Critique thread. Make sure you've read it all out loud to yourself at least once before you post it here.
Been working on something for a while, but pastebin didnt take all of it and a chunk of text at the end was out of place, so https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Urk8BOxHerPO-SK2UPBakrEjL9USlxXk7NKvnUns7JI/edit
request access plz
Give opinions so far, note I'm planning on fixing the grammar related shit.
Oh and if you have ideas for titles comment.
[...] Cleopatra rose, jerked her shoulders impatiently, and snorted.
"I should have thought it better to be natural," she blurted out. "If it's natural for me to have dark hairs on my upper lip, then surely I should not remove them."
Again Mrs. Delarayne dropped her book and glanced round very angrily. "Don't be stupid, Cleo!" she cried. "What do you suppose 'natural' means nowadays? Has it any meaning at all? Is it natural for you to blow your nose in a lace handkerchief? Is it natural for you to do your hair up? Is it natural for you to eat marrons glacés as you do at the rate of a pound and a half a week,—yes, a pound and a half a week; I buy them so I ought to know, unless the servants get at them—when you ought to be living in a cave, dressed in bearskins and gnawing at the roots of trees? Don't talk to me about 'natural.' Nothing is natural nowadays, except perhaps the inexhaustible stupidity of people who choke over a little process of beautification and yet swallow the whole complicated artificiality of modern life."
As Mrs. Delarayne turned her refined and still very beautiful face to the light, it became clear that she at any rate did not choke over any "little process of beautification"; for she was at least fifty-five years of age, and at a distance of two or three yards, looked thirty.
So as to grasp fully the slick plastic curve of the receiver I placed the dustpan soundlessly upon the counter and, revolving not without the calculated theatricality of such motions as performed by the appropriate characters in all the latest flicks,-theorizing simultaneously as to the dust mote’s eventual place of landing apropos it’s whimsical spiral tileward-vacated my throat of its varying layers of phlegm even as I brought the receiver to my ear.
All at once I was reacquainted with the constancy of electronic sibilance that is synonymous visually with that trembling varicolored confusion of scintillas seething upon the display of a dissociate television set. I spoke into the beige plastic concavity dotted symmetrically with a series of shadowy bores the words I had been told to use for introduction in cases of customer-call-in; words I had memorized long ago and knew now to be one among a series in some hallowed corporate psalter. There was no reply. “ I say again,” I said “I welcome you to answer my beckoning and come frequent the wondrous and highly affordable establishment you chose to call.” riffing at this point, no longer following word-for-word the recommended dialogue, becoming nervous in the face of the white noise. “And purchase there any one of our myriad products-praised by numerous corporate-food-review-outlets for their vitalizing aspect and, and attractive packaging-including but not I assure you limited to One Sips, Good Gulps, Power Pastes, Two Twists, Krazy Krinkles, and, and, and, and,” at this point stuttering, an irregularity of mine latent but in cases of extreme stress, which I assure you this was, this intractable buzzing, this unreceding surf. I spoke for several minutes more into the telephone. Though I expected no lapse in the perfect wave of sound that was my response, I understood the expectation that an NRG employee should dutifully attend any customer or potential customer to the point of purchase as a stricture of essence to yes the very continued existence of NRG.
The circular pursuit had described a quarter arc when the idea came to me like a sudden slashing of price to circumvent the particular stricture disallowing me of the power to hang up on a voice that could become that of a paying customer by placing the phone which looked so very much like a beige shell within range of the store microphone through which I would sometimes broadcast my voice out of the discreet speakers it was linked to, provided something needed to be announced.
>>7407430
This gave me a headache.
1/2
Another grey day through taupe glass was the first deliberate observation since he had entered the building five hours before. Since that time he had taken the elevator three floors without any other passengers, proceeded down the same beige hallway of timeless synthetic potted plants, and spoken words he could not recall to the secretary before seating himself in the cubical and adjusting his position several time.
The computer maintained its quivering light as he entered into it the appropriate information and occasionally highlighted and deleted spelling errors or solecisms. Curled sticky pads were penitentially strewn across his unadorned desk. thin films of lint from prior attachment were visible on several.
He was distinct from all other coworkers in that he alone conducted the business of the day upon a wooden straightbacked chair without wheels and incapable of revolution of the seat independently of the lower half. It was said that he brought this uncushioned chair from his apartment; in fact, when he first entered his cubicle twelve years prior it had not been provided with a chair, and he received the scandalous straightback only at the oblivious behest of his employer, a Mr. Adams, who requested that an appropriate chair be found for him if it at all possible without necessitating pecuniary exchange, though this man whose infantine brow seemed little more than an extension of his bald head would have surely been aghast to learn that this request lead to the eventual procurement of an item which had itself inexplicably resided in a storage closet along with a frequently used modern mop as it indicated the very intertwinement of frivolous evasion of expenditure and crass disregard of employee wellbeing that Adams scorned of his acquaintances of similar position.
2/2
Besides his standard duties, he kept always a single window opened onto a single vista of the world wide web. He was the sole administrator of the official discussion forum of the product line his company was predicated upon. Regulation of the irregular comments left upon this website were a continuous source of pleasure. This pleasure was not the effusion of warmth he understood others to have experienced at salient moments of joyful reversal, it was not at all dissimilar to the gelid indictment he directed by now as easily as habit at overheard individuals who either repeated a phrase or paraphrase which originated in a piece of entertainment consumed by more than ten thousand people or expressed a thought totally unalloyed by either irony or self-contempt, in either of which cases he was able to reflexively placate his own sometimes insufficient belief in a personal, glorious future in which all he had experienced to this point was rendered, as in a sudden catastrophe, irrelevant, not by observation of his observing a thought the orator him or herself likely had not noticed-confirming a perceptive canny he knew himself to be in unique possession of-but rather by the banality of the statement itself’s putting into relief with his own specialness the banality of the given mind.
>>7407457
Nothing wrong with your diction other than that it is bland. Your sentence, however, structure is boring and long-winded. I recommend saying your writing out loud.
>>7407430
Terrible. Big words have to be justified; you can't just spew them haphazardly.
Every time I am about to make a discovery, it strikes me. It strikes me I am the first person to make that discovery, (hence the word). But am I really worthy of making a discovery? Am I actually capable of it? Suddenly, every success becomes a burden. It's the burden of knowing that I know something others do not.
>>7407584
>thinking his problem is the amount of syllables in his prose and not his terrible sense of pacing
kek
What do you see looking out of that mirror? I see a winner. And not just any winner, no. Any fool can win once or twice if he lives long enough. But what I’m looking at here in this glass is a bona fide winner among winners. Yeah! You don’t just live, you progress, you move forward in your life, everything in it just keeps getting better and better. But well I gotta tell you that it wont last, those wins fade fast and soon they’ll just be another part of the past. But why would that matter? You press on. You keep at it. And soon, soon, you’re winning again winner, and everything that came before gets… negated… in the newer bigger better victory glow. And why would all the slow decay after matter if you can just keep on winning? Yeah, yeah. Maybe the glass is a little on the turbid side from all those old after-the-splash stains of sinkwater. Maybe the angle of light isn’t doing any favors to the complexion, but still. You’re here and you’ve done it, and what’s great is it doesn’t even matter what you thought you’ve done, cause what you’ve really done is won. And is that a-a-a-a-a billow?! A billow of momentum or hot air rising up around you from the feet up nearly taking you up right into the blue among all those big ole soft white cottony coruscate cumuluses we’ve all heard so much about? I bet it is!!! It’s like a rapture really is what it’s like, its that momentum. It’s the winning momentum, really is what it is. Yeah that’s right, you’re you. You’re singular, you’ve got all that matters going on, you deserve this. You earned it. In that glass in that face in that chartreuse light, with all of it’s thin little shadows flickering out if you tilt yourself just so, are the thoughts of a real person- not of one of those automatons you see on streets and behind counters!
>>7407618
>All at once I was reacquainted with
>[[[the constancy of electronic sibilance]
>that is synonymous visually]
>with that trembling varicolored confusion of scintillas] seething upon
>[the display
>[of a dissociate television set]]
your choice of words is fine, it's the amount of clauses that is offensive because there is no need for them. if you're gonna have intricate sentences make sure they aren't bloated for no reason. use commas, also. what the other guy said about reading your work out loud is true.
“It ends at birth,” -the first lines of this fucking novel I’ve been working on, oh, for how many years? But, I have to write it. This novel has got to be all of me. I-I said as I peered over my own shoulder to glance at what was written.
“Oh, now what is this you are writing, me?”
“I’m writing this, it’s a novel, I’m not really a writer, but I wanna get something out of me, I wanna do something real, you see.”
“Oh I see alright. You wanna be like that one ------ quote? You wanna live?”
“I guess so, I just - well, I guess I’ve got to do something right?”
“Don’t ask me, I’m just you.”
“Hey, well, where’d you come from anyway, aren’t I here?”
“What is it you wanna do man?”
“Can’t you hear?”
“I mean like, what do you want to accomplish in your novel?”
“I mean, like what do I want to do with my life, isn’t that more important, me?”
And I was gone, just like that. That’s probably enough writing for the time being. I’m kinda new to the whole thing, plus, I’ve got homework to do.
>>7407674
>your choice of words is fine,
I disagree, but for the problem you had with it. In anon's writing, he strings a bunch of big words together in a series of clauses, and it feels clunky, poorly paced, and pointless (what I meant when I said it wasn't justified). I have nothing wrong with big words. I mean, I love when Gaddis does it, but Gaddis paces it well, so when he uses big words they feel right.
>>7407708
eh it's not stellar choice of words, scintillas is pretty bad but i like varicolored. dissociate is also bad.
>>7407708
>pointless
I'd agree with you on the charge that it's clunky, but at the very least don't all the latinate words create a voice that's something like distinct? and isn't a phrase like "dissociate television set" inventive while still accurate?
>>7407742
>at the very least don't all the latinate words create a voice that's something like distinct?
they would if they weren't clunkily thrown together.
> and isn't a phrase like "dissociate television set" inventive while still accurate?
no. it reads like you read the word dissociate out of a dictionary and have never seen it used. usage matters a lot when trying to not be clunky, even more so than 'literal' definitions.
>>7407625
>exclamation marks
Yeah no.
>>7405955
http://pastebin.com/0RbJPWQi
>>7407680
Read John Barth- Lost in the Funhouse
>>7407775
>usage matters a lot when trying to not be clunky, even more so than 'literal' definitions.
This. And I'd say it goes even further than that: usage determines the impact, the beauty of the word.
>>7407996
>not writing for yourself shut in a mountain cabin
>>7408033
I write to get better at it, so I can eventually make a living off it. Besides, I have an acute distaste for everything that I've ever written.
>>7408033
>being content with a mediocre product just because you're the only one who's going to see it
you don't like yourself very much do you
>>7408046
>he thinks the world will crave for his awesome prose
The plebs want John Green and Eragon. You will never be published if you're good, and if you will you won't be bought and discussed. Are you unable to refine your own prose and attain a mystical perfection with dedication and labor? What are you, a faggot?
>>7408076
>he thinks the world will crave for his awesome prose
>my post only concerned writing for oneself
projecting so hard we could use you for powerpoint
>>7407795
Long winded as fuck mate. Nice ideas.
>>7407969
Sure, why do you recommend it?
>>7408121
He does the whole meta-fiction you're trying here in an interesting way.
>>7408124
Okay cool. Any critique for the post itself?
>>7408147
Fair enough. I actually just wrote that yesterday, I want to have like a dialogue with myself in a self-indulgent short story, that was the start of it. I want to do something like that before I write anything I feel more passionate about, otherwise I think I'll add these self indulgent "witty" metafictional things. Don't know if that makes much sense, but whatever. (Basically I've tried starting a couple writing projects and have deleted them all, not being content with them).
I like your descriptions, and your dialogue, . I'm not sure I followed everything, but hey, that's not the point is it?
How can I improve? Part 1/2
“Just you and me, you can’t tell anybody else.”
“I won’t. I promise Laura! I wont’.”
“Ok. My big brother told me last night that one of those planes could come here and crash into the school.”
James could not think. In ten years of living he had not considered dying until this moment. Recess had disappeared and was replaced by an immediate sickness and the image of big planes falling from the Lafayette sky directly onto him. Sinking deeper into sadness he looked up at his classmates. Climbing quickly to the top of their schools property, they all smiled and pushed each other. Giggling up the big hill is where they would die. James was certain of this. He decided to walk from the corner of his rusted-out portable classroom where he stood with Laura towards the top of the hill to alert his friends they were about to die.
Beneath his feet the world lightened. It was supposed to rain just outside Lafayette that day and in James’ mind it poured. The camo rainboots he wore served their purpose. He walked his green mile between the trees from the portable to the playground. Catching a corner of the slide through a space in the trees, he stopped walking. James remember the first time he slid down it. He began to sob at that thought. At the top of the hill, his classmates prepared their Friday afternoon tradition. At the edge of their playground, on top of the big hill, there was a big field filled with hay during the year. After its bailing, the children would see who can push them further. James loved this game.
Laura wondered what was bothering James.
“Are you all right? Did you hurt yourself?”
James could not respond to her. He was at once angry with her. It was obvious why he was crying. He kept walking past the playground and towards the big hill.
>>7408226
pt.2
James could not respond to her. He was at once angry with her. It was obvious why he was crying. He kept walking past the playground and towards the big hill.
Looking up he again saw his classmates off in the distance. He saw them readying the big hay bale that took 5 kids each to move. James walked a few feet more and felt he could not bear to give them bad news. He sat down, facing away from his friends and towards the deep woods in which he would never explore.
The childrens game begun. Each team of 5 took corners of their hay bale and began pushing. The winced and groaned and the lighters kids legs fumbled as they got them rolling. The hay bales begun to pick up steam. James heard the laughing of his friends above him and he turned to look. They all ran towards him and the hay bales grew bigger as they approached. He smiled in his happiest moment all recess and briefly forgot his imminent death.
Overhead a plane approached ear-shot. James prepared himself. He closed his eyes and placed his head in his hands against his lap. Sitting silently he was deep in thought. He had never kissed Laura and he had never smoked a cigarette. These were his biggest regrets. As the sound of engines grew louder overhead, he braced himself. It all went silent.
He could not hear the plane or the buzzing of nearby bees. The young children jumping and kicking rocks in the playground were muted. The sound of his classmates yelling out to him to move out of the way were heard only by everyone else. James sat quiet as a monk, seemingly asleep. The biggest of hay bales hit his back, and rolled up and over him onto his neck. The boys pushing that hay bale down the hill could not stop it, and they heard James’ bones crushed into broken seashells you’d find on the Baton Rouge beaches.
>>7405955
Life lay above outside you
I have been there to fall
Strive with all hopes
Drink of the wine of the wrath of God
One more God Rejected
Life lay above outside you
One more God Rejected
I have been there to fall
One more God Rejected
Strive with all hopes
Thou won't oppose the wrath of God
Fear
Fear God and give glory to him
For the horror of his
Judgement has come to you
Now
When the thousand years have expired
Sodomy be released
Judgement has come to you
She ran towards the sea, her little feet leaving imprints in the sand. The waves lapped at her heels and she squealed with excitement and returned to him laughing. Daddy daddy it's cold, she cried. I know sweetheart I'm right here watching. Don't just watch silly you have to come and play. She clasped her hand around his finger and pulled him towards the waves, and father and daughter stood ankle-deep in the cool ocean spray as the sun glowed low and orange at the edge of the horizon.
I'm a monster, daddy daddy watch I'm a sea monster. She splashed water at his face and made a wild sound that was meant to be a roar. Maybe you should be a dragon he said, and grabbed her around the waist, hoisted her effortlessly onto his shoulders, and waded through the water with his arms outstretched.
