Writefag Thread

Can't wait.

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First time poster on this thread.

I have been wanting to write a fantasy comic since high school, which was initially very cliched and LotR inspired no different than Eragon. Over the years I have improved the concept by adding pre-historic beasts instead of the usual dragons, trolls and the typical mythological creatures. I've been keen on this since I visit Holla Forums as well and some pointed out how interesting it would have been if fantasy settings had dinosaurs and stuff instead of dragons.

The overall setting is one-part Lord of the Rings, one-part John Carter of Mars and one-part Castlevania, with the main protagonist being a WHITE FUCKING MALE vampire knight, his love interest being inspired by Dejah Thoris and the overall tone would have been close to a pulp story.

?

Anyone got tips for writing a novel?
Or should I just write short stories until I know what the fuck ami doing?

Write and write a lot. Give yourself permission to suck, toss it out into the wild and see what works. Prepare to be decimated and pick yourself back up.

I'm working on something that's going to launch this Saturday. A surreal web novel that starts off with not much in the way of insanity, but builds towards it revving up and reality (as we know it) getting upended and the world responding to the escalating madness as things go on. I already got 13 chapters done (most still need a once over to check for anything off I can spot, I have no editor) and working on the 14th as we speak.

While powers would be a thing in the universe things like “super heroics” aren't the main draw. Fights and carnage happen, but it isn't a “save the world” type of series, more of a slice of life with odd happenings and an ancient conspiracy that is coming to the forefront. By the time I get the story where I want, the setting will go from “everything only superficially seeming like our world” to totally throwing all pretenses of such a facade out the window and keeping it their while the world has to cope with the new normal.

I got the blog set up and am trying to ask friends to pass word around. This is all part of trying to become a stronger writer (I feel I'm REALLY LACKING IN A LOT OF AREAS, so time for me to just give myself permission to suck and throw my writing to the wolves).

I'm writing the adventures of my humongous cock.

Scrivener is a god tier writing application it should be in future OPs

I promise to only post the scripts and answer questions this time.

Nice

Thanks

I have this idea and I started working on it.
Is about a Mexican skeletical guy with sombrero who goes in the nights on his motorbike with his nerdy assistant.
He goes killing tearings, basically when somethng bad happens that really scars a lot of people, these scars take sentience and become demonic ghost, he pursues them around the cities at night.
When a tearing escapes from him, he and his assistant must kill themselves (Usually crashing his motorbike against a wall) to get transported to "Las malas tierras" where they keep their pursuit and kill the tearing.
To come back to the normal world they must kill any of the mindless abominations that live there.
Is not a long plot, definetely has an ending and it's titled "Beep Beep Beeeep".

The kicker comes with the revelation that the abominations (the other monsters who aren't the tearings) he kills to come back are actually "potential wrongdoing of a person" incarnate, in that world at least, so not only someone dies everytime he kills an abomination from "Las Malas Tierras" but the more horrible the abomination gets, the bigger his unused evil potential, the more innocent the person who died was thus making a big scar on the people, making him the worst tearing.

I hate to say it user but that sounds cliche as hell.

Then again, having a definite ending to a book instead of writing eight or nine sequels is so rare for me, it might as well be original idea.

Yeah, it's actually very short. Not a hundred pages on script form.

Anything else?

Yes, but I've shilled them to death in previous writefag threads.

Yeah, I should just do it and start writing all those damn stories I have inside my brain.

They'll suck ass, believe me.
But after 132 pages plus 80 you erased in rewrites you start to get the hang of it.
What is important is to always consider is that somehow, someway you'll always suck ass.

Example.
I was a lonely kid and teen so even if I try to make my characters very individual from each other there's a certain feeling of monologue between their dialogues, to compensate for this I've v made them deliberately more cartoonish than they would be otherwise at the beginning, then I take that cartoonish base (usually an exaggeration of one of my characteristics) and extrapolate from it a whole character with backstory and motivations of his/her own, yet it still has suck ass consequences like that this makes the characters kinda unstable but that gives me the chance to be more open like more moments when I break the rules just for fun and doesn't feel like it came out of nowhere, or fourth wall jokes and shit every once in a while.
Which happens to be just my style because I get bored if things don't change constantly enough.

TLDR: You'll be bad until you can deliberately choose where to be bad to make the plot work, just don't go and try to defend it later.

We need more info graphs

It aint bad

Yes
A novel. Planning on doing a series of short stories.
Well, I'm really into crime fiction if that's what you're asking.
Bond novels and some pulp stories as well. I also been reading a lot of Will Eisner and recently discovered a comic adaptation of Blue Dhalia. It's pretty cool.
I do and outline, mostly scribbles, then I revise it and write a script. I draw pencil on paper and ink on Krita.
Don't look back, don't try to correct yourself and don't get too concerned with pacing, what kind of words to use or how a character should act or speak. Seems like bad advice but remember, if you waste too much time on what you just wrote you'll be so concerned about your flaws that you'll never make any actual progress. There's a time for editing, which is after you make the first draft. That's when your story gets shape.
Yes.

This

Thanks

Yeah, editing later is key. I agree.

Here's the same script pre rewriting and post.

Here's a question:
Where on the spectrum from "the sun rise was red" to "red beams heralded the coming of the dawn, a burning ruby eye peaking over the horizon…" do you lot find yourselves enjoying the most?

I am reading the Lord of the Rings at the moment (last time was over a decade ago) and while I am enjoying it quite a bit, sometimes I find Tolkien's descriptive style to become somewhat laborious. I love the scenes he paints but after reading the tenth line ascribing vivid characteristics to inanimate objects and using these huge similes or metaphors, I almost find myself being a bit overloaded with description. The scene is almost too artistically vivid for lack of a better way to put it.

Blog post aside, how do you prefer your descriptions and scene painting? Useful techniques?

