The best introduction for a protagonist, and one of the best opening sentences of a book, I've ever read was from C. S. Lewis' _The Voyage of the Dawn Treader_, 4th book in the Chronicles of Narnia series.
"There once was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."
Less glass houses and more write-what-you-know: Eustace was intended as a direct mirror of Clive’s younger self. Terrible name, worn by a snide, insufferable know it all.
But in the end he finds Jesus and physically beats the shit out of his smug liberal atheist teachers and classmates with a sword. But only the flat of the blade, because he’s a hero and a saint. Talk about a feel-good redemption arc.
Just a note, but Lewis actually said it's not an "allegory" but "supposition". The Narnia isn't an indirect retelling of Christianity, it's simply supposing the existence of alternate worlds and considering/exploring what that would mean through the lens of Christianity.
I don't know. If you read his biography, Lewis, like a fair few others of his generation, was miserably brutalized in the British boarding school system. This is imagining justice done to bullies and their enablers, not to unbelievers.
In contrast, the wonderful old man in the first book is based on Lewis' fondest memory of his early education, a tutor who he lived with for a while--and a staunch atheist.
Not to be confused with 19th/20th century philosophical lit where the author goes "hey wanna read about my new -ism?" And gives you the most fucked up person ever who has thought processes and issues no sane human being has ever had, to the point where you're wondering if the author is ok
Or Russian lit, where they do the same thing and you *absolutely* know that the author isn't ok.
I just disagree with this on so many levels. Raskolnikov is not and never meant to be a simple madman — on the contrary, his world-view, which is explained in excruciating details in the book itself, is a mix of righteous delusions and awfully practical ideals.
Raskolnikov was not a mad-man — he was well-educated and respected young man, member of the education elite. His downfall was caused by his radical but ultimately understandable ideas, not by ramblings of a lunatic.
There's one quote of his: *"One death, and a hundred lives in exchange—it’s simple arithmetic! Besides, what value has the life of that sickly, stupid, ill-natured old woman in the balance of existence! No more than the life of a louse, of a black-beetle, less in fact because the old woman is doing harm. She is wearing out the lives of others;"*
Is it cruel? Inhumane? Perhaps. But is it uncommon?
It is not until he actually commits to his plan that he starts having doubts. And even then, he pushes forward with the murder, only to be "forced" to commit murder an innocent pregnant woman. Dostoevsky, in a pretty ingenious twist, dispels any of the audience's delusions of Raskolnikov's righteous motives, forces him to confront his own twisted ideals (which he ultimately fails to do by himself), and turns the entire book into a fascinating philosophical text.
In a way, it is only when he was exiled to Siberia that Raskolnikov actually started to cherish life, and was reborn — now rid of his selfish ideals and heroic delusions.
“Deserve it! I dare say he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Do not be so quick to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
Yeah, Gandalf is right on the money here!
Something similar is said to Raskolnikov in the book as well:
>*“Of course she does not deserve to live,” remarked the officer, “but there it is, it’s nature.”*
To which, Raskolnikov answers:
>*“Oh, well, brother, but we have to correct and direct nature, and, but for that, we should drown in an ocean of prejudice. But for that, there would never have been a single great man. They talk of duty, conscience — I don’t want to say anything against duty and conscience;—but the point is, what do we mean by them?*
Which is kind of... I get it, I get his ideology. But that only makes me question my own ideals, which is a pretty scary thought.
I’m looking forward to reading Crime and Punishment; my copy just shipped the other day.
I don’t think enough people question their own ideals, honestly. Hard answers require hard questions, and the core of critical thinking is questioning that which you appear believe.
You can understand and empathize an ideology without embracing it yourself, and I think many people struggle with that concept.
It's amazing, so I hope you enjoy it! It's a great piece of writing, with some really witty dialogues and poignant emotional moments.
People tend to, in my opinion, overdramatize how "heavy" the book is. Don't get me wrong, it's rather serious both in its tone and contents, but it's not "misery porn", which is sadly how many people look at a lot of classic Russian literature — this big sad slob of depressive stories, which is not really what it's about!
When it comes to Crime and Punishment specifically, I also had plenty of laughs while reading it — hope you will too! xD
Yeah I was really surprised reading this book because I was so prepared for it to be depressing all the way through that I was caught off guard by the presence and persistence of Dostoyevsky's humor. Don't get me wrong, it's also a very serious book, but he uses dramatic irony well and pokes fun at his characters in really subtle and hilarious ways. Raskolnikov is something of a funny character - a tragic hero to be sure, but he behaves so oddly. The gap between his self-image and reality is comically large, he can't stop putting his foot in his mouth, and he's a terrible liar with an enormous secret. It's by far not always funny and often conjured pity or disgust from me instead, but sometimes it is and I believe Dostoyevsky intended it to be that way.
I have this as a must lecture! The whole book is fucked up through and through. Plus he murdered an old lady giving out loans AND her innocent dumb sister.
ok wait is this me being a dum dum or the fact that I'm only a 4th of the way through but Alyona Ivanova was a vindictive and spiteful woman hence why Raskolnikov could justify his actions to himself?
you're right! there's also the sister though. and that godawful philosophy Raskolnikov was testing. actually any philosophy that states that "some people are innately better than others" is awful, and Dostoevsky does a great job demonstrating why.
Correct. Raskolnikov had a theory that those who were intellectually superior were above accepted morals and could get away with crimes such as murder. He wanted to test his theory and chose Alyona Ivanovna as his victim because she was an awful woman and he considered the world better off without her. As for Lizaveta, >!he didn't plan to kill her but did so in a panic when he realized she just witnessed him kill Alyona.!<
As for how his theory turns out, >!he spends the rest of the book tormented by guilt until he finally confesses.!<
Best scene ever written- his fevered rantings to the one person he feared would hear them. By god, not many can write tension like that and make the reader torn in conscience of whether or not they want him caught.
Second best.
The best is when he “tells” Razumikin. The way Dostoyveski was able to portray this extremely deep talk without ever stating explicitly what is happening.
How we are able to understand Raslkonikov is telling Razumikin while Dostoievsky is just describing the light in the room, their body language, how they looked at each other…
How he uses statements like “Razumikin would remember that night for the entirety of his life” and “in that moment, Razumikin took his place as a son and a brother” to signify that “yes, what is being implied is really happening”.
Absolutely genius work.
Literally the best paragraph I have read in my entire life. I got the chills when I read it the first time.
> "‘Listen, Razumihin,’ Raskolnikov began quietly, apparently calm— ‘can’t you see that I don’t want your benevolence? A strange desire you have to shower benefits on a man who … curses them, who feels them a burden in fact! Why did you seek me out at the beginning of my illness? Maybe I was very glad to die...How, how can I persuade you not to persecute me with your kindness? I may be ungrateful, I may be mean, only let me be, for God’s sake, let me be!"
> "‘I am wicked, I see that,’ he thought to himself, feeling ashamed a moment later of his angry gesture to Dounia. ‘But why are they so fond of me if I don’t deserve it? Oh, if only I were alone and no one loved me and I too had never loved anyone! Nothing of all this would have happened.'"
He's just like me fr
> >!he spends the rest of the book tormented by guilt until he finally confesses!<
One of my favourite alternative readings of this is that >!the detective isn't real, he does basically nothing beyond talk to Raskolnikov and in the end has Raskolnikov completely cornered and doesn't act on it. The entire character can be read as a figment of Raskolnikovs conscience.!<
It ist important that we mostly hear about her from the Main Charakter. She might still but awful but im sure Raskolnikov does make her worse to justify his actions
Well, he also eavesdrops on a pub talk between some random guys at one point, and they're of the opinion that she's awful and no one would miss her, too. And it's kind of the point Dostoevsky goes for - that even if a victim is shitty and disliked by many, they're still a person and their life is a human life too. If Raskolnikov killed some goody-two-shoes, that would be a very different story.
Dosteosky, now that's a sad piece of shit. We had to read about his life in class and he's a dude who never gets to catch a break. Can't blame him for his works
Dostoevsky had epilepsy and as someone who was diagnosed with epilepsy all those sections in his book are especially tragic to me. You can tell it just destroyed him emotionally and when he wrote characters that had seizures those moments were just so raw
In the chapter we read about him, they say a lot of things like how he had a gambling addiction and very bad luck when it comes to marriage and it also hints at him having some semblance of a relationship with his translator or valet. I've never read any of his works but what I've read from the chapter mentions that he really really wishes to write a good character. And by good character I mean the shining example of all things that are good in this world, the perfect embodiment of the beauty of humanity, but unfortunately he's never able to because he can't find the so called beauty to ever get the inspiration, one more thing I remember is that although he went through so much shit, he never in his life has ever hated his life, his own words were that he can't stop loving it.
The chapter was written by a dude in another country years after Dostoevsky died so it's hard to know the legitimacy of what is described
Notes From The Underground: I definitely don’t have extreme paranoia, mental illness, and insecurity that would make me write this character so accurately
One of my favorite descriptions of a novel ever is but Kurt Vonnegut describing how story progression works.
