/CRITIQUE/
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You are currently reading a thread in /lit/ - Literature
You are currently reading a thread in /lit/ - Literature
Dubs edition.
Old one's full.
Post your shitty work.
Rate other's shitty work.
PLEASE leave feedback before or immediately after posting your work. Otherwise these threads turn to shit. Seriously.
>>8154294
I can't post anything ITT, because I'm bringing back philosophy in the form of aphorisms.
If I post any, people will steel my ideas.
>>8154299
At least you got the dubs.
Post a sneak peak maybe?
>>8154294
The café Claire worked at was built inside a space originally used as a warehouse, presumably to store parts of the boats they used to build down by the river nearby. The original walls were still there, grey cinderblocks stacked on top of each other held together by thick white cement that sometimes ran and left chalky marks there like raindrops or tear stains. Claire had grown more sluggish at work in the past few weeks. She’d subconsciously trained herself to act on autopilot, gliding through the space, spectral-like, but also slow. Her manager often asked her kindly to work faster, but Claire didn’t feel like it was in her ability to do so – her body could only travel the speed at which her mind moved, and lately she’d felt her mind slowing down – the processes in her brain decelerating, growing more simple, monosyllabic. Claire understood that something was different, a small part of her worried that her persistent drug use was numbing her brain – another part was relishing the calm space she now occupied – but for the most part, Claire didn’t think at all. During her breaks she would sit in the storage space behind the café, and feeling a cold breeze coming through the open window, imagined her breaths slowing down, her mind slowing down, her body slowing down to the point where she could subsist near-comatose, not dead but hibernating, like a bear in the forest.
Then her break would end and she would go back to work and carry plates around and take orders, writing them down on a small notepad because she could never remember them all in her head.
>>8154313
>Claire
I despise Claire, I hope the insipid bitch drops dead
I posted some of this in the last thread, it's part of my book I'm about halfway through writing.
It's about a man who finds a rabbit dying in a parking lot, and nurses it back to health. He soon finds the rabbit is much more than it appears, however. Meanwhile, a strange new drug has become popular in his tiny podunk town.
I'll drop a link, read as much or as little as you'd like.http://insomwrites.tumblr.com/post/144848742959/moondust-prologue
I'll do some critique in a moment.
>>8154313
A mostly humble description of what sounds like a combination of nihilism and depression. It makes me curious about the further details of the character's life, so good work there.
>monosyllabic
The writing was very humble until you decided to use this word and make the whole thing very slightly pretentious-sounding.
Will I ever be able to publish a poem in English? It's not my first language.
The End of Love
Alone I rest my life upon the hands
Of unforgiving time and prizeless seeking -
The birds have flown away that once were squeaking,
And on the river's place is now dry land.
I tried so much to keep in my command
All my knowledge of joy and tender speaking
As youth was going down and age was wreaking,
But now my voice is dry, my mind's bland.
So will I see again that rose of roses
Who came to kiss my brow when I was young,
And flew like flowers fly when winter's coming?
I don't think that I will. My mind reposes
Too much, and tries too much to end my song,
While my heart has no force to keep it running.
I wrote it in 30 minutes, but it sounds wholly artificial. Should I stick to Portuguese?
>>8154299
>If I post any, people will steel my ideas.
Is this some sort of intentionally philosophical statement?
'Steel' being used in the same manner as 'Steel yourselves'?
Or am I giving you too much credit.
>>8154313
>her body could only travel the speed at which her mind moved
CLAIRE, YOU SON OF A BITCH!
EVERYTHING WAS GOING SO WELL UNTIL YOU WENT FULL PSEUD, EUGH!
>>8154366
It's a valiant attempt but like you said, it feels artificial. Would get you a nice C in english class.
Don't give up though.
>>8154443
Thanks.
Next time I'll try more seriously, and during a lot more time, maybe by translating a Portuguese poem, so as to focus more on language itself rather than on the meanings and concepts. It's kind of difficult to make something come naturally to you in a language that's not your own, even if you're already fluent in it.
Meri loved the night sky, sparkling with stars that would never leave.
It was when his mother, embracing her son, would sing lullabies to him until he fell into a deep slumber.
Meri loved the river, sparkling with the reflection of the clear water that would never leave.
It was where he and his father caught the largest fish that they would ever see in their whole lives.
Meri loved reminiscing when he saw the objects connected to his memories. Meri loved reminiscing the time his mother read to him his first book and told him that she would never leave him. Meri loved reminiscing the time his father appeared a little teary-eyed and told him that he'd be there for him forever.
Meri, however, did not like how they broke their promises. How they told him that they would stay by his side, no matter what.
If there was one thing that truly lasted, it was his fondest memories. Memories that even then could only be remembered when he saw the things that emotionally connected to him.
Meri closed his eyes when he realized that in the end, those memories were limited and will never continue their story. Those memories will never substitute the warmth feeling of being with his loved ones.
He wanted affection, but all he had were memories.
>>8154294
I wrote a magical realist-ey/Southern Gothic short story (only 770 words) for a microfiction magazine.
Reddit didn't like it because I used the word "marmoreal".
Give it a read pls.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SmcQtYA5Qli7rRpwY8PuIYBkEoWQ37mSevo6Vv8h43o/edit?usp=sharing
>>8154313
The writing is pretty good. Simple, clean, but not pedestrian by any means. I'm not the biggest fan of the subject matter (Claire sounds like a bloody cunt), but I give you props for style. Very readable.
>>8154318
I'm not sure how I feel about this. The writing isn't bad by any means, but it with the subject matter was...an interesting mix, to say the least. I feel like something a little more whimsical or ornamented would help you here in conjuring the atmosphere. And how does the space mission coincide with the rabbit story on Earth?
>>8154366
I agree with the other poster--definitely not bad considering that English is your second language, but the rhyme scheme definitely needs work. I'd like to hear your work in Portuguese. An off-topic question---how do you codniggers speak English so well? I visited Portugal twice in the past 5 months (I loved it) and was amazed at your people's ability with language.
>>8154487
This has some potential but I think it's too short and is very over sentimental. Subtlety is the name of the game anon.
>>8154507 <---Here's my piece that I'm offering up for critique.
>>8154507
They once said I would never become a writer because I used the word 'pernicious'.
>>8154625
LMAO
>>8154625
How do these people even get through Charlie and the Chocolate factory?
I hate this fucking world, too many god damn fuckers in it.
Too many thoughts and different societies all wrapped up together in this fucking place called AMERICA.
Everyone has their own god damn opinion on every god damn thing,
and you may be saying 'Well what makes you so different?'.
Because I have something only me and V have; SELF AWARENESS.
Call it exortenstiolism or whatever the fuck you want.
We know what we are to this world, and what everyone else is.
We learn more than what caused the civil war and how to simplify quadratics in school.
We've been watching you people and we know what you think and how you act.
All talk and no action.
People who are said to be brave or courageous are usually just STUPID,
then they say later that they did it on purpose cause they're brave,
when they did it on fucking accident.
God everything is so corrupt and so filled with opinions and points of view,
and peoples own little agendas and schedules.
This isn't a world any more.
It's H.O.E and no one knows it.
Self awareness is a wonderful thing.
>>8154719
pic is me btw
>>8154507
Settles into a nice atmosphere, though I'd take reddit's advice into consideration. In the first few paragraphs especially you're flexing, and in service of what? Setting a scene that isn't terribly relevant to the rest of the story.
>>8154751
The opening paragraphs and the metaphor of the trees ties into the central theme of the persistence of "loss".
And the opening paragraphs are mostly just about setting the "setting"---early 1910s in the South. The suggestion of the milkman looking like a ghost echoes what the narrator will later see.
It might sound terribly "constructed" but the word limit was 800, so I had to think about what was going into it pretty hard.
I posted this yesterday too, and I never got a response. I wrote it for a short story competition with the theme of fear. My main concerns are I don't describe how others feel fear well, I'm too repetitious, and my story is boring. I already know my grammar is awful.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/13bTMv-eJJiOSbi9q91K_tbT5FKbGChfYRV92RM37hzA/edit
>>8154507
I didn't have any trouble with your word choice, but I did find the ending a bit jarring at first. Thinking about it, the ending works. Your protagonist is walking about the city so of course it ends when he goes home. It's suddenness surprised me at first, though. Such shock was definitely from the lack of direction. A lack of direction isn't a problem of course. In fact it seems to fit the work as a whole. Basically, I enjoyed it, but I was surprised it ended so suddenly.
>>8154781
Give your character a name, for starters. Even just using "he" would be better than "the man." Boring is right -- what kind of pathetic fear is this? Afraid of dying out on a domesticated lake, at a summer vacation spot? Anon please, you can do better than that. Why did you decide to write in the present tense? Some stories can benefit from the feeling of immediacy lent by it, but this isn't one of them.
Paragraph breaks are for psueds
>>8154810
Simply dreadful. Too on-the-nose.
>>8154802
The tense choice stems from my inexperience as a writer. I thought it'd lend an urgency, which I clearly failed to do. I'll fix it up. Thanks for the help.
http://pastebin.com/czaqgnnU
This was spawned from a single sentence that wouldn't leave me alone:
"Simba has defeated his evil uncle, but can he defeat the forces of revolutionary socialism?"
I doubt I'll ever add any more to this, but I'm interested in whether this comes across as tongue-in-cheek and somewhat satirical, or just wordy and pretentious.
>>8154810
While I don't think the way you quantify everything is necessarily bad, I just want to ask, how long can you keep it up? At some point you're going to have to change the narrative voice so that these meticulous, quantifying descriptions (which are obviously set up to reflect the personality of the character) and what are you going to do when that happens.
While this looks promising, how is you narrative going to stand up when you actually start writing, because this kind of storytelling doesn't seem to be sustainable for anything beyond the initial hook.
I'm still writing solomon king stories if anyone wants to read my newest one
http://pastebin.com/ct0JjGvr
>>8154516
>And how does the space mission coincide with the rabbit story on Earth?
The prologue is a sort of preview into the themes and challenges the characters in the story will face. It's also kind of like an intro to moon rabbits... if the reader is unfamiliar with the concept.
It's not a whimsical story. I wanted to have it somewhat grounded in a feeling of reality and urban malaise to give the mythical beings in the story an urban legend sort of feel.
>>8108444 (1/3)
>>8108430 (2/3)
>>8108440 (3/3)
And here's a later writing from the same story, hot off the press: http://pastebin.com/iDrMcaNh
What do you guys do when you don't know much about what you're writing? It's a bitch that inspiration should ever act on such impulsive commitment to history, but I can't help it. This is what it is.
I'll be back later tonight to critique I hope.
>>8154507
Honestly, it feels like you're trying too hard to impress the reader. That's the feeling I got.
You don't need to use a complex, uncommon word at every opportunity and every description. A common word, used in the right way, can be just as powerful.
For example, I really liked this,
>It smelled of moss and soil, and [...] the frail suggestion of smoke.
A simple, but elegant description.
Conversely, I didn't like this.
>They say it was a miracle that the fire didn’t eat up the house entire,
You're trying to use the word 'entire' in a fancy way that sounds like some person of nobility speaking or something, but it's just awkward to read.
>>8154294
Dubs get
>>8155527
I wasn't trying to evoke nobility, but rather the way that Southern people of that era spoke.
Also, tell me, where are the uncommon words?
There's:
>indefatigable
>marmoreal
>atrophied
>lozenge (not cough drop but w/e)
>liana
>corbelled (an architectural term)
>umber
>keening
And those are not entirely uncommon.
I was trying to evoke a certain style, which is the Southern Gothic of Cormac McCarthy, Faulkner, and Gaddis. The writing is purposefully baroque and the story is told in a purposely ambiguous way. Otherwise it'd be just "Kid go into spooky house see spooky ghost oo!" The writing requirements for this magazine were a max of 800 words so you can't exactly develop a real story in that time.
So I settled on atmosphere and the WAY the story is told over an actual story.
>>8155836
I wasn't aware you had a word limit. In that case, fair enough. You did well with the space you had.
>Otherwise it'd be just "Kid go into spooky house see spooky ghost oo!"
I mean, if you say so? I am simply coming from the mindset that you don't need to 'impress' your reader with your writing in order to tell a good story.
>PLEASE leave feedback before or immediately after posting your work. Otherwise these threads turn to shit. Seriously.
lol
>>8154313
Good, but nitpick:
"Claire understood that something was different, a small part of her worried..."
Should be split or you should add an "and."
>>8154366
Honestly the things that bother the most are the words "squeaking" and "wreaking." But I know close to nothing about poetry so feel free to ignore.
>>8154487
Any context for this? It feels pretty heavy handed, especially for topics like memory and loss.
>>8154810
>>8154968
Agree with this reviewer.
>>8154949
I thought it was both satirical and pretentious. Some funny moments, especially, "It's dead."
Something I've been working on.
http://pastebin.com/enjvMkKs
"The metal cast, which the sun, now fallen into shelter, had draped over the world of steel and glass which now shone like jewels, made me feel something, whose son they know as nostalgia. My unfeeling, cold frame dolled with fine clothing bent into a pose of battle, and exploded into a violent sprint, which could only be described through meaningless prose and overdramatic angles. Galahad raised his gun, and in that fleeting moment I saw him, like a man sees a beautiful woman amongst a thousand others: a titan tucked into a suit, whose end and the other had been covered in expensive delicacies, polished shoes and top hats. The short dark haircut didn't force itself out of the hat too hard, and instead led way to the stereotypically evil, squiggly Pringles-man moustache- and after that moment had passed, he fired until my right arm clanged as junk onto the roof of the train, the steel footing. "
A translated paragraph from the first writing exercise I ever did, setting is basically a parody of something I did in school when I was 14 (overdramatic steampunk through the eyes of a neckbeard of that universe, a loser cyborg pretending to be a vigilante)
constructive feedback plex
>>8154318
>Moon rabbits
So the Great Lunar War is about to begin anon.
>>8156267Gas the lunarians, race war now.
It's so much easier just staying numb. Knowing that you'll bear those scars, that the sense of aimless dread filling your gut and bubbling into your throat might not ever go away for good, praying for the ringing in your ears to stop and for the world around you to just *shut up* for once, maybe forever... How can you cope with that? How can you possibly face that head on when you know it could have been you? That it could have killed you?
Don't think it still won't. It'll kill you from the inside.
>>8156310
Without any kind of context this just reads like an angsty livejournal post.
>>8156313
It is an angsty journal post.
Would really love some critique on my work here:
>>8156030
It's supposed to be almost like an irreverent science journal description of how a high school/college social group might form and operate. I had an idea for a graphic novel, interspersing chapters of comic with longer prose. Is it too cliche/campy?
>>8154781
What is this character? He hardly seems like a man, but a teenager - it seems a man who has family/has spent time in this area would not make his mistake to begin with. The Nazi imagery also feels out of place. Everything feels so abstract beforehand - the character has no name, there's a loss of hope/feeling stuck but a widely applicable one. The Nazi detail grounds the story oddly - there either needs to be more concrete details before or this detail needs to be removed. I also feel like rather than talk about their truly being no hope, examining him freaking out as he tries to fall asleep would be good. I think the overall idea is good though.
>>8154968
Sorry I didn't read this earlier. It's very readable, pretty fun. The transition into the story about the theft is a little jarring in a way that the chronology becomes confusing, but maybe this is what you were going for. I'd need to read more.
