What you can't do in youre story

[2wordsperminute]

No smut. Period.

 

[TheEldritchGod]

I respect it. There in sh. You can find some stories where a minor has sex. Sometimes it's even incest. So I'm not too impressed. And no, I'm not interested in money. I'm making history for myself. Not for some perverts.

I'm not talking "SOME minor has sex or SOME incest" I'm talking about "Wanted to go back in time, seduce his priest, then start a child sex trafficking ring by starting with the boys who bullied him and moving onto his single-digit aged sisters."

Some requests are unforgettable, ya know?

 

[Garon]

I'm not talking "SOME minor has sex or SOME incest" I'm talking about "Wanted to go back in time, seduce his priest, then start a child sex trafficking ring by starting with the boys who bullied him and moving onto his single-digit aged sisters."

Some requests are unforgettable, ya know?

Your customer is a threat to society. I hope you don't encounter anything like this again.

 

[TheEldritchGod]

You had some "interesting" clients.

But 30c/word is not enough to do what amounts to a serious crime. That's like, what, 90 dollars per page? Licensed business contract translators make more, and they are in high demand.

Ghost Writing, back in the day, was a rather incestuous affair. To get a good gig, you had to know a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy. It was all word of mouth and you had only your reputation. This is before Fiverr. The internet was barely a thing. I started at 6 cents a word and worked up to 15. You usually had about 40k words a gig.

NO FLUFF. They wanted it raw, straight to the point, plot and key scenes only. There was a different format for writing it. You grouped paragraphs by plot, not by conversations. Made it easier to be modular. Everything you wrote was going to someone who was going to rewrite it anyway. You often got hired along with about three other guys to all write the same story. Everyone who made the deadline got paid. All copies were given to the lead author who rewrote everything by taking the best of the four stories and smashing it into one.

And now you know how Bus Station Romance Novels got pumped out on a near-daily basis.

But with the advent of the internet, the need for people like me dried up and jobs got... more... esoteric. Personal requests that would never be published, you might say. This one? That was the job request that broke me and made me quit entirely. I only take personal requests from some old friends now.

...


You know, I wonder what happened to the industry?

Like, Back in the day, EVERYONE did this. I can't name names, but you'd be surprised how many *AHEM* big name authors would sign on with someone like my "employer" and subcontract out a novel. If you needed to get product out there because your name was hot, you'd hire guys like us. Or gals.

Like, GRR Martin and his next GoT book has taken like... a decade now? DUDE. Just hire Twenty Ghostwriters, you have the money, have everyone write out a novel in 6 months. It'll look like ass, but that's what final drafts as for, steal the best ideas from 20 authors, slap your name on it, and call it a day.

I seriously don't know why they don't do this anymore. I mean, EVERYONE did it 20 years ago. Hell, half the SCi-Fi you read back in the day was pumped out of some Philippine Sweat Shop with a fresh coat of paint. Nobody cared as long as the end story was good. This might sound strange, but the internet killed good fiction.

I have this strange feeling that when writing was much more of a science and less of an art, they had the formula down and everyone stuck with it. Then the internet came along and everyone said, "WE'RE GONNA DO THINGS NEW AND EXCITING. Except that there is nothing "New" and we already had it all figured out. Then you started to have quotas of "identity" in your stories. It has to have so many minorities and so many gay characters etc etc etc.

When you already have the system down damn well perfect for pumping out product, any change will just make things worse.

You ever see the movie Naked Lunch?

I'm not saying being a ghostwriter was like THAT, but I will admit, there were times it felt like that. Being a hired gun. You jumped in, slammed out something in a month, got your money, and vanished. The first rule of ghost writing was nobody talked about ghostwriting. We all kinda knew who the heavy hitters were. Everyone had a story. Nobody was a "writer" everyone one had a job and this was a side gig. You have no idea how many divorced white guys did the job because it was one of the few ways to make money without the wife's lawyer sucking up all the income.

I dunno. You'd figure there would be even MORE of the stuff these days. I mean, if I said, "10c a word. I need 40k in two months about X. You will never speak of it again after you get paid. If I hear you utter my name or claim to have worked for me, I will blacklist you off the internet." How many people would take the job?

But no. It's all private shit these days. Porn. College papers. Boring shit. Nobody who's a publisher does it anymore. I wonder what changed?

 

[J_Chemist]

If I had to say, it would probably be killing my MC outright. I don't exactly have any other rules or things I would consider "No Go's".

My MC's wife, whomst is supposedly pregerant, would probably be the individual I explicitly could not mess with in the eyes of my Reader base. Doing anything to her, the child, or the family he left behind would probably get my ass crucified. Otherwise, there's not really much else that would be out of reach.

 

[HungrySheep]

Smut.

 

[CupcakeNinja]

Really? NO RULES?
Because I had a client who was paying quite a bit of money to write really explicit CP.
That was MY limit, btw. No amount of money was going to get me to cross THAT line.
So, do you want me to go toss him an email and let him know you are interested? Last I chatted, he was paying 30 cents a word. That was about a decade ago. He might be in prison by now. Wouldn't surprise me.

