Morning rDrama

I'm feeling nostalgic this morning, so, what books did you read as a kid that you loved?

Here's mine:

I picked this up when I was 10 or 11 and I can confidently say that this is what made me want to be an author when I grew up

I also was read the little house on the prairie books, but we only got to book 4 as a class, so I'm reading them again.

King came out with his new book Holly a few days ago and I just finished it. What it's about isn't important; what struck me while reading it is how badly being a lib on Twitter has infected King's brain. The following are just some of the Trump mentions in the book:

“That sounds right,” Holly says.

“And bonus! Trump's gone.”

Leaving behind a country at war with itself , Holly thinks. And who's to say he won't reappear in 2024? She thinks of Arnie's promise from The Terminator: “I'll be back.”

It was Charlotte who died.

An avid Trump supporter—a fact she trumpeted to her daughter at every opportunity—she refused to get the vaccinations or even to wear a mask. (Except, that was, at Kroger and her local bank branch, where they were required. The one Charlotte kept for those occasions was a bright red, with MAGA stamped on it.)

On July 4th, Charlotte attended an anti-mask rally in the state capital, waving a sign reading MY BODY MY CHOICE (a sentiment that did not keep her from being adamantly anti-abortion). On July 7th, she lost her sense of smell and gained a cough. On the 10th, she was admitted to Mercy Hospital, nine short blocks from Rolling Hills Elder Care, where her brother was doing fine… physically, at least. On the 15th, she was placed on a ventilator.

“Divorced. Herbert and I dissolved our partnership three years ago. Political differences were part of it—he was all in on Trump—but there wereplenty of other reasons, as well.”

“How did Bonnie feel about that?”

“Handled it in very adult fashion. And why not? She was an adult. Twenty-one. Besides, the first time Herbie came home wearing a MAGA hat, she actually laughed at him. He was… mmm… displeased.”

Here is another relationship chilled by the fast-talking man in the red tie. It's not fate and not coincidence.

The jagged laugh comes again—nerves rather than amusement. “He's in Alaska. Left for a white-collar job in a shipping plant about six months after the divorce. And he has Covid. His idol refused to wear a mask, so Herb refused to wear one. You know, Trumper see, Trumper do.

“I don't know exactly. I've been working at that Jet Mart a long time. Seen em come and seen em go. But Trump was running for president, I remember that because we joked about it. Seems like the joke was on us.” He pauses, perhaps thinking over what he just said. “But if you voted for him, I'm only kidding.”

Like fun you were, Holly thinks. “I voted for Clinton. You called him the bowling guy?”

There is also a hilarious bit where King let's you know a character is evil because they find the Jan 6th insurrection inspiring, and another character is good because they cried during it:

Bonnie needs to see her as the stereotypical elderly academic: head in the clouds, losing a few miles an hour off her mental fastball, and largely helpless outside her own field of expertise. And harmless, of course. Would never dream of insurrectionists hanging elected representatives of the United States government from lampposts. Especially the blacks (a word which in her mind she will never capitalize) and the fannyfrickers. Of which there are more every day.

She's cried so much lately. Tears of relief after Biden won the election. Tears of horror and belated reaction after Chet Ondowsky, a monster pretending to be human, went down the elevator shaft. She cried during and after the Capitol riot—those were tears of rage.

Bibliophile dramanauts, I was thinking about having a few recommendation threads according to genre, this one is Sci-fi but then we could go into horror, fantasy, realism, math textbooks, etc.

Here’s mine, or at least the few one’s I read.

HG Wells

“War of the Worlds”

Isaac Asimov

I robot

Foundation Trilogy

Frank Herbert

Dune

Dune messiah

Andy Weir

The Martian

Edit: I forgot about Robert Henlein, in his case “Starship Troopers”

For the writers in here, what's the most embarrassing thing you've ever written?

I'll go first:

Back when I was a braindead teenager, I postponed my senior capstone for an entire semester.

I originally started designing a whole table top game. This would have included box art, a resource book with illustrations, tables, the whole 9 yards.

But I was laughed at by 3 fat they/thems when I presented that idea.

