Last one hit limit. Now it's official! Any type of writing is welcome. Pastebins, google drives, anything. Rate, give advice and critique to have people do the same with your writing.
http://pastebin.com/
heres an easy format for beginners to use.
Asi fue como salio de mi boca un tren de saliva seguido de una cara en llamas, sentado bajo mi reflejo luminoso en la silla del inodoro apreciaba esa bella figura.
CONT?
One day, somehow, someway, there appeared a stain
But it was no smear, it was a splatter of red paint of the dark shade
That shade of red found after the slice of a sharp blade
And it cut deep and brought shame everyday
People claim time alleviates all pain but how can it soothe this rotten stain
...
Later the pre-existing paint fades away and turns a shade of grey
That shade of grey found after a loved one passes away
That shade grey found when love is just a hopeless aspiration
That shade of grey found after a state of pure devastation
However the blood-colored stain remained the same
Their split whispers float into the night like ember. Outlines of tangled hair strangled with bands, the teeth behind the kisses. The car lurches, a trauma subsides into their bellies and they laugh with their heads cocked. The trees pass alike in the shortly illuminated dark and a nameless song plays on the radio. Absent is the dust from summer, bringing forth commodious air. It’s winter and it’s cold, always cold.
>>7680570
My interest is piqued. Where exactly do you think this story is headed? Or is it more of a prose poem?
>>7680546
I like where this is going! Is there more where that came from? I'd like to see it.
This is part of a story I'm working on:
http://pastebin.com/y8GK4Zb3
What do you guys think of the short sentences? Are they too simplistic? I'm trying really hard to perfect my style and I have trouble writing any other way.
>>7680654
I really liked the story so far. I felt like it had a rhythm to it. I had to stop myself from reading to quickly in my head.
>>7680675
*too
The short sentences were noticeable but weren't a problem. Going to post some more of mine I suppose
I had only a few ways to fix the wall
End my rage with the tip of a knife and end it all
Cut the innocent flesh with blood splattered tall
Spread it until my wall is covered with death and then bawl
...
Maybe I'll hold my breath and pray
Perhaps I'll wait to paint in grey
And then clean the walls with a uniform shade
Then, I'll be able to live life my way
With no more pain to make me insane
...
Or I could break down the fucking wall down
Laugh while I watch it all fall to the ground
As I say my last words before I end it all
"I don't want to live a life with a stain on my wall"
>>7680654
>They never lacked for firewood. He brought a dozen logs back to the front of the cottage, then he retrieved his axe from the toolshed. It had been in his family for three generations.
peronsally id do " He brought a dozen logs back to the front of the cottage, they never lacked for firewood. Then he retrieved his axe from the toolshed that had been in his family for three generations.
that just kind of stuck out at me, i love it so far, i havent finished it but its good!
Such Rage
Such unbearable Rage
It consumes me
Blinds me
Forces me to live by it
Numb to everything else
It destroys me
Kills me
Binds my will
Slaughtering everything else
I can no longer explain the source
It is there
Unending
I can no longer live by it
yet it holds me
as dearly as a lover
I fear I can no longer withold it
I must find relief
where there is none
Help me
I have been forsaken by all others
-Sonny
http://pastebin.com/NzFY3qaR
Breaking the fourth wall shit
>inb4 dogshit
>>7680690
I enjoyed this. A lot of edgy shit gets posted to these threads but it typically never moves past formlessness. This had a theme/focus which makes the digestion of the intended emotions actually possible.
10/10 - IGN
>>7680675
Slowly but surely that pain faded away
But so did my life as it started to drain
It was consumed in a thick layer of paint
But I could still see the red stain
So I continued to paint
I soon stopped caring about life
And wondered how it felt to die
So I took a knife in order to try
And cut my wrists and smeared it on the wall with one wipe
Then repeated the cycle again
It was a game I couldn't win
Until one day I cut too deep
And the blood on the wall started to seep
There was too much blood and I was too weak
The wall that was so strong started to bleed
I wanted to leave, but got on my knees
It trembled and shook as it started to fall
All I could see was the blood dripping off the wall
Then it crashed down on top of me and destroyed everything in the way
>Will post the end soon
>>7680779
Be careful and listen to what I say
Everyday is a new shade of grey
Except it's just a new layer of pain
Just don't let your life turn out the same
Because you direct the story of your life
You can paint it with the music you like
Go ahead and live a lie and try to be content
I'd rather live and not have to pretend
We are two Spanish Galleons
Tossed upon the mire of crimson cash and takeaways
running lye over the frigid bodies of castaways.
The remains of an arrogant halcyon.
But you cannot unstain the eons and eons
of card sharks and panhandling strays
kneeling in their suits and ties on tired Sundays
knifing us in the back; letting our blood until dawn.
But our journey was not stifled by the sea.
A patchwork was sewn to fill up my heart.
We weathered an envious twist of waves and algae,
with scars on my arm and an imaginary chart.
But when I look to you now for comfort and ease,
I only see us stranded and falling apart.
>First revision of a first draft I posted a couple days ago
Distinguished
Sweet as jumper on Kristaps Porzingis
Grayer than the temples on 48-year-old linguists
Clooney, Cruise or Denzel, maybe Johnny Depp, Michael Keaton
Who's the female Liam Neeson, 63 and striking
Sally Field as Tom Hanks' mom no one found it surprising
Distinguished
46 and no kids chance of motherhood got extinguished
Fuck the fuck should I fuck you for your eggs rare as gold ingots?
It's all about the children, can them titties feed my kids?
We keep our seeds for life I mean look at Dennis Quaid
No need for child-bearing hips when you're steady past 38
Distinguished
Looking at the time where are the heirs to my queenship
TV says ten years til I'm four cats, knick knacks and trinkets
Surgical residency overlaps with my peak fertility
Watching as the men in my class talk about possibilities
It's a solid 20 years before time fucks with their virility
Child on student loans? But how's that for responsibility
Stay at home for a year? There the fuck goes all my mobility
Distinguished
Eventual tenure track Biblical Slavic linguist
Momma had me in college clock ticking on all that dream shit
Overnight everything turned from "me me me" to that "we" shit
Law school, get that money, feed my kid or finish my thesis?
Fucker don't be facetious you know how this shit goes
And they wonder why the executive board got fucked up ratios
So Clinton told her drop out and join the job corps
But then what'd she spend two years studying law for
Hundred K lined up but she had to feed baby Kol
EBT at the HEB looking at her like she just stole
Dirty looks as if she's lazy but my mom's an iron lady
26 with a baby and a fresh T14 JD
That there kind of shit cannot be for everyone
Mandatory family leave could I guess be step number one
But the beauty thing, me I fuck with older girls
Same verse I talked about my mom? Disregard what you just inferred
Fuck the ageist shit, don't play that shit, Melora Hardin can slay the dick
Shit t.b.h not to harass or be problematic but I hardcore celeb crush on Emma Thompson
Man 60 is the new 40 which is the new 30 fuck the age gap casting man what ever happened to Maggie Gyllenhaal
it's all about beauty you gotta love it y'all
Can we post finished stories? Nobody ever posts full stories?
>>7680570
Really nice
not sure if it's contraction belies ornateness of rest of prose.
Trying to write a short story about being a short story about a stupid millennial author afflicted by modern anxieties, thinking of going full meta.
not sure how well it's going
http://pastebin.com/sP1cbTJr
TOe
http://pastebin.com/mm1pNTUr
>>7681021
You've already gone too meta. The prose isn't bad but as a concept this is just such a non-starter.
http://pastebin.com/8ixRUfti
The first page of my editing-in-progress novel.
>>7681060
Yeah I liked that, interested to see where the novel would go?
I was thinking maybe if it were more about him, less about the short story he was trying to write, it might be better?
>>7680570
nice words put together in order to create a sentence senpai
>>7680842
Is this b8?
Tell me you were purposely trying to write something this bad
>>7681083
Yeah, focus more on the character. It takes a lot of skill and care to make meta-narratives work, and while I'm not saying you outright can't manage it, it's usually not worth it unless your idea is something that's absolute dynamite. And you're pretty good at prose, so focus on that over clever tricks. Learn to walk before you try parkour.
>>7680690
Saved
Cock Blocked
Soft cathedrals of bodies,
built in white flesh and shrouded
with mirror's fabric. The shining
dismal or the haughty taughty,
the race and the polo. The confused
and colluded clouds that collect
above confiscate this heavenly meeting
of flesh on flesh below.
>>7680690
I liked this desu senpai mate, have you written anything else?
>>7681123
Read the entire thing lol.
The last line is a joke. It's not serious you trite fool
>>7680654
the first half is solid enough, where the writing is simple and rustic (if a bit elementary--you should really look to be a bit more imaginative/innovative)
but then from "Tobais had a revelation" onwards it becomes very ham-fisted and heavy-handed:
>It was a relatively monumental thought for a boy of eight to have about his father.
show don't tell
>rhetorical questions
cheesy
the idea of his mother dying and its impact on the father and him, and then what would happen if his father died too is interesting but it's just not really explored in the manner you would expect from the first half
you need to go much slower, much more of a slow burn....
personally, I would intersplice these "deep thoughts" the boy is having with much more mundane actions: the taste of the bread and the cheese, the fire in the hearth, etc. etc.
>>7681025
>I go to Klimple rock high school, and due to my presence, the collective sum of student toes is not a multiple of five; that is my contribution, and I loathe it. I
ehhh you should re-consider this sentence as it's very awkward and out-of-place. I can see how you might be attached to the idea behind it (ie statistical anomaly, skewing averages etc.) but kill your darlings etc. etc.
the writing is quite strong, but the tone can definitely be improved
I feel like it's needlessly pedantic in a lot of areas (lots of un-necessary filler interjections and semi-colons)
>>7681083
meh
the problem is that it doesn't really grab my interest
there is no hook, no sense of mystery, no questions or suspense
the characterization is weak/non-existent: mostly physical descriptions and one repeated feeling of butterflies
if your prose was straight-forward and clean, then that wouldn't be a problem
but you have a lot of descriptions, a lot of "fancy" writing (I wouldn't call it purple prose) and my eyes just kind of glaze over
your writing also isn't poetic or beautiful enough to carry the momentum imo (although there are areas of quite good writing)
to be fair, I'm not very partial to modern novels/prose, and I probably wouldn't be your target audience in the first place
Late Night Reading
The glass of sea in my right hand
obfuscated the light that the window
did not confiscate. These black bleedings
of thoughts that time had spat out.
The bowling blues of green sea-hues
turned beneath the waves of sheets.
The Captain called for his ail,
as I drank my fill of refuge and seaweed.
>>7681129
>show don't tell
do you realise how many published and renowned authors tell instead of show?
>>7681141
>published
not many
>renowned
most
>>7681128
I don't get it
>>7681148
it's really quite genius
>>7681147
the renowned are published? What you just wrote doesn't make sense
>>7681165
please o supremely sapient spirit of exegesis, cast some light down to this little simpering slave who cannot even read so clouded is his screen by ignorance and dakimakura popups (too stupid to install ad-blockers, the knave)
>>7681099
hmmm yeah I did think maybe I shouldn't just be like: "it's a short story, within a shorty story, I'm the Christopher (hack) Nolan of writeangs m8"
Will see if can develop proper idea if not will make more about bath bloke
cheers for the crit
http://pastebin.com/MW1bEZkn
The first page of a short story I'm working on, about a big underground city.
If anybody actually reads it, it'll be the first thing I've ever written that anybody has read.
Then it happened again, the last slimy sliver running down my leg. I stood silent and still among the milling crowd waiting for the light to turn so I could quickly hustle across the street. I knew it would leave a trail. Brown strokes upon the ground, like a painter performing his master craft. What did it matter now? The smell slowly floated to my nose as I began to observe others noticing. Their noses twitched like rabbits being poked with sticks. The hot sticky city day was not helping my situation, and I felt the continuous gush of decayed and digested substance run down my leg. The next instance I was discovered. The young girl next to me in what seem like one long, endless ululation, sang the timeless song of " ewwwww" that seemed to swim amongst the crowd.
Excerpts from my master piece. Still a work in progress
>>7681221
>faint staticky patterns
wot?
>Detecting the electric presence of his hand, it lit up
too wordy
use something simple like, 'it lit up from his hand's presence'
>phone clatter to the floor
bad use of the verb clatter
>few LED indicators
don't use the word LED
>Jack rubbed his eyes as he walked the few steps from the bed to the desk and hit the power button on the computer. In a couple seconds it booted, and Jack launched his email client from the desktop menu. As it loaded, he crossed his fingers. When the program came up, he was greeted with a short list of already-read messages. “No new messages”, boasted the text at the top of the screen.
Way too long. Try something like 'Jack booted up his computer to look at his emails. There were none.'
You show instead of tell in some of this. Maybe just telling the reader would be better. Cuts down on pointless description that isn't world-building at all
I stopped reading after the first paragraph
>>7681231
i can tell it's going to be a master piece indeed
>>7681129
I appreciate the criticism, truly. I do try to take everything you guys say to heart. Honest feedback, painful though it might be, is crucial to the writing process.