Some time passed and eventually their beautifully mindless play came to an end, and they collapsed into the sand with her little arms and legs clasped around him. He was her daddy and she was his little girl and she would never let him go. He could feel her warm breath on his cheek and he ran his hands through her tangled hair and for a moment he thought to himself that if he had not achieved anything else in his life then at least he had created her and shared with her moments like these.
(1/2)
And then the moment turned to nostalgia and the nostalgia turned to sadness. Gone were the days when all he cared about was playing. Gone were the days when he was free. Never grow up, he willed her silently. Never grow up, my beautiful girl. Spend every day like this laugh and play without a care in the world. May you never know what it is to be a disappointment. May you never experience any trauma that can't be instantly soothed with the right words from your mother or me. May you never understand what it is like to hate yourself. Just say like this forever, please.
Oblivious to her father's sudden and overwhelming angst, she got up and started to chatter excitedly about what she had learned at school, and how she knew how to say beach and sea and sky and sand in French. This was already a slightly different girl to the daughter he had last month, and she would be different again next month. Her cells will all die and replace themselves until nothing would be left from the girl he had in front of him now. She was no more impervious to change than any of them were.
He called her over and said it's time to go home and so she obediently followed him. They walked together through the sand dunes and the sun set over the ocean behind them.
(2/2)
Granpa turnip theres no radishes left for thanksgivng i think we need to treat this like one of the magpie summers in the sugar facotry of the the doctos cola mine, I really like pepsi-its a drink thats good and good for you aint nothing wrong it like that i think I could catch a couple of bigfoots if i went back out there'd and wrangled one of those blimey urchins of the lagoon and found me a river for two to sail hte night away on. I guess suns about to come up and there no way of telling what is going to go whereno way no how and i dont be expectin to figure it out no time soon, I guess its time to hop in the sloppy jalopy and dance of down to Uncle Petersburg and / fishing trip for the campsite. A desperation flies through the trees at a speed imperceivable to anything other than a few rare insects wipe out in the Locust Wars. A flavor of turpentine washed into a good old crab shoot and it looks like Christmas may have early had it not been for the par-tide last Wednesday. I think the loberkons have found there way into the inner pylon and may be attempting to disassemble the Jorgonimaton for their use in a most disagreeable act, the sodomy of the very earthmotherplanet herself. No time for the wicked in this moon cart. We gotta get to the cotton candy fountains lest we get a few spoonfuls of rape for dinner. I think my dog can play hopscotch, it's not like hes a faggot or anything. I bet beetles are actually pretty cool. A plant dances next to my tapestry and I think it may be time for another nap.
I'm trying to describe a MILF in my book.What are some terms I can use to portray old age in a positive manner, besides the dead horse that is "aged like a fine wine?" Alternatively, how can I reword or add detail to that sentence to make it at all original? I actually know nothing about wine.
In a room, dark beyond the candle lit desk and drenched in the scent of boiling tea, sat a middle aged nun, Hasuko. As she sat, drinking her eighth cup of tea, which gave her strength to stay off sleep, she worked on copying a dusty, decaying copy of the Lotus Sutra to a new scroll. While ostensibly to preserve a copy of the text, she had no interest in this. She desired only to study the text, which she had often studied before, and possibly write a commentary on it. In her estimation there were few that knew the text as extensively as she did, and her knowledge would be invaluable.
>>7408834
Slimy kiss but not yucky. Soft like a new sponge. She pulled me toward her, into her old-lady-smell, her musky perfume, Opium by Yves Saint Laurent, her soft white hirsutism against my face, my mountain goat, she said yes, yes she said Yes.
>>7408231
>subject, verb, complement in every sentence
>James could not think.
>and in James' mind it poured
>The camo rainboots he wore served their purpose
>He walked [...] to the playground.
>[...] he stopped walking
>James remember the first time he slid down it [?]
>He began to sob
>at the top of the hill
>at the edge on top of the big hill there was a big field
>Laura wondered what was bothering James.
>He saw his classmates
>He saw them readying the big [...]
>James walked
>He sat down [...] and towards the deep woods
>James prepared himself.
>he closed his eyes.
None of this reads like English is your first language. Perhaps write in your own language, instead of writing in this rather broken English that reminds more of the reading attempts of a Pakalu Papito than of anything bearing the likeness of literacy.
>>7408834
She had a disarming gaze set in a developed warmth. I was naked long before the first button came off.
>>7408331
>She ran towards the sea, her little feet leaving imprints in the sand.
Not a particularly eyepopping start. There's definitely a better word than "ran" to use. "Her little feet leaving imprints in the sand" is fine, but I would expand upon the imagery, maybe by adding a colon or emdash and following with something like this: "curved depressions, recesses that fill with water and fade at the soft touches, the loving and indiscriminate caresses of the ocean waves." You feel me?
>The waves lapped at her heels and she squealed with excitement and returned to him laughing.
Apply an adjective (preferably something implicitly metaphorical) to "waves; drop "with excitement; add an extra description after "laughing."
>Daddy daddy it's cold, she cried.
Comma between the daddies. Replace "she cried" with a description of something, anything, or add a description of how she said it, maybe what she was doing.
>I know sweetheart I'm right here watching.
A little cheesy--spice it up.
>Don't just watch silly you have to come and play.
This is coming from a little girl, so you don't have to make it complex, but you do have to use proper grammar.
>She clasped her hand around his finger and pulled him towards the waves, and father and daughter stood ankle-deep in the cool ocean spray as the sun glowed low and orange at the edge of the horizon.
"She clasped her hand around his finger and pulled him towards the waves": clunky. Bad pacing for its entirety.
>I'm a monster, daddy daddy watch I'm a sea monster.
Grammar issue, but this is fine because, once again, it's a little girl.
>She splashed water at his face and made a wild sound that was meant to be a roar.
Clunky and too simple; needs spice.
>Maybe you should be a dragon he said, and grabbed her around the waist, hoisted her effortlessly onto his shoulders, and waded through the water with his arms outstretched.
Grammar and pacing need some fixes. Trying not to write this for you, friend.
>Some time passed and eventually their beautifully mindless play came to an end, and they collapsed into the sand with her little arms and legs clasped around him.
Come up with a more creative way of saying "some time passed." Again, spice up your sentence structure; play around.
>He was her daddy and she was his little girl and she would never let him go.
Remove entirely.
>He could feel her warm breath on his cheek and he ran his hands through her tangled hair and for a moment he thought to himself that if he had not achieved anything else in his life then at least he had created her and shared with her moments like these.
Much too simplistic and, again, poorly paced.
>>7408226
I have no idea what is happening here
>>7408935
The MARK OF GENIUS.
>>7408870
someone pls put this french pedophile out of his misery already
>>7408226
I just did a sentence by sentence critique, so I will, for my and, hopefully--hopefully, your benefit, make this brief: criticism followed by advice: your sentence structure, imagery, diction--everything, really--sounds like a high schooler wrote it. With that in mind, here's advice that will hopefully be heeded, but will, almost inevitably, be ineffective (that's how things go): read, really--read. Read all the time; read even when there is little time. Bored? Read. There has never been an author (a good author, I mean) who did not read constantly.
We have half an hour to buy alcohol, state law you see. These are the sorts of things I think about when I'm not thinking about you and I or I and the world. It's one or the other: saints and demons or booze and burgers.
I want to say "I want to be a writer," but I've met too many writer-boozers. They would rather lie down on a park bench for an afternoon nap than venture into the cold halls of a library for reading and writing. It's obvious I don't fit into this world, so all that's left for me to do is talk about not fitting in. I can sing that song and dance to it too.
Still, every time I start scratching at a blank piece of paper I get nervous. Who is going to read this anyhow? They'll surely think I'm arrogant, or that I'm brilliant, or an asshole, or- worse still- they'll pin me for exactly what I am: a writer-boozer with a chip on his shoulder about nine to fives and Holiday shopping. I'm a sorry gift giver. I don't pay attention to anything but myself and my world. December 25th always comes by surprise. Every year I mean to give my brother something nice, and every year I scratch my head and shrug like an asshole when he hands me some perfectly wrapped perfect gift.
Christmas is for young couples and children. Maybe it's for old ladies and parents too, I don't know. It sure as hell isn't for me. Next year maybe I'll be in love. Christmas will suddenly be a magical occasion for ice skating, hot chocolate and snow-watching from couch-cuddled warmth. For now it's an opportunity to laugh at all these cocksuckers while they sit in mall lot traffic and burn up their paychecks for useless shit. It's also an opportunity to bang my head against the wall when I realize they're good folks turning nine to fives into nine to sevens so they can put smiles on their kids faces, or buy their idiot boozer-brothers gifts. And I'll be no nearer a mall for it. Find me at the liquor store.
I wondered what heaven looked like
but I don’t wonder anymore
Heaven is a name, roomed downstairs
She carries a laundry basket
to and from a door always closed
>>7409005
It's a little too edgy I guess for my taste, but it's got a humor and bitterness that I like.
"Perfectly wrapped perfect gift" reads really awkwardly.
>>7407393
The last sentence in the monologue seems kinda forced and strange. The rest is good.
>>7407457
It's not terrible. There are some interesting things there, but it feels very forced and, like the other anon said, boring.
>>7407795
I liked this a lot. There was a good, intriguing plot for the first 2/3 of it. The dialogue at the end feels kinda weird. There were also some spelling errors, so I'd recommend reading through it again and checking that. Otherwise fun to read.
>>7408240
Jesus man. What the hell are you trying to do? Write the worst Lutheran hymn you could?
http://pastebin.com/YEZjugxT
>>7407795
>http://pastebin.com/0RbJPWQi
This is good, but you need to work on your consistency. To clarify, you jump from idea to idea, subject to subject much too much, making it jarring and, really, unpleasant, unenjoyable regardless of the beauty of individual sections. My tip: slow down, think--really flesh out the images and scenes you are trying to create. Tip on how to do this: read (surprise, surprise. I bet you didn't see that coming, did ya?) and see how other authors structure their paragraphs and sentences.
>>7409122
Formatting got weird. This is my piece.
http://pastebin.com/YEZjugxT
The rumble of current generators underground attested to the unchanging, smooth motion of the water from one distant end of the biodome to the other constantly mobile, so that it accumulated barely no algae and the rocks were smoothed and white. The corals and unmoving starfish, all pristinely visible beneath the surface, looked like models on display in a diorama of ocean life. The long fans of tight knotted coral types, packing themselves all over the empty conches and hollowed out shells of the armoured fish.
>>7409183
Hey, you posted this before. It's better than last time, and still uncomfortably accurate to a lonely college kid's thoughts. Perhaps a tad overwritten in spots, and the use of technical terms to build anxiety (life giving motherboard sequence) is a tad cliche.
>>7409122
Is it supposed to be really bad?
>>7409196
I've never posted it before. I wrote it in the last two days. But I guess I'm better than that other guy who wrote a similar thing so that's cool. I wasn't trying to build tension with the motherboard sequence, but I can see how it's a little cliche feeling. Thanks for the feedback!
>>7409190
There are some mistakes in grammar and tense ... edited:
The rumble of current generators underground attested to the unchanging, smooth motion of the water from one distant end of the biodome to the other; [the water was] constantly mobile, so that it [what?] accumulated barely no [replace no: any] algae and the rocks were smooth and white. The coral and unmoving starfish, all pristinely visible beneath the surface, looked like models on display in a diorama of ocean life. The long fans of tight knotted coral types packed themselves all over the empty conches and hollowed out shells of the armored fish.
I don't like how the subject of the first sentence 'water' comes so late in the sentence. The second sentence is fine, perhaps even good. Notice I think corals doesn't sound right so I changed it to coral. The last sentence has problems ... it isn't really clear to me what you mean, maybe simplify it or rewrite entirely, e.g. like:
The tightly knotted coral types were packed on the empty conches and inside of the hollow shells of the armored fish.
>>7408834
I mean, there are tons of ways you could say it directly. E.g., 'She was a lot older than the girls that I'd dated, but still looked fantastic.'
With the 'aged like a fine wine' example, maybe what you're saying is you'd like to explore the use of simile, metaphor, or more poetic language for the MILF. Try using your imagination. Really anything could work, depending on what mood you're going for. E.g.,
'She was too old to be a princess, but she could still be a Queen. Preferably my Queen, roosting down on my cock.' [Flippant/juvenile/aggressive]
'I had heard of a beach somewhere that was covered in glass. Over time, the waves had rounded out all the shards until they had become as smooth as pebbles. That was what Jane was like; rounded and smoothed by her age, but in a way that only increased my attraction.' [Serious/thoughtful/considered]
>>7409215
thanks this is really helpful
>>7405955
This story is not my own, but due to my inability to account for several years in attendance of either of my dearest friends, Emma and Isaac, the heroes and villains alike of this tale, I must share their lives through my eyes. I have never seen a love quite like theirs, and to my greatest envy will never feel it myself. It is tempting to call their love divine, infinite, relentless. To call them soulmates would undermine their complement. Despite their best efforts they have for well over forty years struggled to maintain themselves together—I have seen more than once them declare their mutual hatred towards each other—yet are inextricably bound to one another on the deepest of levels. What began as obsession manifested over many years into interpersonal addiction. Their attempts to live their lives separately, or to persist an extended platonic friendship, have been thwarted by all but God himself, though personally I'm convinced the big man is just a diehard fan. My persisting active role in both of their lives makes me the ideal arbiter of their journey, I am just as much responsible for their eternal ecstasy and failure. It was only quite recently that I was made aware of the full scope of their shared madness, and over several months I have gathered all available information on their entwined existences. Among these passages of love and hatred are happenings of my own life that in their own way extended and interrupted their journey. I claim no great conspiracy nor divinity in their lives despite the circumstances surrounding their dependence being existentially suspect; I merely wish to share what I believe has been a war against entropy itself. In all the ways that they are ideal for one another, each shares an equally crippling counterpart. I can only surmise that their extreme awareness of themselves and one another has kept them afloat. Today is their first wedding anniversary in what seems like a lifelong marriage in practice. It is in my humble opinion no coincidence that the two met first, quite remarkably in their earliest infancy. Seated together on a flight bound for the eastern American coast, the two, according to their mothers, who themselves developed a close but inconsistent friendship, maintained an intense fascination of one another. "They were always adorable together" his mother told me one day that I was over, during their first and arguably most intense courtship in high school, and shown a picture of them, years one and two (he being the elder) holding hands. My earliest reservations towards their copulation were for the most part incredibly selfish: I had in the previous year fallen hopelessly in love with her and failed to win her favor. I have bared witness to her emotional disturbances, and in my own romantic experience with her come to understand the underlying and thematic loneliness that has borne narrative to her soul. She is an intense commitment, at times an untunable instrument.
here goes:
Harvey Corvee was drifting off now, with a somnambulist’s look on his face, into the dim labyrinth of a fantasy he'd been building on a year-and-a-half or so. In this fantasy, he was the Antichrist. He was the literal, physical, metaphysical, and spiritual man of sin, the Beast of revelation, the great Red Dragon. There was nothing up his sleeve but body odor and lint. He wasn’t an initiate of Illuminati-Masonic secrets nor a high-ranking, politically connected Yale Skull-and-Bones alumnus. He wasn’t a celebrity or a banker or a CIA spook or a jaded, multilingual diplomat with an NYC parking pass to hang in the rearview mirror of his bulletproof Benz. He certainly wasn't a pope or president, nor was he a distant scion of the Caesars raised in seclusion by some dark coven, carefully schooled in the Dark Arts from birth. Instead, (and this was a great and terrible instead) he was going to be the man that would rise from obscure and backwater origins to lead such men in driving the human race down, like drops of heavy water, into the sulfurous pits of the Earth. Lazarus was going to watch in horror as the rich man’s tongue would at long-last be cooled. He was the hard, knotty Little Horn poking its way up from the filth like a horrible new lifeform born from decay.