So I wrote an awful novella about lesbians going to prom in the last 2 weeks of the project. I admittedly hamed it up for extra points by padding out the plot with needless identity politics. But I got a B+ and multiple classmates said it was the best thing they'd ever read because it spoke to them as

I'm eight months and 110 pages in (I'm slow, but also a first-timer). Yesterday, I gave the majority of my novel a readthrough and saw that virtually all of my small, sharp paragraphs moved at a pretty rapid pace and were full of friendly (and not-so friendly) banter between characters in an attempt at levity, even during tense and emotional situations.

I guess it sounded better in his head.

Tbh based on the full post it didn't sound that bad (just generic), but in a later comment OP posted a plot summary.

My novel is about a young girl in France during World War 1 who sneaks into trenches to aid soldiers as a Combat Medic... and who happens to weld the mystical healing power of Jeanne d'Arc's guantlet. It's just that she can be quite snarky and also has a friend whom she has excellent rapport with.

Just a quippy magical girl protagonist in the trenches of WW1. Maybe it works in context?

someone [can adapt] it into the next marvel movie 😆

I second finishing it, editing can fix a lot.

I'm an edit-holic; three hours of editing for every one hour of writing lol. So for the most part my chapters are looking extremely close to what their final version will be, witty banter and all.

Frick, not the one draft guys again. Line by line polish does not replace the need for rewrites because you need to respond to structural problems. A one draft story, even with outline, is essentially a random walk and can lose track of tone, get bloated or distracted, just end up married to ideas that don't work, etc (this is all an issue in my fanfic submission btw ). Making every scene "good" does not mean you have a good manuscript.

Marvel movies have only made, what, twenty billion dollars? There's nothing bad about having a book with broad appeal.

The market's right behind me, isn't he?

We don't write in a vacuum, and not everyone studies the classics. Our voices, methods, and priorities are influenced by what is in the air.

My literary influences are Marvel movies, isekai anime, and Bluey.

nothing wrong with writing marvel stuff a lot of my work was mostly inspired from anime I watched a mix of steins gate and jojo but the story still nothing alike.

Is that a fricking Jojo ref-

As usual, the problems with /r/writing are structural rather than comment by comment (sounds familiar ). In this case, the issue isn't whether quips are always bad. Rather, it's whether they work in context and whether they're appropriate for the story and setting. OP's setting likely meshes poorly with a wacky tone (and nobody seriously asked OP why the story suddenly felt bad to them, instead reassuring them that it's okay).

OP also gave away that they are not actually planning to do rewrites. So as usual, they came to the soyhaven to ask for affirmation about what they were already going to do.

Edit: I forgot to make fun of them for "devistated"

https://www.economist.com/culture/2023/07/21/critics-are-getting-less-cruel-alas

Article

https://txtify.it/

https://archive.li/dGpHw

Link to bypass paywall

!bookworms, !neolibs

Some of the most important statistics from the National Institute for Literacy, National Center for Adult Literacy, The Literacy Company, and U.S. Census Bureau underscore the critical need to address illiteracy in the United States:

• As of 2019, 45 million Americans are functionally illiterate and cannot read above a fifth-grade level

• 50% of adults cannot read a book written at an eighth-grade level

• 57% of students failed the California Standards Test in English

• 1/3 of fourth-graders reach the proficient reading level

• 25% of students in California school systems are able to perform basic reading skills

• 85% of juvenile offenders have problems reading

• 3 out of 5 people in American prisons can’t read

• 3 out of 4 people on welfare can’t read

First i want to apologize if a make gramar errors, i am not a native english speaker. I'm an college student and i want to beging to have a writing routine to gain experience as a amateur writer (my dream is to publish my own fantasy novel). Because college and work i don't have much time, so i ask you "is 100 words minimum a good amount to have like a daily routine? It is low?" Every answer is welcome. Thank you.

Sometimes I wonder if every word goal post is just the same guy trolling, seeing how low you can go before they finally call you out.

Sure. Especially if you're trying to build a consistency habit. Some days 100 words will feel like bending over to pick up a feather and sometimes it will feel like pushing a boulder up a hill. Everyone's journey is different and every day is different.

I always wondered what George R R Martin was doing these days

It's better than 0. Keep up the good work my friend!

There are 130 comments, most variants of this, from all the other writoids who don't actually write anything.

The most effective days of writing, you often type zero words. I tend to write in my head a ton, then type it all, then write in my head a ton and repeat. Progress is progress is progress.

Heh. Write it out? Not necessary. I calculated the story in my head. Hmm... Another draft, perhaps?