As far as the writing being too elementary, though- well, that's kind of the point. I understand where you're coming from, but that's just how I think, and thus, how I write. I realize that what I just said sounds INCREDIBLY autistic. But- hold on to your hats, fellas- I am autistic. No, really, I have autism. But I don't think that should keep me from writing. I wouldn't be the first autistic author in history, either.
O.K., I'm going to shut up now.
>>7681258
I'd be interested to know which famous authors have autism
>>7681258
>someone on 4chan with actual autism
what a surprise
>>7681221
What kind of stuff do you regulary read?
>>7681267
I'm pretty sure Melville was on the spectrum. Can't think of anybody else, though. I'm sure many of them meet certain requirements but were never officially diagnosed. Of course, no one knew what autism was until very recently, so you have to take that into account, too.
>>7681235
>>faint staticky patterns
>wot?
Staticky hallucinations like that are an effect of prolonged amphetamine use.
>>7681297
the use of the word staticky is just plain bad, if it even is a word
Are you the writer of that piece?
>>7681296
Yeah fair enough
>>7681337
Yeah. It's not a word, but I thought its meaning was clear in that context.
>>7681367
why would you use it if it's not a word then?
And I wasn't saying wot due to not understanding what you meant.
Also, you should honestly take the rest of my feedback to heart if you're just blowing it off
>>7681401
No, I legit thought it was horrible
>>7680842
how many synonyms did you look up to write this one?
>>7681410
lold
>>7681258
>I appreciate the criticism, truly. I do try to take everything you guys say to heart. Honest feedback, painful though it might be, is crucial to the writing process.
wow this guy must be autistic
>But- hold on to your hats, fellas- I am autistic.
woah!
>>7681385
no, I took it to heart, it all makes sense. the first one was the only thing I felt the need to explain.
Through the whole thing I took "show dont tell" too far.
black lung tar pit
snake tongue rip clit
my boot your jaw the perfect fit
tie a noose and take a trip
feel my steel against your lips
effortlessly tables flipped
give a fuck you're just a bitch
subsistence mission
you don't listen
vomit glisten
pipes are hissing
ripping lines
double time
hit the wall
fuck it all
shovel dog
argh!
i lack empathy
pussy shit get with me
manicures blistering
raining blood
roll in mud
undo my belt
prepare yourself
i've never felt
>>7681452
I. Have. Autism.
>>7680880
Enjoyed
Here is a little excerpt of something i'm working on:
The matter of the bodies was another issue all together for the local police to try and figure out. The corpses tended to be mangle beyond recognition, faces rendered in a way that could only be considered a master piece in the most twisted piece of fiction. The wounds inflicted on the victims seemed so bestial in the beginning, that at first the thought was that there was some sort of wild animal that had gone rabid terrorizing the park. But when the killings started happening in the city that opinion vanished. No, it was obvious that there was a murderer on the loose, targeting indiscriminately of any factor. This killer thus far had taken it’s pick of men, women, and children, and they were all treated to the same violent end regardless. That was how the people whispered in regards to the killer. They called the killer ‘it’, having collectively unconsciously decided that someone who had committed such violent acts could not be considered human. They weren’t too far off with that accusation, either. The police had been doing their best, but so far the only lead that they had was that occasionally, there would be bloody foot prints found leading into the forest.
There, just on the edge of that forest, a little girl was skipping about through the leaves and grass with a bag hanging on her forearm, seemingly oblivious to any sort of danger. And there, from the cover of foliage within the forest, a pair of white iris’s followed her every movement. The sclera of these eyes was a pitch black, which contrasted against the snowy white fur of the creature in a rather spectacular way, though the creature itself –himself- thought that the color of blood contrasted much better. Yes, this creature was a he, this much it –he- knew. He didn’t know much about himself, if he was honest, but he didn’t like to tread that line of thinking too often. Doing so brought along empty feelings that he didn’t like to experience. So, he simply stuck with what he knew best.
>>7681500
I was waiting for the "tit" rhyme.
>>7681538
Jeez you sound autistic
>>7681500
Actually this is not so bad. Reads a bit like lyrics (for a Tool song?), but doesn’t feel all too corny. Nicely expressionist. Ok, well, the "fuck it all" line is a bit corny, I think.
>>7681267
None. You have to feel love to be an author.
>>7681571
i am in a punk band
it sounds better when i yell it
im just trying to rip off mc ride
Agent intellect knocks and says
"Again, again, again"
The saltmine racist gang
The spoils of the pizza king
That's not gonna save you, man
That's not gonna save you, man
The oligarch lenders' guile
The largesse of the Lombard Bank
That's not gonna save you, man
That's not gonna save you, man
The halls of gold are theirs
You're only renting space
That's not gonna save you, man
That's not gonna save you, man
But what will?
What what will?
The dope cloud
That's descending
On this town
Is blowing gold dust
Into the pockets
Of the undeserving
And I'm wrung out
I'm wrung out [x3]
The dope cloud
That's descending
All over this town
Is blowing gold dust
Into the pockets
Of the undeserving
And I'm wrung out
I'm wrung out [x3]
This ancient microphone
And the lungs behind that creak
That's not gonna save you, man
That's not gonna save you, man
You dedicated your life to prayer
You suffered in silence, there
That's not gonna save you, man
That's not gonna save you, man
Your passive mind that thinks
"Perhaps my ship's come in"
That's not gonna save you, man
That's not gonna save you, man
Agent intellect knocks and says
"Again, again, again"
That's not gonna save you, man
It's not gonna save you, man
>>7681006
Oh wow, someone did actually comment, I was just in the wrong thread.
No, it's not genesis, though I did draw from it a bit as well a few other places. Toth is actually an intentional misspelling of Thoth/Tot an ibis-headed god of all laws, with no distinction made between the laws of conduct and laws of physics
the name tetragrammaton means four-letter-word and it's a description of the abbreviation of the name of god in jewish tradition because his name is so holy that you can't even use the abbreviation in vain
>>7681584
You don't "have" to be anything to be an author.
>>7681599
you have to be adead white male.
>>7681169
The majority of the published show rather than tell.
The majority of the renowned tell rather than show.
>>7682194
Before we go any further, can you please define, succinctly, what you mean by "show" and "tell"?
>>7681591
I can feel the McRide influence. However, it feels a little slow. I know that's just how I'm reading it, and obviously you're going to be shouting it, but it almost lacks energy, somehow. Maybe it feels too mechanical?
I can definitely hear him chanting it in my head, though.
Really cool. I don't know shit about writing lyrics.
She sleeps, and she dreams of sleeping. She does not have to do anything, nor can she can do anything. It is indeterminable whether she is bound, or floating. As well as who is singing, which choir is singing, the all the time same chord without pause. Time is at a standstill and fate is raising, then lowering its shoulders. The world is whispering.
Her face is slender, but not meager, one can presage the bones. The temples have a bright glow. Her cuspidal nose points towards the sky of the cabin. If you went by memory you would impute a small mouth on her. And indeed, she has dazzling, red-blue lips of delicate shape, outlined sharply, left moreso than right, although the right is covered mostly by the pillow.
I apologize if I'm harsh. Be the same to me. Mine is pic related.
>>7680546
The color idea is good, but cliche. You're falling into the common blood red tropes in all descriptions, and constantly seem to be writing the same point in slightly different, but uninteresting language.
>>7680732
Why's this a poem? It doesn't read like one, doesn't benefit from line breaks.
>>7680868
Actually quite like this one, but the ending really falls apart. Worded too simply for a metaphor about ships. Also, try to introduce a recurring image of something related to the idea of ships; it makes the metaphor seem more meaningful.
>>7682441
Doesn't flow very well, but pretty good writing. Try to change up some sentence structures.
>>7681545
Nice style of narration, horrible spelling/grammar/word choice. Is English your first language?
Every time mine eyes do lay, tu m'embaume.
Though there is more to this world I can see,
Tu est les etoiles, la lune, et le soleil.
Though to some you are a new bright day,
To me you are futures I can’t foresee.
Every time mine eyes do lay, tu m'embaume.
So five faithful messengers do obey,
With luck, our fates wove from a silken tree
Tu est les etoiles, la lune, et le soleil.
All my hope is to be not lead astray
For love so vast as the aegean sea,
Every time mine eyes do lay, tu m'embaume.
And for this love I will wait as ember day,
And you push through with all things that would be,
Tu est les etoiles, la lune, et le soleil.
For love so pure to stay day after day
Be with me, and you, as the hemlock tree,
Every time mine eyes do lay, tu m'embaume;
Tu est les etoiles, la lune, et le soleil.
Tu m'embaume = you fill up my senses
Tu est les etoiles, la lune, et le soleil = you are the stars, the moon, and the sun
>>7682329
I know what you mean about it lacking energy. I haven't actually done this one to music yet (waiting for the band to come up with something that fits) but most of my other songs also feel vaguely slow. We don't use any electronic stuff, just guitar bass and drums so we're in no way innovating and they also don't really like to play super fast.
I don't know shit about lyrics either desu, my rhyme schemes are always super simple and pretty lame. Thanks for your thoughts anon
>>7682774
>Tu m'embaume = you fill up my senses
>Tu est les etoiles, la lune, et le soleil = you are the stars, the moon, and the sun
It's "tu m'embaumes", and even then it just sounds weird. You want to say "tu embaumes mon esprit/mes sens" or something along the line.
"Tu es" instead of "est".
No one ever tells you the thing you love most is going to kill you.
Make no mistake, racing a nuclear-fusion, powered hovercraft at three hundred and twenty two miles an hour 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 couldn’t help either. What could possibly be more ludicrous than that? Having that same hovercraft you’re strapped to catch fire.
No one ever tells you the thing you love more than anything is going to be what kills you. No one actually says those words to you, ever. People will tell you about things like “potential dangers” 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 even happen when the concrete barrier of a hairpin turn threatened to turn his craft into smoldering wreckage. No, 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 blinking like a strobe that the truth finally hit home. Only after being reminded of the very real scenario of burning alive did all three punch through his concentration and find the last strands of rational thought. Ask any other racer in the league what they’d do if their “sled” caught fire and they’d tell you the same thing the league’s safety official says before every race: “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 is also the immediate shutdown of the fusion core powering his hovercraft. And when you need thousands of pounds of thrust to continue chasing the perfect season, sometimes a little fire can keep you motivated to achieve 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 that 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).
How do I resist tossing out what I've already written? I feel like unless I write everything in one go it's not consistent enough.
>>7682841
7/10 would read
With thanks to transistors assembled by mistreated south asians governed by fruit I met a kindly treated south asian. Via cult of Instragram(praise be) she has a following one thousand six hundred thirty eight followers, 1,638 obedient hearts. They serve their goddess's beauty via absent minded binary prayers, the exchange brokered by the empire of fruit. I snapped her, "did I meet you last night?", no response, maybe she isn't real. I've been spending a lot of money on serotonin lately but I have a scheme to remedy; Walmart, a tonne of salt, time machine, Silk Road.
100 words with nno words repeating. idk it seems dumb but its the most recent thing ive written
I’m leaning against an uncomfortable bus stop bench. A slightly overweight man walks across overhanging sidewalk pieces. Some lady with sunglasses bumps into him without apologizing. Children pass through in large groups accompanied by adults, all day, at different periods from morning to noon. This old couple slowly waddles together across the street. Busses creep along. Many stop, but I decline every invitation, completely distracted with my observations. There are businessmen sitting and reading Times magazines. Who’s on their covers? Steve Jobs? No, just someone who looks like he could be. Tourists stroll around, snapping pictures of buildings, trees, birds, tapping each other, pointing out either this street performer, or that graffiti artist.
>>7682835
Alright thanks for the tip, any other commentary on the actual poem?
Rounding the corner, he came upon a cat splayed across the pavement. It was a blue short-hair, lying in that sausage way cats adopt when the weather is too hot. He slowed his pace slighty as he passed within centimetres of it. Not even a twitch, a function of extreme bravery or haziness. Hefting his workbag and resuming his pace, be gave a final glance down at the Zen animal. Its face held a look of terror. Its teeth were bared and its eyes were giant and green, with slashes of black. Dead? Paralyzed? He had to quickly process the idea that perhaps the cat wasn't fine and was undecided. It was like some bad joke, 'Schrödinger's sidewalk cat'. Was it ok? By now he was metres past. He dared not look back at the cat for fear of haunting his day, as though that were avoidable. He began to catch up to the woman in front of him as behind him, another man rounded the corner.
>>7682841
Someone already wrote 'Hovercraft Racer' bud
>>7683351
who?
Currently writing something which I think will end up as a novelle about a bureaucrat in a technocratic republic who suffers a heart attack and joins a lunatic terrorist cult. Getting it out of my laptop isn't on my plan, but if the final result plesases me I'll maybe do. What would you think?
Um, the candles flickered, the sheets were still, but all the energy in the room surrounded Roman and Kenzie. Kenzie stepped forth and... gently touched Roman's arm. He suddenly felt weak in his legs and trembled and fell as if his Achilles heel had been struck by a blade, but all it was was simply a woman's touch.
