someone else understood that, even though I wasn't able to communicate it past your sense of superiority.

 

[Pomniman]

What I said was not at all a suggestion for people to "wax poetic" about "half-assed philosophies" or that that makes someone a good writer. I hope someone else understood that, even though I wasn't able to communicate it past your sense of superiority.

You're wrong again, it's the exact opposite of superiority, I'm saying anyone can do this because once you get to the other side of it you realize that all you've ever really been doing is burning yourself down to a husk and that's actually easy even if it can and will kill you, it can be done to anyone, by anyone, of their own volition. You talked about Jung but you don't really understand what he did to arrive at those ideas, it sounds complicated but it only is insofar as it's painful, but the path is there for anyone to take if they're willing to.

If I'm preaching or being an asshole here it's because the end of all abstraction is simplicity and these things all loop back around in a cycle.

 

[cigint]

You're wrong again, it's the exact opposite of superiority

This is like talking to Patrick Tomlinson. "Wrong again, stalker child. Yes, I did directly just say I eclipsed your pretentious and midwitted mind in my early 20s, but actually that is the exact opposite of superiority."

Just bizarre.

 

[Pomniman]

This is like talking to Patrick Tomlinson. "Wrong again, stalker child. Yes, I did directly just say I eclipsed your pretentious and midwitted mind in my early 20s, but actually that is the exact opposite of superiority."

Just bizarre.

But why shouldn't I be like him? Every writer can be every other writer, child. This is why your life never even began. Wait for the knock.

If you can't laugh at yourself first and foremost you can't laugh at anyone else.

 

[A Hot Potato]

You two are faggots lol

 

[Pomniman]

You two are faggots lol

Unfortunately, it's inevitable that any group of more than a handful of writers trying to talk about writing devolves into a symposium on homosexuality in special education. Though in his case where I'd really attack him isn't even as a writer because I have no idea if he even writes anything, but as a reader, because he talks about authors like Jung and Dostoevsky to signify how "cultured" and "intellectual" he thinks he is while very plainly not having understood a word of anything he's read by them.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Powerlevel, and useless question.

How do you go about writing a web comic or long form story while keeping personal interest in the project?


I know this is the age old "pantser vs planner" debate, but I'm wondering how it's done as, unlike a typical novel, you can't go back and edit in earlier pages like a pantser, but also you can't plan for infinity, even planning out a whole arc can result in a lack of interest as the project progresses and a lack of flexibility as skills improve and feedback comes in. I never read long running mangas like One Piece and Berserk, but clearly they've done something right.

I'm asking because I've been annoyed by web comics I should like. I won't name names, but I'll choose two examples.
One was a fetish comic with a mystery/action plot where the artist seemed to lose interest. Going from a page every few days, to every couple of weeks, to one or two months between pages. The artist now seems to working on another project that disappeared up it's own arse explaining esoteric lore.
The other is a comic that has been recommended a lot. Supposedly 80s style action comic with a heavy dose of cheesecake, only for much of the comic to be taken up by an obvious author insert OC involved in unfunny slapstick situations.

I'm a shit artist and a worse writer. I've gained confidence in large part to various kiwis sharing their beginner efforts in other threads. I'm busy in RL with many time consuming projects so this will likely never see the light of day, but I want to know.


The motivation, if it isn't obvious, would be to deliver on promises made without too much of the writing equivalent of feature creep. So if I promise mechs, they'll be stomping around a few pages in. If I promise hot babes fighting dinosaurs, there won't be extended scenes of old men talking about philosophy. I'm not trying to make money on this, and I don't expect anyone will read it. And to reiterate. I doubt I'll ever get the free time or will to make it due to other projects. I'm just sick of the bait and switch or artists abandoning things mid story.

My back-of-the-envelope idea is a simple, bare bones action adventure story. Possibly involving some amount of cheesecake depending on what people want. I don't know how to budget a story pages in terms of length, but what I have seen is artists tend to start losing interest 10 pages in, and abandon entirely at about 30-50 pages. 10 pages seems a bit slight to tell a story, so I'll aim for 30 pages.