ITT: We critique prose.
I'll start: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZRQFxpnmqv3dFmhO-wtBa8VqUnt7nULqVm3vwCwa5YU/pub
>>7610045
good style, I like it. its actually really good imo. the content doesn't matter I suppose, on its own this story isnt much, but I guess you wanted a critique of writing.
>>7610045
It reads like you're trying too hard to be smart.
Many of the sentences drag on and need to lose some weight.
Will post something of mine in a sec...
This is so bad but whatever. Hit me with your thoughts.
A peculiar headache reached up through the coils and folds of my brain to nest beside the left temple. Every second moment a piercing throb would remind me of its enthusiastically effectual existence. Had I known that an insufficient mix of coffee and water were to blame (not enough water, more than enough coffee) I could have solved the problem in a moment while digressing from a disease succinct enough to ensure fatality: boredom.
My father and his old high school friend still chatted at their table across the cafe, intent on each other, dad rarely casting a glance toward us, his tedious charges of myself, Amy, and my friend Sarah, where we lounged on a couch apiece. Our wide-spread leg space demanded too much comfort for others to relax.
“Sweat pants were made to be comfortable in,” Sarah said when we had sat down. She spread her legs in the typical male fashion of knees far apart. Victorian-era ladies would have swooned from embarrassment, but I laughed and mimicked in my worn and faded jeans.
Ninety minutes later, Sarah had her legs tucked underneath her and flipped through the same Cosmo for a tenth time. My legs were ladylike crossed, to the enjoyment of royalty and fucking pompous asses everywhere. To be accurate, it contrasted my lazy grunge mode of dress nicely even though I scanned through another Cosmo.
>>7610095
I didn't think so. I mean you could say the same about anything that has extra content not directly focused on the plot and characters. This turns out to be in place.
I want to know what OP enjoys reading and some of his influences and what sort of genre is he aiming for.
>>7610107
OP here.
I've been reading John Banville recently, I think that's where a lot of the stylistic influence comes from (he's more a style over content kind of guy). I've also been digging the general ethos of J.G. Ballard, which is where the sardonic absurdism arises from.
I'm aiming for wry comedy underpinned by a semi-plausible realism.
My favourite writers are Joyce, Yeats, and Updike, but I don't try to imitate or aspire to what they do because I don't think I have it in me.
>>7610106
There's something a little off. For instance:
>A peculiar headache reached up through the coils and folds of my brain to nest beside the left temple.
sounds like something that you'd find in a high school creative writing assignment. Try and stamp some more personality onto your prose and it might get somewhere.
>>7610191
Thank you.
>>7610045
Sorry but your prose sounds overly academic and thesaurusy.
>>7610204
And use fewer words. You really didn't need to write that so eloquently. Save the rich language for things worthy of those descriptions.
Sunday is the day
I will finally visit her grave
We loved eachother since may
Her and I together like 2 slaves
The day will be gray
when I finally shave
I just threw this together a couple minutes ago. I was just having fun, let me know what you think though?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KG5XZ-iIE0qAiF-jz3-Q0JXslpr6oNKC4sJqLA3aRd8/edit?usp=sharing
>>7610106
Overwrought, sometimes to the point of incoherence. For instance, I can barely understand what your third sentence is trying to say. Your coffee gave you a headache because it was too strong, but then ... ? Not sure, even upon my third re-reading. "While digressing," so deviating, wandering, etc. The disease is metaphorical, but what makes it "succinct," and how does the succinctness of this disease guarantee your death? Seven times I read that sentence and I can only conclude that it's gibberish.
>>7610584
>He didn't see no sign
>gonna
Ugh. You ain't never got no business writing like that in third person. Who's our narrator? Why do they talk that way? This is a page of prose, not a voiceover on a movie or something. Also I can't really stand this really vulgar style of fantasy (it's a trope unto itself at this point, and it's never done tastefully), but that's just a preference
Meh ...Just wrote this, i promise:
I killed my father before i was born. In the end my mother shot him in the chest. She missed his tie and hit the top left shirt-pocket. One wound and i was fatherless. I was the first child alive after three brutal miscarriages in three consecutive years. She must have been 16 when they met. An unpleasant age. Poor girl from a poor family. Grown up before she was used to it.Two hours ago, the nurse in the emergency ward asked me to fill her date of birth for the records. For the first time i calculated the age when she had me. The math made me hate her instantly. I don’t like the idea of a young single mom being knocked around in the 70s on my side of town. Not worth the pain. The thought makes me ill. It changes her face. Her hands. Her voice. Everything. She is wasted sick now on the bed. Painless and lonely. Good Luck to her and to me too. This is going to be tough for both of us.
- Diary of the first gangster in the family.
>>7610778
The first line sounds like it just sounded profound so you left it in. I like it, just don't think it's really applicable. The use of "brutal" threw me off, it doesn't fit the tone. Also, the style kind of very suddenly changes from the first few sentences until the emerg nurse. Both styles I enjoyed, I just had to read it through like three times to connect them. it was hard to follow that sudden switch
Secret stellar will you tell her what I know when I am gone? Will you keep her, never leave her, sing her not the siren song?
What I heard in the light that did not show, did not see, did not. Reveal. You made a deal. In the night. Vapor flesh in vapor's sight. And I abide. In vapor's sight I vapor knight, giver in the screaming.
The screaming light.