Yeah, we have someone similar here in Mexico and my favorite story of his is his most direct one, I'm more a guy of
Although I don't mind my songs to be symbolic, descriptive or poetic in lyrics, I guess it makes them more interesting.

(Checked)

Depends on the setting. In my fantasy novels, I prefer overtly descriptive. In Modern works, I prefer on the nose.

The original one was really boring even if it had more "awesome" action scenes, the action descriptions are really mechanical and bossy.
3/10

For the second one I've gotta admit it's the first time I read a script with a lemony narrator (Not as "Lemony Narrator" character) doing the action descriptions which turns it directly into Lemony Writer, even the stage directions can be fun to read sometimes, is around more fun even with characters and events tuned down.
8/10

Part of me thinks he was trying to meet a word count minimum. If you take it like that, it might be more bearable. Though I do prefer short, more to the point descriptions, but really wordy ones, when kept to a minimum I don't mind, especially if its in service to describing intense emotion a character is having.

Keep up the pace man

Well you can hae a preface describing various things to avoid it later on

This

He really did improve.

Thanks

Welcome

Im slowly learning to draw, and slowly assembling the story that I want to draw.
What is the best way of keeping notes? I dont know what to do with all these raw ideas for scenes that I have that I am not yet able to draw.
I could draw some very general sketch and add descriptive text for what I was going for, but how do I structure that information so that it doesnt end up a big mess?
Right now Ive got it all in random childnotes in a flash note document.

Grab a notebook, write and draw sketches in it. Give each idea some breathing space, because later on you'll want to add more stuff to it. If something grows too big, rewrite it again with all the info you want. Rinse repeat.

I would prefer to work on my computer. I only ever draw digitally and I barely know how to write with a regular pen.

Nice

Anymore info graphs?

Read some of the modern classics first, and then try to write a story that you would be interested in reading yourself. When you're done writing it, read the entire thing and fix it. Then read the entire thing again and fix it some more. Repeat as many times as you can stand it. That's the basics of it, and if your book sucks then be willing to write another one and another. Perseverance is just about the only true secret to becoming any good. Don't believe the lies you hear or tell yourself about talent being a requirement. Almost no writers have talent, even the best ones. They just had skill and confidence. The secret of confidence is that if you pretend like you have it really hard, everyone will think you have it naturally, and then you'll have it for real. Sometimes you can fake confidence by just not giving a shit and going balls out to such a ridiculous level, write something crazy into your story that you know people might hate but you love, and say "people are just going to have to fuck off if they don't like it," and accept that the only person on the planet who will ever like your book is you. This won't make you a great writer or popular. It'll just make you more able to write a book and tell a story without your own mind getting in the way.

Just short little comics for practice

Comics and fun

No, other than focusing on not overusing speech baloons and crowding panel with text. More than 4 per panel and book feels sluggish.

For the practice stories, it's mostly various genres of rock and metal, Conan, John Carter, Heavy Metal animated film, Warhammer (and WH40k), westerns, and ancient myths. My stories are mostly pulp sword and sorcery, set in a "Metal" fantasy world. Bards with electric guitars, barbarians with chainsaws, "cowboys" on motorcycles with lassos made of metal chains and so on.

Plan out important plot points first, usually starting with beginning and ending and working my way towards the middle. I draw and write on the fly, to generate ideas and see how it will work on page right away. Then everything gets fixed, re-drawn, and rewritten.

Planning is very important and writing an visuals have to go hand in hand.

Mostly practicing and honing my skills to hopefully develop style eventually. I know how to draw realistically from a reference well enough to impress normalfags,

Binder works a bit better, since you can add, remove, and rearrange pages.

hey Holla Forums

I got high started to watch James Camerons Avatar and this song that reminded me it was from a Vietnam video game came on my phone as a result I got this idea

I am getting really into this new setting I got cooked up. About how the Earth was swarmed in hostile Jungle and gave way to a new way of life the remnants of the U.S. Armed Forces are basically having a sort of modern Vietnam war aesthetic and are more of a sort of militarized tribe. Other factions include Amazon warriors who are basically a sort of cult where they think of the earths new form as a blessing. The third faction is a scientific technology faction who think with their immense knowledge the entire planet needs to be cleansed all for technology advancement and the rebuilding of human kind.

Right now im trying to spice of the U.S. faction with the inclusion of a sort of "super" agent orange but instead of causing cancer it mutants the soldiers that came in contact with it. So you get things like beastmen,insect-men, and Orc like beings(their skin becomes incredible thick and they lose some of their mental power I am just using orc to classify them). The leaders instead of shunning them decided to use it their advantage and placed them in the "66th Meta-Human Battalion" Its a stupid idea of how humans have 46 chromosomes the mutants had more added to their bodies I am not really a biology guy but I thought it sounded cool

but yeah thats it so far I feel like its not the greatest since I am still working on building up the amazon faction I want to write in a way where each faction is not the "good guy" each one being morally grey in their actions.

No, but I did just finish writing a novel a couple months ago. It was based on a comic book script I wrote a couple years earlier, but with no outlet to turn it into a comic (it would've taken me more than one decade to even attempt to draw it myself, and it would've come out looking worse than an 8 year old's drawing) I decided to stick with writing. I think it's a better story as a comic, I think it would read better as a comic, but my only option is to turn it into a novel right now, so I did that.

To sum it up, back when I read Freaks Squeele a number of years ago, as much as I thought it was entertaining, I was really irritated by that scene where they're acting all rebellious towards the head of their school, and it struck me as such a typical spoiled western college age brat who is completely oblivious to the threats of the world around them, naturally in France where they had no idea that in the next few years they'd have muslims everywhere shooting up offices and clubs and pulverizing civilians with trucks, but even around that time they were having massive riots in Paris that would go on for days, and I always thought, why aren't they writing stories about that? From this, I put together a story about a lone soldier, in this case an Indian-American girl (if you want to make a story about a white male hero fighting islam, turn the hero into a brown girl and the muslims into zombies, it'll really drive a bug up people's ass), who has to drag a college aged drunk guy through a sort of "monster apocalypse," where the guy is nothing but a liability who stumbles through everything like it's a big party that no one else showed up to, and he survives only through her constant protection of him, even as he denigrates her for "being paranoid" about the threat he's pretending isn't there. This is essentially the kind of comic I wish anyone else had the balls to write, let alone publish, as opposed to the exact opposite, where most comic creators would indeed treat any real life threats as something that don't exist, and then manufacture imaginary threats to fight instead. This is almost entirely my prime motivation to write, as a sort of form of trolling.