>>8156241
Feels clunky in a not great way, especially the first line. There are some parts I really like, like "only be described through meaningless prose and overdramatic angles." Also, personally not a fan of the Pringles-man thing.
Wrote this awhile just after hs graduation, the breakup, broken leg, oxycotin,...I can't stand to read it again
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K0NgnC7R2qp-wiVaCKrLUNPTPQw3cdWlm6WFaxp4htg/edit?usp=docslist_api
>Thinking I'm clicking on Jewgle links
Stop
I received a letter from Berthgurth: "Darling have this cake, and this razor blade. Kisses B.B". There was no cake, just razor. Delayed by the post-office they say, never to be seen again. She came later that night, praised my skin for some reason (a fetish I think, one of a kind), and introduced me to her new fiancé, "l'artiste," as she calls him. He designs trousers, in the shape of birds and mammals. She said goodbye, and laughed and hugged the trouser-man.
Last week I was introduced to another ex, the pamphlet writer, just the day after the banjo man-encounter. Both dropped at my office for some reason, spoke loudly, and called that night while she had an orgasm. "Just a reminder," she said.
>>8156241
You don't need all those commas Anon, channel Marx and redistribute them to other Anonettes in the thread. Personally I'd recommend trying a Poe-like style for this type of shit:
>metal cast
Sunken sheet
>world of steel shone like jewels
glistening girder
etc.
>>8154313
This reminds me of clicking a link on a lofi band on band camp, its somewhat good, basic, slight impressions of that amateur trying hardness, slight bit of magical whim, but rather sad and so caught up in that still life prose, ultimately relatable (well, for some of us I guess...) and just too short...but it had a nice voice and feel about it, you wouldn't mind it again. Tldr, I like it
>>8154366
Well I spose if it sounds artificial it is....but heck, learning another language is crazy enough. If you kept at it and just got more natural in it I feel you could do well, its just awkward at bits like the -ing rhyme first two and the sentence mid-line fourth stanza, though I enjoy the poignant break it offers. Feels are there, reminds me relatively of a foreign man at the bar counter going on in a second language.
>>8154487
Man, that repetitive sentence start and basic structure really established that mood. The sentimentality comes at you like a sledgehammer, I feel some more abstraction like the first few would help. Feels like a don herdzfeldt without the humour, love the imagery tho and na!me casting (I mean assuming you were....meri, sea, cuz like...but if not that's cool too)
>>8154719
I'm trying to decide If this is a shitpost or not...but hey, postironic obsessiveness interests me, just look at my piece. Its exploitation is nice tho.
>>8154810
Rather liked this. So dry and perniciously biting in its lack of emotion, really reflects the life of a NEET. really reminded me of one of those nostalgic dfw endnotes
>>8156241
Those commas....then I read that it was translated so I mean, unless the jilted style was meant to reflect the character. I love how each one of these sentences just seems to ultimately work against itself, especially "which could only be described through meaningless prose and overdramatic angles" made me lol. I feel like I'd want to read the rest of the nonexistent story this must belong to just for that weirdness of it all. Also the cartoonic imagery...seriously its like each detail is so much as if a robot were trying to create human description and expression but can only use some algorithm giving the most ironic effect. Its delicious
>>8156310
Hopeless post internet culture...the epitome like,
>>8156523
>this
Oh so edgy...
[Insert expletive backlash]
>>8156539
Would like to read more to this, ppigniant and nice, just good...
>>8156491
This is mine, it actually took awhile and just want ppl to giuve feedback since its like the first thing I've been proud of...i know its long tho and weird postmoderny shit but I mean I've put so many puzzles in it, please...
>>8155913
Yeah my policy is critique what I want to and it won't change shit. One guy going through the whole thread is just one guy with a lot of time on his hands.
>>8156636
I did pick Meri for the meaning of his name because it relates to his backstory. Thank you very much! I didn't think it would be this good. I will try to write more pieces.
>>8156030
Meri was just reminiscing as he was completely alone, with the only companions (his parents) he had leaving and turning him into a one-man island. I wanted to establish his character.
The Weaver
Sitting in the center
sits the Web Weaver
connecting threads, spooling
scattered swatches and
switching switches
swiftly wrapping cogs
with these threads
The Weaver works with old hands
knotted and gnarled
from bringing strings together
It is. It is.
He plucks and He pulls
twists and connects
makes life and
makes nuisance
A Weaver sacrifice
you want him gone
to connect on your own
Aware.
of the strings
threads
dangle
but don't know
what goes
where
got bad connection
let the Weavers weave
or be free to
be them
First paragraph of a developing cowboy story
Early Chitwood was cold. He had been cold all night, and the fact his condition had endured into the early morning only deepened his discomfort and irritation. He shifted himself in his overlarge saddle and looked up and watched the shining beams of morning sunlight trying, and pitifully failing, to break through the thick grey cloud bank that filled the Texas sky. Last night the sky had been crystal clear. He’d tried to sleep in his tent, but the icy wind had cut through the cheap canvas like a knife. In desperation he had dragged his kit outside and had fallen asleep huddled as close as he could to the campfire,looking into the dark void of the night sky and counting the innumerable pinpricks of starlight unfathomably far away. It seemed though now that that same devil wind that had bitten into him all last night (and had made it so hard to get that campfire started in the first place, goddamnit) had brought on its back the ugly bank of grey cloud that now filled every visible corner sky.
Sometimes I feel like I need to encode my actual writing into something ridiculous and full of memes just to get someone to at least partially read and respond to it.
>>8157069
I'm always down for a good story but the prose and structure needs work. Less similes, more metaphors. I'd also seriously recommend making the narration style bleaker. I want to feel like an actual rugged cowboy is telling me this, y'know? Don't be afraid to experiment
>>8157009
I shouldn't like this but I really do
It intentionally starts getting messier towards the end, and I actually wouldn't recommend making it pull together for the last few lines. I say let it end messy and incoherent.
Posting mine below...
From a religious text I'm writing. I'm still writing the creation portion
>>8157103
One more sample, maybe this one makes a bit more sense out of context
It's from earlier in the text
>>8157094
Thank you! i think that makes a lot of sense.
>>8157094
Sorry, *good cowboy story
bump?
Not really happy with it. Mateen and wolf just don't match well enough.
Darken the city, night is a wire
Smoke on the dancefloor, club is afire
Do do do do do do do dodo dododo dodo
Faggot, you want me, give me a sign
and catch my breathing even closer behind
Do do do do do do do dodo dododo dodo
In touch with the ground
I'm on the hunt I'm after you
Smell like a goat, I'm lost in a crowd
And I'm hungry like the Mateen
Straddle the line in discord and rhyme
I'm on the hunt I'm after you
Mouth is alive with juices like Qaswa
And I'm hungry like the Mateen
Stalked in the gaybar, too close to hide
I'll be upon you by the moonlight side
Do do do do do do do dodo dododo dodo
High blood drumming on your skin, it's so tight
You feel my heat, I'm just a moment behind
Do do do do do do do dodo dododo dodo
In touch with the ground
I'm on the hunt I'm after you
A scent and a sound, I'm lost and I'm found
And I'm hungry like the Meteen
Strut on a line, it's discord and rhyme
I bleat and I brey, I'm after you
Mouth is alive, all running inside
And I'm hungry like the Mateen
Hungry like the Mateen
Hungry like the Mateen
Hungry like the Mateen
Burning the ground, I break from the crowd
I'm on the hunt, I'm after you
I smell like I a goat, I'm lost and I'm found
And I'm hungry like the Mateen
Strut on a line, it's discord and rhyme
I'm on the hunt, I'm after you
Mouth is alive with juices like Qaswa
And I'm hungry like the Mateen
what are some good books that can help with writing?
>>8157210
All of them.
Hahaha but I really like How to Enjoy Writing by Isaac and Jane Asimov.
One of John's rooms has what seems to look like steel grated wall, stretching miles-- wide and length. The wall is the skin of the engines. Looking at the right corner of the wall is a hole. It helps the thousands of wires to connect John's quasi-supercomputer to the gear hidden inside the wall. John's a digital librarian. He makes six figures. What does John have in his exabyte worth of digital information? Almost every paper (scientific, criminal, legal) published in Arizona. Almost.
>>8157251
You're intriguing me now... stop that
>>8157285
Don't be a petty fag.
>>8154318
>Moon rabbits.
Gas the lunarians, race war now.
>The ferocious snowstorm blew thick flurries to cover her tracks from any unwanted pursuers, but the downside of this, it also made hunting nearby game harder.
Consider breaking this up or rewording it, it reads awkwardly.
You might do,
>The ferocious snowstorm blew thick flurries to cover her tracks from any unwanted pursuers - the downside of which that it also made hunting nearby game harder.
or,
>The ferocious snowstorm blew thick flurries to cover her tracks from any unwanted pursuers. However, this had the downside of nearby game becoming more difficult to hunt.
>Ignoring her growling stomach need to eat something
Is english not your first language? I mean no offense. I assume you meant something like,
>Ignoring her growling stomach telling her she needed to eat something
Also, watch your tenses... Is the story happening now or is it happening in the past? You suddenly switched to present tense during the second sentence of the send paragraph and never switched back.
>>8157504
English is not my first language. I am sorry for the mistakes
>>8157515
I said I was intrigued. The writing was functional, I could see it as being a little idiosyncratic but good with context.
>>8157528
It's alright, that's what peer review is all about. There were a ton of errors in my current project I had glossed over that others noticed, and I've read the whole thing (77k words) several times over.
>>8157069
there's too many things happening in each sentence, spare it down, you're not a good enough stylist to have that many things happening in each sentence
is Early Chitwood the dude's fucking name? That's a shit opening two words
Show, don't tell. Don't say things like 'in desperation' - show me that he's desperate.
There's no fucking way it would be warmer outside his tent than in, especially if its windy. Why are you writing a cowboy story if you don't know shit about the outdoors?
>>8157094 says don't be afraid to experiment. At the technical level you're at, DO be afraid to experiment. Get the fucking basics right first
You've wasted a whole lot of the reader's time saying nothing except there's a cowboy who's cold. You can do that in a sentence. Have a little more respect for your reader's time and patience.
Otherwise, ok
>>8157504
>the ferocious snowstorm blew thick flurries
you have nothing to contribute, you just use a lot of words
First poem I've made, please critique!
Deaf
I am deaf.
I am deaf,
But -
I can hear
The smiles of
Children
Playing so eagerly.
I can hear
The thoughts of
Business
Cold and calculating.
I can hear
The old man
Singing
About his memories.
Most of all
I can hear
You -
Crying in whispers
When I see
The
Big, gloomy eyes
You show to
Us -
My dear friend
Do not hide
Feelings
Because I may
Not
Hear your woes
But I can
Listen.
>>8157867
I'm not usually big on poetry famalam but I'll give it a shot for you.
I like the weird flow going on. At first I couldn't help but read it like William Shatner but by the end of it I was enjoying it. I think the first line doesn't need to be repeated, but it's your idea so make of that what you will, maybe you could do something else other than I am deaf.
>Do not hide
>Feelings
I think that should be worked on a bit, it seems almost out of place. All of the other lines flow very nicely but this one just seems to make me stop reading for a moment to understand what I've read.
All in all I think it's a good poem, for a first start, much better than any poem I've ever written.
As for my own work, this is one short story I just finished, it uses the same main character as the book I finished about a month ago. I'm trying to get more short stories like this out into the world to generate interest so that maybe a publishing agent will finally take a look at my work.
>http://pastebin.com/QT7Qe92Q
And then there's this one, I think it has a whole lot of promise, but it also needs a lot of fucking work.
>http://pastebin.com/9ViPXpZ1
I'm not trying to write anything noteworthy, I just want to write something entertaining that people will have fun reading. I'll take any constructive criticism I get.
>>8157881
Thank you for the critique! I should probably have rewrote that. This means a lot to me, thank you very much.
>>8157893
No problem famalam, I know how good it feels just to have somebody else read your shit
>>8158078
Thanks pal
>>8159133
SHUT UP YOU FUCKING NEW FAG!!! I HOPE YOU GET CANCER WITH HORRIBLE PAIN!!!!! FUCK YOU MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111
>>8157483
Re-write.
The plot seems fun, but i think it comes out a bit sloppy. It starts okay and gets worse as it goes, so I'd just start from scratch. Also pick a tense, it loses flow.
A short story
II
Life was simpler inside of her. The world had yet to break me with its pulls and pushes, with its infectious desire. Needs were my only trade and how my heart bolts to think of those days! I meditated nine months in complete silence like a good bodhisattva, lingering about in mother’s womb like Tathagata, eating only modest alms that were offered.
Maybe I reached nirvana before arriving to this world. Maybe we all did. All I know is I’ve never been back.
Nobody clapped when I was born and that’s okay. Mother hugged me and father shook my hand with a firm grip of respect and told me he was proud. They invaded me as if I was a malleable metal, loving and shaping me. Mother who once protected me from the outside world became its ally, allowing it to invade me with temptations and at times helping to get its tentacles round my underbelly. The first betrayal I’d ever receive.
One fateful day before eating, I turned to her and exclaimed:
“Before becoming, you know, I already existed.”
She laughed and hugged me and pinched my cheeks, calling on father to come see my new trick. It was then, I understood.
>>8159669
lol 69
>>8159891
You're story intrigues me, anon. Any more?
Also about re-writing the first chapter. Should it be written in past tense or present tense?
Been rolling some attempt at poetry today, but poetry critique thread is dead.
Not done yet but lease tell me what you think, can't tell if its good or not anymore and curious if I should finish it
Somethings lost in translation-
From the Divine
From intercourse with man-
How quick in dirt
the honey spoilt
>>8157566
All of your advice is awful, and im going to break down why.
>there's too many things happening in each sentence, spare it down, you're not a good enough stylist to have that many things happening in each sentence
>You've wasted a whole lot of the reader's time saying nothing except there's a cowboy who's cold. You can do that in a sentence. Have a little more respect for your reader's time and patience.
These ideas are literally exact opposites, there can't be too much happening and not enough happening. Also, to the latter point, reading is not an exercise in efficiency. If you lack time a patience read a magazine.
>is Early Chitwood the dude's fucking name? That's a shit opening two words
This is a metric that has absolutely no bearing on anything. It's like saying GR sucks because the first two words are "a screaming".
>Show, don't tell. Don't say things like 'in desperation' - show me that he's desperate.
This isnt the lead by the nose motivation you're making it out to be, in fact you're kind of proving you're the kind of person who does need to be shown.
He got desperate quickly because he's young and inexperienced, which is the same reason he thought that as close as possible to the fire =Warmer. His quick temper and over-sized gear were supposed to be enough to indicate this without beating the reader over the head with it.
A man wandering up the road, flanked on each side by a row of lamps, whistles to himself in the moonlight and hobbles along alone. Lamp after lamp turns to torch after torch as the whistling man walks.
With each step the man finds his whistle increasingly drowned out by a second booming whistle approaching, until the man is finally passed by a nearly identical man. The passing man is gruff but not disheveled, rough but not rude looking, and produces a sound that leaves the wandering man inaudibly moving his lips and mouth. The wandering man and the passing man pass hip to hip and as the wandering man continues his whistling begins to return.
