writing

I'm a big Star Wars fan. There's tons of anti imperialism and I love the visual aesthetic, but I always felt we should see the empire doing some actual imperialism, with actual atrocities and the effects of financial imperialism like america does today. I wanted to try my hand at world building so I began writing a story that I felt scratched that itch with a 21st century understanding of technology. So andor comes out and I'm three episodes in and it's exactly what I wanted from the franchise so far.

I hardly felt like my story was going anywhere in terms of publishing or anything. I'm not a great writer, my allegories aren't elegant, and I'm sure it's unintentionally full of liberalism. Plus, like I said, it's almost Star Wars fanfiction. But I'm enjoying writing it and I would like to try to publish it since it's kind of written for bazinga brained libs to try to get them to look this stuff in the face, but I fear it's just going to be called derivative or compared to Andor.

I don't know, I'm going to keep at it. Worst case scenario I'll post it online. This was mostly a vent about losing my inspiration in a way.

Edit: I should be clear, it is not set in the star wars cannon, I'm just worried about it being compared to star wars and losing my own ambition.

If dying was like floating
In the void
Void of all worries
Light as a feather
A murmur in the wind
Of good times gone by.

Gone with the years
Aged to dust
Dust blown into the wind
Scattered into nothingness
I wish I was dead sometimes.
It sounds easier than living
With the weight on my shoulders
Let me float
I’ll be alright.

The Tulpa War rages on, and in the ongoing dance of death, no one is safe.

The Olympians of Mars are immortal no more, falling one by one at the blood-soaked hands of the mysterious Reine Rouge. New champions arise on Earth and armies of Preta-haunted machines emerge like living nightmares to meet them.

The fires of revolution burn brightly as old allegiances are torn apart. Some fight for hate and vengeance while trampling over the ruins of the past. Others fight for love and redemption, striving for a future that might yet be.

Megan and Kitsune reunite amid the ashes. The final battle for life itself is about to begin.

Fans of the Gundam franchise, the Pacific Rim films, the Nier: Automata and Zone of the Enders video game serieses, or the Heavy Gear and Lancer RPG settings are cordially invited to the climactic conclusion of the Tulpa Trilogy.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BCQD4BZZ

As a personal message to anyone on Hexbear reading this, I have been looking forward to completing this trilogy for years, and without spoiling anything, I promise that there is a satisfying conclusion. No story should go without one.

Here are two links about the previous novels of the trilogy if you’re interested but new to the setting:

https://ulyssestuggy.com/

https://www.tulpatrilogy.com/

Full comic : https://i.redd.it/cjd72t46nl291.png

As you all know, I have been writing a novel and this is the writing community...

This video by Shaun is actually pretty inspiring. The idea that JKRowling went from zero to billionaire by writing a series that had so many stupid mistakes in it lifts quite a burden off my shoulders.

I've seen the Harry Potter movies, they're not bad, nor are they particularly amazing. Well, it is amazing that they actually got made and fully budgeted until the end. The Narnia series after the third movie had to abort to save the wallet of the producers, Pirates of the Caribbean made a deep dive into the bottom of the ocean of low quality, The Hobbit was bad in ways mere mortals are not qualified to explain. I'd have swapped the amount of production effort HP and PotC got to the last movie if I could.

The Harry Potter directors were smart enough to cut out some of JKR's weird shit. I didn't read past the third novel. I only watched the movies, and they did make a good job of toning down the worst parts of the bullying and slavery apologia. I can see where HP movie fans and HP theory readers can have very different understandings of how JKR talked about slavery.

There is probably a large Venn Diagram intersection of people who downplay the slavery and people who pretended to read the whole series to the end for some kind of clout.

As I write, I'm meticulously paranoid about details that don't mean something later in the story, or dig a hole that later becomes a plothole and gets forgotten instead of filled. In fact, I'm kind of worried that my paranoia could make the novel(s) incompletable.