(continued later)

(continuing)
That's my most recent work, the original comic script for it is still laying around, along with a handful of other fully finished comic scripts I've written over the past few years that I never showed to anyone. One was about an overweight pudgy dorky annoying 12 year old girl in junior high school who writes fanfics and cosplays, but is secretly a skilled mech pilot in a distant galaxy fighting off endless hordes of demons from some interdimensional portal, and how she has a crush on her much older commanding officer and she writes mushy fanfics about him that creep him out, and at the end of the first issue he dies, and the next issue starts off with her a few years later where she's suddenly slimmed out and hot, because I wanted the whole "obesity representation" and "real nerd girl representation" and whatever else representation to be built up in the first issue and then horrifically violated in the second issue just so people would be traumatized by the betrayal. By the third issue she's an older battle scarred veteran who gets into a super mech and sacrifices her life and blah blah, I did have a lot of fun writing that one, and I think a couple years ago Oni did some submission contest for comics or scripts, I sent that one in, and they rejected it, they said it wasn't what they were looking for, what a shame.

My first attempt at writing real comic books in script format was a 9 issue series that I secretly named "Falling Down 2," two massively powered protagonists start at the opposite end of a gigantic city and carve a path of destruction towards the center and towards each other. It turned into "paladin girl vs witch girl" ultimately, where they're both trudging through opposite ends of the ruins of an ancient formerly-advanced magi-tech city that's now a wasteland full of mutant orcs and other powerful creatures, all deformed by the ancient magic core at the center of the city. My idea for this story would be a throwback to those old "Saturday morning anime" they'd show on Sci Fi around the mid 90s or so, where they'd play Vampire Hunter D or Project A-Ko or Fist of the North Star, or when you could rent Ninja Scroll at blockbuster, etc. I wanted to have two warrior girls, the paladin with her gigantic meat tenderizer mace (later changed to a folding scythe once I was informed by artists how assbustingly hard it would be to consistently draw a giant meat tenderizer at different angles) and some pretty thick muscle under full body heavy ornate armor, and a witch who was more pure thicc and going around the ruined city just about naked, shooting fireballs and ice shards and jumping into portals and so on. At the end they get to the center and brutally beat each other for an uncomfortable amount of time, They Live style, with teeth getting knocked out and blood splattering everywhere. I felt pleased with this, but when I finished it, again, I had no outlet to get it made. To be honest, the whole thing could probably stand a pretty serious rewrite.

I did submit that script, and a handful of other first chapter treatments for various loose stories, to Dark Horse, who says they accept open submissions, but I think they mean primarily as 8 page bites for Dark Horse Presents, so if you send them a full 20 page issue they'll just throw it in the garbage, either way they threw all of mine in the garbage as far as I know, and I think if you're submitting just writing to them they're not going to give much of a shit, they want just 8 pages of fully finished comic that's made on a level at least approaching professional.

(one last thing)
When it came to writing the paladin/witch story, this was my first experience with the burning embarrassment of revisions. Not only rereading my own stuff and realizing how cliched or ordinary it seemed, but all the spelling errors, even if it's only in a script, a panel description, a character's name, where the finished product would vaporize its existence, it stings pretty bad because I feel like it never should've been there. That's probably just me, and the desire to fix things keeps me going and moving through. Revisions are important because they can lead you to improving the overall story, dialogue, descriptions, etc, and you want to write as well as you can even for aspects that would never be physically seen within a comic. Otherwise you're just sloppily throwing ideas onto a page and hoping that an artist will make them good.

The cold open of the first issue seems almost embarrassingly typical now, especially after reading superhero comics on my own time. As much as I want to write comics, I can barely stand to read any modern ones, American or European or Japanese (my favorites are still Punisher Max, Berserk, and then Asterios Polyp). So when I wrote my first "serious" comic script, upon later returning to it I was shocked at how typical it is to most superheroine comics, where the paladin girl faces some serious threat and steels herself, gathering courage, narration captions of her saying how she refuses to be afraid, defeats imposing monster. I actually wrote that kind of stuff into the script.

Maybe a year after writing that, I read some Captain Marvel comic where almost the exact same thing happens, she throws some lame quips at a big bad guy, narration captions have her mention that she can't afford to show fear, she beats up the bad guy. I was horrified when I saw that, because it appeared that I apparently had subconsciously ripped off unknown amounts of superhero comics without reading a single one of them, and as much as I wanted this story to be a 90s anime throwback, I didn't want it to read as something completely typical, I wanted it to be better than the usual comic book people would find on the stands. So I dumped the dialogue captions entirely, just let it go silent, let the visuals tell the story in solitude. Yeah, a lot of comics do that too, but at least it comes off better. It's better to at least try to do things different from anyone else, under any circumstances, even if it's only a minor change. Thinking on it now, it could probably still use yet another rewrite.

This is how I feel about my writing, at the very least, is that if I'm doing what everyone else is doing, there's no reason for me to do it. I think too often writers don't feel this way or don't have a good sense of it, and I had to realize painfully that I didn't have a good sense of it because I wasn't even reading the comics that I didn't like. In order to know what to avoid, I had to start submerging myself in that stuff I wouldn't like. So I started going to the comic store, going through the bargain boxes, and buying the most pedestrian ordinary corporate comics, the strange long forgotten self published comics by companies that lasted for maybe a matter of months in the 80s or 90s, comics looking like they were drawn by Sonichu fanartists that somehow were sold at real comic stores from what I could tell. I don't even know if I learned anything from buying and reading these comics, and in fact I've stopped writing comic scripts and started writing novels.