>>7409353
Way too much set up.
Like, why am I supposed to care about these two people?
The voice is obnoxious and we don't get any sense of scene, place, or, imagery until long after you've outstayed your welcome.
>>7409353
Most of this reads like something that would be published in 1911 or so. Is that what you were going for? If so, the part where you say "I'm convinced the big man is just a diehard fan" stands out for its lack of formality amidst all the...perfume of it all.
It's too busy and dosen't have much of a 'hook' to it
>>7409377
Busy?
>>7409370
What do you feel is obnoxious?
>>7409392
It's excessively wordy. It reads like a novel written in an era where novels didn't have to compete with TV and video games and internet porn for people's attention.
>>7409377
To answer you, I wasn't going for anything. I wrote this in my 15 minute break at work.
>>7409370
I guess if you can relate to love's mystery?
>>7409403
I don't think this would be a novel. Maybe a novella? I guess now that I think about it I affected an old journalist's speech. I wasn't consciously pushing anything. I just started writing and that's what I wrote. Haven't touched it since.
>>7409404
Well what do you want to hear? It sounds like a voyeuristic weirdo creepily prattling on about the relationship of his friends in the purplest of prose. You have a great career ahead of you if your audience doesn't die of tuberculosis.
>>7409420
Are you the smartest person you know? Beautiful insight.
Soft December snow fell on the sparsely-populated sidewalk near the corner of Bathurst and Herrick. Against this sidewalk, a red-bricked building stood. The weeds along the side wall parted for a low basement window, looking for all the world like the glass had been painted black. Inside that basement, dirt clung to the walls and darkness clung to the air. Light from the window withered and died long before it touched the concrete floor. In the middle of the black room was a black machine. It churned heavily, gears spinning, a deep hum emitting from its core.
>>7409449
Good start. would read further
April daydreamed of warmer weather, casting a long shadow onto the concrete where she shivered. A leaf was stuck in the sidewalk, which she had been staring at for no particular reason. It fluttered in the notch, and April thought it looked like a waving hand. The white noise around her faded into shouting voices and distant birds as the wheezing roar drew near.
Every time the bus doors opened they made a harsh shrieking sound, as if it were a warning. The other students didn’t seem to notice this harbinger, but April did. Every single day she dreaded the moment, it was the loudest noise in the world.
>>7408885
>She had a disarming gaze set in a developed warmth
This is a good sentiment and i like "set in" but the flow of the sentence doesnt work it should be split in two but i dont know how
>>7408866
this is good up until "Opium by Yves"
which is desperately "pomo"..?
>my face, my mountain goat
nice
>yes yes yes yes yes
no
>>7407393
I fucking knew that it was from an old novel, nobody living in 2015 would write like that.
published 1921 fagget
>>7407457
>adjusting his position several time.
>several time.
>ERROR THIS OBVIOUS IN A SUB 1,000 WORD STORY
>HE DIDN'T READ IT OUT LOUD FIRST
go home, n00b
"Listen: that whole day something was off. Even the night prior, tell ya the truth. We had been travelling along a more or less set path. But seeing as the vandals hadn't struck the plant for a while we figured it might be worth following some of the old forest tracks out into the more heavily bush areas. Well, the night just prior we were all gathered on the fire chewing snuff and telling stories, when this queer sensation settled over the evening like a blanket. There's no way to describe it, I can't be bothered trying. But just know that a feeling or a mood seemed to fall over the place in a way which wasn't personal or psychological but immediately felt by everyone present as a tangible, almost physical field of changed sensation."
"Were there any strange sounds or smells accompanying this sensation?"
He looked at me as if not understanding the question for just a second then blinked and said:
"Yes there was a faint electrical crackle. Like when you pass a faulty telephone line. But it wasn't until the next day we smelt the smell. Christ. How it reeked. You could smell it, all over everything, a thick musk which settled on every plant, every patch of soil like an overpowering perfume. We thought something big must have died close to the camp - funny to think how at first we were worried about contending with scavengers, wolves and coyotes, that's the only reason we got our guns at the ready in the first place, but nah nothing. So we continued along this old dried out path through the bracken what we'd been following and that was how we reached the cliff. The cliff was the vantage point from where we got em."
"Got 'em?," I swallowed.
>>7409541
"Yeah. I forget how many there were now. Four I think, maybe five. Three big ones and one or two little ones. Little ones as big as a bear cub. a full set of shoulders above a bear. At first that's what we figured they were. They hunched over, scraping rocks or something, it occurring to me only later that they were cracking open the plentiful mollusks and urchins which grow in the warm shallows that time of year.”
“Right.”
"Well bunched up as they were at the base of the treeline they almost looked like, like huts or lumps of coal piles you know. Just big blackish blotches on the landscape, on the shore."
He sniffed hard and spoke up a bit louder now.
"And anyway it wasn't until I see one of the, one of the little ones you see it jumped off the front of its, ah, mother or father or whoever and it scuttled over the rocks a short distance and went and clung on to one of the other ones. The big one it had jumped off, sitting just under some big pines well it stood up and i could see how huge it really was, standing about as tall as the lower branches on the conifers. And those trunks go a heck if a ways up."
"What was your feeling on seeing these things?"
"On seeing them? Well. I was filled immediately with a coldness, a real chill of the bones. Like my stomach was weighed down and frozen, sort of like hunger pains in a way. And that sulphur smell, the electrical buzz in the air. These things all increased as I looked at the animals and increase even more as I identified it as what it was."
"And what was it? WhAT DID YOU SEE?"
He looked at me sternly. The bad weather was finally settling in. I waited for the first drops of rain.
"I saw a family of Sasquatch."
"Was the specimen filmed by Patterson and Gimlin sighted amongst this family."
"Yes."
>>7409543
"Close analysis of that footage reveals the subject of the tape to be a female, possessing obvious breasts. Did you observe this at the time?"
"I did not distinguish between them apart from the baby ones because they were so much smaller. They scuttled on all fours as well."
"How many babies?"
"Two, maybe three? Two, I think."
"sO YOU ALL SPOTTED THEM? Did you all know what you were seeing?"
"Well at the time I suppose I thought we did. But it wasn't til later that Bob said he only thought we were looking at the indians who we'd been tracking for so many weeks. aT THE TIME HE ONLY SAID "THERE THEY ARE" or something along those lines. I suppose he didn't positively say "There are bigfoots" but you know I think maybe he is just trying to make up excuses for why we did what we did."
"What about the others?"
"I believe they understood what they were yes. Remember we'd had Patterson And Gimlin telling us campfire stories every night. No, only Bob said he didn't know what they were."
"So after you saw them, what happened?"
"Well we were high up. There was a long stretch of flat stony ground around the riverbed, were it had dried up over the month. The trees and such all real barkey, and the Sasquatch were just pulling it off the trees in lengths and chewing it. And when they were around the pools they stood out clear as day against the white washed stones on the river shore. So it was well I forget who it was but someone ah opened fire."
>>7408331
I don't think that kids talk like that one. Also, your choice to forego dialogue punctuation is less McCarthy and more /r/WritingPrompts
>>7408885
nice.. secret freudian angle too
>>7408846
comfy/10
a text this length should really sound better when read though, imo
>>7408935
are you a tard? child is made paranoid by whispered threat by other girl, captivated by imagining them all dying
>>7409318
You're cool and I really wanna read more. My only criticism is that the last sentence is a fragment.
>>7409237
>'She was a lot older than the girls that I'd dated, but still looked fantastic.'
S
H
O
W
DO
NT
T
EL L
>>7409367
This reads like Pynchon, but I really dislike Pynchon so maybe my appraisal isn't very accurate.
>>7409449
you should really put the subject first:
"A red-bricked building stood against this sidewalk." sounds so much better
>>7409521
>casting a long shadow onto the concrete where she shivered.
She shivered on the concrete?
>no particular reason.
Cliche & cloying
>The white noise around her faded
is this writing or a TV show? (I don't even know if this is a legit criticism)
>harbinger
no need
Reminder that I hate reading and that 99% of the western canon doesn't affect me (impossibly high bar, if you can take worse criticism than even mind you'll make it by god)
>>7409581
it's okay. that little bit was my first try at writing anything ever, and i agree with you on the harbinger thing. i hamfisted it in there last minute "for no particular reason". i don't really get your "is this writing or a tv show" thing, that line was meant to express that she was distracted and was hardly aware the voices of the kids around her. thanks though
>>7407430
Pathetic 20s arrogance
Fart upon my sultry little mouth i love the sensuous drip of decay upon my gaping maw it is not perfection i desire but merely a decay forced into myself show me the magpie and let me become what it means to journey into the place that is where is no forpem ragtime for me it is not what becomes but what is the volcano its beautiful little caverns dancing for me in the twilight of a dawn a magic marker is the right eway to see through to the devil if you wish to unlock the spirit withen the desire of the chaber to where you need to go i think its time for another barbeque what is that oh no i think its a velocoraptor coming from a nother town oh fuck oh shit tis simultaneously raping and eating my wife with its jagged vicious teeth and some kind of strange vaguely alien looking cock clearly causing a massive amount of pain to her shown by the flow of a viscous mix of blood and vaginal fluid STOP VELOCIRAPTOR ITS NOT THAT TIME YET. and the tenacious raping dinosaur was sucked into dimension 12 for another good time jolly miracle, courtesy of the squid rebellion of 19786.
With short, heavy footfals the priest approached the female, his piercing stare never wavering from her quivering young countenance. Halting before the terrified girl he projected his arm outward and motioned her to arise with an upward movement of his hand. the girl's whimpering increased slightly and she sunk closer to the floor rather than arising. The flickering torches outlined her trim build with a weird ornate glow as it cast a ghostly shadow dancing in horrid waves of splendor over smoothly worn whiteness of the marble hewn altar.
The shaman's lips curled back farther, exposing a set of blackened, decaying molars which transformed his slovenly grin into a wide greasy arc of sadistic mirth and alternately interposed into the female a strong sensation of stomach curdling nausea. "Have it as you will female;" gloated the enhanced priest as he bent over at the waist, projecting his ape-like arms forward, and clasped the female's slender arms with his hairy round fists. With an inward surge of of his biceps he harshly jerked the trembling girl to her feet and smothered her salty wet cheeks with the moldy touch of his decrepid, dull red lips.
The vile stench of the Shaman's hot fetid breath over came the nauseated female with a deep soul searing sickness, causing her to wrench her head backwards and regurgitate a slimy, orangewhite stream of swelling gore over the richly woven purple robe of the enthused acolyte.
The priest's lips trembled with a malicious rage as he removed his callous paws from the girl's arms and replaced them with tightly around her undulating neck, shaking her violently to and fro.
The girl gasped a tortured groan from her clamped lungs, her sea blue eyes bulging forth from damp sockets. Cocking her right foot backwards, she leashed it desperately outwards with the strength of a demon possessed, lodging her sandled foot squarely between the shaman's testicles.
The startled priest released his crushing grip, crimping his body over at the waist overlooking his recessed belly; wide open in a deep chasim. His face flushed to a rose red shade of crimson, eyelids fluttering wide with eyeballs protruding blindly outwards from their sockets to their outmost perimeters, while his lips quivered wildly about allowing an agonized wallow to gust forth as his breath billowed from burning lungs. His hands reached out clutching his urinary gland as his knees wobbled rapidly about for a few seconds then buckled, causing the ruptured shaman to collapse in an egg huddled mass to the granite pavement, rolling helplessly about in his agony.
>>7409609
and you know the squids, the more under rated of cephalopods people always thinking "oh hey look at that fucking octopus what a goddamn motherfucking genius of a creature its like Bret Easton Elis compared to that fucktarded squid". But the squid has always been there, was always watching the vents unfold. As Global Warming began to fully set in, one of the more violent and adventurous squids, the Humboldt, began venturing up the coastline.. The Pacific coastline, motherfucker, you should of figured if you'd had any prior squid knowledge. Anyhow, the squids continued devouring the beautiful tan californian cunts and no one paid any attention due to their fetishisation of the octopi, the perceived beauty of the cephalopod. IN the ocean are many things and they all will squeal into the microphone and tell you where you need to bury your treasure, time for the piece of pie you'v been saving bud, go ahead dig in. its pretty good, I know you'll love it and it s a pity if you dont eat it now because in a few seconds it'll already become some disgusting slab of mold, completely inedible and likely deadly to any human being. Ithink i hear a harp going by in the sky, and i wonder if the justice will ever come but then i sit back and relax with a pizza pie and dat jibba of some reeeaaal good chronic and i just let the waves go on by my nigga keep it loco baby boy and let the passages flow on forth through and through into the time and warp forever
>>7409617
>footfals
bad
>shaman's
put thesaurus down
>enhanced
what? is he a sorting algorhythm?
>the female
just fuck off
>>7409631
>under rated
one word
>>7409617
Despite the fact you interrupted my writing i quite enjoyed your writing. The presentation of some kind of mad, beastly shaman certainly hit close to home and your deployment of adjectives delightfully tickled my little balls. I do agree with the cunt above me that the word enhanced stood out as odd and unnecessary but keep on trucking and try capture the moons soul with your next triumph
>>7407795
1. beginning is cliched, but the transition to the action isn't so bad
2. try to cut your descriptions down; don't overpaint where a few brush strokes would do.
3. spelling mistakes
4. “Old man, do you have a name?” - this sounds off. i've never heard anyone address an old man as "old man" except in fiction.
5. "As they approached the desk, the chill air began to warm, murmurs from the side galleries emerged from the silence." - the transition into this small sequence is much too fast. the reader gets confused.
overall I enjoyed reading it. keep at it.
>>7409353
1. is this intentionally stilted and abstract?
2. "Despite their best efforts they have for well over forty years struggled to maintain themselves together" - this expression is confusing
3. "Their attempts to live their lives separately, or to persist an extended platonic friendship, have been thwarted by all but God himself, though personally I'm convinced the big man is just a diehard fan" - serious tone clash
bathos aside, it sounds like it was written by a dean of a small protestant college in the 1890s but about two average people in the late 20th century
>>7409420
>You have a great career ahead of you if your audience doesn't die of tuberculosis.
hearty kek
>>7409557
>source
Source for what? My advice? Well, to get technical for a moment, reading--not speed-reading but close, analytical reading--causes the author's style--their sentence structure, diction, figurative language, pacing--to enter your working memory, where it can be manipulated, used to synthesize your own style.
>>7407410
you have it I think as well as three others now
>>7409353
Just wanted to say, I've been reading a ton of modernist literature lately and I really like this style you've written in. Fuck the haters desu. I'd read it.
I am not my grandmother or my mother
although they are flowing into me.
Into me I am not them
And I will not take this beating
Beating down like the rain
Beating down like the rain
Without a sound
He stepped out of the car into solid ground and open air. The eternal sun above proudly blazed as he dragged a hit of oxygen and light-headedly almost felt to float up into the heavenly expanse as the confines were left behind him and he was suddenly aware that it's a big, big, world around him, what a world to be lost in! He slipped and fell from his ego's balcony, down and down and down to where he stood in the centre of that moment.
http://pastebin.com/fZ69Phpw
I'm kind of embarrassed to have this written in a notebook in my room.
>>7407457
>>7407464
I like the atmosphere you're trying to evoke as long as it does go somewhere more interesting like, the most obvious comparison I can think of, Kafka does. I'd cut down on the heavy use of adjectives which would be superfluous anywhere but especially here where you're trying to create a feeling of monotony and drabness.