Sherlock Is Garbage, And Here's Why - Hbomberguy[1:49:52] dabbles a bit on that with the recent BBC sherlock series. He notes a director who is apparently talented at building up, but is utterly incapable of actually building to a destination. I had already felt like Sherlock was off, and Hbomberguy just happened to release a damning video that precisely articulates why I liked individual episodes of Sherlock, but felt the series as a whole wasn't adding up. Because really, it literally was just kind of going nowhere, but with the aesthetics of about to get there. And Sherlock wasn't the first series the director ruined for Hbomberguy.

Game of Thrones is an interesting example. The guy's ending was clearly a shower thought, he built a world, he built several books. Maybe he built something so big he couldn't finish it. This could be me in 10 years (minus the financial success, statistically speaking).

I have to walk the tight rope between a story with no errors or accidental loose ends, but also a story that cleanly arrives with a satisfying destination.

Best of luck to everyone.

I'm writing a currently genre ambiguous Sci-Fi/lovecraft/spaceopera/superhero novel that doesn't outright declare everyone is openly is Maoist/Anarchist/Stalinist/Etc., (the alien characters won't have human etymology for their ideologies) and maybe it's not actually all that political on the surface anyways, but any tips for slipping in vegan and leftist dog-whistles?

What is the issue with a writer being straightforward with what they have to say? This isn't me saying every piece of fiction needs to make it blatantly obvious what the themes or morals are but I see this criticism a lot.

I said earlier that I was working on submitting my stories to different literature journals and today, I got a bite.

It's the first time I'll be getting a paid publication and that's really cool. I'm so glad I found this community that helped me feel confident enough to put my work out there.

I look forward to getting more of my work out there to corrupt the youth.

Holy shit, I think this is my most upbeared post. Thanks everybody! :sicko-wholesome:

Also, it's a sci-fi story about a future where body modifications are cheap and easy. I wanted to explore how even good technology can be bad in and inherently oppressive society.

I feel like I'm swimming upstream in polluted water when I read other works out there for purposes of trying to see how something I would want to write might fit in.

It's bad.

A lot of what I skimmed over were Mass Effect clones, but somehow further right wing than Mass Effect already was, with the names changed and the numbers filed off.

A lot of what's left involves "humanity fuck yeah" space imperialism, grizzled tough guys with cold piercing stares and powerlifter physiques well into old age and their adventures with brilliant and hot scientist women that are defined more about who their father is/was and less by their actual job, that try to prove they are Independent Strong Willed Women but of course swoon for the timeless grizzled ego insert's blandly stoic charms. Also, a space bureaucracy usually interferes with the grizzled tough guy's very important imperialistic mission and his only chance to save humanity is to go rogue with a ragtag bunch of renegades and kill those filthy aliens before they threaten colonial interests. Or something.

I got some pretty harsh negative feedback for my inclusion of ideas in my own work. The idea that billionaires wanting to colonize Mars aren't actually going to save humanity by doing that and it would be an insatiable resource sink that would further accelerate Earth's decay was especially incendiary. Maybe I should have already become a rich and influential writer first before trying something like that, but that seems like it might have involved writing one of the above reactionary works instead and hoping another off-brand Mass Effect got more traction instead.

I'm demoralized, but I'm also nearly done with the third book in my self-published trilogy. It's a weird place to be.

EDIT: I may as well post a link to the website my wife and my friend helped set up. It has the first five chapters available for free and some other stuff.

https://www.tulpatrilogy.com/

This skit was written back in 2006 when I still aspired to be a sketch comedy writer. I've never shared it and forgot all about it until today. Thought maybe you guys might enjoy.

EXT. FRONT PORCH – NIGHTTIME

A single yellow-hued light illuminates the scene. In the center of frame, above a pathway and a couple of steps, is a door. A wicker wreath with a cartoonish bird holding a sign that reads “HOME SWEET HOME” hangs on the door. A bench swing is off on the right side of the porch

JOHN STOSSEL and SUSAN approach the door. Susan is leading the way but she is walking backwards, as if to guard the door.

