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Flesnolk posted:He basically has a nervous breakdown whenever he receives criticism, however mild, so that won’t happen. Different strokes and all, but why are you even in this thread when the only thing you do is talk about how bad Wildbow is? And now with that ridiculous "go read real books" jab. Even in the one post where you actually mention serials you like, you couldn't resist finishing it off with more jabs at other serials.
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Mar 25, 2019 19:16
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Tbh I thought it was pretty funny that he was asking for editors to apply to him instead of the other way around 
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Mar 25, 2019 19:20
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Insurrectionist posted:It's interesting seeing people so down on the torture porn, I never felt it was an issue in any of Worm/Ward myself. I say that despite being currently bored with Ward (courtesy of the like 10 chapter long fight scene as someone who hates reading Wildbow's fight scenes) and being someone who doesn't consume any other works with body horror, torture, etc at all and actively disliking horror movies and the like, so I'm not exactly the target audience. The Tattletale thing was like the mildest application of that edgy power too, she basically acts like she doesn't care about it because she's Tattletale and that's what she does. Yeah, none of this recent stuff gives me the same vibe as, say, the Slaughterhouse 9 stuff from Worm.
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Mar 25, 2019 20:03
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Omi no Kami posted:I wonder if Ward wouldn't have been better-served as a series of standalone novellas- if he had just gone "Okay, here's the nazi story, here's the child abuse story, here's the story of that time google translate conspired to rape and kidnap his brother," and so forth. The lack of narrative connective tissue would utterly cease to exist as a problem, he'd get to write interesting stories about random stuff in his setting, and fans would get the cool fights/grimdark/body horror stuff that they like without having to sit through the pointless, meandering tedium that telling this as a single story has become. Well... it kinda is that already? It's basically written as a series of separate novels and it just has a really bad table of contents that doesn't tell you when a book ends and a new one starts. It'd be improved by him making that more official, but if you don't like the current structure would you really like it that much better with some better labeling?
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Mar 25, 2019 23:30
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Plorkyeran posted:Well... it kinda is that already? It's basically written as a series of separate novels and it just has a really bad table of contents that doesn't tell you when a book ends and a new one starts. It'd be improved by him making that more official, but if you don't like the current structure would you really like it that much better with some better labeling? I was thinking more making each thing a clean break- different characters, different framing devices, different everything. Ward's complete failure to create and sustain a core narrative spine is one of my biggest gripes, which would go away entirely if he straight-up stopped trying to pretend that there was a story at all, and just focused on interesting ideas in isolation.
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Mar 26, 2019 00:13
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Ward sucks tbh
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Mar 26, 2019 00:57
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Flesnolk posted:He basically has a nervous breakdown whenever he receives criticism, however mild, so that won’t happen. I can do both, buster, and you can't stop me!!!
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Mar 26, 2019 01:15
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guy they're called web serials for a reason. I know wildbow generally tries to write "complete" stories but doing that is kind of anathema to the format. Meandering episodic content is what serials are. To a web serial author writing a solid final ending is slaughtering their own personal golden goose with their own hands. There's a reason all the most financially successful examples in the genre are a zillion chapters long and nowhere near any sort of final resolution. I know a lot of the thread favorites are the ones that seem to a have solid ending (or at least be building to one) but eh. imo you're looking in the wrong place if you want tight novel length self-contained stories. There's a whole other format for that called "novels".
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Mar 26, 2019 03:58
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That tattletale poo poo is ridiculous. Glad I never started reading ward.
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Mar 26, 2019 04:05
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If you're posting here just to bitch about how much better "real books" are then you can kindly gently caress off right out of this thread tbh.
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Mar 26, 2019 04:10
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sunken fleet posted:guy they're called web serials for a reason. I know wildbow generally tries to write "complete" stories but doing that is kind of anathema to the format. Meandering episodic content is what serials are. To a web serial author writing a solid final ending is slaughtering their own personal golden goose with their own hands. There's a reason all the most financially successful examples in the genre are a zillion chapters long and nowhere near any sort of final resolution. I know a lot of the thread favorites are the ones that seem to a have solid ending (or at least be building to one) but eh. Lol
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Mar 26, 2019 04:12
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sunken fleet posted:guy they're called web serials for a reason. I know wildbow generally tries to write "complete" stories but doing that is kind of anathema to the format. Meandering episodic content is what serials are. To a web serial author writing a solid final ending is slaughtering their own personal golden goose with their own hands. There's a reason all the most financially successful examples in the genre are a zillion chapters long and nowhere near any sort of final resolution. I know a lot of the thread favorites are the ones that seem to a have solid ending (or at least be building to one) but eh. this is why TWI is so successful as a serial its format is unabashedly episodic. there's a plot, and important characters do important things that influence events, and things change over time. but at the end of the day, it's really just the story of erin's life and the things going on in the world around her, without the huge narrative peaks and valleys of a novel because that's not how life actually works you can argue about whether that's personally what you want to read, but it's certainly making the most of the medium to do a story like that instead of a more traditional novel-like structure
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Mar 26, 2019 04:18
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Yeah, and serials got huge around the time that fantasy went mainstream and the major authors could afford to start taking years between books. Worm had problems , sure, but it also had a regular update schedule, and no matter how weird it got you had to keep turning the page.