Crystal aether cross my tongue. Cut my teeth. I can feel the harmonic in the tips of my ears, only. Draw your blade across my skin. in the crystal, in the cold, I know you. Kiss me, my cold, and give me the light.
Blood writhes through my lips.
-Tell me, when the walk is over. You'll keep her.
>>7610827
This is a mess. Like why did you write it like this? I'm asking seriously, cuz it seems intentional. How is this supposed to flow? The tempo changes at every chance in can get. I almost like it but I can't
There was an unusual glint in the air today. The beech trees that lined the square were rustling nervously, shuffling with a murmur of things disturbed. In the park an inquisitive crowd gathered around the large glass prism; a sense of spectacle was growing along with the buzz of the shifting throngs of people. A man lay face down in a large bronze bowl, his skin caked with dust. The back of his heel pressed up against the inside of the prism, startlingly animal in its limp presence. The man’s face was grizzled, hard lines of dirt streaked down the sides of his arms and legs, a sign of the age of the dirt that had settled upon him. A smooth black glass band clung tightly to his left wrist. His formerly white and clean shirt and pants were now brown and tattered, strips hanging raggedly from the curve below his knees. A few inches from his stony hand lay a half-curled note, fluttering slightly in the breeze: “So be it.”
Couple weeks ago, first time.
Aunque aún le ciega, ya no le molesta tanto la luz, antes trataba de tapar el haz con la mano, en un intento inútil de defender sus ojos, con lo cual solo lograba que pareciera más brillante el circulo rojizo en el horizonte. Todo a su alrededor se difuminaba con la luz, haciendo imposible distinguir donde se encontraba o que se encontraba a su alrededor, si es que había algo a su alrededor. Recuerda correr, tratar de alcanzar aquella estrella que no lo dejaba dormir. Todos sus intentos frustrados por ruidos ensordecedores que siempre se producían en el momento en el que la luz se volvía más intensa, que lo cegaba y lo quemaba y entonces corría mas, cerraba los ojos para escudarse de aquella brillantez que lo agobiaba, que admiraba y odiaba, que lo atormentaba en las noches y de días anhelaba justo cuando el calor se comenzaba a volver soportable y la luz dejaba de ocultarle su forma, al sus tonos volverse más profundos y marcar una silueta de colores cálidos alrededor de una forma que se hacía más nítida con cada paso que tomaba, comenzaba siempre bajo, siempre inesperado, siempre dejándole cierta esperanza para que cada vez que lograra amontonar la cantidad suficiente de valor necesario que le permitiera ignorar los intentos pasados y se encontrara al borde de lograr alcanzar a su musa, ignorara el zumbido que se le acercaba, aumentando su tono poco a poco hasta chocarlo del costado izquierdo y apartándolo de ella, acelerando con cada intento de liberarse y volver a su lado, con cada lucha la velocidad era mayor y cada vez lograba observar más de lejos aquel faro, con el tiempo la distancia final antes de llegar al borde de su sueño se hacía cada vez mayor, el tiempo entre el choque y el despertar era el mismo, solo lo apartaban con mayor velocidad hasta estar de vuelta.
Al abrir los ojos lograba ver por poco tiempo la secuela del juego de luz que acababa de observar, tratando de mirarlas fijamente y no mover la mirada mientras pudiera sin parpadear, así las sombras se quedaban un rato más, aunque igual se desvanecieran y difuminaran con el gris del techo de su habitación. Luego volteaba su cuerpo adormecido hacia la izquierda para darle a entender a la alarma que cumplió su cometido de recordarle que no puede soñar para siempre, luego se acuesta de nuevo y rueda la cortina al lado de su cama para que entre la luz del sol que tiene entendido es el real aunque no tanto como el que espera ver cada vez que alza la cabeza de la cama para tratar de verlo fijamente como si fuera a cambiar de lugar, para compensarlo por su intento anterior de alcanzarlo, como si hubiera alguna fuerza que para sacarlo de su miseria, o inundarlo aún más en ella, intercambiara su realidad con aquel otro mundo. Como si tener aquello que más desea presente la mayor parte de su día le quitara el sufrimiento a nunca poder alcanzarlo. Cierra la cortina luego de entender que no ha sido castigado de esa manera.
>>7610823
Thanks a lot, kind anon. Appreciate the critique. I kind of see what you mean about the first line. Just trying too hard to sound Orwellian i guess.
>>7610915
Honestly it was like kind of dissapointing that you put it in cuz to me it set it up to go in a different direction than it did. Like I said, I really liked the first few lines as their own cuz they carried a cool tone. The poem overall was fine, I just would have liked to hear something in line with that beginning
>>7610947
I actually think this could be pretty good. There's a shitload in it though that needs to be redone but overall its got potential. The first thing to throw me off was the first use of Prince. You could have left it till >the prince's arms stung as well
there's only two people in the scene. we can figure it out. Also Kartal shouted. Why? I'm assuming you're imagining him walking to the forest and shouting it behind him. But instead it comes across as him being pompous which I don't think is the aim. There's more but whatever. Edit it and get yourself more immersed in your scenes rather than just writing them
>>7610912
No Spanish speaking anons?
I really could use some feedback
>>7610983
Tried google translating it and it was clearly not worth trying to critique with the bad translation
>>7610947
Like the other anon said, this is pretty good. It reads like an actual story which makes it better than a lot of the stuff in these threads. Like, you offer the right amount of description to be immersive but not enough for it to get boring or feel overdone.