>>7407625
Is this new sincerity?
>>7407795
Like other's have said, the opening reads a little trite. Otherwise good and a museum is a good setting for this kind of fantastical or surreal writing, whatever you're going for, although I can't help but think ofNight At The Museum
>>7409005
I'm assuming you sat down to write something and decided to write about whatever popped into your head. Does this help the ideas flow? I've considered doing this when I can't think of what to write.
>>7409021
Made me feel a little warm
>>7409183
Made me very anxious, so well done. Obviously quite repetitive and difficult to get through, but I'm assuming that's what you were going for. Obviously this is only suited to a short story. It's difficult to weave modern technology/social media/etc. into a narrative, but this is probably the way to do it.
>He acknowledged that it was funny mentally but he didn’t smile.
iktf
>>7409617
Nice premise. Too sensationalist and moralizing. Revise the same scenario but in the mindset of the priest. Also, write "girl" instead of "female".
>>7409824
Stunning, brave, and beautiful
>>7409533
kek
Here is some self indulgent shit I wrote because I got dumped recently and I feel like writing.
Now I spend most of my time in bed. The window directly above the head of the bed is ensconced in the walls of an old Queenslander and can be hitched up at two separate levels. It lets in a soft breeze most nights and after 11pm the smell of jasmine feeds through, prompting feelings of nostalgia for every time prior to now that held elation.
I sit with an open laptop, balancing the rear of the machine off the side of the bed with the weight of my typing, to ensure it doesn't overheat. I look at the pile of books flanking both sides of the bed and think about how tomorrow will be the day I start to read, get off the computer and do some constructive learning. A full fledged embarkment in auto-didacticism. Maybe read some poetry and have a profound experience of art In my mind, I've read these books from intro to conclusion at least once. The copy of Lenin's State and Revolution sits right next to me on the bedside table, on top of a copy of Thomas Piketty, which was only there because I was expecting company. Someone once said only 5% of people who own Capital in the 21st Century actually read it. I feel like that's an indictment on the culture of reading.
bomp
>>7409982
Not as bad as I expected.
>>7405955
man, Tokyo is so fucking cool
>>7409816
Haha, thanks. I showed it to an instructor that likes my writing and a few friends and they all enjoyed it, definitely different from what/how I usually write. I wanted to post it here because I love seeing reactions from this board.
>>7409982
Could be a lot worse. It's honest and not purple, which is more than can be said for a lot of amateur writing.
>>7405955
http://pastebin.com/SBn8NWVh
>>7408889
The only thing I'd take issue there is the comments regarding grammar - it's a deliberate stylistic choice, and if it were done well I think it would work nicely (obviously I haven't done it too well, but I don't think that means the grammar is wrong). Otherwise your comments were very helpful, thanks.
>>7409546
I've worked with children quite a bit in the past and have a few younger siblings, so the dialogue was based on my experiences there. I don't think it's too unrealistic, but maybe I'll look it over again. Fair point about the punctuation.
>>7410470
I would say there are two expectations set. Either you are heading down the kind of road paved by Yuri Olesha, and we are going to get an Envy-flavored dissection of masculinity via foils to our sickly protag, in which case, you had better have already read Envy, because this is not new territory, and though it is also not exhausted by any means, being able to read the messages left by prior pioneers lends valuable assistance in avoiding their pitfalls, and appreciating and building upon their examples, rather than simply repeating them less well.
The other case is that you have some truly pyrotechnic Rabelaisian body narrative full of comedy, transgression, disgust, tragedy, and poignancy whose virtuoso embigification of the carnivalesque and grotesque thematics of the lower body's intimate involvement with both filth and renewal of life will demonstrate more than ample cause to enfranchise this poor itchy fellow with the mantle of Literary Character.
If you are just another anality-fixated German, then off to the pool hall with you.
Always do one proofread through exclusively for the purpose of identifying, and prosecuting under the death penalty, each and every adverb. "-ly" should be in the auto-search of every writer's Edit>Find search box.
Please let me know how this seems so far.
Two young catholic priests, fresh out of the seminary, Jesus in their eyes and Jiggy-Madness in their feet (these two were so into dancing, you'd think it's the only thing they ever did), these saucy greenhorns hit the church circuit like a bat out of hell-- literally. One of them was named Father Bendle. Father Bendle says one day on the way to a run-of-the-mill, your-average-day church meeting, (the other priest's name is Alan btw) “what, Alan, do you think of this plan I'm having: (picture this) we don't go to the meeting.” “Go on...” “ I was thinking, what if we ditched the meeting!”
And so, these two clergical goonbags began the great era in history known as the “big priest slump.” All the priests realized that nothing in the bible says you can't play hooky on important big priest meetings. The pope was furious. He says to the priests :”Listen, you insufferable lazyboys have brought me unto a point of big frustration. I cannot have this. I was scheduling all those meetings for a reason duh,”
All the priests sort of realize that priests gotta do what priests gotta do. They all go to the Sports Authority off of route 85 and get big league chew because the pope loves it. These miserable chumps come back to the pope's house crying on their hands and knees saying “we're sorry pope we'll go back to going to meetings. (P.S. Here is the extra gift, the bribe(A lovely fresh pack of your oh-so-beloved-big-league-chew.)) Is it a deal, “Popers?”” (“Popers” is all the priests' pet name for the big cheese of the catholic church. )
“I'll tell you what, all the priests: you're forgiven (reason: jesus? Duh?)”
“Goodbye Popino.” said the priests. Bendle and Alan went home to where they were last in America-- for your information, it was Kansas City1. They were driving down the freeway into the city1 when Alan, ever the prankster, opens the car door and slams it shut on his arm multiple times as hard as he can until one half of his arm is essentially dangling off of his body. Bendle's eyes go wide and he looked at Alan with a face that was the definition of what-in-the?. “Uh don't you think that was uncalled for” “Yes but son you should have seen the priceless look on your face.”
It took Alan an entire month to recover from his arm disaster, but it took Bendle the rest of his life to recover from even a fraction of how hard he got owned that fateful day.
First two paragraphs of a story I started yesterday. Thoughts on style?
One cold, snowy day in a Midwestern American town, a smallish boy with an awkward frame and a disorganized look struggled to put his winter jacket on. It's almost five below zero, his mother had nagged, turning him around and forcing him to go add a final layer—he knew perfectly well how cold it was, but the nightmare of being labeled the “#1 pussy-dick puffyboy of the year” by a group of his peers, having only happened the day before, was still on his mind.
The sleeves were proving difficult to negotiate. He had his left arm inserted partway into one sleeve and was attempting to finish the job, but for a few flailing seconds, the other sleeve felt impossibly out of reach. Finally he got the thing on. Next step: mi, the bulky Gore-Tex ones he had gotten for Christmas (for when we go skiing his father had delusionally foretold). The left was no problem: simply stuck hand in hole and pushed and pulled. The right proved an immediate challenge, as the precision and dexterity of the gloveless right hand he had used in the previous step could not be matched by the pawing inefficacy of his left. He decided to just ask mom for help. Typical, said a voice in his head.
Latest entry from "Practice what you Peach".
About a peach farmer who hates peaches.
In this chapter, Frank the old peach farmer and his fat wife Mira have a guest over for dinner: a local reporter doing a piece on Frank's prize-winning peaches.
Will Frank be able to keep it together and hide his terrible secret from the media?
Will Mira finally get him to eat his peaches?
Let's watch...
>>7410719
Haha, thanks for reading! I am astounded by the occasional levels of extreme perspicuity that I seem to see on /lit/. I should crawl out of the /b/ hole more. Your comment brought me great delight.
Honestly, your third interpretation is most accurate (big surprise). To be clear that I understand you, with your last remark, you mean to suggest that adverbs should only be used with great care? Thanks, I hadn't noticed I used them so much.
I figured using a literary cliche would be beneficial. I don't want to add much detail or background but here's the beginning of a project
The Phoenix nebula, the product of the industrious Collective Consciousness, illuminated the vast darkness. The name, Phoenix, was a visual portrayal of oddly shaped figure. A cluster of stars and gases rising from the emptiness from which they came. A reminder of the defiance of life and its fiery nature within. The beauty was apparent to any beholder. Like the phoenix's very nature, this nebula defied the surrounding nothingness. The magnificence of its spectacle was uncontainable but its very being was controlled & intricately woven.
Something had a hold on the nebula. Such a place shouldn't exist, let alone encapsulate the definite shape that was its figure. To the observer, stars and great masses of matter were always being spit out. However, they were still contained, adding to its size. This area was home to the height of the Consciousness's activity. It was one where no physical human resided, one where no living organism has ever had its presence welcomed and uplifted. This gleaming sea was only affected by the brilliance of the human mind. It was soon to be the home of all life.
The scale of this daring project was apparent to a distant observer; and here he stood, with many questions - on the brink of it all. They were the type of questions which answers would not satisfy. The questions were not postulations. They were questions that would only be settled by daring actions. Daring actions, that to some, would break the sacred bond, but to this observer, there was no bond.
>>7410750
Style - it sounds like American English that is recognizable as being from this century. 2nd para nearly achieves comedy, which would pay off its fixation, but is slightly too restrained from the truly slapstick floppiness of what is going on there, and falls short of a kek.
"pussy-dick puffyboy" does not offend, but "puffyboy" is not at all clear in context. If it refers to the style of stuffed parka that resembles the Michelin tire man, throw me a bone and make that clear somehow.
"Next step: mi" suspect typo or copy-paste amputation for "mittens". If so, "simply stuck hand in hole" begins an awkward construction, in which I see no reason to omit a perfectly good subject.
Developing a style is the source of perhaps the greatest injustice writers face. Because for some it is already there; a bird's wings. For most, it is a grinding tedious effort of development, every bit as painful as bodybuilding or marathon running.
I want him to be funnier, without mocking him. He is the kind of kid who is as self-aware as that, he knows how to say it. Like Steve Martin in Cyrano - the afflicted always have thought of better insults than their attackers.
>>7410784
Yes, great care. It only takes one misplaced adverb to bring the whole edifice of disbelief crashing down.
>>7410750
From Roxanne. Martin must insult himself 20 times with something more original than a drunk in the bar to win a bet. When the drunk loses and tries to assault him Martin then punches him unconscious, in self-defense.
All right, twenty something betters.
I start with the obvious:
Excuse me, is that your nose
or did a bus park on your face?
Meteorological:
Everybody take cover, she will blow!
Fashionable: You could de-emphasise
your nose if you wore something larger...
...like Wyoming.
Personal: Well, here we are...
Just the three of us.
Punctual: Okay, your nose was on time,
but you were 5 minutes late.
Envious: Oh, I wish I were you...
...to be able to smell your own ear!
Naughty: Some of the ladies have asked
if you would put that thing away.
Philosophical: It is not the size
of a nose that is important...
...it is what is in it that matters.
Humorous:
Laugh and the world laughs with you...
..sneeze and it is goodbye, Seattle.
Commercial: Hi, I am Earl Scheib
and I can paint that nose for $ 99.99 !
Polite:
Would you mind not bobbing your head?
The orchestra keeps changing the tempo.
Melodic: Everybody.
He has got the whole world in his nose.
Sympathetic: What happened?
Did your parents lose a bet with God?
Complimentary:
You must love the birdies...
...to give them this to perch on.
Scientific: Say, does that thing there influence the tides?
Obscure: Whoa, I would hate to see the grindstone. Well, think about it.
Inquiry: When you stop and smell the flowers...
...are they afraid?
French: The pigs have refused
to find any more truffles...
...until you leave.
Pornographic: Finally a man
who can satisfy two women at once.
>>7410780
stunning
>>7410780
God I love the peaches series. I am sucked in hard. Cliffhangers every time. I love Frank's recalcitrant, weird and slightly crazy character.
>>7410814
>The Phoenix nebula, the product of the industrious Collective Consciousness, illuminated the vast darkness.
First sentence is good, kind of piqued my interest.
>The name, Phoenix, was a visual portrayal of oddly shaped figure.
Kind of odd to say "visual portrayal", don't you mean like "word that signified"? Also, should have the indefinite article "AN oddly shaped figure".
>A cluster of stars and gases rising from the emptiness from which they came.
Should terminate the prior sentence in a colon or semicolon if this comes afterward. Also, sentence is awkward to me. Who is they here? The gasses, the Collective Consciousness, etc.?
>A reminder of the defiance of life and its fiery nature within.
Why are the stars a reminder of the defiance of life? Doesn't make sense to me.
>The beauty was apparent to any beholder.
Sounds awkward to me. Try rewriting.
>Like the phoenix's very nature, this nebula defied the surrounding nothingness.
Don't need the word very.
>The magnificence of its spectacle was uncontainable but its very being was controlled & intricately woven.
The repetition of 'being' seems redundant, e.g. could rewrite this much more smoothly as "The magnificence of its spectacle was uncountable, yet at the same time controlled and intricately woven." Generally, don't use & in the midst of text.
Sorry if I seem harsh here, just seems like it needs a lot of work to me, same with other paragraphs.
>>7409982
Agree with the others, not bad. Sounds perhaps excessively detailed. The part about the laptop overheating makes it sound like the narrator is somewhat OCD. The discussion of the narrator's books and decision to embark on "auto-didactism" does sound self-indulgent, mawkish. How does having read the books from intro to conclusion at least once fit in with the rest of that sentence? Seems to contradict the idea of the novelty of the embarkation into auto-didactism with the presence of the self-same books.
Something I'm working on for school.. It's supposed to be a historical fiction about Anne Frank and her fathers plunge into insanity ultimately resulting in them getting found out. Heres a couple pf paragraphs: http://pastebin.com/47Hp9FsY
>>7409830
>He stepped out of the car into solid ground and open air.
into -> onto
>The eternal sun above proudly blazed as he dragged a hit of oxygen and light-headedly almost felt to float up into the heavenly expanse as the confines were left behind him and he was suddenly aware that it's a big, big, world around him, what a world to be lost in! He slipped and fell from his ego's balcony, down and down and down to where he stood in the centre of that moment.
Felt to float is uneven. Maybe "felt he floated"? The whole second sentence is borderline run-on to me, but I suppose it's a matter of stylistic choice.
I like the third sentence but I'm not sure how well it connects with the previous two, which do not establish an overly lofty ego or a presence particularly out of the moment.
>>7410780
>Frank put his elbows on the table and rubbed his flat hands
Oh he's fucking pissed alright
>>7409353
I like the energy inside of it, there's a lot of observations and contemplations from different angles. That being said, I think it borderline doesn't work because all the different thrusts & comments don't seem connected, and yet that seems to be the implication.
- author's unrequited desire for love -- competes with
- divinity of their love
- hatred for each other
- need for each other
- narrator's role in their lives
- loneliness of the woman
I suppose it is a matter of stylistic choice, but I think I would prefer to have those topics each a little more focused rather than mixed together in one huge, crazy stew.
"several years in attendance" is awkward/confusing. Also, there seems to be a sprinkling of grammatical errors, awkward sentences, or other minor errors here and there throughout.
Right. So I've been editing, touching this one up for awhile so that I can submit it to some local writing thingies. I think it's half decent. I'd love for any of your feedback on it before I do:
http://pastebin.com/71JpVuxR
>>7410814
>The magnificence of its spectacle was uncontainable but its very being was controlled & intricately woven.
Everything preceding this was gold. This sentence is awkward and makes little sense.
> Daring actions, that to some, would break the sacred bond, but to this observer, there was no bond.