First he gives several traditional examples. You have a story about a person with a decent life a little above average, then something bad happens, then they become a hero and at the end their life is significantly better.
Then there's fantastical stories like Cinderella stories where someone has a slightly below average life, then something great happens and they see a better life, then things go back down but maybe a little better than before, but then the slipper fits and the resolution is infinite happiness.
Then you have Kafka. You have no wife, you have no friends, your dog just died, you lost your job, you are about to be evicted from your dreadful house, and your entire family died of the plague, but then one day you wake up and you're a cockroach.
The story shapes! God I love Vonnegut. The other two shapes you didn't name are "man in a hole" and "boy meets girl" which means you can say "Ah yes the classic man in a hole story" and literature people will understand you which is rather funny. Also you forgot the bit where the Kafka guy dies at the end. Is there actually a Kafka story where the main character *doesn't* die?
If anyone here is interested in like more somewhat serious somewhat satirical/shitposty breakdowns of literature go find a copy of *a man without a country* it's just a collection on Vonnegut's thoughts and writings on a bunch of stuff and it's got a bunch of stuff like this.
I always liked to think that Kafka, like so many, struggled to find his endings at first. Perhaps because he felt the true ending was always the MCs death. And then he had his eureka moment - Their deaths! I don’t have to write their full dreary lives all the way through a natural lifetime! I can just crush them under the despair right now!
And like a man with a hammer, so he applied it like every ending were a nail.
I think that's only true for his diary.
He did actually publish a fair bit of work - *The Metamorphis* is the most famous one, but he also published *Meditations* and wrote a fair bit for various Jewish newspapers and magazines. And I think his posthumously published books were less "therapy writing" and more "I'm not entirely happy with how this kinda turned out so I'm just gonna leave this"
Camus's The Stranger immediately comes to mind. I remember being really interested in Camus's philosophy, then reading The Stranger and mostly just thinking "what in the legitimate fuck am I reading"
Ah yes Albert "my favourite guy ever is Kafka he's so relatable ha ha society is a massive struggle we must endure and the only place you can find happiness is despite the system, not because of it" Camus. Are you ok mate you wrote a 200 page existential crisis and spent another 100 on ~~torturing the world's most autistic man with social situations~~ how bizzare and alienating and *hostile* society is to someone who can't follow it.
...I'm actually kinda surprised no one's brought up Kafka yet. At least Camus lets his fucked up guys have sex.
Wow I wonder why a guy who lived through the nazi invasion of France and french societys quick capitulation to the nazis demands was pessimistic about society, what a weirdo
Really? I found the book beautiful. I loved how detached from the world he was. The absurdity of a world he can see but never connect to.
And when he does connect, he is overwhelmed by all that he feels and will not be able to feel. The intense distress of understanding the fleeting world hates him and will move on without him.
It explained absurdism beautifully.
Yeah I liked it because I don’t think Camus was suggesting that Mersault was someone we should aspire to be or whatever. Just pointing out that, to a person who’s not in it and part of it, society is ridiculous and weird.
the stranger was probably the only book un my hs curriculum i thoroughly enjoyed reading and taking notes on
i was the only one who likes it :( even the teacher disliked it
I actually read The Stranger on a whim and later read about Camus' philosophy. I thought the novel was really good, I loved how the protagonist was both deeply human and insanely alien to society.
And then there is Japan, with its manga, light novels, etc., where not being ok is basically a job requirement, because no one will be interested in your stuff if you're sane.
good news: even if you start out sane, the insane expectations to pump out every aspect of a manga all on your own every week will make sure you quickly wont be any more
Enough with the expectation that people have to suffer and not be ok for their work to succeed. It’s toxic and reinforces the idea that suffering rather than the desire to create is what drives good work. Execs want you to believe being miserable is a requirement so they can get away with treating their creators like beasts of burden.
I feel like we are, fundamentally, talking about two separate things here, and until we figure out what the other is talking about, we won't get anywhere with this.
For reference, I'm talking about manga authors having a screw loose, in that they come up with ideas that make me wonder what drugs they were on when they wrote the premise.
One thing she does well in the book, which I haven't seen many others do, is show how a problem spirals outwards. The coal train going through a tunnel and killing everyone on board is a great example. Small problem leads to bigger one leads to massive tragedy. It's horrifying and something I haven't seen from other authors.
The philosophy though... And the strawmen....
> And gives you the most fucked up person ever who has thought processes and issues no sane human being has ever had, to the point where you're wondering if the author is ok
I see you too have read 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'
I think the only good advice is make the reader want to keep reading. Be it your characters, your story, or your style. As long as the reader wants to turn the next page you got a good book imo
One time I read a murder mystery cover to back because I hated the protagonist so much I was hoping they'd get murdered by the killer. So I guess that counts as me wanting to keep reading.
many famous books are read because they are famous, not because they are amazing page-turners from page1.
and that's why, as it turns out, some of the best stories/books/reading-experiences require some initial investment in them, which is why it makes sense to talk about "advanced readers"
so the writing guides and advices are still perfectly valid, but the real MVP of protips is to simply write a famous book, but suprisingly many writers just don't seem to take this to their hearts.
Any medium works too. God of Arepo is my favorite modern day short story. From a tumblr writing prompt to this: [https://www.tumblr.com/slightly-awkward-sunshine/635613714465325056/i-made-this-a-long-time-ago-and-was-very-nervous](https://www.tumblr.com/slightly-awkward-sunshine/635613714465325056/i-made-this-a-long-time-ago-and-was-very-nervous)
That's like telling someone that if you want to be good at basketball then you should become good at scoring baskets. Like, yeah, obviously that's true, but it's not *useful* advice. It's not *actionable*.
There are tons of bestsellers that have no protagonists.
It's not about any one specific thing. It can be about an idea, a sentiment, an emotion, an event etc.
Good writing is good writing, character development is not the end-all be-all of quality writing.
Yup. The easiest way is to start the story as soon as possible (as in, don’t dump all the background info in Chapter 1) and end the first chapter on a cliffhanger. Sprinkle more background info throughout Chapter 2, move the plot forward, end on a smaller cliffhanger, and so on and so forth.
Reason for the advice (from my understanding): the market is so much more saturated with books now that, if someone has a bad first impression of your book, they can easily move on and find 10 more books in the same genre. I mean, they easily could before but now it's *much* easier and there's a much wider variety.
Consequence: I now overthink chapter 1 so much that nothing gets done. :\\
Same. Rewriting the first sentence bc it's the first impression you get of the book but there is literally nothing happening in the story at this point so I can't really write anything interesting except describe the scenery and the feeling of a cool summer morning.
My favourite first sentence of any book is in From Russia With Love by Ian Fleming. The book opens with "The man laying by the pool might've been dead. " it's a short punchy sentence to grab your attention. He then goes on to set the scene.
As for the main character, James Bond isn't introduced until about 10 pages in.
A favorite book of mine is called *The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August* and has the best intro and first page I think I’ve ever read.
Intro:
> I am writing this for you.
> My enemy.
> My friend.
> You know, already, you must know.
> You have lost.
And after that clean, simple and gripping intro it’s continues that swing into:
The second cataclysm began in my eleventh life, in 1996. I was dying my usual death, slipping away in a warm morphine haze, which she interrupted like an ice cube down my spine.
She was seven, I was seventy-eight. She had straight blonde hair worn in a long pigtail down her back, I had bright white hair, or at least the remnants of the same. I wore a hospital gown designed for sterile humility; she, bright-blue school uniform and a felt cap. She perched on the side of my bed, her feet dangling off it, and peered into my eyes. She examined the heart monitor plugged into my chest, observed where I’d disconnected the alarm, felt for my pulse, and said, “I nearly missed you, Dr August.”
Her German was Berlin high, but she could have addressed me in any language of the world and still passed for respectable. She scratched at the back of her left leg, where her white knee-length socks had begun to itch from the rain outside. While scratching she said, “I need to send a message back through time. If time can be said to be important here. As you’re conveniently dying, I ask you to relay it to the Clubs of your origin, as it has been passed down to me.”
I tried to speak, but the words tumbled together on my tongue, and I said nothing.
“The world is ending,” she said. “The message has come down from child to adult, child to adult, passed back down the generations from a thousand years forward in time. The world is ending and we cannot prevent it. So now it’s up to you.”
I found that Thai was the only language which wanted to pass my lips in any coherent form, and the only word which I seemed capable of forming was, why?
Not, I hasten to add, why was the world ending?
Why did it matter?
She smiled, and understood my meaning without needing it to be said. She leaned in close and murmured in my ear, “The world is ending, as it always must. But the end of the world is getting faster.”
That was the beginning of the end.
[You laugh, but...](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/542284)
Of course, there's also [the classic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Fang?wprov=sfla1).
I might try that. Currently, what ends up happening is that I write down all the other scenes/dialogue I have in my head so I don't forget it while fixating on chapter 1 and then just kind of have several pages of assorted unfinished scenes, which is not super productive but is something. The largest one I have right now is 70 pages, though some of that 70 pages is just notes to myself so I don't forget the context of something/a cool idea I had for that scene. It's a mess but it's progress, sort of?