I found the way you'd switch between the characters' names and pronouns (the slave, the prince) to be a little confusing. Variety is nice, but I feel like you overdo it a little too much here.
Well yeah, it's just that sometimes i've seen spanish poems posted on critique threads so i tought i'd give it a try, thanks for bothering anon.
I've always thought english an somewhat easier language to write, or to start at least, not saying it's harder in spanish. Maybe i'll do this one in english. Probably turn out to be shit.
>>7610584
I actually think it's pretty solid, I know someone was criticizing the informal 3rd person voice but I think it sort of works actually. It feels like a sort of western-comedy-fantasy; is that what you're going for?
Anyhow, I'm going for fantasy/western myself so I figure it's appropriate to post this. Part of the introduction of a dark fantasy/horror story that I've been working on. Kinda shooting for that western feel. Yeah, I know, pretty pleb. Lemme know what you all think regardless:
The harvest had just ended - provisions were meager, but enough to get everything through the winter. Celebration was slow and subdued, but still celebration nonetheless, as the villagers took a sort of calm revelry in the warmth offered by both fire and mead alike - with a few, of course, dead-set on intoxication.
The scene was a dark and subdued one, but not entirely unpleasant. A decent dozen folk had gathered in the inn, including a local mother and her children, who would frequently rent the place out for its superior insulation. The chill of the outdoors was not welcome here, banished by the fire, the thick walls, and the alcohol. Drunkards chuckled and smiled, and occasionally a bawdy song would burst out from the corner (sometimes hushed, depending on the conscientiousness of the drunkard in question).
Nevertheless there was an unquestionable lonesomeness in the air, a feeling of something fundamental missing that seemed to have lingered ever since the world had taken its downward turn. Even those who had grown into middle age in the world of decay could tell that something was off. There was a light which had once danced behind even the saddest eyes that seemed to be missing, and it lent even a riotous crowd a borderline mournful air.
And so it was into this scene that the stranger burst, an unwholesome thing from an unwelcome world of mysticism. A world where untold horror could await the prepared and unprepared alike - and yet, there was a quality such existence held for those who had let themselves be taken in by it. Something close to what was missing from the “normal world” - something close to life.
>>7610889
I did kinda just write this for the thread. Honestly there are parts that do need work but the change in flow is intentional, for emphasis. It's prose, not poetry, for that reason. The prose and poetry divide change after poems stopped having to rhyme, prose now being the flow, meaning, resonance of the words. I'm playing with that.
>>7611103
It's not necessarily bad writing. It's overeager and I find it difficult to believe that this will go anywhere particularly spectacular. Also you use way way too many (contradictions?). I don't know the word for it but you use it was this but it wasn't this. Provisions meager but not, Celebration but not. If I believed you had the literate maturity, I might think you were using this as a technique to paint the town in its kind of indifference, but I think you are just using it cuz you're both indecisive and also trying to fluff up your writing.
>>7611116
I figured you were playing with that but I feel like its a shame cuz you did it too much. The big problem for me was the second stanza which then snowballed into the rest also becoming disjointed. I really do almost like it though. The changing tempos are nice if they were more smooth
>>7611183
Thank you. Once again, for the record, 0th draft.
>>7611198
If you redraft soon, post it.
I've been posting critique so may as well get some. These are 2 separate pieces but they were written with the same emotion and within a day so they're intertwined to me. I haven't done anything to them since I wrote them. First one is a bit cumbersome.
The toilets overflowed and added to the stench and slosh of the ground beneath our feet yet you hung on to hope and grabbed at the idea that this was not the end. But betterness disintegrated in your already dirty hands and cause whispered away before you could hear its feeble cry, and as you clawed for anything to prove the world could change, your unwashed soul tainted the naive dreams that lazily dangled and died in front of you. And no matter what you tried to build or would try to grow or could hope to change, the floor was still sewage and nothing could be clean again. And I sat, small and alone, in the corner of understanding while you left me behind for nothing.
The trees are blackened against our brightening sky and we roll past their endless branches. Roads and trees and sky and you. And whichever direction we go the world will lift and you and me will still be, if nothing else. Oh Dan, the web of telephone connections lead to everywhere but you're looking at me and I'm looking down and we miss the miles of whispering people that never leave their homes and it's better this way. Once, I roamed the exact same highway far away alone and you were inside me cradling my dying heart and I was running to you and nothing was more pure and every ounce of me that melted down and died was filled with parts of you that swallowed me up. but it was too late wasn't it, when I finally looked up, and you were gone and only we were left.
>>7611183
Thanks. The contradictions are something that I was sorta going for, but I should probably try to do simpler stuff before I go for weird descriptions like that. Might try to make it either more straightforward, or more clear what I'm going for with them. Pretty much was trying to go for a "it's not celebratory by normal standards, but by these peoples' standards" sort of feel.
>>7610045
The watched by and large are fodder for the watcher.
By the end of the first month most people stopped noticing the red lights. Bill did not. It was difficult for him. His daughter, age twelve, had been too young to care about the Discovery, but even she looked at him with disdain every visit to the D.S.T. At first he had thought it was the coffee stained terry cloth robe, or just the fact that he was confined to the D.S.T. But it was much deeper than that. It was the way she looked at him whenever he used to step out of the convex convenience store mirror's sightline, and whenever he made sure to avoid the electronics store's camera section. Her disgust at his disgust at being watched by something eyeless had irised-out into a hatred of him. If everyone else could get by after the Discovery, what made him so special?
