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HOW TO WRITE A STORY

Introduction
We are all storytellers. And story is all around us. After all, what is a TV show or a movie? What is a book? What do you tell your parents when they ask, "How was your day, dear?" You guessed it - a story.

You can write a story about anything you want. All you need are the basics. You wouldn't bake a cake without knowing the ingredients, right?

So before you write, it helps to know the ingredients of a story.

There are three great secrets to creating a story......unfortunately nobody knows what they are. Just kidding.

Actually these are the secrets:

1. PRACTICE
2. PRACTICE
3. PRACTICE

Practice changed me from being a kid who liked to draw and write, into an adult who has written and illustrated many children's books. Would you like to be a story writer, too? I'll show you how.

Story Structure
A story is like a SNAKE with its tail in its mouth. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. Some stories even end up in the same place they started.

For example, in The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy starts out in Kansas, travels to Oz in a cyclone and ends up back in Kansas. In my book, Surf Gecko to the Rescue! Moki the Gecko starts out happy, gets mad about pollution and ends up happy at the end. You get the idea.

Ready to start your story? Then grab a pencil and paper, or open up a new file on your computer, and away we go!

Main Character -- The person, animal or thing your story is about
Every story starts with a main character. It can be any animal, human or thing you want it to be. One suggestion: try choosing a main character you like to draw, if you plan to illustrate your story.

Start by asking yourself some questions:
• Who is your main character?
• What does he, she or it like/dislike?
• What is your character's personality?
• What does your character look like?

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HOW TO WRITE A STORY (cont.)
When you start getting answers, you can draw a character web, like this example. Put your main character's name in the circle in the middle, and all of his or her characteristics along the lines coming out of the circle.

Here's another hint:
Draw a picture of your main character. That will help you visualize what he or she is like.
Setting -- Where your story takes place
Every story needs to take place somewhere. Well, duh, you might say. But your story's setting can have either a big or little impact on the story. What would The Wizard of Oz be without Oz? Just a story about a girl and a dog in dusty old Kansas, that's what.

Ask yourself these questions:
• Where does your story take place -- on the moon, in Hawaii, inside your dad's nose, or someplace completely different?
• When does your story take place: past, present or future?
• How much does your setting affect your main character's problem?

Problem -- The challenge your character must face and overcome
Without a problem, your story would be dull as watching paint dry. Snooze city. But when you give your main character a problem to solve, your story comes alive. Be sure to make it a big enough problem. Remember: having a hangnail isn't much of a problem, but hanging on a cliff is.

Important tip:
Use the magic of conflict. Conflict means someone or something tries to stop your character from solving the problem. The more times your hero tries and fails, the better.

Ask yourself these questions:
• What is your main character's problem?
• Is it a big enough problem that it will take a whole story to solve it?
• How does your main character try and fail to solve her or his problem?

Resolution -- How the character finally solves the problem
The most satisfying resolutions come when you think your hero is about to give up. When they've tried everything else, they finally solve the problem. It's best if your main character solves the problem on his or her own.

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HOW TO WRITE A STORY (cont.)

Hint:
Look back at your character web, and see if one of your hero's characteristics can help him or her solve the problem. It's even better if one of their faults turns out to be a strength.

Ask yourself these questions:
• How does your main character finally solve the problem?
• If possible, can they solve it using their own strength or wits?
• Does the story or character end up back where it started?

Reminders
• Let your artistic side go, have fun and be creative. Write your story all the way through before you edit it. Only let your Inner Editor work on the story after your Inner Artist has finished.
• Think about a story you like. What makes it good? Can you identify main character, setting, problem and resolution?
• Writing is rewriting. Write until you're satisfied with your story. Feel free to change and rewrite to make it stronger.
• Are you having fun? If so, wonderful. If not, make it fun.

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>>23870971
>>23870980
>>23870986
>morning /tg/

Thanks for all the info, but the information I need is how to get readers. I've already written quite a bit with my background in Creative Writing an current job as a copywriter.

What do you guy want to read, and how would you like to read it? That's what I'm looking for.

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>>23870971

>What do you tell your parents when they ask, "How was your day, dear?" You guessed it - a story.

>>23871010
Hold me Anon

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>>23871010
>tfw tf

Why won't your characters call their parents, /tg/

>>23871021

Because that would let the GM know too much.

>>23871021
my parents are DEAAAAAAD!

but they deserved it, they were scummy Xenos-sympathisers

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>>23870971
>>23870980
>>23870986
You sir, have made my day

>>23871005

Then post them.

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>>23871021
Because I don't have very much interest in roleplaying family time, and I'm afraid that my DM will take it as an invitation to involve them.
But at least I know I'm not interested. I had a party mate bring up his wife and kid constantly. The moment the DM tried to involve them, the player burned down his house (family and all) so that he wouldn't have to deal with it.
I then smote him into the dirt, because what the fuck.

>>23871060

Historical Fantasy
http://roryedd.tumblr.com/post42917795770

Fantasy Drama
http://roryedd.tumblr.com/post/44769558021

Scifi Horror
http://roryedd.tumblr.com/post/44348009089

Start with fanfiction. Nobody expects fanfiction to be good, so you're setting the bar low enough that people will be impressed if you're not absolutely awful.
If your fanfiction is well-received (which it will be if you have a basic grasp of grammar, spelling, sentence structure and scene flow, and don't go HURR DURR MARYSUES/CRACKFICS EVERYWHERE), host your own site for your fanfiction.
If your fanfiction website gets a lot of hits and people still like your stuff, you can start writing real fiction, sell it for a dollar on Amazon, and start swimming in money.

There is only one way you can fail as an author, and that is if you ever stop writing.
NEVER STOP WRITING. Got writers block? Write something else. Can't thing of anything to write? Look up bad fanfiction and write something the same but better. Don't want to write? Hire a hooker. Hire three hookers. Write up a dry, factual account of your evening with those hookers, put it on Amazon for a dollar, and HIRE MORE HOOKERS.

>>23871117
I liked that third one, OP.

>>23870937
Pursue it as a hobby. Always consider it a hobby until you get your first fat check. Do not make it a goal to be a full time writer. Most writers these days, even professionals, cannot do it full time because the amount they get paid has cratered because nobody can afford books and now books can be stolen.

Most magazines and journals (the ones that pay, anyway) will give you 6 to 9 cents a word, tops. So you're looking at $400 to $600 a piece depending on the length and quality of your writing.

Nothing you're going to be paying the rent with, certainly. Stephen King worked at a laundromat until he got his first big book deal. John Grisham was an attorney. You're not going to make a living off of writing when you first start out. Keep your job and focus on it when you have the time.

>>23871129
Not OP or anyone else, new person in the thread. As a writefag who is 2/3 of the way done with a novel about hookers and gladiators, your words please me.

>>23871129
>If your fanfiction website gets a lot of hits and people still like your stuff, you can start writing real fiction, sell it for a dollar on Amazon, and start swimming in money.

Has this ever happened? has anyone actually built a fanbase as a fanfic writer and then transitioned to writing real fiction?

There's rumors that 50 Shades of Gray originally started as Twilight fanfic, but I don't think that chick marketed it to her fanfic fanbase. Even if she did, that's a grand total of 1 successful transition. Telling people who want to be a successful author to take up writing fanfic is not good advice, IMHO. You need constructive criticism to improve, and fanfic readers aren't gonna give you that.

>>23871129
>NEVER STOP WRITING

This is good advice, though.

I'll add that while it's necessary, you're only going to improve if you're genuinely practicing rather than just spamming low-grade fiction and are willing to listen to constructive criticism. Writing groups are really good for the latter, and are really good at encouraging the former.

>>23871117
Your writing style is *awesome*. I really like it.
How long have you been writing?
As for your question: I guess you would want to write genre fiction if money is your big concern. Look what's in, then copy all dat shit, but make it better. Then try to get yourself published.
Otherwise, write whatever you want? You are good enough for the proper people (read: those who are interested in the stories you yourself like to read/write) to pick you up.
You just need to get out there by obnoxiously bugging strangers to read your stories. Or make your friends read them, their friends, their friends' friends, etc; mouth to mouth propaganda.

>>23871129
He's going to be a poor man with all these hookers hanging round

>>23871380
Right now all I want are readers. It really helps me keep going when I know people are enjoying what I'm making.

I figure if one day I have a thousand dedicated readers I can start charging for completed books, but I'm nowhere near that yet.

I honestly loved that you came here before /lit/. That place is a cess-pit of pretentious assholes.

>>23871408
Coming here is a first step getting your stuff out.
You can always self-publish e-books via ... well, *all* the outlets on the net (either for free or for a tiny sum to suggest professionalism.) Someone there is bound to pick you up. Someone is bound to stick to you. Someone is bound to recommend you.
That's how you build a fanbase, I reckon.
All you really need for self-publishing is good covers.

>>23871483
>good covers.

I hate to be the dickhead who puts something before the writing, but this is fucking vital. Your story can be perfect, but nobody will pick it up without a good cover.

>>23871483
I'm actually a pretty alright artist. I think I can manage to do my own covers better than most.

What kind of stories/themes/genres would you guys look for if you did buy a .99 cent digital book?

>>23871117
Wow. I really liked them. I was going to tell you to give up but I changed my mind.

>>23871521
>I'm actually a pretty alright artist.
I just found this: http://roryedd.tumblr.com/image/43779723278
You style is cool, but designing and developing book covers is different from "just" drawing. What I try to say is that you need to pay attention to the composition.

