/LIT/ GOOD WRITING CRITIQUE THREAD
RULES:
1. Critique someone else's writing before you post yours
2. Only post something that you have proofread and reasonably reflects your writing ability
If you want relevant feedback, it's generally a good idea to post some questions or areas you'd like the focus to be on.Let's see how long we can make this a good critique thread before it devolves into shitty navel-gazers just splurging their free/automatic writing shit for validation
Well how the hell am I supposed to post if I can only critique and you've given me nothing to critique, OP?
Anyway, here's a villanelle of mine. Enjoy.
Do you suppose that roses even know
How lovers give them meaning quite beyond
Their humble place in nature’s greatest show?
If titles meant a thing, as Shakespeare shows,
As singers must eventually give songs,
Do you suppose that roses even know?
As goldfish swim in decorated bowls,
Or flowers sit in vases, do they long
A humble place in nature’s greatest show?
If love would die as all things tend to go,
And rot creeps in to houses where it’s wronged,
Do you suppose that roses even know?
The hugs or smiles, as signs of love, grow cold
Lovers go back, return the rose torn from
Its humble place in nature’s greatest show.
As all the poems burn away, you go
Like dust of stars to dirt where you belong;
I don’t suppose that roses even know
Their humble place in nature’s greatest show.
>>7763143
It felt sort of jumbled I guess. Take some time to revise and rewrite and it'll be good.
Here's an excerpt from my latest endeavor, first draft.
Anonymous strips of meat lay wizened and black underneath the sun. Vultures squawk from their rookeries, occasionally filching the droppings like hungry dogs.
Rhett watches at the gate, running his fingernails along the jags.
The alleys are pervaded with marred wickerwork and sprouting prickly pear and twist underneath the gleam of saloon and apartment sills. At night they are coloured blue like the tendrils of a corpse and whores pull men by their ties to get their money.
Two-hundred feet to his left a a cluster of leafless trees stood out against the early morning sky; their brown bodies like extensions of the muddy earth reaching skywards in a vain attempt to claw their way out of the hellish landscape. These trees had fallen victim to the clouds of death that slowly sulked their way across the landscape, shriveling and distorting man, flora and fauna alike. At the beginning of the war the gas had been much less of a threat. Where once a man could have expected temporary loss of sight or vomiting, these days he could expect blindness, death by choking or the skin to peel from his exposed body.
The gas however was not this man's biggest fear. Far greater was his fear of the machine gun or the falling shells. Where the gas clouds slowly searched the landscape for its next victims, the shells would fall randomly across the lines of trenches without warning. It was well known that the minds of many men had simply cracked under the knowledge that at any moment a projectile would be delivered to take his arms, legs, hearing or life. The machine gun was known for it's ability to search the landscape and cut down any man who was unfortunate enough to be in the open. Often a wave of men would be sent forward to try and capture the enemies' trench; the man behind the machine gun would shoot down this wave as easy as if he was harvesting wheat with a scythe.It's probably obvious but this is my first time with creative writing; it's hard
>>7763143
ehh your end rhymes are too boring (know, beyond show, songs, know etc.) and monosyllabic
4 stanzas ending in rhetorical questions is also too much, especially as there's no conclusion to "roses even know"
>As all the poems burn away, you go
>Like dust of stars to dirt where you belong
good use of enjambment here--it's like the first time in your poem where there's any sort of surprise
the biggest problem is probably a lack of a good refrain--"humble place in nature’s greatest show" is very awkward imo. "do you suppose that roses even know?" is quite good tho
I would have liked "a rose by any other name" to be explored a bit much.. a lot of the stanzas seem very random/have no relevance to the central thesis
also the goldfish imagery in the third stanza comes out of nowhere
>>7763174
there should probably be another rule that you have to post something of a substantial length because really, what's the point of asking for crit for like five sentences?also your writing is really bad
>>7763188
your writing is shit and you are shit too
>>7763174
I don't like the comparisons and I don't like the adjectives. They seem off.
Ex:
>anonymous strips of meat
sounds awkward. No matter what you were trying to get across.
my shite
Dark. Jagged. Violent. This was the landscape, as far as one could see. In it, there was no joy, no life, and no wonder. Fuck this planet. The cosmos had been careless in its creation, as if they were pressed for time or as if the very act of creation had grown into a dull routine. But in spite all of this, in spite of the void, the sky was an infinite aquarium, a cosmic coral reef. No matter where you go, no matter what planet you are on, if the atmosphere permits, the stars can relieve you, and for that, he was thankful. The blast door closed behind him, the thudded sound muffled through his helmet. He was glad to know that within the warm facility, there awaited a soft bed with many blankets he could wrap around himself, as many as it took to forget this obsidian tundra. He heard the winds stir in a distant canyon, and soon they surrounded him, whining as they brushed through the crevices of his suit. He pressed through them on his way to the disposal, handicapped by their strength. The waste tumbled down the chute, hesitant to fall into the abyss. Syringes, blades, and tubes scratched the metal surface as they slid. This was their last chance to remind others of their purpose, but all of it would soon be frozen, and the painful history of them, forgotten. The winds kept up, slicing and frenzied, they had grown stronger, and from this, one’s thoughts could only wander towards an undesirable truth: the seasons were changing.
>>7763614
>The Good
- in medias res lends it an atmosphere of mystery
- Strong opening
- "the sky was an infinite aquarium"
>The Bad
- awkward language ("He was glad to know that within the warm facility, there awaited a soft bed with many blankets he could wrap around himself", "Fuck this planet" clashes with the rest of the narration style, "handicapped by their strength")
- no definite landscape established, there is no anchoring setting to give foundation to the colourful prose
- weak ending
>>7763650
My story:
I only ever knew two things for certain: every day, when the sun stretched on its toes to graze the roof of the world, life would fill to bursting with the melodious cries of a thousand mechanical birds that had been affixed to unseen walls an eternity before I had ever been.
That, and my father was a dragon.
These were the two laws that governed my life from first to last, and often my visions of a dark figure enrobed in smoke would coincide with the noontide festival to such an extent that it seemed to me a ceremonial necessity, coterminous lode stars that made the setting sun's promise of coming night seem feeble and uncertain.
He would enter with a roar, cedar planks creaking below his titanic form seconds before the familiar scent of charcoal and oakmoss drifted into the bare kitchen where I was besieged by arithmetic. I would abandon my studies, the reproachful coos of my mother falling on deaf ears, and carry myself with such abandon that more often than not I would collide with that leather pleated colossus in a whirl of laughter that quickly turned to curt dismissal. He would seat himself at the kitchen table and begin rolling a cigarette as my mother portioned out three bowls of rice and potato soup. It was never long before his stern face, framed by jet black hair streaked with silver, was completely lost in a cloud of thick smoke from which his stentorian bellows enquired about my studies. It was amid this scene that the mechanical birds would sing, their simple melodies paying tribute to this legendary being.
I read once that dragons were all afflicted with the same fatal flaw: an unquenchable lust for wealth. This I recognized but forgave in that mythic wyrm that bore me, and the fierce battles that would be waged in our kitchen over the current state of our monetary existence quickly made the transition from traumatizing to banal. I would always admire my mother for being able to stand the caustic flames of admonition that would blast our home until the early hours of the morning. Her weeping was never manipulative and always shameful, followed by an appeal for recess whereby she would collect herself and fearlessly enter his den once more.
Then, one morning, hours before the festival of the meridian and my Fafnir's homecoming, my mother told me to pack a bag with clothing and my most essential school books. I did not realize it then, but her fear of my father, though never manifest in the material world, had worn her down to such an extent that flight seemed the only solution possible.
And so I came to be where I stand now, gazing out the second story window of the house of an aunt I have never met, surrounded by unfamiliar scents and men that are most definitely not dragons. After the third noon came without the rhapsody of life that signalled my father's return I resolved to seek him out myself.
With furtive steps I made to fly and reached the halls of eternity on wings of blood and broken bone.
>>7763614
I would indicate there's a "he" observing from the very first line, ex.
>Dark. Jagged. Violent. This was the landscape, as far as he could see.
You start off with this distant, lofty and overhead voice then immediately jump into a more crude and human tone that's kinda jarring.
Other than that try to work out a stronger rythm with your sentences and combine details for a stronger effect.
for ex.
>He was glad to know that within the warm facility, there awaited a soft, bed with many blankets he could wrap around himself, as many as it took to forget this obsidian tundra.
can be
>He smiled in knowing that inside the facility was a warm, soft bed. There he could wrap himself away from that bleak obsidian tundra, for a time.
Agreed with the other anon in that the landscape itself isnt concretely established, but I'm sure you can dig into that. Good start.
Here's mine ----
They met under the blinking shadows of the rail, their greetings swallowed by a thunderous roar. In that moment they were a swirl of mute benedictions and numb gesture. Then they walked through the streets.
They were arm in arm, together like two fish on the same hook. And deeper, through the streets of neon and blur they were like a two headed beast, staggering, frightful, each head dragging the other to sights and senses more fresh but never tasting the whole.
In the end they remained hooked, and took council in each other, on what they had gathered in those moments of vague truancy, and what they hoped to see again. Then they laughed together.
>>7763655
First line is pretty awkward but other than that, pretty good. Good imagery and progression. Whats it like the start of a novella?
>>7763662
your writing doesn't make any sense
>>7763655
the first sentence is too confusing
the long length to juxtapose against the second sentence is fine t hough
>my visions of a dark figure enrobed in smoke would coincide with the noontide festival to such an extent that it seemed to me a ceremonial necessity, coterminous lode stars that made the setting sun's promise of coming night seem feeble and uncertain.
trying too hard
yeah, your writing is too obfscuating and purple
you need to invest your reader in the story
>>7764032
>your writing doesn't make any sense
thats it?
>>7763662
Your writing is hard to follow because it is so vague and impersonal. Give some concrete details to make it real.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DBFvEY263U3K9Y5ICqtGBXkHzL3W7Kfh4O5_AxM3EmY/edit?usp=sharing
I'm the anon who posts assignments from his playwriting class. The assignment this time was to do a 3 page play with a time strategy and I chose frame narrative. This is a rough first draft just to get the ideas down. The class is pretty amateurish (not in a bad way just in a half the students are freshman way) so even something this rough holds up.
Any ideas at all? Haven't gotten response in the last few threads.
>>7763655
You have to be a really good writer to make long sentences work and I don't think you're that good of a writer.
Well damn. I have 12 chapters averaging about 4k each. How the hell do I get started posting that?
>>7763662
Way too many similes, dude. Sometimes, an actual description goes farther than an abstract comparison.
Here's a sample... Taken from chapter 10. Might take a few posts to get it in.
“What was your mother like?”
Elias frowned, pondering. “I don't really remember. She died when I was barely thirty. She had black hair and very pale skin, I think. I was told that she had violet eyes. She had a reputation for being very kind, very loving.”
“How did she die?”
Elias shrugged. “I honestly don't know for certain. Nobody would tell me about it, and I left Silva Aestas before I was old enough to know which questions to ask. All they would tell me was that I was the firstborn twin, but my brother didn't live. It was suggested that she died of a broken heart.”
“And your father? Was he a giant like you?”
Elias laughed. “No, not as far as I know. He died before I was born. He was a scout for the king, and was out on patrol when he was killed. A band of orcs, I think they said it was. He was blonde, with blue eyes like mine. I was told that I took more after him than my mother, at least as far as my looks.”
Coral smiled up at him, her eyes twinkling. “Then I would have to say that your mother was a very lucky woman, if your father looked like you.”
Elias blushed at the compliment, and smiled. “Thank you, Coral. You're not half bad yourself.”
She rolled over, giggling and shoving him. “Not half bad? So only half of me is not bad? Which half would that be?”
He grinned, catching her wrists. “That would probably be the half starting below your neck and above your knees.”
She feigned shock. “Augh! You monster! I knew it! You sailed to Greenreef just to despoil our maidens with your rapacious ways!” She threw a leg over his lap, straddling his waist. “I shall battle you for my honor!”
Elias released her wrists and wrapped his hands about her slender waist. “Never have I faced such a terrifying foe! I shall have to redouble my efforts!”
Coral wrapped her arms around his shoulders, kissing him passionately. “It shall be of no avail! I've already got you surrounded!”
He spread his hands meekly. “I admit it! You are better than I am! Mercy, I surrender!”
Coral's hands worked their way down his chest and to his trousers, undoing the tie there. “T'was a battle too easy to win. I expect a ruse! No, best to finish the deed!” Her hands found him, and he immediately responded.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Hidden weaponry! What treachery is this?”
He reached down, gripping her backside, spreading it under her skirt before releasing her. “Ah! You've discovered my flanking maneuver!”
She lifted up on her knees, her hands running along his length. “I think we'd better disarm this foe, just to be certain.” She positioned him underneath her, and lowered herself onto his tip. As he felt himself slipping into her, he caught his breath a little, his hands moving to gently rest on her waist.
>>7764257
She settled her hands back on his shoulders. She lifted herself back up again, then settled further, lower than the first time, causing him to release his breath. “I think we have them on the run.”
He slid his hands up her sides, pushing her halter up, his thumbs grazing across her nipples. “Truly, I am no match for you.”
She leaned forward, kissing him again as she rocked her hips up and down. “Yes you are,” she purred, nipping at his lower lip as she increased her rhythm. “You're the perfect match for me.” She settled down on his length fully, wincing only slightly at the end. She stopped, resting her full weight on his lap.
Elias lifted her chin to look into her eyes. “Are you alright?” he asked her, concern showing on his face.
She opened her eyes, the crystal green seeming to drink him in as he looked into them. “I am perfect,” she said, leaning into him, resting her head on his right shoulder. Her right arm came up, and she ran her fingers through the short cropped hair on the back of his head. Arching her back, she slowly resumed her motions.
He could feel her slickness increase with each thrust, and soon his urge was building. Setting his hands on her hips again, he started lifting with her motions, thrusting with his hips to meet her. The speed of their rhythm increased, and she leaned back, clutching his head to her breast.
As he took one of her small, hard nipples into his mouth, he could feel her thighs shuddering. She let out her breath in a long, low moan of pleasure, and it was over for him. He arched his head back as he climaxed, pushing her onto him, filling her entirely with himself and his essence.
She gasped, clutching his chest as her tremors subsided, and he leaned back against the tree, wrapping his arms around her.
She rested her head against his shoulder, her eyes closed, as her breathing slowed. Elias stroked her hair, looking out to sea, the afterglow of their passion almost palpable in the afternoon air.
“You have bested me, sir.” she murmured into his shirt. “The spoils must go to the victor.”
He reached down to kiss the top of her head. “Then you shall take all.”
>>7763655
I'm the guy that posted the two-parter above this.
I like yours. I like that she sees him as a dragon. My girls say that I am a dragonslayer, since i breathe smoke (vapor) and i own swords and talk about dragons and tell stories. That resonated will with me. I also like her interpretation of the parental arguments. the whole thing read really well.
I want to read more.
>>7764328
*vapes*
>>7764471
Tastes better than smoking, and doesn't fuck my lungs.
>>7764328
8/8
>>7764477
not b8, m8.
>>7764257
>>7764260
My main issue with this is that it reads more like a movie script than a work of prose. It's simply 'dialogue - description - dialogue', and there's very little variety in sentence structure. For a sex scene in a fantasy setting it's pretty good (as in, I didn't cringe) but on at times it feels a bit flat and the dialogue is awkward at times ("Ah! You've discovered my flanking maneuver!" - really nigga?). Despite this, it works. It's plain and focused on the action, which is all that it is, but it's also enough. You're not going for something you can't pull off, but you're also not going for anything impressive.
>>7764479
There's something terribly sad and banal about you.
>>7763655
I don't get it
Where is the dragon?
>>7764328
have you mastered the blockchain?
>john cage on a wednesday
What a marvel. You gaze at the rows of the meat section displayed under heady lights. A canvas of reds, pinks, off-whites composing a mosaic of flesh. A man passes, taking a package of beef. The composition stirs, becomes imbalanced, rights itself despite it. One merely needs to look, you think. But how many see for all their looking? A woman opposite, half-occupied with placating her children, measures chicken thighs. The work is indeterminate. You closer scan the wall: thighs skin ribs fat breasts bones liver flank shoulder belly.
You feel how quaint the homogeneity of the packaged constitutent flesh belies a previously whole being. It's the myopia towards a brushstroke in a landscape, not necessarily apathy so much as learned insensitivity, you think. Such thoughtlessness certainly blunts (astuteness moreso among our enlightened types, you daresay), thus you half-fancy to meditate on this moment so. If you did, if you traced with one hand along those shifting labyrinths, you might find the waning gestalt of some animal here and now here; shaping the essence of, say, a pig, you would trace the circumference of your simulacrum and sense a radiating pulse: a trough, perhaps, materializes from which it feasted indiscriminate, and then the wood that constructed the trough and the tree among many that supplied the wood, and further the feed of the trough comprising the scraps and leftovers of its caretakers and the meals cooked to provide the scraps and the labor necessary to provide the meal; and then the components of the meal. These would you find as waves breaking upon waves encapsulated at any and every point of your simulacrum's centeredlessness.
Now returning to the arc of its life, of its shadow casting and shadow retreating, like the lockstep dance of the moon and sun, you might traverse the etched annals of its lineage to find in pigkind a Pig, invoking in those vestiges an ouroboros coiling through epochs and paradigms, reaching towards the conclusion of your constructed progeny as an ultimate (or very well an eternally penultimate) summation. Before you: its death and butchering, its processing and packaging, and its further transfiguration yet as the ouroboros writhes. You might glimpse the pig standing at the intersection of temporality and infinity; you might watch its crossing.