Whistling and wondering with respect to the passing man, the wandering man shed his perplexion and continued on until coming across another identical passing man, and hip to hip saw the man more gruff and more rough than the previous, and as the wandering man continued again passing lamp after lamp and torch after torch the passing man became passing men and the gruff became disheveled and the rough became rude looking until the wandering man saw stubble turn to beards and the passing turn to crawling.
The wandering man, being increasingly passed by crawling gaunt men one behind the other, came to a final set of lamps and torches, past the set the wandering man could only see that the crawling man inched from the otherside into the lights of the lamp and continued on.
The man prepared to take a step past the lamps but stumbled falling face forward. Laying with a lamp on his left and a lamp on his right the man was piled on over and over by the crawling men who turned to mountains.
>>8162180
I don't understand the ending. Specifically, the turned to mountains line confuses me. Given how weird everything else is, I wouldn't be surprised if they actually turned to mountains. I like the set up though. It managed to keep me interested while keeping me curious about what was going to happen.
>>8160103
Very in your face and tragic, seems like a complete thought already. If you add more too it it may make it ramble on.
Heres one of mine
Lightning strikes the tree
Split from top to bottom
A year later, two trees in bloom
>>8157251
1: Arizona is a shitty setting, no matter the year, or alternate reality or whatever.
2:
>seems to look like
Does it seem, or does it look like? Never both.
3:
>Wide and length
Is English your first language?
The rest is decent enough, doesn't bother my mind at least.
Could be a good story, if you present the story more articulately.
>>8162749
I like this, short, to the point, and the whole chaos causes beauty thing works. Personally, I prefer poems with meter, so if you add that then I feel it would work better (particularly if you made the first two lines correspond to a specific amount of syllables, and the last line corresponding to a different amount).
>Mine, first paragraph from a short story I recently began working on
As grand pianos stand, and they often do, the one that stood in the center of my living room, adorned with pictures of me as a child, decorated with my many accolades, and decorative plates and chalices, was first-class. The room around it followed suit: elegant pictures of fruitful valleys trampled by thundering storms painted by long-dead men hung on the walls, which were covered end to end with small, winged men who stood on golden canoes and surfed rampant waters, their eyes mad with greed for a land that they would never reach. The furniture was equally fanciful, each piece coming from some billion-dollar foreign company that overpriced its products because it knew that we could, and would, pay the price. So each time I sat at that piano and opened my sheet music to begin my lessons, each time I lay on that sleek, leather couch to relax, each time I passed through the elegance on my way to the kitchen, I was forced to see that organized, meticulous beauty, so tediously put together it brought my stomach to its knees. The older I got, the less intricate and beautiful the room seemed to me, so I went elsewhere for excitement.
I am being thorn apart by different alluring directions and I can't distinguish the false promise from the promised land.
Peace is a myth to me and I spy the happy ones from distance, judging them bitterly.
Is writing the cure?
Didn't want to open another thread.
buuuump
>>8162767
The language is pleasing to read, but a bit overwrought. It seems more focused on being literary and "well written" than conveying the meaning effectively. Also, the last sentence seems like an abrupt change from the rest of the paragraph's tone ("so I went elsewhere for excitement" seems almost plaintive compared to the more drawn-out sentences of the rest of the paragraph), so if that was your intention, great, but otherwise consider making that last clause more in line with the rest of the text.
>>8163202
That was my intent, I was trying to show dissatisfaction with the tedious pomp that the character's surrounded with. This paragraph was meant to sound kind of pretentious and flowery, so I'm glad it came across as overcomplicated. Thank you for your input.
>>8163229
Well done then! You should post the rest when you finish.
I'm working on a intro for a short story.
Oh my dear child, you ask what happened to the monsters of legend? Vagabo, son of Brigith and Agus, breaker of King Loron’s indestructible armor, slayer of Droth’s infinite legion, and conqueror of this world and the one below, had a nightmare. After he killed king Loron and bedded his wife, slumber took him. Within the realm of dreams, Vagabo found himself aged and joyless. Though his beard was now white as snow and dragged on the ground, he still had the strength to topple to nations. If only there were some left to topple.
>>8162767
Haven't read anything else in this thread but I can say from experience that this is certainly the best thing here.
Although I don't quite get the image of the winged men on the walls ... you mean like sculptures, attached to the wall surfaces? Besides that, the language is very clear & enjoyable.
>>8157566
I agree, this is a terrible review, written with very circumspect grammar.
Pretty good/decent paragraph to me, anon.
>>8157109
what in the great fuck of jesus's name?
>>8157109
I mean, fuckin makes me chuckle but what in the fuck ...
>>8163403
I meant it was wallpaper with angels in canoes, thanks for this, ill polish up that imagery
>>8160710
you care too much about things that don't matter
the advice was bad, but you're egotistical
>>8162180
I really don't know what to make of this. I can't tell what meaning you're trying to convey (if there is one) but the best i can say is that this is somewhat pointless, purposelessly vague and abstract. I almost feel like you're trying to imitate Kafka's super short works.
But, if i'm looking at this just stylistically, it's very monotone. The narration is very calm. Every sentence conveys the same objectivity as the last. You never really make use of sudden stops or different levels of pacing or intensity. This would get old fast when writing anything a few hundred words longer than this, but here it works. You don't use any awkward words and sentence at its end seems to carry nicely to the next. However, it begins to seem again monotone with many of your sentences starting with "the passing man" and "the wandering man".
Also, you switched from present to past tense after the second paragraph. I don't know if that's intentional but i may as well mention it.
>>8163391
You're going to lose points automatically with me because i absolutely loathe fantasy.
>Vagabo, son of Brigith and Agus, breaker of King Loron’s indestructible armor, slayer of Droth’s infinite legion, and conqueror of this world and the one below, had a nightmare
I've never read a lot of fantasy, but do know enough to tell you that this is cliche. Perhaps you shouldn't begin with blasting your reader with all these titles and names that exist only in this world you've created. Try to ease them into it. If you don't, you run the risk of making them feel as if they're opening an encyclopedia.
>Though his beard was now white as snow and dragged on the ground, he still had the strength to topple to nations. If only there were some left to topple.
I'm going to be blunt: aside from the first sentence, none of this is good. "white as snow" is as cliche for a description of the color white as you can get.
>the strength to topple to nations. If only there were some left to topple
It seems like you just went with the very first thought that occurred to you when trying to explain how much of a badass this guy is. Maybe try being more specific on what this "strength" of his is.
>>8154294
Can A book be written in a mixture of First-Person and Third-Person for aesthetic.
>>8154294
Compromise
He wakes up and goes to work. He comes back and lets the cable TV drown over him and put him to bed. His wife, Martha, has hated him for four years. He feels completely indifferent towards her. The same routine, day in and day out, for ten years now. Ten years surprisingly devoid of any pain or sense of loss. Instead, he feels numb. His son is ever absent, at soccer practice or any of the other activities his mother signed him up for to keep him occupied. The man is fairly affluent, but can’t enjoy in his own wealth without facing disapproval from his wife.
“We have a son to save for!”
“What’s the point of having all this money and not being able to spend it?”
“Aren’t you happy with what we have?”
“No, and I know you aren’t either.”
The “disagreements” would go on in short bursts, and soon, things would return to the way they had always been: devoid of any passion, any strong feeling. The only thing the man really felt was an absence of feeling. A lack of caring. One day, while he was sitting at home, the man came to the realization that his life would not get better. He had peaked two years after college, before meeting Martha. He had let himself be changed too much ever since. This cocktail of compromise had led to him leading not exactly a life, but rather a series of disappointments. His intention to lead a safe life actually led to him getting the rope and tying it to the ceiling fan when one day, enough was enough.
I'll take my time and give my opinion on other anon's work shortly, I just gotta finish my lifting.
Wrote this last night in 1.5 hours, it's the first work of fiction I've written in like 3 years and English isn't my first language so advice and critique is more than welcome.
Like every morning for the past three weeks, Isiah reminded himself he could have easily marinated in the bed for at least another half an hour. God knows getting ready wasn't a problem these days. If you wanted it, everything – the shower, the breakfast, the commute – everything could be done in a minute's notice. This wasn't about convenience, though. His refusal to conform to that particular desire, no matter how banal, was a matter of character. Waking up at 5:30 became a thing of principle these last three weeks, somewhat of a categorical imperative. It became the best and most important thing in life.
He spent the very valuable 30 minutes of additional waking life meditating on the fact that he woke up 30 minutes sooner than logic would command him to. When he was finished, he got out of bed and made a grand move to the kitchen. There, he would start his daily routine of button-mashing. With a two-second-delay, breakfast was ready for consumption. He went with the traditional setting: 2 eggs, 3 stripes of bacon, 150 grams of beans, 2 slices of bread.
What could be said about it other than that it was some food. It had nutritive properties. Isiah thought about what's on the plate and concluded he didn't really care that much about it or where it came from. However, the dish tickled an elusive part of his brain and made him nostalgic. That's why he liked the traditional setting.
A wife just passed through the kitchen on her way to the bathroom. She didn't kiss Isiah on his cheek or his lips. Her dissatisfaction with his rigorous practice of waking up thirty minutes earlier finally manifested physically after three weeks of nagging. Isiah felt satisfied in a somewhat smug way. She didn't understand what he was doing. Not yet anyway.
Isiah wondered if he did. He must have, because if he didn't, how would he have been able to scrutinize the decision so calmly, so rationally?
Isiah felt satisfied in a smug way.
A child just had their breakfast made. He went with the standard option which allowed him to leave the room as quickly as Isiah left his post on a Friday afternoon. The kid needs his strength. Maybe he will get into a fight today. It would make for some quality father-son bonding and advice giving later today, Isiah thought.
>cont.
>>8164325
Patrick… He was fascinated by what the world had to offer him and Isiah felt the slightest bit of envy because of this. He hasn't been fascinated by anything for a long time. „That's growing up“, Isiah would say to himself. What we are able to do with today's technology seemed enchanting to Patrick, like a superpower granted to him and him only. Of course, every home in Isiah's neighborhood had the same „superpower“, but granting wishes so constantly and indiscriminately becomes very personal very fast. No one's superpower was the same, even if every one of them was standardized.
Isiah knew it was just mechanics and quantum physics. He didn't understand it, but he knew it was just mechanics and quantum physics.
Most ventured into the brave new world with pragmatic intentions. Some did so with epicurean ones. A portion decided it's a perfect way to preconstruct and reconstruct intimate experiences. We're talking sexual experiences, of course. That was more than a decade ago, before the intentions slowly started changing. Not for the worse, for who can say with certainty that something is worse than something else? Not for the worse, but for the more basic. Isiah wouldn't have that in his home, so he and Sara made a pact not to use it for such things. Patrick was too young to even consider it anyway, but plans have been made to introduce him to a new amendment in their home's constitution as soon as he reaches puberty.
Isiah was one of the unlucky ones whose line of work was still in some, although measly, kind of demand. Even unluckier for him was his choice of profession. To be a journalist at a time when nothing interesting happens is akin to torture via boredom. Only the centennials even read anymore, and they too will be gone in a decade.
>cont.
>>8164335
Blake, the balding knob in the office next to Isiah's, snuck in through the aluminum door into Isiah's workroom. The two silently stared into the ground. Their mutual discomfort was particularly strong today. Isiah made the first move and slanted from his chair towards the carpet to pick up a mangled cigarette butt. Blake was not lucky enough to find an excuse for staring at the floor.
„How did this ever end up in here?“, Isiah inquired with genuine amazement.
„I don't know… Maybe it stuck to your soles or something?“
„Yeah, that's probably it.“
„I wish they still allowed people to smoke indoors.“, Blake said with quiet resentment. It seemed like he didn't know who to direct it at, which probably was the case since smoking indoors has been prohibited long before either of them were born. Isiah didn't like the prospect of a smoke filled office, therefore he didn't have an adequate reply to Blake's idiotic statement. So he stayed silent.
„Anyway… Any new designs lately?“
„Not really, no. You know my policy, I'm not really into anything too excessive or… Well, weird. Just the basic stuff. Food, drinks, school stuff for the kid. Occasional jewelry for the missus. You know me.“
„You're not using it to it's full potential, Ike.“
„To be honest with you, I'm a little bit afraid of it's full potential.“
„Sure, I get it.“
„I'm not judging you, or anyone else for that matter. Don't get me wrong.“ Isiah got surprisingly vigorous in his presentation. „You're free to do whatever you want with it. It's not my business. I'm just saying that I – personally - am trying to steer away from it as far as possible. Or at least as far as common sense allows me to. It doesn't feel right, you know? It still doesn't.“
„I guess, yeah. So, no new designs?“
„Nope.“
„Okay then. We'll talk later?“
„Sure… Actually, I think I might just bail on today and head home. There's nothing interesting happening anyway. Everyone's inside all the time.“
„You can say that again.“, Blake nervously smiled „I've been praying for a murder or a terrorist attack or something.“
>>8164338
Isiah came back to the apartment dead tired, even though he didn't actually do any work. He had his dinner made. Standard setting. Didn't have the patience to deal with traditional tonight. Didn't have the patience to deal with anything tonight. Patrick didn't get into a fight, thank God. He was playing with Legos in his room. Isiah leaned a bit more so he could get a better look at the kid. There was an unfamiliar child in the room with him, it's back turned to Isiah.
Sara was asleep in the bedroom, pipe in hand and an oversized bag of weed on her night table. Isiah carefully grabbed the pipe, packed it tightly and lit it, slowly puffing away the dense, pink smoke. It was 10:46 PM.
He set his alarm for 6 AM, wrapped his body in bed sheets and shut his eyes tightly, so as not to be reminded of a repulsive sight above him- a ceiling soaked in mold and grey moisture. He could still smell the bacteria, though, and the creeping death which came down on his face slowly but steadily in a single, unbroken, unrelenting cloud.
He tried not to think about it.
He tried thinking about how tired he was instead.
>http://pastebin.com/Se7Tcwef
please critique my friends
>>8164357
I love your style, with the abrupt syntactic and semantic turns like
>He sat down on the empty chair, and stared down at his reflection on the warm tea. He had none.
That's a great sentence, very interesting. Also, the way you divided the story into numerous short paragraphs makes it flow very smoothly, it almost feels like reading a collection of short meditations on death and afterlife. I must admit I didn't quite "understand" the plot or what the story really means. Is the girl his sister? Is she some random dead person that was matched with the man in the waiting room of death? Her ambivalence is somewhat confusing, as it seems that one moment she envies the man and feels sorry for him in the other. I don't know if that's what you wanted the interaction to come off as, nevertheless it left an impression of a cryptic and unfathomable fluidity of the beyond.
So the man comes back to life?
>>8164262
Your "man" is written very similarly to my character in the story just below yours. I guess it's a common archetype for somewhat creative young people surrounded with technology, living in a somewhat indifferent, apathetic world. I enjoyed this one, you touched upon a couple of important aspect of the modern human condition and I appreciate that you didn't clumsily bail out with the ending. The sudden breaking of the rhythm of your story with that last sentence ties it up very well and leaves the reader in a state of emotional dissonance. It feels (purposely) unfinished and that's gnawing on my brain.
http://pastebin.com/KuxTiZ94
Resurrecting so someone will give this piece of shit a rating and review
Check em
>>8164335 I like the start of it. It's a nice introduction.