He comforted himself by repeating the mantra of the age “To be seen is to exist.” A helpful slogan painted in purple letters across acres of urban wall, that is when it was not being scoured away by white suited and masked civil workers, the same workers who could be seen testing the red recording lights on every street corner, or who could be witnessed talking on boxy cellphones to men in black suits seated in tendentious offices delineated by soundproof walls from the soft clicks of digital keyboards and garbles of mouths talking into headsets to people like Bill. These Bill like people, like Bill, were mostly artists and reporters.
Late at night quite past my masturbatory feat (three hours if my memory has not betrayed me, edging now and then like I always do) I logged in into my mac laptop to browse that place better known as four-leaves place, four chan, for laughs, haha, oh my. Browsing the board faster than my fapping hand, I took notice of every thread to see; then, checking every dubs (and trips, and every trips!) to check, a thread of the most retarded kind grabbed my attention, like minutes ago I grabbed the head of my dick: "Prose Critique Thread - In This Thread, We Critique :)" said the fag of the board.
Bored as a dog (have you seen how those lazy fuckers sleep all they long?) I decided it would entertain me, at least for a minute, to write a post and send it there. But what should I say? what should I write for these fags now to read? Oh, I know, what about this: "Late at night quite past my masturbatory feat (three hours if my memory has not betrayed me, edging now and then like I always do) I logged in into my mac laptop to..."
>>7610045
bamp
>>7613058
bump
>>7611275
sad and banal
http://pastebin.com/SBGzD2Wi
First rewrite, Unfinished at this point. Can post the ending later
>>7610778
First line promises time travel and then doesn't deliver. :(
Write a better time travel story plz
>>7610827
Fun as a poem or mad scribbling for the protagonist to find
>>7610902
Hooked. Was going to criticize you for a shit metaphor but it's awesome reality. Well done
>>7611275
Kinda cool. Wish you'd make it subtler. Make it less of a "one day everything changed." Less blatant Orwellian imagery, turn that message into an advertisement for some social media company which can rent time on looking fabulous
>>7614043
It's actually not readily apparent, but the discovery is actually the, well, discovery is that some godlike entity exists, and that there is a way to tell what and when it's watching.
Writing this one the fly. Just for funsies. Inspired by this painting. Inspired by the writings of others.
SNAP! -- the flintlock spoke, and the soul of the nameless Royalist deserted his body even before the wind swept the discharge away. Another of Turenne's royal paladins charged his steed, ready to be made quick work of with the sabre; Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, on whom war was like wine, slashed toward the stallion's thick pack of shoulder muscles. The horse was felled and the royalist was crushed. Through the wild smoke, le Grand Condé spotted the blue flag of his rebellion, signaling the capture of the Bastille from the royalist, and thus the retreat of his men into the impenetrable fortress. The Prince, with a final flintlock discharge toward the brown mass of betwixt Royalist paladins, followed his rebellions men.
it sucks doesnt it?
He wandered around, aimlessly as he does, on the bare bones and rotting carcass of the city and wondered about the small threads left to the man to follow who could, and felt himself as though he were part of this dying and unhorsed beast of burden, with footsteps all across his back and rivers of concrete and steel tracing his veins, and himself again under the covers of health and vitality pulling his race, his children, up by the bootstraps with which they were born. He reminds himself to be content with small fires; small burnings which flare and die as quickly as Salem or McCarthy.
>>7614125
Yeah, pretending to write like its the olden days is goofy
>>7614135
What do you mean?
You're all autistic.
>>7614135
He's right, though. If you're just writing it for your personal enjoyment, more power to you, but if you ever expect anyone to read it at length (or publish it even) you are a delusional.
>>7614233
Why not? I don't read much modern novels. How should I write then?
>>7614241
i'm not those anons but you're aping a dead style. it isn't your voice unless you're the type of person that uses the word betwixt in conversation. (if that's the case, i think you should reexamine your choices.)
>>7614125
This is complete garbage
>>7610045
Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make. You can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won’t know for twenty years! And you may never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce…
“And they say there’s no fate, but there is, it’s what you create. And even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead, or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain wasting years for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right, but it never comes. Or it seems to, but it doesn’t really.
So you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along, something to make you feel connected, something to make you feel cherished, something to make you feel loved. And the truth is is, I feel so angry! And the truth is, I feel so fucking sad! And the truth is, I’ve felt so fucking hurt for so fucking long and for just as long, I’ve been pretending I’m okay, just to get along!
“I don’t know why. Maybe because…no one wants to hear about my misery…because they have their own.
Fuck everybody. Amen.
>>7611103
(I'm the guy from the Lefiet google doc thing)
Yeah, I fell in love with Joe Abercrombie's Red Country and John Horner Jacob's The Incorruptible, and I just sorta blurted onto the page.
Thanks for the input.
As for your thing:
Like that other anon said, it's not BAD, and it feels like you're trying to eat the world in one bite. Break up some of the descriptions, make them punchier and give it a stronger atmosphere, I think.
That sentence that starts off, "Celebration was slow and subdued" and ended at "intoxication" just meanders all around. That could be like 2-3 really punchy thoughts instead of one long, wispy one.
>>7611300
>>7614539
I assume you did not like my story.
Your way of expressing your discontent hurts my feelings.
