A lot of my story is focused on characters rather than the grand scheme of things, the characters are put in that environment and I write how they react to that environment and to each other. That's the idea of my first book, to show deep down how the political structure works, how the civilian structure works, how the military police/armed forces structure works and how society operates/functions with various cultures, religions, differing ambitions or motivations in life. While the main issue is the Great Apocalypse coming to destroy them, people still have hope and I show that hope through dialogue; people think that fleeing towards the inner circle of the High Sovereignty will keep them safe. All dialogue with alien civilizations, political or not has been completely destroyed by the reckless aggressive war expansion caused by the royal family known as the Wonder Family who influenced and held the Sovereignty captive with a trump card of their own over a period of 60 thousand years, the last few years is spent battling the Great War for the first 500 years, the other half the Great Apocalypse. People flee towards the capital of the Sovereignty from different faraway galaxies and they get past the wall that protects their star system. But before they can even think about setting foot on a world, refugees are forced to fight a hunger games as trillions of refugees are stuffed into those ships and they are made to fight for food. Bodies pile up like mountains, people become cannibals and the lower tiers where the refugees are kept become the wild, wild west during the decades they spend going to a safe world. People who live on worlds invaded by aliens or demons are subjected to intense starvation, health problems from pollution and poisonous gases, war, disease, cannibalism, gangs and so on. Soldiers fighting on the front-lines or in the underbelly of the Great-Cities they patrol have to deal with PTSD, death, rape, torture, castration, starvation and tons of health problems. Politicians at the highest tiers of society bicker and squabble as they scheme to backstab and take power from one another while being completely oblivious to the war that threatens their world. Royal families attack each other discreetly and wage private wars that end up with entire families being captured and forced to fight to the death in an arena opened for public entertainment against genetically altered humans that butcher them. Then the victors/survivors are forced to inbreed with each other to produce as much offspring as possible so the family doesn't completely die off so they can also put the offspring into the arena as well, then the offspring will be forced to inbreed with each other which will produce physically deformed and mentally challenged children, the cycle never ends. The Wonder Family did this so they could strip away any merit, any respect, any sort of accomplishments or prestige a family did and show the public that they were not to be trifled with. To completely destroy them, physically, mentally and historically until there is absolutely nothing left of them. Children, especially orphaned children are forced into poverty and starvation as they try to protect themselves through hiding in the ghettos and the underbelly of Great-Cities. Starving girls who steal from kitchens of mob bosses so they can survive are raped, tortured then skinned alive and beheaded, hung up on lampposts with a sign hung around their neck that says something like "I am a filthy whore, ha, ha, ha, ha!" I created tons of characters set in every environment, every situation imaginable and I write their experiences, their emotions, their turmoil, their happy moments, their sad moments and their reaction to one another as they cross paths and work together or may never see each other again. I have it planned out, I have the draft of my first five chapters written down and I have an idea of how I'm going to play it out. But you seem to assume that it's going to be like some exposition-filled story like Tolkien's Silmarillion, it won't be. I just wanted the honest opinion of people around me so I don't end up being stuck in an echo chamber with only my thoughts and opinions to judge my work, that's all.
No, no no, not at all! I didn't mean for a happy afterlife to await the end of your story. I meant what do your CHARACTERS think will happen when they die? Do they 'believe' in a happy afterlife (like some of us here on earth do?) My point was that we earthlings all know we are all going to die and that everything and everybody we love will also die. The only way that knowledge can be bearable for some is to hook into belief in an afterlife of some kind. Most cultures do this; what individuals within that culture do may vary. Some accept that the present is all we've got and that death not only is the ending, but there is no afterlife. Either way, people can make themselves 'happy' or 'hopeful' in the present—if they want to. Love matters, and all that. I can't believe that your characters will not have SOME attitude towards what happens after death, assuming everybody does die and everybody knows they will die, whether there are monsters around or not. I'm just wondering if a belief in an afterlife gives them hope in the appalling 'present' you seem to be creating? The fact that the afterlife doesn't exist doesn't matter. It's what they think an afterlife might be, and what that causes that to make them feel during the story, that might be relevant. I think what I'm saying is that belief in an afterlife is common in all cultures. That doesn't mean it exists. It just means that most of us need to believe in one, so the present doesn't seem awful or meaningless.