>What kind of stories/themes/genres would you guys look for if you did buy a .99 cent digital book?
You are on /tg/. I'm pretty sure what we like to read. ... mostly everything. Anything that is fantastical, be it the criminal investigation of a polymorphism "assassination" attempt, a light-hearted romantic comedy set in a dungeon involving a Gelatinous Cube and a Conflagration Ooze, or something as simple as a dog that wants a nice bone and goes on an epic adventure to find it.

Also if you should need help preparing e-books, I'm all in. (But it's rather simple, so whatever.)

>>23871577
*I'm pretty sure you know what we like to read.

sorry

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>>23871577
I get ya. I've done some design work. I also paint sometimes. Here's Papa Hemingway in acrylic on canvas.

>>23871577
>http://roryedd.tumblr.com/image/43779723278

Something like this could make quite a good book cover. If I saw a book cover which was only a deer in knights armour I would pick it up for sure and have a look.

>>23871637
This on the other hand I would not pick up.

>>23871637
While we are on the topic of Hemingway (nice painting btw), which authors would you say influenced your style of writing the most?

>>23871681
>Something like this could make quite a good book cover. If I saw a book cover which was only a deer in knights armour I would pick it up for sure and have a look.

I know. I would definitely pick that up as well. Though if the story didn't feature a deer in armor I would be majorly pissed.
And that's what I wanted to warn against. Covers, like film trailors, create expactations. And those goddamn marketing fuckers, publishers and producers shit on us, for all they care for is profit.
"Oh that book looks cool!" ... "Well, sadly it's got nothing to do with the story, but thanks for your money anyways."

Also, OP really wants to distance himself from the typical self-publisher, who throws together some rectangles and god aweful comic-sans titles in mspaint and believes himself to be DaVinci on meth.
Style and composition are elemental.

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I do some design work, but most of my art is either messy ink or acrylic, or this rotoscoping.

>>23871792
Oh ... people who are passionate enough to finish stuff ... how I despise them, for I do not share that quality.

Looks good, really good. In how far you could use that as a cover, or as a cover for which type of story I don't know, but it's definitely well done.

Also: sloppy or messy does not necessarily imply bad or inappropriate.

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>>23871828
Well I had written a few scary stories because they're fun and easy, and I can find people to read them. I do these pen and ink things that I might do for each story and make a little collected work.

What do you guys think of the title: Shitty Shorts To Make You Shit Your Shorts.

Good luck to you, OP. It's kinda sad, having the willpower to finish a story but not the resources to get it to any readers.

>>23871869
10/10 international bestseller

>>23871869
>

Winner winner can now afford dinner

>>23871117

I wanted to let you know I loved those. Keep writing bro.

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I recommend this book to every would be writer

>>23872022

hey I bought this the other day.really funny

I think OP is more interested in finding out what people want to read, than writing advice, since he seems to be pretty competent.

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I saved this a while back, maybe it can help you.

>>23871117

>That scifi story

Nice! I'll be waiting for more of your stories in the future, and I hope you become succesful.

>/tg/ writers thread
Cool, I like these kinds of threads.
I've been writing a story about a teenage witch with zero social skills secretly defending her hometown from a Vampire going through a midlife crisis and his minions. Other characters include her magic tutor, an old man who used to be the greatest magic user in the world but would now rather stay home and watch old soap operas, her best friend whose defining trait is being "Very Scottish" so obviously that means being very angry and getting in fights a lot and her maybe-love interest a guy whose very good at fighting supernatural creatures for some ~mysterious~ reason, but would rather be at home playing video games.
Writing it all out now makes it sound pretty awful but does it sound like something you guys would read? Or see being read by other people?

>>23873095
It sounds like comedy. In my opinion, what carries comedy is writing style and the little things, not the overall plot, so I wouldn't really be able to judge. Some of the things seem like great setups for jokes (the midlife crisis vampire, mostly), but the ~mysterious~ thing has been done to death. You could run it as a joke on the whole cliché, though, I don't know.

I'm not into urban fantasy or magic teenagers, but it doesn't sound awful. Can't judge on one paragraph, anyway.

Best thing to do is just to write it. If it turns out good, e presto, there you go. If it turns out bad or mediocre, you're a step higher on the learning curve with the experience.

>>23873151
Yeah, it's a comedy, the intention for the whole ~mysterious~ thing is to treat it as a joke, specifically put emphasis on the word ~mysterious~ every time it's mentioned.

I was thinking of making it a balence between comedy and serious though, kind of like the Skulduggery Pleasant books, where everything is rather amusing and light hearted and hey presto, some scary shit is happening. But I dunno, I'm not really sure I could make it work.

Besides from being slow, is /lit/ a good place for discussion and critique about writing? or is everyone there elitist douches or something horrible.

>>23873218
Only one way to find out, I´d say.

I could see the ~mysterious~ thing work, but then again, it's all dependant on writing style for me. I've gotten so bloody perfectionist on my own writing that I can't get myself through even solidly written books anymore.

>>23873262
Yup, elitist douches. Mostly, I should say - they have some pretty good threads at times, even about fantasy books, but I'd stick to tg for fantasy.

How about a story without a main character?

>>23873799
Any character you concentrate on will be the equivalent of a main character.
It's difficult to create proper character development and generate interest in your readers for the story if you never focus on *some* characters but keep jumping constantly without any recursion.
I'm not saying it's impossible, merely difficult to pull off effectively.

Bump for writers.

OP, I wrote and self-published a novel, then gave it away for free on /tg/. It was MASSIVELY successful, for a first-time author. What I found was that /tg/ didn't bring in sales as much as reviews and downloads -- I did a free promotional day and /tg/ rocketed my up to #7 in all epic fantasy on Amazon, if you can believe that. (Just for a few hours, but still.)

Don't think of /tg/ as your primary audience. You won't succeed just by writing stuff for /tg/. Rather, think of it like a very big, very friendly community of fantasy fans who will HELP you succeed, if you've got the chops for it.

Write something good, and then make it easy for /tg/ to get it -- and then GIVE THEM SOMETHING TO DO. Ask them to write reviews, or tell people about it, or something. And don't just be mercenary, where it's all about the writing. Be a bro. Talk it up. Make friends with /tg/, and /tg/ will be friendly back.

This probably goes for marketing your writing to any little niche community, to be honest. Don't sell. Connect.

I'm rambling a little, but you get the point.

>>23876506
Hey! I remember you! I've been meaning to check out your work but I forgot the title/. Would you mind refreshing this fa/tg/uy's memory?

>>23876605

Sure thing

http://www.amazon.com/Deep-Sounding-ebook/dp/B009XIRKEO

Now then...
>>23871117
Gonna read the sci-fi horror one.

>>23876648

Actually went ahead and read all three.

I'm gonna be blunt and say that I think the sci-fi horror one and the fantasy one weren't very interesting. The historical fantasy, one, however, grabbed my attention immediately. It opened strong, was immediately compelling, and wrapped up nicely (clever little twist there at the end, too). Out of curiosity, what time period is that supposed to take place in? The title is "The German", but he talks about being sold to Romans, and then he's dreaming of Valkyries.

The best advice I've ever read about writing is to start the story as late as possible. If the story's about an invading army, start the day before they attack. If the story's about a guy going to jail for murdering his wife, start in the middle of the trial.

It strikes me that the reason that story is better than the other two is because it follows that advice. It starts as late as possible: moments before this escaped slave is going to be ridden down by his pursuers. This means we don't have to spend a lot of time establishing things. You literally deliver the entire backstory with like one paragraph of exposition. That's the right move, when writing a short story.

>>23876952

>>23876952

The sci-fi horror story, for example, might have been much more effective if we had opened immediately with the scary image: two astronauts looking out the window of the first lander on Mars...and finding another astronaut, who shouldn't be there. Imagine what the story might be like if that had been the very first sentence.

>>23876952

That one's the prologue of a novel I have planned, so it's simmered a lot longer.

The two others were short story practice.

The German takes place around 50 AD.

>>23876506
>You won't succeed just by writing stuff for /tg/.

Right there. I'm probably your target audience. When was the last time I actually bought a book??? AGES ago. I know I'm being a pessimist, but I came to the conclusion a while ago that unless you're willing to write girl porn, don't expect much success on the ebook thing.

>>23877454

I still buy books, but I don't own a Kindle or Nook, and have never bought one digitally.

>>23877454
I buy books when I read em, I just dont read as much as I used to...

OP here.

I'm not worried about money. I just want to find readers. I'm more than happy to give everything away, but it's still not that simple.

Reading is work, it's just a fact of the time and focus it requires, and you have to make sure people are alright with investing their time reading your words, and visiting the story you have in your head.

I just wanted to ask if my tumblr is a good format for reading, and if my stories are in the right genre for /tg/.

>>23870971
>>23870980
>>23870986
Curse you glorious bastard you put me in the mood to start writing again.

>>23877640
I'm in the same predicament.

I started writing, worked myself through a novel, and now I have a finished story with no-one to read it. One of my friends is reading it, as he read my work in progress as I was still writing, and he likes it, but... you know how friends and critique are.

the problem is, it's not a short story by a long shot - it's lengthy. I don't know how I'll get anyone to read it, even if I get past the self-doubt.

>>23876648
Can't say anything about the writing, but Deep Sounding has some kick-ass cover art. Simplistic and extremely alluring, as well as a perfect match with the title.

>>23877770

I just texted that to my cover artist. She's hated that cover ever since she did it. I try to tell her it's perfect and people love it. She just doesn't get it.

If you want to REALLY see some shit, look at it on an e-ink Kindle (if you have one). The white background renders as the ambient color of the Kindle screen, while the brown renders as a dark gray, and so just seems to "float". It looks fucking amazing.