>>7683406
Matthew Reilly
>>7683417
Yeah nobody's ever used that premise before
>>7683548
Who did?
God, I hope I didn't make this too edgy/anime by making an albino character
In a maternity ward two newborns writhed and fidgeted in the arms of their parents. It had not been an easy birth, yet the mother and both children had persevered, but not without complications. The father held a small girl with his own mocha skin and bright blue eyes like his wife. But they were not truly like his wife’s eyes, nor like the eyes of any other child on this earth, not even those of her brother.
He was if anything, far stranger: pale as porcelain with platinum hair. The nurses had covered his eyes with small, tinted glasses. “It’s to protect his eyes from the light.” They said, secretly glad to not have to look at them anymore. They were disturbing things, goat-like and carmine red. One nurse pinched the silver crucifix on her necklace as she left the couple and their children, rubbing it betwixt her thumb and forefinger for comfort.
“Rasul will come soon,” the mother said morosely.
“How can he ask us to choose?” asked the father.
“He didn’t ask us,” she replied, “we made that choice ourselves.” She smiled softly at the boy in her arms. He felt lighter than he should be. She knew what the doctors saw when they looked at him, that one day he would be a monster, but he was her monster. “I’ve thought of a name,” she whispered. “Maxwell.”
“And she will by Maryam.” Said the father. He grimaced at the thought of parting with either of them. “He will be a difficult child.”
“Difficult children need the most care.”
“And she doesn’t?”
“Of course she does,” she whispered sweetly. “But you know wherever she is she will find it. Her eyes alone will be the world’s moral compass. We will be all he has.”
“Have you chosen” a voice cooed from the window sill.
“Yes,” the mother and father said in unison.
>>7683315
>lying in that sausage way
this is the greatest fucking description I have ever seen. But seriously, it's fairly good. Engaging, readable. I already feel concern for that cat, and it has an ominousness to it. keep it up
>>7683219
you fixed the by, but I just discovered another double:
>this old couple
>this street performer
>>7683679
>you fixed the by, but I just discovered another double
fuuuuuu. ok. thanks!
I wrote this while at school today. Really like the themes and the imagery as also pretty nice.
A parting in the icy morning fog.
Akin to Clouds though not as fed.
The narrow gap leads from my open door
to my summer garden bed.
So, strolling through the claustrophobic walls,
Pounding with timid tufts to my brow,
Leaving my footprints broken on the grass,
I feel so purposed now.
The dirt is frozen, hard, and rough to touch.
I cut my finger on the soil.
Nothing has differed save the rumbling fog,
who's closed my path in roil.
Alone with empty stakes, the misty walls,
and dirt that mocks my pointless use:
I've tilled this land for generations now
and yet to grow much produce.
>>7683679
I want to read more of this, and now.
>>7683806
That is the reaction I was hoping for. I'm working now but I make slow progress
>>7682659
i like it
>>7683793
>Really like the themes and the imagery as also pretty nice
nice complimenting yourself senpai
>>7683896
If I don't do it no one else will.
>>7683881
Thanks brother. If I may ask, what did you like about it?
The shouting of a friend quickly becomes annoying; you want him to stop, but you don’t have the balls to tell him. You’re viewing the world from a low angle: everything seems bigger, moving outwards, as if every object were innately evil; Only when high is the truth seen. Nervous twitches and readjustments. Paranoia doesn’t set in the normal way: a proposition for the mother’s pasta is enough to send you emotionally spiraling, but still you remain physically static - no chances: they can’t find out; As if every muscle in you were frozen. A friend makes a joke and you’re the only one who laughs; Your lone, jovial, bark reverberates in your head. The air feels empty: You’ve offended everyone present. They’re all distracted - turned towards the tv - but you still feel like everything they do is a disguisement for their actual goal: they are spies. Emotionally oppressive: a force field of emotionality surges in diffracted waves out of the planet’s core; the human mind. The rain scratches the window. The slightest sounds exemplify themselves. Texts seem like they will be taken the wrong way. The sarcasms are more apparent than straight meanings. A mistake in typing; an obsession with the overuse of semi-colons; an inability to hyphen with certainty. Writing is unapproachable. You feel as though it would make you happy, but you know that you’d never put enough work in. Maybe this way of thinking can be changed. Your head throbs. You’re paranoid that your host’s parents know. They’ll tell. They’re telling them right now on the phone. Fuck. They’re coming down the stairs. They know. Bananas in pyjamas style. Those crafty yellow fuckers - bananas could never collect the funds to afford pyjamas. Propaganda. Sing. Joints crumble. How long has it been. Singing. Singing. How long? who gnol? who gaol? The battle fly of the ages; frying lightly, in olive soil, the essence that ingratiates the myszicks with lice. Creep weeps bleakly: bleat sheep steeply. Fuck. The singing long ceased (who gaol?). Deft apprentice of a master’s training. The peak of the mind. Shit man. The training with the master starts as they all do. I was climbing a steep mountain; no voodoo priest had the gall to live any lower than cloud level: the smog, the prostitution, the destruction of a once graciously ignatius empirical sector who thought that I did not ingest that he would often create things that I usually ate. Gracious Graced. My training complete. Reverberate echoes gosh on the fine frail frame.
>>7683926
True, because your piece was trash
>>7683965
What is the literary significance of changing from second to first person in the last part?
>>7683976
it's shit dude; i was too high to have any idea of what i was writing. I just get my kicks from anonymous people insulting my dumb writing.
>DUDE WEED LMAO
Guys, my workshop director told me I had a "gift" after class today! You are reading the words of a genius/future bestseller.
>>7683965
The prose is technically complicated (perhaps needlessly so), but can't say the piece made me feel anything considering all the fancy word combinations
>>7683970
Care to elaborate? I'll take trash but if you could inform me to as why then I'll stop patting myself on the back and focus on elements that make me less trash.
>>7683980
Wow, now I feel foolish for giving your piece the time of day, you stoner trash
>>7683990
Lol I was just kidding man, your piece is okay
>>7683996
I guess I took this too seriously. Egg on my face I suppose.
>>7683806
I hope you like this anon, I had trouble keeping the style consistent
The three-o’-clock bell rang loudly, and weary adolescents began to pack their notebooks and pencils into their bags. Max slipped his arm under the strap of his knapsack and left without speaking to anyone. He had an arrangement with his classmates. They wouldn’t harass him, steal his shades, or fill his bag with yoghurt, and he wouldn’t talk to them, electrocute them, or put some creepy albino curse on them. He was not, as far as he knew, any more capable of casting hexes than he was flying by flapping his arms, but the electrocution clause was based on a precedent. That home-made taser glove was still somewhere in his closet, probably in an old shoe box.
As he passed through the halls the crowd parted around him, as if they feared he was sticky or contagious. Down the stairs, out the door, across the street, into the subway. Max leafed through his bag for his reader. It was an older model, long out of production, with a physical keyboard and a small storage capacity. He favored it because it had free wireless and an e-ink screen, which he found easier on the eyes.
At the moment he was reading a pop physics book about the big bang. It never ceased to amaze him how outlandish creation stories could be, even with the myth stripped away. If anything, it seemed crazier than anything a preacher could come up with.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” Called a scruffy bell ringer who had boarded the car. “The end of days is upon us! We live in the darkest of dark times, where faggots can marry and jews can walk freely in the streets!”
Max tried to ignore the man and read in peace, but the preacher had quite a set of lungs on him. “Let it be known that god curses the atheists and homo enablers, with HIV, cancer, and syphilis! Corinthians 6:9” He swung the bell wildly, with little care for what or who was in its path. “We of the Blood Of Christ World Mission Church ask that all who have Jesus in their hearts donate what they can to help save the world from sin!”
The man was lurching closer now and Max could smell him now, unwashed and sweaty, with a mix of piss, beer and yeasty funk. He swung the bell in a sweeping arc, smacking the reader from Max’s hand and snapping its screen under foot.
“Are you going to pay for that?” Max snapped incredulously.
“Pay for what young man?” the preacher asked innocently.
“My fucking book!”
“Son, the only book you need is the lord’s book, which I would be happy to provide.”
The train ground to a halt, and as the door opened the car emptied leaving only Max and the preacher. Max breathed slowly through his mouth. Him being angry wouldn’t fix anything. Besides, there was fun to be had. “Oh, I would love a copy,” he said, taking off his sun glasses.
Oh wait, I forgot to critique others here >>7684029
>>7683965
damn dude. You write schizophrenia better than I ever could. No offense intended, but do you have personal experience with it?
I like the imagery and the rhyme scheme. What I don't get is why you call it a "summer" garden bed when it's clearly winter in the poem
>>7684040
To sort of give it a time sensibility. Like, the speaker had a garden in summer, but then is clearly winter, so it's long past the time to be interested in the garden. But the fog making a path to it has him curious for whatever reason. Sort of I guess?
>>7683793
>while at school today
>>7684029
Cringe
>>7684114
anon, I agree. I was kind of cringing as I wrote it but I wasn't sure where I was going. I couldn't flesh out characters well in that dramatic prose. It's good for montages and overviews but not much else
Anyone want to critique this? Spent a while looking at it, but I think it needs fresh eyes. This is just the first part.
>inb4 it's terrible
---
An outline of a form, a field, a silhouette of force. If I concentrate straight ahead, I can notice slight movements in my periphery; I can sense the shape of things impending in their fate. My premonitions feel like metal filings inching sideways to some distant magnet. It’s something with my brain, I don’t know what to call it. Perhaps it’s no stranger than arthritic twinges in the joints by which others can predict the weather.
I’m playing chess. I come here every Saturday. Around us, the trophy heads of wild game adorn each wall of the wood-paneled lodge: elk and antelope, wildebeest and boar. However, instead of glass eyes, the taxidermist has inserted ball bearings into each socket. Their silvered, shifting images make the heads look more alive. The falling sun now smolders, reflected off a zebra, as shadows from the fence grid crosswise on the tiles.
My opponent is a gaunt and sinewy old man who’s lost his bottom jaw. The flames that growl down in his belly leap into his blood-rimmed eyes. Curled up next to him in his wheelchair sits a pink and hairless lapdog. The old man likes to squeeze the tiny pimples that infest its skin. I think this man used to be a salesman or a sermonizer, I’m not sure which. He’s never told me. He’s never told me anything.
I know I will lose this game. I see each move play out: the bishop now sliding down to take my queen, my feeble attempt to castle, the knight that hopscotches to place me into check, my tactics of diversion and delay until a pawn inches forward for the final mate. I’ve read it like a script, yet have no will to act differently. I know how my wife will break my heart, as well; she’ll pick a fight with me at her company picnic then drive away with the woman she will later marry. My only child will jump from a bridge in winter in Minneapolis when he turns seventeen. I know exactly how I will die, too: 4:21 pm on a Tuesday as I’m startled by a garter snake while pulling weeds from my garden. Yes, I am still startled. The shock is that I’ve seen it all before.
I grasped my phallus in my hand, and with a firm hold, squeezed with force, with rage. The sun was beginning to rise and I could feel the morning rays of light, weak and poorly rested, pierce into my bodily pores, illuminating the millions of tiny caves. I could feel my body absorb the solar energy – was I a photosynthetic being, after all? This energy rushed into my head for a breif moment, and like a rollacoaster at the apex of its course, jolted straight down my arms into my hand, allowing me to squeeze tighter. Tighter. The pain rushed up to my head and the energy rushed down into my hand. Tighter. The sun rising up from underground in an imposing manner, preparing to ravage and rape me. The head began to change colors, a cameilan of flesh, into a dark purple. Amidst the oargnge sun, I had created a scene that was at once both picturesque and primal. The sun rose further, its radius now in full view. Tighter. Pre-cum cumulated on the tip and rolled down the blackening slope onto my quivering hands. The sun had now lifted off the ground entirley; it was ready, and with one last tightening, I let out a great roar. Lions, thousands of miles away, that prowled the plains with pride, would quiver in fear at the faintest sampling of my yalp. The tides of the ocean halted in their motion and then withdrew back into the sea. I felt the molecules of the universe shake in frenzy, stars collape into mere particles, and then I knew I was complete. My phallus, now under the astounding pressure of my vice, burst into a cataclysmic aura of blood and cum. The sun smiled.
>>7684232
>cameilan
>>7684226
What is this a part of? You kind of blow your load too soon in the last paragraph there; not much room left for a story. Furthermore, the clarity with which the narrator can see the future is a lot stronger than "slight movements in his periphery, the shape of things impending in their fate." Strange phrase, "impending in their fate," don't really like it, needlessly wordy.
The grotesque, surreal imagery of the middle paragraphs is interesting, but seems out of place between the more mundane paragraphs around it.
I came
Erupted thick, delicious, sperm-rich, pearly white semen. The ballistic force of the ejaculation had enough power to blast any sized insect out of the sky. But it didn't end there, a steady flow of aftershock cum came pouring in all directions from the aching hole of my penis, trickling down my hand like sweet roll frosting from Skyrim.