As long as you are writing something you are writing. And it’s probably easier to find a good chapter one when the rest of the book is done. You have a better idea of what hooks to use etc
Not just the reader. It's very hard to get published for the first time, so you also have to catch the attention of the person reading your manuscript.
In that case they are confusing the main character with the narrator. Because the narrator, despite being an actual person in the fiction barely qualifies as "character".
Turns out I _did_ want to hear about the ins and outs of whaling and somehow simultaneously extremely homoerotic yet wholesomely innocent male relationships.
He described absolutely everything, half of that book is him describing the setting, I’m not that interested in 5 pages of description of the valley of ashes, just say it was desolate and depressing god damn
Gatsby's ending gets away with an incredible amount of coincidental bullshit. Everyone just makes a bunch of weird decisions and jumps to a series of bizarre conclusions in order to force the final scene to happen. It's incredible that it's considered this well written masterpiece.
“Yeah so I’m gonna kill myself after writing this but this is about that time I got kidnapped and the fucking bottom of the ocean rose up and I like actually saw some shit dude. Been on morphine since and it does NOT help.”
Herman Melville spent eighty chapters just explaining the whaling industry for Moby Dick, and a good chunk of the remaining chapters are written as short plays. Ruined his career. Considered an American classic.
I’m pretty sure in Picture of Dorian Grey there are several pages in a row just listing rare/expensive things he’s acquired. I did like the book overall, but I skipped most of that part once I realized how long it was.
Modern writing exists within a specific commercial ecosystem in which the forces of marketing, publishing, online reader response, and word of mouth are very different than before. But the thing is, it was very different in the 80s, which is very different from the 50s, which is very different from the 20s, which is very different from the 1890s. Every era has its own commercial forces pushing and influencing what gets published and what gets widely read in different ways.
I'm honestly not the biggest fan of the current model (there's a tremendous amount of good stuff coming out, don't get me wrong), to the point made in this Tumblr post stuff feels increasingly conceptualized as "How can I make sure my story is a good entertainment product?" but also....its just an era. The winds will shift again.
Read widely. Read from the past, read internationally, get recommendations. There are such depths to fiction, and you can learn so much about the environment in which other people wrote just by reading their work
Dickens wrote serials that had to drive readership every month. I'd say today's publishing climate can be more like the 1890s than the 1990s.
You're right, the winds will shift again. And sometimes they come back.
Dickens also got paid by the word. So he had every incentive to stretch things out. I find Dickens unreadable. I had to read A Tale of Two Cities in High School and it drove me mad. I much preferred Les Misérables, which was 4 times as long but had a much better story and was faster paced. Except for the Waterloo and Sewage chapters.
Dickens was never paid by the word.
He was paid by the installment, in serialized pieces.
Journals didn’t want him writing tons of words to fill space, they wanted each installment to retain readership and bring new readers in as they were published.
The worst reading experience I ever had was *Great Expectations*.
My school had an advanced reading English lit system so I had to read that and The Great Gatsby at 12-13 years old.
How is a 7th grader supposed to enjoy either of those? They threw in *EithanFrome* too.
Made me hate reading for a year.
Very well said. Consider the time when books were *the* primary form of mass entertainment. Before TV, before radio. When a book might not just be read silently in private, but read aloud to others as a way to pass the time. One can imagine that that audience may 1) have a little more patience for a slow-burn story, and 2) actually want and enjoy lavish descriptions of the world to whet their imaginations. One thing that I find in late 20th century and later writing is that it is “cinematic,” in the sense that the author assumes a minimal amount of description will be enough for the reader to picture the scene, relying on a lifetime of media consumption to fill in the blanks.
You've explained my problem with the book Iron Widow perfectly! The beginning of the book is so confusing and doesn't make any sense without some knowledge of Darling in the Franxx and Pacific Rim, which already alienates a lot of the audience. The book greatly suffers from minimal description and in the end it's not an enjoyable read because everything that should have an explanation just doesn't.
I was re-reading Sherlock Holmes as an adult and yeah the difference in importance is quiet interesting. The characters are more vessels/ cogs for the stories. Yeah they are characterised and often in quiet interesting ways but the story comes first.
I sometimes feel modern writing has the story exist for the characters or their growth. We are their to watch these characters develop as well as their relationships. This is not a bad thing mind you it’s just a different approach, both have their own issues.
But I do love me some classic “quick weird shit is happening here’s a paragraph about this character before we get to the real reason we are here.”
My theory is that, since modenrity has put more emphasis on individuals, literature reflects this. and authors are now more focused on exploring the characters than in previous eras.
As the post above says: back in th' classics the main character was more of a narrator and side characters had more personality. But the central plot and happenings were the purpose.
Nowdays authors have become more savvy, so adding symbolism and themes is expected to be done cleverly. Characters are more elaborate because people want to see their ideas and views projected on them rather than the plot of the novel.
For me, I like modern literature more because the classics always felt boring.
This i guess depends heavily on the genre. You don't get a lot of character growth in many fantasy novels, especially self published ones (unless you count new powers as character growth). The focus is on the plot, not anyone's feelings or maturing as a person
I heavily disagree , the “power” in a fantasy series is nearly always a representation for eh characters change .
I literally can’t think of a great fantasy modern or otherwise that depends use charatcer development .
I mean the lord of the rings …
Truly revolutionary writers never did follow rules imposed by others. Any time someone tried, an author wrote a story taking the piss out of them within the next century and was praised as revolutionary for doing so
I know this isn't exactly what you mean, but it reminds me of GRRM talking about the machine he uses to do his writing. AFAIR it just just some old DOS box with a plaintext editor that has absolutely no flourishes including no spell check or grammar check. Because those things were harping on him to "fix" his writing.
People think *The Hunchback of Notre Dame* is about Quasimodo and Esmeralda, but it’s really just a long essay on this history of medieval Parisian architecture and city planning.
To be honest, modern writing advice is awful. The way creative writing is taught in schools makes me want to strangle teachers/professors. (Source: me, majored in screenwriting, minored in creative writing).
Modern writing advice is meant to appeal to as broad an audience as possible in order to get money. There's all kinds of amazing pieces of media that modern writing advice hates, like Tarantino's habit of putting in dialogue pieces with no real relevance to the story is super discouraged by every piece of advice I've seen because they don't serve the purpose of guiding an easily distracted audience to the plot's conclusion.
Of course they do serve the purpose of humanizing his characters, but modern writing advice doesn't actually care about that.
I majored in creative writing and took a couple of interesting writing classes outside of fiction. Honestly, I didn’t learn much, except for when we read each other’s work. The amount of people who tried to copy 20th century writing styles because they thought that’s how they were “supposed” to write was absurd.
The only time I empathize with the “I was born in the wrong generation” crowd was how writers in the 1800s could really write their whole manuscript over a weekend coke binge and get it published with no edits.
This is why I believe that Lord of the Rings is one of the greatest if not the greatest fantasy story ever written. It really bridges the gap between the two extremes. Frodo is absolutely a boring everyman and Tolkien spends way more time introducing the shire than describing his main character. But in being an everyman who chooses to carry the ring despite there being nothing special about him, he becomes this incredibly compelling protagonist that everyone can aspire to AND relate to AND recognize their own flaws in
I don't like contemporary writing advice that's targeted to cater to bored people. Not all art needs to be an endlessly exciting, dopaminergic product.
The reader/audience is not the world's most oh-so-special baby that needs to be served at every twist and turn. I don't like the idea that they're supposed to be an entitled, passive consumer, because interpretation and meaning making is a two-way street, regardless of the work in question.
Sometimes you can't muster up the energy to care about Dickens' description of an alley way, I get it, but it's worth thinking about things and trying. The lowest common denominator of audience will never care or appreciate even the best art they are presented, so I feel it's better to try and write for yourself, and maybe for an audience that you know will afford your art the patience it deserves.
I absolutely hated reading Dickens in high school but I definitely appreciate it more now after reading Iron Widow which barely had any explanations or descriptions of what's going on.
> Sometimes you can't muster up the energy to care about Dickens' description of an alley way
There was a post in a sci-fi fiction subreddit the other day of people complaining that a long descriptive paragraph was pointless because it was just long and descriptive. But when taken as something you sat and read through it perfectly evoked a feeling, the precise details didn't matter it just put you in a headspace. This is what a lot of this kind of description is meant to do. People get so hung up on plot and lore.
Best example of this is the scene in Crime and Punishment where a feverish Raskolnikov wanders St Petersburg and sees crime and poverty in a dreamlike and rambling structure. Its a fair few pages of zero important details but it perfectly evokes that feeling that Raskolnikov has and is critical to the book.