No, you make a very fair point that I hadn't considered before. Are people religious? How do they cope with the concept of death, especially one they cannot avoid even if they wanted to? There are certainly lots of religious people in my world, some believe in an afterlife of some sort but during the 61st century, all the old religions from pre-origin times are long gone. They believe in rudimentary religions, very basic ones that believe in tolerance and brotherhood, that everybody has a second chance even if they messed up the first. Some religions are based on the Suffering Gods, they devote their bodies to host great demons and eventually their bodies are destroyed giving birth to those demons to enable them access to worlds. Some have a nihilistic viewpoint of the world, this is very common with my soldiers and I have many scenes where soldiers will simply just commit suicide even if they don't believe in an afterlife, thinking that not existing anymore is better than living in a world like that. Even so, suicide doesn't completely stop them from existing. Souls are snatched out of the void by the Gaunt, the dimension the Suffering Gods live in and the home of the demons. These souls are taken, likely tortured or manifested into some horrific manifestation of the God that took them. Some souls have even become Suffering Gods themselves, one of the primary Suffering Gods was a mortal soul before tortured. Another Suffering God was an immortal being living in a mortal universe that came to that state through the warping of their own desires and emotions. But to answer your question, most people are still completely unaware of just how serious the situation is that they're not even thinking about an afterlife or imminent death. They're thinking about fleeing to safety rather than saying their goodbyes to one another, which is why the refugee crisis is so serious and cities are getting overfilled to the brim with people. Crime rates have spiked through the roof because it is every man for themselves and nobody truly knows what is coming for them, nobody knows the extent of the situation except for a very few high level military commanders, political figures and royal family members. So, people are walking into a massacre that will be the most horrific event to happen in human history.
Again, it doesn't matter (for my point) what is going to happen in the story or what your 'gods' are actually like, etc. What matters is what your characters THINK will happen as regards an afterlife. I would say each character you create should have some BELIEF about that. They might be part of a religion that tells them what an afterlife is like. Or they might be non-religious and have their own ideas about what an afterlife might be. They might hold a belief in a heaven-ish kind of place, or a hellish kind of place, or reincarnation, or that the 'soul' goes on the same as it does while they're alive, and they meet up with people they used to know, etc—or that nothing happens and you just die. They may hope for a certain afterlife, or fear a certain afterlife. But they will certainly wonder about one (as we do), unless, like Orpheus, they get to visit the afterlife themselves beforehand and KNOW what's there—or what isn't. Your point about suicide is a good one. Why, if you don't believe in any kind of hope at all, including an afterlife, would you put up with horror and pain? You'd kill yourself, wouldn't you? So if you don't kill yourself in this situation ...why? What would keep you 'going?' I see you haven't really done much writing yet, and you're still in the planning stage. Taking little issues like this and working them into your character development will help. I agree with @Kallisto that the story should focus on the people in your story, not on the grand detail of your worldbuilding. Worldbuilding is important for YOU to know, in order to steer your story in the direction you want it to go. But, trust me, what people believe (or just hope) will be their afterlife will matter to the development of their characters more than what actually awaits them. In fact, the contrast can be devastating, can't it—if the reality of their actual afterlife is as bad as you describe? So suicide actually hastens that horrible ending? That's another idea. Suicide makes things worse, more quickly? Yeeks.
Yes, I understand what you're saying and I'm thinking of how to incorporate afterlifes into my story so as to give contrast to my story and characters. I did explain to Kallisto with a post that I do write about characters and in fact, it's pretty much all I write about. My characters learn about the world at the same rate as the readers and they don't know of the impending doom which is why it's difficult to incorporate this kind of stuff but I'll find a way. I've gotten up to the fifth chapter so far, I'm just looking for feedback since I haven't had any in ages, I need to know if any of this is good and exciting to readers. I just wanted peoples' opinions on the direction to be honest.
It's hard to tell without seeing your actual writing. It looks as if you've been a member long enough (two weeks.) If you have fulfilled your other criteria (two critiques, and I think 20-something posts) why not put your opening chapter into the Workshop and get some actual feedback? All we can do right now is react to your ideas, and ideas don't matter in the long run. It's what you actually write that matters. So if you're looking for feedback, why not get some from the forum? That's what we're here for, actually. Support and feedback.