A distorted loudspeaker voice returns you. An agreeable muzak tune drones under the announcement of clearance of some certain steaks and already you can sense the bustle of movement. Oh, yes, while you may extrapolate so you do not feel you are particularly off (in sentiment). A moment and the tenor of the resumed muzak is tempered by the organic droning courtesy of a gathering crowd, modulating the work. (But how many listen without hearing?) You step back, listening, to resume your shopping because you always did prefer a butcher for such purposes.
(ran outta space, might try to crit later)
>>7764079
yes, what more so you really want? unless you're writing some sort of postmodern masterpiece, readability is always going to be very important
if I remember, I might do a line edit for you when I get home but at this point, you're better off just working on your clarity and steering away from "literary" writing
>>7764085
maybe if you critiqued some other people you'd get some responses
>>7764682
It may have been a poor choice for a sample, but it was the first chunk that came to mind that was easily dropped into a readable set. I'll try to get another bit that is fairly cohesive, doesn't run on too long, and isn't a sex scene...
The main problem is trying to get a section of a novel (which is what this is on its way to being) that can be read, understood, and appropriately appreciated without a ton of backstop or explanation. I may have a scene here or there I can grab.
>>7765203
I have critiqued four posts but I didn't do it in the same post because I'm on mobile.
>>7763188
Clean it up a bit and it's not bad
Cut down on the amount of "landscapes"
>>7765187
>If you did, if you traced with one hand along those shifting labyrinths, you might find the waning gestalt of some animal here and now here; shaping the essence of, say, a pig, you would trace the circumference of your simulacrum and sense a radiating pulse: a trough, perhaps, materializes from which it feasted indiscriminate, and then the wood that constructed the trough and the tree among many that supplied the wood, and further the feed of the trough comprising the scraps and leftovers of its caretakers and the meals cooked to provide the scraps and the labor necessary to provide the meal; and then the components of the meal.
Holy run-on sentence, Batman!
I'll be honest, this wasn't easy to read. I seemed to kinda drone on at times; the sentences were all way too long. It seemed that this selection was almost more of an exercise in thesaurus use than it was an exercise in writing... I'm all for mixing it up at times with words and verbiage, but at a certain point, expedience takes a front seat to vocabulary grade level. It's not that it was unreadable, it just really, really felt like you were trying WAY too hard, and that interrupted the flow, which is very important. If a selection doesn't have flow, it's a struggle to read. If it's a struggle to read, then nobody is going to force themselves to read it, and your work is wasted.
>>7765282
ok, ty. I recently read Absalom, Absalom! and was absolutely floored by the technicality and wanted to evoke that sort of modality (obv not easy). idk the words aren't that exotic or anachronistic imo but it's the syntax and structuring that's most difficult
>>7765187
very beautiful. i liked it very much. my only suggestion is to write more stuff before you proofread what you've written. often ideas seem so clear in your head at the time that when you write something and immediately re read it you don't read it as a new reader would. take a break and let your brain move to a new idea and come back to it later rework it and then rework what you did. always do at least two seperate ideas? chapter/ scenes whatever. it helps you convey the ideas and flow better if you do this.
here is plot for short my story.
>guy in prison for murder he doesn't believe he committed.
> story begins
>strange guest arrives at prisoners house saying his car had crashed up the road in a thunder storm
>couple arrives later, car had crashed down the road in a thunder storm the husband arrives first then later wife joins
>creepiness causes tension between the strange guest (who is manifesting the prisoners own interior monologue) and the couple. murder of husband occurs wife disappears into the night with ghost pursuing her. power comes back on shortly afterwards prisoner calls police they arrive take man into custody
>later revealed he is being charged with the murder end.
>woman says prisoner did it
>guy says it was strange guest.
>there wasn't anyone else there according to wife and tow truck driver who had been there earlier (driver was there before power outage).
fin.
next post will have opening. 1/2
>>7765509
I've loved rain for as long as I can remember. Most people hate rain and, for the most part, I understand why. I enjoy waking up at 6am to see a dim blue hew resting on my blinds, instead of that golden glow. I have no problem with a sunny day. I've felt the pleasure of a sunbeam across my skin as a cool morning breeze tries to seduce me back to sleep, the sound of gentle waves slowly dragging across the rocks, the smell of fresh water winds and beach fronds mixing with the fabric softener of fresh, once used sheets, these are some of my sweetest memories. I loved opening my eyes to see light cast against the dark walls, knowing that once I'd turned over, I'd be greeted by a beautiful blonde and blue world of fresh greens, bright stones and bleached sand. However, as much as I'll always cherish those distant times , I find more comfort, more often, in the soft sound of rain, the smell of wet bark and the feeling of damp air. it reminds me of the happiness I used to feel when I was alone. Those were the days I most liked playing outside. the days when no one else was around. never much for baseball, I could play games and act in ways that I normally wouldn't around others. I'd take out my pocket knife and spend hours carving wooden swords, making dubious animal traps and living out epic tales of heroism, adventure, love, friendship and loss. I also didn't mind getting wet. the rain was the perfect backdrop to the melancholy of my imagination and to this day rain still draws my mind to the dramatic.
>>7765514
rain is the reason that I'm writing this now, a tale I'd be proud of, if it were fiction. today is the perfect day to sit by an open window and let my mind wander, in the way it used to. lately though I find it difficult to think such things, even as my lungs fill with the scent of moist earth, I'm not compelled to fancy, only to misery. I sit here , by the window, only in the hopes that natures gentle roar may calm me long enough to put that terrible night down in words, so that I might understand what really happened. I hope by chronicling every event of that dreadful storm, that I may be able to make sense of it all, that there might be something I've missed , something that will make everything fit. I hope to make this account before it is warped by nightmares and mania, into something uncertain, so that if I go mad and I ever doubt the truth of my own memory, I can look back to this document for reassurance and know that I never imagined what happened. I also write it in the hopes that a kind doctor will find these papers and know that the things I speak of are more than the incoherent ramblings of a psychopath, that I never killed that man and maybe, I hope, he will take pity.
my tale didn't start on a day like today. it was raining outside, but it was thundering as well. days like these I'd get my ear plugs, my .22 rifle and sit on the porch, taking shots at the steel gongs I had set up in the field...
what do ta'll think? 2/2
She says she loves me.
As a friend.
I say I love her too, without specifying.
This is the friend zone, of course. I'd heard tales of it. Then at some point in my life without noticing I was elected mayor of the friend zone. Captain of the U.S.S. Friend Zone, sailing the seven seas.
We spend lunch together every day, past the baseball bleachers all the way at the edge of the field, away from everyone else.
There are some sheep near us from one of the agriculture classes. I crouch and lean forward and make sheep sounds because sometimes communicating with them is easier than Natalie, who calls me her best friend.
Baaa.
Natalie is staring off in the distance like some fictional princess waiting to be saved.
There's a lot of things to like about her. She isn't lame like the others, you see. She doesn't pay any mind to the loudmouth bravado of the popular boys, or to anyone at all, really. She's the only other person with no sign of concern for the bullshit social hierarchy here, which is how we found each other here at the edge of school to begin with. Trying to get away. And she's smart too. She's been on my heels for the top grade in every class we have together. Mrs. Larzs once said we were her two walking dictionaries. That has to mean something, right? I mean, we match perfectly. Two integers in tandem. We're mental juggernauts, that we are, far better than the rodents scurrying about this school, masquerading as adults and obsessed with developing their cool. We're beyond that. Beyond them. We would be great together, I think. I wonder if she sees that.
“The pharmacy opens next month,” Natalie says.
Her dad's, that is. I've listened to her vent about her dad and his new pharmacy and his new wife for the last few weeks, all in vague spurts. Every response I've had has been met with silence, so today I just listen.
He's so transfixed on this pharmacy, Natalie says, and this new bitch. He doesn't even act like mom exists. Nope, just the great Ventress Pharmaceuticals and its grand opening. Oh, it's in a great spot. What a great deal. Downtown, high visibility. The market's recovered, thanks Obama. And Nancy, well, Nancy just thinks it's a great idea. She's coordinating the whole launch party. Even got a news crew coming out. Can you believe that? She's so great. Ugh.
This is an angry retelling of everything I've heard so far, all at once. I keep listening.
“The last time I saw my mom I could tell she'd been crying.
I don't say it, but Natalie kind of looks like she's been crying too. As for me, I'm sitting here with a blank look on my face, three feet from what I want the most. I feel like I couldn't cross that distance in a hundred lifetimes.
>>7765926
Fourth period English the next day. I watch her from afar, like a fucking weirdo. She's sitting two rows from me, or maybe I'm sitting two rows from her, and the sun revolves around her and the moon and the stars and the constellations too. She's perfect, buried in Fahrenheit 451 during silent reading, brow slightly furrowed and concentrating. Her eyes scan each line of literary greatness while I scan each atom of her perfection. I'm peeking from above King Lear, consumed by her beauty and straight brown hair. So shiny. It probably smells nice.
Silent reading is finished and we're to work on poems. I want to write one about Natalie but that would be socially unacceptable, so I begin writing an Ode to the Alphabet. Some silly thing like a nursery rhyme. Simple rhymes win all of our class poetry slams. I know this. I begin:
A, B, C, D, E, F, G
You don't know what you mean to me
Gosh, that's terrible. But the judges will be other students, and students have toddler brains.
I sneak a stalker peak over at Natalie and she's only sort-of writing. She's eavesdropping on a trio of barbie dolls another row down. They're gossiping and giggling about the Homecoming dance next month, and at first I'm shocked that Nat V seems to care at all about that sort of thing. I mean, she's clearly from a different echelon of human being, enlightened from the social norms of high school. Even now she wears a crummy old light-brown “grandma” sweater with reindeer on it. Because fuck yeah, reindeer are awesome, and your social expectations are not. This is not a person concerned with trivial things like a dance.
But maybe I'm wrong. She's a girl, after all. The thought of getting dressed up nicely is a common girl-thing, I think. Maybe she wants to. Maybe no one will ask her, or has ever asked her. Maybe she has a hole in her heart the exact shape of the Homecoming Dance.
I've never been to a dance because I don't know how, both physically and socially. It's not something I think my ancestors spent time on. Chalk it up to genetics, really. But I have the strongest urge to ask Natalie to go. To go together. To distract her from her family problems. I'll learn to dance for her, even, because she makes me want to be a better version of me. That's love, isn't it?
That's it. It's decided; I'll ask her.
>>7765926
YOU DIDN'T RATE FIRST YOU CUNT! damn you and a pox upon your post!
>>7765942
i dont think i'm good enough to do that at other peoples' stuff ;_;
>>7765926
>Then at some point in my life without noticing I was elected mayor of the friend zone
Too cliche- almost cringeworthy midddleschool shit. I could see this being a line in some bullshit Nickelodeon show
Honestly some of the dialogue is cheesy but it does alright and it sounds pretty natural- which is hard for writers. If seems like it would be ok as a Young Adult novel. You could clean it up though, like i said the dialogue has that hard to find naturalness, its just corny as fuck at times.
Not bad though man keep it iup
>>7765953
Then don't post you're writing in threads that demand making critiques before doing so.
>>7765960
;_; okay I'll do one right after lunch. Or whoever the newest one is
>>7765973
Lmao thank you, alright I'll crit, one sec
>>7765187
I'd love to read all of this.
I could write that Élise had belonged on this stage, that she swam through it all like a buxom sea nymph fresh from a mariner’s fantasy, or graced it like the muse of some lovesick artist graces a portrait, but really she was just walking home from whichever tavern she was working at the time, carrying her curves like a maid carries a bag of vegetables. She moved with the urgency appropriate of a woman alone in the night, and had disappeared around a corner before Johan and I could commit the sight of that bobbing bust to memory.
The rhythms of her feminine footfalls became echos, and we emerged from the darkened alcove where we had crouched like two lecherous trolls behind an exhausted stone fountain. Johan, having nearly toppled it as we departed, muttered something while I reached into my coat pocket.
I forgot to save word somewhere when I formatted my pc and my grandma has lost my microsoft office that I lended to her to install it
Fug, should I use google docs?
The doubt and anxiety that surmounts the individual only becomes greater should the individual fall prey to the belief that love can save the depressive. I must take it upon myself to wrought upon my heart a devastation greater than the torment she gives me. And such would be to lose the torment that is the only meaning of life for me. A fruit of love raised from the seed of doubt is withered and tarnished in time - soon the newfound glamour of love is tarnished, the fruit falls back to the ground, and becomes embedded within the spirit to be raised once again. Like all other fruit that is raised, it must be nurtured by the loving sunlight that envelopes all in promise. Soon however, as in every day that has been and will be, day will recede back into the dark of night. In this the seed too dies. Thus, you must be like the day that passes and call the arrival of dusk that looms over the horizon. For our love is no more, and doubt only remains. It is within your best interest to ensure that this seed may die, or that you may torment my soul until I seek respite in the unwavering peace of death itself.
im too shit to critique
>>7766024
*for writing
>>7765989
Hm, maybe I'm an impatient reader, but the premise had me hyped - the intro is almost like telling me about the badass story I'm about to hear, instead of just telling me the badass story (the end of it was gripping) despite your writing itself being good.
"...the happiness I used to feel when I was alone" is simple and poignant, which I really liked. But yeah, as a reader rather than guide me gently into your story, which seems at a glance to have a lot of velocity to it, I'd rather you punch me in my face with it. Immediately.
If the first sentence of your story was, plainly,
"I didn't kill that man."
I'd immediately be grabbed.
Tldr don't tell me about telling me your story; tell me your story.
Important caveats: I'm not your target audience and know next to nothing about the norms or cliches or common pitfalls of that genre, so take everything I say with the tiniest most microscopic fucking grain of salt of all time
>>7766083
Also this is the fag that wrote the Natalie bit, so there I critiqued lol.
>>7765187
I like the way you write, but it feels a little bit too unnatural. Feels too much like you spent time looking for synonyms for smaller words. If it "flowed" better for a lack of a better word, I think it would be really great.
http://pastebin.com/aFfXjJb9
Dumped it in a pastebin since it didn't fit in one post.
Can't tell if the first paragraph is good or terrible.
>>7763188
I feel like you're writing a little too informatively, if you get what I mean. Not much in terms of prose, just describing what's happening a little mechanically. You could also benefit a little from maybe trimming a few sentences down, I feel. Removing some unnecessary prepositions could make it flow better.
It's not terrible, just barely more than generic, but there's something to it.
>>7766024
Open office, dude.
>>7765959
Thanks brother, I'll keep pushin. Did you have something in the thread you want another set of eyes on?
>>7763143
no syllabic phrasing; although you follow the correct format, the verses sound clunky because there's no structure to your vowel sounds. they should repeat at intervals to increase the flow of the verses. when you don't do this, it sounds wrong to the ear, like >>7763174 said "jumbled".
content was fine. you might want to allude to shakespeare instead of directly referencing him, because the reference seems condescending.
>>7763174
use "under" not "underneath". underneath is too intimate to describe a relationship between the sun and something on the earth. comma after "pear" (assuming you're referring to the alleys twisting). change "tendrils" to "marbled veins".
>>7763188
their brown bodies *were*. need the verb otherwise it's not a complete sentence. or just replace the semicolon with a comma to change that sentence into a descriptive element. comma after war. commas around however (interrupting element). try to find an accurate period colloquialism for "machine gun". if these guys are russian or german try to find the word for machine gun in that language. adds a bit of authenticity.
remember that thorough description slows down the pace of your writing, so if shit's hitting the fan you don't want to be painting a huge image of it. this is where vocabulary comes into play; having the perfect word to meaningfully and concisely explain events is crucial.
>>7763614
comma after but (middle 2nd line). multiple grammatical errors (commas, run on sentences, improper sentence structure, and etc.) that i don't have time to point out and correct without rewriting too much of the piece. however, they fit in the stream-of-consciousness style that you're writing. in most cases it's a pretty lazy style, because you just rush out everything you want to say and separate your thoughts with commas, rather than writing proper sentences. personally i don't like this style; it's kind of like the speed metal of writing. it's hard to add emphasis and emotion when you're just blabbing everything out like a busted fire hydrant. all you can do is add a ton of adjectives and adverbs to be descriptive. anyway, you do you. it was fine other than that.
>>7763655
comma before "where" 4th paragraph first line. commas around "more often than not". comma before "from which" 4th paragraph 2nd last line. commas around "but forgave" 5th para 1st line. comma after "father's return" 2nd last para 2nd line. comma after "with furtive steps" last para.
generally good, a few missing commas around interrupting elements, after introductory elements, and before a joining word in a compound sentence.
I'm out of time for now boys, but if you guys think my criticism is constructive just tell me what post you want me to look at, and i'll see if i can do it later.
>>7766160
thx
>>7764085
I wrote this and already posted some critiques but I didn't attach it to my post because I was on mobile. Now I'm on my laptop so I'll go critique some posts with my writing linked at the top so that I can get some response.
>>7763143
Clean up your language. The word "even" doesn't need to be in the first line and "quite" doesn't need to be in the second line. That kind of thing happens a lot where you just put filler in to fit a rhythm and it's not especially valuable.
>>7763174
The passive voice and ugly diction make this not fun to read. In a larger context it could make sense but when I read "The alleys are pervaded with marred wickerwork" I don't look forward to reading more.
>>7763188
This style only works if one has an especially masterful understanding of syntax. You're not there yet. Strip it down and read some great essays.
>>7763614
The edginess you're going for needs more direct language. There's nothing punk about beating around the bush.
>>7764257
Ask yourself why you're writing a novel. The other anon is right about this reading more like a script.
>>7765926
This isn't long or funny enough for me to comfortably interpret it as greentext-level satire and for that reason I'm out.