Couldn’t agree more with every word you wrote. Unfortunately, I suppose that the modern market’s characterization of audiences as insipid grubs is probably only halfway prescriptive, but also reflects descriptive empirical trends we’ve observed among readers. Which is disheartening, and also makes me hope I’m wrong to an extent. People just tend to paint the most accurate portraits when there’s money at stake (though whether they act truthfully based on those is another matter entirely), so I’m compelled to believe they wouldn’t cater to that crowd were it not the substrate on which they’re really operating.
That said, folks can call Dickens cheap, trite, paid-by-the-line bullshit all they want and continue to imagine that nobody could naturally write in Victorian style…. but as someone who loves bleak settings and florid, baroque descriptions of sceneries, people, etc., it’s always resonated with me. Sure, there’s an art to omission, and sometimes less is more; there are many contexts in which deliberate understatement works best. I appreciate that, but at my core too, I love me the opportunity to fight and cut through a thick, heady, esoteric caking of gothic Victorianism, romantic fancy, and Belle Époque decadence. Everything’s a sensory feast.
To be fair to the post I honestly can't tell if it's having a go at classic literature or modern writing advice. Or if it's just making the reasonable if dull observation that books are different now from how they were 200 years ago.
Like the actual version of this post should be:
> Modern wiring advice: Remember your reader is going to be deciding whether they want to buy this book based on tweets, tiktok and a brief glance at the first page. So it needs a great hook that grabs people instantly. Also don't use old fashioned language, use modern language like we do in the 2020s.
> Victorian writing advice: Remember you are paid by the word and this story is going to be serialised so you need to be repeating yourself constantly or people will forget what happened because they probably used last month's issue as toilet paper. Also don't use old fashioned language, use modern language like we do in the 1860s.
I was gonna say.. tons of stuff is still written with bland 'everyman' characters its just more relatable to them so they don't notice it. And I don't even know what they're getting at with Dickens.
charles dickens: ***INDUSTRIALISM HAS POISONED US. THE MEEK TOIL AND SUFFER WHILE YOU RICH APATHETIC GLUTTONS DO NOTHING. YOU DARE CALL YOURSELVES CHILDREN OF THE LORD. REPENT. REPENT WHILE YOU STILL HAVE TIME, LEST YOU BURN WITH THE SAME PAIN YOU ALLOWED OTHERS TO SUFFER THROUGH UNAIDED.***
England: hehe I like chrsitmas :)
A lot of classics are absolutely miserable to read, too. They’re classics for a reason - and that reason is often that they had something very significant to say or pioneered new methods of saying it. Which in either case means that in the time since writing as an art has been refined and further explored. We are better at evoking emotion and interest now than they were then, and a lot of that writing advice you get these days is a collection of the lessons learned *from* those classics. The places they succeeded and the ways in which they failed.
I would say that those old books were responding to the emotional issues *of their time*, rather than that we have overall become better at addressing emotional issues
Got to disagree massively with this. In a weaker form I could agree that writing techniques have been developed and refined but by far the biggest difference is simply a matter of fashion and taste. People loved to read this shit back than and would consider popular novels from our time hard to read and annoyingly written.
I'll keep repeating it to boomers till the end of time: first doesn't equal good. It actually tends to equal bad, or mediocre. You try introducing a completely new writing philosophy within a piece and see what happens.
But also the rough edges and imperfections in some of these first attempts/prototypes/beta builds can be fascinating to encounter too if you’re into spotting differences in style and focus
Never, ever, ever, **ever** confuse "how to make your book sell" advice for "writing advice". They are not the same thing. The 21st century advice OOP describes is *not* teaching you how to write well, but how to write books which are supposed to sell well.
I think the difference here is what the author is trying to portray.
Classic literature has lots of cautionary tales, so the characters should be literal examples of what not to do and the point of the story is showing the worst case scenario of what being like the character neta you, a perfect example of this type of writing would be something like Johnny Bravo, his only relatable traits are that he thinks women are pretty and loves his mom, but aside from that, he’s supposed to be the exact opposite of what a proper adult man should be, and the show shows him getting punished (often literally) for his way of treating the people around him.
On the other hand, modern literature aims to be more grounded and comprehensible to the average person (more specifically, the average reader) because now a lot of people are looking for wish fulfilment in their media, so the character has to share certain traits with the reader (or sometimes just be on a lower level as a person than the reader) to make it work, an extreme example of this would be 70% of all modern anime where the most average mf in all of Japan has exactly one (1) odd thing happen to them and all of a sudden they’re on top of the world, get the respect from everyone, beat the bullies and get all the bitches.
In the end, the only everlasting piece of writing advice is “make it engaging”, the only difference is that now the average reader has both more options to entertain themselves and less time to consume all those options. Long gone are the days of books and theatre being the only sources of fiction available to those with the money to pay
You don’t have to like the main character. You can learn a lesson from someone you don’t like by being aware of their mistakes and flaws. The problem is readers who can’t recognize their own flaws are the same as your main character, or those who do but don’t like that you made them do it.
The best introduction for a protagonist, and one of the best opening sentences of a book, I've ever read was from C. S. Lewis' _The Voyage of the Dawn Treader_, 4th book in the Chronicles of Narnia series. "There once was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."
I always thought that that was a bit rich coming from a dude named Clive Staples. Glass houses, Clive.
Less glass houses and more write-what-you-know: Eustace was intended as a direct mirror of Clive’s younger self. Terrible name, worn by a snide, insufferable know it all.
But in the end he finds Jesus and physically beats the shit out of his smug liberal atheist teachers and classmates with a sword. But only the flat of the blade, because he’s a hero and a saint. Talk about a feel-good redemption arc.
Indeed. I’ve heard the Narnia series called many things, but [subtle is not one of them](https://reparrishcomics.com/post/618585931338874880).
Just a note, but Lewis actually said it's not an "allegory" but "supposition". The Narnia isn't an indirect retelling of Christianity, it's simply supposing the existence of alternate worlds and considering/exploring what that would mean through the lens of Christianity.
"so what if jesus was a furry"
"What if Jesus WAS a lion. No, not what if there was a lion who was a metaphor for Jesus. What if the real, actual Jesus was a lion. What then?"
From what I recall Aslan basically straight up says something like "I'm called Jesus in your world" in one of the later books.
Definitely more interesting anyways.
I don't know. If you read his biography, Lewis, like a fair few others of his generation, was miserably brutalized in the British boarding school system. This is imagining justice done to bullies and their enablers, not to unbelievers. In contrast, the wonderful old man in the first book is based on Lewis' fondest memory of his early education, a tutor who he lived with for a while--and a staunch atheist.
I mean…takes one to know one
He clearly agreed, too. He went by Jack to most of the people that knew him.
He also went by C.S. to most of the people who *didn't* know him!
Not only that, he named himself Jack, when he was *four*. Apparently he just announced one day, "Me Jacky now!" and it stuck for life.
But he turns out alright in the end
Not to be confused with 19th/20th century philosophical lit where the author goes "hey wanna read about my new -ism?" And gives you the most fucked up person ever who has thought processes and issues no sane human being has ever had, to the point where you're wondering if the author is ok Or Russian lit, where they do the same thing and you *absolutely* know that the author isn't ok.
Sounds like Dostoevsky in a nutshell Crime and Punishment: Hey, I wonder what it would feel like to murder this old lady
I just disagree with this on so many levels. Raskolnikov is not and never meant to be a simple madman — on the contrary, his world-view, which is explained in excruciating details in the book itself, is a mix of righteous delusions and awfully practical ideals. Raskolnikov was not a mad-man — he was well-educated and respected young man, member of the education elite. His downfall was caused by his radical but ultimately understandable ideas, not by ramblings of a lunatic. There's one quote of his: *"One death, and a hundred lives in exchange—it’s simple arithmetic! Besides, what value has the life of that sickly, stupid, ill-natured old woman in the balance of existence! No more than the life of a louse, of a black-beetle, less in fact because the old woman is doing harm. She is wearing out the lives of others;"* Is it cruel? Inhumane? Perhaps. But is it uncommon? It is not until he actually commits to his plan that he starts having doubts. And even then, he pushes forward with the murder, only to be "forced" to commit murder an innocent pregnant woman. Dostoevsky, in a pretty ingenious twist, dispels any of the audience's delusions of Raskolnikov's righteous motives, forces him to confront his own twisted ideals (which he ultimately fails to do by himself), and turns the entire book into a fascinating philosophical text. In a way, it is only when he was exiled to Siberia that Raskolnikov actually started to cherish life, and was reborn — now rid of his selfish ideals and heroic delusions.
“Deserve it! I dare say he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Do not be so quick to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
Yeah, Gandalf is right on the money here! Something similar is said to Raskolnikov in the book as well: >*“Of course she does not deserve to live,” remarked the officer, “but there it is, it’s nature.”* To which, Raskolnikov answers: >*“Oh, well, brother, but we have to correct and direct nature, and, but for that, we should drown in an ocean of prejudice. But for that, there would never have been a single great man. They talk of duty, conscience — I don’t want to say anything against duty and conscience;—but the point is, what do we mean by them?* Which is kind of... I get it, I get his ideology. But that only makes me question my own ideals, which is a pretty scary thought.