JOHN STOSSEL

(incredulous) The word gratuity comes from the latin: gratuitus, which means voluntary. So, how is it that a “gratuity” was automatically factored into our bill?

John Stossel air-quotes the word “gratuity”.

SUSAN

(passively dismissive)

I don’t know, John. I guess that’s just their policy.

JOHN STOSSEL

(annoyed and incredulous)

But what’s voluntary about that?! Why not charge 10 dollars for egg foo young rather than 8 dollars and 95 cents and then pass that additional income on to their servers as a taxable wage? And what if I’m not SATISFIED with the service? How do I provide FEEDBACK to my waiter if he’s automatically ENTITLED to a full tip? I mean, c’mon! Give me a break!

SUSAN

(wearily)

Yes, John, I see your poi-

JOHN STOSSEL

(angerly)

There’s a word for what they’re doing. It’s called welfare!

Susan shoots John Stosssel a horrified look

SUSAN

(cautiously)

Listen, showing me the 20/20 studios was great. Taking me to visit your friend Hugh at the old folk’s home was really sweet, but it’s getting awfully late.

Susan looks at her watch.

SUSAN

I have to work in the morning, you know.

JOHN STOSSEL

That brings me to dating myth #6: It’s dangerous to invite a man in for a nightcap on the first date. Almost all the dating sites advise against letting a stranger into your home on the first date. They say, “You must be careful to avoid potentially dangerous situations because sexual predators often look and act just like normal men”. But is it true? Turns out, it doesn’t matter. One study shows that 90% of date rapists will rape their dates regardless of whether they are invited in or not.

Susan looks at John as if he’s sprouted devil horns. A couple beats go by.

SUSAN

It’s not that at all, John. I just need to get some sleep.

JOHN STOSSEL

How much sleep is enough sleep? Conventional wisdom would have you believe that 8 hours is mandatory. But where did that number originate?

SUSAN

(flatly)

John…

JOHN STOSSEL

Many sleep experts attribute its enduring popularity to the work schedules of our agrarian ancestors. Back in the days of dusk to dawn workdays, sleep patterns were largely determined by the sun.

SUSAN

(sternly)

John…

JOHN STOSSEL

Modern tests in sleep laboratories have shown that the natural circadian rhythm of humans averaged 25 hours without the benefit of triggers such as light or dark.

At the word “shown” Susan puts her head in her hand and begins to slowly walk toward the bench swing where she sits down and sighs deeply.

John walks over and sits beside Susan. He stares at her for several beats.

JOHN STOSSEL

(earnestly)

I’m sorry Susan. I feel like a fool.

SUSAN

You do?

JOHN STOSSEL

(tenderly)

I’ve just realized what you’re thinking.

SUSAN

(hopefully)

You have?

JOHN STOSSEL

(return to incredulous)

You’re thinking, why sleep with John Stossel? He looks like an Armenian Janitor. Who knows what STD’s he may, or may not, be carrying. Wouldn’t NOT sleeping with John Stossel make the most SENSE? That’s what you’d think, but you’d be wrong. SURPRISINGLY, women that slept with John Stossel are TWICE as likely to have graduated from college and FOUR TIMES as likely to go on to earn an advanced degree

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Text of the NYT Article:

By Timothy Aubry

Nov. 25, 2015

Less than a lifetime ago, reputable American writers would occasionally start fistfights, sleep in ditches and even espouse Communist doctrines. Such were the prerogatives and exigencies of the artist’s existence, until M.F.A. programs arrived to impose discipline and provide livelihoods. Whether the professionalization of creative writing has been good for American literature has set off a lot of elegantly worded soul-searching and well-mannered debate recently, much of it in response to Mark McGurl’s seminal study, “The Program Era.” What Eric ­Bennett’s “Workshops of Empire” contributes is an understanding of how Cold War politics helped to create the aesthetic standards that continue to rule over writing workshops today.