As was the case before, the preceding sentences are great. You seem to leave things unfinished at the end and just hang off there with all your conclusive sentences. They're not bad by any stretch- Your vocabulary and use of is simply phenomenal, it reads like smooth butter. It's smooth but intellectually stimulating enough to make me want a little more each time. It's just the ends seem left alone.
Any idea where it's heading?
>>7409367
This is good, well written, flows nicely. Perhaps with "There was nothing up his sleeve ..." would insert a "In reality, there was nothing up his sleeve" in the beginning of that sentence, since otherwise it's a little jarring there. I don't get the Lazarus tongue cooling reference but I assume that's legit. The last sentence could use another comma as well as use metaphor more effectively than simile, IMO, "He was the hard, knotty little Horn poking its way up from the filth, a horrible new lifeform born from decay."
>>7411351
My involuntary initial reactions in order were:
Oh dear. It's all narrator.
We are at Conrad-ious ratios of words passing to things happening.
I now realize I have forgotten anything I ever knew about the events behind this story.
It's not the length, it's the opposite of density. And the absence of dialog. And the absence of character interaction with each other.
The narrator is not the most intrusive such ever, but it is the least interesting voice to listen to of the choices available.
There is nothing here to really trigger any autism, or inspire any ire, it's just loose and one-noted.
I'll do one incision:
>but some had begun to pick up on little oddities in his behavior.
OK, chek em. You have teased a reveal that we might actually get to see, or at least have a list, of odd behaviors. Conditioned by the orthodoxy of modern English fiction as I am, I am at this period, expecting this tease to paid off: "The compulsive knuckle cracking was weird, but no one really wanted to know much more about the way he changed the part in his hair from left to right to front to back every four days."
Instead, narrator completely blue balls me and goes off down this diagnostic speculative tributary:
>Some would argue it was simply wartime stress,
...which continues for two more long sentences, and never comes back and gives me any crazy. You promised me crazy, then didn't give me any crazy. Furtive glances? Under the circumstances, it seems like furtive glances aren't all that context-inappropriate.
Little irritations like that are geometrically cumulative. And this encounter in the hallway? Does that require four paragraphs? Because a lot more things than one relatively straightforward confrontation can happen in four paragraphs.
>>7407430
tell me this is a joke, please
>>7407464
I just fucking hate that last sentence, too long, confusing, chop it up ... You have to be hot shit for me to be willing to decipher that kind of ugly mother fucker of a sentence.
>>7411503
Thank you for your thoughts. While rereading it over and over I did spot some of the inconsistencies that you have noted, but didn't care to change anything just yet until I laid the foundation of the story out. Perhaps I did jump right into it too quickly without any smidgen of expository shit, as for the dialog, it's something I hope to nail down come later pages, it's sort of difficult creating personalities for people that actually existed. I suppose I might just have to read her diary to get a sense of the characters? Anyway, the four paragraphs was necessary in my defense in order to really grasp the intensity of the situation, and it will obviously not be a reoccuring thing. Thank you!
>>7411568
The stakes are low. If we live in a world in which a retributionist unknown hip hop guy can make a Broadway sensation out of a rap version of Alexander Hamilton's life story, I'm sure you can transgress the boundaries of the most precious snowflakes of WWII and get a C or better.
>>7411315
Thank you for the feedback. Harsh or not, it helps.
>>7411464
>It's just the ends seem left alone.
I didn't notice this when I wrote it, thanks.
>Any idea where it's heading?
So the story is about the universe "dying" at an accelerated rate. In this "world" the universe is an entity. Its solution to its own death was life. Humanity remains as the last intelligent life form and is aware of the universe dying. To combat this humans have ascended their bodies and live as one mind. However, only humans who have reached inner peace can join the Consciousness.
I don't want to reveal too much because I want there to be quite a bit of mystery that is slowly revealed.
A man came up to me in the street one day
"Hey! The Earth, It is Hollow!" He cried.
"Why, sir, that's insane! The Earth's insides are deep, and have a center of hot-stuff!"
"Why, tis not true, Thou pyon! The Earth is hollow! Why else can we stand on it!"
"Sir! Wherefore thou thou me, thou thou'r? And we can stand on the Earth because it's got heavystuff on the inside that pulls us towards it, thou fool!"
"A fool is I to you, but th'art wrong of that, and of the Center! It IS hollow, seest thou! Were there a Mass of Heavystuff in the center we'd've exploded from the reverse invariability by now!"
"No, th'fool, the reverse invariability, it's countered by the gravitional pull! How canst thou not see!"
At that, I turned and left him.
>>7410470
Better than I thought it would be. It works because of the narrator's position in relation to the characters.
>>7412383No discernible talent.
To a sky of chalky uniform grey went the cry of a man caught stealing meat from his local name brand convenience store.
He had been coy at first, walking to the frozen food section with fevered eyes and billowing trench coat. But later, after making his strange procuration, his aspect changed entirely. Maybe it had been the sibilance of convenience store music that had done it- last year’s hits piped out over defective convenience store speakers, or maybe it had been the stores corporately reassuring color scheme, or the low employee-to-customer ratio, or the seeming lack of wall or ceiling mounted cameras, or maybe just the mild cool from the freezer, emanating out among perfectly stacked rows of microwaveable dough products, it did not matter. A noticeable calm went over him regardless, and, drawing brief eye contact as he did so, the meat thief walked lockstep toward the door, his arm draped protectively across his trench coat. But no plan could ever be perfect. A single, catastrophic error was made: eye contact with the cashier. That brief moment of visual interface, even as it was happening, unnerved the meat thief. Unnerved him into a shudder, a shudder which, with the slight, involuntary movement of an arm, shifted the overcoat and revealed the meat stashed inside it.
The cashiers face went coldly impassive. He spoke the word “sir” even as he, like a lion or bear escaping a cage, left his register and went to his prey at speed-walk. Over the speakers an informational began, extolling the virtues of the convenience store that it was playing in. When the cashier didn’t say anything after “sir”, the meat thief dropped all pretense of purchase.
He came out the door at full sprint and straight into the generous stomach of a cashier who, only seconds into his shift, knew for sure that this was would not be his day. Then, even as the meat thief was rising from the pillow of flesh he had run into, the second cashier was on him.
A halfhearted struggle ensued, ending with the intermission of the newly on-duty cashier, who caught onto the meat thief’s ankle, leading to a headfirst topple that ended with his head rested on the ground and the meat package lying dormant next to him.
A collective breath was released when the man remained immobile. He lay recumbent, refusing for reasons most likely theatrical to shift from the position he’d fallen in. The first cashier said nothing, but exchanged a meaningless glance with the second. Then, with an adenoidal blow of air out his nose, the cashier bent over the thief and reclaimed his object of desire, brushing away dirt that had stuck to the surface. ‘It was still good meat’ was what the cashier thought, ‘a little dirty maybe, but the packaging seems totally unpunct-’ then the meat thief made a sound, loud and bovine. An unexcited scream.
The meat thief had nothing to say when the police showed up. He rose from his sprawled position only at their explicit request, and even then did so slowly, with a mechanical deliberation. He went to the car explanationless, with a facial expression that was unguarded only because it reflected the same confusion felt by the cashiers, who might have asked their shoplifter any number of questions, ranging from ‘why meat?’ to ‘why didn’t you fight harder?’ to ‘why shoplift meat?’ to ‘that was a nice watch you had on, why not pay just pay for the meat?’ to ‘why did you seem so hesitant to carry out an act like this that was thoroughly premeditated?’ and on and on and on. But the cashiers asked none of these questions, and the meat thief went mute into the waiting police vehicle. Through the tinted glass, only his outline was visible, and the first cashier felt a dread in him at the idea that the thief, the meat thief, might go the entire ride to the station with the same befuddled expression across his face.
The cashiers watched the cop proceed down the commuter-light road, but together reentered their place of employment.
After a fleeting inspection of quality, which ended of course with the assurance that the meat remained untainted and hermetic within its plastic seal, the ground beef, fourteen ninety nine, was replaced in that icy tomb, the frozen foods section.
>>7412295
"Bad dialogue?"
"But why asks I." He sighed.
>>7412393
In a world without responsibility for humanity,
we have actions without compassion.
In a world with state servitude,
we take it as gratitude.
In a world without analysis,
we accept the fallacies of fascists.
In a world where real lies become real truths,
there will be an to extent to anything we reject.
In a world without any thought,
corruption cannot be fought.
In a world; this "perfect world"
no justice will ever be sought.
>>7412343
Thanks! Would you be so kind as to elaborate on your comment? In composing it, I had thought the narrator was more or less a clear third person perspective, but told as though it were from Jake's mind.
Other questions I have (in general, for whoever):
Was it difficult to understand at any point?
How funny was it?
I wonder about submitting this kind of stuff to McSweeney's or something, but I haven't practiced as much as I need to.
>>7409617
A little cliche, and very pulpy, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Overall pretty enjoyable little scene. The mess of adjectives is certainly noticeable but winds up being entertaining.
>>7412486
First 6 lines are pretty decent. Line 8 doesn't make sense (typos?) Lines 9 and 10 seem too short, trite compared to the others, just cut them. Semicolon used incorrectly/unnecessarily. Last line sounds petty, whiney, lacks originality. I say this because some justice is definitely sought, or seems to be sought, based on my personal opinion. If the line said 'true justice will never be sought' then I wouldn't dissent in the same way.
Excerpt from a chapter
http://pastebin.com/dQKu6Wcg
Full chapter if you give enough of a hoot to read it.
http://pastebin.com/GZaE7Bw3
>tfw 27, depressed, and writing about apathetic 17 year olds
Such as the letter X oscillates in molecular structure, my room does also; in microcosm inverting the letter and thus vibration of all other rooms inwards. All points having merged against each other from some sort of 'center,' the room extends boundaries into isolations. On the walls an edge seen only by itself in X dimensions, another edge reflects it, constructing each other in succession. But as in all bodies of X dimensions, these are linked transversely; as inverted as the room, their parallel to me degraded-- diffusion efficient in air, here easier in solid.
I've closed myself in. Iev’ colesd msleyf in. I feel a downwards vertigo. I fedl a downward respiration, synthase of sense in a downwards matrix, of which I have little understanding outside its terminology.
From inversion I find myself stamped inside ground with stiff, heavy body. All rooms superfluous in their pretense, I imagine all synapse collapsing in its excess, Earth falling out under the weight of diminution. Sub-ground completing thought with orange matter, inversion pours into everything with the weight of Earth minus sky.
Because color is subject to vision, a specific osmosis begins this—endlessly absorbing, the rooms gaseous in their equilibrium. Because of this, I’m here. This is here because of me. A reflection invisibly myself, of which I’m not sure I should feel shame or something more pathetic.
I imagine these frequencies into something which Earth assimilates transversely, breaking off into space by means of complacency—broken because it is my own. It’s here I see stars spitting in faces of nothing, I see the million blinking eyes of everyone I've loved, I see a loneliness appercept across the faces, boundlessly elongating to fill the emptiness between the stars. I see the dark vacuum holy feeding the loneliness of Judas, I see the wanted face of God in macrocosm of a million spitting variations equalizing their density. Both of us make the mistake of seeing people instead of chains of carbo-plastic skin.
I see all rooms integrate, orange implacable in star-lit black and plastic. I vaporize alongside them in prolixed osmosis, all center displaced. I vaporise in a taxidermist meta-physicality and my insides gradually semi-synthetiec. Sub-Earth thoughting into completion with orange matter, synapse reverts from excess and ground falls out under its weight. From here I see my body stamped inside Earth minus ground, the sky a dense blue matter housing the self after it is mine. From here I diffuse with the self-implosion of infinitude: something of which I'm not sure I should feel shame or something more pathetic.
>>7412609
Tip: abandon postmodernism. It's not the sixties anymore.
Quick question, what is the feminine of "godliness?" Is there anything even applicable?
Something I wrote for a BEGINNING writing class. I know the ending is shitty but it had to have and ending so that was the best I could do
The rain tapered down the mahogany casket and onto the brass frame as it was lowered into the ground. David heard his child coo in his arms, seemingly undisturbed by the silent requiem engulfing the air around the cemetery. The rain cried for both them. David had ran dry of tears within the first days of his wife’s departure, and the babe knew not of the tragedy that had come to pass. The surrounding crowd offered so many assuring words to him, but David knew that they mean nothing. They would tell him sweet and soothing things, but he did not need this symphony of melancholy. He needed her. He needed her calm ways and confident assurance, he needed her voice to cool his temper, he needed anything of hers. He had nothing now.
His car ride was silent, where their used to be passionate debate over the old country music station versus the bass-booming hip-hop one, and whether or not the temperature should be set at 68 or 82, there was silence now. The only noise filling the car was sound of a combustion engine, rubber spinning at 60 miles per hour, and the rhythmic back-and-forth of the windshield wipers. It was deafening. He pulled in his driveway but did not let go of the steering wheel until he heard the child awaken from her blissful sleep. He took her from her carriage and rocked her back and forth. He titled his head down and touched his forehead with hers. He would have to tell her someday, and she would blame herself. But he would not. He to prepare for that. So many things that were impossible to prepare for now that he was alone.
David brought her in to her freshly constructed crib and swaddled her the best he knew how. He tried to recall the instructional videos he had pretended to pay attention to, but was only capable producing an abstract image of the fold. He gently stoked her head and laid his face in his palms, still attempting to wake up from this nightmare. He left the room unsure of what to do and stood stared at the half painted wall. Running has hands through his hair we walked out to the garage and unlocked his tool box to retrieve a flattened pack of three cigarettes and lighter that had a crimson KU inscribed on its front. A small smile parted his lips and he shook his head. She never did find them. David took a bit of pride in that. He walked outside and lit a stale Marlboro in his mouth. Letting the smoke out of his nose he hoped the nicotine would let him feel something, anything. He moved to take his second when heard a weak cry muffled through the curtained glass. He gripped the cigarette in his mouth and flicked it into the puddle beside him as he walked inside to give his hands a rinse. He entered the room with an unopened pack of diapers and suddenly it struck him, he was wrong. His wife hadn’t left him nothing, she had left him her everything.
>>7412486
you should be writing manifestos if you want to write like this
>>7407393
learn how to use a semicolon moron
>>7407430
u can't be serious
>>7407457
>cubical
>>7407625
I actually like this but my god you'd think you'd have moved past "its" and "it's" by now
>>7412486
2edgy4me
>>7412609
literally senseless garbage
>>7412681
>their used to be
>how do you expect to write when you can't even spell
>Besides, if you want to end with a turnaround like that you have to actually set it up. Here it's like an afterthought.
>>7412819
Wait why did you greentext those last two lines.
>>7412609
Baby's first psychedelic noodling
>>7412868
I didn't take drugs when I wrote that. How do I make it more mature?
>>7413010
By writing like a grown adult who is communicating something to the world.
Lathnos het faltern on the high stump
Tious masses rustling their coats in root-eaves below
while Istern hordes trample in a growing spiral
on gods' faces, antipodal.
Sammandrion, sivy settled Satremonger
he may be, lends animate to callowed, mallean Prentics
and holds barred many a mangled law-tracer
but has no heed of his brother
Taphylos, who's none below but the deads' hands
agaze to the primate roil past halted lands.
>>7413026
That... tells me nothing... many people have been able to understand this story. it's not indecipherable.
>>7410341
>you will never be a poet in tokyo
Not really up for typing this out before bed. Maybe tomorrow. Writing is arranged in two columns. Sorry for semi-potato quality.
This is a brief account of me coming down from my first and only trip on some obscure research chemical apparently similar to psilocybin. My friend held my hand for an hour and talked me out of ego loss.