>>7610045
Don't info dump in your first paragraph, or even the first page if you're going to be doing more than a short story. It's just plain boring. On top of that your writing seems artificial, almost as if you thesaurused every word for no reason other than to have uncommon words. You wouldn't masticate chewing gum, you chew it. In relation to info dumps, try to be more active when doing them. Rather than say, he has this hair, he has these clothes, he is doing this action because I think it humanizes him and will emotionally attach my readers. Say, things in passing like: as he turned his head his hair did such and such, he tried speaking but the large wad of gum so on and so on. I skipped the rest, your first paragraph put me off your writing.
>>7610106
Your tone is all over the place here. The language you're using doesn't match your characters mannerisms or his speech. You start off with a common exageration in that boredom kills which puts my mind in YA mode. Then you stop that by talking about Victorian England which feels out of place with that idea. Then you jump back into it. The wording is also somewhat awkward in a lot of places but that could be remedied when you start to edit it. But definitely pay attention to the tone.
PS. Swoon is generally seen as a positive reaction, you're looking for something like faint instead.
>>7610584
The cursing feels forced and childish. The scene itself feels overdone and cliche. The writing itself is fine for mass-market type books that you find in Airport stores.
>>7611227
Crit anyone?
>>7610778
Parts of this don't really make sense because you are missing some kind of connective section. Is the child narrating pre-birth, her late death, some other time? It feels like you're jumping all over the place. The minimalism isn't terrible but remember you have to break it up occasionally.
>>7610902
Not bad but like I told the OP: this is a passive information dump. Connect the traits of your character in some way to the world around him in a way that's more active for the reader.
>>7614241
Write in your normal everyday voice. Don't go out of your way to try to copy a style from hundreds of years ago. It's just silly. You're like the kid in the one picture who has a fedora, inkwell, and feather pen to take a test in middle school. It's absurd. Just childish and foolish.
>>7614352
All right I see. I will think about this next time
>>7614810
I see.. Okay, next time, I won't use betwixt, or any archaic words. this is perplexing. I still don't quiet understand. I'm not trying to sound like the kid wearing the fedora. Is the writing style still okay? It's the first time i've written something
>Write in your normal everyday voice.
I didn't think authors really did this unless they were trying purposefully...I thought the goal was to describe it the best?
But okay, I will remember this next time
My brother died for the first time in early autumn, when the otherwise uniform trees were just reaching a conspicuous speckling of early turned leaves; spots of gold and burnt orange stuck out in the canopy, grabbing the eye like the freckles on his skin.
Standing in the paneled hallways of the subway station, staring at the grime tinged reflection of the young kid busking with a rusted trumpet, the sound hunting out sympathetic ears with its dissonant bark, I contemplated the end of my career.
Before we continue, that penny flattening noise you're hearing, that little head to the tracks voice telling you a train called suicide is rounding the bend of this plot, you can tell it to fuck off. I don't pedal in that bullshit— I'm not sensitive enough. Instead, how about we all agree that Goethe covered most of it? If you're looking for that kind of pathos look elsewhere. The window dressing trumpet kid won't give you any either.
I was too nervous to stare back at his puffed out eyes, straining out against the tetanuspiece at the end of the trumpet. How much of it was design— The canvas jacket, twenty dollar bill just falling out of the chest pocket, cardboard box folded out in front of the empty payphone boxes whose exposed dot pattern looked like a couple of stacked dice. It was obviously all a story, prefabricated. The question of its honesty was one that required a movement beyond reflection. Still, the mirror bares more to me than his face will ever see.
When you're anxious, everything's a story.
Just two hours ago I saw my agent, tweed suit furled and fraying like it was trying to escape the knife points of his bony shoulders. He was informing me that my book was missing.
“Look, Jim we don't know where it is.”
“Did it disintegrate, fall into the ether, magically vanish into the genital gobbling fuck hole—“
“Jim, I won't have you talk to me that way.” He eased back into his chair, voice falling off like melted butter. “ The truth is that it's just gone.”
“Great, I'm living Kafka's dream.” a lone warbling light began to strike through the clouds outside his window, “ Tell me,how does one lose a book.”
“Server's get fried. Angry employees; you've made plenty of those.”
“I'm swarthy, not some unjust Easton Ellis celebrity obsessed with pissing into the customer'so mouth just to make them feel something.”
“I know Jim, I know.” Lower jaw jutting into the musty air causing his tumescent front teeth to buck under his pallid lower lip. I wished they they drew blood. He was certainly drawing mine: blood pooling under cheeks creaking them out from my skull. The master copy was back west, but that was a flight away, and the click-clacking of bureaucrats (buttervoice included) ensured that I'd lose my publishing date, be forced to come out alongside some bestselling crossover fuck who's intelligent witticisms and sterling moral sense had the critics dropping his texts into laminators and those people who cast awards a shortage in Arthur Catskill nameplates. What did buttervoice know?
Did he know then that my copy was gone too, my house, my home, or did he just know that he lost the copy that mattered.
>>7614852
>my brother died
Ok.
>for the first time
Dropped.