Some of the most effective days involve removing 100 words.

So true!

My manuscript is -47,000 words and shrinking every day.

Fantasy writer (and college professor) here... I'll say this. Any amount of writing daily is good to establish a routine and to simply practice, but on average, fantasy novels run at about 170,000 words (varies depending on subgenre, but this is average in most cases) so it might take you forever if you're sticking to 100 words a day

Agents love getting 170k word debut fantasy manuscripts. That's like the bare minimum these days!

It's great!

Any consistent writing is greater than anything else. It won't get you go published fast, but it's waaaaay faster than "waiting until I have the time" writing. Also some people's 100 words are better than others 1,000 words.

And by "some people's" I mean mine.

it is a great amount per day! i do even less if i am being honest, so you are doing great. (your english is very good by the way)

Keep it up and you'll be 1% done with your novel in no time!

People here will say any writing is a good amount of writing. I'll be honest, one hundred a day is not very good. It's basically your post twice. It takes no effort.

What the frick? What are you doing in here? Guards!

This post contains 149 original words, not counting Marseys and file names. Soooo, that's my writing goal for today. Later, virgins!

https://old.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/16h9ul8/i_finish_my_manuscript_and_no_one_cared?context=8&sort=controversial

Why does a neighbor expect praise for accomplishing a goal

Your writing is just words till it affects someone, either makes them reflect, cry, sneed, enraged, fricking something. Only people getting praise for simple finishing a work are writers with a history of delivering

To discuss your weekly readings of books, textbooks and papers.

Even though I bought the 1859 edition of On the Origin of the Species, I started reading “Entangled Life” instead, thanks to a dramacel recommendation, @rDramaHistorian I'm on chapter 3 and the book is great.

!bookworms

!bookworms as you know Never Let Me Go is finished, we'll have a final thread to discuss the book as a whole this Sunday. So it's time to nominate books for the next bookclub. I'll select all nominations and post a thread to vote which one you like most. First voting will eliminate all but the Top 5.

got ready to catch up on a few years of nosleep, sorted by top, literally none of these are scary, nor are they even well written. i stopped reading them in probably 2016-2017 when all the hottest stories started boiling down to "bigotry was the real monster all along" "big bad evil guy does a heckin wholesome" or just weird, impotent revenge fantasies you can tell are written about the author's bully

the top post of the last few years is https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/wqnymn?sort=controversial which is just a stupid shallow reddit bait about a cheater but even sillier than usual main character's wife when her husband gets drunk and chips part of his brain out in front of her

are there any the past few years that don't suck butt? i used to stay up all night scared shitless over these, the bar is low, i can't believe nosleep has somehow gotten so bad they can't even scare me

To discuss about the books, textbooks and papers you are currently reading.

I finished Moby Dic a couple of days ago. Next i’ll pick up Pale Fire by Nabokov. I started reading that book a few months ago and stoped after the poem because i was reading it before sleep and couldn’t focus well. Even though I still remember what happened and took a few notes, I decided to start from the beginning again.

However bad you think the book might be, it's worse pic.twitter.com/sgcRee1vqO

— Roman 🦅 (@goodhorsemen) May 3, 2024

!bookworms

incels.is is a criminally untapped vein of content.

Greetings dramacels and !bookworms

As promised, today we are holding our first bookclub discussion thread. We’ll be discussing the first 7 chapters of “The Master and Margarita”, written by the late Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov, set in Stalinist Moscow .

I hope you have enjoyed these first chapters, I certainly did. Based on the numbers of pages read from chapters 1-7, next week discussion will be about chapters 8-17.

I know it was supposed to be at noon E.T. However I’m posting a bit early because I’m off for a family lunch in half an hour, and I don’t want to longpost there.

Have fun with the discussion!

You will never be a real reader

So, I started reading Moby Peepee, and I didn’t expect this book would be so funny. I’m currently on chapter 13, and up to this point Ishmael and Queequeg had so many “no homo” moments. Can’t wait for the Captain Ahab chapters.

I’ve also finished “It” by Stephen King. It was my first King book, and god, I didn’t expected for it to be 50% filler, so many pointless and endless backstories of side characters that never show up again, plus the creepy child gangbang near the end had some “50 shades of Grey” tier writing. A friend of mine recommended me “The Shining” but l’m not quite sure anymore.

What do you guys recommend?