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Mar 26, 2019 04:29
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Xun posted:Tbh I thought it was pretty funny that he was asking for editors to apply to him instead of the other way around If he's the one hiring them, why not?
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Mar 26, 2019 09:54
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It's not how finding an editor you actually want to hire works.
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Mar 26, 2019 17:00
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TWI Patreon: wooooooooooooo Numbtongue lives!
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Mar 26, 2019 19:23
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TWI Patreon: Goblins died 
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Mar 26, 2019 20:19
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The reason Wildbow is so down on editors afaik is that he hired one right after he finished Worm and the guy completely butchered it to the point where several of the passages are memes on the parahumans subreddit, such as Taylor saying "Take that you worm" after rotting lung's junk off.
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Mar 26, 2019 22:22
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Even worse:wildbow posted:An editor from a publishing company sent me a draft of the early arcs with the changes they suggested. They wanted the opening line of the story to be
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Mar 26, 2019 22:37
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So, an editor made some generally okay suggestions (relating the title back to Taylor more directly is a good thing) and Wildbow used his subreddit to castigate them. That line sucks but there's no way it was some ironclad edict like how Wildbow said it was. No wonder he can't get it published and has to resort to a ghostwriter.
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Mar 26, 2019 22:56
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yee it's a bit on the nose but isn't an editor's whole job making things generally simpler and more easily swallowed by the lowest common denominator reader?
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Mar 26, 2019 23:02
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Worm starts off pretty slow too iirc, and its title has no apparent relation to the story. I dunno, right away, that seems to get into the meat of things with a hook most people can understand and conveys an antagonistic relationship between teenagers. It does make it seem like the start to a young adult novel. I don't think it's terrible given what the editor had to work with. Short, simple, evocative. Provides temp hook to start with until you can get.to the I have superpowers pivot hook / arc. Katreus fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Mar 26, 2019 |
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Mar 26, 2019 23:05
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sunken fleet posted:yee it's a bit on the nose but isn't an editor's whole job making things generally simpler and more easily swallowed by the lowest common denominator reader? No
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Mar 26, 2019 23:06
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lol that fuckin line sucks and he's right to reject every other single change that person would make
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Mar 26, 2019 23:13
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sunken fleet posted:yee it's a bit on the nose but isn't an editor's whole job making things generally simpler and more easily swallowed by the lowest common denominator reader? lol no Katreus posted:Worm starts off pretty slow too iirc, and its title has no apparent relation to the story. I dunno, right away, that seems to get into the meat of things with a hook most people can understand and conveys an antagonistic relationship between teenagers. It does make it seem like the start to a young adult novel. It's not terrible, that's the thing. By the looks of it, the editor made a bunch of suggestions that were to, essentially, massage the first arcs of Worm into more of a YA story -- which it essentially is. If you were going to sell Worm, to a publisher or to a market, it'd be as a YA trilogy of maybe 300k words total (but probably less).
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Mar 26, 2019 23:15
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Also keep in mind his purpose for posting that was to burn the editor in effigy in front of his fanbase. He could very well have deliberately misrepresented them.
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Mar 26, 2019 23:18
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like an editor is someone you collaborate with, its not some boss who has the final word. Did wildbow ever write previous to worm? I know the peer editing process can be absolutely mortifying to someone who isn't used to it, but you have to learn to take it if you ever want to improve as a writer. incidently i never got used to it and thus never improved as a writer
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Mar 26, 2019 23:20
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Well, yeah, I think that goes without saying. There's no way the editor was like "Look, Wildbow, love it, love the story, love the Taylor... but there's one small thing. Emma must say 'Take that, you worm.' It has to be the opening line, too. This is non-negotiable, sorry." "They wanted me to link the title to Taylor and made this goofy suggestion that Emma could say 'Take that, you worm'" doesn't play as well. A big flaming stink posted:like an editor is someone you collaborate with, its not some boss who has the final word. Did wildbow ever write previous to worm? I know the peer editing process can be absolutely mortifying to someone who isn't used to it, but you have to learn to take it if you ever want to improve as a writer. No, he hadn't written anything before Worm. And I think the fact that he would've got some really harsh criticism after years of an extremely positive, hyperbolic fanbase is why he reacted so poorly.