And boy did it feel fucking GREAT. Now I need a towel or a tissue or something-
Oh ok I'll just use this tank top on my floor.
~Fin~
>>7680500
I have the word flu
Word nausea- perse
Speak words I don’t mean, I may
I should have taken the word flu vaccine
Alas, not even medecine could intervene
with my fate
Let me list off my wordlfluenza symptoms:
Explosive word vomit ensues its victims
Spewing every word that comes to their mind
A request to stop will surely be declined
We sound like preaching auctioneers
We will bring you to laughter or bring you to tears
We’ll tell our deepest, darkest, greatest fears
To any and everyone who will volunteer
And this sickness
Whimsical sounding indeed,
Would be the band of me
My existence
The quickness
Of my speeding mind car
Was absolutely bizzare
I’d gone so far
And now I’m gonna crash
Into this wall I’ve built for myself
I wanted to go fast
That’s all it was
How naive of me
To think that it would last
I would stop at nothing to reach my objective
But it was only because my brakes were defective
No, this was the wrong move
The wrong turn
Where did I go wrong, I thought
As I watched my world
Burn
We talk about phoenixes
Rising from what would be ash
For me? Dirty kleenexes
Not into, but through
That sturdy looking wall
I’m invincible, that’s the principle
I’m working off of
Yeah, it’s my life
It’s what I think of as I battle through my strife
Because no matter how sturdy that wall looks,
It ain’t as hard as they’ll tell you in books
Because that wall will come crumbling down
If you give it anything so light as a frown
>>7683948
idk man, has a nice atmosphere, and it didn't feel like you had opened a thesaurus, like most people on here
>>7681171
underrated post
>>7684354
I chuckled and then was sad because the surgery left me barren
Im probably the worst writer ever. Fyi. My friend did some of the stuff. Just want an overall critique and yea go ahead be rough. I want you to make me cry. Its the only way i will get better. My stories are the wierd short stories mostly wierd af. Also some poems.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B019YG5QHC/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1455166597&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=paradigm+for+the+abyssal+mind
"Do you often feel tired, achy, or without motivation? Do activities that used to interest you now seem like nothing more than ways to distract yourself from the misshapen and dissatisfying story that is your life? Do you resent your loved ones and both pity and hate yourself? Then it's time to cleanse and rejuvenate your colon," -- so sayeth HealingJuices.org, either the eleventh or fifteenth such detox site James has read in the past hour and a half, and the most moving of them all, so far.
"The colon is the intersection of some of the most important lines of chakra energy in the human body; therefore if it is filled with toxins, or rocks, the entire organism is thrown out of balance." James hasn't remembered falling asleep for the past three days, though he knows it's happened. "Healing Juice's carefully balanced mixture of raw vegetables, rejuvenating crystals, and mineral water will vacate your colon and, in the process, realign your life." James's fingernails so long now that they're what's actually pushing down on the characters of his keyboard, when he types.
"Order now and ease your pain."
The seat barely makes a noise as James rises from it and lanks his way to the one bathroom in the house. If you looked at a clock right now it'd say 4:34, AM. He shuts the door and then, after standing in the dark for a couple of seconds, turns on the light. He sees himself: the heavy oily curls of hair on his head, the two huge brown eyes, the shoulders just as wide as his hips, forearms you could, at this point, encircle with your thumb and forefinger.
He doesn't blink.
With great care James opens the cabinet behind the mirror and takes out the electric razor. It hums to life at the click of a thick, satisfying little button, and he starts feeding his hair to it. Eagerly it chews through curls and waves, spitting out fragments of follicles in big semi-connected clumps
He looks at the fuzzy skull-like visage that his name now picks out of all the objects in the world, and then turns the lights off again.
He stands in the bathroom like that for a good long while before leaving.
the beginning of a re-write of >>7684029 Honestly I like this one even less. The last one was /r/atheist edgy but this one is just plain boring. Can someone suggest how I could fix the last one?
As anyone could have predicted, the boy’s childhood was not a particularly happy one. With vulnerable eyesight and ghost-white skin, it would have been unwise for him to spend much time out beneath the sun. He made few friends due to his isolation, and lost many due to his deformities. While few parents in this city would be concerned if their child played with an albino, goat eyes with blood-colored irises spooked even the most secular.
He took quickly to solitary pursuits such as reading and tinkering, and in time developed an impressive scholastic aptitude. By the age of 13 he was more knowledgable in most regards than many adults. “We expect great things from you,” became a customary phrase in his life, but it did not take long before he came to understand the addendum implied, “great, terrible things.”
Covering his eyes with the darkest lenses and the longest bangs could buy him many hours of normalcy, but sooner or later someone would see his bar-shaped irises from the side and that respite would come to an awkward end.
>>7684704
wow, that started hilarious and got depressing fast. The 'therefore if it is filled with toxins, or rocks' part falls flat though. I'm not sure if that was a joke or metaphor but either way it doesn't work
>>7684361
Your rhyme scheme needs work. it's simplistic and lacks a palpable rhythm
>>7684677
Im gonna assume no one has actually read this :/
this sucks but it's my first thing so heh
“The water always tasted funny,” said Marcel. “Things kept gurgling up through the pipes, the hell did I know? Nobody ever told me different. So I drank it, we all drank it, you either drank it or you died, but most everyone ended up dead anyway. Well, most everyone ends up dead anyway, anyway.”
He tapped his cigarette on the table, dispersing the tobacco evenly and deeply throughout, then peeled away the empty paper at the top. He put the grotesque tube of filth to his lips, the third of God knows how many there were that night and God knows how many that man inhaled over the course of his lifetime, and before his hand had even moved away another pair of hands were there, this one cradling fire, scorching and burning the paper and tobacco together until it stayed smoldery. Marcel nodded vaguely at these hands, and they disappeared back beyond my periphery, just a barely witnessed flicker of light at the match was shook out. Who even was that? The curt, pretty hands suggested a girl, but a youngish boy was also a possibility. Would he have one of his sons up this late just to run errands? Whoever it was was well trained in being a servant to him, so unless Marcel beat on his children (which was also a possibility) I doubted a boy as young as the hands had suggested could be that obedient, that steady, that precise, especially when handling fire. Babies are like puppies: if something hurts them, they’ll be adverse to that thing their whole life long. You don’t light and handle matches that easily without burning yourself a few times, but the hands had seemed so delicate, so soft and unblemished, certainly free from any burns or scars…
“You listening or what?” Marcel nudged my leg with his toes, and I started in my seat, eyes refocusing on his. I bite back against a grin.
“Suppose I faded out for a minute. You were talking about the water your apartment got when you were a kid, right?” He took a drag as I said this, and I brought my glass up to my mouth to block the smoke, should he decide to blow it in my face in his frustration. The swift twist of a dull knife the whiskey made in the corners of my mouth were hardly better than the arid smog. I was also on my third drink of the night, God knows how many more.
>>7684029
Oh god this for bad really quickly. Delete everything after the preacher knocks the e-reader out of the characters hands. And change the name, Max is too YA.
>>7685113
I've scrapped pretty much everything after the first paragraph and changed that heavily to mesh with the style of the original material. I'm still working on it but after two flop attempts it's coming out a lot better
>>7685113
Oh, also, Max stays. The name is symbolically important to the story
Okay this time it definitely feels better and more uniform in style
The three-o’-clock bell rang loudly, and weary adolescents began to pack their notebooks and pencils into their bags. Max slipped his arm under the strap of his haversack and left without speaking to anyone. He had an unspoken arrangement with his classmates. He would pass by untouched, his possessions unmolested, his dignity not insulted. In turn he would not speak to them unless spoken to, nor would he unsettle them with his presence or bring a curse or electrocution upon them. Maxwell could not, as far as he knew, place a curse upon another person but in one unforgotten instance he had utilized a home-made taser.
Upon arriving home, Maxwell did the same three things he always did. It was a sacred ritual he had committed to muscle memory by the age of twelve. He placed his haversack carefully on his desk, kicked off his shoes, and collapsed fully clothed upon his bed, where he would rest until dinner.
His was the room of a nyctophilliac, a habit born of light sensitivity and social isolation. One wall was a book shelf as tall as he was organized chronologically from his first picture book to several books on history, pop science, and occult esoterica. The occult was not a system of belief for him, he knew there were no gods or demons or magic spells, it was an interest and a subject of daydreams but nothing more. Reality, he thought, was a much stranger fish.
There were fewer recent books as of late, and the top shelf of the book case was a charging station for his reader, an older model with a smaller capacity and a physical keyboard. He favored the outdated version for its free 3g service and e-ink screen which he found much easier on the eyes.
A work bench was set up on the opposite side of the room, with various half-formed and gutted electronics sitting beside meticulously ordered actuators, microcontrollers, sensors, and other assorted circuitry components.
>>7685096
Two problems: your speeches and how the narrator refers to themselves. The speech is pretty accurate to how people talk, but not to how people talk in stories. the way characters speak has to be slightly less realistic than real life to preserve the flow, not too unrealistic mind you, but if you get too close it's annoying to read. As for how the narrator describes themselves, it seems like they don't know anything about themselves, not even if they're a boy or girl.
>>7685096
i liked it desu
>>7680500
Paint me with a short skirt
and tall heels—with shopping bags
at each hip down a Paris street
glistening with the evening’s rain.
Paint me by the bath as I look
out on the future on a white plain.
Paint me in the red curves
of thick velvets, long hair
brushed in the candlelight.
Draw me lying prone, open to
my daydreams.
See me in my best light
or not at all.
I’ll hide in the stains of
the coffee round your
girlfriend’s teeth,
in the mosaic pattern on your
kitchen tile floors.
As you die the front of
your hair, I’ll peer from
behind the mirror,
you will not see my stare.
I can stand by a window
in Le Louvre, let the
sunlight fall and create shadows
that circle me during the day,
or I can find a hidden stair
in the maze, and curl up within
my frame.
In stillness or grace
In the forms of your trace
I will stay in minds
as I shutter the blinds.
>>7680546
too much repetition ruins the pacing. other than that, liked the voice and the imagery focus rather than descriptive storytelling
>>7685149
How? If it's justifiably good I'll let it stay
>>7680570
too vague? i like the unique metaphors and imagery you're going for, but there's some sort of story that I'm not catching. or i do, but i don't see the point of the story, the theme, the meaning. the words are trying too hard to be pretty and miss the point of expressing is more than prettiness.
>>7684704
I like it, but the tense shift ruined it, when it says "If YOU looked at a clock right now". Such a singular use of a tense change is not good.
>>7680690
very strong theme, and I liked the rhyme for the most part. 2nd stanza's rhyme comes off strained and trips up the rhythm. would not use wall twice in a stanza. use a pronoun, make us remember the point of the whole poem so it hits us harder when you use the word at the very end.
>>7685219
Toth Tetragrammaton isn't just the god of the pigeons. They worship him and he takes their form but he's something far more ancient and far more powerful. He's the physical embodiment of electromagnetism and some of his essence exists in Max. Max is named after clerk maxwell, whose eponymous set of equations describes the entirety of classical electromagnetism
>>7680732
cliche turns of phrase and a theme that's been overdone. But I really don't care cause that rhythm is everything to me. I'll read a thousand stanzas more of the same stuff no matter what you do with it because of that rhythm and line breaks. It never failed too, I was waiting for it to trip, to break, to fall into another pace, but no, always held it. really nice.
The first thing she noticed about him was that he hadn’t come to the register to order any food. Instead, he had walked straight to a booth and sat there, his hands clasped together and his head turned to the window, staring out into the misty day. That old, impenetrable mist. Jenny watched him for a while, her pen resting on the yellow note pad, but all he did was stare out of the window, as if there was something other than the pearly fog to see.
“Jenny.”
She jerked her head up, and there was Peter, her boss, looking as ridiculous as ever in his beige top, his white chinos with the tie tucked into the waistband, its black clip perpendicular with a strange military precision. He jerked his head at the man, mouthing “get on with it.”
She smiled and placed the pot of coffee back in the grinder. The curls in her dirty blonde hair bounced and her heels clicked as she walked over the tiled floor towards the booth. She expected him to at least look up at her as she approached, maybe reach over to the menu to browse, yet he remained staring out at the mist, maybe hoping to see a passing taxi, or even someone walking past. She came to his side, smiling sweetly, and waited for him to turn and look. He didn’t.
She cleared her throat.
He slowly turned to look at her, his eyes fixed on the window for as long as possible until his head was almost facing towards her. Then, finally, his eyes darted to hers, two great, dark brown orbs stared up at her, watery and almost glazed over. They were only slightly darker than his skin. It was clear his hairline had receded slightly, and a tinge of grey was appearing in small veins through the black hair tightly hugging his scalp.
“Hello,” she said sweetly, flashing her smile at him.
He smiled weakly, his gaze falling from hers to his hands.
“Coffee?” she asked, her pen hovering just above the note pad. His mouth opened and closed several times for a few moments, before he swallowed, and nodded slowly. She smiled, and asked if he took milk, still looking at him. He shook his head.
“Sugars?” she asked, and he held up two disinterested fingers. “Right away, sir.” She scratched the order into her pad, and walked back to the diner desk.