Presence
Sinew and marrow, to be created on the morrow,
It was love and lust that brought you out of the dirt,
From thoughts and dreams you came to be,
A presence... born out of a dream.
Sorrow and angst began to make you contemplate,
You being like a leaf, completely free, persona of liberty,
You were... more than teeth and fleece... not alone, but still a nihil digit,
A substance... leaking out from God's inhumanity.
visualization of your contemplation was tubed into a surface to display it to yourself,
words flowing like a jelly on the wall of repudiations that came to be your monolith of decay,
death was a bringer from torment to lovers abstraction to each other,
it thought you were nude, you thought it was naked, presence + presence minus-ed from their co-creation.
Cycle began, cycle ended, left you thinking in the dichotomy architecture,
It was the start and end that brought you to realization,
From birth and decay you came to think,
You were my lover... that wandered astray to a new presence to fade away.
>>8164262
I liked the ending, fuck the world. Here's something I wrote, I don't know if I can write or not but I'd like to publish a sci-fi short story one day.
Michael fetched an ice tea from the refrigerator and looked at the clock on his wall. He breathed a sigh of relief. It was only half past ten and he did not have to be down-under until at least two o’clock. He walked across the soft carpet on his floor, the floorboards underneath creaked loudly. Michael did not mind, it was hardly the worst thing about his apartment which was the rats and the cockroaches. Michael swore to his landlord Kenny that he could hear the rats going up and down the pipes in the walls but the building never got an exterminator. “What’s the point” Kenny said to him once, “they just come straight back up here from down-under,” it was useless to refute that point. The building was way too close to The Slide and that brought a litany of problems, pests being the least of them. For now, Michael and the rats had to find a way to co-exist peacefully.
What Michael liked best about it was the location, right next to The Slide, the mega-highway that connected the towering metropolis of New-Detroit with the world Downstairs. For most people living too close to The Slide was something to avoid like the plague. Apart from the rodents, the neighbourhoods closest to The Slide were a hotbed of crime and feuding gangs. In reality there were two Slides; one went “Downstairs,” to the area surrounding the city. The other one went “down-under,” that is to say underneath the city, to the old city of Detroit. The old city is still technically off-limits although that law has not been enforced for decades. Michael was part of the Metropolitan Police Department. More specifically he was part of the relatively newly formed Special Attention Division or the S.A.D which only investigated crimes in the old city. The Special Attention Division got its name from New Detroit’s mayor, she ran on a platform that promised to turn special attention to the crime ridden old city. The S.A.D made for a good political stunt but it has not made as much as a dent on the crime rates for the past four years. It was a sorry job which no one wanted, least of all Michael. After graduating he had hopes of working his way to becoming a detective for the M.J.D or, Major Crimes Division, but he found himself at the then newly formed S.A.D, which has become a career dead end for most cops.
Below is a short story I'm writing, about 100 pages.
Beatrice fell in love with what could only be described as her reason for living, on the morning of June 15, 2016. She had woken up too late, and left for work too early. The metro-north rail to grand station from Yonkers had to make frequent stops, for reasons unknown. When the train finally stopped, Beatrice walking upon her usual path past the shoe shiners and flower salespeople, she came across an unsettling disturbance. Strongly wanting to dissociate from her stressful life, only more frustration came along as this disturbance made its presence known.
And suddenly she was there, in that moment, self-aware.
To her left, a twenty something year old woman, wrapped gently around a great wooden beast with shining surfaces and a slick black ebony fingerboard. Four greatly wound strings buzzed in unison as a horse-hair bow galloped its way across the behemoth below. Elegantly guiding, yet firmly commanding what was unbeknownst to Beatrice at the time as a cello, was Caroline. Short cut, jet black hair, slender arms, long womanly fingers that would imply regality in their form, a welcoming motherly figure, played the Courante of Bach’s First Cello Suite. Beatrice had missed the Prelude and Allemande, but the Courante of the First Suite would always be her favorite part. Silently, she stood and admired, noticing no open case for donations. For two hours she stood still, not dissociating, yet gleefully unaware of a newfound peace that made her unconsciously smile. Caroline continued playing, through the first, second, third, and fourth suites, before looking up at Beatrice and returning her gentle, gleeful gaze. And so it happened, while we can control our emotions and thoughts, we can’t entirely control who we love. A guitarist and a cellist. What an unlikely match.
>>8166957
Are you a grill?
May 25th 2016
Robert P. Enlend is making preparations for his own suicide. The biggest lie, he reflects, is when they tell you that it won’t be your idea.
May 25th 2006
After leaving St Peter’s secondary school with poor results – in every sense of the word - and a distinct lack of ideas, Robert P decided to take-up an idea suggested to him by a T.V advertisement. The advert depicted a young white male’s unremarkable trajectory through an unremarkable adolescence in a series of vignettes shot in that reality T.V high-deff which most people, wrongly, intuit as being filmed on low quality cameras, the truth is that this type of footage is actually as close to real life as you can get; what this type of footage lacks is the traditional movie look achieved via professional lighting, colour (un) balancing, and the addition of digital mattes and glosses. It is the point in the advert at which the footage shown transcends its reality and begins to depict a digitally mastered and beautifully coloured British Areospace 125 Jet plane that the harmonically scrutinised and perfected voiceover informs Enlend that he, who falls asleep some nights terrified at the thought that his terror at the thought that he will defecate during the night time will cause him to do so – stress does wonders for peristalsis – can in fact, he imagines to his father’s everlasting surprise: “Be the best”. It is also at this point that said young white male exits the gloomy environs of High-deff reality T.V style footage and becomes what he always knew he could be: a hero of filmic stature.
I'll critique other works in a separate post just to keep things neater
Hey guys this is the paragraph from a short story that I'm working on, I haven't written any other part of the story so that should tell you how far along I am in the process. I'd like to hear your opinions and perhaps I'll post the whole thing when I'm done. Considering that it's just one paragraph the only critique I care about would be concerning prose, spelling, punctuation, and grammar and all that.
Title: Nothing is more important than this
Friend A hit thirty, which marked the end of the last adolescent safety net for all four. A came home to an empty house, the other three are in their respective homes. They didn't have the time to celebrate with A, they had more important things to do, do not fret for A, as A did too. At the end of the night A came across three emails marked as important. A read all three and smiled. They were short, but they were sweet, and A loved it. Before going to bed A chuckled; A wondered if the other three did too. A thought of how silly they were for thinking their friendship was the most important thing in the world, and A was sure that it was silly. Yet, a small but poignant warmth sparked inside, it is unknown whether it spoke of truth or lies, but it created a crescendo from an utter of whispering echoes, memories flooded A's mind and the whisper cushioned A's body like a bed of rose—nothing was more important than this.
>>8167062
me
>>8166957
I like it quite a bit, prose especially. Thought I don't like
> And so it happened, while we can control our emotions and thoughts, we can’t entirely control who we love. A guitarist and a cellist. What an unlikely match.
Feels a bit too on the nose. Like you're telling the reader what to think and how to feel.
>>8166138
I like it though tbqh I didn't know what you were talking about half the time but that could just be my terrible reading comprehension. Also I don't like ellipsis, but that's just a personal thing.
English is not first language, any critique is greatly appreciated!
>(1/3)
High above in the empty sky hung the swollen sun, the blistering Mother eagerly bathing her children in warmth. Below the two, twin-like towers jutted out of the flat ground, the rebellious child standing in defiance, reflecting the orange and yellow hues of the desert. Surrounding them were the familiar canyons, looming like an overeager father, spreading his shadows far and wide across the vast area, save for the towers. The child of earth and sky reached into the heavens, their diamond-esque material and sharp edges contrasted with the rough cracks springing up from the ground flowing like veins from the rims of the valley.
“Gen, how long until nightfall?” Chani signaled, though with difficulty as she rested on a tiny ledge they’d found shelter in, one of the few in the many chasms. Rows of them led away from the towers, as if someone had run claws through the earth, gauging out flat desert rock and mountains alike. Using handtalk he responded. “We have more than enough daylight to reach the surface, the shrieks are nocturnal, but still will wake at any sound not of this ecosystem, so we must still use sign language but for now, they’re as docile as house cats.” Dark eyes regarded him skeptically from beneath her cowl. He continued “We have about two hours to rest, five more hours to get to the surface. Once we do we’ll be completely surrounded without shelter, at the mercy of The Child” She nodded, gesturing with bruised fingers. “And if The Child doesn’t approve?” He gave her a long glance, her cloak flapping in the wind revealing the suit, it’s purpose designed only to withstand the heat of the desert and preserve the wearer. Only then did Gen’s hands moved without hesitation. “Then The Child doesn’t approve.”
They made camp, settling into cramped positions. Giving the command to his suit, Gen began stasis. The technology rebuilt his body as he slept, two hours meant a day of sleep in the suit, replenishing energy and food. Taking a glance at Chani, he sighed. This one is going to get us both killed, the shrieks, the insects beneath her feet and somehow the damned sand. Not wanting to dwell on the thought too deeply, he closed his eyes feeling the familiar numbness of stasis creeping in. Taking one last breath, he slept.
>>8167103
>(2/3)
Chani woke first, consciousness a slow trickle before awareness flooded into her, panic her first emotion. Gasping for air she clawed at her throat, fingers sliding off the metallic collar covering her neck. Black dots began to fill her vision. Trying to move into a sitting position, she saw out of the corner of her eye the faint outline of Gen waking up and scrambling over to her. Grabbing ahold of her arms, he laid a knee over her chest. Speaking softly into her ear. “Careful girl, remember the advice, let the suit breath for you, let it reach equilibrium again, do not struggle, stay still.” Chani obeyed, tears burning her vision. Moments later the acute pain in her chest began to fade, leading to a coughing fit which she tried her best to muffle. She gave him a shaky smile after he got off, allowing her to stand. Moving her hands she asked, “How is it you were able to in seconds?” Gen responded. “Practice, and the suit has recognized me. Yours will too..in time.” Chani stared at him, three slow blinks. “Recognize...me? It should automatically have done that first time I put it on” She conveyed with puzzlement. He grimaced before signaling to her. “I forget you are foreign to the planet. The technology from your home is similar in shape and purpose but not the same, our suits are alive.”
Alive. Chani had struggled with the thought for the past three hours. The laws decreed...it is not animal..nor.. She glanced down at the metallic liquid material covering her neck down to the soles of her feet, which were currently using cracks in the sandblasted wall as a foothold as they scaled towards the surface. Shaking her head, sweat flung from her forehead, hitting the rock. Its sizzle leaving a small trail of steam before she realized it had evaporated. Insect? Simple cell life forms? It can withstand deadly temperatures without a fault while I feel close to nothing, even when it does not cover my face, it still protects me. The color...so much like tar.. Wincing inwardly she gave up pondering the origins of her suit,, Gen had been silent when she’d asked and she could not come to a conclusion. Surveying the scenery instead, her eyes wanted to vomit, it was the same variants of dark yellow urine in the specimen cups she had seen in the...No. Avoiding the direction of the thought, she continued to climb upwards, next to Gen.
>>8167106
>(3/3)
They advanced through the multitude of rough rockholds in silence, save for the scuffling of a dangling foot and gusts of throat drying wind sending pebbles scattering all throughout the area. The soft pings echoing as they bounced off of the rocks. Chani twisted her head side to side, trying to stave off a curious looking insect, it’s annoying buzz following her ear. Reaching above her, she tugged gently at the heel of Gen’s foot, grabbing his attention. He kicked off her hand, shaking his head. His grizzled features darkened by the hood of his cloak. Chani bit back a snarl before looking down, the sight of how far they had come up shooting a bullet of dread through her. Night and day passed haphazardly, at random intervals. Only the moon was constant, yet Gen seemed to make sense of The Mother. It’s because you’re an outsider. Remember that. Licking her lips, she furrowed her brow, pushing her body to climb. Until I reach The Child.
Gen clambered over the chasm's edge, it’s sharpness biting into his belly. Standing up, he was alone, feet crunching against the salt pan of the desert, visible from leagues all around. The Child and it’s immense size shined under the glare of The Mother, beckoning in the distance. Above he could feel the waves of deadly heat beating down on his back, almost instantly he felt the suit change the temperature to a bearable degree. Turning around, Gen crouched, grasping Chani’s outstretched hand and pulled her over the edge. They stood still for a moment, their suits glistening under The Mother, cloaks driven to a frenzy by the wind.
>>8167103
>>8167106
>>8167107
Really weird shit to read when you're thrown into the middle of the story, the whole thing reminded me of Dune. I suspect the 'shrieks' are some sort of creatures? If so they're supposed to be in uppercase. I find the prose way to overbearing and filled with metaphors for a science fiction piece. Finally, the point of these threads is that you're supposed to critique others not just post your own shit and then expect everybody to read your own crap.
>>8167127
It came from a dream, but was influenced by Dune. I appreciate the critique.
As for the second part of your statement. Why do you sound so angry? This is puzzling. I was planning on critiquing, and will do so, I just went to go do things and planned on doing in later when I could focus on it. Lit is a slow board. Pretty sure it can survive a few minutes.
>>8167151
I'm sorry about being angry, sometimes it just irks me to no end to see someone post something without critiquing. I should have known better than to get all butthurt over a new post.
>>8167062
>A
That threw me off the entire paragraph. My reading comprehension is just terrible. It seems cool so far. This part concerns only me, but after "yet a small nut poignant" I had a hard time understanding what you meant. That's just me though. .
>>8166138
It sounds great but I have no clue what you're talking about. I was always bad at understanding poetry.
>>8164357
I really enjoyed the small touch you gave to something as simple as tea. I can't really give any critique but I would definitely would love to read more of this.
>>8167162
It's okay anon. I understand.
>>8167179
I understand, "Friend A" is just a placeholder for now. Thinking up of names is always the hardest part for me
>>8167204
Giving them temporary name's like Bob, bill, and Jack works. Look at the credits of a TV show or movie and make a list of nice names you see. Keep them on a notepad. Last names make this more difficult btw.
>>8164865
>>8167185
Thank you very much!
I suppose I didn't make it clear enough, the man lived a good life so he gets another chance. The girl lived only one good life, and then the next she wasted her life away, and now she remembers it all and feels regret now that she has no more chances. The man doesn't remember it if he lived a good life as he's set up for another life anyway.
I will try to create more short stories, thank you very much.
Any thoughts on this?
Laughter escaped into the night dancing through the tall grass, intertwining with the crickets song, weaving dark shadows with the moons like as the two young lovers darted around trees as they headed for the top of the hill. The very same hill where they had met. Their feet beating up the path familiar, and the cool night breeze tickling arm hair. At the top of this hill stood a tree and underneath a bench carved out of a thick log. The darkness sung its beautiful tune as the moonlight danced through the leaves flowing in the wind. The silence wasn't really silent at all, but they sat there, not making a sound, taking all of it in. Listening to the rolling wind through the meadow. He grasped her hand and he could feel her smile and the moon smiled down at them, embracing the two with cold light.
>>8167241
first sentence you've already mixed up tenses.
>>8167259
I got that feeling, but I didn't where I mess up.
>>8167259
Is it
>Her mother Janice believe her daughter IS in school
it should be was?