Are you here to argue or are you here to listen? Because everything you wrote here has nothing to do with what I said. Everything you said here, is completely irrelevant and beside the point. That tells me you didn't come here to listen. You came here to respond. You don't actually care what people honestly think, you're just looking for validation. If you want to world build, then cool. Do it. Some of the greatest novels in sci fi and fantasy revolve around world building. I world build. I world build a lot. All I said is you have to be aware of the trade off. Anytime you take focus to the wider world of your story, you take away from the intimacy of the characters. That's just how it is. I will tell you from experience that if you're not careful, the spectacle can eclipse the story. That's why a lot of stories that deal with intimate relationship with characters have really very little going on in the wider world. At least nothing that requires a lot of explanation. It's usually things like "Main character is lost in the woods... and that's the whole story." Maybe a little blurb on how that happened, but mostly it's pretty simple. And to show you're not listening, you just wrote more about your world building, thinking that will convince me that you got this character thing covered. You don't convince someone that you aren't having the problem of spectacle eclipsing story by showing more spectacle. I know the difference between a setting and a character. I'm wondering now if you do.
Okay, this is how this conversation has played out: - I tell you that I am doing what you advise me to do. - You tell me that I am not doing it. - I explain why and how I'm doing it, I reinforce my points. - You tell me that I am not doing it. What do you want me to do? Obviously you have your mind made up about this. I am aware of this "trade off" that you keep talking about but what does that have to do with anything when my story is 95% character/dialogue and 5% actual world-building? I didn't explain my world-building, I explained specific scenarios that my characters are in and then I write about those characters and show intimacy between them. I don't go on a rant about how X is related to Y and how Y is from C family and C is related to whatever in my writing so I don't understand this, you're talking about some fictional spectacle that apparently will eclipse my story when I'm telling you that I'm doing the opposite. But on a serious note: you should go and tell all of this to GRRM, author of Game of Thrones. I'm sure he's unaware that his world with a huge scope and multiple characters isn't going to work out properly if he wants to show us character intimacy. In the meantime though, you should learn reading comprehension-- I came here for feedback, not to have a debate on whether or not I'm writing what I say I am writing, which as far as I know; you haven't read a word of my story yet. I have listened, I am taking some advice given on this thread into consideration for future reference but that's about it. Thank you for your advice, thank you for your help but this is too much.
You want to know what I want? Okay, it's really simple. I want you to go and write whatever the hell you want. I want you to world build until it completely eclipses the one we live in if that's what you want to do. Add five or six more great houses if that's what makes you happy. Or have two dudes sitting at a table playing poker and smoking cigars as the world ends, if that's what you want to do. It's your story. Throw a few sharks in there if you must. But don't try and make the story out to be what it isn't.
You haven't read my story yet, why make a claim like that when you haven't even read the opening paragraph yet? Thanks for the advice but I think this is going nowhere, have a nice life.
I wouldn't read it, but only because heavy material can be hard for me to read at times. I like the idea of "no happy endings", though, and I think there need to be more books (and other forms of media) like that. Life doesn't always end happily no matter how much hope is involved.
Dude, I have read this thread, and you seem to miss the point of what almost everyone saying and taking them entirely out of context. And that's not just me. You're reading far too much into the details of what they say, while missing their entire point. No one is saying what you have isn't a great story at all! What I'm skeptical of isn't how good it is, but what it is. You snidely state how how Game of Thrones has intimate moments between. And that is true. But an intimate meditation on the emotions and condition of individuals it is not. It is a commentary of social and political conditions using characters as a building block for the plot. The characters are trying to stamp their influence on the wider world. The focus on the story is the wider world. Because of that focus, a wider world with characters that are still relatable and feel real, is necessary. The Road is a meditation on the human condition. It's not a vast world with two characters playing a role. The characters are the world. They are the entirity of the story. The author widely kept world building to a minimum. No one is trying to influence the wider world. It's just a man and a child and so no efforts are put into explaining anything. I don't know how to explain this any more clear to you.