The coffee beans had just finished grinding, and she pressed the button to release the hot, black liquid into the cup. It fell gracelessly in, the black filling the pot until it was just below the lip. She pressed the button again, and turned around. Peter stood there, his tie clip glinting at her eye, catching the light from the bulbs above. “Jesus, Pete,” she said, “don’t sneak up on me like that.”
>>7685096
You're really good at purposefully leaving some description mysterious and vague without it being confusing and unable to be pictured. I pictured it so well, it was like an anime playing out in my head, with strong voice actors and a shadowy figure just so. With that, you don't need that sentence: who even was that? Reader knows it's a mysterious person, reader knows the narrator doesn't even know. Narrator also has a diferent voice in the rest of the piece, authoritative and objective and suddenly a subjective who even is that, ruins the great, full, textured sentences you have in the rest of the narration. Dialogue is engaging and dynamic as well.
>>7685236
err, hard going. the first two sentences can be made into a succinct, short opener. He walked in heading straight for a booth, sitting there with hands clasped... of course it's the first thing we notice, the narration is coming from her pov and it's the first sentence uttered. i like the mist, i hope it's a symbol or comes up later in the story. description of boss man was a tad long. and give the girl some edge, she's "sweetly" doing everything. smiled sweetly is used too often and gives me nothing on her character. other than she's sweet. even if she smiled politely, means there's something going on in her brain, tells me she smiles just for professionality's sake but is judging beneath that.
>>7685260
Okay, thank you very much for the critique, I'll take that on board and change the waitress. Is the "hard going" necessarily bad? I guess it makes it less accessible.
Here's the next part:
“What’s he here for?” he asked, his head slightly at an angle, a vague, disinterested look on his face.
“I didn’t ask-”
“Well, do. We can’t have people coming in here and sitting around forever, can we Jenny?” he asked, expecting no answer.
You smug prick, she wanted to say. Instead, she only smiled again. “Of course not.”
“Right. So, get on with it.”
Miserable bastard.
She stepped around him, plastering a smile on her face as she did so. She dropped two sugar cubes from the diner counter into a small bowl when she passed it, then picked it up. As she walked back to the man, the smile became a touch more genuine, taking on some warmth. She cleared her throat again as she neared him, and he looked up. It occurred to her that he hadn’t moved, even slightly, since going to get the coffee.
“Here you are,” she said softly, pouring the coffee into a cup already on the table. She dropped the sugar in, and presented a spoon from her apron pocket. He took it, smiling faintly, and stirred his coffee. She looked at him for a second, before asking, “So what’s your name, hon?”
He looked back up at her, his stirring hand pausing for a moment. He coughed and said, almost too quietly for her to hear, “Ray.”
She smiled again and said back, “Nice to meet you, Ray. I’m Jenny.”
He nodded, and went back to stirring his coffee.
She glanced back over at Peter, her mouth now relaxed, and her eyebrows raised. He nodded insistently, and she mouthed back “OK”, perhaps a bit too aggressively. She turned back to Ray, and sat down opposite him in the booth. After a couple of moments, he looked up at her, as if he was seeing her for the first time.
“How come you’re here, Ray?”
He looked up to meet her gaze, holding it for a few seconds, before looking back at the cup. He continued to stir the coffee, his lips twisting and his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. He cleared his throat. “I was, um… walking down to the bridge, and I saw this diner, and um… I thought, ‘man I am hungry,’” he laughed softly, his straight mouth twitching at the edges.
“Doc..*Huff*..hmm..ahhhh..FUCKING HELP ME, MAN! *AOL dial up noises* My leg fell off!” Was what this TI-8400 calculation bot yelled at me in excruitiating pain. It’s barely 8;27. I just got in and haven’t even sat down for my morning ritual of coffee and shitposting on the virtual space, but here’s this smhuck. TI-8400 bots are notorious for being shipped with defective parts. It’s crazy, I remember using one of this robots ancestors, the TI-84 back in middle school. Back then those were simple graphing calculators. Now…Now in the years 3030 we have robots that are on par with humans. I get paid to fix them. I’m a doctor!...Well not a real doctor, but a robot doctor. *sigh* It pays the bills, and gets me out of the house so I don’t care.
I never quite introduced myself, my name is Dr. Dank Buds M.D. ever since the great sexual fallout of 2738, we’ve been using robots. You don’t understand? Let me explain, it started in Japan, from there it took to a global wide spread. People stopped…you know…fucking. Populations stood at a standstill. Too much of a divide between the sexes and all that jazz. So man-kind started building robots. At first they were shitty tinker toy bots built for lonely fucks to have drinks with, then they got more advanced with time. We built them in the image of humans, for the sexually frustrated. This was to stop folks from going on violent rampaged when they couldn’t get laid. Now robots are just like regular people in our society, they handle most of the jobs no one wants, and they even ended racism (via becoming the
Part of a larger piece I wrote two weeks ago.
Aside from the solitude needed in order to take drugs, the tranquility of the moonlit world called to us. Days and evenings were ruled by the jeering, reckless brutes of college life who were caught in an endless dispute of “my cock is bigger than yours,” with homoerotic overtones. A plague of stress and anxiety seemed to infect every student in the university as fall wore on. The night offered us an escape from the oppressive atmosphere brought on by the sun. For me, going to class was my only daytime activity. I can’t say the same for you, since we never spoke during the day. I only remember seeing you return home with a glazed expression and messy jet black hair. We both needed a dark place to chain smoke our lungs to death in quiet contemplation of our disordered lives.
After three months of living together in that small run down house near campus, I’m certain we never really understood each other. Our conversations never reached a degree of intimacy or friendship. Most times, we would avoid interaction, pretending and hoping the other wasn’t actually real or alive. You initiated a discussion only when you were buzzing with eighty milligrams of adderall. I became the sole recipient of your boiling thoughts. You spent hours telling me about how Friedrich Nietzsche started World War II, and explaining to me how the trope of “deadly, sexy woman” was displayed in Klytemnestra. I simply listened with a vague interest that eventually turned into exhaustion. You expressed a deranged obsession with all forms of art. An interest in philosophy gave you the desire to reinvent yourself in order to become an ideal image of humanity. You boasted about how you shed your pride fourteen times, and were ready to become the second coming of Christ. Religions seemed disposable to you, as you cycled from Atheism to Buddhism, to Christianity, then to Paganism. You referred to this practice of rebuilding the soul as a form of mental alchemy. My role was that of a mental mirror in which you examined yourself. I assumed the familiar mask of a student who was being provided all of the lectures that I had missed during the short course of my life.
http://pastebin.com/6XceMqX2
I wrote this some years ago, back when I was certifiably crazy, before I got on anti-psychotics.
It's a true story.
>>7686185
Tired, trite, tacky, and probably other words beginning in t as well. Just terrible. Strange decision to address the other character as "you," makes it seem more like a diary entry or a letter than a work of fiction. It's difficult to say without the rest of the story, but your narrator is just as detestable as you're trying to make the other character seem.
Given how much /lit/ likes to rip on alt-lit for just being masturbatory bullshit about being sad and on drugs, it's shocking that so many of you seem to write just that.
>>7686340
Hey, at least something happens. Your prose is fairly shaky, seems like you didn't bother to edit this at all or anything like that. Some corny stuff, like the "man on heavy psychedelics" bit, or how you end paragraphs with sentences like, "And go insane I did," or the endless harping on the hunter/hunted thing. It's spelled "crescendo." Anyway, all in all this is a good enough chase scene, just a little melodramatic, and flawed in its execution.
The Train
His crusted laces snapped against the icy pavement as he stepped out onto the platform. It was past dusk, and the moon hung low in the deep black sky. The air was sharp and cold. The snow fell softly. The lone man next to him, wearing a square hat and a long dark coat of black, said the train would be here shortly. "You must be patient," he said, staring off into the night, "the train will be here soon. You will see it faint in the distance, and it will look at first like a candle burning. That's when you will know it is there." His old voice was gentle, and indicated a sincere understanding. He felt that he could trust the man, and so he listened with childlike ears. "It will soothe you when you see it, and assure you of its certain presence. It will doubtless be a tremendous relief. But the longer you wait, the colder you'll get, and you will begin to question if it will ever actually come. You will stand chilled and shaken by this incessantly bitter wind, and feel as if your time is wasted. I urge you now, you must endure—through all the cold bestows upon you. You must allow yourself to be warmed by the mere promise of its coming, and always keep Faith in its certain arrival. For as long as you do, it will grow brighter, and rival the moon in its sizeable glory. It will appear, you'll see, as two eyes seeking—and then you will know it is coming for sure." All the while he spoke, his eyes remained fixed, as if he could actually see the train without any tangible evidence of its reality. His careful, calculated diction suggested some kind of special insight into the matter, and kept his sole listener intrigued. "It may overwhelm you though, and it may confuse you, and it may even consume you in its screeching rapture. It will certainly shake the very ground that you stand on. But then you will hear as its bells come chiming, and know it's arrived then to take you away."
>>7686979
Dense moments passed. The hostile, biting wind grew harsher, and the ever-thickening squall of snow piled up on their motionless shoulders. He just stood there, silently, staring out into the distance, thinking intently about what the man had just told him. Only the constant moon above filled the black void of the starless sky. There was something in the tone of the man's voice that made his words so compelling. They instilled in him this sense of unyielding Hope. He felt that he could believe in what this stranger had professed. Perhaps it was that he reminded him so much of his father—a prudent old man—and he could cling to that like some kind of crutch. He could not think of any reason why he should doubt his sincerity, for was he not standing in waiting as well, subject the same to the cold tyranny of winter? And yet, as he stood there, the train would not come. His lips soon cracked, and his cheeks turned a ghostly white. With every breath he took, a phantom of vapour danced ominously before him. His vision became clouded, and his knees began to ache. The oppressive cold quickly became insufferable. I must endure, he thought to himself. I must find warmth in the promise of its coming. I must keep faith in its certain arrival. But still, it did not come. It had yet to even appear as a glint on the horizon.
>>7686985
Then suddenly, clutching at his chest, the old man took a feeble step forward. The sound of his boot crunching the ice beneath alarmed his lone acquaintance. He reached out so as to support the old man, but was met with a stubborn wave of the arm. "I'm okay," he said, after a brief but ill coughing fit. "I'm okay. Just a tickle in the throat. It's a chilly night out. I'm okay." He stepped back so as to give his compatriot some space. This was the first indication of any weakness in the man's solid demeanour. It came as a strangely unforeseen shock to him. He, almost against his own will, had placed so much credence in what this man had proclaimed, it was unfathomable to think that his sage-like words could perhaps be no more than conjecture. They suddenly began to lose their prophetic value. How long has this old man been standing out here? He thought at last. There was no way any fool could be driven to such insanity unless he knew for sure what the final reward was. But how could he? It was a question he had yet to ponder, for the entire time he was so completely entranced by the man's ardent resolve. How did he know that the train would be coming with such confidence? He must have seen it before, surely. But he was too afraid to ask him. There had to have been some kind of substantial reason why the man had been waiting here so long. There had to have been some merit in what the man had so zealously claimed. Otherwise, what? What was the reason for his being here? What is the reason for my being here? The thought that no train would come to provide them with shelter from this ever-worsening, ever-permeating cold was preposterous. It was absolutely Absurd. He could not accept the prospect. He just couldn't—the consequences were too profound. And so he stood there, conflicted—shaken but faithful, uncertain but hopeful—knowing then that that was his only choice. There was no other way. He had to find warmth in the promise of its coming. He had to keep faith in its certain arrival. Or else… Or else there was nothing.
The old man broke out into another brief but violent coughing fit. He cleared his throat, then rubbed his tired eyes. His long grey beard—varnished now with a grim layer of frost—swayed ever so gently with the permanent wind. "You must be patient," he said, staring dimly down upon the tracks, "the train will be here soon."
boiler
my boiler leaks
never the time to fix it
i hear it every night
five in the morning
i can't sleep
i hear a weeping
i can't discern
dead tired
maybe it's crying
my boiler leaks
never the time to fix it
i hear it every night
1/2
Just typed this up based on a weird dream I had. Gonna turn it into a story.
The Cat
N had a sassy cat which he loved dearly. The little black creature, though, had been burdened from birth with an unfortunate affliction of the joints that left it completely locked-in and immobile. It always seemed to be in pain. The poor thing was entirely dependent upon N's unwavering care to live a comfortably tolerable existence. But N was to leave town on business for an indeterminate amount of time, and would need somebody to take care of the cat during his indefinite absence. It was no easy task, and required hours of tireless effort to look after the little demon. N asked R, his neighbour, if only for convenience sake, if he would kindly take the job, and R, being his neighbour, wishing to avoid any future disgruntlement between them, dutifully obliged. R was not the hospitable type though—unemotional, rarely displaying concern for anything beyond his immediate interests—and could not have been prepared for what this commitment entailed. The cat was kept in a small crib built for an infant, of white ivory stilts, and when not wrapped up cozily in layers of warm white sheets with just its scruffy little head poking out, lay there nakedly exposed—a ratty black, crippled and decrepit bundle of bones. It was a sad sight, but R didn't care much, and expected that he would visit it twice a day to tend to its most basic needs, and proceed with his life as he always had. It became apparent quickly that things would not be so simple.