Sponsored by foundations dedicated to defeating Communism, creative-­writing programs during the postwar period taught aspiring authors certain rules of propriety. Good literature, students learned, contains “sensations, not doctrines; ­experiences, not dogmas; memories, not philosophies.” The goal, according to Bennett, was to discourage the abstract theorizing and systematic social critiques to which the radical literature of the 1930s had been prone, in favor of a focus on the personal, the concrete and the individual. While workshop administrators like Paul Engle and Wallace Stegner wanted to spread American values, they did not want to be caught imposing a particular ideology on their students, for fear of appearing to use the same tactics as the communists. Thus they presented their aesthetic principles as a non­political, universally valid means of cultivating writerly craft. The continued status of “show, don’t tell” as a self-evident truth, dutifully dispensed to anyone who ventures into a creative-­writing class, is one proof of their success.

Bennett’s argument is a persuasive reminder that certain seemingly timeless criteria of good writing are actually the product of historically bound political agendas, and it will be especially useful to anyone seeking to expand the repertoire of stylistic strategies taught within creative-writing programs. That said, some sections are better researched than others. His chapters on Stegner, Hemingway and Henry James lack the detailed ­institutional machinations that make his account of Engle’s career so compelling. Moreover, he uses the early history to support his claim that creative-writing programs continue to bolster a pro-­capitalist worldview today. But a chess move made to solve specific problems can serve unexpected purposes when the situation on the board has changed. Whether or not the aesthetic doctrines currently championed by writing workshops perform the same political function they once did, now that the very conflict responsible for their emergence has ended, is a question that requires further study.

Finally, despite Bennett’s misgivings about creative-writing workshops, his book is itself a convincing argument in their favor. A graduate of the Iowa M.F.A. program, Bennett has produced a literary history far more enjoyable than the typical academic monograph, for all the reasons one might guess. It features a winning protagonist, Engle, the ebullient poet-huckster and early director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, who, according to Bennett, “moved too quickly through the airports and boardroom offices to bother with the baggage of complex beliefs.” Here and elsewhere, Bennett never tells when he can show. The 1920s, under his scrutiny, consists not of trends, but of “racy advertisements, voting mothers, unruly daughters, smoking debutants, migrating Negroes, Marx, Marxists, Freud, Freudians and the unsettling monstrosity of canvasses and symphonies from Europe.” Wallace Stegner, he observes, “wrote at length about not sleeping with people.” Whether novelists and poets should make room in their work for the intellectual abstractions that prevail within academic scholarship, the academy would be better off if more of its members could attend to concrete particulars with the precision and wit that Bennett brings to his subject. Indeed, they might even benefit from taking a creative-writing class or two.

WORKSHOPS OF EMPIRE

Stegner, Engle, and American Creative Writing During the Cold War

Link to the article

Seriously, how? They've been trying to kill of superheroes for years (Watchmen, the Boys) but nothing seems to stick.

I don't even mean in a "Ayy I'm walking here" kind of way. Today I was getting my airbags replaced for a couple hours so I was just walking around (Nowhere to go to because it was one of those near-the-highway places with nothing but department stores and car dealerships, but that's a different discussion.) Literally, it seemed like the entire layout of the area was saying "Fuck you, drive around" Like, there was barely even any sidewalks, which you'd think would be the bare minimum but nope.

The one place worth going to was this supremely out of place fountain, but to get there I had to do several different crossings of a very busy street, with nothing to help but those damn buttons you're supposed to push to, I think, make a red light (they didn't work, whoopity-do) and one crossing didn't even have that. Eventually I decided "Screw it", since there was no "official" crossing, so I just crossed the rest of the way from one of those tiny concrete islands. I didn't get run over, of course, but now I think about how comparatively easy it was for me, being able to walk on my feet; I can't even imagine how much worse it is in, say, a wheelchair. I guess America hates anyone not driving.