Though a week ago, I did write a small cartoon script for a friend, a sort of cheap screenplay, which he said he would animate (whether he does, I have no clue). So I'm still throwing multiple options around, even if I'm not selling anything. I already have plans for a next novel, which also started as a comic script.

It took me 15 years to even consider doing this as a hobby. My advice is don't wait until you're good, because you won't get good by waiting. Do it when you still suck, and you might become good if you work under the intent to become better. Don't accept your current level as "good enough." Don't accept your improved level as "good enough." Even if you make it into one of the industries, don't accept that as "good enough."

That's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

That doesn't sound nice.

That was awesome until that last part, you're doing the exact polar extreme to changing your plot to please people, but what could've been an incredible character arc was thrown down the drain.

Yeah, I'll by that as a short series.

I'm writting Sci-Fi and for some reason people get super pissed when it comes the conversation that in my universe there's no such things like Wormholes to travel trough space, time travel or alternate realities, even if there's an explanation in universe as to why so.

In fact a minor lesson in my work is that Math doesn't rule the universe, like the old "Even if we count 0, one could say that is mathematically feasible to say that the distance between the couch and the door is by theory infinite and one could never leave the room but yet I can." and that Math logic doesn't apply to real life

Have this become so hard-written tropes of Sci-Fi that people just expect them?
Or probably because they're being researched IRL by scientist they expect them to be true in Sci-Fi.

Its called autism user.
Your work doesn't sounds very fun.

I'm writing a sci-fi novel for my writing blog about a science vessel with its crew and AI investigating an anomalous signal 500 light years from Earth.

Means of intersteller travel relies on a Mass Manipulation Drive to allow Faster Than Ligjt travel minus the complications of time dialation. Of course the third version of said drive can only go 100x the speed of light. Which makes their journey five years on ice while the AI Acts as a skeleton crew. It takes elements of previous sci-fi works but with a twist to the usual formulas. Almost finished the prologue.

game dev here working on a demo for my own project, anyone know a thing or two about devolving a character. i've been having problems with it for a while, also how can i use that for design?

Anyone can "develop" a character the trick is "in which way" and this can vary a lot for a lot of reason but mostly depends on Original character by events that happen so more details.

Comic on the side of the third image

Yes it does fuck you.

very well. im trying to play off the silent protagonist trope, everyone knows how that works, but here is my problem, and im sorry for being vague, after the 2nd act the protagonist is told something that drives him mad, and with that starts speaking for himself, instead of the player making a choice.

im sorry for being vague, its just that im paranoid about sharing my ideas.

Don't worry, this lazy asses won't move a finger to plagiarize shit and those who would are already working on their own stuff.
Anyways, it would be nice if he shows some tendency to do this every once in a while before the big mindfuck.

"The sky was a dull red as the sun once again rose in the east. The familiarity and regularity of it all brought a twinge of reassurance to the country side."

If you're going to use a lot of words, say something, if you don't have anything to say keep it simple. or just don't write you illiterate

You dumb faggot, what do you think the image was about? I proved to you I wasn't, because your reply on the bottom doesn't have (You) after the post number. Imbecile.
That's *it's by the way, you stupid twat.

How viable is it to make a character seem constantly composed and powerful very early on but then slowly break down those strengths and show more of that character's background and why they are the way they are?
I currently have this character planned to seem emotionally blank, completely composed, seemingly superpowered (other people in the setting can be as well, it's a trainable thing), and that the story goes by putting them in completely unfamiliar situations (or "not properly trained in") and forcibly comparing themselves with the reality they're in constantly, leading to inner breakdowns and confusion. Just slowly shattering what they were raised to be and end up coming out as a better person and character than what they thought they should be. The story would try to focus on these comparisons naturally instead of forcing it, simply placing that character in events that work out logically, and just trying to let it naturally develop based on their perception of the world vs the one they're in.

It's so perfectly viable just a question. What's the endgame?
Are they supposed to expertise these new situations or they break?

I will say that the protagonist's background is they're a royal that was sheltered and privately taught to be a "perfectly crafted" heir. You can imagine how unfamiliar scenarios can come from that sort of naivety.
They would eventually learn to deal with the new situations, but they're so drastically different from what they know that there's some breaking? The underlying plot is about manipulation but on the outside it looks more like the protagonist is learning more about life and hardships? It's a bit difficult to find the right words for it.

You got more pics? I need all the tips I can get

...

Just like my chinese shonens.

This shit is uncanny. I guess I can at least be sure it has a tried and true formula?

What is that?

You know the "if you want power to stop the evil guy, you must prove your worth to me, but remember that there's no turning back after this" dude? That's the threshold guardian.

Plebeians use guides such as these to make stories. When things become measured and formulaic, it loses its wonder and innocence, and feels empty and tainted.

Go home /lit/ and take your metaphysical shit on your way out.

Yeah

Mostly as a form of magic

I'm strong with first person. I like to write occult fiction

I write music.

wut

Listen to your story. I've written three books, and in each and every one, writers block was solved by doing what the story wanted to do, regardless of my plan for it.

lol

Right now, I'm working on an audio book series I'll release on youtube. This is Ch 20, and I'm particularly proud of it. The story can be best described as a Video Game Western. Honestly, the hardest part of writing for me is finding people to read my work. I'm good, I know that much, but I can't even pay people to fucking read and help me improve.

Shit's wack yo.

I've got some books on writing I could drop on our Volafile room if anyone's interested.

Yes

Doesn't /lit/ like modern "literature" excluding a few exceptions, of course, a la Tolkien or Lewis though?