>>8167269
try "was"
>>8167269
and combine the first and second sentences. just erase the period after SCHOOL
>>8167246
Too flowery
>>8167246
Genuinely nauseating
>>8167246
I believe writing is all about getting your point across. Reduce the flowery words, perhaps.
>>8164062
If you pull it off well.
http://www.writerscafe.org/writing/OmniStories/1789556/
Back againt /lit/.
This time I gave fantasy a break, and decided to try something new, a bit more political. Please be honest with your critiques lads.
Hey, Charlie. He’s got that thing, man, I don’t know what it is. A nail in his brain that don’t let him see what they’re doing to him, lets him keep on, lets him swallow all the bad that’s flung at him. Nothing sticks, he gobbles it up and he shits it out, and keeps on walking on his line, tortoise-like, downhill, toward point B. Terminal Station. He don’t care. It’ll be the end of the bad, he says. He’s the type that’ll die young. After he’s buried they’ll play bingo in the chapel, kids like him die every day. Truth be told I’m sorry we don’t wear black for them, they’re the blood in the veins of the whole beast. Don’t know how they do it, to be straight. How do they stumble right to virtue? How can a kid do no wrong when he don’t know what’s right? Can they teach a brother, please?
>>8167342
Is writerscafe any good?
>>8167371
Better than wattpad. It took me about 3 months to get 5-7 views for a story there.
That same story got 77 views on cafe after 3 days. So chances of critique are better.
>>8167378
Have you tried Widbook
>>8167390
No. Is that good?
>>8167399
Sturgeon's Law
>>8156463
Same person as from here. Wrote some more, would love critique.
It was warm that January. I suppose, not actually warm, but warmer than what was typical. My friend always joked that it was global warming and I said yeah, that's probably it.
The weather put me in a good mood, as I would look outside the kitchen window in the morning while I waited for the pan to heat up. The electric stove always took a while. I'd listen to If You're Feeling Sinister or something like that and regret leaving all of my tea back in Cambridge.
I am going to make sure that when I move I get a real gas stove. Electric stoves are kind of liars when you think about it. The burners on mine will burst with red every so often as they heats up, or will stay red if they are hot. But I think that's like the gas company adding that rotten egg smell so we don't all accidentally kill ourselves. It's just some more electronics, some LEDs or something. I've got enough going on in my life, I don't need dishonest appliances.
We talked about that rotten egg thing in my high school chemistry class, while we were firing up the Bunsen burners.
"Did you know natural gas is actually odorless?" my teacher said.
"No," we replied.
"The gas companies mix in the smell so we can notice the gas. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to detect leaks, and a lot of people would die."
I thought that I could feel the difference in my mouth, like the difference between oil and water. I didn't say anything.
I drank watered-down coffee while I drew Lewis diagrams and read over the lab instructions. Although you shouldn't really be drinking anything in a laboratory setting - maybe I'm misremembering. My partner was a soccer player, and he had a face like a Norman Rockwell painting. He was terribly impatient. This is a poor quality to have in general, and particularly for chemistry labs; he would always try to plow through the procedure, never allowing things to rest or to heat as long as they were meant to. He kept me on my toes, for sure.
I always liked writing things down. Words, making lists. Telling people stories over chats.
I always enjoyed writing in reading journals in elementary school and stuff.
Writing is a way to pass the time for me, and also to have an outlet for my thoughts and opinions on things. For the former I write fiction I almost always give up on. Since I feel the need to express my thoughts I end up writing a lot more non-fiction.
>>8167525
Shit! Posted in the wrong thread. But I meant to post in this one anyway.
Salt, sweat, body odors set in outer skin emulsions; it wafted up in curly fixtures by the steam of his urine. He thought and thought, and nothing poetic came out, so now he describes himself, mostly telling the truth, lying in other places.
“My name is J.R. Dickson, and I am a relative of the great William Kennedy Dickson, inventor of 35mm film and the amazing kinetoscope that it played in. Later, of course, motion pictures started being shot and projected separately; from bulky camera to editing suite to printer to screen to eye to mind. And now I stand in front of a urinal, pissing hard, smelling things—not just me.
My hair is brown, normal, not styled. Picture it any way you want. Forget about what I look like, anyways. I’m a man, a normal looking man, except for some moles on my face, and square-head. I grew up in Arkansas, and all of my older male relatives, immediate family included, worked in trades like a bunch of stiffs, doing things like welding and mixing cement and things like that. “
He’ done pissing now, and washing his hands. Now he decides to burn down the building, but elects to sit on the idea for a while, since he isn’t sure who he wants to kill. The door makes a whooshing sound when it opens.
“I got arrested in 1999 for shoplifting. It just was a bunch of food out of a grocery store, but I was on drugs. Didn’t make the cops any more lenient, obviously.
“You might want to keep that to yourself,” says Dan from accounting. He has a very straight mustache.
J.R. Dickson is a relatively normal person. For instance, he’s never jaywalked, even though most people have. He’s never committed a crime out of malice, or committed a crime in full knowledge of what he was doing. Apart from the misdemeanor shoplifting offense, his only other run-ins with the law were minor moving traffic violations accrued over an undisclosed amount of decades. Today, that is Tuesday the 5th of January, he decides to ask Kathryn out on a date.
To get there, he must walk through HR, accounting, go up a flight of stairs, and arrive at her desk, situated just outside the glass wall.
“Kathryn drinks minty tea in the morning and coffee in the afternoon, which always struck me as unusual.” For a brief for instance as to their current standing as office friendlies, J.R. and Kathryn talk about once a week. Her coffee drinking is entering the stage of inside-joke, and she only refers to him by the first letter of his name.
“Hi, J!”
“Good afternoon Kathryn. Boy oh boy, I can smell that Joe from all the way over here.”
“Well there’s only about 12 inches between us.”
“Forget it. Joke. Would you want to drink one of those with me?”
“Oh I don’t make the coffee.”
“Right. Well I’ll see you after work.”
“Oh, are we all meeting up at Klippers?”
>>8156310
Is the Main character one of those female angsty type you Americans love so much? or is this just some random blog?
>http://pastebin.com/Vk6Lam4K
Nothing else to do, created a new story. Please critique.
>>8168161
use less cliches
>>8167970
>You americans
Okay so I'm guessing english isn't your first language.
1. This seems like a very obvious copy of the 1984 movie Red Dawn.
2. Before you write stories in English, try your best to brush up on grammar rules because there were a lot of grammatical mistakes in here.
>"Her mother Janice believed her daughter is in school an obvious deception on her daughter part, but ultimately a well-meaning one." Should be "Her mother, Janice, believed that her being in school was an obvious deception, but one that meant well."
You switch from past tense to present tense a few times, so try to make sure you're staying in the same tense throughout
ie >"it won't be long now before the people starts to fight..."
Just try to brush up on grammar rules overall.
Aside from the grammar and the obvious replication of Red Dawn, it's not bad.
>Here's mine. It's a poem
XVII
Such distance is often travelled,
By many such as me.
Though each time it is unraveled:
Fever’d, near silently.
‘The first was wrong, as first is oft,
The second grew too quick.
The third in time waned itself soft,
Now quarter burns its wick.’
And candles come, as candles go:
Replace’t, the withered light.
Though frozen wax, does burn more slow,
Miss take not lover’s fright.
Frenzies of fervor so corrupt
Me that my breath has flown.
With wings of icar I’ll construct,
To follow flame that’s shone.
O’, such brief passion does appear,
And lay before my eye.
It’s stalken struggles I don’t fear,
Till minutes ‘fore I lie.
But fretful blood runs cold in veins,
My heat: yours, unbounded.
Presence lacking, I’m mad, like Danes,
Present: cherubs sounded.
The days grow cold, as I grow old, and crow for everlasting.
The night grows hot, with you ‘tis naught: to live, to die, t’age laughing.
>>8168436
>Obvious copy of red dawn.
Don't worry it won't be a carbon copy of the movie. I just took the premise. I plan to make something completely different.
And don't worry i finally decided to write it in present tense.
The poem you wrote is good. Do you have more to share?
>>8167195
I always have that problem of doing that. I believe the rhyming structure comes before the words coherent-ness? I have been dabbling in abstract poetry in free verse style. If you would like I have something even more abstruse than this, but it's all about humor to be desu.
>>8168436
>roman numeral title
>uselessly antiquated language
>forced meter
>>8168436
jesus christ force the meter a little more why don't you. although that said, I really like "present: cherubs sounded'
>>8167062
First draft of full story
http://pastebin.com/gjveXff5
Let me know what you think lads.
>>8169209
it's a little douglas coupland-y. the timescale feels a little wonky. get rid of dumb descriptors like "unyouthfully", there's better diction choices to be made there. the narrative distance overall makes it hard for the reader to get invested.
>>8167241
The Red Dawn reference makes me question if this is just trolling. In case it's not though, you need to show all of this. This a page of cliche's and the only way to make a cliche not a cliche is to do it an interesting way.
>>8167516
I actually really like this. Personally, i think you should paraphrase the dialogue about natural gas as opposed to forcing the conversation. I enjoyed the line
>"I thought that I could feel the difference ... I didn't say anything."
Would definitely read more of this.
This is a continuation of >>8162767
The harbor was quiet. Splashes of water attacked my legs in broken intervals, and bursts of dry air crept down my neck and chilled my spine. I sat on the precipice of the dock, growing more impatient with each moment that I wasted waiting. The wooden planks of the aging dock creaked behind me, prompting my head to turn with a sudden jolt. “You made it,” Frank joked. He knew that I’d been waiting for this night with an impossible excitement. His hand reached down and grabbed my arm, helping me to my feet and, not waiting a moment, Frank walked off the deck and turned briskly onto the half-deserted street. I had to half-jog to catch up with him—the way most pedestrians do when a car lets them pass—and was surprised that he was in such a rush.
“I thought I was the one looking forward to this,” I said as I reached his side.
“It’s about to start, and if we don’t arrive before it does, they won’t let us in.” Groaning, I hurried to match Frank’s pace. The streets he led me down twisted like neck-bones shattered in lethal drops, and hungry anacondas. In time we reached a large and seemingly abandoned warehouse, colored the same as dry, pooled blood. I looked around and couldn’t see anyone, and the air was still and quiet, so I assumed we were at the wrong place; then, with no prior warning nor signal from Frank, a man opened a fake door on the right-side of the front of the building, and started towards us, forming sentences from which I could discern no meaning, despite their being made up of English words.
I have more written in my notebook but I've yet to type it. Please critique and let me know if you would like me to post more.
>>8167179 I like this desu. I like how you describe movement, it's very apathetic energetic.(?) The last phrase is very neat, "And I loved it." Leads you too be able to start in some tangential episode after this.
Pic related is my attempt at an absurd humorous poem.
Also I'm this anon >>8166138
>>8169558
>sucking on a peach's crotch
Gave me a kek
That first half is pretty humorous desu. To deliver the punchline at the end of a line, try not to use a lot of long words tho like at
>he grew bored of old world porn
>>8169352
I'm >>8167516 - thanks for the reply. I'm glad you liked it, and I've been flip-flopping between paraphrasing that or not so it's good that you gave some input.
I like your stuff. Especially your paragraph from earlier - definitely feels sort of stuffy or pretentious, though I agree with the other anon that the wallpaper image doesn't quite hit.
This is good too. I like the detail about running like a pedestrian. Only thing that stood out immediately to me here is that "neck-bones shattered in lethal drops, and hungry anacondas" feels a bit clunky. It definitely made me double take and reread. I think even using "or" rather than "and" would make it flow a little nicer.
I'd read more for sure.
>>8169272
>The Red Dawn reference makes me question if this is just trolling.
The reference to Red Dawn and Any other reference to the invasion of america is only going to be limited to Olivia's Perspective. The rest of the book will deal with the real issues.
>>8170164
Da fuq you talking about?
>>8170234
>Da fuq you talking about
That anon said if the Red Dawn reference made him wonder if I was Trolling.
_Gentleman!_ yelled Ivan as he got up and smiled, to the surprise of everyone _ It's been a pleasure.
He calmly reached for a bread knife in the table, put the blade against his chest in the heart area, and with one single motion stabbed himself, with an ear-to-ear smile, fell down.
There is nowhere to hide in the Broken One’s domain. The labyrinth stretches out like a lawn and all who enter will surely come to an end in the grass of eternal damnation. The Broken One sits at the center but not as a fat king of gluttony and lust like the lords in the pits of hell nor as a gibbering Old Thing in the stars. No, the apt description of the Broken One is a word that cannot even begin to describe it, twisted. Everywhere you look every fake of what must be skin,every hole which must be an eye, and every gasping and yet vice-like breath which comes out of a shuddering orifice is all twisted in an expanse of shattered life. There are no tentacles or mad noises, nothing to make a man go mad. No, madness does not dwell in this labyrinth, only an almost dead thing, near death, which has an agony over the harshest sunlight and blackest, nightless sky. The face was like a human if all humanity in the world were stored into it and then sucked out all at once, looking at it would cause you to simply expire from sheer, unabridged despair. But the most terrifying thing about this mockery of life is not the twisting labyrinth that surrounds it, it is not the less than soulless eyes staring back at you, it is not the twisted, maddening throne the figure sits on which seems to be so silent yet so loud that a deafness of either type could quickly overtake you, no, the true horrifying truth about this creature, this sad monster, is that it had once been not only a man, but a hero. The best of man, the shining example of what a human of any race, creed, or faith should be, this Thing was all these and more still. This all presents a question, a question so broad and unknowable no one will truly understand what is means.
What Breaks a Hero?
Clare side of the river, perhaps near the house used as a warehouse for the delivery of the first night they were made. What in the first row of blocks of gray concrete walls with chalk drawings of each other, black spots or white spots, and disaster. Clara gradually increased in recent weeks. Spirit floating space flight to begin with, the ship slowly. Rulers often want to leave again, but of course, I'm sorry, but this season, the last time I felt so good in the simplicity, speed and intelligence development inhibitor change his slowly to mind. Happy place to comfort her - Clare Brain nertia the work of long products are an important part of Clare's small but not least, I do not understand. Gradually the mind, the body, its up slowly, but not by their families to the park, and opened the window, the smell of coffee and sit down in the cold and slowly, he said, breathing.
When they break, all this was done, work, and brother small notebook and write to be ready to start.
Sam, I'm done in my hands with my life
Premium time and more stable right -
"Wing, which was the whistle once,
And instead of the river, now in the country.
So do the commands
My knowledge of joy and tender words
At a young age, which made the revenge,
But my voice is now dry and clear my thoughts.
Then again we see Rose
Who came to kiss his forehead, when I was young,
He flew as a winter flight flowers coming?
Think of. My soul
Other and try your music,
Even though my heart is on the right side.
In the evening, the group left.
Went to his mother, and as a lullaby.
Water, pure water, and I will not leave.
His mother told him that she wanted to save memory, I read the book. I want to remember the quote. Keep in mind that they ever saw him, I have three small eyes.
Maria, do not throw them on the promise. How the results lilo'ao'ao.
You know that the most important memories, because. Memories, please remember to always contact feelings.
Maria and ending on the power of his eyes. Please remember that I do not think that their loved ones.
Peace, you will not want to miss.
However, avoid hatred.