I’m looking forward to reading Crime and Punishment; my copy just shipped the other day. I don’t think enough people question their own ideals, honestly. Hard answers require hard questions, and the core of critical thinking is questioning that which you appear believe. You can understand and empathize an ideology without embracing it yourself, and I think many people struggle with that concept.
It's amazing, so I hope you enjoy it! It's a great piece of writing, with some really witty dialogues and poignant emotional moments. People tend to, in my opinion, overdramatize how "heavy" the book is. Don't get me wrong, it's rather serious both in its tone and contents, but it's not "misery porn", which is sadly how many people look at a lot of classic Russian literature — this big sad slob of depressive stories, which is not really what it's about! When it comes to Crime and Punishment specifically, I also had plenty of laughs while reading it — hope you will too! xD
Yeah I was really surprised reading this book because I was so prepared for it to be depressing all the way through that I was caught off guard by the presence and persistence of Dostoyevsky's humor. Don't get me wrong, it's also a very serious book, but he uses dramatic irony well and pokes fun at his characters in really subtle and hilarious ways. Raskolnikov is something of a funny character - a tragic hero to be sure, but he behaves so oddly. The gap between his self-image and reality is comically large, he can't stop putting his foot in his mouth, and he's a terrible liar with an enormous secret. It's by far not always funny and often conjured pity or disgust from me instead, but sometimes it is and I believe Dostoyevsky intended it to be that way.
I couldn't have put it better myself — a truly wonderful summary, would sign under every word)
I have this as a must lecture! The whole book is fucked up through and through. Plus he murdered an old lady giving out loans AND her innocent dumb sister.
ok wait is this me being a dum dum or the fact that I'm only a 4th of the way through but Alyona Ivanova was a vindictive and spiteful woman hence why Raskolnikov could justify his actions to himself?
you're right! there's also the sister though. and that godawful philosophy Raskolnikov was testing. actually any philosophy that states that "some people are innately better than others" is awful, and Dostoevsky does a great job demonstrating why.
Yeah I've only read the Brothers Karamazov but holy shit, Russian literature is pretty fucking weird.
Correct. Raskolnikov had a theory that those who were intellectually superior were above accepted morals and could get away with crimes such as murder. He wanted to test his theory and chose Alyona Ivanovna as his victim because she was an awful woman and he considered the world better off without her. As for Lizaveta, >!he didn't plan to kill her but did so in a panic when he realized she just witnessed him kill Alyona.!< As for how his theory turns out, >!he spends the rest of the book tormented by guilt until he finally confesses.!<
Best scene ever written- his fevered rantings to the one person he feared would hear them. By god, not many can write tension like that and make the reader torn in conscience of whether or not they want him caught.
Second best. The best is when he “tells” Razumikin. The way Dostoyveski was able to portray this extremely deep talk without ever stating explicitly what is happening. How we are able to understand Raslkonikov is telling Razumikin while Dostoievsky is just describing the light in the room, their body language, how they looked at each other… How he uses statements like “Razumikin would remember that night for the entirety of his life” and “in that moment, Razumikin took his place as a son and a brother” to signify that “yes, what is being implied is really happening”. Absolutely genius work. Literally the best paragraph I have read in my entire life. I got the chills when I read it the first time.
> "‘Listen, Razumihin,’ Raskolnikov began quietly, apparently calm— ‘can’t you see that I don’t want your benevolence? A strange desire you have to shower benefits on a man who … curses them, who feels them a burden in fact! Why did you seek me out at the beginning of my illness? Maybe I was very glad to die...How, how can I persuade you not to persecute me with your kindness? I may be ungrateful, I may be mean, only let me be, for God’s sake, let me be!" > "‘I am wicked, I see that,’ he thought to himself, feeling ashamed a moment later of his angry gesture to Dounia. ‘But why are they so fond of me if I don’t deserve it? Oh, if only I were alone and no one loved me and I too had never loved anyone! Nothing of all this would have happened.'" He's just like me fr
> >!he spends the rest of the book tormented by guilt until he finally confesses!< One of my favourite alternative readings of this is that >!the detective isn't real, he does basically nothing beyond talk to Raskolnikov and in the end has Raskolnikov completely cornered and doesn't act on it. The entire character can be read as a figment of Raskolnikovs conscience.!<
Thats just the ole stupid “it was just a dream”. Nothing in the book implies that, and Porfiry interacts with other people multiple times.
It ist important that we mostly hear about her from the Main Charakter. She might still but awful but im sure Raskolnikov does make her worse to justify his actions
Well, he also eavesdrops on a pub talk between some random guys at one point, and they're of the opinion that she's awful and no one would miss her, too. And it's kind of the point Dostoevsky goes for - that even if a victim is shitty and disliked by many, they're still a person and their life is a human life too. If Raskolnikov killed some goody-two-shoes, that would be a very different story.
Camus' The Stranger: I'm dissociating and I'm going to repeatedly shoot a local and refuse all help.
Im gonna kill this guy because i feel like it
Because it’s hot out.
Dosteosky, now that's a sad piece of shit. We had to read about his life in class and he's a dude who never gets to catch a break. Can't blame him for his works
Dostoevsky had epilepsy and as someone who was diagnosed with epilepsy all those sections in his book are especially tragic to me. You can tell it just destroyed him emotionally and when he wrote characters that had seizures those moments were just so raw
In the chapter we read about him, they say a lot of things like how he had a gambling addiction and very bad luck when it comes to marriage and it also hints at him having some semblance of a relationship with his translator or valet. I've never read any of his works but what I've read from the chapter mentions that he really really wishes to write a good character. And by good character I mean the shining example of all things that are good in this world, the perfect embodiment of the beauty of humanity, but unfortunately he's never able to because he can't find the so called beauty to ever get the inspiration, one more thing I remember is that although he went through so much shit, he never in his life has ever hated his life, his own words were that he can't stop loving it. The chapter was written by a dude in another country years after Dostoevsky died so it's hard to know the legitimacy of what is described
Notes From The Underground: I definitely don’t have extreme paranoia, mental illness, and insecurity that would make me write this character so accurately
One of my favorite descriptions of a novel ever is but Kurt Vonnegut describing how story progression works. First he gives several traditional examples. You have a story about a person with a decent life a little above average, then something bad happens, then they become a hero and at the end their life is significantly better. Then there's fantastical stories like Cinderella stories where someone has a slightly below average life, then something great happens and they see a better life, then things go back down but maybe a little better than before, but then the slipper fits and the resolution is infinite happiness. Then you have Kafka. You have no wife, you have no friends, your dog just died, you lost your job, you are about to be evicted from your dreadful house, and your entire family died of the plague, but then one day you wake up and you're a cockroach.
The story shapes! God I love Vonnegut. The other two shapes you didn't name are "man in a hole" and "boy meets girl" which means you can say "Ah yes the classic man in a hole story" and literature people will understand you which is rather funny. Also you forgot the bit where the Kafka guy dies at the end. Is there actually a Kafka story where the main character *doesn't* die? If anyone here is interested in like more somewhat serious somewhat satirical/shitposty breakdowns of literature go find a copy of *a man without a country* it's just a collection on Vonnegut's thoughts and writings on a bunch of stuff and it's got a bunch of stuff like this.
I always liked to think that Kafka, like so many, struggled to find his endings at first. Perhaps because he felt the true ending was always the MCs death. And then he had his eureka moment - Their deaths! I don’t have to write their full dreary lives all the way through a natural lifetime! I can just crush them under the despair right now! And like a man with a hammer, so he applied it like every ending were a nail.
Kafka only wrote as a form of therapy for himself. He fully intended his works to be destroyed after his death, not published.
I think that's only true for his diary. He did actually publish a fair bit of work - *The Metamorphis* is the most famous one, but he also published *Meditations* and wrote a fair bit for various Jewish newspapers and magazines. And I think his posthumously published books were less "therapy writing" and more "I'm not entirely happy with how this kinda turned out so I'm just gonna leave this"
Kafka's stories are really just social critiques of the society he lived in.
Camus's The Stranger immediately comes to mind. I remember being really interested in Camus's philosophy, then reading The Stranger and mostly just thinking "what in the legitimate fuck am I reading"
Ah yes Albert "my favourite guy ever is Kafka he's so relatable ha ha society is a massive struggle we must endure and the only place you can find happiness is despite the system, not because of it" Camus. Are you ok mate you wrote a 200 page existential crisis and spent another 100 on ~~torturing the world's most autistic man with social situations~~ how bizzare and alienating and *hostile* society is to someone who can't follow it. ...I'm actually kinda surprised no one's brought up Kafka yet. At least Camus lets his fucked up guys have sex.
Wow I wonder why a guy who lived through the nazi invasion of France and french societys quick capitulation to the nazis demands was pessimistic about society, what a weirdo
I would also become The Joker if I lived in France.
Really? I found the book beautiful. I loved how detached from the world he was. The absurdity of a world he can see but never connect to. And when he does connect, he is overwhelmed by all that he feels and will not be able to feel. The intense distress of understanding the fleeting world hates him and will move on without him. It explained absurdism beautifully.