Hi reddit

So, why is exactly first person narrative considered "bad"? Most books are written in third person, but I like the personal style first person gives.

K, it's up. For five days anyway lol.

How do you handle flashbacks to events that weren't previously mentioned before? Specifically for a novel, I want a character's memories to be selectively returned by some other force, mostly referring to different major points of a single event.

So as a drawfag I've never considered learning to write a decent story, most of the time I just wing it with an idea I had.

I always felt if I had a great writer we could compliment the other and i'd learn from them.
Most of you are writers what do you think? From one drawfag to a writefag.

I read Casino Royale, the "flashback" was in the form of a dossier of the villain, explaining his past and activities, although it's more of an exposition than a flash back. In Live and Let Die, there's a scene right in the beggining of the story where Bond is in this hotel and he remember his encounter with M.

There should be some knowledge in storytelling from the part of the artists, if you are doing comics. Art for comics is kind of double-edged sword, in my opinion, I'm willing to let some technical problems in the drawing pass as long as I see that the artist kept the sense of impact and rhythm in the stoytelling. I mean, you shouldn't be trying to achieve Charles Dickens levels of competence, but one should know what the fuck the writer is talking about and be able to translate it.

By the way user, do you have a portfolio?

I'm an amateur so don't expect much from me.

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Hey, these are pretty nice.

I still need to improve in most areas but, I felt at this point (art wise) I could at least try to make a comic or something.

The thing is I feel I'm one of those comic artist that probably need a writer as a crutch before I "fly on my own" even for short projects.

Plus I'd be a great experience.

thanks, friend

Hey Truthseeker

Ah, the third pic is the one I requested.
Thanks again to the artist!

Damn you know now i really wanna see if i can do a project with a writer! Anyone here need an artist?

Show sample

It's still me man.>>812457

This. I tend to write in a pretty simple, direct style most of the time, and use more descriptive, flowery language when I want to emphasize something. While I like Tolkien a lot, I totally get where people come from when they say he's overly wordy. I have the same problem with George Martin. I don't need to know the crest of every family on the continent, and I don't need to know what every person at the table was eating. It gets monotonous and boring after a while.

If you're interested, I could provide you a short story to adapt. I wouldn't say its anything fantastic, but I think it's half decent. It's a lot more grounded in reality than most of your art seems to be, though, with only minor fantasy elements. Reply if you want to know more/ see the story.

Sure I'm up to try something new, especially something with little to no fantasy. New Challenges!

Haw, ever tried reading Thomas Covenant?

Read through the story again real quick, and there's definitely a few issues (mainly crappy exposition), but I'll post it anyway. Overall I think it's okay though. If you have any questions about it, let me know.

pastebin.com/b5yz21tV

Alright it's a good read, not gonna lie this is like a full comic size story. My questions are what art style you looking for I dont do realistic portrayals that well, but hell I can try OR can I go a bit comic/cartoony? (Select a picture from my "portfolio" as a guide)
Want a sample or two to get the feeling?

Personally, I'd prefer something more on the realistic side, like the second pic you posted. But really, feel free to do whatever you like, it's your art dude, do what you think works.

Also, a sample would be really cool, if you feel up to it. I've never had someone try to draw one of my stories before.

I'll see what I can do.

Last I checked, Dark Horse only accepts art samples and story/series proposals from writer-artists or writer/artists teams. So yeah, those scripts and treatments were probably ignored. Not that anybody should get their hopes up since nobody really breaks into the industry through unsolicited submissions alone.

Might have to suspend that story till i come back from this trip.>>812488

Only if you take it seriously, and I was writing it as a 3 issue comedic series, so I wasn't really in it for the "incredible character arc" and I don't care. It's always better for a creator to please themselves than please an audience. You get better art that way every time, regardless of if people are able to appreciate it or not.

Added to which, that section of her arc pretty much ends on a perfect act out. The second issue skipping ahead a few years then continues the arc of her overall character, instead of just a mere event, which then informs of her full personality instead of a small portion of her younger life. This gives a character's personality much more opportunity to increase in scope, while also keeping things brief without getting bogged down in serious dramatics, which are what most neophyte or sophomore creators kneecap themselves with, and I can point to many examples of this through comics or TV shows.

I bogged myself down just like that when I made little notebook comics when I was around 12 or 13. Later still, I began experimenting with writing, nonsense and stream of consciousness and wordplay and meaningless jumbles of shit, and even later I experimented with structure where I wrote comedic pornographic stories (just for myself) where I dared myself to take the story so incredibly seriously just so I could see how the premise and intent would fall apart, or how I could keep it all together if I could. I considered these experiments far more important than "write every day" or the usual mundane advice.

After doing all that, trust me when I say that there's not much going back to spending the entire 3 issues on every last detail of girl at age 12 after a guy she has a crush on gets smooshed by giant monsters.

Sure, no problem

i remember that episode
this is the funniest part of that whole segment

bump because I was about to post something but I have to go now.

Wait I finished it.
I re-edited the first three scripts into one plus corrections.

My main problem was that the editable file for the second script got corrupted so I had to rewrite it.

Do you guys know how many pages does an average comic has.
I already wrote my script and I'm planing the paneling on Krita, just curious.

20-30 on average for a single issue.

So this may be obvious but as I'm experiencing right now une issue in script can become 2-3 issues considering the visual media?

If you want to pad it out, of course.

noice

Who're you talking to?

Critique this please.

Fult grinned so hard it could be sworn his teeth might break. He heaved his broad-ax over his head and slammed it on whatever was in front of him. It stuck half way down the thing's torso–it shuddered and gurgled. Lio's eyes grew enormous. Kirkweld blasted it. "Stop wasting time." Fult smirked, hefted the gargantuan axe on his shoulder, and swaggered after him. The creature's ashes gently blew into a corner.

The next room featured a great dais. "Tongue magick", spat Fult.