Many people lay with another company.
May Allah curse
Do you know what happened? If the.
I think the work.
Call us exortenstiolism agents.
We know a few others in the world.
No public want, and I know what it is.
If you think you can talk to and how to use it.
If you see something.
foolish male hero,
Then the bottles,
It was a disaster.
For God's sake, and a good idea,
In a few days.
Control.
Wise H.O.E.
Perspective is a natural wonder.
"Best cake and blow a kiss," I Berthgurth. Cake and a half. Today you will use. E (effect), leather and his bride, "L" art. "During the night, he told us the names of the birds and mammals that are put of action for children. Happy, happy, he said.
After meeting last week launched the book, the authors once Banjo. Interestingly, not only because of the great day work, at night. "As a warning," he said.
Both are trying to keep it very simple. Scar, the mind and the world left ear ring bubble threat on an empty stomach to fill in the throat, "he concluded," You are a great saint and why ... Potential barriers to credit, how can I get to the right that you want to not only to kill time?
I do not think so. It must have been killed.
Weber
sits
Weber
In the real message
many of the sample
change
Teeth-coverings
theme
Old Post Tan
clusters decided
Harness
. .
Villa and the cause
the frequency of rotation
the world
horror
Weber
What
contacts
.
rope
This article
and hung
but I do not know
will
it
To get a bad combination
Two Weavers Textile
or take
they
Chitwood morning frost. It was a cold night and a morning off than hurt and training. "It was the morning trying, and" thick gray cloud moved through the Research Officer victory verlarge er Texas. Last night was a clear sky and light. It cut like a knife through the cloth under natural sleep in his tent, but cold. Or, more to the cancellation of the dark night, you can see the singer and set fire to a need for more sleep, and drag your blog.
>>8154313
The dashes are a bit too much but this is actually far better written than most of the crap normally in these threads. Pare it down a little bit and you have a good bit of writing. No need to go on and on with long words when you already captured what you wanted to say perfectly a sentence before.
Wireless night Note
Club fire in the smoke at the dance floor
Radim dododo
Human packaging, give me a sign
Then hold the breath,
Radim dododo
The department
Or me, I am there for you and me
Like the smell of a goat, I lost a lot of
I'm hungry
Pork line, sometimes clashes
Or me, I am there for you and me
QA SWA language live
I'm hungry
Gaybu hide a lot of hidden
I am not I will be on your side
Radim dododo
Cache raise pressure on the skin
You feel my heat, I'm just a bridge behind
Radim dododo
The department
Or me, I am there for you and me
Bodies and sound, I'm lost and I found
I'm hungry
Line erosion, and sometimes planting
I Brey, I will do it for you, crying
Country living
I'm hungry
cooperation
cooperation
cooperation
Civilizations, Burn
I'm your search
I find missing children
I'm hungry
Line erosion, and sometimes planting
I'm your search
QA SWA language live
I'm hungry
I am a deaf person.
I am deaf
but -
I ask
face many
children
I look forward to many games.
I ask
Think
business
Eyed.
I ask
general
singing
The semantics.
special
I ask
-
call You
When he came
from
Big, beautiful eyes, face,
We will give me
-
My dear friends
Oh
check
I can not do it. because
not
Unfortunately, your name
But that is impossible.
Hear.
>>8154507
I really want to call reddit pleb whenever I can but unfortunately they are right here. That first mini paragraph thing is like English Composition 101 material with the thesaurus turned on. Even one unusual word per sentence would be tryhard. You have like 4 lol. Unreadable, and I know what all the words mean, just too overwritten and pseud
Start of a story
***
The couple, who had been fighting when Nicole sold them their tickets, which he (the man in the couple) insisted on paying for, an act which seemed almost malicious in how it affected his girlfriend, enraging her in a way that was clearly the intended result to him buying her the tickets, the couple were smiling and holding hands when they walked out of the screening room. The crowd was surging behind them, and because they were walking the slow walk of lovers lost in each other, they stepped aside into the shadow of one of the cinema’s restored faux-Greco columns.
The couple faced each other, she with her back to the wall, and they mostly looked each one another, speaking in short two-or-three-word sentences, him asking short questions and her giving one word answers, looking embarassed. Nicole kept herself busy, so she doesn’t seem like she’s staring, by stirring the ice where sample bottles of Coke and Diet Coke and Fanta sit on display to advertise the small medium and large drinks for sale.
After a few questions and answers, the couple hugged. The girl was a foot short of the guy. They loosed the hug enough to kiss, and then came apart except at the hand, and walked slowly out onto the street.
Cody, manning the other register, had been watching the couple too, looking more and more crushed, and as the door closed behind the couple he shuffled his wallet into his hands and took out a Ten, which he gave to Nicole.
“Never bet against Linklater,” she said, like she’d found it in a fortune cookie. “He’s like penicillin for relationships in a rough patch.”
>>8154313
Really like it, would unquestionably keep reading.
The opening to my"can love bloom on the battlefield" romance. More included in the pastebin below but if you can't be arsed opening that then here's the first of three paragraphs.
>Birobnya Oblast was cold land, and it produced cold people. The bleakness was inherent in the terrain; it permeated every aspect of life. From the moment a citizen woke up in the morning, freezing even under his three blankets in the penetrating chill of a darkness that lasted until mid-morning, to the moment he collapsed back onto the spring-and-batting mattress, he would be looking out at a palette of low-set grey concrete blocks punctuated here and there by stark white fresh snow, brown mud from where hurried footsteps or passing tractors had churned the dirt roads, and the black sky. Eventually what he looked out on become his outlook. Even where citizens had choice - when new rations of clothes came in, or when ordering a new tractor - they shied away from the bright colours or loud gestures. The ubiquitous jackets and jumpers were in pale palettes of washed-out sky blues and pinkish reds, or in earthy browns and ochres. The two cars in the province were silver and black respectively. It was as if the entire population of the oblast might sink at any moment and become part of the sparse, flat, empty landscape.
Mainly looking for feedback on the "atmosphericness" of the writing. I want to paint the environment, the war, and the entire world, situation, and everything, as absolutely bleak - like watching a beheading on liveleak. It's horrific, but it doesn't affect you because you're not fully engaged, and you've seen it before anyway, so all that's left is vacant abstract observation. If anyone has any reading in this vein it's be appreciated too. I'm trying to create a World War One-type conflict of eternal stalemate and grinding attrition, set during the modern era but with such exhaustion on both sides of the war that strategic bombing has ground civilisation down to practically nothing, and yet the war goes on. To this end I've been reading up about WW1.
However, this is also the opening to the novel and I'm afraid that the description lacks sufficient "hook".
In exchange I'll write a few critiques of my own, accompanied with some pictures of WW1.
http://pastebin.com/JY61LjfP
>>8173138
The first sentence is way too long and unfocused. I'm hoping that was the intent, but if not, definitely revise it. Try reading it aloud, and if it sounds like shit, then that's what your reader is going to think too because 99% of people read with an 'inner voice'.
You switch back and forth between tenses: at one point they "looked" (past tense) at each other, then at the next point she "doesn't seem" (present tense). Never switch tense in prose. Only in dialogue.
Typos all over the place. You're missing entire prepositions or suffixes in a few places, and you've used "loosed" instead of "loosened" which would be a misspelling that wouldn't show up in autocorrect. Ten is not a proper noun.
Outside of technicality, I don't feel hooked. This scene doesn't really - to me - appear to set anything up. Sure, it sets a scene, and it sets a relationship between two characters, but you could have done that in two sentences - which means that unless this exercise was in the pursuit of something else all you're doing is wasting words. There's a place for detail and there's a place for brevity, and generally speaking the start of a novel wants to be brief and interesting. People want to get to the novel, not wait for the novel to get going, and this entire scene feels like we haven't actually started until we get to the last two sentences.
It's not bad, but it feels like a first draft. I think a lot of the issues could be solved by proofreading, which you don't need to post on /lit/ for.
>>8172089
This reeks of trying too hard, and I mean that in a kind way because at least you're trying.
I get what you're trying to go for, but the problem is that volume of words do not add impact to what you're saying. You want to describe the Broken One as some kind of horrifying but all-to-real and grounded vision of biological terror. However, upon realising that the first sentence doesn't quite deliver the gut-punching emotion you want to convey you proceed to add a second. The problem repeats. And on and on it goes, a long description featuring increasingly desperate similes and metaphors that actually becomes less and less effective as it outlives its usefulness - the latter sentences retroactively taking punch away from the earlier ones.
_Generally_ speaking, a long description is a poor one. Describe the Broken One, but do it quickly and with impact and panache. If you do want to make it long, at least describe different aspects of him. You're also only using once sense: sight. What does the Broken One feel like? What does he smell like? I could show you a picture of a WW1 hospital ship with stalactites of feces hanging off the gunwhales where the ooze of human waste has seeped across the deck and around the feet of the soldiers, who are packed too tightly to even move to the side of the ship to ablute over the edge, but until you've been there - until you've smelled it, the scent of months of dysentery, pus, blood, and sickly sweet infection that cloys at your nose, that you can even taste when you breathe through your mouth, that you can feel in your throat and lungs like a hot, choking sensation - you'll barely even retch. And when you finally come aboard, having endured the stench of the ship from miles out while you steamed over on the ferry-launch, which is now reaching its unbearable climax, and you step onto the half-inch thick crusting of feces, urine, seeping green infection, and begin treating patients, you'll feel how their flesh is feverish hot, how it trembles under your touch, rough and ragged where blood and ooze has dried on young, ruined bodies, that's when you'd lose your lunch - if you had any left to lose.
That description was heavily inspired by a diary I read, and what you read is accurate to the conditions aboard some WW1 hospital ships at Gallipoli, just FYI. I know it leans heavily on commas and long sentences - don't do that, vary your sentence length - but it's just an example. I haven't even proofread it.
>>8167532
Going to be honest: I don't like it. I don't like it because it feels platitudinous and it also feels like you're trying to disguise your exposition dump, which in my opinion is even worse than just dumping exposition because trying to disguise it means you know it's not working but aren't going to stop doing it.
It feels platitudinous because it reminds me of just about every noire book I've ever read - but only the parts that I generally found distasteful. It's vulgar, it's vaguely self-referential, the main character is hardboiled, etc. etc.
The vulgarity feels purposeless - like it's just there to be vulgar - and the self-referential, almost "meta" self-description is virtually inexplicable. Who just starts monologueing about their life in a urinal? Unless you're writing Richard III, I don't think you're going to pull it off. Regardless of what the intent behind it is, find a better way to do it. This way comes off as just plain dumb. If you want to show a particular aspect of your character, do it in a different way than this. If you want to describe his background, do it in a different way than this. Even if his character _would_ do something like this, I don't know anything about his character and this is too much "characterization" too soon. It's making me go "no, this is dumb, and I'm going to stop here" because there's no lead into it.
It's also got a few grammatical errors but you can fix those with proofreading.
Basically, hardboiled stories are fun because they can actually be quite light-hearted. In a black and white photo the picture is the contrast between dark and light, not the actual black parts or white parts. This writing feels too cynical, too irreverent, and too vulgar.
Keep it up though, there's a lot to work on but it can all be fixed. A lot of my complaints are matters of taste anyway.
>>8164342
I like this and i dont know why it got ignored. Bit DFW theme wise in my opinion, with the boredom and the future and the "smoking a bit of bob hope" But the only reason i compare it to his work is because that's my only real reference point.
>>8167516
I like it, but I wouldn't open by literally talking about the weather. Roll that into another sentence to create something more interesting, like
>It was warm, which my friend always joked was probably global warming. I said yeah, that's probably it. That was January. The weather put me in a good mood... blah blah blah
Up to your taste, of course, but I personally wouldn't open with such a mundane sentence in such a declaratory "pay attention to me" position. You can say mundane things in interesting ways.
I particularly like the 'I've got enough going on in my life, I don't need dishonest appliances.' Keep that kind of wit running and you'll have a solid, if generic, work. Just don't overuse it.
You also characterise the character as reserved, methodical, thorough, and scientifically-minded really well in just a few short sentences. So don't linger on it too much. There's not really enough there to tell, but anything following that had better get to the point pretty quickly. To put it another way: I'm interested - take me somewhere.
>>8167195
Solid, but could use some love. You use 'actually' twice in the first sentence, which feels clumsy. The italics could be punctuated better, in my opinion. You have a comma almost everywhere except at the end, where I think one would be most appropriate.
The rest is fine, except where you have so many people shifting seats during a school assembly. How does nobody notice or stop them? Either acknowledge the teachers are there and explain it or don't draw attention to them and hope no reader realises they should be present and taking action.
You can do a little bit of work to turn your existing sentences into what I think are more impactful ones - and I'm talking very minor work. For example:
"As I watched her happily skip down the row, I prepared myself for the worst."
becomes
"I watched her happily skip down the row and prepared myself for the worst."
"And I loved it."
becomes
"I loved it."
Things like that.
Up to you, though.
>pic is soldiers with trenchfoot being carried away by their replacements. When troops were rotated in the trenches they often had to be carried from their posts by the people who were taking their positions. Not the Austro-Hungarians though. Not because their trenches were better, but instead because they never rotated their troops.
I really wish you could use italics on this board because the internal monologue in this piece is supposed to be in italics
Driving through the mountain highway the vastness of it and the sky above and the smallness of them scared them. As a child Jim had been afraid of the sky. He dreamed about losing gravity and falling into that eternal nothingness and falling deeper there, alone. He dreamed about the world turning upside down and falling. He wondered what types of dreams the girl had, and whether she had dreamed about him before they took to the road. Pondering this he smoked a cigarette and sipped from his beer, the first of the afternoon. When facing things of such vastness and such rootedness in nature and history, he thought, we are confronted by the sense of our own minuteness and finitude; the fleetingness of our lives and of these moments in which we find ourselves contemplating these things. The thought itself will be forgotten. How many people have passed this mountain over its many ancient years? The mountain itself, surely, never forgets. The girl ignored the landscape and read a book. They had brought a lot of books. It was going to be a long journey. And they were never going to go back.
Never going back again.
We’re following the mountain highway. Said Juan. The longer we go, you can look down and there’s a crevice between two mountains that we pass through and a massive drop that ends in water. There’s a waterfall too. It’s very beautiful.
That sounds ---- favorable adjective
Yes, very beautiful, we’ll pass that in a few hours. By the way, he broached the subject, when people go on certain trips like this, and don’t tell anybody about it---
Yes?
People at home will start to maybe get worried and ask certain questions, is all I’m saying. It doesn’t really
>>8173675
Just use /this/.
Fleeting Youth
Sit and drown in the hours and hours
Learning of the axis powers
Whilst the sun beats down on the green grass
We sit and wither away our finest hours
With subjects with a lack of interest to invest
Disregarding the importance of our youth will activities so crass
We forever wish to grow old
And experience those stories told
By parents, telling of houses sold
Families started and apartments with mould
Busting for years to pay off mortgages
Failed marriages and crushing divorces
As we are in our salad days
We stare dazed and crazed
With the thought of age and wonder
Of where did the time pass
And as I realise, age 18
I have to make my time last.
rhyme scheme is all over the place but my point is made
>>8173419 writing back.