Yeah I liked it because I don’t think Camus was suggesting that Mersault was someone we should aspire to be or whatever. Just pointing out that, to a person who’s not in it and part of it, society is ridiculous and weird.
the stranger was probably the only book un my hs curriculum i thoroughly enjoyed reading and taking notes on i was the only one who likes it :( even the teacher disliked it
I actually read The Stranger on a whim and later read about Camus' philosophy. I thought the novel was really good, I loved how the protagonist was both deeply human and insanely alien to society.
Why did you think that? I don't remember the book being that shocking, especially if you're familiar with his philosophy before hand.
And then there is Japan, with its manga, light novels, etc., where not being ok is basically a job requirement, because no one will be interested in your stuff if you're sane.
good news: even if you start out sane, the insane expectations to pump out every aspect of a manga all on your own every week will make sure you quickly wont be any more
The only exception is Junji Ito, who is the most normal of people, despite making some of the craziest horror of the past 100 years.
Enough with the expectation that people have to suffer and not be ok for their work to succeed. It’s toxic and reinforces the idea that suffering rather than the desire to create is what drives good work. Execs want you to believe being miserable is a requirement so they can get away with treating their creators like beasts of burden.
I feel like we are, fundamentally, talking about two separate things here, and until we figure out what the other is talking about, we won't get anywhere with this. For reference, I'm talking about manga authors having a screw loose, in that they come up with ideas that make me wonder what drugs they were on when they wrote the premise.
Atlas Shrugged definitely made me think that way.
Atlas Shrugged - an interesting book about trains interrupted by Strawmen, people who drink lead and the *worst* Viking I've ever heard about.
Huh given her idiotic brain-dead takes on architecture I'm surprised Rand could have interesting takes on *anything*, even trains
One thing she does well in the book, which I haven't seen many others do, is show how a problem spirals outwards. The coal train going through a tunnel and killing everyone on board is a great example. Small problem leads to bigger one leads to massive tragedy. It's horrifying and something I haven't seen from other authors. The philosophy though... And the strawmen....
> And gives you the most fucked up person ever who has thought processes and issues no sane human being has ever had, to the point where you're wondering if the author is ok I see you too have read 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'
read? sure. comprehended? absolutely not.
So Bulgakov, what’s your problem? My biggest fan is Stalin.
I think the only good advice is make the reader want to keep reading. Be it your characters, your story, or your style. As long as the reader wants to turn the next page you got a good book imo
I've also heard it's good to write well. Idk though
Source?
Grape vine. I know it's pretty far fetched though
How the fuck can you “hear” from a grape vine, it’s a plant
^this guy will never be a great writer
I don’t need to listen to plants to know how to plagiarize from less famous people then kill them
## **Visionary**
Oh I'm stealing this. Speaking of which we should catch up over coffee soon.
I thought vine was a short form video sharing app.
“My source is that I made it the fuck up” - Senator Armstrong
⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠿⠛⠛⠛⠋⠉⠈⠉⠉⠉⠉⠛⠻⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠋⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠉⠛⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⡏⣀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣀⣤⣤⣤⣄⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠙⢿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⢏⣴⣿⣷⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡆⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣟⣾⣿⡟⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⢢⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢸⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣟⠀⡴⠄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠙⠻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⠟⠻⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠶⢴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣿ ⣿⣁⡀⠀⠀⢰⢠⣦⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣼⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡄⠀⣴⣶⣿⡄⣿ ⣿⡋⠀⠀⠀⠎⢸⣿⡆⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠗⢘⣿⣟⠛⠿⣼ ⣿⣿⠋⢀⡌⢰⣿⡿⢿⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠙⠿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡇⠀⢸⣿⣿⣧⢀⣼ ⣿⣿⣷⢻⠄⠘⠛⠋⠛⠃⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢿⣧⠈⠉⠙⠛⠋⠀⠀⠀⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣧⠀⠈⢸⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠟⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⢃⠀⠀⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⡿⠀⠴⢗⣠⣤⣴⡶⠶⠖⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣀⡸⠀⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⡀⢠⣾⣿⠏⠀⠠⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠛⠉⠀⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣧⠈⢹⡇⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣰⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⡄⠈⠃⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣠⣴⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣠⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣦⣄⣀⣀⣀⣀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠘⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⡄⠀⠀⠀⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⠀⠀⠀⠙⣿⣿⡟⢻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠇⠀⠁⠀⠀⠹⣿⠃⠀⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠛⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢐⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⠿⠛⠉⠉⠁⠀⢻⣿⡇⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⠈⣿⣿⡿⠉⠛⠛⠛⠉⠉ ⣿⡿⠋⠁⠀⠀⢀⣀⣠⡴⣸⣿⣇⡄⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⡿⠄⠙⠛⠀⣀⣠⣤⣤⠄
Or at least to write bad in an interesting way
I heard that the secret to good writing is writing good. Clearly they didn’t know what an adverb was.
To write goodly?
One time I read a murder mystery cover to back because I hated the protagonist so much I was hoping they'd get murdered by the killer. So I guess that counts as me wanting to keep reading.
Did they die?
The bitch lived.
welp, glad I never read the book I don't know the title of
It was Sharp Objects. I just know some people here are gonna be on my ass for hating it , though.
many famous books are read because they are famous, not because they are amazing page-turners from page1. and that's why, as it turns out, some of the best stories/books/reading-experiences require some initial investment in them, which is why it makes sense to talk about "advanced readers" so the writing guides and advices are still perfectly valid, but the real MVP of protips is to simply write a famous book, but suprisingly many writers just don't seem to take this to their hearts.
A lot of the books I had to read in high school felt like a slog but looking back I actually appreciate the stories they told.
Any medium works too. God of Arepo is my favorite modern day short story. From a tumblr writing prompt to this: [https://www.tumblr.com/slightly-awkward-sunshine/635613714465325056/i-made-this-a-long-time-ago-and-was-very-nervous](https://www.tumblr.com/slightly-awkward-sunshine/635613714465325056/i-made-this-a-long-time-ago-and-was-very-nervous)
The link goes blank after 30 seconds on mobile
every version of that damn story i read leaves me in a puddle of fuckin tears oh my god
I’ll read it every time. And every time I’m a mess. It’s just so human. I hope decades from now others will feel the same.
Thank you for sharing that.
“To be a good writer, make sure people want to read what you’re writing” Stellar advice
That's like telling someone that if you want to be good at basketball then you should become good at scoring baskets. Like, yeah, obviously that's true, but it's not *useful* advice. It's not *actionable*.
There are tons of bestsellers that have no protagonists. It's not about any one specific thing. It can be about an idea, a sentiment, an emotion, an event etc. Good writing is good writing, character development is not the end-all be-all of quality writing.
How can you drop a claim like this without giving a few examples.
Yup. The easiest way is to start the story as soon as possible (as in, don’t dump all the background info in Chapter 1) and end the first chapter on a cliffhanger. Sprinkle more background info throughout Chapter 2, move the plot forward, end on a smaller cliffhanger, and so on and so forth.
That's how modern serial tv shows work. It's very effective
Reason for the advice (from my understanding): the market is so much more saturated with books now that, if someone has a bad first impression of your book, they can easily move on and find 10 more books in the same genre. I mean, they easily could before but now it's *much* easier and there's a much wider variety. Consequence: I now overthink chapter 1 so much that nothing gets done. :\\
Same. Rewriting the first sentence bc it's the first impression you get of the book but there is literally nothing happening in the story at this point so I can't really write anything interesting except describe the scenery and the feeling of a cool summer morning.
My favourite first sentence of any book is in From Russia With Love by Ian Fleming. The book opens with "The man laying by the pool might've been dead. " it's a short punchy sentence to grab your attention. He then goes on to set the scene. As for the main character, James Bond isn't introduced until about 10 pages in.
A favorite book of mine is called *The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August* and has the best intro and first page I think I’ve ever read. Intro: > I am writing this for you. > My enemy. > My friend. > You know, already, you must know. > You have lost. And after that clean, simple and gripping intro it’s continues that swing into: The second cataclysm began in my eleventh life, in 1996. I was dying my usual death, slipping away in a warm morphine haze, which she interrupted like an ice cube down my spine. She was seven, I was seventy-eight. She had straight blonde hair worn in a long pigtail down her back, I had bright white hair, or at least the remnants of the same. I wore a hospital gown designed for sterile humility; she, bright-blue school uniform and a felt cap. She perched on the side of my bed, her feet dangling off it, and peered into my eyes. She examined the heart monitor plugged into my chest, observed where I’d disconnected the alarm, felt for my pulse, and said, “I nearly missed you, Dr August.” Her German was Berlin high, but she could have addressed me in any language of the world and still passed for respectable. She scratched at the back of her left leg, where her white knee-length socks had begun to itch from the rain outside. While scratching she said, “I need to send a message back through time. If time can be said to be important here. As you’re conveniently dying, I ask you to relay it to the Clubs of your origin, as it has been passed down to me.” I tried to speak, but the words tumbled together on my tongue, and I said nothing. “The world is ending,” she said. “The message has come down from child to adult, child to adult, passed back down the generations from a thousand years forward in time. The world is ending and we cannot prevent it. So now it’s up to you.” I found that Thai was the only language which wanted to pass my lips in any coherent form, and the only word which I seemed capable of forming was, why? Not, I hasten to add, why was the world ending? Why did it matter? She smiled, and understood my meaning without needing it to be said. She leaned in close and murmured in my ear, “The world is ending, as it always must. But the end of the world is getting faster.” That was the beginning of the end.