"Obviously because it can't move, it can't eat proper cat food, so you'll have to feed it from a bottle. I've left twenty dollars on the hutch to pay for milk until I return. If I'm not back by the time it runs out, I'll make up for all the extra expenses when I am," said N, adjusting the collar of his long black trench coat as he prepared to depart. The low brim of his black trilby cast a dim shadow across his pallid face. "Oh, and if you touch the turntable, be careful. It's old and expensive. And those records—they're difficult to replace… Anyway, thanks again. I'm sure in time you'll grow to really love the little monster." He opened the door and stepped out into the foggy new dawn before him, slamming it shut behind him with a startling violence.
>>7687110
2/2
Imagining that the sound must have disturbed the cat in the other room, R went in to check on it. The cat lay absolutely still in the centre of the crib, bundled up like an Eskimo in a cocoon of white bed sheets. He noticed immediately as he entered the room the piercing, judgemental gaze of the cat's sharp yellow eyes as it stared at him with contempt from within its stilted throne. They looked as if to tell him to fuck off now—you are not welcome in my divine presence. R approached with caution. "Hello…," he said hesitantly, peering down at the face from above. It just stared back at him with those scornful eyes. He decided not to say anything more after that, because talking to a cat, he determined, was stupid, and it probably wasn't going to say anything in return. He wasn't sure if the cat, in its feeble state, was even capable of uttering a meow. The thing proved otherwise, however, when R reached down in an affectionate attempt to give its tattered little head a scratch, and it responded by producing the most wretchedly shrill screech he had ever heard from such a creature. He almost leaped back in astonishment at just how utterly and unexpectedly disgusting the sound was. His hands clasped to his mouth, R could think of nothing to do but stare wide-eyed at the little beast within the cage; and it too, recognizing the look of disgust on his face, stared back with even more vigilant resentment. Well, aren't you just deathly… thought R. Slowly easing his hands from his face, he studied the cat's penetrating eyes. He concluded after careful inspection that there was intelligence behind those eyes, and that the cat must have him, his disposition, and the entire situation completely figured out by now, within the constraints of its brittle little skull.
>>7680500
Cabe: God, Lain. You smoke so much you’ll turn into a cigarette!
They look at each other.
Cabe: Lain, no!
Lain is shaking uncontrollably.
Cabe: Ohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgod!
Lain drops to his knees and grabs his stomach, screams.
Cabe: I am not about to watch my best friend turn into a cigarette! [pulls out pistol]
Lain immediately stands.
Lain: I was joking! What’s wrong with you?!
Cabe: Don’t scare me like that!
Lain: Don’t point a gun at me!
Cabe: Oh, come on. It’s a pellet gun.
Lain: Really?
Cabe: Yeah.
Lain starts shaking again.
Cabe shoots Lain to death.
Cabe: Oh, shit.
>>7685231
Great YA material. Trash, but good enough trash to sell to brain dead teenagers.
>>7687163
This is awful.
For my playwriting class we all brought in a small piece of writing that had language we found interesting. We got in groups of three. I brought in the first verse and refrain of Emily by Joanna Newsom. One guy brought in a small part of The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain. One girl brought in a Philip Larkin poem. Then our instructor made us write using the style of the piece we brought in and write from the perspective of the speaker as if that speaker wants something from one of the other two characters. I did this and changed Emily to Eleanor because using the same name would be extra lame.
The frog and old Smiley Webster all say that
The bread of the birch is the base of the belly's beloved
And the whimsical rhymer hoards the riches of Kaisers
As Eleanor sleeps none the wiser but whispers to me
That that man in the bar is a liar, a liar, a liar
Spinning tales of old tadpoles trapped drowning in fish bowls
Who never jump out of the fire, the fire, the fire
So I recruit Larkin and use both our voices to pull good old Eleanor back to good choices
Our lyrical boldness will bound the now-hopeless
With bricks as they sink in the river
Drowning in dampness they'll mildly panic
in stoic acceptance, their efforts invested are sunk costs like ships on Lake Huron
Me and you, Philip, my God what great teamwork
We just put quite a stir of a play on
I suppose all men must do it one day
Leave and embrace himself, learn the meaning
Find that which will guide him to superiority.
Such a quest has not made itself for me
Nor expect I that it will come soon.
I am still an infant, in the least of words
when it comes to the state of my mind.
While I may not act as one might
My spirit is still young, and unready
I do hope it grows soon, that I can become.
>>7680654
Nice.
>>7687274
become what? I feel like the whole poem was kind of like that. Second half of sentences or ideas leaving me dry with a: what the hell was this about, kind of feeling. But there's some important ideas in here somewhere, something about self-reflection and striving to be better. It's a message that needs to be said. But go deeper, keep writing, keep searching for the conclusion of the thought.
Poem I wrote yesterday for class:
Clayton
These kids are sitting in the car
But barely, ‘cause they shake like stretched wires
The hour hides them on the curb
They wait for the dude with a bag
The one with no surname,
and slurred speech
They fear cops but they won’t say it
A bored thumb clicks a lighter
The boys feel Earth pull them inside
Something like guilt is born in their guts
But it crawls along up intestines
And dies in their stomach juices
Jackson gets passed
Bag goes in sock
Lined up and well-measured
The nosebleed is worth it
Forgetting what hurts is
worth
it
too
The boys go home and watch patterns,
as they feel the air eat itself
Like the sweetly mauled bridges
that stand between their brain cells
Now occupied by emptiness
a strong affection
for apathy, and chronic lack of sleep
I would like to hold you
as one might a thing of beauty
A flower, for example:
I would take you up, and
place you in my palm
and slowly take in your air
And as I fill with ecstasy,
I would look at you and see
That you're not a flower
You're a black man.
>>7687536
Kek/10
trying to write a scene where a guy writes his crush an apology/goodbye email, how's it looking so far
“‘Bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk’, written by James Joyce and published on the first page of Finnegans Wake, effectively cursing the book to be labeled as the incomprehensible ramblings of a madman by almost everybody who ever opened the damned thing, basically means ‘the thunder of God’. ‘Bababadal’ refers to the Tower of Babel, according to scholars and historians, and the rest is derivatives of the word ‘thunder’ in several different languages.”
“What does that have to do with how I feel about you? I hope you don’t think I’m trying to impress you, because I’m not. I know you can’t feel the same way, and no amount of verbal gymnastics or literary dick-showing can change that. I just want you to understand the thunder clap that goes through me whenever I see a picture you've posted, the electricity I feel when I think you're trying to get in touch with me, how incomprehensible my thoughts and feelings seem most of the time. I'm not blaming you--”
Elliott leans back in his chair at this point, lips pursed, and watches the little line blink for a good minute or two. He thinks back to all the things he did to Emory, and whether he should be writing this at all. How slim the chances are of him getting any kind of response, other than maybe a restraining order or a stern, threatening message from a parent.
He cranes his head back and runs his hands over his face, closing his eyes for a moment. In the darkness, the past continues to replay: meeting Matthew on the band field trip; eating lunch with his new friend group; comfortably staring at the waif sitting across from him; fast friends; infatuation mistaken for love; failed attempts at flirting; the big reveal, followed by the goes-without-saying rebuff; frustration; obsession; he has to stop once he gets to the lunches down the hall, the picture, the text over the summer, the unreturned calls, the CD. With how often he thought about everything, you’d think his heart would have a great big callous on it, but it doesn’t. Everything still hurts the same as it did when he first did it, because he did it.
Under his breath, he mutters the thunderword he’s basing his letter off of. His pronunciation is usually quite good, but now it’s muffled, half-hearted. Then he whispers, “I’m sorry.”
>>7684677
Shoild inpost this thing on paste.bin ?
Slowly, without him realizing it, sleep took him, and he found himself among a chasm of charcoal black clouds. They were mountains before him, dwarfing his perceptions and stretching off endlessly in every dimension. Great forks of lightning licked, struck and spat in slow motion as he drifted aimlessly among air currents, kicking up great, glowing motes of plasma. Thunder rolled down the cliffs and slopes, too quiet to be believed. Its podium had been taken by another voice, a girl’s voice.
pawn, knight, royal, bishop, rook
we hope they’ll find what for they look
men aplenty gods a few
is a lonely heart worth the lot they drew
It seemed to come from everywhere and no where, but in the pit of his chest max resolved to find the source. He wasn’t sure how he was moving nor did he care. He let his intuition and the air currents guide him along a path he did not know
rat-king, feline, serpent, bird
their game is on but their roles transferred
change, create, shape, shock and spin
not too long till their war begins
As he crested a hill of umber mist he saw her. Suspended in the open was a girl in silk. Her knees together, her arms outstretched, the cracks of plasma that lit this dark and unreal place gathered around her and restrained her like a spiders web.
cook, tramp, gamer, devil, martyr
they had no chance to choose or barter
safety keep them and us all
should they fail the sky may fall
Beneath a veil her hair was braided into an oiled bob like that of a ptolemic queen and black kohl lined her closed eyes. Had he not noticed smart watch on her wrist, he would have thought she was from another time or another world.
pawn, knight, royal, bishop, rook
we hope they’ll forgive us for what we took
men are many but options few
sacrificed for the lot they drew
They were a mere pace apart when her eyes shot open. Hers were bright, sharp eyes the color of robin eggs. A photograph of an afghan girl he had once seen on an old magazine cover lept to mind, but if anything these eyes burned brighter. It wasn’t the color that made his heart race, it was the shape of her eyes that he would never forget. Just as he opened his mouth to speak, his eyes opened, and he smelled dinner cooking.
>>7688240
The dialog feels really fake. the first paragraph serves no purpose and the second is extremely direct and cringe-worthy. Of course, cringe-worthy and direct is acceptable for an awkward protagonist but it's unpleasant to read, as is the present-tense. Like second-person, present tense is a framing device to be used rarely by those who have built up a lot of skill over time
Water and eye contact are not the same. The pure and cold and practical versus the deep abyss of personality which takes up such mercurial forms. Who are we to be a type? The only ones who can. All living things need water, to my knowledge, but I was surprised the other night to see a coyote leering at me. Its eyes were water. My stomach was water. And the air was sticky with it. But there was no volume to that experience, no depth with which to measure pressure. There was only eye contact, and that strange lopsided expression, and my steady hands on the patio table. I cannot feel these moments. They cannot float forward through time to save me, sinking and sinking in my own water. They were never real, but for the strange substance of graphite. Waves of lead that all but we will never understand, much less read, and will never the wiser return to the sea.
I feel like this could be longer, but then again I don't know it feels sort of complete at this length..
___
I am in my car and the summer rain that is barely drizzling outside makes it humid inside the cab. I am breathing heavily; half snoring from all the beer and it feels like each breath I take adds to the humidity. I focus on the sound of the rain hitting the metal of the car outside and I notice that it is an intrinsically melancholic sort of sound especially when I am alone. It is dark outside and through the beads of rain on the window the distant light of the pub is distorted but I can make him out, my son walking towards the car. He should not know that I am here but he opens the door and he gets in and does not say anything. I look at myself in the rear view to see what he sees but I am long past that sort of objectivity.
“You’re a fucking idiot” he says.
I know that I am a fucking idiot. I tell him that I know I am a fucking idiot and I say that I do not blame him for saying it but truly I feel misjudged. I spew admissions and justifications and in the midst of my telling I see that he is not hearing what I say and I cannot understand why this boy who I have raised and helped to mould and set an example for and worked for cannot spare me some kind of sympathy now that I am utterly alone.
“This isn’t how a Father should be” he tells me.
It is this fact that feeds my shame and hearing it said makes me weep and as I weep I see an unbidden revulsion on his face and I know that he is lost to me and part me is relieved that the climax of my failure which I have fought for so long is at least finally here. I tell him that I am not what I wanted to be and that as I have always maintained he should take my example and know what not to do.
“I don’t need your example.”
I tell him I know Mate. Mate I tell him, you have never needed an example. I tell him that he has always known right from wrong and that I have often felt helpless watching him grow up while I watched him grasp the things that I always imagined I would teach him on his own. He does not say anything and only takes a deep breath and I am embarrassed. This car stinks like dirt and sweat and as I watch him prepare to leave having fulfilled this meeting which was a chore to him I know that I am not going to see him again and that he will remember that I am a man made of dirt and sweat and that I smelled so. He opens the door and I say Mate I am sorry and I doubt that he forgives me.
>>7688838
Pleasurably vulnerable. Take that feeling of shame and really build on it with more poignancy. The parts about the sweat and dirt and the reflection in the mirror are excellent.
So how am I to make it day to day,
if only pushed by the thought that somewhere,
in some universe
There is a version of me,
with you
and, there, I am happy.
She maintained an air of eternity,
Of foreverness —life, and timelessness —
Everywhere she went. Time, as it was seen,
Slowed to a perpetual halt as she,
The endless and perdurable being,
Cast her eyes upon my broken veneer.