>>23878356
I have a Sony Reader, but I get what you mean. It does the same to the Lord of the Rings covers, making them more awesome than even on paper.

>>23871361
Actually, there's a Harry Potter fanfic author by the pen name of Jbern who made the transition. He used it for practicing the craft itself and seeing what could work and what wouldn't for a few years and now has a few books out.

>>23879359

It kind of reminds me of those old Tiger electronic toys. If I ever do a book about videogames, I'm totally doing the cover of the e-book edition like that.

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I felt like it should be done

>>23871479
what's wrong? mad because /lit/ doesn't heap praise on your neckbeard trash?

>>23880203
Someday, people should post /tg/ quests and fanfics to /lit/ for 'criticism.' It would be hilarious.

>>23880230
they do, and then get butthurt when /lit/ doesn't proclaim them as the next Joyce

>>23880260
If the world found a hidden book by James Joyce and /lit/ read it before knowing who it was by, they wouldn't call IT the next Joyce either. /lit/ is a shit hole of people wanting to feel intelligent. This is best done by insulting everything. If you like something, someone might insult it and others will join in, and you won't feel intelligent. Liking something makes you vulnerable, so the clear solution is to hate everything.

>>23880386
Oh I'm so sorry that /lit/ doesn't have a hard-on for poorly-written fantasy pulp marketed at teenage neckbeards

>>23880386

/litlit/liked my story...

/lit/ is fine. It's a small community, and of it there's very few people who really care.

A lot of them are just like us, sitting on a computer typing away on a story.

The few trolls are English Lit majors and extremely overzealous hobbyists. Most of them still talk about 8th grade required reading like Hatched and The Giver because they haven't read anything else since.

>>23880386

Nah, /lit/ just suffers from the same condition as every other small community on the internet: whatever it is they love, they also hate it intensely.

It's because they're more exposed to it than everyone else. /mu/ listens to more music -- so they both love good music and hate bad music more intensely. Post a short film on /tv/, a short story on /lit/, a song on /mu/, your gun collection on /k/ -- you'll get the same vitriolic response from every one of them.

Except for /tg/, for some reason. Coming to /tg/ is a positive experience 98% of the time. I'm not sure why.

>>23880462
What story?

>>23880516
It's because /tg/ is used to settling for mediocrity

>>23880460
Quit trying, kid. I'm not one of the ones who posted a story there. I used to go there before I got sick of that shit. I get that you probably go there and have a boner for it, but your insult misses the mark so far that it just makes me laugh instead.

>>23880516
You know, I could see that, when you put it that way. Overexposure does do a lot to a person, good and bad. It's why I try to split my time between boards and hobbies. Burning out sucks. /tg/ is the one I spend most of my time at, and the 2% of negatives experiences, in my experience, tend to be the same 5-10 assholes who exist only to try to cause problems. See also the other person I quoted in this post, as well as anyone screaming autist about MLP fans, or people who post 40k inquisition shit in unrelated threads. Outside of those, /tg/ is a place to kick back.

Write. Write all the fucking time. Find a writing prompt somewhere on this board and write them a story. Start threads now and again promising writing for whatever prompts people give you. They don't have to be long, but it's essential that you keep writing ALL OF THE TIME.

Seriously, make a thread, say multiple writefags can join in, see what happens. The last few times it's been done people liked it.

>>23880681
sick of what shit?
pls tell us all about your experience with /lit/

>>23880520

it's on my blog, which I think is still set to private. They tracked it down after I posted a shoddy thing someone had asked me to proofread and they wanted to read some of my stuff. I believe it's on chanarchive under 'the greatest story ever proofread' or something. I'm on my phone right now since my laptop died so I can't go get a link. Any typos are also from my phone not liking the posting field here...

>>23880832

Not that guy, but here's mine:

> self-publish book
> go to /lit/
> Hey /lit/, I wrote this book, check it out
> They tear apart the title, the cover, the name of the main character, accuse me of samefagging, call me stupid for writing a fantasy book, denigrate fantasy/sci-fi in general (despite the fact that /lit/, at any given time, has at least three Song of Ice and Fire threads on the front page) and just generally act like assholes

> come to /tg/
> "hey /tg/, I wrote this book, check it out"
> thread goes on for two days, everyone loves it, so many fa/tg/uys buy/download the book that it rockets up the sales charts, a bunch of them review the book, I gain a number of new bros, and one guy sends me fifty bucks on paypal

>>23880948

well okay. I haven't been to /lit/ in a while, so maybe it's changed.

>>23880948
I don't see the problem

Lots of people have written books. Why should /lit/ care about yours?

>>23880948

...are you the guy who wrote Deep Sounding?

>>23880948

Also it's important to note that /lit/ said and did all that without any of them even having read the first page. I know that because Amazon has metrics tools that let me see that in hard numbers.

>>23880988

Exactly. That was my point in >>23880516. It's not that /lit/'s a bunch of pricks, it's that THEY'RE A BOARD DEDICATED TO LITERATURE. Of COURSE they're going to have -- not necessarily "higher" or "better" -- but more specific standards and expectations, when it comes to literature. The same way /mu/ does for music, and /tv/ does for film.

>>23870937

OP, you'd only keep me interested as a reader if you had a model similar to a webcomic: that you released a lot of content, very frequently. Like a story a week. (Ideally a story a day, but of course that's impossible.)

I like epic fantasy with plenty of humor thrown in. I like at least one character I can relate to. I like tropes. I like subverted tropes.

That being said, I can into sci-fi, historical fiction, and spy fiction too.

I read books. I'm a young man (25), and I prefer the tangibility of books in my hands to e-readers and online reading.

>>23881132

I tried to do that with a blog once.

It was hilariously awful in retrospect.

>>23881034
Yes, and everything we've seen points to their specific tastes being as retarded as any other of the special interest boards - /v/, /mu/, /a/, etc.

>>23881151

I think the trick would be to do a serialized story. It's the only way you would be able to muster the motivation/creativity to do a story a week, much less a GOOD story. There would also be the benefit of a very fast feedback loop (if you had readers, anyway, and weren't just yet another blog shouting into the void) and if you wrote enough, you could eventually just collect the stories together and self-publish them as a book.

>>23881199

That was actually my original idea behind starting a quest. Write every day to force myself to become a better writer.

Obviously quest writing and writing a proper story are worlds apart, but improving my ability in one has some things that can carry over to the other.

Since everybody is talking about stories, I'd like to just throw an idea I have out here and see if anyone thinks it'd make a good book.
Basically, it's about a boy who is adopted into a massive royal family that rules over most of the continent. The boy is taught to act proper and king-like, giving him sort of an uptight personality. He learns how to fence/duel from his adoptive father, who comes from a long line of respected duelists. The boy wanders off the castle grounds and meets two boys and their sister. They turn out to be magic users that are in hiding. The boy returns to the castle and repeatedly goes to visit his new friends. Later on, the boy's father begins a mass genocide on magic users. This leads the boy to abandon his adoptive family and begin a rebellion to free the land from tyranny.
Sorry for the long ass paragraph, I just wanted to get the idea down in one go. There's a lot that isn't included, just looking for feedback on the general idea.

>>23881233

That might be interesting. Quest writing seems like it would improve your plotting more than anything; your ability to create an engaging story, and to pace it well.

>>23880203
I wouldn't recommend much that we like to be posted on /lit/ simply because the difference in not genre, but TYPE of fiction consumed by this board and that one are entirely different.

If he wants to write the kind of stuff we talk about here, going to /lit/ is probably worthless.

Of course /lit/ would also probably say that he's destroying himself as a writer by writing our kind of trash or something like that. Not writing Serious Literature, etc.

>>23881281

The general idea sounds pretty cliche, but that's a pretty worthless assessment. An idea doesn't represent much. It's how it's executed-upon. If George RR Martin were to come on here and lay out his idea for a fantasy book about these families patterned after animals who fight eachother because of incest, that wouldn't sound very good either.

>>23870937
Give some short stories to a publiisher. If they aren't interested ask them why, and in the best case they'll say that it's a genre they aren't really interested in and will be able to direct you to another publisher that might be more interested.

You might also want to get in touch with a sci-fi magazine or something, they are usually interested in people who want to write short stories for them. And if you deliver, and your stories become popular a publisher is likely to notice and offer you some form of deal for your first book.

Don't try to get a 500-page fantasy epic printed as your first book. To publshers that's an enormous and expensive risk and they aren't likely to accept it. Focus instead on short stories and slowly build a name for yourself.

>>23881457

Traditional publishing is dying. There is literally NO good reason to try to debut as a writer via the publishing system, in 2013. It'd be like a musician sending cassette tapes of his work to Nashville, rather than just putting songs on Youtube.

>>23881580
Just because everyone can publish a book doesn't mean they should

>>23881702

Give me one good reason to send your book to a publisher rather than self-publishing it.

>>23881732
I'll give you a pair, marketing and distribution

>>23881580

Terrible advice.

The number of successful self-published writers isn't even 0.1% of the number of successful traditionally published writers. The few who see some success in self-publishing always leap at the first chance they get to sign up with a traditional publisher, as it's so ridiculously difficult to make money self-publishing.