I haven't read the whole thread but it seems to me the biggest reason people are saying they won't read such a book is because the author is misrepresenting their book. Or, because the book is indeed too niche and the readership is by definition going to be very small. The blurb makes me expect a book focusing on the depictions of various ways people suffer. That's a very specific genre, similar to the so called torture-porn in the movies. Let's call it suffering-porn. Maybe that's a misrepresentation of your book. Suffering-porn will mostly consist of gratuitous depictions of suffering. If we know that everybody dies in the end, then the rest becomes just a series of hardships. Note that there is no hint in the blurb that the book is going to be about anything else. There are books like that, some quite popular. Watership Down is a story about rabbits dying in various ways. But that's not how the story is advertised. It's also more than just depictions of suffering, it's very masterful, on many levels. The suffering there is only a plot device. If your book is also about something more than just depictions of suffering, then you'll have to find a way to include this in the advert (blurb etc) so that the readers don't misunderstand. If your book is only about depictions of suffering then rest assured that there are readers for that, but it's best to research the market and adjust your expectations to it. Titanic had no happy endings but that story also was not just about people dying in the end. It was a beautiful love story most of all. It also had a frame which brought it beyond the story of "those people die, no happy ending". Do you see the trend? Popular books concern themselves with extra stuff beyond "people being unhappy". For example, the abovementioned "On The Beach" (great movie, too) may seem close to what you're doing (no happy ending, everything ends with apocalypse) but thaat story had a different point. It did indeed intend to scare people and show them that nuclear war is something that brings a very unhappy ending to everybody, there's no escaping it. By using such scare tactics, the movie meant to urge people to try to prevent the nuclear stand-off. It had a message. Does your book have a message? If it does, I can't see it. "Life is pointless" can be a message, if you like it, but "a chilling story about the final years" is not it. It's bland and vague and that doesn't work to attract reader's interest. Again it all comes down to advertising your story the right way if you want it to have a more general appeal. Asking people on a forum is not representative of how well your story will do in real life, btw.
Yes, I understand what you've been saying and I'm still wondering why you'd still make claims when you haven't read a word of what I've written in the story yet. But thank you for all your advice, I appreciate it.
Right, so misrepresentation is the issue, I understand. It seems the entire argument is based off the blurb, then maybe I wrote the blurb wrong, my bad. I'm asking people on a forum because they're literally the only people that will respond, I will take any feedback over nothing.
I think you can put everybody's doubts to rest if you put maybe your first chapter (or the first part of it) into the Novels workshop. Then we CAN actually see what you've written. You can specify what you'd like us to look for, in particular, if you like. That way you'll get feedback that might be helpful to you. If your story has a strong start, that will be reassuring. Would we want to keep reading? I hope so. You don't need to go into any 'blurb' in the workshop. If it's the start of the story, you don't need to give us any background. If it's a later chapter, just a quick (like a paragraph, no more) notion of what is happening in the chapter and where it is placed in your story, as an introduction to the post, is helpful. People have a tendency to critique every offering in the workshop as if it's the start of the story (it is for them!) unless they're told otherwise. If you haven't already done two critiques, find a couple of offerings that appeal to you and critique them. You've been on the forum for two weeks now, and I think you've probably made at least 20 posts (a fair number of them on this thread) so you have likely fulfilled the other requirements for posting a sample of your work in the Workshop. Why not give it a try?
Maybe I will try to post my first chapter but I'm afraid I'm not going to get any feedback, the workshop is pretty dead in terms of activity.
My honest opinion? I'm depressed just reading this post, so I'd be more likely to open a vein than read the book. I also think a book like this has a lot of potential to mentally damage the people who do read it, and it already sounds like it has a lot of trigger points.
This is an example of the sorts of things I have concern with. Obviously, there are books like this, some very successful (it's hard to say Nineteen Eighty-Four has a happy ending) so there's no right or wrong here, but some points for consideration: Shock value can be so weighted towards shock that it loses most if not all value. If the reader feels they've been played with emotionally they're not so much likely to love the book, as hate the author (and more importantly not buy his future books). This is especially important when considering the merits of choosing to write a super-downer ending with a large body count, particularly of major characters. Generally a book is supposed to entertain. This sort of stuff doesn't usually entertain, so care is needed. If there's some sort of moral to the story, or a deeper meaning, or a reflection on our real-world society that makes it a bit less awful ... but it will still be awful. Although certain things, such as the passengers on overloaded ships being forced to become cannibals is a real-world truth, with examples - usually lifeboat survivors not found for a long time, it's important to remember that part of the appeal of fiction is an escape from reality. Fiction should often be realistic, but not necessarily real. The story, and entertainment, should usually take pole position. There are some authors who seem to take a form of delight in evoking disgust or revulsion among readers, heedless of whether it's aimed at the book or the person who wrote it. It has been argued that evoking emotional reaction is equatable to success as a writer. If this is in fact what you're going for, then carry on. It's not what I enjoy, but there's probably plenty of people out there who might like it.