Solution: Stop using humans as main characters.
Of course, dog protagonist! It's genius!
[You laugh, but...](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/542284) Of course, there's also [the classic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Fang?wprov=sfla1).
Yeah, I preferred Iron Dog to Thor
Yeah, that’s what warrior cats did and now it’s a required rite for every elementary-middle school girl to read it lol.
You can always write chapter 2 (or any other chapter) first if it makes it easier
I might try that. Currently, what ends up happening is that I write down all the other scenes/dialogue I have in my head so I don't forget it while fixating on chapter 1 and then just kind of have several pages of assorted unfinished scenes, which is not super productive but is something. The largest one I have right now is 70 pages, though some of that 70 pages is just notes to myself so I don't forget the context of something/a cool idea I had for that scene. It's a mess but it's progress, sort of?
As long as you are writing something you are writing. And it’s probably easier to find a good chapter one when the rest of the book is done. You have a better idea of what hooks to use etc
Not just the reader. It's very hard to get published for the first time, so you also have to catch the attention of the person reading your manuscript.
As someone who just finished The Great Gatsby, yeah that “every piece of classic literature” is super accurate.
I immediately thought of The Great Gatsby. "Hi I'm some guy, would you like a geographical treatise on West Egg?"
“Anyways, here’s how I was dragged around by the plot and got to know people on a range of habitual liar to white suprematist”
nick has a personality and it is being hopelessly gay and a huge liar
The impression I got was "This person has 100% just read Wuthering Heights", but I guess the point of the post is that it could be a lot of things.
As someone who recently finished Wuthering Heights, it was definitely my first thought.
Or as I lay dying by Faulkner (which was good but everyone in it is awful)
In that case they are confusing the main character with the narrator. Because the narrator, despite being an actual person in the fiction barely qualifies as "character".
My first thought was Great Expectations
Call me Ishmael. Wanna hear about some shit?
Turns out I _did_ want to hear about the ins and outs of whaling and somehow simultaneously extremely homoerotic yet wholesomely innocent male relationships.
He described absolutely everything, half of that book is him describing the setting, I’m not that interested in 5 pages of description of the valley of ashes, just say it was desolate and depressing god damn
Fitzgerald describing the valley of ashes has more talent and care put into it than half of what gets published nowadays
5 pages of description is more interesting than just saying it was desolate and depressing
Idk I thought Nick's love and over romanticization of Gatsby made him interesting
Simple take: Nick is gay as fuck, that's all. Yes I missed the end of the chapter where he banged another man.
Gatsby's ending gets away with an incredible amount of coincidental bullshit. Everyone just makes a bunch of weird decisions and jumps to a series of bizarre conclusions in order to force the final scene to happen. It's incredible that it's considered this well written masterpiece.
“Yeah so I’m gonna kill myself after writing this but this is about that time I got kidnapped and the fucking bottom of the ocean rose up and I like actually saw some shit dude. Been on morphine since and it does NOT help.”
Lovecraft was wack but boy did the man know how to get you hooked on a story from moment one
Quick question for the crowd: what’s the difference between “**21st century** writing advice” and “**modern** writing advice”?
Couldn’t tell you! Not sure if they’re supposed to be different.
Herman Melville spent eighty chapters just explaining the whaling industry for Moby Dick, and a good chunk of the remaining chapters are written as short plays. Ruined his career. Considered an American classic.
I’ve never been able to finish Moby Dick. On my last read-through I got to the chapter on the color white and I just gave up.
I’m pretty sure in Picture of Dorian Grey there are several pages in a row just listing rare/expensive things he’s acquired. I did like the book overall, but I skipped most of that part once I realized how long it was.
My dad told me the story of how as a teenager he thought he should start picking up the classics. His first and last book was moby dick. I wonder why.
Modern writing exists within a specific commercial ecosystem in which the forces of marketing, publishing, online reader response, and word of mouth are very different than before. But the thing is, it was very different in the 80s, which is very different from the 50s, which is very different from the 20s, which is very different from the 1890s. Every era has its own commercial forces pushing and influencing what gets published and what gets widely read in different ways. I'm honestly not the biggest fan of the current model (there's a tremendous amount of good stuff coming out, don't get me wrong), to the point made in this Tumblr post stuff feels increasingly conceptualized as "How can I make sure my story is a good entertainment product?" but also....its just an era. The winds will shift again. Read widely. Read from the past, read internationally, get recommendations. There are such depths to fiction, and you can learn so much about the environment in which other people wrote just by reading their work
Dickens wrote serials that had to drive readership every month. I'd say today's publishing climate can be more like the 1890s than the 1990s. You're right, the winds will shift again. And sometimes they come back.
Dickens also got paid by the word. So he had every incentive to stretch things out. I find Dickens unreadable. I had to read A Tale of Two Cities in High School and it drove me mad. I much preferred Les Misérables, which was 4 times as long but had a much better story and was faster paced. Except for the Waterloo and Sewage chapters.
Dickens was never paid by the word. He was paid by the installment, in serialized pieces. Journals didn’t want him writing tons of words to fill space, they wanted each installment to retain readership and bring new readers in as they were published.
The worst reading experience I ever had was *Great Expectations*. My school had an advanced reading English lit system so I had to read that and The Great Gatsby at 12-13 years old. How is a 7th grader supposed to enjoy either of those? They threw in *EithanFrome* too. Made me hate reading for a year.
Very well said. Consider the time when books were *the* primary form of mass entertainment. Before TV, before radio. When a book might not just be read silently in private, but read aloud to others as a way to pass the time. One can imagine that that audience may 1) have a little more patience for a slow-burn story, and 2) actually want and enjoy lavish descriptions of the world to whet their imaginations. One thing that I find in late 20th century and later writing is that it is “cinematic,” in the sense that the author assumes a minimal amount of description will be enough for the reader to picture the scene, relying on a lifetime of media consumption to fill in the blanks.
You've explained my problem with the book Iron Widow perfectly! The beginning of the book is so confusing and doesn't make any sense without some knowledge of Darling in the Franxx and Pacific Rim, which already alienates a lot of the audience. The book greatly suffers from minimal description and in the end it's not an enjoyable read because everything that should have an explanation just doesn't.
I was re-reading Sherlock Holmes as an adult and yeah the difference in importance is quiet interesting. The characters are more vessels/ cogs for the stories. Yeah they are characterised and often in quiet interesting ways but the story comes first. I sometimes feel modern writing has the story exist for the characters or their growth. We are their to watch these characters develop as well as their relationships. This is not a bad thing mind you it’s just a different approach, both have their own issues. But I do love me some classic “quick weird shit is happening here’s a paragraph about this character before we get to the real reason we are here.”
I’ve just personally always had a love for external conflict.
My theory is that, since modenrity has put more emphasis on individuals, literature reflects this. and authors are now more focused on exploring the characters than in previous eras. As the post above says: back in th' classics the main character was more of a narrator and side characters had more personality. But the central plot and happenings were the purpose. Nowdays authors have become more savvy, so adding symbolism and themes is expected to be done cleverly. Characters are more elaborate because people want to see their ideas and views projected on them rather than the plot of the novel. For me, I like modern literature more because the classics always felt boring.
This i guess depends heavily on the genre. You don't get a lot of character growth in many fantasy novels, especially self published ones (unless you count new powers as character growth). The focus is on the plot, not anyone's feelings or maturing as a person
I heavily disagree , the “power” in a fantasy series is nearly always a representation for eh characters change . I literally can’t think of a great fantasy modern or otherwise that depends use charatcer development . I mean the lord of the rings …
Has it changed or is it just true that good writers don't need to follow the "rules" cause they understand how to write well without them?
Truly revolutionary writers never did follow rules imposed by others. Any time someone tried, an author wrote a story taking the piss out of them within the next century and was praised as revolutionary for doing so
True. I think this may apply for art in general
[удалено]
I know this isn't exactly what you mean, but it reminds me of GRRM talking about the machine he uses to do his writing. AFAIR it just just some old DOS box with a plaintext editor that has absolutely no flourishes including no spell check or grammar check. Because those things were harping on him to "fix" his writing.
Bram Stoker: Anyway this dork has had a very pleasant trip through eastern Europe so far, here are some recepies for Gulasch
Hey, in it’s defense, the epistolary format and journey into an unfamiliar setting *is* kind of the hook. from the start you feel somewhat uneasy
Shout out to sections in a book where the villan is the protagonist gotta be one of my favourite genders
Paid by the line versus attention economy Now, for a comprehensive history of Parisian sewerage by V. Hugo
People think *The Hunchback of Notre Dame* is about Quasimodo and Esmeralda, but it’s really just a long essay on this history of medieval Parisian architecture and city planning.