Her eyes are the color of the night sky just before sunset. Her golden skin sets off a beautiful contrast against the auburn blonde hair streaking down her head. Her pouty, pink lips form a smile, flashing a set of teeth perfectly straight and dazzling white. She wears a red peacoat with a silver scarf wrapped around her neck and a purple hand-knitted beret atop her head. Her diamond earrings avoid the flash as she snaps a selfie in the women's bathroom
It was a dark and stormy night. I had been occupying the john for the past 7 our of 9 hours. That veggie burger really did a number on me. I farted -- or was it thunder crashing outside in the abyss, or was it the proverbial mule hee-hawing, or was it really my big stinky hole signaling another massive log was incoming, like a ship captain's bellowing foghorn through the murky ocean (toilet bowl in this case). At any rate, I plopped another log in that bowl, flushed it, waddled outside to the outhouse. Suddenly a gust of wind with much gusto lifted me up like wings on eagles and tossed me to and fro like weak and content poopoo swirling down the abysmal whirlpool of a toilet. When I had come to, a stench of disgust and a thousands particles filled my lungs. I discovered I was the log of poop the whole time and had been cruelly flushed by my uncaring master. Inch worming through the murky sewage like a slug, I made my way to India and joined my poop brethren in the streets -- free at last, free at last, thank god almighty I was free at last. The promised land of milky and honey.
>>7614852
>My brother died for the first time
>>7614946
Rowling/10.
>>7614918
Awful
>>7614020
Rated a few, plz look at
The house had shifted again with halls coming out like arms and legs and people walking through them with their voices bouncing. It was his wife and son back from their days and wanting to see their loving man. Of course he told them that his day was fine and that he'd watched TV and walked the dog. Poor dog. If they had wanted the wall to be looked after while they were gone then he’d have been a good father. They all called each other into the kitchen which shortly appeared before David. It was dinner time but David wasn’t hungry. Spaghetti or a roast it was but he felt his stomach full. Probably air since he wasn’t a breakfast or lunch person. Maybe a snack here and there of potato chips but that’s on a day he remembers which certainly wasn’t today. He was too busy with the wall to do much else and as long as he gets that small eat in before bed he’ll be able to continue with his lifestyle. His wife notices his lack of appetite but she never comments on it out of fear of being rude. In the past she had asked David every night why he wasn’t hungry but felt this persistence had gone beyond caring and was beginning to break into a nagging; although this never stopped her from side eyeing his plate in plain direction of his looks in order for him to see that she was aware of it. She’d never stop noticing for him.
He's depressed and was staring at a wall all day. That's probably the only context you need. This is part of a larger story that I'm working on. I don't really know how I feel about my prose but I do know that it has improved a fuck ton since I started reading more.
here's my crap
Don Barker, enthroned high in his lifted, turbo-diesel-powered Dodge, was barreling down 22, averaging 80 or so on his way to Gonzo's brewpub. It was Friday night and the entourage was anxiously awaiting him, but more importantly his ex-wife was sure to be there with her loser chump of a boyfriend-of-the-month. A puffy, artificially-tanned and chinstrap-goateed face crowned with thinning gelled, spiked and just-for-men'd hair looked back at him in the rearview mirror, sucking down a Marlboro Light and smiling confidently with a mouthful of small, porcelain-white teeth. A proper Friday night required hours of careful preparation. The shirt alone, which hugged his form so tightly and took forty-odd minutes to select and iron, was an Mixed Martial-Arts number, black, featuring two silvery skulls facing one-another, their hollow eyes focused on an executioner's sword wrapped in barbed-wire which dominated the front-center, blade bowing out over the prodigious gut and hilt sinking into the canal between the fleshy pectorals. Over this the motto ALPHA DOG was etched in Gothic capitals.
A little while back, a full seven days (and I daresay an equal number of my wife’s delectable New England Boiled Dinners) had passed without a single action of the lower intestine, and I assure you that on the seventh day I did not rest—indeed, I felt as if the entirety of Creation had made its way out of my innards at full force, and with such physical and emotional exertions of my mind, body, and soul, that, at the moment of exit, I truly believed that I was casting out an entire regiment of the infernal army—I did not stop to ask its name, but I assume, given its tremendous size and the hellacious stink assaulting the firmament upon its passing, that ‘Legion’ would have been my answer . I saw that this was not good
People ask for many things when death approaches, but one guy stood out to me.
Wasn't poor enough to ask for money.
Wasn't hungry enough to ask for food.
Wasn't thirsty enough to ask for water.
Wasn't downtrodden enough to ask for luck.
Wasn't wronged enough to ask for power or justice.
Wasn't lonely enough to ask for friends, family, or a lover, either.
What did he ask? If I needed help.
I could not believe it. Of all the people I've ever helped, he was the first guy who wanted to help me.
>>7610045
I find that picture strangely sexually arousing.
>>7614779
I know it's discursive. But i was thinking of it as just a character idea so it lacks depth and structure temporally and thematically. Thanks for the critique though, mate.
It feels good when someone reads something of yours, even if it's rambling.
>>7615693
Your whole paragraph is symbolic shit.
Looking for a decent constructive critique of this, I'm not at all happy with it and can't put my finger on why. Any and all advice will be helpful.
http://pastebin.com/Hgv2wZvh
The girl in the photo was beautiful. She was mulatto, a cocktail of African curves and European edges that conspired for high cheekbones, a tapering chin and pouting lips. Her eyes were green, peppered with flecks of gold that caught the flash and refused to let go. Her skin was warm amaretto brown and it filled the lens with a honey sweetness even Simone admired. Her hair, a high mop of brown coils parted on one side, was lost somewhere on the border of Afro and Irish curls. It looked cute, even though the photograph didn’t reflect the long strip of blue she’d dyed at the group home. It cut through the curls and lead a road of rebellion from her forehead to the far frontier of her cheek.