I will absolutely write the most disgusting child porn i can imagine. Do you not know me? Shit is fiction. I aint give a fuck about shit that aint real. Some of yall get disgusted cuz yall cant define that line in your heads. Fiction, and reality.

I mean lets be honest. Back in NU i wrote that kinda shit just on a whim. They aint call me the Pervert Supreme for nothing, fam. I aint gonna jerk to CP cuz im a milfing man, but i can certainly write it.

Course, if even thats illegal then all this above is purely hypothetical and i hereby state that i in no way engage in any such activities.

 

[Sagacious_Punk]

Ghost Writing, back in the day, was a rather incestuous affair. To get a good gig, you had to know a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy. It was all word of mouth and you had only your reputation. This is before Fiverr. The internet was barely a thing. I started at 6 cents a word and worked up to 15. You usually had about 40k words a gig.

NO FLUFF. They wanted it raw, straight to the point, plot and key scenes only. There was a different format for writing it. You grouped paragraphs by plot, not by conversations. Made it easier to be modular. Everything you wrote was going to someone who was going to rewrite it anyway. You often got hired along with about three other guys to all write the same story. Everyone who made the deadline got paid. All copies were given to the lead author who rewrote everything by taking the best of the four stories and smashing it into one.

And now you know how Bus Station Romance Novels got pumped out on a near-daily basis.

But with the advent of the internet, the need for people like me dried up and jobs got... more... esoteric. Personal requests that would never be published, you might say. This one? That was the job request that broke me and made me quit entirely. I only take personal requests from some old friends now.

...


You know, I wonder what happened to the industry?

Like, Back in the day, EVERYONE did this. I can't name names, but you'd be surprised how many *AHEM* big name authors would sign on with someone like my "employer" and subcontract out a novel. If you needed to get product out there because your name was hot, you'd hire guys like us. Or gals.

Like, GRR Martin and his next GoT book has taken like... a decade now? DUDE. Just hire Twenty Ghostwriters, you have the money, have everyone write out a novel in 6 months. It'll look like ass, but that's what final drafts as for, steal the best ideas from 20 authors, slap your name on it, and call it a day.

I seriously don't know why they don't do this anymore. I mean, EVERYONE did it 20 years ago. Hell, half the SCi-Fi you read back in the day was pumped out of some Philippine Sweat Shop with a fresh coat of paint. Nobody cared as long as the end story was good. This might sound strange, but the internet killed good fiction.

I have this strange feeling that when writing was much more of a science and less of an art, they had the formula down and everyone stuck with it. Then the internet came along and everyone said, "WE'RE GONNA DO THINGS NEW AND EXCITING. Except that there is nothing "New" and we already had it all figured out. Then you started to have quotas of "identity" in your stories. It has to have so many minorities and so many gay characters etc etc etc.

When you already have the system down damn well perfect for pumping out product, any change will just make things worse.

You ever see the movie Naked Lunch?

I'm not saying being a ghostwriter was like THAT, but I will admit, there were times it felt like that. Being a hired gun. You jumped in, slammed out something in a month, got your money, and vanished. The first rule of ghost writing was nobody talked about ghostwriting. We all kinda knew who the heavy hitters were. Everyone had a story. Nobody was a "writer" everyone one had a job and this was a side gig. You have no idea how many divorced white guys did the job because it was one of the few ways to make money without the wife's lawyer sucking up all the income.

I dunno. You'd figure there would be even MORE of the stuff these days. I mean, if I said, "10c a word. I need 40k in two months about X. You will never speak of it again after you get paid. If I hear you utter my name or claim to have worked for me, I will blacklist you off the internet." How many people would take the job?

But no. It's all private shit these days. Porn. College papers. Boring shit. Nobody who's a publisher does it anymore. I wonder what changed?

This is... flooring. If I was a drinker, I would've been with a stiff one in hand right now. Probably a couple.

Sure, maybe you're pulling my leg. Or your observations are skewed. I have no idea, because as you said, it's the internet - any weird shit goes on here.

But that's a rather chilling story you're telling here, even if I conservatively assume that half of it is embellished or misrepresented due to personal perceptions.

Dude. You made me hate reality for a minute.

* * *

As for why... nobody does it anymore... My personal speculation would be that the ease of information flow the Internet brought, coupled with stuff like the DMCA and tightened copyright laws are the reason why the... practice fell out of vogue.

I mean, sure; you do the job, no contract, no anything, get paid, leave. But what if you don't? Sure, the law can't back you up - no paper trail, right? But if in the pre-Internet days this would devolve into a "he said, she said" scenario with limited exposure, in today's digital frontiers a reputation can be made or broken literally overnight. Just look at what false allegations did to people like Chris Avellone (yeah, he got compensation in the end, but his career is basically over) or what shitstorm the Me Too movement caused.

My point is, reputation is fickle these days, and nobody can afford a scandal - even an alleged one - for something like that. Perhaps that's why it died down en masse: imagine it was still done today on the scale you claimed it had, and somebody like you came out of the woods and blew the whistle. I can imagine the entire remaining trad-publishing industry coming down in flames, or at best surviving as a shadow of its former self.