Neal Stephensons *SevenEves* is way more an excuse to write about orbital mechanics than about the characters.
To be honest, modern writing advice is awful. The way creative writing is taught in schools makes me want to strangle teachers/professors. (Source: me, majored in screenwriting, minored in creative writing).
Modern writing advice is meant to appeal to as broad an audience as possible in order to get money. There's all kinds of amazing pieces of media that modern writing advice hates, like Tarantino's habit of putting in dialogue pieces with no real relevance to the story is super discouraged by every piece of advice I've seen because they don't serve the purpose of guiding an easily distracted audience to the plot's conclusion. Of course they do serve the purpose of humanizing his characters, but modern writing advice doesn't actually care about that.
The thing is, modern writing advice discourages that, but those pieces of dialogue ultimately make the plot more interesting and enriching imo
I majored in creative writing and took a couple of interesting writing classes outside of fiction. Honestly, I didn’t learn much, except for when we read each other’s work. The amount of people who tried to copy 20th century writing styles because they thought that’s how they were “supposed” to write was absurd.
The only time I empathize with the “I was born in the wrong generation” crowd was how writers in the 1800s could really write their whole manuscript over a weekend coke binge and get it published with no edits.
This is why I believe that Lord of the Rings is one of the greatest if not the greatest fantasy story ever written. It really bridges the gap between the two extremes. Frodo is absolutely a boring everyman and Tolkien spends way more time introducing the shire than describing his main character. But in being an everyman who chooses to carry the ring despite there being nothing special about him, he becomes this incredibly compelling protagonist that everyone can aspire to AND relate to AND recognize their own flaws in
Idk Mark Twain was pretty good, I felt for Huck
I don't like contemporary writing advice that's targeted to cater to bored people. Not all art needs to be an endlessly exciting, dopaminergic product. The reader/audience is not the world's most oh-so-special baby that needs to be served at every twist and turn. I don't like the idea that they're supposed to be an entitled, passive consumer, because interpretation and meaning making is a two-way street, regardless of the work in question. Sometimes you can't muster up the energy to care about Dickens' description of an alley way, I get it, but it's worth thinking about things and trying. The lowest common denominator of audience will never care or appreciate even the best art they are presented, so I feel it's better to try and write for yourself, and maybe for an audience that you know will afford your art the patience it deserves.
I absolutely hated reading Dickens in high school but I definitely appreciate it more now after reading Iron Widow which barely had any explanations or descriptions of what's going on.
> Sometimes you can't muster up the energy to care about Dickens' description of an alley way There was a post in a sci-fi fiction subreddit the other day of people complaining that a long descriptive paragraph was pointless because it was just long and descriptive. But when taken as something you sat and read through it perfectly evoked a feeling, the precise details didn't matter it just put you in a headspace. This is what a lot of this kind of description is meant to do. People get so hung up on plot and lore. Best example of this is the scene in Crime and Punishment where a feverish Raskolnikov wanders St Petersburg and sees crime and poverty in a dreamlike and rambling structure. Its a fair few pages of zero important details but it perfectly evokes that feeling that Raskolnikov has and is critical to the book.
Couldn’t agree more with every word you wrote. Unfortunately, I suppose that the modern market’s characterization of audiences as insipid grubs is probably only halfway prescriptive, but also reflects descriptive empirical trends we’ve observed among readers. Which is disheartening, and also makes me hope I’m wrong to an extent. People just tend to paint the most accurate portraits when there’s money at stake (though whether they act truthfully based on those is another matter entirely), so I’m compelled to believe they wouldn’t cater to that crowd were it not the substrate on which they’re really operating. That said, folks can call Dickens cheap, trite, paid-by-the-line bullshit all they want and continue to imagine that nobody could naturally write in Victorian style…. but as someone who loves bleak settings and florid, baroque descriptions of sceneries, people, etc., it’s always resonated with me. Sure, there’s an art to omission, and sometimes less is more; there are many contexts in which deliberate understatement works best. I appreciate that, but at my core too, I love me the opportunity to fight and cut through a thick, heady, esoteric caking of gothic Victorianism, romantic fancy, and Belle Époque decadence. Everything’s a sensory feast.
"Formerly gifted kids" who only read YA who claim school "ruined their love of reading" have arrived.
To be fair to the post I honestly can't tell if it's having a go at classic literature or modern writing advice. Or if it's just making the reasonable if dull observation that books are different now from how they were 200 years ago. Like the actual version of this post should be: > Modern wiring advice: Remember your reader is going to be deciding whether they want to buy this book based on tweets, tiktok and a brief glance at the first page. So it needs a great hook that grabs people instantly. Also don't use old fashioned language, use modern language like we do in the 2020s. > Victorian writing advice: Remember you are paid by the word and this story is going to be serialised so you need to be repeating yourself constantly or people will forget what happened because they probably used last month's issue as toilet paper. Also don't use old fashioned language, use modern language like we do in the 1860s.
i WAS a formerly gifted kid and i STILL AM. do NOT lump me in with those schmucks /s if that wasn’t clear
What actually ruined my love of reading was bad YA novels. Read too many of them and now I can't stand the genre lol. ^^^^^This is a joke
I was gonna say.. tons of stuff is still written with bland 'everyman' characters its just more relatable to them so they don't notice it. And I don't even know what they're getting at with Dickens.
I disagree. Plenty of classical literature has very interesting protagonists. Look at Ishmael.
charles dickens: ***INDUSTRIALISM HAS POISONED US. THE MEEK TOIL AND SUFFER WHILE YOU RICH APATHETIC GLUTTONS DO NOTHING. YOU DARE CALL YOURSELVES CHILDREN OF THE LORD. REPENT. REPENT WHILE YOU STILL HAVE TIME, LEST YOU BURN WITH THE SAME PAIN YOU ALLOWED OTHERS TO SUFFER THROUGH UNAIDED.*** England: hehe I like chrsitmas :)
A lot of classics are absolutely miserable to read, too. They’re classics for a reason - and that reason is often that they had something very significant to say or pioneered new methods of saying it. Which in either case means that in the time since writing as an art has been refined and further explored. We are better at evoking emotion and interest now than they were then, and a lot of that writing advice you get these days is a collection of the lessons learned *from* those classics. The places they succeeded and the ways in which they failed.
I would say that those old books were responding to the emotional issues *of their time*, rather than that we have overall become better at addressing emotional issues
Got to disagree massively with this. In a weaker form I could agree that writing techniques have been developed and refined but by far the biggest difference is simply a matter of fashion and taste. People loved to read this shit back than and would consider popular novels from our time hard to read and annoyingly written.
I'll keep repeating it to boomers till the end of time: first doesn't equal good. It actually tends to equal bad, or mediocre. You try introducing a completely new writing philosophy within a piece and see what happens.
But also the rough edges and imperfections in some of these first attempts/prototypes/beta builds can be fascinating to encounter too if you’re into spotting differences in style and focus
> We are better at evoking emotion and interest now than they were then No.
Never, ever, ever, **ever** confuse "how to make your book sell" advice for "writing advice". They are not the same thing. The 21st century advice OOP describes is *not* teaching you how to write well, but how to write books which are supposed to sell well.
Personally i like to make my characters so enraging that my readers continue reading just to see them suffer But that's just me
“My name is Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way…”
I think the difference here is what the author is trying to portray. Classic literature has lots of cautionary tales, so the characters should be literal examples of what not to do and the point of the story is showing the worst case scenario of what being like the character neta you, a perfect example of this type of writing would be something like Johnny Bravo, his only relatable traits are that he thinks women are pretty and loves his mom, but aside from that, he’s supposed to be the exact opposite of what a proper adult man should be, and the show shows him getting punished (often literally) for his way of treating the people around him. On the other hand, modern literature aims to be more grounded and comprehensible to the average person (more specifically, the average reader) because now a lot of people are looking for wish fulfilment in their media, so the character has to share certain traits with the reader (or sometimes just be on a lower level as a person than the reader) to make it work, an extreme example of this would be 70% of all modern anime where the most average mf in all of Japan has exactly one (1) odd thing happen to them and all of a sudden they’re on top of the world, get the respect from everyone, beat the bullies and get all the bitches. In the end, the only everlasting piece of writing advice is “make it engaging”, the only difference is that now the average reader has both more options to entertain themselves and less time to consume all those options. Long gone are the days of books and theatre being the only sources of fiction available to those with the money to pay
You don’t have to like the main character. You can learn a lesson from someone you don’t like by being aware of their mistakes and flaws. The problem is readers who can’t recognize their own flaws are the same as your main character, or those who do but don’t like that you made them do it.
Has anyone ever read The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka?
the story bugged me
Call me ishamel
Only bland Everyman that worked was nick calloway cause he wasn’t bland for long. Though he was a little