Larry Correia is one of the few recent success stories in self-publishing. He's written article after article telling people NOT to do it, because getting signed up by a traditional publisher is actually much, much easier and safer than doing it yourself.

http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2010/11/18/ask-correia-10-how-do-you-get-published/

>BUT I don’t recommend it. If you are going to self publish you’ve got to be a self-promoting son of a gun. You’ve got to figure out who your market it, exactly how you are going to reach them, and then you’re going to have to work your butt off. Most self published books are badly written. Most readers know that. So you’ve got a huge handicap starting out that you’ve got to overcome. In their minds, self published = crap.

>For example, I was reading some reviews of MHV over on a forum. I had just made the NYT bestseller list and a bunch of forumites were talking about how great this book was. Somebody who hadn’t heard of me went over to Wikipedia and read the entry about me there. He came back and posted “I don’t know… The Wiki says he was self-published. That’s never a good sign…” Yes. Even after selling a ton of books, getting tons of good reviews, and making the friggin’ NYT (which is like the writer’s equivalent to getting nominated for an Oscar to an actor’s career), this guy wasn’t interested because that’s how negative an impression self published works have had on him. That is what you are up against if you self publish.

>>23881817

> marketing
Publishers don't market the majority of their books. That falls upon the author. Unless you're GRRM or Stephen King, the publisher will ask YOU what your plans are to market your book. That may surprise you, but it's true.

> distribution
Publishing: your book goes on Barnes and Noble shelves for two weeks, then disappears.
Self-publishing: your book is available for purchase forever, has a chance to find and build an audience, and may explode in sales years from now. Your book never "disappears" -- it's always available, anywhere, to anyone, with just a few clicks.

>>23881881

>The few who see some success in self-publishing always leap at the first chance they get to sign up with a traditional publisher, as it's so ridiculously difficult to make money self-publishing.

Hugh Howey would disagree with you. He was working as a bookseller 30 hours a week when he put a story online. It exploded. A year later he was making six figures a month. Publishing houses came to him and offered deals. He turned them down. He turned down multiple seven-figure deals, and finally got Simon and Schuster to offer him a deal that gave them print-only, and let him keep digital distribution rights.

>>23881881

IE, readers are your gatekeeper to success, rather than employees at a publishing company.

>>23881889
>may explode in sales years from now.
Yeah, that never happens. That's like the people who buy comic books because they are "sure to skyrocket in price in ten years". Just no.

>>23881916

Sure, you can cherry-pick a few success stories (I pointed out Larry Correia, for instance), but there's thousands more successful writers who DIDN'T self-publish. It is incredibly, mind-bogglingly rare for a self-published book to succeed, compared to a book published the traditional route.

Plus of course; you give one example of a successful self-publisher... and that guy still signed up with a traditional publisher.

>>23881987

Go read the guides Smashwords puts out. They have charts of books which show how their sales go over time, and multiple examples of how a book will "break out" -- multiple times, even -- over the course of several years.

For every self-publishing success story, how many scrubs who never made a dime are there?
At least if you make it through traditional channels you know someone thinks you're half decent

is someone archiving this shit? fukken sweet

>>23882012

He signed with them after making millions on his own, self-publishing online, in print, internationally, and getting a movie deal with Ridley Scott. Publishers came to HIM, and he only gave them permission--and only to take over print publishing--after THEY ceded to HIS terms.

>>23882059

For every book that comes out, how many novels are sitting in a publisher's slush pile? For every author that's published, how many weren't?

>>23882059
One of few advantages to self-publishing that I can imagine is that if you could theoretically still earn some money by being so horribly bad that people just have to read your latest work to know just how much more badly you can fuck up.

That doesn't happen through traditonal channels.

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>>23882059

>At least if you make it through traditional channels you know someone thinks you're half decent

Pic related. Publishers are no barometer of quality. You can go into a bookstore and the majority of books on the shelves (especially in the fantasy section) are no better or worse than stuff that's being self-published.

>>23882165
wasn't that self-published before Vintage picked it up?

>>23882093
>He signed with them after making millions on his own, self-publishing online, in print, internationally, and getting a movie deal with Ridley Scott

Yeah, and that's ONE GUY. You're cherry picking literally the sole really impressive self-publishing breakout in history and saying "This is how you should do it, kids!"

It's terrible advice because you're a hundred times more likely to get published the traditional way. And that's not hyperbole, if anything it's understatement: if you took a random sample of 100 successful writers I'd be very surprised if one was self-published.

>>23882165
It's shit, but it's well selling shit.

>>23882322

No. Just a few short stories that went on to become Fifty Shades were originally Twilight Fanfiction. But the book itself, in its entirety, was put out by a publisher.

That means some guy in a publishing house picked up Fifty Shades off the pile, read it, and went, "Yep, this is worthy of being in stores. This right here is fiction which is satisfactory in quality."

>>23882322
Yep. Twilight fanfic, at its "finest".

>>23882376

> you're a hundred times more likely to get published the traditional way

More likely than what?

It's also important to understand that "success" takes a different shape self-publishing than traditional publishing. Are you going to become the next GRRM? Probably not. Can you make enough to earn a living as a writer? Absolutely. And you don't have to be an explosive success to do it -- you can just be some guy with a little audience That's never really been possible before. Traditional publishing is an all-or-nothing scenario: you're buying a lottery ticket, where the quality of your book has about a 5% effect on the odds in either direction.

To understand self-publishing, think of something like webcomics. The goal is not to put out one book and cross your fingers that you become an overnight superstar. It's to build an audience over time.

That same guy, Hugh Howey? He put out almost a dozen novels before one finally took off that way. The difference between him and other self-published writers isn't that he got lucky and his work took off -- it's that he kept putting out work, and they didn't.

>>23882376
>you're a hundred times more likely to get published the traditional way
If you're talking genre fiction, the publishers aren't even interested unless you have a successful blog and a couple of self-published books that have already sold decently.

>>23882390
>This reworked and extended version of Master of the Universe was split into three parts. The first, titled Fifty Shades of Grey, was released as an e-book and a print-on-demand paperback in May 2011 by The Writers' Coffee Shop, a virtual publisher based in Australia.

>>23882471

People break in all the time. The mistake most unpublished genre writers fall into is submitting their ultra-epic half a million word a book fantasy trilogy first, instead of a more reasonable 100,000 word novel or something that's actually likely to sell.

Dan Wells broke in by asking "So, what're you guys after? YA horror? I'll write one of those, will you publish it?". And then went on to write the actual genre he wanted to after he was already successful. You want a method of getting published that works, look at that. Look at the link >>23881881 posted where a published author spells it out.

>>23882664

http://www.thewriterscoffeeshop.com/page/c/about

Writer's Coffee Shop is still a publisher. They're just a small publisher operating on a print-on-demand model. They're not a vanity press.

>>23882714

But we're splitting hairs now, and the point still stands. Walk into your local bookstore, close your eyes, and point to a book on a shelf. Do that 100 times, and I guarantee you at least 90 of those books will be middling crap. The only difference between that and self-publishing is that in self-publishing, the shelves are bigger.

Ain't you eva hearda Sturgeon's Law, boy?!

What do you guys think of this? Do I have potential?

http://roryedd.tumblr.com/post/42917795770

>>23882468

So list all the successful writers who make money your way. So far you have one guy, who you keep bringing up as though he's representative of anything.

I'm willing to bet there's a hundred successful writers who went the traditional route for every one who self-publishes e-books, despite the odds of that being fairly low anyway. That's what you fail to understand - the odds of becoming a successful writer the traditional route might be 1 in 1,000, but the odds of doing it the e-book way are probably more like 1 in 1,000,000.

>>23882468
>That same guy, Hugh Howey? He put out almost a dozen novels before one finally took off that way. The difference between him and other self-published writers isn't that he got lucky and his work took off -- it's that he kept putting out work, and they didn't.

That at least is similar to how it works in the traditional publishing way. Brandon Sanderson wrote 13 books before a traditional publisher picked one up.

>>23882714
print-on-demand isn't a million miles away from a vanity press tbh

>>23882763
>Walk into your local bookstore, close your eyes, and point to a book on a shelf. Do that 100 times, and I guarantee you at least 90 of those books will be middling crap. The only difference between that and self-publishing is that in self-publishing, the shelves are bigger.

No, the main example is that in the bookstore, THE WRITERS ARE GETTING PAID.

>>23871361
There's an author I know personally who wrote amazing DC comics/batfamily fanfiction for awhile, then transitioned to self-publishing through indiegogo.

Her goal was 3.5k to self-publish. She made over 18k initially, and people are still pre-ordering her book despite the crowdfunding campaign being over.

So it's doable.

>>23882800

Yes.

>>23882810

You're failing to take into account that self-publishing is a newer model, and hasn't been around as long. And if the odds are longer on self-publishing, they certainly aren't as long as they were a year ago. Or the year before that. Or the year before that. Every year there are more self-published books breaking out.

I didn't say print publishing was dead. I said it was DYING.

You point out the fact that these authors are then taking deals with publishers as though it's a point in the favor of traditional publishing. It's not. It just shows that there are more books selling enough that publishers think them worthy of pursuing.

Your average reader is barely aware of whether a book they're reading is traditionally published or self-published, and even if they're aware, the majority don't know what that difference means, and don't give a shit. If the book is good, it's good. If it's bad, it's bad.

If you think traditional print publishing is still going to be the dominant source of fictional literature twenty years from now, you're deluding yourself.

>>23882949
>If the book is good, it's good. If it's bad, it's bad
But if all you have to do is click a few buttons and hey presto, your book is on amazon, there's going to be a lot more bad books to sift through, making it all the more difficult for the few good ones.

>>23883114

I would think it would give the few good ones an advantage.