It's quite realistic that the more you're exposed to shock value, the more you become desensitized to it. Just like how in real life, the more you're exposed to horrifying things, the less you're phased by it until you completely do not react to any of it. Then it manifests later on as a disorder like PTSD which gets pretty ugly. I also agree that people read books to escape from reality, I'd say that this world is the furthest you could get from reality. There are monsters the size of planets, gigantic angels clad in armor and hideous Gods that live in an alternate dimension. I hate it when books or movies hide the really horrible parts of their stories, like when a rape scene occurs, it's just implied. If a genocide is about to ensue, it's just implied and we see the corpses afterwards. People often aren't exposed to how fucked up it really is, they don't realize what really happens and that's why in real life, we're so desensitized to school shootings, mass murders, wars and so on. We play video games and we shoot millions of people, run them over and blow buildings up but we don't see the emotional fallout, we don't see innocent children screaming for their parents, we don't see any of that. Not many seem to understand just how horrifying war is, sure, they're aware that it's horrible and terrible but they've never actually seen it from an emotional standpoint. We hear about genocide all the time on the news but we're just like "meh, those stupid Africans never learn, do they?" But if we saw a documentary that dove straight into the gritty and brutal details of what actually happened with pictures, videos and eyewitness accounts... people become severely aware of just how terrible it is and suddenly care more about it. Sugar coating things has desensitized us to things like this and I don't like it, people are so quick to scream "just nuke the arabs already!" But do they even realize what a nuclear weapon does to people? Have they seen what it does to them? What it does to families, to children, to innocent people? Sometimes they don't just get instantly vaporized, they are literally cooked alive for a minute before they drop and die. I can only imagine if websites like Bestgore.com was more available to the public to show people just how terrible car crashes really are, how terrible the Mexican cartels are, how terrible gang crime is, I bet you that people would start caring more and stop being so ignorant of how the world works. I am striving for evoking emotion reactions in people because not only because I want to evoke disgust or revulsion among readers but because I want to make them completely aware of what really happens outside of their sheltered lives. To show them in depth just how awful it is so people stop wishing death on one another, I hear people screeching "castrate him! When they read a news article about a pedophile but do they even realize what they're asking for? Have they seen a castration happen before? I'd bet a lot that they haven't and if they did, they wouldn't even dare demand that pedophiles get castrated or tortured. It's more of a commentary on how ignorant we are of the world, how we demand torture and death upon one another but I don't think anybody even has a clue what they're asking truly entails and it disgusts me big time. To demand that we nuke New Mecca, do people even realize what they're asking for? They're asking to fry and cook millions of people, to put them in extreme agony and suffering, to destroy entire families because they're ignorant to what a nuclear weapon actually does. It's not like the movies where a nuclear weapon goes off and we see a camera shot of the mushroom cloud and suddenly all the "bad guys" are dead and it's done over with. They should watch the documentaries of all the Japanese that suffered from the fallout and still suffer from it today. While I'm writing this story for the cool factor of sharing a crazy, epic universe-spanning war to end all wars with giant demons, angels and aliens with hulking death machines, I'm also writing it to basically paint a picture for people as to what really happens with all this stuff, how it actually works and what the consequences are. I refuse to shy away from details, even if it involves children, people like to plug their ears and go "la la la la!" But it's so harmful to society in my opinion. If people actually understood what they were asking when they say that we should declare war or torture people, they wouldn't do it anymore. It would be a wake up call and possibly help people to stop being so violent. That's why I'm writing this, so I can show people exactly what they're asking for and just how downright disgusting and horrifying it really is.