>>7766083
thanks alot brosef. yeah starting the story is hard for me. i'm actually considering taking that bit about the crime and the doctor out of the intro and leaving the ending a bit more ambiguous. so that the reader afterwords goes "?" "oh he was in prison or a mental ward or something". just need to rethink how to interject that after i'm done the rest of the story.
and i agree completely with you (though i hadn't thought of it before you brought it to my attention). i need to have something more interesting to entice readers to pay attention than just musings on weather. thanks a lot for the helpful criticism. and that somebody thinks my writing isn't bullshit.
>>7763614
It's really weirdly rough, real, down to earth and then all poetic and kind of pretentious again. It doesn't blend.
The aquarium and reef comparison is neat. And I did like the super cosy interior description. Like you are going to switch around the usual cold, dark and lonely space theme to warmths and comfort.
http://pastebin.com/RLkVK2q1
>>7766328
<This isn't long or funny enough for me to comfortably interpret it as greentext-level satire and for that reason I'm out.
hm, okay thanks for the glance. by chance did you catch the second part of it? or together was it still not long enough
>>7766541
The balance between the character being a sympatheticly stupid Catcher in the Rye type and a laugh-out-loud caricature isn't really there. He's too creepy for me to like and not ridiculous enough for me to laugh at. For homework go read through a /b/ or /r9k/ cringe thread to get a good idea of how people who say "friendzone" act.
>>7766464
An interesting concept, but I feel lost reading it. Some things are over explained, other things under explained.
The first paragraph especially was difficult to read. I would definitely remove that "bang!" from the sentence.
>>7766550
gotcha, thanks for the feedback anon
>>7766464
The sentences are a little too terse for my liking; but then maybe that's what you're going for, conveying a sense of urgency or the fast passage of time/etc.
Almost like an old-fashioned telegram; which might suit the whole 'military' theme you have going on, actually.
Anyway:
http://pastebin.com/1GVPVuxp
Book idea I've been working on. I'm around 20k words in; I could be farther along, but my writing moods are few and far between.
>>7763655
>coterminous to lode stars
my nigga
good $tuff
idk about that last line though, strikes me as rather edgy.
>>7766018
goddamn those are some pretentious names
also the >I could write
is such a meme, we can tell you're trying to show off
also this protag is boringly lecherous. he look at her titties but what does it mean? Doesn't seem like it means much. Good stuff for the shadow website that opposes our own one. I'm not much for fantasy though so ignore me
>>7766032
I know you're in pain but you gotta use words right.
>I must .... wrought upon my heart
that's wrong. it would be work, I think.. or wreak. wrought is past tense
I can just tell you're not fully inhabiting the voice you're straining for here. It's inauthentic.
Just B yourself, or practice until you can write well with that old dusty voice
>>7766131
>in this day and age
cliche
>heart briefly jumped in my chest
has this ever happened to anyone in the 21st century?
>voyeur twice
try not to repeat words accidentally
>prattling on about something work related.
I've read this before
these are minor complains desu. your writing is currently childish but you're genuinely interested in other people and have something very interesting to say, so you will survive
>>7766665
https://xkcd.com/483/
>>7766849
>XKCD
Strike one.
>Fictional names in a work of fiction as a fault
Strike two.
Last chance, kiddo.
>>7766866
Uh... your gay?
>>7766866
>misreading it
lol
>>7766870
My gay what?
>>7766879
your gay ass story
>>7766884
If you say so, champ.
Link what you've got; though I can't say I anticipate anything stellar from your performance so far.
>>7764257
>>7766199 here
4th para - change "Elias" to "He". change "I honestly" to "Honestly, I" (I honestly sounds pleading, honestly I sounds more matter-of-fact. he sounds like an old guy, who would he be trying to convince?)
Remember to choose the active v passive voice carefully. Eg "I was told" v "They told me"; the active voice can create an adversarial relationship between the two parties. Whether you want that or not idk, but switching between the two for the sake of variety is lazy and will subtly change the meaning of your statements. It's important to be shrewd when dialogue is the main component of the text, since you don't get much of an opportunity to be descriptive without making the dialogue sound inauthentic.
Good content so far; gave me a chub.
>>7764260
1st para: I would change to "She settled her hands back on his shoulders, then lifted herself back up again and settled further, lower than the first time, causing him to release his breath." You want to keep up the pace here, and breaking this up into two sentences, especially when they are structurally alike, slows you down. In your original version, the way it's written, specifically the comma between "again" and "then", causes a mental pause, as if she's stopping at the top, taking a breath, and then coming down. But, she's not; is she? I interpreted it as somewhat of a grinding motion: down-up-down deep. Anyway, consider that.
4th para: You might change "concern showing on his face." to simply "concerned." If you're going to mention his face, then you should be mentioning something about his face. Eg "his eyebrows knotted in concern." or something like that; "concern showing on his face." is wordier than "concerned.", but adds no extra meaning or description.
5th para: "her motions." You can afford to be more descriptive here.
6th para: same as above. "Motions" is a vague term, and, from what I've read, you're not afraid to be explicit in your sex scene. So, if you can find a tasteful and descriptive word to replace this with, then go for it.
All in all I thought it was an enjoyable read. Several sentences were technically run-ons (ie using a comma to connect clauses without a joining word), but I let it slide because this is a fiction, you used them sparingly, and they did improve the descriptive quality of the piece.
Enjoy this fap worthy picture of some babes as my congratulations.
Taldeer eyes slowly closed, like the falling crystal leaves of Ulthwe, the hesitant memory of a black spring in the void. The flower in her hair was cut by his hand, her lips still hot remember the taste of forgotten suns. Her breath, trembling, whispered away the shackles of his soul.
When did the kiss begin? When did it end?
A wave of pitch black truths boiling in her mouth, like two wrestling galaxies ripping apart their tongues for that moment, where suffering gives wholeness, and grief becomes forgiveness.
>>7766890
The gun-steel was heavy on his chest; she drew closer until he saw the flecks of sleep on the edges of her eyelashes.
She put her hand against his neck; it was impossibly soft; she leaned in; his own soul dissolved into an ultramarine blueness:
"The living light is undying. The–"
She seemed almost to sneer as she exposed her secrets to him.
Now there was no voice for the speechless; nor was there any longer any death for the undying.
>>7763655
I enjoyed this, though I echo (to a lesser extent) the comments about being verbose. Some of it was harder to interpret than I think it should be, just barely crossing the line from being poetic and descriptive to just being wordy. But I liked it!
here's some stupid shit i did:
http://pastebin.com/1MSuqkTf
>>7766910
>impossibly soft
Sounds a bit pithy.
>an ultramarine blueness
You could kill two birds with one stone and just say "dissolved into aquamarine", which is a colour. Not sure what the sentiment means in any case, however.
Not quite sure what the rest is supposed to mean, but perhaps the context is given elsewhere in the story.
So there you have some criticism/advice (i.e. The point of this thread), rather than being linked a comic from the world's most faggy/hypocritical comic maker.
>>7766936
thank you
>>7766894
you haven't reviewed mine but you are a good person these threads need
>>7766894
source on girl (left)
>>7766913
Not really sure what's supposed to be going on in this short piece you shared. The information you give doesn't have much of a flow or logic to it--why do we need to know that the speaker would only have two numbers in his phone? We don't even know where he is what he's doing, which is why the "weed!" line doesn't make any sense. You should try to establish scene before getting into more detail. Unless this is an excerpt from a larger bit, which would excuse you from not setting context and all. The writing here actually isn't terrible--you don't try to do anything too pretentious, but the first person speaker puts us a little too close to the character imo. The tone is too casual and unreliable so I really wasn't sure what was going on. Also you didn't mention how many people were in the room so the sudden introduction of Dizzy is confusing because he/she wasn't mentioned before that. And how did the speaker get high? I mean I understand the concept of hotboxing but this just didn't seem believable. You don't just suddenly start cackling when you're high.
here's a short bit of a non-serious short story I wrote a while back:
http://pastebin.com/RKUuSAk9
>>7766957
I wish I had it bro...
>>7766942
link it and i will, if it's not super long
itt: people search for the word crit in the catalogue and post without reading the rules.
>>7766974
5
7
5
7
5
>>7766969
it's comparatively longish now
http://pastebin.com/0a2pGfRF
>>7766962
thanks for the read! yeah sorry, this was literally a copypasta from the 9th chapter of something i was putting together; i had just gotten it down and wanted eyes on it before i got too excited it. i should have put a disclaimer.
on suddenly cackling when high, i would probably annoy the fuck out of you irl because that was a bit autobiographical ;_;
on yours -
body-builder! lolol. i liked it
Think I'm late to the party but I'll critique whatever comes after mine. My instinct is to call this story finished but I know it's not, I'm just at the end of how far my own critique can take me.
I've been told it's not perfect but it hasn't been picked a part and no one's mentioned specifically where they find imperfections. Would appreciate a look.
http://pastebin.com/DHZEZhXz
>>7766837
Thanks, it definitely needs improvement. I try to avoid repeating words as much as possible, guess I missed that one.
Could you expand on what you mean by childish? Just kinda simple and elementary?
>>7766962
The use of Hofgarten is quaint. It evokes The Waste Land to me, where when I read it I take Hofgarten as some vaguely German vernacular or proper name. Here the Americans' misconstruing of the company name is a funnily incidental mirroring of that. I liked the juxtaposed caricatures.
>>7767059
glad you picked up on that because Hofgarten is 100% a reference to Eliot's poem. I actually had a brief excerpt of it in the first draft of the short story but removed it because it was a little too on the nose (the idea of a wasteland figures into the plot of the story later on)
>>7764227
Find a piece that reflects your ability. An average piece.
Something that can somewhat stand on it's own and doesn't require exposition or follow-through.
A good scene with dialogue related to a plot point is typically good.
>>7767001
>http://pastebin.com/0a2pGfRF
Lots of big words that I would say border on the right side of being pointless. It's there abundance that's so distracting, I have to admit they fit and flow better than any story I've ever read that overuses thesaurusy words, but still they pull me out of the narrative every time.
I'm having a hard time de-constructing what you've written to find out just where you go wrong, for example:
>You feel how quaint the uniformity of this packaged constitutent flesh belies a previously whole being. It's the myopia towards a brushstroke in a landscape, not necessarily apathy so much as learned insensitivity, you think. Such thoughtlessness certainly blunts (astuteness moreso, you daresay, among our enlightened types). You half-fancy to meditate on this moment.
It feels like it works almost but I know it doesn't. It's got a nice rhythm to it (I think) but I still get the impression you're trying to impress me more than you're trying to really compose something that fits together. And while I say it kind of works then you hit this:
>If you did, if you traced with one hand along those shifting labyrinths, you might find the waning gestalt of some animal here or there; and thus shaping the essence of, say, a pig, you would trace the circumference of your simulacrum and sense a radiating pulse: a trough, perhaps, materializes from which it feasted, and then the wood that constructed the trough and the tree among a majestic many that supplied the wood, and further now the feed of the trough comprising the scraps of its caretakers and the meals cooked to provide the scraps and the labor necessary to provide the meals; and then the components of the meals. These would you find as waves breaking upon waves encapsulated at any and every point of your simulacrum's centeredlessness. Now returning to the arc of its life, of its shadow casting and shadow retreating, like the lockstep dance of the moon and sun, you might traverse the etched annals of its lineage to find in pigkind a Pig, invoking in those vestiges an ouroboros coiling through epochal forms and patterns, reaching towards the conclusion of your constructed progeny, an ultimate (or very well an eternally penultimate) summation. Before you: its death..... (etc.)
And it's the same style, the same flow but I can already see at the beginning of it where you're going with the idea and now all you're doing is telling me what I already know in a long-winded and fanciful sort of way that is sometimes interesting but really the idea and feeling is too far ahead of the writing. You want to present your prose and your ideas at once so I can have both the "a-ha!" moment at what you've told me and also have the "wow" moment at how you've told me at the same time.
__
Mine if you feel like reciprocating >>7767027
>>7763655
I would like to say as someone who just started frequenting this board, I really enjoyed what you wrote.
The way you married the vocabulary has put me to shame. I'd like to share what I got, but fear it's too edgy.
"Standing over Jäger's blood, spirit fought mind. The feeling of revenge, so sweet, seemed to gurgle inside me, my spirit abhorring it. Such a savage act, so merciless, that I describe it in an uncommon way: Human.
There's nothing more cruel, sadistic and evil than man. You can't be human, all flesh feelings must be ignored, and the spirit, elevated. But is there anything more tempting than savagery and nature acceptance? The madness, the disorder and the anarchy, man's natural state, is hard to be denied."
The context is basically this: The protagonist was betrayed by Jäger, who killed his wife. The antagonist, that represents savagery and anarchy, takes the protagonist to Jäger, who was beaten and locked up by the antagonist guys. The antagonist gives a gun to the protagonist, to prove that even the most saint person (the protagonist), can do a savage act for revenge.
>>7767027
It's too descriptive, sometimes it kinda ruin the idea. Everything else is really nice though, kinda comfy
>>7767110
confirming that it was edgy and/or awful can only be good for you and your writing.
>>7767092
I can totally agree. I read a little Faulkner recently and was floored by the technicality and if I could capture even a wisp of it I'd be satisfied. It obviously goes beyond vocab but it's that balancing of poetic prose before its veering into a cloying incomprehensibility (per his structure and syntax idiosyncrasies as well) that I feel is really difficult.
re: yours, I really liked it
>we testified by staying silent and letting it hang there and develop a greater sting as it went on to become the last thing any of us said for the night
stands out and I can't imagine changing much other than a bit of punctuation on the part of my own rhythmic quirks. Your narrator's voice is very believable.
>>7767277
It takes me two hours to write two pages too
But I didn't make any progress at all. Wrote one and a half page, thats it
>>7767223
See, I actually don't get that. Is that good or bad?
>>7767277
>>7766894 here
I only write academically. >>7767092 is a different guy. But, my best advice is that you write like shit on the first draft. I always do a first draft on paper because I find i can handwrite faster than i can type, and the point of the first draft is to get the words on the page before you forget about them. As you get good at writing, you will internalize certain skills and your first drafts will get better and better, faster and faster, and etc. You have no reason to think twice about your speed.
Writing my crit of >>7767001 now if anyone is still here.
>>7767169
>"Standing over Jäger's blood, spirit fought mind. The feeling of revenge, so sweet, seemed to gurgle inside me, my spirit abhorring it. Such a savage act, so merciless, that I describe it in an uncommon way: Human.
>There's nothing more cruel, sadistic and evil than man. You can't be human, all flesh feelings must be ignored, and the spirit, elevated. But is there anything more tempting than savagery and nature acceptance? The madness, the disorder and the anarchy, man's natural state, is hard to be denied."
I liked it. And I'm saying that upfront so that my criticism doesn't sound harsher than it actually is.
It feels stilted. I'm aware that this is kind of a vague, whimpy thing to criticize, but if you try reading it out loud you'll see what I mean. Parts of it feel redundant. "Such a savage act, so merciless, that I describe it in an uncommon way: Human. There's nothing more cruel, sadistic, and evil than man." is a good example of what I'm talking about.
Also, it feels like you're just trying to explain your novel's symbolism to the reader in flowery terms. Don't do that. Show don't tell is a cliched piece of advice, but it applies here. Be more subtle.
It has potential and I can tell that you're not a bad writer, but it needs to be overhauled.
>>7767305
well it'll function insofar you use it to, you can channel it towards improvement or reconcile it in an ongoing dialectic, outright reject it to fortify your rationale etc.
none of us got anywhere without engaging in at least trying I think, and even a guy like Pessoa who talked of failure and apathy all the time nonetheless wrote and wrote and wrote, even if only for himself
>>7767027
I like this. However, you get long-winded at times in a way that doesn’t quite work for me. For example:
>We stepped out of the car and the air held a tang that smelt like Italian spices in a hot kitchen molested by some sedimentary chemical, repulsive yet appetizing, the duality was disturbing.
>Further along the road the trees edged closer to the bitumen and they inclined away from the road making it seem as though they were running towards us with so much haste that their leaves had caught in the drag of the wind, but still they came on, furious with us.
A sentence can go on forever and be acceptable if it is necessary, or if there is a stylistic reason for doing so, but I think these are run-on.
>We stepped out of the car. The air held a tang that smelt like Italian spices in a hot kitchen molested by some sedimentary chemical, repulsive yet appetizing, the duality was disturbing.
>Further along the road the trees edged closer to the bitumen. They inclined away from the road making it seem as though they were running towards us with so much haste that their leaves had caught in the drag of the wind, but still they came on, furious with us.
The sentence:
>I imagined the smell would be yellow if it was anything, the same dim yellow of the lights that ran around the edges of the car park and all the other car parks, taverns and motels far enough removed from anywhere considered remotely urban.
Is of similar length, but everything within the sentence feels necessary to the sentence, and in that way, I think, this works.
But take to mind that I don't know what I'm talking about.
Mine:
http://pastebin.com/R0f2hbjD
The language is supposed to be a bit colloquial, manic, and evoke a time and place. General critique on my sentence structure, certain repetitions of language, and my grammar (as well as anything else) are eagerly welcome.
>>7767169
I don't know what the fuck this is, but I'm glad to be alive for it.