>>23873095

make the mysterious love interest like tuxedo mask parody from sailor moon and its good

>>23882093
if you want to make an example, pick 100 or 250 sample, see the standard deviation, only then you will be sure that self publishing is the way for new authors because it has enough population to warrant validity

anecdotal evidence is not indicating trends

>>23880948
What is the name of your book and where can I pirate it at?

>>23883837

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/may/24/self-published-author-earnings

Survey of 1007 self-published authors found that the average was 10k a year. This was considered to be skewed upwards by top earners. 10% of reporting writers made 75% of the wealth (average in most industries). About 50% of reporting writers made "$500 or less".

Interpret that how you will. We could say "well, of 1000 traditionally published authors, they made X, and that's more!" But we could also say "of 1000 authors who sought traditional publishing, only X% made any money at all"

>>23884123

Deep Sounding. You can buy it here, http://www.amazon.com/Deep-Sounding-ebook/dp/B009XIRKEO or you can pirate it with a quick Google search. Either way: enjoy!

>>23882891
>in the bookstore, THE WRITERS ARE GETTING PAID.
No they're not. They're given an advance for the book and then their royalties, afterwards, go towards reimbursing that royalty. 90% of writers make most of their money from the book advance and never see another dime, which is why many writers often write one or two books a year.

>>23884213

I remember that thread. I was casting an early ballot that day, read part of it while I was stuck in line for a few hours. Good stuff.

>>23882682
>where a published author spells it out.
I'm a published author. Most of the "successful" genre writers, like Scalzi, started out posting stuff on the internet. Correia's correct in saying "don't lock all your shit behind a pay wall" but is otherwise full of shit because he doesn't really understand where the industry's at.

>>23884213
Wait, it's about dwarves? And apparently there's a bear? And it's only 4 bucks? Never mind the pirating.

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>>23884309

People don't get why it's good to price things low and be pirate-friendly. This exchange fucking sums it right up. Hilarious.

>>23884309

Badass. Enjoy. And don't forget to come back and leave a review when you're done. It's much more useful/beneficial than you might imagine.

How do I write short stories, /tg/?

Every idea I get invariably evolves into some sprawling saga that would span across multiple books. Then I realize what I'm doing, step back, come up with a new idea and repeat the process.

>>23884421
Start with the end. It's easier to not get lost if you know where you're heading.

>>23884421

Just learn to pare it back. When you have a new idea relating to the story, ask yourself if it fits the scope. If not, toss it. Don't be afraid to do that. Don't be afraid to tell your creative brain no. Don't cling to every idea; they're not made of gold. And there's always more where those ones came from.

>>23884421

At a certain point learn to just stop typing. That's sort of facetious, but I mean in general about scaling yourself back. Drop that subplot, don't fill out the other characters, when you think about introducing a new character to say one line just have an earlier character say the new one. Keep. It. Focused.

dwarves are gay

and bears are not something to joke about

grow up, all of you

and come play chess >>23873902

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>>23884586

Are you trying to provoke a chess game by acting the heel?

>>23884634
what's 'the heel'?

>>23884650
The badguy in wrestling.

>>23881281
sounds good. just be sure to provide strong motivations for their reasons. and do you really want the boy to stay a boy?

>>23884421
Find the end, find the middle, find the beginning.

Learn to structure.
Look up 8 point story structure for instance.

Pick what kind of story it is and stick to it.

I'd like to thank this thread, particularly >>23871117 and >>23876506

I keep writing and writing, but i'm never sure what i should do.

So im going to write some short stories (while continuing the several i'm always writing) and stick them on a tumblr

If I come back to /tg/ and drop some down, will you read them and review them?

So far we just have two ou/tg/oing guys with the guts to share their stories. Anyone else?

>>23885294

I can give advice in painting and drawing if anyone interested

>>23885294
Ive done stories for /tg/, but nothing of my own. The most original thing Ive written to completion is a little short story for the most recent CLANG thread that was surprisingly lacking of smut.

>>23885294
I'm not from /tg/ (I'm only a passing /a/non), but I've written my own story. Needless to say, it's shit. It gets better later on, but I just don't know how to make the beginning interesting.

>>23882800
Fucking great, dude.

>>23885294

I write for you guys all the time.

Tomorrow afternoon I'll start a thread for general writing. Let people submit prompts, let our pool of writers take a crack at it.

I...Wrote a 40k fanfiction. I know, I know. But it's unfortunately something I'm most proud of right now. I dunno. I'd like constructive feedback, but I don't have it saved elsewhere. Can I post it here?

>>23885913
you can

>>23885986
Okay. H-H-Here I go!

OOLAN SEPT PROPAGANDA PRODUCTIONS PRESENT:

"POISON TEMPTATION: A Warning Against the Lure of Slaanesh!"

'Be warned! The scenes that follow are disturbing, especially for those human in the audience! If you are faint of heart, or desire to avoid obscenity, we stress you turn off your receiver, or change it to one of the many other educational channels offered by Oolan Sept Productions! If you choose to watch, and you later grow disturbed, or find yourself thinking thoughts outside of the norm, we urge you to see your local Counsel (Your information informs us that this is "La'Salle, Soothing Waters" three clicks at the corner of M'sor and Unity). This depiction further includes artistic aids, to help further the warning! A recording without these admittedly worrying depictions is displayed one decimal above your current selection on your receiver, if you wish to only have the audio. We further stress again that the subject matter, though very informative is GRAPHIC and DISTURBING. You have been warned.'

5. 4. 3. 2. 1.

Behind the table, the shaggy head glances up, his eyes surrounded by black rings. Some noise, a corner of blue skin in the lens as the broadcaster is righted. Some exchange evidently occurs, as the human nods, then looks into the camera.

"My, ah," he shivers, "My NAME is Telemachus. I am, sorry, was a guardsman in the Holy Emperor's army. In action on Imber, I, I was captured by the Host of Geryon," A pause, as the guardsman looks up over the camera, has a baffled look on his face, then says, "I was impressed into decadent slavery...For Slaanesh."

A pause, then the colors invert, and the camera zooms into the guardsman's pupils to a screech of fearful and shocked noise.

Six minutes of explanation/speculation about Slaanesh later, it returns to the guardsman's tired face.

"Yes. Anyway, it was after the, ah, the third drop wave. I was on the first, bad luck that, my craft got hit before it got to the rendezvous, eight PPZs came right at it, only managed to jink five. Luckily me and three others survived. Unluckily, one was the commissar. So, we went marching on to the meet site. Certain vee uncertain death."

While he talks, small notes blink and pound underneath him in a crawl, offering tenuous explanations of terminology. To provide clarity, the interview goes on with the commentary running below, and to the side.

"Anyway, maybe about a lick n half off from the rest of the army, all those great big Lemans, Basilisks, autocats, fifty kay head of troop, at the tail end of the third wave dropping, we get hit, four of us, by what seemed the whole of Geryon's Host."

I'm working on a fanfic that ships George and Fred Weasley. Does that count for anything?

It was a bet.

He breathes deep, shaking his head, "Maybe about a hundred? Fifty? Feet of tree between us and the division, and they didn't hear us screaming," Telemachus takes a dark look as he murmurs, "Or maybe they didn't care, and didn't feel like separating themselves from their important work of being counted by the laurels."

"Two were cut down. The commissar among 'em, no tears about that. Third pretended to be dead, not that hard, with how cut up he was. I surrendered," He coughed, shaking his head, "I was just... I was just so scared. They came out of the trees, wailing like banshees, four of 'em each for us. It was like a game of grox in the middle. With knives. I got hamstrung, I felt the knife pass through my thigh and heard the SNAP of my muscle rolling up like a curtain, and I knew I had it. I fell over, raising my heads, and, Emperor forgive me, started yelling all the snatches of dark prayer I knew. You get bits, when you're in the guard. Rumors. 'Burn this candle at this hour for Khorne, whispering these words and your gun'll shoot straight for three battles,' and what I heard in my last engagement, over Lampetie. It worked. Oh Olanus, why did it have to work?"

"One of them was all for killing me, all up in a frenzy, as I crawled away from him, with my one good leg, before the others got a hold of him, he broke my shin, and hacked awful at my leg. I was curled up, whispering 'blood for the god of blood' when they started hitting me in the head. I think they were trying to knock me out. Eventually, they gave it up when a marauder buzzed over, and just dragged me off. I had lost a lot of blood, and I wasn't exactly cogent at the time, so bear with me if I skip over this part. I know they dragged me to a stolen groundcar, I travelled for a long while, then I was somewhere dark."

"They had...Stitched me back up. The bandages weren't cloth. As far as I could tell, I was in somewhere concrete, and warm. To my left, some crusty pillows, to the right, a wall, and a corner of a tapestry. I had no idea how long I was out, but when my eyes had adjusted for a light, I realized I was in their pathetic excuse for a temple. There was a pile of pillows, refuse from some law abiding home or another, candles in holders, a squat altar made from cast off cinder blocks, and a tapestry. All aside from that was just your average basement. The tapestry was inexpertly stitched, depicting a blasphemous image of the Emperor, a withered corpse in his famous armor, masturbating to the thought of being devoured by...What I assume was Slaanesh."

"Instinctively disgusted, I tore it down. I crawled forward to the pillows, and laid myself down. I slept again, I know not how long."

"When I next awoke, I found the tapestry had been put up again, and a beaker of piss."

Telemachus pauses again, staring down.

"Before I go on, I wish to just tell you, the viewer," he waved his hand, "That I'm going to go on about this for a while. Because this is important. I grew close to that piss, while I was there. My first response, I back handed it away. A bad idea, but it was right next to me. Now, when confronted with something disgusting, what you don't do is slap it so it ends up all over the place. Especially when all you can do is crawl."