>>7413010
I'm the noodling commenter and it sounds like a trip experience from the perspective of the psychonaut. I think it's generally written "well" but style over substance. It doesn't tell me much about the character beyond an abstract metaphysical awareness that any LSD user (with a basic background in science) could extrapolate. It could easily be looked at as word vomit, just concept after concept but there's enough theme that's it's certainly not random nonsense.
>>7413310
I appreciate the different POV on this. I think I was heading more towards... not really a 'story' but an experience. I wasn't thinking of drugs when I when I wrote it, so that's interesting for you to take from that, but I do see it now.
...The 'orange' is the opposite of blue-- blue is the color of the sky. I meant it to keep in line with the entire inversion which I based the story on... the motif. I chose that since life is the inversion (opposite) of death. It's not a psychedelic experience, but an experience about death and all of the emotions that come with it. It is a bit aimless too but I suppose that was intentional looking back on what I was trying to get at when I wrote this. If my main goal is to convey the death in act and implicitly, then I don't want to focus on the character so much as emotion and experience.
>>7413329
moreover, the orange vs. blue inversion represents the transition towards death
http://pastebin.com/fZ69Phpw
My sleep cycle is sub par
My head is an empty ball
That is what they tell me
Indeed
That is what they tell me
I too often attempt romance
And it's all in vain
That is what they tell me
Indeed
That is what they tell me
However,
I continue my aimless journey
Not able
Not willing
To cease my motion
As if there was a choir
Inside my head
Singing: all ends, at worst
In mediocrity
>>7413307
>talked me out of ego loss.
Why oh why?
>>7413307
Fuck, I can't even care about /lit/'s usual writing concerns right now. This was a beautiful read, it's really really nice. I hope you're doing OK. I wish I could have these notes for myself.
>>7409032
throw a fucking in there and it'll be aight
>>7413307
I liked it.
>>7410814
Why did you punctuate it like this?
>>7413539
Could you point out what's wrong with the punctuation? I'm not very educated.
>>7413076
The point, Jimmy, the point?
I couldn't see much to critique here.
I'm just gonna leave this here... http://pastebin.com/a0v2JKg1
Critiques will be responded to when I wake up...
>>7413405
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfWlot6h_JM
>>7405955
(any feedback appreciated xx)
Like part of me wants to say yes and be all zen about it and ask how your Germanic Law course is going and how your younger brother Timmy, or wait - Tommy! is and all, so internally you'll be like, "Boy, Cabe sure has changed! What a mellow guy. He couldn't exactly remember Tommy's name, he's definitely moved on. I sure fucked up by breaking up with him." Other times I consider going for more of a like angry sorta thing, but not like angry angry more like a sorta poetic, sexy angry. Like I'd tell you about how you never loved me because you can't love anyone because that requires loving someone more than you love yourself and how you're incapable of doing that. And then you'd be all like visibly struck to the core about it and you'd feel like shit and realise what a sensitive, deep guy I was. And then sometimes I like to imagine that I just act like I don't care at all and be really cool and confident about the whole thing, giving you short monosyllabic answers, constantly glancing around in search for someone better to talk to, and all the while I'd have this shit-eating grin on my face. That one is sorta like a compounding between the first thing I said and an inverse of the second thing I said, you know? And I'm aware that none of these are entirely genuine reactions, they're more so that I look cool or make you feel bad and I'm not entirely sure why I'd want to do either of those things. It's mostly an ego thing, I think, with some latently mysoginistic implications. And, yes, I am demonstrating for you another "persona" as we speak, the sorta full-on hyper-analytical understanding of myself, but I'm not exactly sure what I'm trying to make you feel with this one. I think I probably hope that you'll look at me and realise that I have a ton of control over myself, like I really understand myself on a deep level, which I know is something you aren't able to do, and I know you know that that's something I definitely couldn't do so I guess I'm trying to make you accidentally fall in love with me again. Maybe that was all part of the "act", as it were. Maybe that too. Maybe that too. Maybe that too.
You get the idea.
http://pastebin.com/KK2vH0wm
>>7411464
I hate attaching a critique to my writing.
The opening feels cliched, also
>monolithic gods
that doesn't seem right. Something monolithic is singular, but this is just my autism acting up.
You overuse the word "imperial" and "galactic", and I know you only used it like three time but that's too much for such distinct words.
Ultimately the entire idea that the essay is pushing just doesn't sit well with me. It's too edgy and not really all that insightful. I understand the thinking that connects the emptiness in humans to striking out into an equally empty void, but the connection just doesn't feel that powerful.
I'm also at a point where I cannot get behind any line of thinking no matter how sound the logic behind it is and just act on the habits I've accumulated at random over time so I might be biased against any kind of essay.
http://pastebin.com/53hzmkEU
Sorry for the generally shitty format, but it's an old college essay I didn't end up using. Also I went super try hard, I tried writing like Francis Bacon paints, I think it came out alright.
His head was down, a wad wallowing in whatever woes it's owner would invariably whittle. The toes on his hobbit feet zig-zagged, and his beard barely existed: a shade of brittle barley struggling to sprout from a caky stretch of dermal-dirt that knew only the fingerless gloved nails of a global-squatting squire from Brooklyn. On the tip of his tongue stood a standing wave: a simple 'um' evolved into an Om (quietly calling home). The piece of his brain working overtime for the pieces lost to time was now in perpetual peace, a gold mind mined of nearly all sibilant, gut-wrenching nuggets that any natural formation could produce given only 4.2 billion years. He set down the coffee his hand held and picked up his hand-held to dial Dale for his sadly second sack of the day. Why he didn't simply purchase the sufficient amount earlier that day at 2 pm was, like almost every vital or tantalizing thing in his life, beyond him. A staticky rustle came from the other line–"You got Dale."
The weather beaten trail wound ahead into the dust racked climes of the baren land which dominates large portions of the Norgolian empire. Age worn hoof prints smothered by the sifting sands of time shone dully against the dust splattered crust of earth. The tireless sun cast its parching rays of incandescense from overhead, half way through its daily revolution. Small rodents scampered about, occupying themselves in the daily accomplishments of their dismal lives. Dust sprayed over three heaving mounts in blinding clouds, while they bore the burdonsome cargoes of their struggling overseers.
"Prepare to embrace your creators in the stygian haunts of hell, barbarian", gasped the first soldier.
"Only after you have kissed the fleeting stead of death, wretch!" returned Grignr.
A sweeping blade of flashing steel riveted from the massive barbarians hide enameled shield as his rippling right arm thrust forth, sending a steel shod blade to the hilt into the soldiers vital organs. The disemboweled mercenary crumpled from his saddle and sank to the clouded sward, sprinkling the parched dust with crimson droplets of escaping life fluid.
The enthused barbarian swilveled about, his shock of fiery red hair tossing robustly in the humid air currents as he faced the attack of the defeated soldier's fellow in arms.
"Damn you, barbarian" Shrieked the soldier as he observed his comrade in death.
A gleaming scimitar smote a heavy blow against the renegade's spiked helmet, bringing a heavy cloud over the Ecordian's misting brain. Shaking off the effects of the pounding blow to his head, Grignr brought down his scarlet streaked edge against the soldier's crudely forged hauberk, clanging harmlessly to the left side of his opponent. The soldier's stead whinnied as he directed the horse back from the driving blade of the barbarian. Grignr leashed his mount forward as the hoarsely piercing battle cry of his wilderness bred race resounded from his grinding lungs. A twirling blade bounced harmlessly from the mighty thief's buckler as his rolling right arm cleft upward, sending a foot of blinding steel ripping through the Simarian's exposed gullet. A gasping gurgle from the soldier's writhing mouth as he tumbled to the golden sand at his feet, and wormed agonizingly in his death bed.
>>7416077
Don't sacrifice clarity for wordplay unless you've got an established literary career and you just want to jack off.
>>7416165
>unless you've got an established literary career and you just want to jack off.
My semen encrusted pile of published books in the corner of my dingy NYC apartment that I overpay rent for tells me that this is exactly the type of thing I have the write to do.
>>7416096
Classic
>>7416225
got to bed Tao
I just dug something up I wrote freshman year of college. I don't remember why I wrote this, in curious to know what you guys thinkof my writing a year ago
"He was exhausted walking the few minutes it took to get from Hal’s (his place of work) to the restaurant. He was exhausted because of two reasons: This morning at promptly 6 a.m. he had set his alarm to go off. Prior to the violent shaking of his alarm, he was dumb faced and stuck on a spot on his eggshell speckled white ceiling completely immobilized. It was one of these nights again. He sat in the shadow of his own sweat, feeling heat rake across his cheap 5-pack hanes undershirt and soak in like a good storm across a ripe patch of garbage. And that wasn’t even why he was still awake minutes before his alarm was set to go off. It was a dream he had been having for some months now: His mother's head in his lap, her body standing at the foot of his bed, hands expressionless and outstretched. Her neck had been evenly split across, no stump nor tremendous geyser of sticky, hot blood. It was a clean and even nub of pale flesh that sat paramount on his mother's neck. He held mom’s head in his arms, feeling her hot breath against his chest and he couldn’t bear to look down, not anywhere but straight ahead, because if he looked down he knew what would happen. Then she started to ask him questions. The head shook as it spoke, and though it was his mother's voice, and his mothers thoughts (complete with her mannerisms and habits of escalating her inflections to an almost painful squeak and bringing them low and stumbling towards the end of her thoughts), her speech was muddy and strained. She chortled mucus from her disembodied lungs with every word and spoke in patterns and dialects he couldn’t understand to his heaving chest and shaking chest"
>>7416267
>got to bed Tao
>3:23
I've made it.
>>7408331
don't listen to the faggots. this was 10/10, gave me feels
>>7408331
Reminds me of one I made. Great work.
Gave feels
I've just started writing an essay and, not being quite sure how to structure it, would like some constructive criticism. Will any of you guys help me out?
The essay ought to be around 2000-2500 words long when finished. so far I've written the introduction and laid the groundwork for what will come after (which will be greatly expanded on). pic related is the title and the introduction.
>>7416316
This is actually pretty great
>>7405955
This is a story about a Djon Turkey Sandwich. Not much more than that. No real cleverness, no asides, no footnotes. Just the relatively humdrum consumption of a Djon Turkey Sandwich purchased from small, underground–—it's actually in a basement— coffee shop. Not even any description of the mustard dribbling off of bread that looks more like a leavened cracker than a bun, and has the soggy but hard texture that bread only gets when its been filled with cold cuts and secured in saran. No expected moment of transcendence, or even any conflict (aside from maybe your attempts to glean anything from this story beyond an adolescent attitude of confrontation; an attitude that you would be completely right in assuming.) It's just me, you, and a sandwich all in search of a plot. You being one of two things: A) a reader, someone engaged with this work, perhaps forced to be engaged, or B) me at another point, perhaps after some personal growth that will elevate my attitude against this sort of thing; you know, maybe have a few life experiences, eat with some people, eat some people (in the sexual sense). At this point, you probably noted a sort of connection between the eating people joke, and the consumption of the Djon Turkey Sandwich, I can assure you that this is merely a false positive— a Freudian delusion that is either my own paranoia at your assumptions , or a true accusation that I hope does not turn you off reading this.
Quik is the kyning come
battlen be the beeste birden
Recketh e that rak is rung
Shritheth e iwis, sweord ired
Ak! be the kyning attack'd!
Forsooth fightan fulwith fat
That hathen heere hath iwreke
Skoren soon are sleye soon
and alle is aht awkelle
Then though theos they threosaw
The kyng is rise of the ground
blade be long blowth the beest
So seyle he forthwith in suit
ak an arwe is flew to he
hardstruck it he in hine head
Thos went the death kiynges
>>7415214
I see potential. The ideas are good, but the writing is uneven, at times cliched, at times too tremulous. Speak with confidence if you can, e.g. delete 'It was as though' and just with 'The awfulness ...':
> It was as though the awfulness of the event had seeped through backwards and forwards in time to contaminate its temporal neighbors.
I like the style of your longer sentences but they don't feel very tight. That's just a matter of practice and editing to make them read more smoothly. I like the withering critique of the dad's conversational mannerisms.
Also, just for editing purposes, you should separate out or re-format your comments from the actual writing. Nothing wrong with the comments but makes it confusing to judge it.
ey bby u wan sum fuk? i got a long d ;)
pls rate
>>7416052
Well, can't believe I've read it considering your aforementioned horrible formatting, but I tried making sense of it anyways. I don't really know what you were going for here (essay, journal, personal piece) but it was very meandering and metaphorical in the beginning and hard to figure out wtf you were even talking about. As far as comprehension goes you would do much better to at least prime the reader on the nature of your meaning and intent.
Really no excuse for the formatting. There are at least 3-4 obvious paragraph breaks there.
There is some clear passion and spirited motivation that comes through, but it blows a lot of hot air for the impact it gives. The tone seems undecided between hitting the concrete or the abstract more clearly and loses precision in both. Needs work.
>I think it came out alright.
Don't say this, just begs for people to be more vicious in their critique. Or if you are going to claim your work is alright, at least have the non-moronic decency to elaborate on what you mean as "alright" when you post what could easily be regarded as the fresh steaming turd of a newborn.
>Look at this piece of shit I wrote in 10 minutes.
Is it even salvageable?
Babel was not a tragedy—
built from flint next to the water rising
going too far, to see the face of the word
—that was courage.
Hubris is not a word in it,
rising, or should I say:
ὕβρις.
Faith
the word would be at the top
and not on the water, below the water, and
through the water beyond the Oxford comma.
Out of it we got a word meaning jumble,
how to ask someone where they are from.
Was there fear in it? A word meaning running
far away from dusty walls by the stream.
When it fell:
say it sadly—
drown, drown, drown.
Lizard tongue forked—
you know the story;
it has been translated again and again.
Say it again:
God said language is flint and like flint We shall break it,
hone it into an Indian spear head.
When it fell,
the point drove home:
drown, drown, drown.
In books
there are words for open and closing,
rising and lowering the pretty blind eye.
Built from friction,
piecemeal systems
on rocks
on walls
on yellowed bones
scratch-scratching ourselves, again and again.
From rubbing two flints
comes the thing you hold in your hand.
GERMAN
Any of you guys interested in my poetry and flash fiction?
stilleblaetter.wordpress.com
>>7418707
>flash fiction
Raymond Dithers always considered himself an artist who suffered for his work, while both cause and artistic effect barely existed. His writing, his sloppy prose and crude poetry were the only reasons he could dredge up to explain precisely why he hadn’t ceased in walking for several hours, telling himself that the parka and the humidity served to recall certain sultry Russian backstreets, to strengthen his connection with the suffering of the literary figure, a cruel combination of the preventable and the unchangeable to worsen the heat and weight pressing from inside. Perhaps, he thought, he could give himself a fever out of an eighteenth century work, one that made his eyes shine and excuse unwise and morally reprehensible acts. After all, how could a person be considered complex or interesting without committing their fair share of criminal acts, byways which brought one sooner or later to that sort of catharsis which must invariably follow moral dilemmas resulting in a well rounded individual free from doubt. Dithers--or Dit, as he’d been called in high school, half in jest by people half his friends--could see himself circumventing the problem of the moral crisis by having none at all, instead looking on at all the normal occurrences thinking to himself that he could easily disrupt them in any way he pleased, but held back for his mother’s sake, not anyone else’s. He passed beneath the beady moon’s gaze dripping murky light, making soggy the sparse clouds surrounding. The trees loomed above him, their skeletal joints cracked and clapped in the hot wind swaying across, pressing down toward the asphalt and rising again, continual obeisances whose intimidation of the walker below was a secondary consequence. He was inconsequential to the world around him, the misty air created a dull sidewalk that halfreflected the streetlights like frosted mirrors over which his footsteps made no sound. He wasn’t even given the ability to shatter puddles with his passing through the night’s demesne; The stillness of the night was as if it expended effort to ignore him, robbing him of the opportunity to impress his being and express his will on the concrete bulwark or the trees it barely held back. It was all very saddening, which suited him just fine, but the lack of peers present to ask him what he was doing and why was a cause for alarm, because to him nothing mattered which went unnoticed and unexplained as material for his carefully groomed image. Maybe, he thought, he’d walk the next few miles to that 24-hour coffee shop and order something minimal, intellectual, and with few calories (he didn’t feel that self-impression made him any less of a starving artist),and leaning on the counter he planned to drop a reference to the fact that he wrote in coffee shops for more than the image, and take the dead-eyed twentysomething in the apron’s complete and (keep going or is it nauseating to read?)