>>7767338
You're right, now that you said it I noticed most of my wrting is more telling than showing. That part isn't on the novel though, I just wanted to wrote that part to see how it looks
The inside of the forest might as well have been a cave. The trees withheld their oxygen greedily and he had not taken an unfought for breathe in a long time (nor had he seen the sun or felt a breeze or spent any length of time not drenched in sweat). Like all the others he had eventually given up the idea of modesty. He lived naked in this twisted growth of fauna and at the sudden sense of any cool pocket of air he huddled against the moss of the forest floor and rolled in the dirt like a pig. Rainfall was bitter-sweet; during he would go to the stream (his own, the one he knew of, not so much a secret just nothing he spoke about to others and so on and so forth, let them find it if they did) and lie in the mostly empty creek bed and enjoy the fresh flow of the new rain that came from somewhere north if his understanding of north was not mistaken. It was pleasant to pair the undeniable sensation of the chilling temperature with the idea that the water was fresh, it came from the sky and brought with it a new air that was still imbued with the essence freedom and if not that (platitudes could drive a man mad in the forest) then just some welcome spaciousness or something worldly anyway. If this lasted a day he was happy until tomorrow when humidity had sunk inside the place and in waves its heat emanated through the forest, routinely propulsed by some heartbeat through each of their bodies which they felt in the same the way a deaf man still senses the thrum of music. In this aftermath he returned to his tree (his own, the one he knew about etc.) and burrowed deep into its ancient roots grown from an earth that was so fertile here that its moisture had begun to decompose the still living wood. He could tolerate the heat there and if he was patient enough he mostly just sat until it passed.
>>7767001
>>7767001
1st para: I'd change "thighs. The work is indeterminate." to "thighs; her work is indeterminate." Using "The work" makes it seem significant and oddly tangible, like it could stand alone and be measured or admired or something. The style of this paragraph seems detached: "A man", "A woman", etc. Giving the woman's actions more significance than herself seems out of place; john hardly notices her, so he should give an even smaller crap what she's doing. "Her work" conveys that the action is secondary to her presence; aside from her existence, the only notable thing about her is her work. Do you see what I mean?
1st para: "wall: thighs skin rib fat breast bone liver flank shoulder belly." Commas are used to separate items in a simple list.
2nd para: "uniformity of this packaged constitutent flesh" should be "uniformity of the packaged constitutent flesh" unless you're talking about a single piece of flesh.
2nd para: I would change "It's the myopia towards a brushstroke in a landscape, not necessarily apathy so much as learned insensitivity, you think." to "It's the myopia of a brushstroke in a landscape; not necessarily apathy, so much as learned insensitivity, you think." Toward(s) seems both clunky and ambiguous (in the linguistic sense: not the word for the job) in this case. You create repeated structure using "of" ("of a ... in a"), which is neither good nor bad; but, I figured I'd point it out. IMO it flows a bit better with "of".
3rd para: "there; and thus shaping" You don't use a joining word after a semicolon. A semicolon works exactly like a period, only it denotes that you, the author, intended the bound clauses to be closely related. Joining words follow commas when you are making a compound sentence. So you could turn that phrase into either "there; thus shaping" or "there, and thus shaping".
If you're starting a new sentence with a joining word, such as "however", "although", "because", and etc (which is fine), then that word becomes an introductory element, which a comma must follow. Eg: "Bla bla bla, however bla bla." or "Bla bla bla; however, bla bla." or "Bla bla bla. However, bla bla." All are correct, but the structural differences affect the flow of the paragraph. They are also a style choice. If you've ever read DFW, you know that he makes long sentences. But, the sentences are always grammatically correct. He just makes long introductory elements, long clauses, long interrupting elements, uses semicolons, creates compound sentences, etc. I digress. These grammatical concepts are less important in fiction than they are in academic writing, but that's what's so great about Wallace; he is a very shrewd linguist.
(1/2)
>>7767485
(2/2)
3rd para: "meals; and" no need for semicolon here. You have a big list going on where you're using "and" repeatedly, instead of punctuation, to add emphasis (which is fine), but this last semic doesn't need to be there.
3rd para: This paragraph has two large run on sentences. They suit the style of your neurotic-yet-apathetic narrator, but be careful not to overuse them or you'll end up like >>7763614 .
4th para: I would change "of clearance of some" to "of the clearance sale on some". Announcement of a verb v announcement of a noun. To me, announcement of a noun sounds more natural, even if it is a bit wordier. It's also more explicit, which is the way your narrator seems to like to talk.
4th para: "certain steaks and" should be "certain steaks, and".
4th para: "Oh, yes, while you might extrapolate so you do not feel you'd be particularly off (in sentiment)." Sentence fragment: While I might extrapolate what? "While" indicates that this is an introduction of sorts, but the thought is never completed. Removing "While" or adding something like "extrapolate that chicken is delicious".
4th para: "modulating the work" Here, I find both words ambiguous. Modulating = changing to some degree; how are they changing it? To me it seems like you'd want something that expresses looking on, but with more meaning (including some emotion; tired excitement? something along those lines, perhaps). I don't know exactly what you want to convey, but unfortunately you've cornered yourself to some degree in the description department by making your narrator apathetic; it would be hard to use a simile describing any form of excitement, and have it seem authentic, coming your narrator. I'd change "work" to "sale" to align with the earlier phrase.
Overall, an enjoyable read. Like i said before, try not to overuse long sentences unless you've got them sewn up grammatically.
>>7766894
Thanks, I really do appreciate it. This was a first draft of this bit, so you're literally, like, the second or third person to read it, and the second one to give feedback. I wrote that in one sittingas part of a NaNoWriMo rush. That day, I think I ripped out something like 8000 words, chapters 10 and 11.
I'll take your critique into consideration when I do my revisions. I'll come up with another selection, one that maybe shows off a not sex scene. >_>
The thing about my writing is that it is a novel, and each chapter builds the tone and mood for the next so cutting it out of context degrades it, unfortunately.
>>7767511
That's OK. I'm not a creative writer, so I wouldn't be able to give detailed or insightful advice on character or plot development anyway.
>>7766328
>>7764085
Still haven't had anyone read it so I'm gonna do another round of critiques.
>>7767413
The forest being claustrophobic and dark like a cave is nice, but the idea that this big lush treescape would be devoid of oxygen doesn't feel right. Some of the turns of phrase don't work. For example "twisted growth of fauna" just doesn't work. Simplify your language.
>>7767169
This is good stuff. Maybe lowercase the word human because I think that'll improve things somehow. I slant toward "show don't tell" so stuff like "There's nothing more cruel, sadistic, and evil than man" makes me groan. But that's just me.
>>7767027
There's something offputtingly overwrought about this. Leave shit out. Simplify. Put this in a word-counter and then try to cut it down to 2/3 of the current word count.
>>7766464
Should mother be capitalized? If you're gonna come right out with a line like "This army, see, is made up of children" it either has to be more ridiculous so that it can be funny or it has to be omitted. Your prose isn't bad but your storytelling needs work. The way you reveal and withhold details is lacking. I really do like your prose. It's not overdone like a lot of things here.
This is Cap'n Sex Scene. Here's another selection, I'll be able to crit here after my company leaves. Snuck away for a sec.
It wasn't long before the rest of his companions were dragged in, one at a time, and chained to oars. Most of them looked somewhat battered, as if they had put up a bit of a fight. Martin looked the worst for wear, his face and hair covered in blood, and his left earlobe torn and puffy. He had apparently put up more of a fight after Elias had been escorted out. Shortly, all of the empty spaces were filled, save three. Elias still had no partner, nor did an elderly man three oars up from him, as well as an emaciated young woman across the aisle.
The last man to be brought in was Jonas. He walked more than he was dragged or pushed, leading the two men that were escorting him. He started to sit by the old man, but before he could even take rest, one of his escorts, a skinny man in faded, multicolored clothes, hauled on the rope his wrists were tied to, almost bowling him over. Jonas recovered his feet, glaring at the man who almost knocked him down. “Alright, alright, princess, where would ya have me sit, then?”
The pirate glared, baring his teeth. “You mouthy son of a whore!” he spat, punching Jonas square in the stomach, doubling the mercenary over. Jonas coughed and struggled to keep his feet as he was hauled to his bench. As he was being shackled to the oar, he turned to look at the man who had punched him, a cheeky grin on his face.
“A son of a whore, am I? I didn't know you and I were brothers!”
The pirate looked at him for a moment, confused.
Jonas sighed. “I mean your mother's a whore too."
It took a moment for the flicker of understanding to cross the pirate's face, and when it did, it was quickly replaced by anger. He seized the front of Jonas's shirt and struck him three times before Jonas tried to hold up his hands to protect himself.
“Alright, alright! I'm sorry!”
The pirate grabbed Jonas by the neck, his long, dirty fingernails digging in. “You're not sorry yet, you mincy, nancy little fairy! But you will be." He lifted Jonas slightly from his seat, his gapped teeth bared in Jonas's face. Jonas tried to turn away, presumably from the smell of the pirate's breath.
Elias pulled hard on his wrist chains, but they held firm. He had never felt so helpless before, and even though the mercenaries weren't his family, by any means, he felt a duty to help and support them. They were part of a band, a group, and he wasn't able to come to their aid.
1/2
>>7767687
“That's enough." The voice of the well dressed man rose over the sounds of struggle. He stood not far from the pirate attacking Jonas; Elias recognized him from the room where he had regained his senses. He had entered the deck to quietly that Elias hadn't seen or heard him until he spoke.
“Turn him loose. If you injure him too badly, he won't be fit to row, and we may need all the backs we can get." The man turned his head and looked at Elias for a moment, then walked back towards the stairs. “Gab, you're needed on deck. Get up there now. We're four weeks from Greenreef; if we want to make any sort of good time, we'll need every inch of sail we've got."
The pirate turned back to Jonas, glaring daggers at him. The foul breathed pirate spat into Jonas's face and dropped him, storming away. Jonas hunched over, doing his best to wipe his eyes off on the sleeve of his tunic.
Turning his head, he saw Elias watching him. With a lopsided grin, he chuckle slightly. “Well now. Isn't this a pretty pickle we're in. Looks like we're going to Greenreef."
>>7767487
Thanks, the analytic side is insightful and reminds me to not ignore rules before I've internalized them to a justifiable degree of being able to play with them. I can see where I might've made the narrator too clinical in my wanting to avoid tweeish wonder. I tried to do it from a place of Zen mindfulness, if anything, per JC as a postwar composer interested in that stuff, and there's a definite eminence to the concept of a 'work' the narrator constructs that I might nonetheless structure better.
>>7765187
i like the concept because the deli display is the absolute carnal height of advertising.
i think you need to tone down the language, and i'm not a big fan of the second person
>>7765341
the heavily german "gestalt" was like slamming on the breaks in the middle of the sentence.
up til then it was smooth middle english plus the greek "labyrinth."
don't get me started on "circumference" and "simulacrum"
>>7765514
"for as long as i can remember"
avoid.
>>7767927
Lol. This post fucked me up for a sec. I thought someone was saying that it would be a bad thing to end up like me by linking one of my posts as an example.
>>7767927
>>7767968
Any time you use a comma to connect two independent and complete clauses without using a joining word, you are making a run on sentence.
^ sentence was OK because there was only one complete clause; the part before the comma was an introductory element, as notified by the leading qualifier ("any time").
In fiction, readers typically let the odd run-on sentence slide, because they are stylistically useful when the author wants to add a lot of description in a short space. Some will claim it increases the flow of a paragraph, but a good author can make a paragraph flow without grammatical mistakes.
>>7763614 is an example of overusing run-on sentences to the point where the writing begins to look sloppy and disorganized. For example, the last sentence reads:
>The winds kept up, slicing and frenzied, they had grown stronger, and from this, one’s thoughts could only wander towards an undesirable truth: the seasons were changing.
but it should really be:
>The winds kept up, slicing and frenzied, and they had grown stronger; from this, one’s thoughts could only wander towards an undesirable truth: the seasons were changing.
>>7768067
thanks. I was itching to use semicolons when I wrote this; but the last item I posted was torn to shreds for using semicolons. I let /lit/ bully me into run-ons (and hard ons)
>>7768067
I am >>7767968, and I posted
>>7764257 and >>7764260
as well as
>>7767687 and >>7767694.
The way >>7767927 posted this:
> them or you'll end up like >>7763614 (You)
I saw the (You) at the end and thought that you had referenced one of my works as an example of bad run on sentences. Completely just my tired, after-work eyes being dicks.
I know that I have a tendency to make run on sentences, but I go through and check for flow pretty constantly... I think, most of the time, the flow is pretty good.
>>7767413
Hey, >>7767687 here. giving yours a read over.
The first thing that hit me was how insanely rdy this was. It felt like I read a entire paragraph of, well, nothing. Nothing happened. There was an extreme amount of redescription,where yu cover the same concept multiple times, and it started to feel like a stretch for a word count. This sentence stoodout to me, as it was kinda awkward, and had to reread it a few times;
> Rainfall was bitter-sweet; during he would go to the stream (his own, the one he knew of, not so much a secret just nothing he spoke about to others and so on and so forth, let them find it if they did) and lie in the mostly empty creek bed and enjoy the fresh flow of the new rain that came from somewhere north if his understanding of north was not mistaken.
The parenthetical addition as way too much on an already way too long sentence, and the whole selection felt like just a whole lot of that. There didn't seem to be much of a point to what was written.
Break up those sentences a little, look for redundant descriptions, and try to tighten up the whole thing... I think you could say what you said here in about 1/2 to 2/3 of the words, and it would read easier.
>>7765932
This is really crappy crap crap. I would say it could be written by one of the toddler brained students you rip a part but that would be given the overused saying too much credit. The part that you call "terrible" is indistinguishable from the rest of the story's terrible aspects. I would suggest focusing more on the struggle to ask her or you may even just be better off finding a new muse.
>>7766018
nice build up, but rather jumbled. could benefit from reworking and possibly some cuts.
I heard you can't fuck up that hard
so I got laid on the track
got to give it up quick unless i am laying new tracks
getting run down on bars
by people trained to move fast
damn those bars go hard
across my back in fact
better move it or just loose it
because crazy is split in half
on the rail that I kissed whilst the train was out of sight
coming down the line
between the wrong and the right
I paused in the sight staring down one headlight
really not much a fight to be had when it is all white
like I write this ambiguously
just to fuck with the type
of people that say
even one solution can be found objectively right
ight do you get the picture we gonn' be alight
just heal; feel and hear everything
then make up your own advice
follow the voice that told you to take a
breath in your head when you sleep in the night
just staying human is the hardest part
sometimes when there is a record playing
the farthest place from our life
so i guess all i got is a space to play
for a life well while i'm at it I'm gonn' give it
all up and get laid on the tracks
>>7766897
super short. Fairly interesting similes, lacking metaphor so loses some context and awe.
How do I make people cry with a story that has minimal dialog and descriptions?
>>7770175
Print it over and over and over, bind it into a book, then crush their baby's skull with it in front of them.
It was an ominous night, the kind that makes the meteoropaths grab their long-healed injuries and lament in pain as they try to catch some sleep. I stayed up late, writing articles for a fee as to make my student life a little less ascetic. My workplace and bed being a couch and a low table, situated next to large windows on the ground floor, with long a long blackberry tendril resting on it, waiting for springtime like all of us.
The rain fell heavily, and I had an ominous feeling. I had a conscious tick, a vessel in my brain that kept pulsating and keeping my wits about that night, as I lay in bed, drifting to sleep.
I felt a sharp hiss in my mind, and heard a bark. The bark turned into barking, and the hiss became a growl, and in a second it turned into a turmoil of moaning, hissing, barking, clawing and crying, all several meters from my window.
It was as if my body had turned on the autopilot, I leapt across the table and hastily opened the window wide, only to see the housecat being torn apart by dogs. I jumped outside in the pouring rain, almost as naked the day I was born, and crashed over a barbed wire fence, scraping my foot in the process. I did not care, for all I cared was getting the dogs away from the cat which they had in their vice grip of death.
I leapt for the dog in an attempt to snatch at least one of their lives away, as they attempted to snatch the family's beloved pet.
Neither the dogs nor the cat were nowhere to be found.
The entire family awoke, and looked at me in disbelief, calling me a madman, a fool.
But I knew what had to be done even before I had done it, I knew as I've done it instinctively.
The cat disappeared for days, and I wondered what had happened to it, was it alive or dead? If he was alive, where did he go, is he frightened of us?
The torment lasted for several days, with thoughts of revenge occasionally flying past my consciousness.
Until I found him, the poor sod laying under an old apple tree in the neighbors yard, his death bringing my sadness to an end and planting a seed of bitterness in return.
P-please be kind
>>7770804
I DON'T REMEMBER YOU CRITIQUING A GODDAMN THING!
>>7765187
Para 1: I would probably cut “What a marvel” which seems too quaint for the tone. Otherwise okay
Para 2: Good, but editable. The myopia becomes a repetition of an idea introduced into Para 1, but better. So I would cut it from Para 1, the “who really sees” thing. ‘Shifting labyrinths’ has been quite overused after Borges, I think it can be cut without not much loss in the idea. “centeredlessness” sounds a bit clunky, but I think still manageable. I would use “decentering”.
Para 3: “shadows casting” and “dance of the moon and sun” feel a bit clichéd in this kind of description.
Para 4: okay.
Verdict: I wouldn’t read an entire book like this, but I would read a few pages like this.
>>7770939
NIGHT JOURNEY
1.
The cockerel peters out birth
And lo, a stream again, coming
Stream, to stream, to vast,
Piece upon piece, veldt upon veldt
Walk the creatures of the morning
Whilst the sun fires over Africa,
The moon is hanging over here
Black trunk, whispers the grass
To the clouds, afar, and neither
They nor, the rest can understand
This perpetual –
O, night is perpetual. Day fosters
Everything discretely. Night is the melding
Grandly
Of everything into a blur, except
O, if the moon were perished from its sky
Would I speak of the eternal blowhorn
That whistles through Nocturne’s
lasting?
2.
Night is perpetual, but only we
Can see that.
The clouds are tinged grey, and a storm
Comes over. The grey pulses. This is no sky,
But the pores of a gloating god. No god
Of pagan mists and foundation, but of One Mind
That seeks the sky as his crucible,
Yet he remains livid at the numberless dreams
And seeks to profane the Night, he remains
Livid at the willing cast of doubt, and the strategy.