"I crawled to the door then. I wish they had locked it. I really wish they had. But they hadn't. The door was open. And I was confronted with a ladder. I tried climbing it, but...There was nothing at the top. A trap door."

"So that was my day. I got piss all over the place, and spent the next infuriating hours attempting to climb a ladder, only to find out, that the trap door was too damn heavy to open with only one arm, without my legs to brace against the steps."

"I crawled back to my pillows, through the piss, to fall asleep again."

"When I awoke the next day, a new beaker was in front of me. With more piss."

Telemachus looked down, for a moment, emotion overtaking him, as he audibly swallows. "Pius, I can still taste it. Can I get a drink of water?"

For a break, there is a recounting interview by a bold firewarrior, speaking of his engagement with Slaaneshi cultists, a water xenopsychologist speculating about what it is that makes gue'la so vulnerable to the predations of cults, and a final message from a Shas'O of the warning signs of Chaos affliction.

Then the interview starts again.

"Ahem. Eh, yeah," Telemachus waves his hand, "Look, I don't want to stay too much in this because, well, that's it. That's how my days were. I would try and try to get out, I wouldn't make it, then that piss would be there. The seventh time I fell asleep, I was too hungry and thirsty to do anything different. I had already drunk it once. This time, I drank it and sat there," He holds his eyes shut, shaking his head, "The next day, they set out a cup of water."

"It was carrot and stick, pure and simple. But Emperor damn it all, but I sucked that water down in joy when it came. My bandages, I, I forgot to tell you what those were, didn't I?" He summons something up, some will to talk, "They were skin. Flesh. Someone's flesh, I, I, I ca-"

The interview skips a bit. One frame, Telemachus stands, shaking his head waving his hands in front of him, the next, he is sitting back in the chair again, staring down, droning on.

"So that was how I survived, for another seven times I slept. One time, I got the bright idea to get up, when next they dropped off the water, or the, or the, or the meat. I couldn't do it. They must have been watching, must have had a witch, that would have been Ram, wait I'm getting ahead of myself. By the fifteenth, I stayed still. Food was more important than escape, and my wounds were septic. I hoped for treatment."

There is a quick three minute break, for a noted Earth scientist to explain human physiology, before it returns to Telemachus. His eyes are red.

"The twentieth day, she came down," He stares down, then looks up, in anger, "No, I will NOT name her! This may be a slagging documentary for you, and you're trying to keep your 'journ-ul-estic credo-credai-' whatever!" He stumbles over the unfamiliar Tau phrase, "I'm NOT naming her. I'm not giving her the benefit!" Evidently, some discussion occurs behind the camera, Telemachus shaking his head. Eventually he stills, looks in the air despairingly, then nods, "Fine, fine, we can call her Medea."

He coughs, "She, Me, Medea, she was...Radiant. They probably slipped something in the food. Anyway, she, she and I... You don't need the details. It was awful. It was awful and it was good. It was...Emperor above, it was so demeaning. She made me beg. For everything. She barely touched me, and I thanked her for everything. Every damn thing. I was hers. Hers for whatever. I cursed the Emperor, I threatened my commanders, I swore to rape my mother next I saw her, and I, at least she made me think, I meant it."

"And that was that. I was part of Geryon's Host," He shook his head, "They took me up after, took me to Ayn and Ram, the doc and the witch, respectively. They fixed me up, what they could," At this, Telemachus lifts his hand, shaking the lone thumb and pointer finger that remain. The rest is raggedly gone, healed over, with lumps, and a ragged scar matching that of a symbol of Slaanesh.

"It was...A change. I mean, once you're, er, once I was out of the basement. Medea soothed me, as soon as the two had finished, took me back to her place. Used to be a tenement, somebody important must have lived in there once. It surprised me, how clean it was. I mean, usually what you think when you think cultist's place was dingy, dirty, unclean shit holes. Hers was...Well decorated. I mean, there were still those gaudy runes that they had hanging around, but they were woven into the rugs, silk curtains everywhere, had a theme of getting people places, even had a cool storage, stocked with food plundered. No recyc. That was the best. After the basement, Hell, after the guard, it was paradise. I was free."

"Was I her pet? Yeah. I daresay I was. It was different then, when we fucked. Er. Copulated? Whatever. She let me touch her. But yet, at the same time, I was free. She called me, and I came because I wanted it. Outside of that though, the town was free for ours to go anywhere we wanted."

He paused, licked his lips, then looked back up at the camera, "That's when I was happiest. No lie. But. Everything has a cost."

He looked down, "We went to war again. I was given a lasrifle, and we went. We treated it like an adventure- oh Gods, I want to tell you about Ram, and Ayn, and Vorbrin, his Vex, and his Slaught and all the rest but," He raised his mangled hand to his mouth, "But I can't. Cause I give up a little bit more when I remember them."

"I was at the battle of Ash pit. That's when the fun ended."

"Me and Brennigan were getting to know each other. We, ah, well, I'm not getting into the specifics," Telemachus gave a sheepish smile, "He was a sweet kid," then his smile withered, as he shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut, murmuring no, over and over again, "no, er, I'm sorry about that. Anyway, I was with Brennigan, he was a new kid, couldn't have been older than sixteen, when Medea came. She was the only one that wore armor, my armor to be specific. A slap dash job to repair it, and she claimed it. Rest of us were in clothes we looted," He glances up, shrugs, and says, "Everyone does it when you're a soldier, doesn't matter what side it is. Only when I was Imperial, you gave 'em a piece of paper, and when I was running with Chaos...You gave 'em a knife if they got lippy," A pause, "I was only one of many. Everyone does it."

An intermission, with a Shas'O, with the most serious of faces, telling the viewer that no not EVERYONE does it and that the armies of the Greater Good would never do such a thing, and any found doing such would be shot immediately. Another moment, this time with a calm ethereal (Stock footage) explaining what to do in case of invasion, proper responses to thieves, murderers, rapists, and other such monsters that filled the enemy ranks. An armored fire warrior, one arm around a human child, the other around a tau child, then a return to the guardsman's interview.

"And Medea comes up, takes in the both of us, tells us to get our guns. She wants to make sure her band is seen at the front. She grabs Ayn, gives him the banner. Tells him to wave it all. Smiles as she says she wants him the first on the capitol building."

"Fucking idiocy."

"I remember, just seeing, people, as far as the eye could see. A leviathan, of arms and legs and heads, of banners high, of bright glinting slugthrowers and lasrifles. It was a beast of many mouths, but one song. Many legs, but one direction. Many arms, but one purpose. They weren't all like me, tatooed, branded, embroidered. Some looked just average, a head band here, or a armband there identifying them as being with Chaos. Some had never heard of the Gods, of the cause they were fighting for, Hell, one or two were still backwards yokels dragged out that hadn't even heard of the Emperor that they set out to destroy. They were just together, in happiness," A pause, his head drifts to his hands, pushed together, one mangled, one whole, forehead rubbing along the flesh.

"And that's why they died when the firestorm struck," he whispered.

"Chaos is not one creature, feet tramping together in song. The Warp is not a many headed snake, in concord for one purpose. This, this parade, this unification, it was everything that Chaos stood against. Which was why it went first. Why this three mile length of, of, PEACE, of togetherness, were there to take the artillery, to exhaust the ammo," He looks up, hissing, "Chaos is NOT a unified rebellion. It is not a rebuilding, it is not change. It is strength, coming up, destroying the weak, it is a million different men trying a million different things, and the strong succeeding, then devouring each other to find greater strength. They don't stop."

"...Some of the idiots brought their CHILDREN."

"It took the air from us first. You heard the shells fall, but fuck, did you care? No, you were convinced that the Gods had a special plan for you, that each and every one of you were the main character in the story of your life, and that you would be fine, fuck the rest of these Grox fuckers. That's why there were no screams. The kids, oh Emperor, the kids that weren't jacked up on Slaught or Vex, that weren't fucked three ways to Throneday and back, they were the first that cried, tried to run. The one, the one next to me, tried to run. His parents held on to him. Whispered, 'No, you're the Starchild, you have to be here,' whatever that meant."

"It took the words. All you heard, was a mighty wind, and then, the fire. I don't know what they used. Promethium phosmag mix maybe. It burned well. And it burned BRIGHT."

He breathed.

"They say they saw the cinder cone from eight miles out. The people in the middle, drawn right up and through, turned to ash, and spread out across the land."

Pictures are provided, shaky feeders from two, four, and seven miles out.

"And where was Brennigan, Ayn, and I? Back of the column. Thank the Emperor that Medea didn't find us quicker. Gave us a minute or two to run. Well. Ayn didn't run," He sighs, shaking his head, "God damn Ram got him on Vex the day before."

"Me and Brennigan ran for the tree cover, maybe two hundred feet out? Genius, I know, forest fires were already starting out, but truth be told I was scared most of being sucked up off the ground like that, and I already felt myself slipping when we broke."

"Poor Brennigan. Took an auto. Heat cooked off his mags in his pockets. He falls over, I stop a moment, but I hear shells coming on me, as if these basilisks have a grudge against US, and, and," He squeezes his eyes shut, "I shot him when he grabbed my ankle."

Cut, to where the propaganda's director takes some time to talk about soldiers, and the necessity of shooting one another in a particularly pedantic moment, and a Shas'La's response.

It returns. Time has passed. The guardsman has shaved, and has a cup in his hand when the film restarts. Looks above the camera, nods, sets the cup aside, before beginning again.