Under the soft and radiant glimmer
Of the glistening glow of eventide
I told her to be like the moon and stars,
Like all other celestial bodies,
And orbit me but never come too close.
Adulation should be but from afar.
When two worlds collide all that follows dies
And is born again, never to survive.
>>7689950
pls critique
>>7689985
>asks for critique
>hasn't critiqued anything else in thread
Ishiggydiggy
>>7689828
Any thoughts ;_;
>>7690210
Get over her, move on with your life.
>>7690231
It's a different situation, it's not a break up or anything. What did you think of the actually poem?
What are you criticisms
>>7690315
Probably would've broken the lines up differently. I'm iffy on opening with "So." On one hand, it makes it seem like a continuation of a bigger thought; on the other, why is that even necessary? Why not just open with "How?" It strikes me as a lazy, thoughtless filler word.
A little too much repetition of mundane words for such a short poem. See "day to day," "somewhere, / in some universe". The commas in the last line really break up the flow, and make it awkward and fumbling.
I don't really like the sentiment of the poem, this kind of "oh, without you I'm nothing" lamentation (and no, it doesn't help that it's not about a love interest). I get feeling sad about the loss of someone or something that you care deeply about it, but this is such a banal, overdone way of putting it. It doesn't hit hard enough to justify its incredibly short length.
Sorry bro. Just my opinion etc.
>>7690363
Well it is a love interest, but not a break up, and not a me being an autist or anything etc.
And yeah I understand what you're saying, no need to apologize m80, ill make some of those changes they make a lot of sense.
And yeah the length is because I kind of just jotted it down when I thought about it so I wouldn't forget, it's not entirely finished.
Been working on this for about a week now. This is my third draft and any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated.
http://pastebin.com/KTuhkgff
>>7689950
>and is born again, never to survive
WHOAHHH, pls take that out or change it,
you're trying to be to incredibly deep and philosophical and it just doesn't work. Come to think of it that's a common theme throughout this entire poem.
What's even the meaning behind this poem?
>>7688702
It's supposed to feel fake and cringey. Elliott is a jackass who's trying to save face in an already dead relationship. When he says "I hope you don't think I'm trying to impress you", you're supposed to roll your eyes
here's a section out of something i wrote recentl. curious as to how cringey it is in lit's opinion.
I daydream in the shower. It’s warm. Just like it is advertised. I skip ads. I skip breakfast, if it is inconvenient. I haven’t skipped since middle school. Hopscotch. I don’t think back to those times. I’d prefer to think of times tall with identity, like catching records and I know just what I would fix and what better of a man I would be today if I had learned to fix anything, fix anything at all.
I have conversations with people I would like to meet. I am composed and witty in all of my fantasies. I know the truth is much more quiet. Hesitative. Glued with inertia.
What if if I got the scissors? Cut it off? Would I blast off like a rocket? I would like to believe but I try not to believe in much.
You know how easy it is to win me over; all you have to do sound better than I do, and that’s just what I think matters at this point. I could enjoy myself if I let my walls down. But I need those walls to stand high. High so that I may see heaven unattainable. I shouldn’t try so hard. Thesaurus in hand, wits gushing through a crack in in my skull, to pour out like spaghetti sauce onto my holy socked feet. Porous. Like cheese? Like schizophrenic cobwebs? A structure that stands because it refuses to let go. That sounds like sickness and war. Not that I have any idea what war is. Or any idea what anything is. I’m just a mimic and a copycat, who make-believes with God’s leftovers.
Is this a decent sentence?
He stood at the open door, motionless, still, eyes wide and staring at the world outside, as if his birth had been a false dawn, and now, a lifetime later, after years of longing, living alone, losing both hair and height, after years of feeding his heart and filling his hollow with hate, the sun had finally risen--he had finally come alive.
>>7690508
I will reconsider those lines, thank you
>>7688702
crit pls...
This one is titled "Two Warm Beers"
very short piece, would appreciate a brutally honest critique (I'll read anything you have in return and do the same!)
http://pastebin.com/rn8AGA6t
>>7680690
Amusing, but lacking in poetic beauty.
>>7690694
Yeah, I suppose it is. I was trying to try something new - I usually write similar to what you just linked to and kept feeling pretentious as fuck so wanted to dumb it down (the amount of commas you have in there reminds me of the feeling desu)
>>7690750
But there's nothing wrong with using commas; in fact, as long as the rhythm is good, it really doesn't matter how many you have.
>>7690769
>that semicolon
wew lad
>>7690774
Both clauses are talking about commas, so it works. Get your grammar straight.
>>7690776
That's not how I prefer to use semicolons; so it bothered me; a bit. There seems; to be a fair amount of subje;ctivity surrounding the matter;
Pine fingers rake the sky
which is held down on all sides
bound by mountains.
It bleeds early sunset
and we could call it torture;
or we could call it something else.
Wood gouged cloud
the shade of maple
or flies stuck in amber
floats without motion
or the sluggish sliding up the sky
that airplanes do.
Musky dirt is our Chanel.
Tongues lick this distance,
eyes sniff the needles far from us,
dart more and more toward the smell of you
who is beside me
wrapped in the tartan of your people
who killed my people
and tortured others slow,
precise, on dark bruised nights,
hanging in the wind.
Headless, I bought you a
necklace made of zircon which was
nonetheless beautiful to the blind.
Retire this nasal eye to slow breathing.
The sheet wrinkles, changing length
From two to one
from one to zero
until zero bleeds to utero;
this dark is fetal climbing through a pussy only physicians touch.
On my hands the look of you
on my ears the taste of you
against my nose the nose of you
on my tongue the sound of you
everything is the touch of you;
origin bleeds from two.
Retire these lips to slow breathing.
>>7690786
There is, but what you have just done is the closest thing to an incorrect usage I've seen.
>>7690769
yes but the rythym is not good and the commas and the sentence gets interrupted like every word or two. reads like a laywer's proposal. dude there's at least 9 commas there. being honest as you were to mine. it's good but fix the flow
>>7690776
Grammatically it's correct but semicolons reek of pretentiousness when not part of a list. You seem to want sentences to go on as long as possible. It makes your writing seem overly formal, even when it's not fiction.
>>7690852
Stop listening to whatever garbage some idiot on /lit/ has been spewing. Semicolons are fine, and some of the best writers ever--Hawkes, for example--use them quite often. If you can't understand that, you shouldn't be critiquing other people's writing, especially considering the shortcomings of your own.
While everything remains cold, the summer still sets, as we remain forgotten, the memories won’t shred. We see into the distance, but we retract in fear, because the fear of the unknown is what has brought us here.
>>7690677
>http://pastebin.com/rn8AGA6t
I believe the tense is inconsistent (first paragraph, mostly i think) and so there's some dissonance because of that, but im not trihard enough to dissect it entirely.
>The tears of the wallpaper
should be tears IN the wallpaper, unless your intention is to imply the wallpaper is crying
>He felt a strange connection to the worn out environment.
perhaps a solace rather than a strange connection? something like ' He felt solace in the disrepair', or something to that effect. i dont think his connection is strange because he and that place are both sort of worn out and stagnated. if you meant it was strange because he feels connected to something inanimate, you should emphasize that.
>He creeped out of bed as the sun was falling behind grey skies and the moon was beginning to pass it by to have the opportunity to smile through the windows of the broken and the few that still had a shred of sanity next to the madness.
what is the objective of this sentence? to say that disturbed people find identity in the moon? comfort? with fiction as brief as this, every word has to be not only neccesary, but precise. if it doesn't add to the piece, it has to go. just something to consider.
>The trains outside the window continued to pass them by.
Somewhat of a redundancy. You can reiterate by stating an alternative effect the train has. (structure rumbling, etc.) that way readers are reminded but in a more interesting way (unless repetition is your point, but i sense that it isn't.)
>Tom finished and left the bathroom. He passed by the bed and bent down to give Martha a kiss.
this statement can be a fair bit more concise.
> Tom finished and went to the bedside to give Martha a kiss.
With more tinkering you could almost 100% improve upon my solution. Again, the key is to understand the purpose of every word.
i feel like one thing you could change is the exposition about fights and desperation. there seems to me to be a common thread of declination. maybe you place an emphasis upon despite the fact that she's worn down (her snoring is disgusting,etc.) he loves her anyways, just like he finds solace in a broken room. anyway, i personally liked the way this ended though the piece might have been too brief imo. keep in mind also i dont know what the fuck im talking about.
anyway, this was my stupid shit. it's pretty abstract. feel free to tear it apart.
>>7680740
Forks clicked against plates and knives ground against dry chicken breasts that tasted of salt and growth hormones and spice but nothing more. The food was of little interest to Max, nor was the idle conversation. Without thought or cause he inquired about the days of his parents listening only just enough to ask a follow-up question. This was his routine, one he need not change. He had heard it all before, and he would hear it again the next evening: his father’s arguments with his supervisors, his mother’s spite for her dearest friends, concern about his social life and praise for his grades.
“Your teachers tell us they expect great things from you,” he heard one or the other say. “Great, terrible things…” he murmured absent-mindedly. It had always been the unspoken addendum playing in the back of his head, but this was the first time it escaped his lips.
“You aren’t what they think of you,” a father’s empty reassurance. “You’re not a monster, and you’re not alone.”
“If I could be as much as they thought of me, why would I be anything else?”
“We always knew you were meant for something more,” his mother whispered.
“Every parent thinks their kid is something special. Saying it doesn’t make it true, it plants the seeds of a superiority complex and fertilizes it with nitrogen-enriched bullshit.” He dropped his fork and excused himself. They could finish their dinner without him, he was done with his breakfast.
Had this looked over by a few family members, and they've said it's good.
That's family though, and friends aren't literate enough to criticise accurately. Any reading would be lovely.
http://pastebin.com/4MVEkuPW
>>7690881
I'm not listening to anyone, that's my view of semicolons. In a list, fine. Elsewhere, it always makes me feel as though the writer is trying to look intelligent. It also doesn't make a difference who uses them, that's what comes across when I, and a lot of other people, see them used. Grammatically they're fine, I agree, but as a style choice I think they are best avoided in most cases. By all means, use them. Just don't expect everyone to like them.
>especially considering the shortcomings of your own.
I've not posted any of my writing in the thread. I am not the guy you think I am.
>>7690914
Hey, thanks a lot dude. The tense thing stood out to me too definitely. admittedly, I wrote it during an almost blackout stupor and haven't had the chance to properly edit it yet, and when I tried I kept overthinking it-hence why i came here. Couldn't have asked for a better critique, my friend. I'm gonna drink a quick beer and read yours in a few.
>>7690946
I agree with this wholeheartedly.
(I'm the guy he originally critiqued and then returned the favour) I'm assuming he thinks we're the same person and directed that at me.
Dear comma/semi-colon guy, it's a CRITIQUE thread, not a bashing of your dead grandma's faults - chill out or leave if you can't handle it
>>7690946
What about for rhythmic choices? I must admit i try not to use them unless necessary (or in super lists as youve said) but sometimes for stylised rhythm or run-on sentences "and" sounds outta place
>>7690210
Trite
>>7690935
horry shet, this is bretty gud. i haven't read the entire thing yet, i'll admit and i would have to probably nitpick to give more specific advice. you pretty clearly have a solid grasp on fiction, moreso than i do. i think anything i could reccomend would null and void because your skill eclipses mine, not that i mean to dick ride this hard. i might spend some time to read it in its entirety because its better than most of the pretentious fucking drivel people on this board write. good work m8.
>>7691003
because amateurs can't differentiate between pretentiousness and purpose. i imagine a lot of them think that the point of poetry is to be edgy and sound sophistocated, when that isn't at all the case. it's a lack of respect for the format.
>>7690914
I like it, and also looks pretty damn fancy with Bookerly font (see pic)
i like like these lines especially:
"I write things down and erase them halfway through."
"I have conversations with people I would like to meet. I am composed and witty in all of my fantasies. I know the truth is much more quiet. Hesitative."
"I can buy myself a few more years there. Pile up some furniture. The thing, banging at my door. Calling me stupid through the wood. My only critic. My only enemy. He likes to tell me my work is dogshit. I can’t help but agree."
"When I sit down to write my stories, there is no violence in the room and there are no strong colors. " (the best)
definitely related to your piece much more than i was expecting and i guess that's a bit of a double-edged sword here cuz it stopped me from looking at it analytically, as I actually got quite a bit deep with it. blame it on the beer blame it on the heart blame it on the whatever
but some shit is redundant, example being
"I wake up in the morning and lie in bed awake,"
well, yeah - you're awake.. we get that
cool shit dude, reminded me of writing that my bestfriend used to send me
>>7680500
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/search.php?searchid=1592884
just fuck my shit up, senpai
>>7691022
yeah i can imagine why it might be relatable to people on this board. i wrote it out of frustration with myself. it's okay if your response isn't analytical, because fiction isn't borne out of rationality and structure, it's borne out of something more raw than that. i agree about the redundancy in that line. i have yet to revise it at all and ill probably do some tinkering today. thanks for the thoughts mayne. glad it resonated with you.