"No, stupid", said Kirkweld. He grew a green fireball among his gripping fingers and threw it at a torch. He did it again. The room blushed green. "Hand. Magick. See the symbols. Ordered." Fult meandered around the dais, his free hand in his belt, pressed against his tan gut. "So?"

"So you're going to break it."

"I don't trust it."

"I don't trust you."

"I don't trust you neither." Fult wiped his nose with his thumb.

"Well, great, you're both useless" protested Lio. Laughter bellowed out of Fult.

"Give me your axe," commanded Kirkweld.

Fult stared at him.

Kirkweld backed off. The suggestion suprised both of them. Fult pushed Lio back with his bulky arm. "Lay off, pretty one. Old Fult breaks it." Kirkweld stood aside. Fult dropped the ax-head to the ground. He spat in his hands. He raised the weighty weapon back and sent it booming down in the middle of the dais. Lio covered her ears.

Nothing happened.

The torches went out.

A moment passed. "Wizard? Stop fooling around", said Fult.

No problem dude.

The Bad:

Awkward as fuck

Describe the thing. Just calling it "the thing" is boring.

This description would be really good in another context, but in the context of buff warrior guys, it feels out of place and breaks immersion.

Also, it's overall kinda confusing. Maybe give a bit of context beforehand so I know who the characters are, etc.

The Good:

Pretty damn good descriptions. Not perfect, but way better than average. I like that you don't over-describe things, that can get old really quickly. You hit the right balance of not-too-much and not-too-little description pretty well.

Pacing is good, not just making every paragraph the same length.

Dialogue is decent, but each of the character's has a pretty similar feel as far as how they talk. It might just be that this selection is too short to get a good feel for the characters, though.

Okay. Since you seem reasonable, give me your thoughts on these bits. They're out of context, but it's from the same story.

**. I now beheld her heavy breasts…then I used the back of my hand to lightly stroke her belly… I then gently rested my face on her nave; her warmth steadily communicated with me. Her breathing immediately deepend, and I methodically sucked the slowest of kisses on her thick abdomen. She laid back sluggishly and submitted to trenchant erotic horror.

. "Here now! Who bites at my little toes?"

. I quickly glided my warm tongue along the innermost sole curve. I fastly pecked light kisses on her little toes. A gold ring tightly encricled the middle one. She spattered giggles, and her big toe lurched back, so I ruthlessly devoured it. It well deserved a solid suck, so I pulled it in while my tongue shoved and muscled it around.

. I drew her on me by her legs. I pressed in hard. She pulled me in, and IN and OUT I battered her. Her fingers gripped the sheets. I felt wicked. I tortured her. I let it out, and shoved it in. Globs pulsed out of me. She sucked it up into her. Her wild wailing was deafening. I shoved it in and out more, relentless.

. Visha grabbed her tiny breasts and slid her fingernails off her nipples. Her jaw slackened and her slick, pointed tongue unwound from between her fangs. She gasped a throaty hiss and dragged the blasphemous tongue up Lio's leg, across her slit, and stabbed her navel. Lio whimpered. Visha cackled.**

. The Tongue cut into earth, and buried lies. The lies ossified and became venomous. The Tongue's teeth jutted out. Poison incisors. The Tongue slithers across dark pools–they become filthier in its passing. Grittiness stole elegance.

The Bad:

Sentence runs on way too long. Break it up into two or three parts.

Weird wording, and too on the nose.

Misspelling, unless it's on purpose to give it a more medieval feel.

The fuck

no

misspelling

Awkward wording on the second half of the sentence

no

The Good:

All really good descriptions. Don't always get the metaphors (I think they're metaphors?) you're trying to get across, but again, that might be fixed with context.

Sentence length variance is pretty good. Long and short sentences keep it from getting boring to read, although I think your fourth paragraph has too many short sentences (this may be to make it more fast paced, though, in which case, it kind of works).

You do a good job of describing sex without using the usual, cliche word choice. Some of it a bit over the top, but its better than being boring.

I didn't knew we could upload PDFs also HOLY fuck 67 pages.

Never underestimate the power of autism.

I really liked it, reminded me of Shinichiro Watanabe because its direct, to the point and witty and everything that was addressed came back to be used.
On the bad side it has some mood issues likes it wants to be serious and have fun but tends to fail at it and some events pause while others occur.

So guys I've been thinking on something.

I'm writing several stories at once, not really following on most of them is just that when I think I have a good idea I like to write at least one page so I know I can follow on it later without loosing the idea.

There's one story which is really audience friendly and normie acceptable, I think it's comfy in a way and I really like it, but there's other story, a really dark one based mostly in (if taken to its extreme logical conclusion) things I don't like about myself and my desires to correct them.
And is really hard to write it, so I've been thinking to write it in comic format you know; Page>panel>Action>shot and lack any kind of dialogue, maybe to add it later, like if I don't wanna talk about those things so I'll find a way to say it visually.

Now I've thought that in general that's a good idea for any kind of visual media writing but let's say if I used that technique in my first story would make it less comfy?
Is making it comfy = to making it dumber?

Yeah, format goes a long way. It depends how you're writing the story. Frank Miller heavily influences my style, so it's rather punchy. I use no more words than necessary. I do not think babbling is cute. The style would fit a script/page-panel-action-shot.

But HP Lovecraft also influenced my style. I like varying between Frank Miller "staccato" and Lovecraft's luxurious style, depending on what I'm trying to say. Basically, I wind the reader up, then let the tension out during a sex scene or whatever.

Since page-panel-action-shot is punchier, I imagine your work would be less comfy. But people define comfy different ways.

Did he throw two fireballs then? If so, why, and what happened to the first one?

To what specifically, the axe or the dais or the room? Does this mean the axe hit the dais with no effect, or did it cleave through and nothing happened?

Unlike the other criticism, I have no problem with this line. Really my main complaint would be that I personally find barbarian sword and sorcery adventures to be generic, so none of it would be to my taste.