"When I was in the forest, all I could think about, not the cinder cloud, not Brennigan, not Medea, that BITCH that threw us in here, none of that, I was just running along, and noticing animals running past me. Hundreds of them. At that moment, all I could think of was how damn sorry I was for them. Their homes caught on fire, for no reason. I know, I know. Downright erdminded of me. But I just couldn't help but feel sorry for them, as I ran along beside them. Emperor," he shook his head, "I don't know what got into me, but I started picking up everything slow, held it to me, and ran, looking for something wet."

"By the time I found a stream, that clever idea, the armor had broken through-" Interruption for Air commentary, that citizens need not fear, that their fire caste would never do something so foolish as produce a crippling cloud of ash that would render their air power impotent, and that aside from that, their advanced technology would let them operate fine anyway,"-clever thing that, must have been a spy who suggested burning the people. Anyway, when I found a stream, I dropped my animals beside it, and dove in. Such a relief. Such a pure, wonderful relief."

He pauses, contemplating, before talking again, slowly, "I could have left then. Thrown off the armor, hacked off the tattoos, torn out the rings, found a nice farmstead, or some other mutineers, rebuilt my life. But I didn't. I helped make Orinstep fall."

"It was three hours later, and at Herod's Gate, when I rejoined with Medea. She smiled sweetly at me when I screamed at her, and fucked me there in the street. I forgot it all again. Evidently, she hadn't known about the artillery plan; or so she said. Those with potential were held back, and she and the others swarmed the gates to man the anti air guns for when the ash cloud cleared. There had to be survivors, I said, there were thousands. Thousands who had to have been angry, it would have split the army in two."

"No. There were survivors, but those that survived were happy enough to rejoin. To follow once more. The weakness had been burned away, those that were in it to form another Imperium. The strong survived. And those that WERE in it to form another Imperium, those that were weak, scared, and angry at their elaborate sacrifice stayed as well, placated with hedonism or too afraid to say otherwise. I wish I was afraid. I just wanted more."

"And...And there was more. There was the money and the loot, Herod's Gate was a large section of the city. I managed to get a hellgun, glamourboy armor, thanks to my connection with Medea. I made a fortune selling Seven Daddies to those unlucky troops that came later. Money enough to buy whatever man, woman, or child I craved at the moment."

At this point, noise breaks through to the one way microphone, as the camera violently shakes, and Telemachus looks up, above the camera again.

"I...I'm sorry, I wish I was ashamed but-" A violent blur, the camera is knocked over, and suddenly there is another figure in frame, sending Telemachus out of the chair, as he assails him, screaming-

The interview skips again, and Telemachus is back in the chair, a bruise puffing around his eye, looking down.

"Mm? Er. Yeah. Look, we, *Cough* we don't need to stay on Herod's Gate it's, it's pretty, pretty raw."

A cut, as a black screen displays facts, figures, numbers, shots and pictures, a long list of crimes, read by a Water caste that manages to sound both detached and in sympathetic mourning. Then, a shot of a grave outside of the newly rechristened 'Mourngate,' the shattered gates with the names scratched across it, and a twenty foot high granite plinth serving as memorial. Return to Telemachus.

"No one needs reminding, right? And, eh, I'm sorry for Gillen again, let him know- let him know I'm sorry for his ma. And if it's any comfort, I never- Oh right, sorry for that."

"Anyway, the problem with Herod's Gate was that once we made a breach, we got slowed down. Me and Medea were off the front, fleecing all the new recruits that came along, so, uh I don't have it first hand what was going on at the front, but apparently the forces came again with renewed vigor. I guess the Arbites and the PDF got sick of blaming each other and getting their asses handed to them, and without an Aeronautica corps to make 'em feel comfy, they decided to actually try working against us. And it did work. For a little while. Then, somebody got the bright idea to run along the walls and go around them."

"Emperor above, the fear we all felt when we saw the guys running along the wall above us. Everyone knew at that instant, that anybody shitting around behind the front when there were people going along the walls were dead when the marines got there."

"The marines. They were coming, apparently, down south, things didn't go as planned, and whoop, there go the Iron Wars, or, eh, Iron Fighters or whoever, leaving behind a crack in the crust on the way out or something."

A brief examination of Melkaus's Fault, wherein upon evacuation, evidently dissatisfied with the commanding Chaos General (Ormachus, at this time), some of the Chaos warriors detonated tectonic bombs before leaving, eliminating all ground passage to the southern continent, May, and inflicting severe losses to the both sides, (Tau commentary dissects several faults in the inferior, Imperial, escape plan). Five minutes coverage of reclamation and repair efforts.

"We figured, that with the block a month rate, the Word Bearers might forgive us. But if there was some way around that we weren't all on, anyone not doing that would be dead."

"So, that's how Medea and I ended up running the walls."

He chuckles.

"There was a reason we hadn't tried it at first. They were rounded, slippery, still slick with rain, and windy as Hell. The amount of people that slipped off, and that even discounts the fact that most of the turrets were still in operation. You can run along it, and avoid all the troops in the city, but as soon as somebody picked you up, you'd be dead."

"But the choice was between certain death when the fanatics got there, or the miniscule possibility of life if you ran the walls. She and I found some half finished building, tore through it, found the last of the industrial glue, and made some traction pads that didn't work. The first try, it stuck, oh yes, but it didn't come off. So, we got some glue and some heavy blocks, and tried using them as lock points for a grapple kit we found. That worked a bit better. But we ran out of bricks time and time again, and eventually we forced some other people in to making a brick line for us and we-"

Telemachus looks above the camera again, licks his lips and nods, and says, "Yeah, yeah, you're right, I'll skip ahead."

"Anyway, point being, we got around to the back, to the palace district. Roundabout now, the PDF were noticing, so we had to make due with being at least two precinct houses from the palace, and its shield generator, lest we get vaporized. By this time, the marine support had arrived and, true to our predictions, killed all those enjoying themselves at Herod's Gate, and kicked the rest until we managed to take half the city."

"Small comfort for me, Medea, and the nineteen or so other fine representatives of degenerates everywhere, sixteen blocks beyond our front line."

"Medea blamed me first for getting us all fucking killed, we hadn't heard about the massacre at Herod's seeing as we were on a fucking wall three miles ahead. Eventually, she managed to calm down enough to get us and the rest of the dumb schmucks moving ahead in the direction of the largest building we could find."

"Long story short, after a truly epic confrontation and blood bath, losing half of our men, and the rest of us bleeding like faucets, we managed to claim the Grand Library of Orinstep, Built with Money Generously Donated by Lord Pliant. It was large, ornate, in the center of the city, we thought it was the palace. Emperor above. We were bottled in with a bunch of moldy tomes recounting arguments about whether or not the Emperor's children were divine, low on ammo, with a squad of Arbites bent on avenging their captain when that over dramatic whore Medea got the idea to stick all of our meltas in a pile, and blow ourselves up to deny the enemy the joy of killing us."

"All of them went with it. Out of spite, cowardice, or blind faith, they all agreed. Except for me. Of course, disagreeing out loud was a ticket to getting shot. So, solemnly, making tedious vows, we took the few melta bombs we had, sat away from the banister where angry fire still emerged, set the timers, and waited to die."

Telemachus shook his head, "I kicked them over the side. Not a lot of blast radius, but the arbites didn't know that. Aside from that, as it turned out, they were defective. In our wisdom, we had grabbed the bombs from the first pile we found, which turned out to be the defective pile in our rush to be glory hounds."

"The arbites broke, I led the charge out, and all of a sudden we held the library, with brand new arbites equipment. We parked their chimera in front of the door, and we served as a fire base for the rest of Geryon's Host as they came in. The city eventually fell, due to the Word Bearers breaking through, but we turned out to be useful enough, and Medea a big enough liar to see the two of us off planet, with a thousand others."

"Keep in mind, I'm not exactly a well traveled man when it comes to Chaos, I'm a mere fifty eight years of age, when there are those in the legions that are millenia old, old enough to remember the Horus Heresy."

An intermission, to discuss the Horus Heresy mythology, and its relevance to modern day politics, the Imperial cult, and the Chaos Cult.

"But here's my theory- there's three layers to Chaos. One is the cannon fodder, the cultists, like I, and the other guys in Geryon's Host were, the guys that can't even summon daemons predictably, who are just mortals, mere cannon fodder, ever changing at the edges, worn away and replaced in blinks of an eye. We're dumb fucks just imitating the second layer, the armies, those guys who are actual soldiers, who run with daemons and worse. They are the guys that radiate out, using us in the first layer as a glove to shield themselves, and recruiting from them, using the retards like I used to be to, to, to cover up the claws. We fail when we do it alone, but when we have an army backing us up? Yeah. Guess that's kind of why Imber failed."

"Anyway, at the core, you have the space marines. Chaos Marines. Those that have a mission, a purpose, and a grudge for more than plunder and pleasure. They've got rites and reasons a plenty, and thus, they get the power. They know...They know a lot."

He pauses, before starting again, "That's when I knew I was in too deep. When I went to the ceremony, up on the Everaun's Steel, there was just mortals, mortals, mortals, just like me. Sure, the walls were pulsing, and there was flesh slithering away from my feet, but hey! I thought I was hot shit. I stood in a huge hangar, congratulated by Orcus, Geryon's right hand man, telling us he saw our future, as stamping across Terra, gaining glory- But then I met Pullo."