It's reading pretty well so far. There definitely is a sense of bleakness, just devoid of most feeling or hope. My main critique would be for the first paragraph. "The bleakness was inherent ... it permeated every aspect of life" feels like telling instead of showing, and feels unnecessary as you go on to show in the next few sentences. I also wonder if simplifying the sentence structure of the "From the moment ..." and breaking it into a couple sentences might be more appropriate. I just worry that the complexity of the structure might take away from the simplicity of the imagery.
I'm not sure about your worry about it not having "hook." I would continue reading this, for example. If you spend too long sunk in this sort of grayness, however, it may be a bit much. Either some sort of interaction/dialogue should occur soon, I think, or you could do an in medias res sort of thing. But yeah, I'd read more.
You were right by the way, and I switched up my first sentence a bit. But as I continue writing I worry about your points - overuse, lingering too long, or generally not progressing at too slow of a speed. If you don't mind reading a couple more paragraphs I'd like to get your thoughts.
>>8173419 sorry if it wasn't clear I'm
>>8167516
I cracked an egg into the oil. It started crackling against the vocals of Belle and Sebastian, sputtering. I watched the proteins denature and bind, unravel before coming together, like lovers after a fight. Salt and pepper to taste, and then a single flip, breaking the yolk. This was a commandment, an ancient charm invoked by tiny runes circumscribing the burner - anything past the first flip, and you're doing it wrong. After drenching it in hot sauce, I shoveled the egg into my mouth in between three large gulps of coffee.
The backyard went on for a while - it's roughly an acre - before hitting the wire fence that separates it from the pasture, owned by some farmer neighbor down a ways. Past that, there's a large forest made mostly of evergreens. The window over the kitchen sink framed the whole thing like a piece of found footage, or the world's most boring landscape painting. Still, the sunlight shone warm and yellowed the earth, made it glow, and I half-waited for some large, lumbering beast to amble in and doze off in the grass.
I was reclined on the couch, reading, when Rockwell stopped by around 3 PM. It was too early for me to start dinner, and too early for me to start drinking, but I grabbed a beer from the fridge anyways.
"What are you reading?"
"Carver."
"The peanut guy?"
"No." I handed him a beer as well.
We wandered out into the yard, drinking in the browns and greens and beer. He studied my face for a while, the same way you would analyze a weather map, before taking in the rest of my stature.
"You're looking good," he said, "Though a haircut and some overhead presses wouldn't hurt." He was big into honesty.
"Thanks," I said. "I see college is treating you well too."
This was also true. He had given up on soccer, even at the club level, but continued to lift weights on a regular schedule. Combined with the unlimited meal plan and countless beers consumed over the course of the semester, this had left Rockwell no longer in what you could call, "shape," but had given him a new heft that suited him well. His cheeks were even larger, redder, his figure commanding even more space until it was practically marching up to you in uniform, begging to inspire artwork for a postage stamp or war bond.
"My mom was asking about you earlier. I think she's a little worried about you."
"Tell her I'm doing just fine," I said. I sat down, took a swig, and started picking at the grass. I took another swig.
>>8173315
Thank you very much. This is the first time i've shared my writing on /lit/ and i'm grateful to have such a well-written and thoughtful response.
>>8166936
Someone plz critque this.
http://pastebin.com/0BbBEJWh
Here's something Ive been working on, pls try to ignore the autism, I just need feedback on how readable it is / how well it describes things. I suck at writing shootout / action scenes so I need feedback.
>>8173737
Meter needs some work in my opinion. Spell out "eighteen", the last line is gay. Work on making the meter better, because i am cringing trying to read this, if it's gonna rhyme, it's gotta have the time, or whatever it's called.
Also it's way too straightforward at the moment, make it a bit harder to decipher. The first few lines are good though.
>>8164062
Moby Dick.
>>8157103
>>8157109
I once read the first two pages of Finnegan's Wake. This seems really derivative of that. You've even lifted some of Joyce's puns (I assume intentionally, to make your influences more obvious).
Do you think you're adding anything to what Joyce did, or only imitating him?
And, on a more personal note, do you really think you have the intellectual/literary firepower to outdo Joyce? If so, more power to you, but man... you must have a ton of self confidence.
I've been working this spot selling crawfish out of the truck going on three summers now. This'll be the fourth. I'm the only crawfish truck by the water to my knowledge. There are two others here not including the ice cream truck. There's a King Burgers & Hotdogs truck and a Ming's Noodle truck. The ice cream guy does a sort of circuit and sits at all the lakeside schools in a strategic order. I think it's different every weekday. But on a normal day the other trucks and I are usually here about 12pm til the sun goes down.
There's not a ton of money in Toronto for food trucks but I do alright. The first summer down here was my first summer with the truck and I did really well. It's probably why I'm going on my fourth summer out here. Truth is I haven't done nearly as well since, not even close. King and Ming only showed up two summers ago. There weren't any food trucks here my first year out, they just couldn't keep up. I had to hire this redhead kid JT full time to give me a hand. We'd Pick up all our craw at the Seaway Core Depot in North York on the daily. In the weeds every weekday, just making it happen. Man, let me tell you, it can get fucking hot in that truck. But it's actually not nearly as bad as some of the other kitchens I've worked at. Good days there's a nice breeze coming off the lake and through the service window, and so far it's been pretty good.
JT left for the west coast halfway through the following summer. Business was slow and I was happy I wasn't forced to just let him go at the time. Last summer wasn't so bad. Good, even. Good enough to make me want to do it again.
>>8174279
I still like it, but I think you're right about it starting to drag. The description about cooking the egg and the description about the landscape are both good on their own, but when you put them together and read from the start of your original post to the end of this one it feels like too much description. I'd pick your favourite and go with it, and drop the description of the other one. Maybe add the landscape description in when Rockwell and the viewpoint character go outside.
Rockwell is described and characterised fantastically though. I really like that part and I think it paints a perfect picture of what he looks like and what kind of person he is. The dialogue is good, but I think it suffers from being too spartan. I think what the characters are actually saying is fine, but you could add a little bit of description about how they say it. I love me some spartan dialogue but where it makes sense for the more withdrawn and academic viewpoint character to just... talk, I'd expect the jock-ish soccer player to be more animated than that.
But it's very solid. There's nothing _wrong_ with it, just things that could be even better. That's my opinion, anyway.
Here's a little bit more of mine.
http://pastebin.com/ZSGarMkv
It directly follows what I originally posted. It's a short stretch of dialogue intended to break up the description and start demonstrating Taras's personality more.
>>8174572
No problem, anon. I do itfor free.
>>8175166
Autism is right, but I'll confine my remarks to the technical.
As far as it goes, it's serviceable writing. It's readable. I have a relatively accurate picture of the battle and the sequence of events, I understand the motivations of the character, and so on. My most general complaint is that this character isn't feeling anything. She's shooting people, running around, vaulting, and generally being relatively active. Is she winded? Is she panting? Breathless? Do her feet ache? Does she want to go home? You successfully describe the sequence of the battle but it doesn't really feel like it's from her perspective, if you get my drift.
I have a couple of /k/ complaints, like why doesn't she just reload the rifle instead of switching to pistols? If the pistols were a better option than the rifle why did she use the rifle? If they aren't, why use the pistols? Why do the lice seem to show no tactical sense, like fire and manoeuvre? When she's pinned behind the tree team one should be suppressing her while team two moves to a better position, and then team two suppresses her while team one moves to a better position, and so on. I'm not saying that they have to do this for me to believe it, but if they're not doing this I want to know why. Are they bad soldiers? Are they conscripts? Things like that. I'd expect what seems to be a trained professional to notice these kinds of defects and at least think something about them - or even exploit them for an advantage.
But this seems like an excerpt of a larger work and this could all be explained elsewhere, so if that's the case don't worry about it. Besides, not everyone is as nitpicky as me.
I do have a technical complaint though:
>She leaned out to shoot back, but the storm of bullets forced her behind the tree again. She squeezed off a couple of errant shots, but they missed wildly. A couple of the lice stopped to reload, and she leaned out and caught one in the knee as it ran for cover. It dropped to all fours, and Andromeda put another bullet through its throat.
Or, to put it another way:
>A, but B. A, but B. A, and B. A, and B.
The sentence structure is repetitive, and this problem crops up a few times. I didn't notice it until halfway through but once I did I couldn't stop noticing it.
Like I said, it's serviceable. There are published books in stores with much worse writing than this. It's definitely readable and if the story was good and the characters interesting I'd be okay with it. But you can improve it.
>pic is austrian soldiers on the italian front climbing to their defensive positions
>>8176297
I like it. It doesn't go anywhere but it feels comfy. The main character feels likeable and the voice is endearing. It's a pretty mundane subject but the way it's described and written about makes it pleasant reading. Would read more, assuming it went somewhere interesting.
Only nitpick:
>There are two others here not including the ice cream truck. There's a King Burgers & Hotdogs truck and a Ming's Noodle truck
I'd roll these into one sentence for better flow. It feels a little fragmented - I read and process the first sentence and have to pause and go "wait, two other whats?" and then I read the second sentence and go "ohhhh."
If you put them together in the same sentence I read the whole thing and don't have that momentary "wait what?"
>trenchfoot was awful, but the hospital rollercoaster was fucking great
t. italian front
The great bell of the Montichiari Abbey was ringing. The monks, who had long since reverted to a smaller percussion located in the chapel proper, only scaled the ancient tower and rang the great instrument for two reasons: firstly because it identified the monk’s residence as a house of God. This status was, since time immemorial, intended to deliver the defenseless compound from the looting so typical of contemporary wars. The second reason, which acted in tandem with the first, was to warn the citizens in the nearby village -- the monastery’s namesake -- that an approaching force was near arrival.
The compound, perched upon a lonely hill, overlooked the otherwise flat plains of this particular corner of Lombardy. Most of this flatland was used for farming all manner of grain -- wheat, barley, rye, and even rice -- a recent import from the ambitious adventures of Italian merchants who had traveled to Cathay and India. These rich lands were fed by the Clisi River, which carried freshwater and rich sediments from the Alps -- those menacing mountains that separated Lombardy from the barbarian Germans to the North -- and the dirty Frenchmen to the West. Standing at the foot of this abbey and looking out across the fertile plains were a man and a woman.
The man was older, looking to be in his middle fifties. His cheeks were encased by deep laugh lines, and a white beard had settled upon his chin, leaving bare only his dimple, which shone bright red in the summer sun. He struck a portly and rotund figure-- the metallic mantlepiece that he wore on his torso just managed to cover his large gut. He appeared every bit a wealthy man of his age -- European to the hilt -- if a bit too fair to be considered properly Italian. An ornate rapier hung from his belt-sash, and he nestled a steel helmet under the pit of his arm. His breathing was long and deep, the breaths of man weighed down by life but still very much enthusiastic in running its course.
“I don’t see them.” The man opined to the woman, in a learned Tuscan dialect corrupted by an English tongue.
“The sun disguises their approach. They are no doubt crossing over from Brescia.” The woman replied in a thickly accented Apennine vernacular, pointing out to the sun, which for its part was slowly creeping up from it’s cradle below the mountains.
The woman looked to be half the age of the man. Her tanned skin and Asiatic features clearly pointed her out as an individual far from home. Her long, black hair was braided on one side, which lazily hung over her right shoulder. She wore a drab, brown, overcoat, which was tied with a white silver sash around her slender waist. Her deep brown eyes were constantly sizing up the man she stood by, only occasionally darting out into the fields, seemingly to glance at nothing in particular. A composite bow hung on her shoulder, whose tip she fiddled with incessantly.
Damned be tradition, the corner-foundations
of the pagoda and mosque, the jurassic,
polished, well-varnished, in slow ambulations
round the bejewelled cathedral enclosure
understood; burn the commandments in classic
letters that cassocks in motley dipped foreign
fingers in ink to inscribe; let exposure
flake the decaying old virginal parchment
sheath and the papery helms of their horsemen
confident faces emblazoned upon whose
masks are the picture of vacuous assent;
let the remaining air bathe your lewd tattoos.
You’re weighed against a spurious ballast; knife
the ropes, free yourself—what can you lose but life?
>>8177244
The old man sighed ran a hand through his matted white hair. The woman seemed to take note of his resigned expression, but made no overt motion to acknowledge his displeasure. The old man, for his part, shuffled away from the crest of the promontory and opted to take a seat on one of the abbey steps.
My grandfather took up the tack until his seventieth year.” The girl rejoined, “And his health was far worse than yours.”
“We’re not all descended from the Great Khan. Latins are a frailer sort.”
“Let us hope your nephew does not complain as you do.” She quipped.
“Let’s hope we can get back in time to see him.” The old man groaned, his vision dancing about, doubtless scouting a more sufficient spot to sit.
“The Duke’s forces will retreat at the bridge after a skirmish or two.” The girl predicted, with an air of confidence that neared fanaticism. Her eyes shifted towards the ancient Roman causeway a mile to the East. “The contest will be over by sundown.”
“You think so, do you?” His question carried a genuine tone.
“Of course -- It is your stratagem, is it not?” The girl prodded.
“It is, isn’t it?” He conceded.
“Then it will succeed.”
“Perhaps.”
The girl’s face contorted, revealing equal parts annoyance and exasperation.
“You do not believe in the plan?” She asked.
“I’ve stopped believing that any plan is infallible.” He responded with a weary smile.
The girl clenched her fists and took a few steps forward. The old soldier looked at this girl with a dour expression. The fire in her had been extinguished in him -- and the disconnect between the two widened each day.
“I won’t ever stop believing in you.” The young woman’s passion radiated through each word, eliciting the man to get up and approach her. Rising and putting a weathered, wrinkled hand on her shoulder, he gave her a light push.
“Ride over and check the battlements on the bridge.” He ordered her, “I need to talk to the abbot about these damned bells.”
“I should go with you!” She retorted.
The old man laughed heartily.
“No women allowed, you know.”
The girl bit her lip.
“Go on, Khutulun.” He said, waving his hand, “If we want this done by sundown, we’ve got to make an effort at it, no?”
The old man watched the girl mount a decorated Asiatic saddle on her lanky, agile, steppe horse. He shook his head and smirked. Soon after, the old man found himself alone, and was quite content with it. It will be that way soon. Forever. These were the kind of thoughts his head was filled with as of late. Every man had his hour, and his was rapidly receding. Unlike most other men, however, he wanted to pass on that flame while the fire still raged.
With some effort, he lumbered up the steps and rapped on the abbey door.
The Milanese retreated from the bridge at Montichiari at sundown after two skirmishes.
>>8173675
Critique plz
just bullshitting and venting I'm a visual artist by trade so whatever
And here it is,
Entropy emerges for a subject of Caligula's reign
Strolling through every whimsical park block under the whims of some gapped-toothed bard of Bath, or Fountains rather,
Perverse pervasive tantrums quietly immerse you into eerie evergreens
Their vile plumes dipped in some noxious toxins, pheromone or parasite
This crucible Rose by any other name hath you ponder in silence and tremble in fear
once again you only long for a Charm evermore,
or even a damned Angel against a shore
A hopeless sadness follows me. Why is the world so very cold? Winter passed long ago, but in my heart lives on its storm. Mornings seem just like grim evenings, and the stars are dimmed by many regrets.
Is it time to close the book? Is it time to end the symphony? How unfortunate is God, weeping alone in icy Heaven. Walking, sleeping, I see
the sky, just like paper, containing nothing.