But that is anyway a moot point in the 2020s, because expert systems like ChatGPT practically do the work (or nearly as much) as ghostwriters of the type you describe did decades ago.

So, in a weird way, it's gone full circle. Perhaps art will become again more of a "science" as you call it in the near future. Until the pattern is broken again somehow. But that's an event horizon even for a futurologist like me at this point.

 

[TheEldritchGod]

I will absolutely write the most disgusting child porn i can imagine. Do you not know me? Shit is fiction. I aint give a fuck about shit that aint real. Some of yall get disgusted cuz yall cant define that line in your heads. Fiction, and reality.

I mean lets be honest. Back in NU i wrote that kinda shit just on a whim. They aint call me the Pervert Supreme for nothing, fam. I aint gonna jerk to CP cuz im a milfing man, but i can certainly write it.

Course, if even thats illegal then all this above is purely hypothetical and i hereby state that i in no way engage in any such activities.

There's ways to make it legal.

And you have my condolences. I had that exact same attitude once upon a time. My advice? Don't do something just to prove that you have no limits. Having limits is a good thing.

 

[ReadLight]

This is a strange topic and I want to explain what I mean. What boundaries will you not force yourself to cross in your light novel? For example, I had an idea to make a novel where a time traveler goes to World War II to kill a funny guy with a mustache. But he understands what a terrible childhood he had and tries to re-educate him. Because of this, time travel organization hunting him. I thought this might be a good novella. But I understand what reaction readers will have. And I understand why. He is a terrible person and belongs in hell. But I'd be interested in reading something like that. This site has stories where complete horror happens, worse than this. Therefore, I wonder what boundaries you are not ready to cross.

My personal author's code:

First, the basics: nothing illegal, (obviously) nothing that attacks any real life individuals or groups, (Such as cultural inapproprations) nothing that demoralizes or will cause harm to people irl. (Such as treating historical tragedies lightly or in joking matters)

Second, the moral obligations and responsibilities: one of the most obvious example for my case currently is that I'm writing a fan fiction using characters and events from other people's works. Therefore I vow to not degrade any public images of characters that I do not own. I can make them do random stuffs, but in respect to who those characters are. There are people who genuinely like those original characters, and I'm not gonna trash their favorites. (recently I am a little borderline with this though, debating how bad I can make the Lunatic Cult)

Third: personal preference: I ain't writing professionally, so I don't feel like pressuring myself to chase any fads or use any "formulas for traffics" that I personally don't see fitting my story. The result is that I'll have a pretty small audience, maybe throughout the whole book, but I'm fine with that. As far as I know, there are at least 2, maybe 3 people who are entertained by my story, and I think that's awesome enough. I feel like if I start writing for the masses in a chase for Internet points, I'd grow to hate writing.

Other than that, I write a lot of different stuff, even gruesome $h!+s. I do have the tendency to follow Margaret Atwood's decision:

“When I wrote The Handmaid’s Tale, nothing went into it that had not happened in real life somewhere at some time. The reason I made that rule is that I didn’t want anybody saying, ‘You certainly have an evil imagination, you made up all these bad things.’ I didn’t make them up.” - Margaret Atwood

Ngl though, sometimes doing that brings me irl psychological harm. But hey all part of the process of writing a story.

My personal author's code:

First, the basics: nothing illegal, (obviously) nothing that attacks any real life individuals or groups, (Such as cultural inapproprations) nothing that demoralizes or will cause harm to people irl. (Such as treating historical tragedies lightly or in joking matters)

Second, the moral obligations and responsibilities: one of the most obvious example for my case currently is that I'm writing a fan fiction using characters and events from other people's works. Therefore I vow to not degrade any public images of characters that I do not own. I can make them do random stuffs, but in respect to who those characters are. There are people who genuinely like those original characters, and I'm not gonna trash their favorites. (recently I am a little borderline with this though, debating how bad I can make the Lunatic Cult)

Third: personal preference: I ain't writing professionally, so I don't feel like pressuring myself to chase any fads or use any "formulas for traffics" that I personally don't see fitting my story. The result is that I'll have a pretty small audience, maybe throughout the whole book, but I'm fine with that. As far as I know, there are at least 2, maybe 3 people who are entertained by my story, and I think that's awesome enough. I feel like if I start writing for the masses in a chase for Internet points, I'd grow to hate writing.

Other than that, I write a lot of different stuff, even gruesome $h!+s. I do have the tendency to follow Margaret Atwood's decision:

“When I wrote The Handmaid’s Tale, nothing went into it that had not happened in real life somewhere at some time. The reason I made that rule is that I didn’t want anybody saying, ‘You certainly have an evil imagination, you made up all these bad things.’ I didn’t make them up.” - Margaret Atwood

Ngl though, sometimes doing that brings me irl psychological harm. But hey all part of the process of writing a story.

That last sentence was meant to be sarcastic