"I was aware of him, when I saw him down the corridor, far down the corridor. We were free to go about the ship, mingle, encouraged to. I noticed the flies first. Fat, black ones, stumbling and buzzing along, rolling down the way. Sick. I had never seen sick flies before. I don't think I have since. He was nine feet tall, in puke green color, scraping along the walls and ceiling inside of his armor. And he was outside of it too. Ropes of flesh worked their way out of the breast plate, all of it, just filth, hideousness incarnate."

"He saw me staring at him, and I ran, I ran, sobbing, before he easily caught my leg, and dragged me over. I... I can hardly remember what he said. He said things of w" A blank, then a screen stating REDACTED FOR THE GREATER GOOD, VIEWING MUST REQUIRE PERMISSION 2A849 LEVEL ROS CLEARANCE, before it returns, the Guardsman hollowly staring down.

"And he didn't care. He spoke those words with perfect clarity, perfect belief, and he didn't care. He knew that he was aiding the end of everything and he did not care. They're all like that. All of them. Every last of them."

"That's when I felt fear. I had never felt fear before, at least, true fear. This was fear that scarred. I wanted nothing but out. And that's when Medea claimed me as property."

"It's basically like this; on this ship there were two concepts; owners and things. You were not an owner unless you owned something. You were a thing then. So, naturally, Medea wanted to be an owner. So she claimed me."

"I came back to the quarter we had claimed, and she looked at me hollowly, before putting on a wicked smile, and saying I was hers. I spoke, for a moment, before she raped her fingers around my throat and repeated again how I was hers. She had grabbed a pipe, and started beating me, black and blue, how I lost this eye," Telemachus jerks a finger to his bionic, "It popped out, she stares at it, dangling by a retina, then putting on a sweet face, drags me out in the hallway, past the bemused vets and shocked new 'cruits, and walks along, hitting me again and again, before she reaches the hangar way, where she grabbed that thing and fucking ate it, in front of me."

"She was always a bitch. Always a crazy, manipulative bitch. But she was always a bitch for her own pleasure, and treated me like a pet for her pleasure, and in some way I was pleased at that. But this? This was livestock, pure and simple. She had EATEN a piece of me. A demonstration of power, and willingness. No reason was given. No reason was necessary. They knew, now, that she was an owner. And that I was her first piece of property."

"That psychotic bitch. She was picked for a chosen on the spot."

"Things went faster after that- I didn't see much, locked as I was to her room on the ship. It was the basement all over again. When I got out of it, I was convinced that Chaos was all about freedom, that they had freed me from my bonds and antiquated ethics. I was right in a way. Chaos is all about freedom, freedom to do whatsoever you wished to whosoever you wished, so long as you proved you COULD do it. I was weaker, still caught by strings of intimacy and want."

"Before this point, she had never changed. To be sure, she had mood swings, random personality shifts, her body was tatooed and pierced in damn near every way she could. But now that she was chosen she changed."

"She kept me, but I guarantee right now, not due to love, or nostalgia, or familiarity, or anything. It was merely because of luck that I lived. So I got to see her, when she changed. Her first gift from Slaanesh was an eye in her hand. She loved it for two missions, waving it around, looking through it, making it look at herself as she looked at it. Then, in boredom, she played with it, poked it, prodded it, then gouged it. Then she received a line of mouths on her arm. The same thing happened, wherein she experimented with it as much as she could, down to biting me with them, before destroying them, smashing them, teeth dribbling out of her arm. Because that's what Slaanesh does to you. It takes you to the peak of experience, until you realize that you can't feel that far, that you have literally run out of all experiences with that, aside from destruction. Like the marine said."

"So no wonder, after every humiliation, maiming, and torture she could think to inflict on me, she sought to kill me."

"The others were already dead when I came to. She wasn't smiling. She was just wringing the blood out of her dress. She had gotten a pretty little dress, of a little girl's, three sizes too small. She was painfully thin. She hadn't been eating. She was covered in the marks were she had gouged out all the mutations. There was a stump of an arm coming out of the back of her."

"She called my name, and gave a nervous grin, before doing a little spin, slipping, in the blood, and falling on the pillows. She lay there for a moment. Chained as I was to the wall, I would have dashed out and strangled her if I wasn't. I was atrophied, true, and I would have died if I had tried. I knew that then. But I just wanted an end. Had wanted an end, since she had torn out my thumb and fingernails, insisting they were useless anyway, and had put a diamond ring in my eye socket."

"She said we were above Imber again, that the governors in charge no longer gave obeisance to Chaos, and that she would have to go and kill them all, but she was bored with that and wanted something new. That killing had gotten so familiar, she wanted to try something special with me."

"She approached then, thinking carefully. Suffocation, decapitation, exsanguination, she went through a lot of 'tions' before finally settling on electrocution."

The guardsman goes quiet now, staring away. The interview pauses, as a caption appears. "The subject would not respond to any queries related to 'Medea's' death. We at Oolan Sept Propaganda Productions apologize to viewers at home that they could not hear of this vile villainess's death."

The interview returns, evidently at a much later date. Now Telemachus's hair has been cut close to his scalp, his face has cleared up, and he has put on some weight.

"They went on with their lives, not caring. Not missing a beat about what had happened. Her master, Orcus, disgraced after Semphion, accepted me into his ranks, even if I was a damaged cripple with no blessings of the gods, and to go forth, on Imber. I was given no command, no arms or armor aside from what I could find. Evidently, we had left mark enough to disintegrate the government, but imperial reaction or politics had forced an evacuation. It was old news now, though, there were still those who had memories. Hole heads had arrived, and the Imperium without force enough was attempting to win over the government through diplomacy."

"We were supposed to be an iron wind, knocking over a house of cards. That's what we were told. It turned out we were the dregs, the unwanted. No one else followed us down, we few that arrived. As soon as we were dropped, the rest left us behind, to build a cult, to start anew."

"I left, and found you, and found the..."

Telemachus stared at the cue card. He had said a lot of things, but... He gave a skeptical look to the Tau behind the camera, who only gave an encouraging wave of his hand. With a sigh, he read on.

"True path, that of mercy, and the Greater Good. Though I do not deserve it, I beg forgiveness of you, and encourage all humans to join the Oolan Sept, and be free of Imperial tyranny or Chaos anarchy. Be free from worry and violence. That's the kind of freedom I can get behind."

Telemachus glanced up, and wearily raised his arm, and accompanied it with a thumb's up.

"End!"

>>23884402
Alright. I'm saving it to read during my lunch hours, but I'll try to remember to write a review once I'm done.

>>23884370
Heh, yeah. I try and support authors by buying books, but I usually can't afford more than one per month. This was cheap enough that it wouldn't really hurt.

...I killed the thread with my story.

I clearly need to never write again.

>>23886603
Or people are still reading it. Thats a whole lotta text you dumped on us, man. Besides, the thread was pretty quiet before you posted anyways.

>>23886603

maybe they are reading your story, it is a wall of text after all

>>23886603
Still reading.

http://www.catherynnemvalente.com/essays/voodoo_economics/

I just found this and I think it's quite pertinent and worth while reading for this thread. (In a kind of 'pour yourself a glass of whiskey' way.)

All right, /tg/, should I just say 'fuck it,' dump my book in a Google Docs file and post it?

It's novel-sized, so not the usual material to dump here, and also not 40K fanfiction, but I just feel like doing it. If it's shit, it's shit, if anyone enjoys reading a bit of it, that's fine. I don't care about stealing, because that would mean it's worth stealing.

>>23888624
If you've written it then you own it, and the copyright already.

Do share. Include your email.

>>23888656
>can not into copyright law
pls go

>>23888652
I live that.

>>23871021
One characters parents are dead, and the priest who raised him doesn't approve of his life choice of being a murdering axeman.

The other one is a Monk in a post apocalyptic campaign, so they're probably dead and he's too Buddhist to care.

>>23888674
If you create something then you own the copyright. It's extremely simple.

>>23888624
Right, I tried Google Docs, and it reduces the file to some atrocious font.

Oh, screw it, this should work. The font looks like ass, so my excuses.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bw1ID89zw06QaWRPOUF0NHl2RDg/edit?usp=sharing

>>23879674
Thanks!

>>23884213
I don't have the money now, but I will in a few days. You'll be getting a purchase from me, fellow Writerbro. Here's hoping I can advertise on /tg/ when my own book is finished, so I can share the trashy wonders that will be...The Accidental Pimp.

>>23888729
can't read it.

>>23890663
Yeah, Google Drive is acting up. I'll try this again.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bw1ID89zw06QVkgyR2ctY0RDS2M/edit?usp=sharing

>>23870937
1. Uh-in-uh.
2. Yes.

>>23890738
Oh, just noticed - if you press Download, it reverts to the original font, which looks a lot less retarded.

>>23888656
He has to protect his copyright though. If he willingly allows others to pirate his book or use his characters in their work the law assumes he has abandoned the copyright.

File: 1364313189167.jpg-(117 KB, 640x642, 1363600979951.jpg)

117 KB JPG

>>23886335

I enjoyed that. It was engaging enough that I read all of it,which sounds bad but I am not really a huge book worm like everyone in this thread. I wanna know what pullo said. I have clearance...

I give it 3 glasses of piss out of 5.

>>23890812
That's not how copyright law works. You can selectively enforce copyright; your ownership means you CHOOSE who can do things with your work.

>tfw you know exactly what you want to happen in your book, but you dont know how to start it

>>23890738

I recommend Scribd for document-sharing, just for future reference. Check it out.

>>23891672
Then write what happens, and then work the beginning out.

>>23885331
Perhaps a bit to late, but If you have advice, share it dude.

>>23891827
Thanks, I'll do that.
I can upload it there, if anyone wants to read it.