What strategy seeks this? Tell us –
I have kept the world in this closeted box,
And inside, a bottled fancy, a draught
Lessening itself into a small thimble
A mercurial heart
Does not
Seek. Silently, at rest
It listens
3.
O, disconsolate god that rests on festive bower!
That breaks the waves of Heaven and would’st call Paradise
As ‘this’ not ‘that’. In your flaunted flower,
While the mortuary ghouls throng on, throng on, enticed
Can you describe to me your Paradise?
Describe to me the simple flowers, that in their simplicity
Are multi-coloured with a stark colour in starkness as it is –
While the bounteous animals hold no complicity
The land endeavours with a vibrance that eternally consists
Of the pleasures that, in cascade, persist.
Flower mistress, wave your hands over my heads
And let me languish in my own perceptual discomfort
That exists here, now, with a sigh. The boat flies down
The river, long lasting, shaking, creaking –
A wooden knocking. Knock-knock. Silence answers.
4.
Night is perpetual, and it is precisely
Where there is no badge. I can live here,
Where there is no blade of grass.
I married under the petals, to the mirror
Whose future looked back, ambiguous, unpleasant
A countenance bearing no respect –
And yet at Night we can have a little house, with a little garden
Where the naked orphans are playing hop-scotch on the benches
And the apple-tree has never been sweeter. We strip
The bark from the trees, you and I, and use it as our rafts
And climb ladders to no tower, and look at things that never end
And ring the bells, that are there, and only meant, to be rang
5.
He spoke of planes, and the journey was bought for
With two tickets, one for him, and one for the mistress.
The terminal was dark. He waited. The planes, to him
Looked like the lumbering lions on the veldt. Staring
Eyes that seemed to speak to light.
>>7770804
I'm almost immediately turned off and rolling my eyes in the first line by the super vague and typical descriptor.
Wouldn't staying up late working make life more ascetic? Also, generally weird vocab choices, meteropaths, ascetic, not sure I agree the uses.
I think the birth allegory would be better left unexplained. Don't really know what happened at the end there. Get it together anon.
>>7771019
Staying up late to work would mean I have more money so I don't have to starve as I'm studying English in a poverty struck country.
Birth allegory as in the seed of bitterness being planted? It's referring to how I felt when I found my cat dead, the story is a real event described for an essay!
Thank you for the hints on what to edit
>>7771019
http://pastebin.com/raw/u3GBtJza
>tfw no critiques
>>7771192
What did you post?
Just a little something I wrote up the other day. Part 1:
“For Christ’s sake Owen, I’m not talking about suicide.”
“You’re choosing not to live, Roger. It’s the same thing.”
“I am choosing to live! To live the years I have left, just how I always thought I would. Natural years. How can a God botherer like you think that’s wrong?”
“God wants us to choose life, Roger. To take all the opportunities we can to live.”
“Well if God’s plan for everyone before a year ago was for them to die I don’t see how that’s suddenly too good for me. You saying I deserve better? Than Dad? Than Lisa?”
Owen let out a long, deep sigh. “I don’t know Roger, I’m not a preacher. I just know that life is a gift not to be wasted. And I believe that we’re all here for a reason, and to check out before we have to goes against that reason.”
“Well I don’t know that there’s a reason. And as far as I’m concerned that might just be the only thing makes life bearable. You tell me I’m here by accident? I say fine, that suites me. I’ll do what I can with that. But you tell me there’s a plan. That when I die and get up there, and it turns out there is an up there to get to, and I get to find out the big plan, well, it better be a good fucking plan to explain cancer and, you know, Nazi’s and all the rest.”
Roger finished his beer in one long gulp before continuing. “In fact, if I die and find out you were right and there was a God all along and I get to spend eternity, real eternity, with him, then I’ll wish I’d joined you. Just to avoid being stuck with God. Cause he sounds like a prick to me.”
Owen’s face stiffened. “Why do you want to drive us away Roger? This isn’t about God and you know it. This is about us. You’re my brother Roger. I don’t want to lose you.”
“I’m not driving anyone away. You all are the ones leaving.”
The two turned from each other. Both looking straight ahead at the shelves of liquor lining the other side of the bar.
Slowly, still looking ahead or down upon the bar, anywhere but his brother, Roger spoke. “I’ve made my choice. I’m staying right here. In this body. It’s served me well for 78 years and I don’t want to leave it now.”
Owen stood up. “I hope you reconsider. While you still have a mind worth transferring.” Picking his coat off the stool he turned and walked out of the bar and into the snow.
“Prick” Roger muttered to the empty stool.
>>7771271
Part 2, not sure how to end it:
He was left the only one at the bar and before long the bartender came over to him. “Hey man, you want another beer?” His voice was deep and gruff.
“Sure, why not.”
“Was that that Eternity shit you were talkin’ about?” The bartender put in front of him a newly filled beer.
“What else is anyone talking about these days.”
“Fuckin’ A, man. Fuckin’ Eternity. Eternity of what? This?” The bartender waved his arm in a gesturing that took in the whole of the world. “Of this?” He asked, tapping the side of his head with one finger. “Shit man, one life is enough ya know what I’m saying. It’s like, we couldn’t leave well enough alone. Like those scientists figured out there wasn’t nothin’ after this life, that there weren’t no hell, so they had to go ahead and fuckin’ build one.”
“You don’t believe the testimonials?”
“I think they believe it. Fuckin, for now. I mean, I thought up this mountain was the greatest place on Earth to live when I got here, ten years back. I still like it now, but in ten years?” He shook his head. “Anywhere becomes hell you stay there long enough. Even here.” He tapped his forehead.
>>7770876
Hell yeah thanks anon!
>>7767687
Yeah, I usually would wait longer but my unlisted pastebin has 6 views for whatever reason.
I don't think there's much wrong with the aesthetic (though it's certainly not my style) I think the problem is mostly due to lack of context but the characters act as though they've already been developed. Idk, there's a weird disconnect to it that makes it feel awkward but I overall like it.
Also just a side note, when you want the prose to move fast and for the reader to read fast, don't add descriptive words.
Specifically, "he spat, punching Jonas square in the stomach" would be better as an individual predicate, "he cursed, and punched Jonas in the stomach" Anyways, good stuff. Keep it up
>>7771271
>>7771275
Critique something you faggot.
Also this reads like YA fiction and looks like it was written by a very young person. Nobody actually has conversations like this and nobody uses the other person's name that much.
Embarrassing
>>7771062
Comrade, this isn't bad. I like what you're trying to express. It feels like a comfortably sad depiction of lost love. But the language you use is a little cumbersome in places- you rely on cliches like "tender, soft voice", which what's more is redundant. Try to dial down your attempts at poetry and let the situations you're depicting speak for themselves.
Anyway, this is the opener to the novel I'm writing at the moment.
http://pastebin.com/YM5z2nYz
>>7771414
>http://pastebin.com/YM5z2nYz
The first sentence is confusing. I got it eventually, but it took me a minute, which isn't what you want from a first sentence. The first sentence is the hook. The percussion that leads into the song. Not sure how to fix it, but my suggestion would be stretch the information contained in that first sentence into a few. In the first just describe her in the bed and how that makes her feel. Then get into the why.
Okay got further and I really didn't get the first sentence. I need to know right away that there's three people in this bed because that would hook me right away. Especially if its from the perspective of a women whose not really okay with it. There's a lot of emotions in there.
I like the detail of your descriptions but they lack authority. Your not in a conversation with the reader, you are leading the reader. You are in charge. You shouldn't have descriptions like this "She was also thin but not very frail, since she exercised and enjoyed sports, and had a body like a boy's or like a girl that had just started puberty, and she wore her hair in a severe bob."
It should be closer to something like this "She was thin but not frail, toned by habitual exercise. Her breasts were small, from a distance she could be mistaken for a boy, and this had always rankled her though she didn't help the matter by wearing her hair in a severe bob. She envied Lily her feminine curves and whisper soft voice."
I like what your building though. I hope you continue.
I wrote this by the way >>7771271
Apparently I sound like a YA hack so take my advice with a grain of salt I guess.
>>7771303
>Yeah, I usually would wait longer but my unlisted pastebin has 6 views for whatever reason.
Probably anons opening it for later, and/or getting bored and not finishing it. I figure that's why I don't get reads.
>I don't think there's much wrong with the aesthetic (though it's certainly not my style) I think the problem is mostly due to lack of context but the characters act as though they've already been developed. Idk, there's a weird disconnect to it that makes it feel awkward but I overall like it.
This is an excerpt from the end of chapter 5, so, yeah, a bit of development has taken place.
>Also just a side note, when you want the prose to move fast and for the reader to read fast, don't add descriptive words.
Good info, I'll keep it in mind.
>Specifically, "he spat, punching Jonas square in the stomach" would be better as an individual predicate, "he cursed, and punched Jonas in the stomach" Anyways, good stuff. Keep it up
I appreciate the crit, thanks.
Ive kind of been working on something thats a bit personal for the last couple months on and off. Its semi autobiographical in the sense that a lot of the situations are pulled from my own life and experiences, but the narrator is a hell of a lot more cynical and misogynistic then I. I dont read or write much so I dont expect my writing to be very good. Basically its about a kid in his second year of college who struggles with cocaine addiction and alcoholism. He has a deep rooted hatred of women and struggles to connect with others. Its really the result of me getting fucked up and making big mistakes, destroying relationships and friendships, and then just writing about what happened as a way to cope. Eventually i came up with this character who is half me half fiction and apply his view to these events. I can post a random excerpt
>>7771882
I looked her once over as she tried to get her bearings. A frazzled look was plastered across Daisy’s face. Beads of sweat trickled down her forehead, adding a clammy and damp complexion to her make up caked skin. Her meticulously applied eyeliner had already deteriorated into inky smudges surrounding her eyes, and black streaks ran down her pale cheeks.
I couldn’t help but feel pangs of disgust. Was I really about to fuck this mess?
She looked up and met my disdainful gaze, finally realizing there was another living being in the room. A toothy smile spread across her face. I made a half hearted attempt to reciprocate the gesture, but my pursed lips refused to budge.
“Hey..y Mick, I made it just like I said I would, huh?”
“Yeah quite a feat. Im surprised you even made it through the door, especially such a small one at that”
“Oh my god I know, Ive got the spins so fucking bad you would not believe. I smoked an ungodly amount of weed, and took out half a handle of jack. Can you fucking believe that Mick?”
“Aren’t dark liquors a little heavy on the calories? A bit surprised you don’t stick to vodka. But then again maybe I’m not.”
“Yeah and oh, holy shit, this guy we were smoking with wanted to fuck me so bad, It was crazy. Ash and Sam could not believe how obvious he was being.” She giggled a bit. “Honestly I probably would have let him if you weren’t here.”
“Yeah, sure. By the way, how are Sam and Ash? Haven’t seen those two in ages.”
“Uh, I dont know there fine I guess, but like I just want to say that like uh…..
blah blah fucking blah…. holy shit she wouldn’t shut the fuck up. God I just wanted to stick my fist down her throat and tear out what ever the fuck makes her speak. Usually my little jabs seem to shut her up and speed up the process, but either she was too drunk to notice them or was trying her hardest to ignore there sting. Im guessing the former. She’s way to self conscious to stomach a blow to her weight.
After a couple minutes her insufferable lips finally stopped moving and she swiftly leaped on to my mattress. I cringed a bit when her hefty girth made contact with my poor bed, half way expecting the entire thing to collapse under her sizable stature. I took a deep breath and hopped up, situating myself upright in between her meaty thighs. I glanced down at her and paused, waiting for the clothes to disappear from her plump body. My gaze briefly met hers, and for an uncomfortable second I got a clear look at her eyes. They had a glassy tint to them, glazed over and cloudy. I was dumbfounded that she could even see out of those damn things, must be like trying to gaze through a saucer of milk. The two murky orbs seemed to almost hide under her thick glasses, as if taking cover. The clear lenses acting as a shield from the judging glare of the man above her. But they offered no protection.
>>7771897
“You planning on taking off those glasses any time soon, or anything else for that matter?”
“What? Oh yeah. Sorry hun, I’ve just got a bit of the spins.”
An insufferable ditzy look flashed across her face as she gleefully asserted her drunkenness with peppy candor. She slowly removed her spectacles, and I unfortunately experienced another quick flash of eye to eye exposure. And for that brief moment I saw a glimpse of something terrifying. I saw just a shimmer of sadness. I saw this hopeless fucking look, this pathetic fucking look that just didn’t sit well with me. It was as if I could see right through her, right down to her black heart. She just seemed so exposed. So goddamn exposed. And for a second I almost felt bad for her. Almost.
Daisy snapped back out of her stupor, and resumed her noble quest for clumsy coitus. She began fumbling with her shirt, flopping around in every direction trying to remove the damn thing. It was painfully apparent that I was being looked on to offer some assistance, but at my current level of agitation there was honestly a better chance of me bending over, spreading my ass cheeks and allowing the slut to pummel my rectum with her clenched fist. Sorry “hun.”
After quite a struggle, Daisy eventually managed to shed each sweaty layer of clothing, save for her bra and panties. I stood there motionless, expecting her too continue the self exposure. But she just looked up at me.
“Well?” she said.
“Well what?
“Aren’t you going to get my bra?”
Her voice cracked as she repeated that phrase, a shrill cackle that was fucking sandpaper to my eardrums. The dumb whores mouth curved into a shit eating grin, her lips spread and revealed rows of teeth. Her eye lids squinted back and cast a sharp leering stare.
>>7771898
I think the swearing could be toned way down, the angst shows. It's a good dialogue, I like the awkwardness, and somehow, I like the whole terribly sad and banal feel about it all too. Her voice cracking is very powerful and I can appreciate that, but at the same time the whole scene feels really... anger driven, Daisy somehow turns out to be kind of endearing in her own way that kind of evokes pity in me.
I'm not sure if my criticism is any valid though.
>>7771930
I appreciate the comments. I think your right that the swearing should be toned down a bit. The whole scene feeling anger driven is kind of the point though. The whole story is supposed to read like a drunken cocaine binge. Angry and horny. Im trying to make it as raw as possible
>>7771954
Marginally reminiscent of Dean Moriarty then, but I don't know, raw, angry and horny, it all feels angsty in the way a bored, misled teenager can be. Somehow, I can't like your character, maybe this is the other point I'm not getting. In general, it almost feels vulgar, but I'm not sure this is valid and more of an opinion. Good luck though.
Here's something I'm trying to start and hopefully finish.
A student found a small café on the side of the road. It appeared tiny and out of place in the long spiraling buildings of the downtown commercial complex. A somewhat homely, yet very chic air emanated from its surface, from its frame, to its windows, to its doorknob. He walked in and a chime greeted him. The crisp winter air perverted the scene and the snow invited itself to embrace the welcoming warmth.
His cheeks felt numb under the jarring heat, and he was left momentarily blinded by the fog on his lenses. He took his glasses off and he searched for a place to sit. One table looked no less attractive than all the others. He seated himself off to the side of the wall. His vision left slightly-less-obscured-than-before by the smears his cloth left. He kept it in his wallet, sooty and undusted from the tumultuous life your change and my change experiences.
The tables and chairs were a faded auburn and a small splattering of coffee left unattended on the edge. The whole restaurant had a dim atmosphere, lit only by perched lamps at select positions in the shape of a rectangle. It was dim enough to make you lose all sense of time, coupled with the generous heating, one could pleasantly nap. The wall had been decorated with wooden planks dressed on the wall, unvarnished and pale with a frieze topping it off. The frieze had been quaintly painted, a motive of white fleurs-de-lis on a dirty beige background, their vines twisting, and blossoming, twisting, and blossoming.
Across the wall, above the frieze were a few paintings scattered about,
made some major re-writes to one of the characters. Now I'm at the end of part 1 and I don't know which character to introduce in part 2:
>angry manlet with the ability to change flavors
>homeless girl raised by cats
>nerdy girl researching alleys, parks and subways with unnatural geometries
>>7771898
okay, first off, i'm pretty sure the name Daisy has been illegal since the 1970's, same for pretty much every english female name based on a flower except Rose. Second I can't tell if I'm reading a depressing slum-romp or the beginnings of a horror story featuring a girl who got bit by a vampire back when white people still wore hair spray
>>7771271
okay, wow, the sci-fi just came out of fucking nowhere. That's not a bad thing, but the dialogue needs work, or rather the void surrounding the dialogue does. Block dialog with no time dedicated to the scenery or narration gives the whole piece a sense of action that doesn't belong there.
It's a somber discussion, whitespace, ambiance and pacing matter here
>>7767671
>>7766328
>>7764085
Still haven't had any response so I'll give a response to some more in this thread.
>>7772005
This definitely feels over-described. "A somewhat homely, yet very chic air emanated from its surface" is not a good way to describe a restaurant. Resist the urge to dress shit up and just tell me what you're trying to tell me. I just fought through that whole paragraph and nothing interesting was communicated.
>>7771882
This isn't bad. One thing to consider: this might be better in present tense.
>>7771414
The premise gets my attention but the prose is lacking. This is the kind of premise where interiority is important. There's a big web of characters and each character's inner thoughts about the other characters will make up the meat and potatoes of your novel, probably. In that case, be subtler. Get inside the characters. Let the plot and the premise reveal itself. If it's easier for you, do each chapter in first person from the point of view of one of the characters.
>>7771271
I like the genre shift. I like the fact that it reads like a play. I like plays. The dialogue is kind of off. The line about how life is a gift not to be wasted is handled poorly. That's either an overt statement of a theme or an ironic statement of totally-not-the-theme and either way it's handled ham-handedly.
>>7772103
I read it. I wrote >>7767687 and >>7764257.