Yeah, I think it's going to be extremely unlikely that a publisher to pick up my book when it's finished and not say "you're gonna have to cut out at least 80% of this stuff if you want me to publish it". If it depresses you and it's prone to mentally damage people who read it then that's a sign that it gets the point across. Perhaps people will start to understand how all of this works and put aside their selfish prejudices against each other and work together instead. That's one thing I want to achieve, the other is to create a really epic world with epic monsters/characters/aliens and introduce really cool lore on the level of Tolkien's Silmarillion. I've always wanted to do that to be honest.
Well, you won't know till you try. I personally check out the Novels section fairly often, and do offer critiques when I have time. Do you do critiques as well? That's one way to get things started for other people, and keep the Workshop alive. I don't visit other sections very often because it's novels I'm interested in. While you won't necessarily get tons of feedback, you're likely to get some. And some is better than none, isn't it?
That's actually a very powerful view that will lend purpose to your writing. There is something about the 'connectedness' of our culture today that puts so much information at our fingertips that we feel overwhelmed AND powerless to do anything to help. If we care about what happens in Africa, what do we do? I personally know somebody who works for a charity that sends backpacks filled with school supplies to children in Africa. She works very hard, collecting backpacks, storing them in her house, and then getting them sent off. To countries where kids are scared to go to school at all because the schools aren't safe, etc—or who don't have adequate food and water to make studying possible. So there is a lot of effort expended on something that doesn't really work. When you dig into WHY things aren't working, that's where it gets complicated. Too complicated for single people without money and clout to really affect. So you go the political route and vote for politicians who either lie like rugs, or who, like ordinary non-political individuals, are ultimately powerless to do anything much at all. And the forces of evil just fill in all the vaccum spaces. I'm beginning to think what the world needs is a good old-fashioned apocalypse. The old omelette thing. If you want to make an omelette, you need to break eggs. The good news is, we're likely to get an apocalypse soon, based on climate change and aggravated by selfish behaviour of the 'few' who have snaffled all the good stuff. But, of course, that's also the bad news.
Great example! I loved Nineteen Eighty-Four! You book won't get any point across, because "It's not real." You'll be depressing people for the sake of depressing them, but once they've finished it (assuming they're mentally strong enough to handle it), they'll shrug their shoulder and go, "It's only a story - it's just a piece of fiction." Yes, there are people just saying "nuke the arabs", or "castrate the paedophiles!" or "Just kick all the [insert ethnic minority of choice here] out, deport them back to their own countries and build a wall to keep them out! But they're not the majority of the human race! You mention that people are becoming desensitized to school shootings and Mexican cartels -- why do you think they make the news? Why is so much of the news towards murder, rape, hate crime and terrorist attack over people holding the doors open for others, or helping the elderly across the street, or donating food to food banks, or volunteering for the massive scope of charities? Because of shock value? Perhaps! But also because the average human being is more likely to show small acts of kindness, because they are more likely to hold doors open for others, give up their seats on the bus for that pregnant mother, or that elderly gentleman, they are more likely to volunteer for rescue and donate to charities than they are to rape, pillage and murder "for the sake of it." Stop smelling the manure and appreciate the roses that stand in it! Yes, there are bad people of various degrees in the world, yes, some of them win battles, yes, Hitler came damned close to winning the war - but there are far more people trying to do the best they can, trying to help people the best they can, than those maniacs who want to annihilate us all!
You also seem to change your mind as to what your story is about. The only thing that is consistent is the violence and the end of the human race. Someone says there's no point in reading it because there's no hope - you then say that the characters do have hope. (Newsflash - they don't! They just think they do!") Someone points out that there's always a reason for violent crimes, you contradict yourself and suddenly see the reasons behind those crimes when before, you said there was none. Someone mentions the hope of an afterlife. You give one, but that's just as (excuse my language) f**ked up as the rest of your story. But hey, it's not all bad because they're deluded and think everything's fine! Someone points out a story has to be realistic - not necessarily real - and you backtrack in your previous comment that "I want to show life as it really is" to say, "of course it's not real - it's the war to end all wars!" You say it's character-based, but there's nothing in this thread that shows that! You have a damned good understanding of your world and how it ends. You go into gory details with the "needless"suffering of your characters, but actually, they come across as important as the pawns in a chess game.