Oh, God, if you write these lines and all others for your grim performers, where, where are your own? What, what, are your words? The train in the distance resolves to gloomy clouds.
>>8173675
Here's the start of the story even though nobody is interested:
John scanned the mountains in the dark. There were a few lights in the distance and the chirping of crickets. It was vast but they were warm and safe in the car. John, the man, rugged and old, in his battered jeans and a beer can in his hand. In his shaking hand. As he tried to calm himself, he looked sidewise. The girl was soundly resting. Her bare soft foot touched his leg. His heart beat faster and blood rushed to his loins. He gently moved her away from him and then took a beer. He took a swig from the can and absorbed the landscape and the darkness and the gentle hum of the wind and the rhythmic buzzing of the insects and was lulled to sleep.
When he woke to have his morning piss and cigarette, the girl was no longer lying there were she had been when he had fallen asleep. John looked around. The landscape was beautiful. He pissed next to the car and lit his cigarette, breathed heavily, patiently waiting for the girl to return. She came out of a bushes, her lightly freckled face blushing as she saw the man standing by the car. Her dirtied dress clung tightly to her small body.
Morning, he said. And yawned. What a beautiful day it is.
Morning, the child replied.
We've got a lot of driving to do, but let's get some breakfast first.
And break fast indeed they did. They stopped at a quiet cafe in the road. It was a hot morning and bright and the ground under their feet dusty. There were trees and a few old houses and the big mountains around them. John let the little girl put on her sandals and hop out of the car and turn back to look at him before he got out. He liked watching her turn around and look at him. John smoked a cigarette and drank coffee while the girl ate toast and milk. Inside of the small and empty cafe, looking at the child focused entirely on consuming her food, he was aware of the unreality of that moment, of the vastness of the outside and insignificance of the two people involved in this scene. He felt how these moments of beauty and quietude seemed to last for so long yet passed so quickly, fading into memory. And then passing on to death. It was a moment only they would share, and it would die with them. And it was perfect indeed. But such thoughts shifted quickly from his mind as his eyes traced the tight green dress
>>8154313
It feels cluttered. The opening sentance is unnecessarily verbose considering how little it actually says. Otherwise, pretty decent.
>>8154507
I understand that you had to be as concise as possible, but the second sentance looks like a thesarus got drunk and spewed words all over it. The way you use these words feels forced, almost like you were given vocabulary list and instructed to cram the whole thing into a single sentance.
>>8178516
It feels like you're prodding into the man's mind and thoughts too much as a narrator.
Also, stop using indeed so much. Don't say "break fast indeed they did" that made me cringe
The description of John is about as boring as the name John. I'm not saying you should change his name tho, that's fine. What you need to change is give me more description about him. All I got was a stereotypical old rugged smoking alcoholic. And then accompanying him is the stereotypical little girl.
I can see some interesting possible conflicts with the blood rushing to his loins and the staring at her eating, but other than that, the descriptions of the world and characters seem boring.
Also, not much really happened in this passage, so I might be wrong since obviously this is only an excerpt.
Rudely rugged, aisle after aisle revealed their columns like grape vineyards from a car. I picked an aisle and found myself gazing into a common collection of rice and beans displayed brightly in the store’s sunlight. I was not familiar with beans as their black-font names pintoed over me garbanzolied. They ask you black or refried beans when ordering a burrito so I gingerly placed the can of black beans into my basket as if I were a real estate broker showing the beans their new home of forty-five minutes.
There were many types of rice. Chinese, Vietnamese, Mexican, Nepalese, Arabian. It seems as though rice has been a staple of human nutrition throughout history across all cultures I thought. They ask you Mexican rice or brown rice so I heaved a small sack of rice with a guy wearing a sombrero printed on it.
At the checkout line, I found myself behind an old lady whose head was devoured by a voracious gray blob that seemed to start its appetizer at the bottom of her long white hair. The beanie matched the gray sweater that similarly devoured unto her knees. But no one devoured her bony doorknob ankles.
I accidently rang the doorbell and she whipped around at ferocious speed as I retracted my insolent foot.
“What do you think you’re doing to an innocent poor lady like me?” she scorched out as she held the checkout divider menacingly in her hand.
I watched my limp bag of sombrero rice lose its crutches and slowly collapse over the old lady’s stick of margarine that seemed to be missing from her sagging skin. And all I could do was watch the sack cross a border no longer there but now in the vein-popped hand of an old lady.
I was able to snap myself out of the political metaphor daydream and mumble sorry but by now I was sure it was too late to say sorry. Vacuums from inside her head sucked in her eyeballs as she glared into my black sludge that would later inhabit my stomach later that night.
“Next in line.”
“Hello dearie!”
The vacuums let up and her eyes returned to plump bright bouncy balls of blue as her doorknobs swiveled around to face the cashier. Sombrero Rice did not get deported.
As far away as I distanced myself from her, I could not help but feel my neurons connect with the same neurons in her brain that changed her emotions so quickly. The difference was that she could control when they changed.
“Today you saved $8.10!” chirped the cashier.
As the receipt churned out, he said, “Today you saved… 31 cents!”
He sounded like a man who accidently shot himself and was too embarrassed to go to the hospital. I had saved thirteen cents on the black beans and eighteen cents on Sombrero Rice.
I only started ''writing'' recently, it almost never goes beyond a paragraph and I delete it immediatly after. Tell me if there is even the slightest appeal to this thing:
Legs crossed, chin up, with those proud yet very charming greenish eyes she looks my way now and again. I sit there, like a big rock fixed to the sturdy ground through the tall distressing stool. I dare not glance, nor do I dare make known my attention is set to anything other than the professors’ words. I don’t know if I do a very good job at it. I take a peek from time to time, after I make sure she wouldn’t notice it. I run my hand through her golden brown hair and caress her cheek in a split second, just to lower my vision again, stare into the nothingness that has invaded my thoughts, and go back to acting my role and forging hers.
>>8178233
I like the flow of this, clearly Joyce-inspired. You should write in prose, would be better imo.
>>8178491
>Oh, God, if you write these lines and all others for your grim performers, where, where are your own? What, what are your words''
I love this part. You have got to work on your imagery though, ''icy Heaven'', ''sky just like paper'' are just not good enough. Plus you used grim two times,
>>8178741
boo
>>8154294
Me and this muslim guy were the only non-asians who worked at the cafe. It was an unusually slow Sunday night. People came to get dessert, usually not as a main meal, as our specialty was pastries and coffee. I don’t know why people get coffee late at night, but for whatever reason, they came in clusters to get it. The night went slow as usual, I tried not to look at the clock on the serving screen, but couldn’t help myself. It was 9:00, the last time I checked it was 8:45, it felt a lot longer than that little interval, but I can’t prove this. I decided on sitting down as it looked like our 9:00 rush would be at 9:30 instead today. I heard the door open after I sat down, and in came Mohammad, my muslim friend who worked there with me. He was on a 30 minute break. I assume it was his weed dosage. Knowing him, it seemed like he needed to smoke weed approximately every 4 hours just to survive. He looked at me jump up, gave his ear to ear smile, and said “Dude! Sorry for being late, did anyone come in while I was gone.” Even though people came in, I smiled back and lied about it.
How's this?
>>8182158
>typos
>basic and boring sentences
>lack of proper description
>using ; when a comma is perfectly acceptable
Overall, it seems terribly plain. Hopefully this is just a first draft because you need to spice it up a lot. Add some life and imagery.
Please critique, it's just a small piece
_Gentleman!_ shouted Ivan as he got up and smiled, to the surprise of everyone _ It's been a pleasure.
He calmly reached for a bread knife in the table, put the blade against his chest in the heart area, and with one single motion stabbed himself.
>>8183955
>cliche cliche cliche
>heart area
and in such a small segment.
>>8183962
Sorry? Why is it cliche? I never saw anything like that anywhere else
>>8183980
A young nigga may read more.
>>8183955
_Bitches!_ shouted Ivan Fyodorovich Gorbakov as he got up and smiled, to the surprise of everyone _ It's been a sexually motivated pleasure.
He calmly reached for a large dildo in the table, put the rubbery phallus against his pelvis in the dick area, and with one single motion fucked himself.
Sit and drown in the sperm and sperm
Learning of the corrosive effects
Whilst the heated air beats down on the sweaty skin
I sit and wither away my finest hours
Salt, sweat, body odors set in outer skin emulsions; it wafted up in curly fixtures by the steam of his semen. He thought and thought, and nothing poetic came out, so now he describes himself, mostly telling the truth, lying in other places.
“My name is J.R. Penisson, and I am a relative of the great William Kennedy "Dick" Penisson, inventor of 35mm pornographic film and the amazing kinetoscope that it played in. Later, of course, motion pictures started being shot and projected like semen separately; from bulky camera to editing suite to printer to screen to eye to mind to vagina or penis. And now I kneel behind a faggot, thrusting hard, smelling things—not just me.
My hair is brown like shit, normal, not styled. Picture it any way you want. Forget about what I look like, anyways. I’m a faggot, a deformed looking fag, with the moles on my face and square-head. I grew up in Arkansas, and all of my older male relatives, immediate family included, liked to abuse me and worked in trades like a bunch of stiffs, doing things like welding and mixing cement and sodomizing me with a broomstick and things like that. “
He’s done fucking now, and washing up in the bathroom by his room. Now he decides to burn down the faggot there, but elects to sit on the idea for a while, since he isn’t sure why he wants to kill exactly.
However, avoid heteros.
Many people lay with another company.
May Allah fuck me up the asshole with a broomstick amen
Do you know what happened? If the.
I think the fag.
Call us exortenstiolism faggots.
We know in the Biblical sense a few others in the butt.
No dickwant, and I know what it is.
If you think you can fuck up the ---- and how to use it.
If you see something.
foolish male hetero,
Then the bottles of KY Lube,
It was a dis-ASS-ter.
Perspective up the faggot's asshole is a natural wonder, cunt.
>>8184139
I'm getting the impression that what he's outputting, what he's writing, can be compared to a body outputting sweat or shit or semen.
I am a gay person.
I am gay
but -
I ask
fuck many
children
I look forward to many cocks in my mouth.
I ask
Think
blue
Balled.
I fuck
general
singing
The semantics.
special
I ask
-
call You
When he came
from
Big, beautiful eyes, face,
We will give me
-
My dear friends
Oh
cock
I can not do it. because
not
Unfortunately, your name
But that is impossible.
Hear.
The great balls of Signor Montichiari Abbey were swinging. The monks, who had long since reverted to a smallerloined catamite located in the chapel proper, only sucked the ancient and wrinkled shaft and slapped the great balls for two reasons: firstly because it identified the monk’s body as a temple of the Holy Spirit. This status was, since time immemorial, intended to deliver the defenseless compound of the human body from the desecration so typical of contemporary wars.
The harbor was quiet. Splashes of precum slithered down my ass in broken intervals, and bursts of dry air crept down my neck and chilled my spine. I sat on the dock on the precipice of the cock, growing more impatient with each moment that I wasted waiting for climax. The wooden planks of the aging dock creaked behind me, prompting my head to turn with a sudden jolt. “You made it,” Frank joked. He knew that I’d been waiting for this night with an impossible excitement. His hand reached down and grabbed my arm, helping me to my feet and, not waiting a moment, Frank walked off the deck and turned briskly onto the half-deserted street.
>>8184167
I'm sorry I have to be the one to tell you this, but I think you're a latent homosexual, bud.
>>8154313
I like the ideas, but cool it with the blatant exposition. Flesh it out in objective inferences, rather than objective nouns.
>>8156491
Holy god
This is from my novel. It's the introduction of the third of three focal characters. He's supposed to act as a foil to the other two, who are kind of dull working class people:
I tip my hat to the well-to-do Russians down an alley on Sunset Blvd. The sun sets, and I’m in LA, but tomorrow I could be anywhere, rolling any die. Japan, Kiev, Los Vegas. Shooting craps with Elon Musk on Olympus Mons. I am a million dollars. I am a million dollars. I take a cab to the beach to see the moon proper, I tip him a thousand and one dollars “oh how nice do the peonies look in the moonlight under the oil refineries” I say as I place ten hundred dollar bills under a Washington one, wrap it up in the rubber band I used to con the Russians, to trick a German marksman out of his seventh magic bullet, to beat Henry Kissinger in a game of Risk – true story I’ll tell you later. I take another rubber band out of the bag, that one’s good luck has worn out. I’m a good luck machine, but I’m up and down and now I’m out a thousand and one dollars to a cabbie, but I got another ten in a paper ring sitting in my back pocket and negative quarter million in forty different European and Caribbean banks. I’m a lucky sonuvabitch when it comes to extradition treaties.
I want to tweet this, a grainy underexposed picture of a gibbous moon and sparkling ocean to the twenty hundred some people who would never see my posts for the curator of the Cleveland Natural History Museum, a few local bands and Donald J.’s (pro)/(op)ponents. I lost my phone yesterday to a roving band of comedy writers in Fresno, lost my iPod touch to a man wearing a moustache and a penny-farthing in a game of Bunco off the Jersey shore last Tuesday. I’m down to one suit and overcoat, my gallon baggie, my rubber bands and money clips, ten thousand dollars and a one-way ticket to anywhere in the world, and I’m a million dollars and my ticket’s right ahead of me, I get naked faster than Degas’ models and swim towards the starboard lights of the oil tanker.
This is from my novel it will be in third person. It will focus on three individuals each having their own and how they will deal with the invasion of america.
Prologue will not be included.
>>8184712
I have a couple of comments, I guess.
First the good:
You've hooked me in enough that I read the whole thing. It seems like it could be good light read. Are you a native speaker? If not, then really really really good job. If yes, then there could be a few mechanical corrections that would make your writing more fluent.
Now the constructive:
1) Do not capitalize communism unless you're talking about a specific brand of communism.
2) There's a lot of information and implied action, but it's really difficult to figure out what's happening. Try to describe the scene where this passage takes place so people can picture what's happening.
3) You might want to be wary of cliches like "...given a coice between war and peace..."
4) grammatical and syntax errors throughout the work. Try to edit those out before posting here.
5) possible organizational errors? I feel like some things in the passage could be much longer, and sone sentences may be deserving of their own paragraphs. Feel free to take your time.
>>8184759
>Are you a native speaker? If not, then really really really good job. Not a native speaker, sorry for the mistakes
>Now the constructive:
>1) Do not capitalize communism unless you're talking about a specific brand of communism.
Limited Knowledge, she thinks all communism is the same.
>2) There's a lot of information and implied action, but it's really difficult to figure out what's happening.
I wrote that intentionally, as its going to be a plot point later.
>3) You might want to be wary of cliches like "...given a choice between war and peace..."
The cliches are only going to be reserve for Olivia. The two other characters are going to be different in terms how this book is going.
>4) grammatical and syntax errors throughout the work. Try to edit those out before posting here.
truth be told, I did. I didn't know I miss some
>5) possible organizational errors? I feel like some things in the passage could be much longer, and sone sentences may be deserving of their own paragraphs. Feel free to take your time.
I'm trying anon.
>>8184759
*Not a native speaker. forgot to write that
>>8184199
you're a little bitch
when you can actually write something then you can make fun of mine