The words under the picture were less gentle, less flattering than a photograph.
>>7616243
Fuck, I accidentally pasted in all of it--
>This is something I did ages ago and then realised was a piece of 2deep4u shit and gave up on halfway through. But I'm going to try and salvage it, or at least get some criticism of it:
I delicately licked the slice of bright pink meat. Then I lathered my saliva onto the flesh and folded it with my knife. I pierced it with a two-pronged fork. Then I raised it to my teeth, smiled, and swallowed it whole. It tasted like cherries.
After breakfast I sat awhile and watched the candles play. They danced and glittered against the shadows. I ran my fingers through the patterns carved into my chair’s arms, birds and fish and grapes and -- I shuddered and yanked my fingers from the wood. A prick. A bead of blood. Old wood splinters easily. I hung my arm around the chair and watched the blood drip.
Later I went to the window and watched the sun rake against the panes. I touched my hand against the cracks and felt the warm light upon my skin. My cut pinched against the glass. I left the window and returned to my dining table. The worm was there. It gaped at me. I clambered over it to sit on my throne and retched. The candles had gone out, but the incense was lit because the incense is always lit. I poured myself a wine-red drink and drank deep. I threw my goblet against the floor and the worm convulsed. It gripped the goblet and set it back against the table. I laughed like screaming. Or screamed like laughter.
>>7616015
Breathtaking critique, my man.
>>7616059
First thing I notice, a lot of superfluous words: "in right in deep."
>>7614883
I kinda like the run-ons here. I'm also going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this is a first draft and the narrator is supposed to be a dolt.
>>7616241
Why are you writing about a nigger? No way she is attractive
>>7616590
/pol/ pls go
>>7614130
I never get replied to in here. I know it's garbage, but it's always cool to see that little (You)
I remember thinking her a minor when I noticed the empty cocktail glasses next to her, speckled with insides; her food was also drenched. She jerked about intricately, in epileptic movements; wiping the bile from her tits . . . she raised her hand as if a child waiting to be called upon, still and insidious. Her acquaintances took no notice of her inebriation or the fascinating presentation.
Customers looked about repulsively, refusing to eat . . . people are always looking for some pretext to shade their unwillingness to pay. I turned to face Julie, the waitress I was supporting, who deserves special mention . . . a brisk, mouthy blonde without notion of her distinct pernicious cackling . . . despite the attempts to extend her likability with tight fitting garments; more or less negligee. In light of flagrant disrespect, she hasn’t her equal. After some time, I found her staring at me with a look of amazement. She seemed to be waiting for a response, “Well?”
She pointed in a most offensive manner at the previously mentioned table. “Shake a leg!” she barked from across the room, her head hung out from her neck at an angle, like a curious dog . . . ‘What a bitch.’ I thought. You really see the true ugliness of a person, working in the service industry.
“You're over serving people.” was my contention, removing my apron.
She smirked and rolled her eyes, “That's not up to you.” then turned to greet her newest table.
With special optimism, I interrupted her banter, “Clean up your own messes.”
Walking back behind the bar, I dropped the apron into a bucket of filthy rags. I collected my things . . . everyone knew I was pissed, veering through timorous glances, making themselves scarce . . . it was a desperate moment. I walked through the swinging doors and was alone on the bar side. Retrieving the tip box from underneath the hand-washing sink, I removed the envelope which belonged to me . . . empty, of course. I seized the temporary lapse of seclusion and my feelings of carelessness to knick a bottle of Glen Livets and several cans of beer, all of which fit neatly into the sleeves of my coat. I rolled it up tightly and casually tucked it under my arm. I had to hold myself back from taking more.
On the way out, I stopped Julie as she collected unattended menus, in an attempt to avoid a final confrontation with me. I felt generally despondent . . . I thought, what a contrast this behavior was to her usual manner of barefaced equanimity.
“I'll be here tomorrow for my tips.” I said, looking around self-consciously. I thought of the attention shifting from the girl to myself and wondered if I had imagined it or if I was actually standing there with my dick out.
>>7616590
Haha
>>7614852
>My brother died for the first time...
Fucking dropped. Besides that, the language is too thick. De-romanticize it.
>>7614883
I like it, but it's a bit over the top. It makes it feel as if it's just starting to drag on in most spots. The references are a bit silly as well past a certain point. You're trying to show off and it's painfully obvious.
>>7614918
There's nothing redeemable here.
>>7615045
This comes off as just a giant wall of text. There's nothing that really jumps out to me. There's parts that feel a bit forced and fake (Poor dog.) that just drag down the rest of this. I don't really feel the depression I just feel bored.
>>7615074
Just bad. Like totally. Way too much of an info dump and on top of that the info wasn't presented well in the dump. Not to mention (looked back at him in the rear view mirror) could literally mean the person in front of him looking back and I would wager that's what most people think reading that phrase.
>>7614883
I hope the narrator is supposed to be entirely insufferable.
The references are ham-handed and stupid in either case.
>>7615555
You and me both quads of truth, you and me both. There's a softness to her. It's very girl-next-door; she could be someone at your school or in line behind you at Starbucks. But she's still beautiful. Her soft features and sharp eyes envelop your entire attention. I want her, I need her. But then, what would I do with her? I don't know this woman. I don't know her interests. Would we just sit in silence at all times during the day? Perhaps. But in those moments of silence I could be absorbed in her presence.