Suffice to say that the whole time I was thinking of this painting

Hey everyone, I'm a professional writer and I just wanted to let anyone interested in writing in on a few open secrets. Many of these come from Chris Fox's books, but he's "apolitical" and defines success by making enough money to survive via self-publishing on Amazon. I have found Amazon to be pretty much a black hole when it comes to making money, even if you make major compromises to your artistic vision. I believe that you should write what you love, but also try to keep people's preferences in mind, and that ultimately any success you experience in a market economy is due to luck and/or privilege. If you can get just one person (you don't personally know) to enjoy reading your work, I think that's a pretty major fucking achievement. Amazon is also fucking evil and "working" with them in any capacity is gross, but they're pretty much the only show in town, and all the other companies out there are just less fortunate versions of Amazon.

Okay. So to write a book, you need to be able to write really quickly. On a few very good days, I have been able to pump out a little under 30 pages. (Most of the time, I only average a few pages a day.) At that kind of rate, you can have a first draft of a novel ready in a couple of weeks. And although the quality might not be perfect, it's definitely true that the more you write (and the more you publish), the more you learn. Plus, if you fuck up with a novel you wrote in a few weeks, only a few weeks are down the drain. Just try to learn from your mistakes and move on to your next project.

Here are the things I've found that need to be done in order to actually write a lot really fast:

• If you have trouble thinking up ideas, use the TVTropes plot generator. Its ideas might be too ridiculous to consider, but it can help you think more about what you actually want to do.

• Plot out your stories chapter-by-chapter. Conflict should be driven by character flaws. Steal plots from the best sources, just try not to be too obvious about it. "Every character must want something, even if it's just a cup of water." Give us a character to root for. It's okay if characters fail, but they always have to try their best, and it's extremely unsatisfying if they get rescued by random chance. This is why the deus ex machina is so popular. Basically, in the end of a story, characters are put in impossible situations to ratchet up the tension. They can only be rescued by some kind of outside force (like Han rescuing Luke at the end of Star Wars). Just make sure to set up that force—by plotting out your story! You can also change the plot as you go along. I've just found that it really helps to know where you're going. Force your characters to make difficult choices. Usually these seem to come down to family versus dreams or family versus career.

• When your plot is ready, you need to block the internet on your computer and any other devices you have. Use apps, hide your phone, lock yourself out using passwords only a friend knows, that sort of thing.

• I use Scrivener to write. It's a little expensive but if you hunt around you can probably find a way to get it for free.

• Find some white noise or movie soundtrack music to listen to over and over again. Don't destroy your ears.

• This is where the bourgeois aspects of writing come in: you need a place to write where no one is going to bother you, as well as time to write. A lot of people get up early in the morning to pull this off.

• Try not to edit until you've finished your first draft. I break this rule all the time though.

• Try not to lecture your reader. As revolutionaries it's definitely our duty to politicize our work. But you have to work the politics into the plot or else people are going to get bored or even angry. If you want to talk about racism in America, for instance, it's a lot easier to adopt the Star Trek approach and just have like a person with green skin being mistreated because he has green skin. If you publish a book that is very blatantly political, you're going to get reviews complaining about this. I break this rule all the time as well, but I really try not to. You can see what I mean if you look at Tolstoy's novels. They're so fucking good, but they get incredibly boring when he starts going on and on about his political ideas.

• There are techniques you can use to keep an eye on your words-per-minute, like counting how many words you can write in an hour. Push yourself and see how fast you can write. Don't worry too much about fucking up. Just write! You'll be amazed at what you're capable of.

• Once you've finished your manuscript, congratulate yourself, and then get to editing as well as thinking about your next project. If you're writing SF/F, extended series are extremely popular, so you could even plan out an entire trilogy or series if you want to. This helps with making money on Amazon, if that's something you want to try doing.