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Mar 26, 2019 23:24
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:It's not terrible, that's the thing. By the looks of it, the editor made a bunch of suggestions that were to, essentially, massage the first arcs of Worm into more of a YA story -- which it essentially is. If you were going to sell Worm, to a publisher or to a market, it'd be as a YA trilogy of maybe 300k words total (but probably less). Right. But that's the whole point of getting an editor for publishing through like an established publishing house, right? If you do want to do that, worm would have to be edited and shortened extensively. If he just wanted to self publish, just choose a chapter to stop at, make the chapters from start to that point a PDF or word doc and put it on the Amazon thing, call it a day.
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Mar 26, 2019 23:28
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Uldor posted:TWI Patreon: wooooooooooooo Numbtongue lives! i just realized that i cant even remember Cloak Guy's name (shorthilt, maybe?) but he was my favorite. because ever since he got the champion class there was a line about him twirling his cloak whenever he got mentioned in a scene
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Mar 26, 2019 23:34
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Larry Parrish posted:i just realized that i cant even remember Cloak Guy's name (shorthilt, maybe?) but he was my favorite. because ever since he got the champion class there was a line about him twirling his cloak whenever he got mentioned in a scene Rabbiteater. Shorthilt was the goblin obsessed with weapons, Badarrow was the archer, Headscratcher was the berserker, and Numbtongue was the bard/the one who can speak fluent english.
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Mar 26, 2019 23:50
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I think that, besides wildbow's desire to be a "real" author, there is absolutely no point in a professionally edited worm. Not because it's perfect, far from it, but because many of the things that make it appealing are tied to the medium and circumstances where it was originally written. Also, the new ward chapter is awesome.
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Mar 27, 2019 01:10
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If he wants to "edit" Worm into a standard-form novel, he needs to encapsulate the entire story in 2-3 50-80k novels that have setups, payoffs, structure, and pacing. That would be faster and easier with a re-write, which I doubt anyone has interest in on the fan or author side of the equation. Really I think he'd be better off posting the entire thing in kindle ebook chunks on amazon, grabbing a bit of extra revenue from something he's already written, then trying to find a new, non-parahumans direction to grow his future work in. Also, someone should probably tell WB that "real" authors get their stuff ripped to shreds by good editors, and mostly thank them for it later on. I know a lot of guys who lose 50-75% of their first draft on the rough edit, and end up with something radically different but way smoother by the time it hits the shelves. This is random speculation, but the Taylor angst and bullying/high school drama is so consistently criticized as a weak part of early Worm that I wonder if the publisher he spoke to wanted to water it down or cut it (since YA readers generally like their characters to be likable, and their universes to not be toxic angst pits). Since tons of Worm stuff is allegedly semi-autobiographical, I could see that rubbing him the wrong way and feeling like "These people have no idea what makes this story great". Omi no Kami fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Mar 27, 2019 |
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Mar 27, 2019 02:07
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First thing I would do if I was editing worm is cut the entire Golem subplot, what an awful waste of time that was. All of the stuff set in the prison didn't really end up mattering either.
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Mar 27, 2019 16:02
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TWI Nonpatreon: I like that Ryoka is actively trying to learn from Erin's example now; I wonder if we're headed for a bit where the roles get reversed, with Erin being unfriendly to everyone (other than goblins, I guess) and peacemaker Ryoka being the one to snap her out of it. I'm liking the vampire stuff; I wonder if Geneva will eventually factor into helping them with their illness, since we're getting more of her this volume.
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Mar 27, 2019 17:35
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IShallRiseAgain posted:First thing I would do if I was editing worm is cut the entire Golem subplot, what an awful waste of time that was. All of the stuff set in the prison didn't really end up mattering either. i mean golem's plot sort of ended up kicking off the end of the world didn't it?
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Mar 27, 2019 19:06
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sunken fleet posted:i mean golem's plot sort of ended up kicking off the end of the world didn't it? Golem's plot inadvertently led to that happening, but I wouldn't say it was the actual cause of it. His sister ended up dying anyway, he gets sidelined immediately after his subplot is over and he isn't that important of a character to the main cast. I think the story spent much way too much time focusing on him.
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Mar 27, 2019 19:50
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Practical Guide So it looks like Black rejected the chance given to him by the bard? Either that or the Saint proved she could outrun a horse. I would expect some sort of trickery but I'm not sure how much he would be able to slip past the Grey Pilgrim, especially without his name.
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Mar 27, 2019 21:47
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IShallRiseAgain posted:First thing I would do if I was editing worm is cut the entire Golem subplot, what an awful waste of time that was. All of the stuff set in the prison didn't really end up mattering either. Golem is a great, interesting character with a lot of nuance whose subplot does a lot to explore the themes of the book, though? This is why I think that Worm is fundamentally not compatible at all with a novel format, too much important stuff would need to be cut out and then you're losing so much of what makes it unique and good.
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Mar 27, 2019 23:59
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Wildbow alt spotted
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Mar 28, 2019 00:14
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