That and I feel a lot of fledgling writers try to dress up their prose too much. Like the "said is dead" graph in OP's post, sometimes I think it's better to just use "said," focus more on getting your point across as best you can and tell the best and most interesting unique story you possibly can make, instead of how unique the individual words are. It's like trying to overdecorate a 15 inch plastic Christmas tree. The decorations might be really shiny and elaborate, but you're still just putting them on a cheapo little dollar store tree.

This is my personal opinion though, and you will probably find a million other opinions that think a million different things about your one same sample, and you can ultimately only go with what you want the most, and not what you think others want the most. My philosophy is fuck the audience, you want to entertain yourself as much as you can, and at this point the only risk is that you yourself are too easy to entertain, so be aware of the risks.

The only completed written work I did recently was write a mini-comic to help promote my friend's game that recently came out on steam. A short 6-page comic that an artist friend of mine is currently drawing out.

Do you have any work that pisses off SJW's?
I'm not asking for a job created for that purpose but some bits of wrongthink in your jobs.
Just curious.

...

oh ok, they're still up.

inyby

It's back up again.

Is it fine for a major plot point to seem out of left field revealed late into a story, but also be indirectly responsible for most of what's going on beforehand? There are hints and foreshadowing to it but it's very mild.
Probably becomes quite blatant if I post small examples here, so I'm putting them in spoilers if anyone wants to question them.
>Monsters created by people failing tragically at performing a certain type of magic
>Monsters are most active at night
>That magic was discovered 100 years prior to the story. It's extremely difficult to attune to, so people assume that's why it wasn't discovered until then.
>A mayan-equivalent prophecy said a shooting star would destroy the planet 100 years before the story story, but no evidence of it even occuring exists.
>This prophecy was discovered after the proposed doomsday, so everyone just laughed it off.
>This magic has many special properties but simplified, it can transform your biological body (thus, failures turn to monsters)
Obviously in writing I won't give these chunks as they are, just gently sprinkle them across where it's necessary or fits into the current scenario.

I'm actually doing the same thing, regarding the execution and I can tell you that is perfectly possible, how much do you address it depends on how important this is to the plot.
In my case there's several DEEP LORE plot points in my story, so fearing to ruin my story with them I decided to make them decreasingly important compared to my main plot in each rewrite.

Again in my case;

Well in my case this thing is basically mandatory, and plays a major part in the conclusion of the story, and would answer a lot of general questions that'd accumulate in the story but also explain characters that the reader might not have paid much attention to before.

Since you decided to reveal your plot points, I guess I'll reveal mine but still in spoilers.
The shooting star was an alien that hit the moon
I'd say more but that'd be revealing too much.

No prob. I "revealed" my plot points because I'm not writing a mystery, I'm keeping them from readers because I understood it would be clustering my story with DEEP LORE before they could know my characters, besides as I said in this case is unimportant, I truly believe that its more entertaining to have a script about a crazy-ass antagonist that's the consequence of the events of the super soldier deep lore rather than a script flashbacking on those events that can be summed up in a couple lines.

I can definitely sympathize with that, I've been reading a book called Nevernight without any prior knowledge of it and it's boring me to death with how much DEEP LORE there is crammed into footnotes that are taking up 40% of pages and even leaking to other pages, while the actual story going on feels like a 180 of what the opening page and first chapter suggested. The real issue is that these LORE footnotes are part of the chapters since every chapter is still the same number of pages regardless of footnote density.

My focus is definitely on the characters, you just also need a good story so readers can get behind them better. My lore is only intergrated into the story and nothing more.

In fact, I haven't even started to write that example but this is pretty much how is going to be, it might as well give me the chance to layout, again, this is just one issue of my series.

What actually happens.
Again, that's just (Projected) issue 9 of the script and this isn't mentioned again until almost another quarter in.

Yes, but none of it the main point of ether of the stories. At least a little wrongthink is almost guaranteed in anything coming from outside of tumblr or mainstream entertainment industry.

There are slaves that have their minds rewired slightly by a mask they can't remove, and female slaves obviously have an inclination to accept any kind of sexual favour if permitted by their master, even if they hate it.
I don't think I'll ever refer to it in the story unless there's some way I can fit it in but with the background of the setting, it's not out of place for that to happen.

In one issue a black character can't enter a "not people of color" restaurant wit her white friends, so she… Respects private property laws and doesn't enters, rather she and her friends go to another restaurant.

How much planning and plot do you do before you start writing the chapters or scripts? If you just wrote as you went, would it be coherent?

Mostly highlights out the majority plot points and some post it notes if new things pop up.

Well, I normally try to link the highlights of the whole plot with certain songs, I try to give 1 hour at the end of my day to discover new songs, and recently I'm trying to write (in script format) as much as I can in actions and then fill the dialogue. Seems pretty efficient and fun to do actually.

Hi guys, I'm a poorfag who can't afford any real writing software which is not that I can't use any freeware is just that sometimes it can be difficult since the lack of easy tools interrupt the flow of writing.
I once downloaded "Final Draft" but shit won't stop updating nonsense and rendering my files corrupt. I heard from an user once that Scrivener is even better but I can't seem to find a crack.
If I google the shit I find many exploit sites for viruses, does anyone have a copy of it?

As much as I would like to gloat on this I would also love to read what you guys write.
Anyways I have a request here, read my script.
Why? Because I tried to do this with this one and I need outside input since is the first time I try it.
On a personal note writing as much actions as possible before the dialogue turns out is awesome, is faster, more organic, and more fun to do.

So I found these examples of comics and scripts, the first one is the average industry "Standard" now, no company will force you to write like this with your drawfag but they will force you to write like this to hire you.

This is screenplay format.
As you can see is less boring since the writefag doesn't have to specify the panels but it seems that the drawfag is more willing to ignore some thing you might say.

...