• I do multiple rounds of editing. I read the entire manuscript at least once. Then I feed some of it into slickwrite.com to see if there's any weird stylistic issues I've missed, like using way too many fucking adverbs, or having super long sentences. I have VoiceDreamReader read the entire book to me so I can pick up on other things I've missed. I'll also use an (expensive) program like Vellum to make an epub for me, and then I'll read that on my phone. Looking at your work in different formats can help to pick up shit you've missed. Once you're at a point when you can't stand the thought of editing any further, you're ready to publish.

• I have found writing circles to be pretty useless. They might be more helpful if all of you are working in the same genre. But writers are hyper-critical of writing. They're always looking for problems, while readers who actually buy your work are looking for things to like, because they feel like idiots if they realize they just bought something that turns out to be garbage. If you've been burned in writing circles or have super cringey memories from writing circles (I do), try not to let it get to you.

• A book like "Self-Editing for Fiction Writers" is extremely helpful when it comes to honing your craft. Don't be a dickhead, like I was, and treat writing as though it all comes from divine inspiration. Professionals write reliably on time, and try to make their work as fun as possible.

• Once you're ready to publish, you can go two ways: either via Amazon or via traditional publishing. Both suck ass. If you're a member of a minority group, try querying agents. If you look at any of their "what I am looking for" pages, they're all basically after minority women who can write decent stories. They have trouble finding these people because almost all writers are bourgeois and therefore white. This is tied in to Trump and MeToo. If you're a white dude, on the other hand, you can try querying agents, but even if you've written the next Moby Dick, it's going to be hard. I queried hundreds over the course of several years before one finally agreed to take me, and that was only because I had written an "ethnic" story and could say that an "ethnic" person I know is a cowriter. (I'm a white dude; this "ethnic" person agreed to work with me, read my book, told me what to change, and would have split the money we made with the book, had any publisher actually picked it up.) Any other professional writers out there who have had different experiences with this, please let me know. I know it may sound controversial to say so. It's kind of an open secret. If you head to your nearest book store or library and look at the new fiction, it's going to be two groups of people publishing: debut writers from minority backgrounds, and white people who have been selling shitloads of books for years. That's pretty much it. Agents and publishers also don't seem terribly interested in minority writers who happen to be socialists, either.

• Some smaller publishers don't require agents for submission. (Just watch out for scams, of course.) If you can get a small publisher to publish your book, you might be able to leverage that into a swell job as a writing teacher somewhere.

• If you decide to self-publish, there's a few things to consider. One, maybe hire an editor, if you can. Two, definitely pay someone to make a nice cover (if you can). Look at covers you like in your genre and try to find the artists who made them. They'll probably make a nice cover for you for a few hundred bucks. Pre-made covers are also an option, but most of them look like ass. People do judge books by their covers. Think about the last time you looked at a book with a shitty cover.

• There are all kinds of abstruse techniques you can use to sell shit on Amazon, but like I said, it's ultimately a black hole. The best I was able to do was break even, and I worked like a maniac on that shit for months. There are keywords and book descriptions and ads and "front matter" and "back matter" and mailing lists and all kinds of annoying shit to think about. Amazon's advertising services seem like just another way for Jeff Bezos to suck up money. The entire process is pretty opaque. You basically have to throw money at Amazon and hope that they not only show your ad to people, but that those people click on that ad. It's a pain, to say the least, and I never trusted Amazon to deliver. My suspicion is that their algorithm only shows ads from authors who are proven sellers—and that they kind of just pretend to sell ads for everyone else, as much as possible before those other writers get suspicious and then give up. There are a lot of guides out there with extremely specific information on how to work with this system, but I got into writing because I just loved telling stories—not because I wanted to spend four hours a day experimenting with stupid fucking keywords on Amazon.

• I have found that it helps to exercise to deal with stress. I jog and do bodyweight fitness.