I read the whole thing, but it was extremely hard to follow, and was well beyond whimsical, and into the nonsensical. It felt like being witness to a string of inside jokes that I didn't get in the slightest. I could totally see it as a very short play, but a play that I would walk out of saying "What the fuck was that even about?"
I hate to say it, Anon, but I didn't really like it at all. Maybe it's just me and my taste, but it was too senseless to catch me at all. I didn't want to keep reading, and was really just waiting for it to be over.
“How was the date?”
“I don't want to talk about it.”
Jonny gave me a sympathetic glance. “You know how to pick them, don't you Albert? You must be the only person who can get and lose a date so quickly.”
“Especially unspecialised.”
“Albert, Jonny!” It was Bennie. “Are you coming to the picnic?”
“What picnic?”
“For Anna, it's her birthday!”
“We always got to picnics – when is it?”
“Now.”
“Let's go.”
We finished our drinks and left with Bennie, following him up into hotel, experiencing a moment of confusion, then realising that this was to be an indoor picnic. Bennie opened the door to reveal a room full of Hungarians and Czecks – we were the only Britons, it seemed, and Bennie hadn't even bothered calling on the Germans. There was a picnic blanket spread over the bed, piled with unhealthy carb-based foods and enough booze to stun a flock of mules. Anna was there, avoiding my eye – why did I agree to come? In erasing Anna from my mind I had succeeded to the extent that I forgot about the debacle of last night.
We had drinks in our hands, and we drank them. I saw Linda and Mozart, talking, so went to join them.
“Albert, I liked what you said today.” said Mozart.
“About what?”
“About finding eye-witnesses and letting them write statements in their own words.”
“It cuts down on labour.”
“What's this about you and Anna?”
I was fazed.
“Don't worry, she's only spoken to Linda and me about it; Florence, or anyone else, hasn't heard.”
“What have you heard?”
“We heard that you were in her room, then you weren't. That's all.”
“That's all there is to know.”
Lina half closed her eyes. “Albert, you don't expect us to settle for that, do you?”
“Listen, you two, are there bits of your life that, when pressed, you really wish people would leave?”
Both were silent, but they got the picture.
“I liked your reference to Othello, today, Mozart.”
“Which reference?” Asked Linda.
“When I said that the gutter press and the government made the beast with two backs. Othello is my favourite play.”
Linda added: “There's none so foul and foolish thereunto,
But does foul pranks which fair and wise ones do.”
Before thinking, I had added: “It is silliness to live when to live is torment, and then have we a prescription to die when death is our physician.”
“You need another drink.” said Mozart, filling my glass.
>>7771062
I usually don't like most of the shit in these threads and rarely find myself complimenting folks wholeheartedly but I'm convinced something about this is genius.
Your critiques were pretty coherent and effective so I went in expecting some purple, annoying shit: standard /lit/. Instead what I got felt like an extremely real, almost Proustian recollection of events with a closing sentence that almost had me in tears (and I never cry at books). There was a beauty to this piece. I'm not sure I can explain it,call it something I ate
>>7771062
This was extravagant, I was moved. I'm at work also, so THANKS haha
I really have no criticism, I wish I knew you in real life.
If anyone feels compelled:
http://pastebin.com/raw/r08EuRa1
>>7772997
The point is that they're all fools, wishing to use the work of dead authors to justify their dumb thoughts, right? If so, isn't the fact that your writing style is clearly not your own a meta-comment on the story itself? Are you criticising yourself? Quite interesting.
Here's my work:
I
The mine was cold and dark. I waved my hand in front of my face from time to time but at some stage I wasn't able to tell whether I could see it or whether I was imagining seeing it.
I had never been so alone. I wonder if I can find the right spot... It should be impossible. This mine is full of tunnels crawling through the earth like a thousand worms. It should be impossible to find the right spot... yet somehow a feeling burns inside me. Like a torch, lighting the way. My feet move one, following some invisible path to the centre of everything. The bottom of everything. The origin point.
A low sound is in the back of my head. Like a distant drone, or the sound of an air raid alarm in a faraway town. It begins almost in silence but as I walk on over the cold stones in the pitch dark, it becomes more noticeable. It's like I have tinnitus. The sound, dull, heavy and threatening creeps up around me and subsumes me. I close my eyes. I no longer need these tools of sight.
I walk and am swallowed into the earth. I realise what the sound is; pure silence. I stop and stand, taking in my surroundings. It's like a sensory deprivation tank. There is no sound but the faint sound of my breathing. There is nothing to be seen. The still, stagnant air rejects my breathing cycle. It exerts pressure on me from every angle, beckoning me to break up into darkness. To join the stillness. Let entropy take its natural course. This place requests death of its inhabitants.
I crawl on the ground, walking is too tiring now. The walls feel like they're constricting slowly around me with each metre I move forward. Finally, I find it.
I can barely believe it at first, surely this is some hallucination. I place my hands on it, pick up pieces. I feel warmth. I feel acceptance. Inside me unused gears begins to move. At the same time, glass shatters. I hold up part of it to my chest and hold it tightly. My diaphram wracks and shudders and sounds issue from my mouth.
>>7772795
I guess it works best when performed and interpreted by actors. I critiqued you earlier.
>>7774197
>I wonder if I can find the right spot... It should be impossible
The whole narrative was first-person past tense but this is first person present tense. You probably thought to made it like a 'stream of consciousness' but it doesn't work that way if you don't have control of the language. Also people who use ellipsis generally don't realize the effect it translates onto the reader, which is quite awkward unless done very very well.
A problem with all new writers in English is that inability to write consistent tense. I had the same problem before, where I would use present in dialogue and suddenly all my words would switch to present tense.
Anyway if you can't even fix that you're definitely not gonna be able to write yet.
As Above So Below
The hills were emptier then.
The soft forest fire buried into an ashen den.
As the ash beckoned and called for its own renewal,
As the scorched Earth sang its due for rain.
The soft wind is blowing; the ashes are gray.
Rings of soot and the sounds of hills fill the night
With the coos of owls and the folly of deer.
The soft wind is blowing; the ashes are gray,
The chaos above speaks of rain that washes away.
>>7774410
requesting feedback
>>7774410
comfy
The rhyme scheme doesn't do much for me and I'm not a fan of all the 'as' and 'the', and I think lines 2 and 3 could be tighter, 'its own' could be removed
>>7771062
>>7771062
Construction is okay. Subject is sentimental and straightforward.
>the joy turn to ashes in my mouth
>the innocence was heartwarming
>I’m brought back to cool wintry days
>your tender, soft voice
>I couldn't stop smiling,
>heavy flakes silently falling, sleepily, glimmering on the moonlight
>the tear I wiped away from your charming, kind face
These are some of the turns of phrases that are more sentimental and clichéd that the rest
>I’m brought back to cool wintry days, sledding with you on Birch’s hill: young, in sodden socks, you with handsome blonde hair, pale skin and gentle blue eyes. In matching pale blue scarf and hat, laughing at the bottom of the hill with me after we crashed into a snowpack.
Hemingway also did like a kinesthetic description of sledding in the Snows of Kilimanjaro. That story is better off because it’s less straightforward. The writer in there is dying in such a banal way juxtaposed to his descriptions of his memories. On the other hand when I look at this story I can see how it ends from the first line.
>(only to find her son kissing a boy!)
>I want more from you, more time from you, just one more adventure together, one more late-night reflective conversation session. Oh god, I can’t believe you’re gone
I know this is like a letter and you’re supposed to be mirroring the voice, but these feel horribly and melodramatically awkward
>"Hey, it's okay... it's okay. We'll be fine. It’ll only be a few years like this."
Actual speech is very awkward, but a lot of writers will have this problem.
>that ever-lingering loneliness in the not-so-distant future; the painful truth that very shortly, the thing we looked forward to the most day-to-day, the companion that made life bearable, would be missing.
I would say as a sketch of a type of sentimental mood, the whole is ok. But its probably been done better in a lot of places before. Personally I would try to cut as much of the idealized fluff as possible, or counterbalance it with ‘bitter reality’ to indicate what exists beyond the idealization (I mean idealization has been done so many times throughout Lit already, and also YA for that matter, so if you honestly wanted to write about that you have to be a lot better in your prose). The only part I see where there’s that counterbalance is in the last paragraph with the suicide note, but not much else.
Verdict: The only phrase I can use to describe it is 'cute', and only that. Seems that you have the basic construction down. Now all you need is to focus on dialogue, better imagery, less usage of sentimentality, narrative-planning, and getting away from the standardized themes
>>7774410
I would rate 60% or so. It passes because it at least has a cohesive image, but it doesn't say much after that. I guess the strongest thing is that its a short image of renewal, but I can't imagine any of the lines lingering with me afterwards.
>The soft forest fire buried into an ashen den
'Soft forest fire' feels awkward. Mainly because 'soft' and 'fire' are light phrases but 'forest' has a heavy cut.
>buried into an ashen den
'into' also feels like an additional beat. You could use 'to' and the image of the fire curling into a den would still be there.
>The soft wind is blowing; the ashes are gray,
>The chaos above speaks of rain that washes away.
The end would be more lingering if you swapped the last two lines, ending on the repetition.
>>7774410
1. this poem is about nothing
2. it's filled with cliches
>scorched earth
>as above so below
>washes away
3. >folly of deer
4. soft everything, soft soft soft soft
the only good bit is "sang its due for rain."
>>7774239
I appreciate it. Thank you.
>>7770944
This poem appears to be about looking at the window while flying in an airplane, but this is not hinted at revealed until the very end, which makes the entire poem confusing and annoying.
Specific issues:
(part 1) stars are discrete eh? the motion of the sky is continuous, that's maybe what you're getting at?
>a mercurial heart... listens
I tend to think of listening as patient, not mercurial. I'm also not sure what this fragment stanza has to do with anything at all. I hope it's not there for decoration.
(part 2) You describe this god as: gloating, seeking, livid but also say "No god of pagan mists and foundation but of One Mind" which seems to suggest some sort of transcendent monotheism/pantheism for which these qualities are not appropriate.
(part 3) the archaic -st ending is for second person singular verbs. if you intend this stanza to be addressing a you then I would change "that breaks the waves" to "thou/you breakest the waves" otherwise you've got inconsistency
>a wooden knocking. Knock-knock. Silence
answers
This is not profound, it's fluff, and bad fluff.
(part 4)
>Night is... where there is no blade of grass
but then
>at night we can have.... a little garden
none of this makes sense
Noblest of men, will i die?
Hast you no care of me? will I abide
In this dull world, which in your absence is
No better than a sty? O, see, my women,
The crown of the earth does melt. My lord!
Oh, withered is the garland of the war,
The soldier's pole is fallen: young boys and girls
Are level now with men; the odds is gone,
And there is nothing left remarkable
Beneath the visiting moon.
>>7774664
btw just something first of all, don't mix hast and you. It's "hast thou"
I feel like your grandiose overtures don't actually lead anywhere. You, overall, are a pretty solid writer, however this poem is kinda all over the board with very little use of cohesion.
>The crown of the earth does melt. My lord!
Oh, withered is the garland of the war,
The soldier's pole is fallen: young boys and girls
Are level now with men; the odds is gone,
It's stuff like this that is all over the board and doesn't do a good job of connecting with the reader.
>And there is nothing left remarkable
Beneath the visiting moon.
Good.
>>7774561
Thanks for the really helpful review!
Here's another one to look at, if anyone wants:
the stars swirl above,
like gullies on an archipelego.
Their green oxygen rising
Their memories bubbled away,
with just the smell of ashes
left to pave the way.
>>7774664
Is there a reason the first 'i' is lowercase?
Otherwise, I think that, while the language is stilted, it is at least consistent. Nice use of the difference between O and Oh. I would consider capitalizing 'the war' to emphasize that it is a particular war of great importance.
here's mine:
White moth fluttering
against jet streams of my breath;
please, call me Ishmael.
My first Haiku i've put any real work into and would like some pointers
Haze:
Thin, dark wisps curling up in the moonlight.
Dimness prevents clarity, presents a mélange.
A muttered statement, meaning utterly lost;
solely the rhythmic soul of it shines through.
Fringes frayed thin; the binge has weighed in.
>>7774197
Liked this but a few phrases stuck out.
>I realise what the sound is; pure silence.
The sound was more interesting until this point, a bit existential.
>It's like a sensory deprivation tank.
Too exact/scientific: the power of this piece comes from the universal fear of the dark/unknown; this phrase drags it back to the mundane/exact and breaks the spell (imo)
I would ask where the piece is going. I can't be too detailed in my response without a bigger picture.
Here is the beginning to something an SS I just started about the distance I felt between myself and the average joe guys I worked with when I was a student working on the recycling rounds in the summer. I want to look at why working class people seem to scare us bourgeois types and apologise for being such a snotty cunt when I worked there.
I was inspired by reading Carriba, and B. Hannah's lyrical, bizarre and beautiful evocation of "the Mississippi Irish criminal poor". Obvs prose style is pretty out there; have I pulled it off?
Fat hangs unabashed off his abdomen like tinsel left and gone to rust, reds and greens pining to be scrapped like true metals in late, chilly February. Even with this being true the man frightens me, as animals do that do not know their own limitations.
I have been collecting recycling in Sedgemoor for just over 8 weeks and am still often hurt by what I find here. The men are pressed hard in many ways, lots are squat and eat poorly and I imagine their bones to be tacky and hewn from pillars of salt. Still, in the black mornings they are pleased with each other and the rolling day before them.
The man is whipping me up with words I’m not all sure of but still I know I’ve done badly.
Aboard the lorry I am pruned tacit by carefulness and sullenness. A little stymied rose bush that has prioritized defense above all else.
Though I am passed around different drivers they all know about this set-up and for the most part are not bothered. Or they try not to be, the truck cabs are very small, like coffins or kitchens, and silence bangs sorrow into them eventually.
>>7774842
I guess my main complaint is that I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. A poem about haze, ok. What the fuck is the last clause about then? Can something with "rhythmic soul" be "muttered." It's possible, I suppose, but I'm not sold on it. The haze is about incomprehension. . . A bit of a trite metaphor, fundamentally.
“The Sins of the father shall be the sins of the son.” These words resonated with Alexander, like they were directed at him. His brother Anton obediently listen to what father said, whereas his other brother, joseph, was too busy flirting with the girl in front of him to pay attention to the words of the lord. Anton listened to the words and prayed with the father, but he did not understand these words in the way that Alexander did. His father’s sins include creating a bastard, and treating him as a pretender to the throne. It did not help that he was the youngest, always being passed over on every opportunity.
The Rostov family had reserved seats in the front, to show their status and the leaders of the oblast, with their father sitting in the middle; Anton and Joseph would sit on either side of them. Alexander of course was shafted two fold, by being a bastard and being the youngest, which meant that he would never had the privilege of sitting next to his father. While he personally held his father would contempt, it was an honour to sit next to such an important figure, relative or not, and Joseph would make sure that Alexander would never forget it.
Anton was much kinder than Joseph was; Always the good boy who helped with the church and got top marks in school. He did not care that Alexander’s mother was a Russian whore rather than a French Princess, he treated him all the same. Despite the affection he received from Anton, he could not help but be distant from him. It took a lot more than kindness to build a relationship, and the similarities needed between them just weren’t there. Anton for example was a devout Christian, whereas Alexander constantly questioned the faith and its practices, though he would never do so in the presence of others.
Anton met with charities whenever he could, giving away as much of his allowance as he could afford to, despite his father’s reservations towards creating such an image, Anton was the heir to the Tsardom, and up until that point they had a certain image created for themselves. He was top student in all his classes and captain of his sports teams. He was admired by men and loved by women, and despite all of this he still searched for me, mainly his father’s affection. Joseph had always been his father’s favourite son, and he had spent the majority of his life trying to win his father’s acceptance.
>>7774651
I accept that
>a wooden knocking. Knock-Knock. Silence
Is fluffy, since I abstracted a stone mood to fit the slowly lingering atmosphere of the previous lines and chose the words later
I also accept the critique of (part 4) although that seems to be overtly semantic. The word 'garden' bears connotations of 'freshness & quaintness' beyond the objects within the garden itself. The first line you pointed out does not necessitate completely the excision of the later line, but I can see how a better choice could be used. And also (part 3) in the archaic usage since I played with the mood of an old Romanticist poem there rather than trying to actually write one properly etc…
>This poem appears to be about looking at the window while flying in an airplane, but this is not hinted at revealed until the very end, which makes the entire poem confusing and annoying.
Not a valid critique, being purely aesthetic. Certainly some of Wallace Stevens poems start with a lingering narrative (Sunday Morning, Esthique du Mal) but others can be read as discrete particles revolving around a solitary theme despite each stanza being disconnected in a 'place'. I can see that after you came to this conclusion, you tinged your whole reading with it.
>a mercurial heart...listens.
>I'm also not sure what this fragment stanza has to do with anything at all
You aren't reading it in connection to the last stanza. Likewise saying 'mercurial' does not make sense with 'patient listening' is the kind of critique that makes as much sense as saying that Buddhism doesn’t make sense when it equates Form to Emptiness.
>gloating, seeking, livid
>One Mind
>transcendent monotheism/pantheism
This I'll accept slightly, because One Mind has connotations to that. Though the usage of 'Mind' opens less to that than 'Being' or 'Body' given that 'Mind' has connotations to Rationality over a purely divine body, which easily fits the adjectives.
Criticism Score: B-
You caught on to some of the moments where I faltered in the poetic connotations, but the rest of the critique has this strange adherence to weird pedantry and an adherence to weird criteria that makes more sense in like a critique of philosophy than poetry. Some parts indicate moments where you probably went like “oh what’s he doing here, a terse fragment at the end of a part? Pshaaaaaw!”