Holy shit i suck at poetry.
I read upon an endless Sunday noon
Of a widower from koolom lompago
For fourty odd years he struck a mountain
With the same pick of iron and wood
For his wife he said to those who asked
And to the hospital on the other side
Time fought wall for 20 million years
And fared no stronger nor worse for wear
But all it took was 20 billion strikes for one man to fell a mountain.
>>7691040
np man but real talk quit being so self-depreciating to yourself. in the long run, that shit is gonna add up.
from one idiot to another,
good luck with everything
>>7691100
yeah, don't worry, these sorts of thoughts don't go rumbling around in my head day in and day out. this was just catharsis. thanks for being genuinely thoughtful. good luck to you too.
>>7685207
You establish the premise quickly and nicely. Show is it in a different way from there. We understand the woman's goal and further elucidation through similar circumstances do little and become boring.
As you die the front of
your hair, I’ll peer from
behind the mirror,
you will not see my stare.
I can stand by a window
in Le Louvre, let the
sunlight fall and create shadows
that circle me during the day,
or I can find a hidden stair
in the maze, and curl up within
my frame.
In stillness or grace
In the forms of your trace
I will stay in minds
as I shutter the blinds.
That is all poor imo, especially the last two lines which are awful.
Part of a thing I'm working on.
"As I descended into the abyss, the darkness growing ever thicker. Like drops of ink into water the blackness becoming ever more viscous as soon no light could penetrate the encroaching darkness surrounding me. Yet still I moved my way forward into the crypt. The smell of mildewed, moss lathered stonework filling the air as I made my descent. Unsure of what I was to find, I stilled pushed further into the underground passages. Hoping to discover the truth behind the mysterious map I had discovered."
- Diary of Daniel Vermount. Seventh of April 1891
He eventually grew accustomed to his depression and in this way decided he had overcome it. No longer did he spend days in catatonic paralysis, wanting nothing other than to return to the sleep that at least gave him some respite from living. No longer was he vulnerable to the complete helplessness that overcame him when something reminded him of her and he couldn't stop himself from crying. Now he was able to recognise his triggers and execute a remarkable degree of self-control over his emotions, such that he didn't really feel anything very strongly at all any more. Life passed without any real consequence or meaning one way or the other.
The one thing he did feel was mature. He looked at the people around him and saw a generation mindless and unconscious, as indeed he had been himself. They were like children, living in a world constructed around their self-serving delusions and unable to see what he now knew was the truth. Everything passes. Everything is in a state of transience. This was true for our bodies, this was true for our minds, and this was especially true for our relationships.
Romantic love was not eternal, relationships simply exist in so far as they have not yet encountered that thing that will end them. The happiest relationships of allare those where one partner dies young, still caught in the heady fervour of real passion. Their death makes the myth concrete, because from that moment on that person will represent all of the purest notions of love and nothing, barring the post-mortem discovery of some shameful secret, can taint that image in the eyes of their lover. Yes, happy are widows and widowers, for they never have to live in a world where the object of their love grows bored or even disgusted by their affection. The person must die for the relationship to live. and even then only as a myth to cling on to. Now that he knew this, how could he ever expect to connect to another human being again?
>>7691328
My effort, and even as I was writing it I didn't like it much. I think I have some interesting ideas, but I don't think I've brought them to life very well. Please be as critical as you like or I'll never improve.
>>7680732
I feel you anon.
>>7680570
>Outlines of tangled hair strangled with bands, the teeth behind the kisses
Really a wonderful sentence :) Especially about the teeth. The teeth behind the kisses go unnoticed, don't they? They're the actors behind the curtains, hidden underneath the blanket of our lips, and yet they are such a significant part of our mouths. Thanks for sharing, hopefully next time you'll share a longer snippet
>>7681060
>She's wearing a long green wig and bright blue lipstick and make-up that glows
>butterflies crawling out of her throat and into the air – more than that, Melanie is the butterfly. She unfurls her wings and lets them watch.
Lovely use of a cliche in a way that is creative and challenging. Excellent job of taking me to the scene, too. Though I think an entire novel with such close attention to detail would eventually become nauseating. Hopefully most of the novel is a little more plot driven and a little less prose driven than this, or else I think a reader might lose track of events pretty quick.
>>7682441
Love the first section, second section not so much. Probably the best example of a concerted effort to break away from repeated sentences starting with "She x's..."
>>7685096
>"Suppose I faded out for a minute."
don't know why, man, but I love that you started this sentence with "suppose". just one of those small things that indicates to me that this dialogue is fresh, real.
>>7691233
It sounds good. Post more on pastebin if you'd like. I'll read it
After a year of wenching, gambling & drinking in Edenborough I found myself once more fallen into a state of debt & privation. My splendid cavalier’s coat was long since lost at dice. A hole-pocked & tattered coat was the only rag shielding my noble shoulders from the cold Scottish winds. All my former friends turned their backs to the extent that they’d not grant this poor gentleman even a warm meal & a cup of ale. When the Edenborough creditors threatened to take Black Bess in exchange for my delinquencies I finally made my mind to return to England & resume my notorious occupation as a highwayman.
I rode so very far, out of Scotland & into the wild roads of my homeland. These were agonizing days without any sustenance except for a desperate drink of water from a babbling brook. To make matters worse, all who passed me on the roadways looked as haggard as I. As low a being as I am, I could not bear to take what little these sad souls had left. The Civil War had become a pestilence on the land: driving peasants from their homes while capable farmhands died on the fields of battle, leaving their vulnerable families defenseless.
Twas long ago my stomach had begun consuming itself out of hunger when I unexpectedly heard the warm melody of good music & gay chatter from the direction of a field near the edge of the wood. You can imagine my surprise when I discovered the source to be a hollowed out tree trunk! After some searching I discovered & opened a hatch leading down into a warm, subterranean dwelling. Inside, I found an enthusiastic party: a mandolin player, a stout woman cooking lamb’s head in broth & two more well-fed fellows rolling Hazard (the most popular game of dice in the land last I was in England). They couldn’t even hear my entrance over the sound of their festivities.
“Hello good sirs!” I hollered, trying not to dwell my eyes too long on the money resting upon the card table, “I’m sorry to interrupt your celebrations but I am a weary traveler looking for only a night’s bed & board.”
Rest is here http://pastebin.com/MDnvLUfH
>>7690913
pay no attention to my drunk generic poem
>>7691403
LOL
>tfw you're the only one who's critiquing and submitting in the same post
>tfw nobody critiques you
>>7691448
It's a bit generic but your rhyme & structure are solid plus you're working with universally important themes. Here are my suggestions:
1) Go back over it with an for using more unusual & exciting words
2) Start the next poem off from a really exciting point your mind doesn't usually go to. See where that takes you.
>>7691510
I can't find it. Post again & I'll do your critique. I'm still waiting for some attention as well. I'm a few posts up.
>>7691510
I did it too mate. Five critiques from me in one post, got one 3 word response.
> inb4 Britfag here, fags here are cigs, though this will still provide much unintended hilarity I am sure.
He took stock.
He did have oodles of fags, a patient queue of them lining up to nail him in the mouth.
One did so.
Against the tea, it felt on his tongue like quarrel between two experts.
tags and tea were the new mescaline, revealed recently to be far more psychoactive, a slow march to lunacy that began with a single step - right, left, right left, fag, tea, fag, tea – but culminating in the onset of a deep black paranoia, the delusion of a shadow on your lung that you picked at with caffeinated coughs, burps and expirations.
He thought again of the fifties.
In the fifties you could smoke until doctors came to your house and presented you with a medal for smoking your one-millionth cigarette; you could work in a café and loiter around cigarette smoke and ploy-saturated fats – as yet undiscovered by the doctors who still then went to cafes – lying dormant like fossils under pie crusts; You could have a good idea.
>>7691516
Cheers man, I'm not much of a poet but I do appreciate your genuine attitude xox
>>7691522
mine is >>7688702
>>7691426
I'm interested int the character and his experiences, but your narration has a major flaw that would require a lot of work to correct. Namely, you're half way between period-accurate linguistics and modern speech, and as a result it sounds really goofy. You could try to stick to one side or the other and it would work fine, but if you stay in the middle of the road you're going to get hit by a car
Can you give me an idea where i should go with this story?
I just wrote this for shits and giggles. Not really sure where it's going. Grammar is trash, i know, but i don't identify as english literate, so check your cis-language privilege.
This is how you write when you drop out of highschool at 16 and do nothing for 2 but shitpost on 4chan for 2 years after.
http://pastebin.com/sNnXeDEM
>>7691624
honestly reading regularly will do a helluva lot more for your grammar and writing abilities than school, generally. as for your piece, it's not as bad as you think it is, though perhaps considering its length, there's too much simile and metaphor. grammar is awkward at certain places, but that's much better than the actual story sucking desu.
>>7691745
Thanks family, i'll keep at it then. Reading poorly constructed sentences on 4chan has infected me with illiteracy. When i write, memes appear before me where structure is supposed to be.
At my school there was a kid named Paul
He had a limp and had trouble walking the halls
Sometimes he would stumble and then he would fall
Laughter came quickly with a thundering gawffaw
Soon after, his weak cry of pain turned into a bawl
I think it's unfair, because he wasn't his fault
Nobody helped because nobody cared at all
He wasn't bright, and was prone to brawls
Also, he might've spoken with an exaggerated drawl
He had a picture in his wallet of his mom
When he saw it helped him remain calm
"Mama's Boy", that's what we used to call Paul
Slowly, without him realizing it, sleep took him, and he found himself among a chasm of charcoal black clouds. They were mountains before him, dwarfing his perceptions and stretching off endlessly in every dimension. Great forks of lightning licked, struck and spat in slow motion as he drifted aimlessly among air currents, kicking up great, glowing motes of plasma. Thunder rolled down the cliffs and slopes, too quiet to be believed. Its podium had been taken by another voice, a girl’s voice.
"pawn, knight, royal, bishop, rook
we hope they’ll find what for they look
men aplenty gods a few
is a lonely heart worth the lot they drew"
It seemed to come from everywhere and no where, but in the pit of his chest Max resolved to find the source. He wasn’t sure how he was moving nor did he care. He let his intuition and the air currents guide him along a path he did not know
"rat-king, feline, serpent, bird
their game is on but their roles transferred
change, create, shape, shock and spin
not too long till their war begins?
As he crested a hill of umber mist he saw her. Suspended in the open was a girl in silk. Her knees together, her arms outstretched, the cracks of plasma that lit this dark and unreal place gathered around her and restrained her like a spiders web.
"cook, tramp, gamer, devil, martyr
they had no chance to choose or barter
safety keep them and us all
should they fail the sky may fall"
Beneath a veil her hair was braided into an oiled bob like that of a ptolemic queen and black kohl lined her closed eyes. Had he not noticed smart watch on her wrist, he would have thought she was from another time or another world.
"pawn, knight, royal, bishop, rook
we hope they’ll forgive us for what we took
men are many but options few
sacrificed for the lot they drew"
They were a mere pace apart when her eyes shot open. Hers were bright, sharp eyes the color of robin eggs. A photograph of an afghan girl he had once seen on an old magazine cover leapt to mind, but if anything these eyes burned brighter. It wasn’t the color that made his heart race, it was the shape of her eyes that he would never forget. Just as he opened his mouth to speak, his eyes opened, and he smelled dinner cooking.
Of course this thread would die before I get a single comment. Why wouldn't it?
>>7692240
Quit feeling sorry for yourself, you're literally complaining about not getting dessert at a Hometown Buffet.
What time is it? The time to stay alert. So many times I have drifted away into my own little, more personal, space of mind. Yet don't we all? There's nothing more menacing in this life than time. If stress doesn't kill you first, time will. Time is an age-old enemy, always there, waiting to pounce at every second of every day. These units of time, time controls, time is the blinking soul that harbors the void.
The days come shorter, the nights wane longer, the mornings dark like so should be. Days colder come, embracing bodies not unlike death, its arms cold draped beneath, beyond. Winter; reverse the clock, all this life in primal pen. Living things fight more, for warmth, survival. Luckily these things do also adapt.
Adaptation is sacrifice, one thing must fall so that another may rise. These are the opposing forces at work.
Throats churn chocked, sore and nose run clear. Still much left for fear. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Nothing quite painful as painful is an attempt at controlling what can't be quite controlled. Rise! Rise, Aeolus' current! Lakes run red and pale, these tastes so bitter. Cool and coated pain seeps out my grasp, fall into helplessness return. Unstoppable this force, this river swelled from deep mountain cavern, not intellect nor power such as God could hold you, not my tears. They rave, they rumble. Defeat.
But soon will come again a time of warmth and comfort, a time of spring, soft and somber. Soon come summer, fall and winter once more.
Perhaps time may also be a friend, a friend and enemy, a singing sibling to men and women; brother or sister to them all.
Sometimes we take what anything we have, what all we praise, for granted.
[A piece I wrote during winter when I had a cold.]
>>7692313
Were you hitting the cough syrup a little too hard?