>>7418889
A tiny throbbing obelisk of intelligence spawned from the balls of yr two græy hemispheres—that black obelisk basilisk thrumming quietly w/the sounds of an orchestra tuning up in the black pit of the unconscious, confident of the incoming applause. 'Thanks, I guess?' you might say & I'd laugh, laff, laughing, laffin. I like you more than a friend.
>>7418707
I'm doom'd 2 tell ye I can only taste the lemma—yet they were delish-yes. When mi brain whirs the haus burns & somehow lexical exuberance throbs in my head and I kin pick up the words of worldkin kwikly and the broken taste tastes good, mon ami, mein Freund, Ich bin Freuds verstümmelt Aale.
>>7418431
Tssss sensituv boi, roight? FOCK YAH. We use dat alternit spellin roight? Ya fukkin child molesta. TSSSS.
>>7417821
Seaweed is tougher. Reading this was like sucking on a bowl of grass & water. Such wimpy, weak muscle fibers. But yr still in school & it's OK. Keep on tumblin those dice.
>>7418944
ik kenne thy niht.
Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? The question entails whether taste is subjective in nature, in accordance to our own sentiments. The only logical answer to this would be, yes.
However, this disposition becomes problematic at closer examination of how we commonly judge works. That is, that we all have a general consensus that every individual is different, and therefore has a different sentiment from one another. However, a contradiction, or rather, a confliction arises within this belief. That while we acknowledge that a variety of individuals have a variety of tastes and sentiments to a work, we are also inclined to believe that there are some works that are better than others. For example, any individual with common sense would agree that Shakespeare is a better writer than John Green, despite this sentiment still being subjective in nature. And to that, philosopher David Hume contends that there is a standard of taste within the confines of our judgement of taste. But, in his Of the Standard of Taste, he fails to prove that there is such “a rule, by which the various sentiments of men may be reconciled” (pp. 104).
First, to understand why Hume fails to prove that there is a standard of taste, we must first examine and understand his position. Hume acknowledges that taste, in all its generalities, is subjective; however, he adds that, although individuals may disagree with each other in taste “the difference among men is there oftener found to lie in generals than in particulars; and to be less in reality than in appearance,” and that “an explanation of terms commonly ends the controversy,” and by doing so, the individuals discover that there tastes were ultimately the same.
Hume tries using his model of empiricism to arrive at a standard of taste, to say that, by learning from sense-experience we can come to a standard of something that is subjective in nature. In that empiricism is the gaining of knowledge through sense-experience, and that, our own taste and sentiment, for something, is created through our experience with that something. To apply this idea to the standard of taste, implies that, ultimately, there is a universally common taste to a particular. Though, this isn’t the case in reality. While, it is true that there are universally common sensations for things that elicit the sensation, but when it comes to the beauty or deformity of an artwork, individuals can experience different sensations from it.
>>7419355
want to know if this makes sense
Once in the Jurassic about 150 million years ago, the Great Sun Buddha in this corner of the Infinite Void gave a discourse to all the assembled elements and energies: to the standing beings, the walking beings, the flying beings, and the sitting beings–even the grasses, to the number of thirteen billion, each one born from a seed, assembled there: a Discourse concerning Enlightenment on the planet Earth.
“In some future time, there will be a continent called America. It will have great centers of power called such as Pyramid Lake, Walden Pond, Mt. Rainier, Big Sur, Everglades, and so forth; and powerful nerves and channels such as Columbia River, Mississippi River, and Grand Canyon. The human race in that era will get into troubles all over its head, and practically wreck everything in spite of its own strong intelligent Buddha-nature.”
“The twisting strata of the great mountains and the pulsings of volcanoes are my love burning deep in the earth. My obstinate compassion is schist and basalt and granite, to be mountains, to bring down the rain. In that future American Era I shall enter a new form; to cure the world of loveless knowledge that seeks with blind hunger: and mindless rage eating food that will not fill it.”
And he showed himself in his true form of
SMOKEY THE BEAR
A handsome smokey-colored brown bear standing on his hind legs, showing that he is aroused and watchful.
Bearing in his right paw the Shovel that digs to the truth beneath appearances; cuts the roots of useless attachments, and flings damp sand on the fires of greed and war;
His left paw in the mudra of Comradely Display–indicating that all creatures have the full right to live to their limits and that of deer, rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, dandelions, and lizards all grow in the realm of the Dharma;
Wearing the blue work overalls symbolic of slaves and laborers, the countless men oppressed by a civilization that claims to save but often destroys;
Wearing the broad-brimmed hat of the west, symbolic of the forces that guard the wilderness, which is the Natural State of the Dharma and the true path of man on Earth:
all true paths lead through mountains–
With a halo of smoke and flame behind, the forest fires of the kali-yuga, fires caused by the stupidity of those who think things can be gained and lost whereas in truth all is contained vast and free in the Blue Sky and Green Earth of One Mind;
Round-bellied to show his kind nature and that the great earth has food enough for everyone who loves her and trusts her;
Trampling underfoot wasteful freeways and needless suburbs, smashing the worms of capitalism and totalitarianism;
Indicating the task: his followers, becoming free of cars, houses, canned foods, universities, and shoes, master the Three Mysteries of their own Body, Speech, and Mind; and fearlessly chop down the rotten trees and prune out the sick limbs of this country America and then burn the leftover trash.
Wrathful but calm. Austere but Comic. Smokey the Bear will Illuminate those who would help him; but for those who would hinder or slander him…
HE WILL PUT THEM OUT.
Thus his great Mantra:
Namah samanta vajranam chanda maharoshana Sphataya hum traka ham mam
“I DEDICATE MYSELF TO THE UNIVERSAL DIAMOND BE THIS RAGING FURY BE DESTROYED”
And he will protect those who love the woods and rivers, Gods and animals, hobos and madmen, prisoners and sick people, musicians, playful women, and hopeful children:
And if anyone is threatened by advertising, air pollution, television, or the police, they should chant SMOKEY THE BEAR’S WAR SPELL:
DROWN THEIR BUTTS
CRUSH THEIR BUTTS
DROWN THEIR BUTTS
CRUSH THEIR BUTTS
And SMOKEY THE BEAR will surely appear to put the enemy out with his vajra-shovel.
Now those who recite this Sutra and then try to put it in practice will accumulate merit as countless as the sands of Arizona and Nevada.
Will help save the planet Earth from total oil slick.
Will enter the age of harmony of man and nature.
Will win the tender love and caresses of men, women, and beasts.
Will always have ripened blackberries to eat and a sunny spot under a pine tree to sit at.
AND IN THE END WILL WIN HIGHEST PERFECT ENLIGHTENMENT
…thus we have heard…
>>7419402
incredible. this is inspired
lil section from a short story called "Knees Weak, Arms Are Heavy"
My sister Caitlyn and I had trouble adjusting to our parents having other partners in our lives, but that's normal, I think. What isn't normal is how much my sister Caitlyn loves noodles. It's a serious problem. There was an alfredo that our whole family called "Caitlyn Noodles" because how much she loved them. Our cousins even called them Caitlyn Noodles.
My dad entered a relationship with a woman who liked pasta. My Dad liked pasta, too. She also liked MAD magazine and collector's Barbies. She really liked my sister and told her she was great. My sister thought she was stupid because she kept all her barbies in boxes. I was an ugly girl and one night when making noodles she shook a can of mushrooms in front of my face teasingly. I don't like mushrooms. The mushrooms were in the pasta. I had a big plate.
“Are you going to eat it?”
Kinda. Sometimes I ate it fast and sometimes I ate it slow. I gagged on it a little bit and they thought I was making myself do it. I might have made myself do it, I don't even know. I took handfuls of pasta and put them into my pockets. I ate some and asked to go to the bathroom. I was allowed to go to the bathroom. I put the noodles in the toilet like poop. I don't remember doing this. I remember doing this a few times and I don't remember which time I'm remembering.
At school I was waiting for someone to say “her pockets smell like noodles”.
I knew it was coming. They knew I'd had noodles in my pocket, at one point. They could smell it. Pasta is a lot like fear.
>>7411495
"In reality,"
that's bad advice man
hey OP, whats the pic you have? is it cropped off the one with the asian girl on a roof? its beautiful
1/?
Fear and Loathing in the New Sincerity
We were somewhere around Belconnen, on the edge of the mall when the drugs began take hold. I don't know how Tomas convinced me to try Dramamine, but I already regret it.
I'm not seeing any spiders yet, but I'm aware that I am under the influence. 500 mg of dimenhydrinate, general brand Dramamine, I feel like brand name would have been fitting, allowing me to explore my awareness of my own consumerism. Time is slow and I'm falling. Everyone is robots, placed to control me - or at least only when I'm high, under the influence and surrounded my fake people. Time is slow, I can't not be itchy, people are everywhere, the presence of the other forces me into myself, my own consciousness becoming a world of its own. Pop culture references make me sad. I an gone, Trees are plastic and plastic really no, deliriants big picture.
I previously had very little knowledge of DPH, or deliriants in general - having read many trip reports of Datura, I knew that this would be bad. Psychosis, screaming, feelings of dying, accidental meetings with family members, and mandatory hospital visits were the usual foundations of any story regarding deliriants. Deliriants, must be noted as being hallucinogens, and a sub-category of dissociative - however unlike the classical psychedelics, lysergamides of LSD, tryptamines of DMT and psilocin, and phenethylamines of MDMA and mescaline - deliriants do not contain any stimulant properties. And unlike other (non-deliriant) dissociatives, such as ketamine, DXM - deliriants do not contain any depressant properties. The result is a delirious, psychotic living nightmare - available from any pharmacy for 8.99. This is where we found ourselves now, sober, purchasing the drugs. Having previously purchased Robitussin for it’s DXM only three days prior, we were acting suspiciously non-suspicious. Finding the travel sickness medicine, I looked through the options - the plain looking, sincere medicine contained 50mg of DPH per tablet - containing 10 tablets per pack - this is what we wanted. Checking the other cheaper medications available, looking at a ‘natural’ alternative to DPH was medicine containing only ginger, knowing that wouldn’t induce hallucinations I hated it. We purchase the packs as inconspicuously as possible, hoping the cashier doesn’t question why two 18 year olds need travel sickness medicine - and remembering the DXM from earlier the week. They let us buy them. For 18 we purchased 2 packs of DPH containing pills. I hated that now, after owning these pills - the reality of taking them became too real. We leave the pharmacy and sit waiting in a nearby park. I try to find a way out, suggesting we simply smoke weed instead - using my as of for now unused glass bong in my bag. Of course - at this point there was nothing to stop me from succumbing to the curiosity surrounding a previously untouched class of drugs.
>>7420069
2/?
And due to a misunderstanding, neither of us had any contacts to purchase from. And so we were stuck with the deliriant of DPH. I’m sitting on the ground, sober, 10 small white tablets in my lap waiting for me. Tomas took all 10 of his at once, disgusted at the taste, at this point I felt like there was no turning back - I couldn’t let him trip alone. I take all 10 tablets, 2 to 3 at a time. And now, there was nothing I could do to stop the drug from pulling me apart, disposing of any aspect of my psyche that was subject to logic. I knew at this point we had less than thirty minutes before we would be temporarily at the mercy of these small schizophrenia containing pills. Dramamine. Unsure of whether or not we are already high (that is if the effects of DPH were anything close to a ‘high’) - we begin to move.
Walking back towards the blindingly dim lights of middle class consumerism, we try to find another pharmacy. Both remembering having read that taking DXM alongside any DPH will make the experience less terrifying. Entering what we believe to be a pharmacy, the air conditioning temporarily removes the anxiety regarding our rapidly onsetting psychosis. The store and the air within is bright, glowing with layers of ideas that no one truly wants - but desperately holds on to. As the pills also contained caffeine - and caffeine being faster acting than DPH, I felt purely stimulated for now - the energy gives rise to my usual overly excited talk of any and all psychoactive substances. Explaining to Tomas the differences between deliriants and others, the chemical compound of DMT, how various products we walk past can be used to cheaply and dangerously extract other drugs. The air in the store feels like shards of glass, stabbing my consciousness for attention, I keep talking about drugs. Pink lines travel overhead. Finding a shelf with a small amount of cough medicine, we give up - none containing the pure DXM necessary to trip in a non-deadly way. It’s now been 10 minutes since I’ve taken the pills, my capacity for higher order thinking is leaving me. My senses are working for now, I’m able to stand and talk, but feel slower, and less intelligent. We leave the store - and as only two under the influence of deliriants we aimlessly walk away.
>>7420074
3/?
My body is moving without aim, as the dissociation appears my mind may have aim, but it’s impossible for me to tell. Some sense of higher order thinking is still with me, telling me that I’m sober, or if inebriated - at least enjoying existence. We make a way to the most disgustingly pure ideology pandering store in existence - containing nothing more than monuments to postmodernism, ideas of the other, of cheap consumerism, and a collective state of enjoyment. A sober - and newly sincere me would be sickened by it, for now my continuously vanishing sense of self is leaving - and I’m content simply by seeing colours. Figurines, posters and other novelty shit fills the shelves of the store - green lights are holding the sky in place, and falling onto us. I’m struggling to keep a thought for longer than two seconds, the physical symptoms of DPH attack me and I fall to the ground, knocking over a large display of plastic figurines with me - not wanting to get caught high we quickly leave. I suggest that I show to Tomas my hero and inspiration for this journey - Hunter S. Thompson. Miraculously we make it unharmed to a bookstore which I knew to contain several Hunter S. Thompson books - Kingdom of Fear, Hell’s Angels, The Rum Diary - and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I sink into the store’s floor, and open the singular copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, I read out the opening lines:
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.
A fear of being found delirious washes over me and I stand up, wanting to leave the store before I become further a victim to my own fear and loathing. We cross quickly to a grocery store - knowing the air conditioning will be comforting to the small amount of physical sensation we are still capable of feeling. Time is slowing, it is speeding and leaving my capacity of thought function - less and less information from the physical world is entering my own - less material to tell of. We wander through the store, and find a large array of bottles containing Powerade, Gatorade, and Arizona Iced Tea. I reminisce on the plastic containers, and the many makeshift cancerous bongs made using them. Tomas somehow interprets my discussion of bong usage as a beg for purchase, more gaps in my memory appear as we manage to make it through the social process of legal purchase. Returning to area where we first took the pills, I’m able to fully give in to the effects of the drug. I try talking, my only thought is of a need to finish the last though - the delirium sucks away any memory of what the initial thought may have been. I drink the tea. And mumble to myself.
You’re so fucked.
>>7420078
4/4
I fall backwards into the grass. Euphoria rushes throughout me as all physical sensation leaves my body, the long inviting blades of nature encompass me, entangling me and holding me down - I am now more drug than man. A previously unknown part of me finds orgasmic pleasure in the lack of capacity to think - when subjected to the mental state of a two year old, the physical possibility of worrying about any future consequences of actions, disappears.