Ways to improve: Learn to read bottom up, that is, discretely consider the imagery then go up to the themes. Don’t try to place a proper narrative sketch over the whole because you read “journey” and “airplane” at the end and immediately wrapped it all into one bundle saying “this must be situated in a plane”, then curved your reading of the words into that interpretation. You’ll misread a significant amount of poetry if you do that, or jacket meanings into narrow spaces. Don’t write in such a way where I can see the type of feelings that’s making the criticism above the criticism itself.
>>7774520
Thank you, this is very helpful.
I've posted this once before and people who aren't using a critical eye seem to love it so it's refreshingand a little bit saddeningto be taken back to reality. That my prose is shit, that I can't think, I can't write, and have no discernible talent. Feelsbadman, I thought I had found something I was good at for a minute there. Guess I'll disabuse myself of the notion that I'm actually good at anything.
Reviews like these and pic related from the other time I posted it were what I was referring to
>>7773591
>>7773618
>>7775110
>>7774842
>>7774944
And this is what I mean by the above. That in an Anonymous imageboard I can spot the quirks of your criticism in a painfully obvious way.
The poem here is not particularly tough, but if its lost on your then I have nothing to say.
>Can something with "rhythmic soul" be "muttered"
Once again, uselessly pedantic. I can see the sense in that the poem is commenting about poetic ambiguity, but your strange adherence to weird rules totally skimmed over that
Criticism Score: C-
My criticism would be that
>Thin, dark wisps curling up in the moonlight.
is a tad overused. And furthermore the poem doesn't permutate it with any twist whatsoever, so the image sits as itself. Romanticists were discussing this theme for ages past but this doesn't exactly add anything to the choir.
>Dimness prevents clarity
>Meaning utterly lost
These are excessively describing stuff which is obvious. If you cut it to:
Thin, dark wisps curling up in the moonlight.
Dimness presents a mélange, A muttered statement
solely the rhythmic soul of it shinining through.
Fringes frayed thin; the binge has weighed in.
There would be no change in meaning but it would be tighter.
The positive is the nice twist at the end. I like it, but it isn't ringing enough to stick.
Poem Rating: C
>>7773591
And thanks, I appreciate it.If the letters felt real it's because they are. I left a series of 11 letters at my boyfriend's grave who killed himself. It's insanely personal so I have no idea why I would post it online, probably because I thought it was good but apparently not (also it's the only thing of mine I've written that I thought was good).
“Though I must say,” Azen mused, his dagger glinting as it danced between his hands, “you’re rather well behaved, for a hostage. I was anticipating a restless night of kicking and screaming, but here you are, still and silent as a midnight moon. I suppose for that I should express my gratitude.”
The silver blade swirled suddenly into the air, wheeling madly before landing effortlessly back into the man’s practiced grip. Now, its pinpoint edge was posed between the princess’s vermillion eyes. Still, the girl sat quietly on the caravan floor, smiling politely as it bumped and jostled along the untilled plains. Azen’s eyes narrowed with distrust.
“Why do you not show fear? I’ve taken you from your home. I’ve bound your wrists and thrown you to the back of a moving wagon, held your life at blade’s edge and through it all you’ve seemed nothing short of utterly content. I’ll warn you now, girl, if you’re hiding something from me, I’ll not hesitate to draw the secrets from your blood.”
Adeline closed her eyes. Her voice was soft and soothing as she spoke; indeed, there was no trace of frightfulness or panic to be uncovered in her tone.
“Since I was a little girl,” she said, “I’ve always sensed the souls of people that I meet. It comes to me like sight or sound. In a similar way, I can feel the nature of a person’s heart. Kindness and malice, happiness and despair; I can read them as naturally as words in any book. It’s difficult to explain, I’m afraid, but it’s the truth.”
She paused, almost sheepishly, before continuing.
“My father tells me, ‘Stop playing silly games! A woman of nobility has no place for childish imaginations!’ I cannot blame him. After all, who am I to ask of him his faith in something I myself cannot confirm? The only one to never once question my readings is Traveth. He seems uncaring, but his heart is of the most warm and understanding I have ever come to know. I am truly blessed to have him as my personal guard.”
Azen’s expression had slumped from cool hostility into bored irritation.
“What a truly captivating little tangent that was. Now, answer my question. Why is it you don’t fear me?”
Adeline’s eyes opened once more, peering with a gentle sincerity at the man in black, perched on a stack of wooden crates and keeping a dagger to her pale, unmarred skin.
“I sense that your heart is kind. My captor though you may be, I trust that in your company I am safe to feel at ease.”
Azen was left temporarily without retort. He simply stared down the length of his blade at the prim and pampered lady before him, smiling at her jailer like a child posing for her portrait. Then, finally, he began to chuckle. Then he began to laugh. His knife withdrew to the mindless toying of his hands.
“You crowns really are a trip” he mused. “I suppose when you’re cooped up in castles your whole lives, the lack of air begins to suffocate your brains.”
>>7775119
I wouldn't let you be so hard on yourself like that though.
Writing is very hard. Although trying to say something new we always fall to the easiest notions, turns of phrases and melodrama. It's a fight uphill to know exactly how to say things in such a way that goes beyond those, and some writers (think maybe John Green) are so incredibly lazy that they stick to the stuff which works for the general crowd and don't try to stretch their limitations by being willing to cut down on the phrases, understating the emotions, pushing for tighter narratives etc...
I would say at the very least you can see that, and that is probably the best way to start. The rest is just reading other better writers at how they do things, hammering what you know into gold, and constant self-evaluation.
>>7775151
Thanks friend, I'll keep working at it.
>>7775119
I genuinely meant what I said, just as I'm now genuinely telling you to go fuck yourself, it's not that you suck as a writer, you seem to suck as a human in general.
>tfw you've got 30-ish pages of shit
>tfw it will never be critiqued by somebody on /lit/ cuz it's too long to post in one of these threads
):
>>7775208
Pastebin
>>7775167
*perception (shlup shlup)
>>7775167
Definitely editable
Paragraph 1: “Fat” linked up with “tinsel left and gone to rust” I can see not really working. You used the latter phrase to indicate an addition to the flesh, and you also wanted to link up the ‘rust’ to create a sense of the decrepit. But tinsel also connotates to a light beautiful kind of thing (think “trees light with winter tinsel”) which kills the “rust”, “fat” and “hangs”, “red”, “greens” and “scrapped”. Furthermore you don’t twist it or give it any greater intellectual connotations, so you leave it merely for the weird poetic juxtaposition of the contrast. The result is purely embellishment. I can think of maybe a Burroughs fan chewing into that fat, but not myself.
Furthermore, if this is your beginning, then it feels atmospherically similar to Gravity’s Rainbow. Starting with a random poetic description of a setting.
Paragraph 2: Okay. Although “pillars of salt” may be overused elsewhere. “Black mornings” may also be a tad too Gothic, but that’s more like my own personal view.
Paragraph 3 & 4: “A little stymied rose bush that has prioritized defense above all else” is a nice touch.
Paragraph 5: “Silence bangs sorrow into them eventually” is a real feeling, but may be overused in other places.
Overall: The tone, which has the grotesque Gothicized descriptions mixing up with the alienated description, reminds me a lot of Plath’s Bell Jar somehow. That’s why I personally would not read a book written like this since I would find it boring. How many times have you seen this type of style elsewhere? I bet there’s tons in Alt-Lit or people like Bret Easton Ellis, although the subject matter in those would be more about alienated youth.
Read Orwell’s “Down and Out in Paris and London”, which has the plus of describing all that lower class suffering, but it’s also hilariously wry, and Orwell is an amazing social critic who can describe these type of scenes smoothly and then have an on-point analysis or interpretation of what it means to greater society. That’s the place I would point you to if you’re planning to write a story like this.
Prose Rating: B-
>>7775135
Oh right, it was so "meta!"
Rubbish. You can't read. You can't write. You've got false idols on the inside of your eyelids.
>>7775231
Thanks, I thought for the opener how about -
Fat hangs off his abdomen, unabashed like tinsel left and gone to rust in late, chilly February.
Since what I was going for was the unabashed quality of christmas decorations left out too long, though I can see that didn't really come off.
I feel like pillars of salt is justified when linked with the poor diet.
Yeah, I wanted to convey the fact that in the mornings there it was pitch black but "black mornings" doesn't really do that in the sense I want it to,and, like you say, comes off as Gothic which is not what I intended.
It's not really like Ellis, or I hope it isn't, I'm not trying to write about disaffected youths in the reverential, "edgy" way that he does. I suppose with the "grotesque" element I'm trying to distill the way (some) middle class people see some working class people, I know a lot of guys that would of thought that recycling plant was hell on earth. My disaffection is a failure of compassion, which I hope to look at earnestly, rather than an empty aesthetic which I plan to employ as a shock tactic. Also yeah It would be a short storey, I think a novel of that style would begin to grate quickly.
Thanks.
>>7774741
>the stars swirl above
Rilke was a poet who could do amazing shit using the same set of motifs 'stars', 'strings', 'trees', 'angels', 'rose' etc... and somehow never really make his poems similar to one another but sadly you are not Rilke.
After Van Gogh, we don't want stars to merely swirl anymore.
>like gullies on an archipelago
This adds up to the previous description, but doesn't really provide much yet
>their green oxygen rising
And now you start to link up the "gullies" to "oxygen". "green" you probably added to give a sense of a lighter sense. Yet overall stars swirling into oxygen is also not a particularly new motif. A standard motion of disappearing.
>Their memories bubbled away
Now this line transforms the image into pure sentimentalism.
>with just the smell of ashes
>left to pave the way
You really like to use disappearing metaphors and ashes don't you? This has no change in motif from your other poem.
Fix:
The stars above
Like gullies on an archipelago
Their green oxygen rising
With just the smell of ashes
With the gullies, swirl becomes redundant, but now when the first line is linked to the second line, there is that surprise that the stars have started moving.
With "green oxygen", memories bubbling away becomes redundant. And by adding that connotation, you jacket your meanings to make it a trite 'recalling' poem.
Due to the removal though, the rhyme is lost on the last line. Leaving it just as ashes creates an ambiguity that lingers. Now the poem becomes more general, universal, and Haiku-esque
>>7775265
No the poem wasn't really 'meta' at all, merely a simple statement, but its a theme thats similar to Dickinson's "Tell all the truth but tell it slant —" except that he was also describing rhythm & music beyond just content.
Likewise it wasn't a poem that was saying that in a good way. Symbolists have tried to do
"A muttered statement, meaning utterly lost;
solely the rhythmic soul of it shines through."
For ages, with Rimbaud and his juxtaposition of hallucinatory verse that cared more about sounds and the feeling of it over the content itself.
These are like stuff going on in poetry that have been going on for ages waaaay before postmodernism turned 'meta' into a thing.
Some time ago
A Sabbath day
My hands were raised in prayer
I felt a chill and I was aware
The devil had come for me
See, the devil had been watching,
Stalking, tempting from afar
But this time he took a seat aside me on the aisle
And told me he'd like to talk to me for a while
And so he talked
One mistake
One mistake trying to learn of good and evil
One mistake and all humans are doomed
The beast "Suffering" is born and all are consumed
Does that sound like a God to follow?
This beast is one that tears all in its path
Innocents get sick, bad people get rich
Good people starve because they don't steal
God does not stop this when these wrongs could be healed
Does that sound like a God to follow?
Then the devil said "come, follow me"
"I don't ask of your faith unlike some"
All I ask is you think for yourself
Go put your Bible back on your shelf
And follow a better path
Some time ago
A Sabbath day
The devil came for me
That day I countered God's decree
And left with the devil
Hand in hand
>>7775276
I apologize because I while reading I missed out 'unabashed, which does make more sense, but one of the problems when reading poetic prose is sometimes the eyes tend to skim over the mixture of the images. I still hold my idea that 'tinsel' has too light a tone. Maybe 'ornament' is a better word
"Fat hangs off his abdomen, unabashed like an ornament left and gone to rust in late, chilly February."
If you're trying to cut down on the Gothic grandeur, Pillars of Salt is definitely too embellished.
"The men are pressed hard in many ways, lots are squat and eat poorly and I imagine their bones to be tacky and hewn from salt"
You can see the difference like that. Especially since the proverb doesn't exactly add much.
With the fragment so far it came off as a disaffected alienated tone kind of writing. But of course since I'm not seeing the whole thing, you could probably end it with the narrator making a connection to the people and the tone become warmer etc... That would make more than just aesthetic sense if it happened like that.
I'm also not going to deny that its your personal experience, but I think that when people read a story like this and see the same grotesque metaphors and atmosphere etc... added to this kind of theme about poverty, they may find it a kind of manipulation or running along a standard theme.
I linked you to Orwell because a great thing about Down and Out is that he never embellishes suffering as a grand tragedy or whatever, or poeticized it. He states it as it is, which is plain stupid shit happening to people. He wrote the book with compassion, but also humor and not overblown pathos.
>>7775348
If you're going to write it like a moral song it would be better to properly write in rhyme and meter. You could also probably blend stanza 3 and 4 together and cut it down to make it less preachy.
>>7774664
I like the twist, which is to apply that Sapphic or Homeric rhapsody to a message about the death of stuff like honor and greatness. The ending touch also speaks about an ephemeral feeling. As a small poem it’s okay.
But of course you still can’t beat Yeats at:
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
>>7775197
Which one are you?
>>7775197
What did I do?
feelsbadman
I'm sorry
Am i a degenerate normie who should neck himself if i dont like poetry? i just find it cringeworthy.
>>7775110
You don't get to review my review faggot. You post your poem, you ask for what people think. You take it or leave it.
Get a life. And that poem was shiiitttt.
>>7775110
(cont) you literally just triggered me
I read your heaping pile of shit of a poem THREE TIMES to be fair. My instincts was to say "Shit" but I thought that wasn't constructive so I gave you details. I hope you never write a poem again so nobody has to sit through that insufferable garbage.
>>7775402
what kind of literature do you enjoy?
>>7775402
No. It just means you should read more poetry and find poetry you like.
http://pastebin.com/7QFuF8eR
Sorry, not going to critique anyone else but i did actually put a lot of effort into this so even if it's garbage at least I tried and you aren't totally wasting your time.
>>7770944
you're aping past masters in an attempt to look learned but it only comes across as false. i don't hear a real voice in this poem. the point of poetry isn't to throw together a bunch of expensive words.
"The cockerel peters out birth"
thesaurus thesaurus obfuscation
a bad start and the rest continues in the same vein
"the naked orphans are playing hop-scotch on the benches"
far too precious
>>7775477
>>7775480
Oh dearie me. Don't worry anon, here's a poem for you to enjoy
The betalord face that he makes is so dear
It looks so sweet that this boy wants to come
To the tables of men that he, now, fears
As his whole body shakes cold and numb
But no look stop! These men are all faggots!
That aim to rape him quite fast through and through
And throw his body to the lingering maggots.
To be a beta, oh life is so cruel!
The raging bukkake of dirt, grime, and semen
And lusty young seamen with their seaworn cocks
Would interpose into his rectal freedoms
And fap off his loins with their dirty old socks
But when this beta is finally thrown to the pits
Necrophiliacs will touch him with their worn mitts
>>7775661
Alas, past masters I wish I could ape
But I scatter my verses like an inebriate
But don't worry anon, I have for you
A nice little ditty to sing to a tune:
Alas, Dear me, this curried fart
Has little will to read and perceive
That there’s more to this than idle queefs
As he still licks the scrots of the bard
Sadly old Willy’s scrots are quite shriveled
As Hamlet’s own balls are quite mummified
And dearest anon should wish to have tried
Something other than tonguing that drivel
One day his ovules will birth into song
And realize that maybe, there’s more to the fact
Than caressing the nekkid dead songster’s sacks
And then his clit will grow five times as long
Into a furious penetrating shaft made of steel
But now, anon go cop your own feel
>>7775148
You should not have used 'mused' two times so closely together. Aslo I'm not fond of the name Azen.
But other than that I'm liking it, honestly.
Please be gentle about it. I'm new to the whole writing bit. And before you ask I don have a decent vocabulary, I wrote it very simply as a choice, let me know if that was a good one.
In a town called Goldbog lived a young boy called Jesse. Jesse was spending his summer alone. His three best friends had all left Goldbog within a week of the school year ending. Jory, the new kid who transferred to Jesse’s school this past semester, went to Philadelphia to visit his great uncle and wouldn’t return for two months. Harry, a short Vietnamese kid that’s great at kick ball, went to London on an extended family vacation and wouldn’t return for a month. And Geoff, Jesse’s best friend since elementary, had moved to Washington and wouldn't be returning at all.
These circumstances were depressing for Jesse, he never spent much time alone. He found himself hanging around a convenience store since his pals were gone. The store had two arcade cabinets but he didn’t play them. He would mainly look at packaging and try to make conversation with the clerk, Gregory. Gregory was a tall, lanky 11th grader, about 3 years older than Jesse, who found little joy in anything at work, almost least of which the young boy who would almost never leave.
“Why does this store sell milk and eggs?” Jesse asked Gregory one particularly gloomy day.
“What do you mean, Jesse?”
“There is a supermarket just down the street. What does a convenience store need to sell milk and eggs for?”
“You ask all the right questions, Jesse. A real thinker, you are,”
“That’s unnecessary.” Strange things had been happening around Jesse since his friends left. Not that this ovo-lacto debacle was particularly strange, there were other things.