Do any of you have any idea how to properly panel.

isn't the ol' nine panel lay out okay?

Yeah but I get bored easily so I try to experiment with shapes positions but just like the dialogue balloons I don't know if there are rules to doing so.

You ever read something so bad that you're using it as a guideline of what not to do? Not just the dumb tumblr comics, just anything that might have not been immediately obvious to you.

Ho do you feel after realizing that the awesome idea you were having has been done before and you like how it was done.
You change something?
Keep it the same or scrap the whole thing?

Read my stupid fucking pitch for a short story I'm going to make because I'm angry about a lot of things.

Toilet + Dark Humour short story about three girls who are totes best buds that see each other everyday at a cafe as strange as they are. It plays out really generically, but with several horrific and dark twists along the way. The joke is the cycle of consumerism and anti-consumerism, and main characters being a satire on "gurl powah" characters and obvious waifu-ism.

Main Character 1: An airheaded assassin who is a ditz but is so good at martial arts and some other weird shit that she can get the job done without harm, but only too herself as everything else gets obliterated. She's got a boyfriend too y'know? Don't get in her way x3.
Main Character 2: Also an airheaded girl, but literally. Her boyfriend is the brain eater living inside her head, of which they agreed that it's okay for him to eat her brain out because humans only use 10% of their brain and the other 90% is useless. Throughout the story she gains more defects from having her brain eaten.
Main Character 3: The thirdest of third wheels, her special ability is to wake up on her bed alive every morning no matter how brutal or painful the death was the day before. She remembers everything too, even the times she's dead. This is a good excuse for MC1 to repeatedly kill her on accident or on purpose. She feels no pain, so she's kind of fine about everything.

Everyone else are just normal human beings. Everyone is afraid of the main characters.

If you find that your idea looks like it's already done, I feel like that's a sign that you haven't finished developing the idea yet.

user, I…

Still better than most new york bestsellers since that title is worthless anyway

Paneling and balloon placement should be kept simple, if only for the sake of the reader because stopping to figure out which panel/balloon is next or who is saying what is annoying. You can still experiment, just don't make your fancy layout a chore to read.

Well in all honesty, this might be your best one yet. 8.2/10. I would rate higher had I a better grasp of the visuals. At least you don't butcher the language that bad anymore.

Somewhat of a departure of my not-earth (think Ace Combat, but with everything) war/political kino, here's something that came about from a different work (a group of bros who are trying to solve an abduction while helping out the more…unfortunate students with everyday perils)

Yes. On my phone, when I can at work.
The little sis. Thought she would appreciate a compelling story about making something as boring as high school interesting. Also for people who were fans of Kids Next Door or the Bully vidya but wanted something for a more mature audience. or a lighter hearted Nightcrawler or Falling Down
I alternate between third and second person
I wanted to do a psychological, pseudo-capeshit thriller that didn't pertain to warfare, but rather a highschool-to-college (outdoorsy campus). Really, its about filling a niche. MC is inspired by the historical aspect of Geisha/Kunoishi, improv tools. and people making miraculous theories to the deeds of someone who uses what's available to her as she does shit in plain sight. Thought it would be interesting to have a character exploit the social cliques and raise hell rather than to make drama about them.
I keep the cringe to a minimum; Avoiding meme storytelling (I.e 'cause I'm batman XD). Just trying to make it my own while having a basis of believeability.
I'd say to not neglect deutoragonists and other secdonary characters. Also, making them compelling is more important than being relateable helps stand out.
…yes, but I'd say I'm better writefag than drawfag my drawings get compared to old animu and Hana-Barbera shit

That aside, in writing about the life of a aspiring student who got into a private school from being technically "African American". She spends her days fucking around with people, being able to mimic the voices and gaits of various students and having borderline domestic-terrorist levels of knowledge of chemicals and everyday items. Lifelong friends and enemies are made as she struggles to retain her true self as she becomes better at what she does.

Any quest-chins

Bad. I created what I thought was a decent and fairly original magic system for my setting, buy people pointed out that it is a lot like the one used in WoD:Mage games.
I went ahead and looked into it, and there indeed is a lot of overlap. However, my system is is free from "use magic to avoid paradox" bullshit, and every magic effect has to be paid for in one way or another. Pacts with supernatural beings are also an important tool to become powerful.

Let's say I want to write a story with Mary Sue. Full on Mary Sue, wins anything she does, has a huge pool of lovers and never seems to do anything wrong. Take the trope to the maximum.

Now, she's the antagonist of the story. After saving the world, things have not been going well for the rest of the world. She has reeked havoc upon the world for everything twisting to her desires. A massive cult that does anything she says, people living in fear of saying doing something wrong that she would disapprove of and be taken away For anyone who isn't Mary Sue, life is basically hell.

What would be a good way to defeat a near reality bending goddess where everything goes her way? I have been tossing around a story based on this idea and I haven't though of a good way to defeat the Mary Sue that sticks to the rules of Mary Sues being perfect.

Good for something as short as a film.

Perhaps you shouldn't make her all-powerful to begin with. because only an asspull can take down a character powered by them.

Or just don't make it serious beyond the point.

Wrote the guideline for the first chapter out of three for this piece of shit. Some details from that post changed but more or less the same. Just need some drive to actually make the content later.
>Chapter 2 is about the MCs being co-opted by another character who tries to come off as more interesting and snarky than them but it's mostly going through backstory instead of actual plot and as soon as he's out of the spotlight, he's gone forever but his short minor actions still had more positive influence on the setting than the MCs. This character is the leader of a bisexual half-demon biker gang avenging his brother-in-arms killed by BIG PHARMA I actually had ideas about the demon bikers long before I wanted to make this whole story

I liked it, so how much action did you wrote before adding the dialogue?

5 1/2 pages to get the 21 final pages.after the dialogue.
Writing the new one right now.

btw I wrote that in 15 minutes, ITS GREAT to work by actions not worrying about the dialogue.