I now find myself inside a large department store.
Until this moment in my life I had the idea that my skin has formed a strong - impenetrable border between my thoughts - my mind - and the physical world. DPH fucked this idea. My physical manifestation of a self dissolves, my thoughts and ideas are leaking out of gaps in my head, they drip onto the ground - people are staring at me and their sight fucks its way into my mind, it controls and me and mixes with myself.
The flashing lights resembling my previously held sense of sight - tell me I’ve fallen to the floor - however I’m unable to comprehend what a floor is.
Hello
A voice calls out, something tells me that this voice isn’t coming from inside my head. I look around and a young girl is standing nearby, staring.
Hello, she calls out again.
Unable to talk, or focus on anything beyond the existence of colours. We move away, further into the monolithic corpse of sincerity. I stumble, falling sideways and forwards into a row of bicycles - a voice in my head tells me to take one, another voice tells me to empty by bag first. I take my bong out and place it on the floor, and struggle to remove the bicycle from the rack. I start to push it around the store as I fall further and farther into delirium. All objects now lose their understanding - becoming to me as only swabs of colour, my body falls away from me and spins the colours - washing them together into a beige, as more voices come to me and more eyes watch all knowledge of reality ascends to black. I can now only assume that I had now reached the peak of the trip - as there’s a two hour gap in my memory.
No one tells you the thing you love most is going to kill you.
Racing a nuclear fusion-powered hovercraft isn’t the safest line of work. Not for someone wanting to die of old age, anyway. Adding a pack of thirty more racers to the high speed mix doesn't help either. What could be more ludicrous than that? Having that same hovercraft you’re strapped to catch fire.
No one tells you the thing you love more than anything is going to be what kills you. No one says those words to you, ever. People will tell you about things like “potential danger” or give obscure statistics. But when you’re chasing a dream, a message like that has to come on its own. And it usually comes when you least expect it. For Fennius Taylor, it didn’t come when the sickly-sweet smell from the broken coolant line found his nose. And it didn’t register as wisps of grey smoke began creeping in through the vents. It didn’t happen when the concrete barrier of a hairpin turn threatened to turn his craft into smoldering wreckage. None of these things on their own could reach Fennius. It was only after the warning light marked “FIRE” in the dashboard of his racer began flashing that the truth finally hit home. It finally took the thought of burning alive for all three to find the last strands of rational thought buried in his desire to win. Ask any other racer in the league what they’d do if their “sled” caught fire, and they’d tell you the same thing:
Pull to the outside of the track and activate the counter fire measures”.
So why would teenage racing phenom Fennius Taylor be any different? Because he knows a side effect of activating the counter-fire measures will power down the fusion core.
When you need thousands of pounds of thrust to continue chasing the perfect season, a little fire can keep you motivated to chaieve your goals. If someone had asked Fennius three years ago what he’d do in an emergency like this, he would’ve agreed with the others. But now? With a perfect season on the line? He’s going to pilot this time bomb until either he gets his checkered flag or the whole thing goes up in flames. Why would anyone act this way? This is the madness of the sport. This is what it’s like to chase a dream. This is where the adventure begins. This is (book title)
>>7419837
Notice how I gave an explanation for my advice, (cunt)? Yeah, that's kind of important. Hurr durr this be good, this be bad doesn't help anyone.
>>7420703
ok
I agree that the sentence "there was nothing up his sleeve" arrives jarringly. However, I think the suggestion you gave sounds worse & if it was in the OP I'd suggest it's change.
Also, when writing from the perspective of someone losing touch with reality, it seems a bit cheap, knock-off, to use it to plug the hole of a needed transition point.
I agree w/ u on switching the simile to metaphor tho, that was a good call.
If I had 5 cents for every cocksucker that posted a piece without giving a critique in return, I'd be a billionaire. Fucking cocksuckers. I don't know where anon's decency is. Thinks he can get his candy ass sucked for nothing. Here I go, providing more critiques ... I must be a faggot.
>>7420571
>counter fire measures
Replace with fire counter measures, counter measures are two words that are always placed together; for good reason, it sounds fucking better that way.
>General comments
The opening was nice, drew me in with the cliffhanger. Also, +1 for the sci-fi theme. All together I like what you're doing here. I mean, I like your attempt. I don't think you really pulled it off, but that's life. Keep practicing. It sounds a little too cliche, a little too manufactured. What am I trying to say ... it just feels a little cold, perhaps over-edited, like it's talking about something very exciting and yet it feels drained of emotion. Where is the real impulse, the 'HOLY FUCK', the fire of the fire itself, the sweat trickling down his brow? Perhaps the problem is that the narrative is really telling the scene almost from the outside, more than showing the experience from Fennius on the inside. But I don't know, you do provide some of Fennius' perspective, the smoke, the coolant smell, etc., so it's not all bad in that respect.
Aside from feeling very solidly cliche, it's really not bad. The thing is, you've taken an idea which in regular fiction (being a teenage phenom in NASCAR racing, say) would obviously be cliche, and you've dressed it up with the hovercraft and the fusion ideas. The way you presented things here, those two connections are not in and of themselves enough to make the story unique. They're just like window dressing here. I think you really need to spend a little more time on what's unique about the situation in order to make the story work.
Also, personally I am pretty put-off by the idea of seeing a warning light that says 'fire' on the dashboard. That just feels very low-tech and out of place with something as high-tech as a nuclear fusion powered hovercraft.
If I had 5 cents for every cocksucker that posted a piece without giving a critique in return, I'd be a billionaire. Fucking cocksuckers. I don't know where anon's decency is. Thinks he can get his candy ass sucked for nothing. Here I go, providing more critiques ... I must be a faggot.
>>7420571
>counter fire measures
Replace with fire counter measures, counter measures are two words that are always placed together; for good reason, it sounds fucking better that way.
>General comments
The opening was nice, drew me in with the cliffhanger. Also, +1 for the sci-fi theme. All together I like what you're doing here. I mean, I like your attempt. I don't think you really pulled it off, but that's life. Keep practicing. It sounds a little too cliche, a little too manufactured. What am I trying to say ... it just feels a little cold, perhaps over-edited, like it's talking about something very exciting and yet it feels drained of emotion. Where is the real impulse, the 'HOLY FUCK', the fire of the fire itself, the sweat trickling down his brow? Perhaps the problem is that the narrative is really telling the scene almost from the outside, more than showing the experience from Fennius on the inside. But I don't know, you do provide some of Fennius' perspective, the smoke, the coolant smell, etc., so it's not all bad in that respect.
Aside from feeling very solidly cliche, it's really not bad. The thing is, you've taken an idea which in regular fiction (being a teenage phenom in NASCAR racing, say) would obviously be cliche, and you've dressed it up with the hovercraft and the fusion ideas. The way you presented things here, those two connections are not in and of themselves enough to make the story unique. They're just like window dressing here. I think you really need to spend a little more time on what's unique about the situation in order to make the story work.
Also, personally I am pretty put-off by the idea of seeing a warning light that says 'fire' on the dashboard. That just feels very low-tech and out of place with something as high-tech as a nuclear fusion powered hovercraft.
>>7419398
I'm not sure if you're just an idiot for using Smokey the Bear to complete your analogy of a future Buddha come to the earth, or if you're an actual bigot who finds it humorous to poke fun at one of the most profound, important spiritual traditions on earth.
>>7405955
Puños aprietan las riendas y los rostros relucen de sudor. Los vagones empujan con su peso, adelante, adelante a lo desconocido. Con la bruma de la desgracia, en un parpadeo, la caravana ruge y todo lo que pasa bajo ella queda hecho trizas. Piedras y ramas, todo salta y la madera de los vagones parece deformarse a uno y otro lado. Más los jinetes se aferran temerarios. La carrera sigue, sigue en el camino. Sin pausa, las curvas son dadas y la velocidad aumenta. Los brincos hacen crujir las cargas y la caravana, como una pesadilla de rostros enloquecidos, parte la noche.
Sombra exhala con furia, sus cascos dan fieros golpes dándole caza a los vagones. Inclinó mi peso hacia adelante, sintiendo a mi espalda, miedo y la cercanía de lo ominoso. Con las manos alrededor de mi cuello y el rostro hundido en mi pecho, imagino a Lizbeth. Ambos huimos y la noche, con todos sus horrores, terrestres y alados, sanguinarios, no puede alcanzarnos.
Ashley woke up that morning feeling confident, that what she was about to do was going to change her marriage for the better. Even if it didnt, she knew her tight little flower was gonna experience the throbbing girth of a real man; unlike her husband's little excuse of an appendage. Tyrone was gonna guve her what every wholesome white woman desires: pure animalistic pounding of raw penetration.
Ashley got out of bed, her hips swayed from side to side while her nightgown try to cover her womanly curves. Ashley looked back at Eugene; her husband of ten years, years she had enjoy emotionally but never phsycally. She loved Eugene but his thin, small excuse of a manhood left her body craving for more. She hurried toward the bathroom and closed the door behind her, she open the shower faucet and began adjusting them. She sat down on the toilet and relieved herself, ashley began to think about Tyrone,
"He was always a handful," she said to herself.
>>7422507
It's a summerization of the conclusion. That's where the sweat, smells, and other sensations come into play. A flash of what's to come
>>7422559
Scholomo/10
Would put money for marketing so it becomes the new 50 shades.
>>7422518
ayy caramba
>>7422518
ok m8 not sure if you're a native in spanish but your phrasing is a bit off. I like the tone and sort of percussiveness it has, I guess you're trying to reflect the tone of the scene in your writing and sentencing. It's interesting but you should chill with the commas, there's other ways you can achieve similar effects.
>>7422559
>Ashley woke up that morning feeling confident, that what she was about to do was going to change her marriage for the better.
No need for a comma there, friend. Otherwise, it's fine, if a little straightforward. I suggest, though, that instead of having her waking--which is a tad cliche, if I may add--precede her confidence, have something else, anything else precede it: I mean, how often have you woken completely lucid, aware of your plans for the day?
> Even if it didnt, she knew her tight little flower was gonna experience the throbbing girth of a real man; unlike her husband's little excuse of an appendage.
Grotesque, but that is the point, I guess.
>Tyrone was gonna guve her what every wholesome white woman desires: pure animalistic pounding of raw penetration.
Spelling error: fix it. Pretty bland, extremely basic use of a colon. The phrase, "pure animalistic pounding of raw penetration," is redundant: remove it entirely.
>Ashley got out of bed, her hips swayed from side to side while her nightgown try to cover her womanly curves.
There is definitely a more interesting way to say "Ashley got out of bed." Either ditch the comma and replace it with a semicolon--which would be a weak usage in this case--or change "swayed" to its participial, "swayed. Fix the incorrect tense of "try." Expand on the imagery of her body: this is a women, and women are hot. Make me tight in the trousers.
>Ashley looked back at Eugene; her husband of ten years, years she had enjoy emotionally but never phsycally.
Flat out incorrect usage of the semicolon. Appositives should be separated from what they modify with commas or colons or emdashes, not semicolons. Incorrect tense of "enjoy": fix it. Just delete this sentence, friend.
>She loved Eugene but his thin, small excuse of a manhood left her body craving for more.
Why am I critiquing this? Anyway, a comma is needed between "Eugene" and "but". Side note: double adjectives not done right are gross.
>She hurried toward the bathroom and closed the door behind her, she open the shower faucet and began adjusting them.
Put a cute little semicolon where the comma is. Fix all the errors.
>She sat down on the toilet and relieved herself, ashley began to think about Tyrone,
"He was always a handful," she said to herself.
Why, friend? Why, without care, without shame, post without proofreading?
>>7423130
>or change "swayed" to its participial, "swayed.
Fug. I meant "swaying."
>>7420571
>No one tells you the thing you love most is going to kill you.
Not profound; lacking in complexity. That said, YA readers would eat it up.
>Racing a nuclear fusion-powered hovercraft isn’t the safest line of work.
Avoid sarcasm unless you are skewing for teens.
>Not for someone wanting to die of old age, anyway.
Attach this to the preceding sentence with a comma or emdash.
>Adding a pack of thirty more racers to the high speed mix doesn't help either.
B O R I N G: spice it up with some imagery--anything to break it up a little.
>What could be more ludicrous than that?
By this point, it is clear that your narrator is very human: he conveys the story in an almost conversational way. However, your writing is sterile, lacking in any of the idiosyncrasies that make human speech sound like human speech.
>Having that same hovercraft you’re strapped to catch fire.
Awkwardly worded.
>No one tells you the thing you love more than anything is going to be what kills you. No one says those words to you, ever.
Insert semicolon between the two sentences.
>People will tell you about things like “potential danger” or give obscure statistics.
Remove "obscure" and replace it "with" meaningless.
>But when you’re chasing a dream, a message like that has to come on its own.
This is fine, actually.
>And it usually comes when you least expect it.
Combine with preceding sentence.
>For Fennius Taylor, it didn’t come when the sickly-sweet smell from the broken coolant line found his nose.
Alright, first off, get rid of sickly-sweet: it's not even a good cliche, if ever such a thing existed, of course. I recommend changing "smell from the broken coolant line found his nose" to "smell of coolant found his nose."
>And it didn’t register as wisps of grey smoke began creeping in through the vents.
Combine with preceding sentence by using a semicolon. Don't be afraid to use semicolons; they are kind of really easy to use. I recommend using colons too, when possible, and, as long as it is logical, I guess, don't be afraid if your usage of the colon isn't the same as how x author uses it: every author uses the colon a little differently.
> It didn’t happen when the concrete barrier of a hairpin turn threatened to turn his craft into smoldering wreckage. None of these things on their own could reach Fennius.
Insert semicolons where needed
> It was only after the warning light marked “FIRE” in the dashboard of his racer began flashing that the truth finally hit home.
This is pretty clunky.
I'm too tired to do the rest, but I hope that from what I've done you can get a good idea on how to improve.
>>7410737
reminds me of when I'm trying to be funny but I'm too unhappy for things to work out
>>7411464
>Before... we have
I don't even know if you can do this in English. Should be "we had"
>Even before we knew that we were human, we knew we had purpose.
well this doesn't even mean anything, it was the discovery that we were just another animal (homo sapiens) that in a sense robbed us of our purpose and shunted us out into contempo nihilistic void
>monolithic gods lurked above us, obscured in black veil.
should be "a black veil" I think
>Is life and all of its totality, its urgency and orgasm, a speck of dust suspended in a sunbeam?
sorry you don't have enough points to say orgasm here. also this rips off sagan
>armed with light and sensor,
might as well make it plural
> The pursuit of knowledge is our god, and god speaks through diet Coke and Mentos. If God had created us from the clay of the earth and made us in his own image, God speaks through the childlike wonderment that is experienced when the sun strikes the trees during autumn, or an old car blinking back to life. He speaks through particle colliders and black coffee liberally sipped. His holy scripture bleeds through the $2 expo markers and writes the poetry of our creation in the form of mathematical constants and formulas. If there is a God then he is us. He is our God, our creation, and the equity between man and spirit will plant size 9 footprints on the stars.
holy fuck, this is even more euphoric than the original euphoria quote
fuck you you unoriginal, reddit-browsing cunt
science doesn't need you, & neither does literature
>>7412295
laughed... love the bizarre ramp up into unintelligibility
>A seagull flew overhead, slicing its wings through the cold of the air and flapping towards
why not cold air? why of the?
>>7412609
reminds me of a friend with whom intellectual conversation is impossible—not because they're stupid, just because every line of thought they have travels perpendicular to my own
>>7412658
goddessliness
it's not a word but who fucking cares, faggot
this isn't france, we're free