It started when he was saying goodbye to Geoff in front of the moving van. They hugged each other, which in itself was odd for Jesse and Geoff, but appropriate all the same. The real mystery came from the girl that Jesse saw when he opened his eyes, arms still around his best friend. She was standing right in front of him. She was maybe 5 years old, wearing a white dress spotted with yellow flowers and a pair of bright yellow duck boots. Jesse yelled and stumbled back, landing hard on the sidewalk. When he looked back up he found Geoff laughing and a little confused, but no girl. Somehow Jesse found the ability to write it off as his eyes playing tricks on a perfectly clear summer afternoon.
This is why Jesse was so fixated on the milk and eggs being available in the convenience store when there was a supermarket just down the street. It seemed out of place, a feeling that had been becoming familiar to the boy ever since the incident with the girl in the duck boots. It made him uncomfortable.
>>7775348
Every time this tries to build a rhythm, you toss too many syllables in the mix.
It reads like prose in lots of places, so it's just awkward that it's broken up into lines like this.
I hardly hear them now.
Just auditory clues,
cues to signal– keys to
slot in neuropaths and
drafts to notes to sheets to
this music. Peace in the
pieces– where I sit but
don't listen. These songs that
tend to sidle step in,
change some stone to flesh and
numb law to love. I want
rest but instead this sly
test sets in for the night.
I hardly hear them now.
>tfw you'll never write good poetry
>>7775736
>>7775754
>rhyme scheme but broken meter and random syllable counts
>reusing birth imagery
>misunderstands criticism that anon should develop his own voice
>'songster' is simply incorrect
>still unable to take the L
>&c
overall rating: highly defensive and insecure about criticism. forecast is dim for development unless overcome. maybe try taking a class anon.
>>7775913
LARKERS NEST
1.
A scattering bird fell into a nest of trees
And lonesome crow, scattered here and there
Bits and pieces of his calumny.
He spoke:
“Why did the arrow that fosters not hit target true
Nor did the harvest bore me my account?
Why did I come to understand that not a day past was my own?
Why did doubt manifest itself in every stone?”
And he threw his pence into the well
Of larker’s nest
And wished for the world to be blest, again
But the mere pence that fell into wishing well
Echoed echoes, internal ripples that spoke no true
And the glint of metal merely fell into squawk,
Wrestled with the wasteland of dead twigs
And made itself into a carcass call
2.
Two stone words make no sound
Other than the sound of a grunt and thump
But I have found a black mare that runs in the sun
And this black mare runs, this black mare runs
Across the hills, borne on flights, reserved
For otherwise other fowl. He stands
On the cloudy parapets, stares, and gapes
With stallion eyes at the far reach
And knows that the world is good
And nothing is out of place, he knows
The stars hold the same view,
He sees – they wish to be starlit too
Their wishes aimed to be starlit too
But if they do not vibrate like stars,
Then what are they? Swallowed up lumps
In soil, like mudskippers playing passersby?
Clingers to the feet of these mountains
Whose legless stance shouts nothing but mountain
Rock and verdant? An inertia of the air
Pushes them back, from ever more than that
3.
A head in a party – speak:
“Surely my dear you agree, startlingly
That the provinces down there are perceptibly,
Or, say, mentally, estranged?”
The other tone yowls, and states
“Monumentally my darling, monumentally
That the rigorous decline of thought has become
Everlastingly apparent. I thrust my nose and the kind
And tell myself everyday, that these are not the type of people
I, nor any other, am to be made for”
Between cocktail swords and servitudous bows
The pauseless glint on their faces knows
That their company is to be made for
Still it does not help the moment when
The reckless scowl of disruptive Mongols
Suddenly flies from the ceiling and breaks
Three hundred bottles of moonshine
And overturns the scrap-table, allowing
Ham to be splattered on these evening guests
Whom, you notice, seem to be molesting
The idea of dignity, in their rags.
Twisting their heads over the notion
That is, ultimately, condemned
As a scimitar raised is a scimitar raised
(Regardless of the condescend)
As splits apart their head in two
>>7776015
4.
O featherless fowl, I seek the imperceptible manifest
That echoes on the edges of the rumination, wander
Far into the bowels of one Earth-Tree or the other
Churning the fires of Mars to apprehend a guide
But were one tongue enough to catalyze day
When Promethean foundry stood to give
Man his inferno? Were one stark call enough
To let fire speak, be spoken, be heard. Listen –
O, Clay-child made from porcelain and gilt
Your vestments are neither your own,
Nor would you wish they were, had you known
The cock that had passed it over was a pigeon
But still you squawk like the seeming non-entity
While the bower sits with graven heads eyeless
For they can see farther. Armless, for they hold
The twin bowls of two Nocturnes inside them
Still, the sea turns over, and spits
Fiery swill like a crematorium
Of dead men’s faces, features, ashes
And two urns worth of sludge is your claim
O Clay-child – Listen!
5.
In the demise of old kings, a position stands
One made from the horrors of that toppled crown
In the forest at Nemi the priest lingers
While the boy bears the golden bough
Shakes the garland at the mark of the head
Whispers prayers, and styles himself.
Three rustles from the trees passes,
Then soon – a quiet passes
Who was left standing, only he who seeks
To enter the farthest reaches, unkind to the meek
cheers in advance
Samson could feel his body slowing with every second that passed, and soon enough, he couldn't even tell when a full second had gone by. His mind clouded, every single thought in his brain evaporated half formed. There was nothing left but pure, absolute terror. Adrenaline was coursing through his veins, wasted. His body was on fire - his senses were ablaze, every nerve in his body was in a frenzy of panic. Fight or flight, his body was telling him. But he could do neither, for he was trapped.
He felt his skin hardening, felt rigid growths tear through him, a sensation that was not entirely unpleasant, for which it was all the more troubling. Out and above, they stretched, sideways and down-a-ways, in every direction. His skin was becoming thicker, harder, dryer. For a second (a millisecond? a minute? an hour?), the feeling was itchy and cumbersome, like a thick layer of paint on his body hardened in the sunlight, but then it was as natural as anything.
His legs were one, now. The things shooting from his feet and into the soil below were crossing over each other like thread on a loom, mimicking the veins and nerves of his past form, solidifying his place in Mother Earth. He couldn't move his head and had lost the vision in his eyes, but he didn't need to witness his transformation. He could perceive it in every other way - his extremities were pulsing and humming with vitality. The most minute pressure on any part of his body was felt deeply, intensely. He was thrumming with life.
Samson was no longer afraid.
>>7776015
>>7776018
Your general impression seems to be that the typical reviewer of a 4chan lit critique thread lacks the skills as a reader to grasp/appreciate your poetry.
This being the case, I cannot grasp why you continue to post your poetry.
I give positive reviews on here frequently. Some people have a knack for language. Their lines are beautiful and their thoughts are compelling. Often they write poems that are incomprehensible to me, but the language is good enough to read in its own right. This is not you. Your prose is crooked, forced, bent, haughty and extremely ugly. I will grant that you have ideas: the idea of an airplane night travel is a very good one for a poem, even saving this precise narrative meaning for last might be a good idea. It doesn't work in your case because the prose is offensive. It is not emotional, interesting or beautiful language suddenly lent a surprise meaning. It's meandering clauses with inconsistent style that has no aesthetic in its own right, and devoid of the narrative becomes meaningless garbage rather than garbage.
I read the Stevens poems you referenced and it seems to me you wrote this with Sunday Morning in mind. Sunday Morning works because each line is nakedly beautiful. Wallace Stevens might be a writer you aspire to be, but Wallace Stevens you are not.
One time I posted a poem and was told a certain stanza was very bad. I was offended and did the foolish thing. I tried to argue with my critic that it was a very good stanza and he was a very bad critic. I discovered, after letting things stew a while, that he was absolutely correct.
You will hopefully do the same thing. I would write blank/free verse in the meanwhile to build up your skills in prose-writing, metaphor composition etc. I also recommend long, solitary walks every chance you get for the purpose of collecting living, sincere impressions about the world, which you seem to have very few of at present.
>>7776015
And for the love of God, knock the classical references and Homeric posturing off. If you haven't been steeped in classical poetry for years, if you haven't studied classics, if you aren't a lover of Virgil or Homer, then all your Promethei and inferni and Golden Boughs are ridiculous, gaudy ornaments. So too your O this and O that, and your lo's and "listens!"
>>7776173
>>7776200
I appreciate you taking the courtesy to speak properly, if you're one of the previous persons who posted as such. On the other hand, if you're not, then I thank you for seeking to try and attack this matter with more courtesy than most. (even though you still love to stick condescensions in your post)
So lets discuss the matter.
Now I have absolutely nothing wrong with criticism as long as the critique is proper, but I take grave offense at people who try to speak based on a smallness of criteria. If you've seen my critiques above I always try to encompass a largeness of criteria. I weigh out the probability of this word or that word, while not working out grammatically, having a what and what connotation.
Without the effort for a close-reading you can't have a discussion. Everything slips past. I take no offense at people criticizing my poem, but I take offense at people not taking the effort to balance a criticism in a way that is absolutely clear, which parts they found dismal, and which parts they did not, without a single fling of the palm. If you give me the courtesy of your text, I will absolutely render every phrase apart. I won't skimp.
But, some parts are just starkly people's unconscious speaking without a single notion of weighing properly what is written before them. Take charge of your words, live by their consequences. I am perfectly willing to live by mine. If you note something which is wrong in myself or the text, I'll try my best to measure it up as long as its well argued. I refuse to condescend to banality in criticism and I refuse to condescend to give a banal critique. You can even give your own text and lets grapple with it together.
Yes I was influenced by Stevens, but no I wasn't influenced by Stevens completely. I don't aim to write like Stevens completely either.
>Your prose is crooked, forced, bent, haughty and extremely ugly
>It is not emotional, interesting or beautiful language suddenly lent a surprise meaning. It's meandering clauses with inconsistent style that has no aesthetic in its own right, and devoid of the narrative becomes meaningless garbage rather than garbage.
These are paper criticisms without any weight. Deal with it directly or I will ignore you. Don't condescend to me.
>And for the love of God, knock the classical references and Homeric posturing off. If you haven't been steeped in classical poetry for years, if you haven't studied classics, if you aren't a lover of Virgil or Homer, then all your Promethei and inferni and Golden Boughs are ridiculous, gaudy ornaments. So too your O this and O that, and your lo's and "listens!"
This is a needlessly pedantic criteria as well. If I change my tone I have a reason to. If I don't I have a reason to. But only a musty classicist scholar can make some criteria like this. This is a thought-killing cliche and a refusal to grapple with the words directly.
>>7763105
I wrote a poem, and will give an oral performance
http://vocaroo.com/i/s0Uzs14SE6tr
>/lit/ is overwhelmingly populated with poets
Just fuck my shit up.
>>7776065
I feel this is overwritten. I just had no interest in reading it. I think part of the pleasure of reading is letting the reader use their imagination, which you rob them of the ability to do when you provide this level of minute detail. Let us imagine the transformation on our own terms, and keep this to two or maybe three sentences.
>>7776357
SCOLIOSIS
To be straight-necked is a blessing
And curvature a sin
For stable tones make prettier words
Than a breaking din
So cut a hole around my neck
And stick a pole right there
I’ll walk around with pretty words
That are right for you to hear
I’ll tell you of the summer
And the winter boughs so sweet
I’ll sing to you of flowers
I’ll make the lyrics neat
But soon enough my bones will grow
And break that lazy pole
And stutter my squawk, and measure my steps
And my bones will bellow – “Behold”
If your tryst is with the sparrow
That plays merry in all of this
Then I’ll mark my words with larking cries
But I’ll still have scoliosis
>>7776302
I have spoken my bit and then some. If fool you must, then by all means, fool.
http://pastebin.com/KUPxmbue
>>7776537
You know there was an anon poet before posting a poem that was actually quite good. It didn't have connections that you would call plainly 'beautiful' but the narrative stretch was solid. It was playing with 4 distinct motifs that were separate from one another but pushed together to create something quite interesting. If you want to find it try looking for I think "View of a Kinetic Sculpture", although it was placed in image rather than text.
Some loser couldn't even read that clear narrative arc, and shat all over it with stupid shit about tailoring meter in sections that were distinctly inappropriate to tailor because it would kill the ideas or the message. Completely lazy, irrelevant, criticism. Not having the ability to context shift between his gut feeling and the clear message.
Plath, Sexton, Stevens, Berryman, Ashbery, Eliot, Pound, Crane and Cummings all have distinct tones of their own. Some are more 'prosaic' and others are more lyrical, and others squawk loudly. To accord them exactly what they're worth requires the faculty to apprehend what they're saying without letting certain kinds of criteria weigh in.
"Spoken my bit"? Who gives a fuck about that? Hold to your standards you retard! And say something of worth! Don't give me this bullshit about being the 'better man' and placing yourself like you know something. If I told you I was like a Poet Laureate or something then what does all that shit you've said above about 'solitary walks' and stuff mean? So what if you got your own ass completely owned because you have the inability to self-edit your work? Say something of worth! God I especially hate people like you because you rub the banality all over poetry.
You see, the difference is that you can only say that Sunday Morning is better than my poem, and on the other hand I can tell you exactly how Sunday Morning shits all over my poem. Don't worry, Sunday Morning shits over a lot of poems. The starting stanza is this dandy-ish image of languour that somehow segues perfectly into a pagan rite while maintaining the clear imagery of the of the languour interspersed to create this pulsing in and out of memory effect. Furthermore the consonance is right on with its 's'es and still having the tidy end by using the word 'sepulchre' at the last line. On the other hand I aimed for Whitman at the start to try and invoke the grand idea of morning, but mixed it in with lesser and terser imagery to provide a juxtaposition, seguing into my idea of the Night. I split apart from Stevens when I deal with ideas more naturalistically, aiming at a tone more like Rilke that the stark dandyism of Stevens. Stevens simply does it tighter without having the words come apart so clearly at the seams.
Yea like I didn't know that motherfucker. Go fuck yourself you condescending retard. I thought you were going to say something substantial but then you pull this shit on me.
>>7776840
If you can't handle criticism, you shouldn't post in critique threads.
also, I'm not reading anything else you write, including this wall of text.
Why don't you run along and read some poems or show mommy what you wrote. I'm sure she'll put it on the fridge and give you a gold star for being her smartest boy.
>>7766897
Id like to see less his/hers in there. Also the recurring 'black' seems unconnected,i would either make them related or change one so you dont get to the end and get another version of black
Heres mine from this morning: addict
I dreamt of you last night, again, one who isnt there 13
Nor here, amid my past through eye and ear of muddled memory. 21
Existance always fleeting, only craving more than absent care 21
Now wither from my mind, your sphere! As fare: this broken sensory 21
Image always fresh yet without means to true preserve 13
Persist in sound and sight and sense and texture muddled memory 16
Awake my dire longing, craving alternates of life observed 16
Now crush them in the haze of waking, wizened broken sensory 16
By day now I retreat to logic, maths and hard causality 16
The sun is bright! And light the clouds alone whom muddle memory 16
Though as sun falls and hard relents i surge forth in totality 16
To seize upon the fancy of recurring broken sensory 16
‘Okay, Dad. Thanks for the call. Bye.’
‘Sue is here,’ he said. ‘Want to talk?’
‘Tell her I say hi.’
‘Okay, sure. Anything else?’
‘That’s all. Thank you.’
‘Love you.’
Pause. ‘Love you too.’
Anna was reaching across me for my phone. I forgot about them, and let her reach all the way over, to touch end call. Looking down at me, she pulled the phone slowly from my hand. I pulled her in for a kiss. She gave me a smile, and whispered, ‘what’s your passcode?’
>>7777176
‘Okay, OP. Thanks for the thread. Bye.’
‘Anon is here,’ he said. ‘Want to post?’
‘Tell her I say you're a fag.’
‘Okay, sure. Anything else?’
‘That’s all. Thank you.’
'Fuck you.’
Pause. ‘F-Fuck you too.’
A kitten was reaching across me for my keyboard. I forgot about it, and let it reach all the way over, to rest its hand on mine. Looking up at me, it pulled my hand slowly away. I pulled it in for a snuggle. It gave me a meow, and whispered, ‘what’s rule one?’
describing a character
Outward Appearance:
Claire Muser. White terry cardigan and black tights. Fashionable, in a mall sort of way. Her square glasses protrude ever so slightly off of her face, as if deciding whether or not they should jump. They don’t.
Background Information:
Student at the University. Second year, but old enough for it to be her third. Hodgepodging about whether she wants to die as a teacher in a middle school in the country or in the city. Her parents met in a Tesco in Colchester. Dad is an assistant front-end manager there. Mum worked at cash.
What She is Doing or Thinking:
busy today hung up people in their chairs fidgeting rocking backforth as if their movements kept all things in motion. eyes flit, decide, caress blue angora scarf of the lady over there with the small child i wonder if she will have hazel eyes like her mother, complexion like hers breasts full like hers wrapped under the same blue scarf one day, a Clacton-on-Sea type blue smell of candy floss and salt...she took my hand there last one primary day and we went up the Helter Skelter— “Super Giant” it declared in its own blue way...up up up each step will take you away from bags of supermarket bartletts and day-old cherry danishes whose butter and moisture have long gone out of this world, up yes my dear hold my hand and hairnets will evade you hold my hand and blue uniforms won’t defile your small body just hold mumsys hand and spiral redwhite redwhite up into the sky
>>7776851
That wasn't my point though. But I can tell that affectation has already brought you too far. If it was my expletives then I apologize for triggering you. Don't worry, my parents are the type who would definitely tear down anything I give them that's not up to standard.
Since at this stage you're just trying to get the last word in. I wish you all the best.
Fuck you people so fucking hard with a knife! I kept coming here for writing advice over and over and you people kept telling me my writing is shit, but then I finally wrote something that you said was good and kept at it. Everything I write in that style you praised, but the minute I started showing it to normal people it got shit on by them!
My own parents told me this writing style sucked! You people made my style into inaccessible trash with no heart or humor!