Lemme know what you think, threw this together last night
(the character is intentionally sporadic in thought)
How I’d love to live in a world that isn’t dictated by dollars and alarm clocks, the routines of the day to day ─ the routines which come to define who I am, but are nothing but tedious ─ to live in a world wherein I’ve time to think: to sit down and be careless of the deadlines and tasks on the calendar, to be able to appreciate the glory of the earth; the sacred beauty of the atmosphere before me ─ gallant yet gentle hills, dusky orange of autumn rolling forever, a magpie’s song and calmly flowing river, filling my lungs inhaling nature’s purity; god is in the air, a celestial holy salmon sky above me, heaven angelically beckoning my name; restoring my soul ─ of course, my endearing heart soon turns to ashes in my mouth as I’m second-naturedly reminded of the incessantly tormenting past dwelling in my skull, the involuntary, ceaseless stream of consciousness now pains me: being raised in the hellishly confining city vibrates a deep discomforting depression within me; the way I envision the untimely death of a perfect love might, I’m reminded this is my first and last try at life and that my youth is eternally gone, therein lies the hideous thought: there was supposed to be something else
How long do we wait before we bump? I've never done this before.
>>7614125
I enjoy it. It has a whimsical old-timey storytelling quality to it that I would read more of.
http://pastebin.com/BJRycw0V
>>7610912
I dig it, man. I can't read Spanish though. Looks nice enough.
>>7611227
Reminds me of uhhhhhh mediocre Borges
I dig it though. I lIke how it runs on and on.
>>7614130
I like the "as he does" bit. I don't get the part with Salem -- how did it die? Nice enough prose, though; it's got some personality behind it. Not complete trash.
Mine:
I got dad’s ashes on my jeans today. Grey — a very light, pillowy sort of grey, blew back at me and striped down the black denim in a cloudy serpentine, sort of trailing off at the seam… I tried to dust it off — ash smudges. Ended up with the flag of Cyprus painted right on my knees.
>>7614125
I dig it man
You do you
>>7616059
I never felt any advancement. There's action but it doesn't feel meaningful. I didn't care for the tone in the middle sections either because it felt a little disjointed from the beginning.
>>7616839
It's a first draft, and yes he's a cunt.
>>7616241
>racemixing
fucking dropped
The evening, after my work, maintaining the indoor climate-control pipes, is my favorite part of the day. I go home, to my apartment I made a museum of, full of carefully catalogued checks, receipts, books, and sketches. I'd bring the day's records and laminate them in small bags, labelling and sorting them by date and source. After I sort, I heat up and eat my evening meal along with a drink of the coffee I found a few years ago, and look through the artifacts I have of the world. Little things, like bones and squirrel's skulls, and more personal paraphernalia like my grandfather's hookah. Though I never knew how to use it, and never understood the appeal of smoking, I would just look about it and think about those days gone by, those days no longer possible in my cramped underground life.
>>7616874
Not a very big sample of text.
Not really any substance in it, just an over-descript bit about a guy who spilled ashes on his jeans somehow
>>7616258
Yeah, nah, it's total garbage. Drop it. The voice sounds completely inauthentic, as if you're trying to copy some other author from the 20s. I didn't imagine the chair or the window or the goblet or any of that. I immediately saw you and I saw you as wearing a flannel shirt, too tight chinos with thick black rims on your glasses. This is all apart from the fact that you are just throwing random events together. Is this meant to be a drug scene? That's how it comes across. Complete and utter nonsense and not in the absurdist fashion that would make it somewhat redeemable, it's just utter garbage.
Out over the ridge, where pine gave out to grass covered fields slowly fading into desert as the sun sutured both in a harsh light, a man sat watching rays rupture through clouds. He was drying: skin cracked along fingers, lips, and cheeks, blood dripping from the fleshy canyons, coagulating above the sand grain smothered pores. A photograph lay next to his side half-buried in the dust, exposed part bleaching in the sun. The rays began to flatten as the sun lowered behind the mountains, casting long shadows over the desert, he smiled at the darkness; his face slackening in one last relaxing moment. Moonlight glinted off the iris of a lone predator. In six hours the man would be dead.
>>7616241
>Mulatto
>green eyes
That's pretty unrealistic.
>>7616842
I liked it. Pretty straightforward and simple, certainly been done before but in terms of the writing there was nothing glaringly negative about it, except perhaps a dull ending. Just some edits to solidify your voice and a proper ending (which could be irrelevant if this is only a segment which gets expanded later).
>>7616893
What about the voice is inauthentic, if you can reduce it to specifics? I get the problem with imagination. What made you think it was a drug scene (it was, in effect) -- the random events?Totally unrelated, but why did you think I wear chinos and black rim glasses? I mean, I don't get the connection between what you said and flannel shirts.
>>7616857
>http://pastebin.com/BJRycw0V
This is WAY to much to read for a single critique. Pull out 500-1,000 words that you feel best captures the general writing and things you want to say with the overall piece and repost.
>>7616913
Because what you wrote sounds like hipster garbage so I imagine you to dress like a typical hipster kid.
The way you describe how your character is moving about and reacting to things is how people tend to act when they're spaced out but still awake, similar to when they're drunk or on drugs. The style of writing makes the voice inauthentic. It's trying to convey this scene in a way that doesn't read naturally. It's not even a language problem it's a problem with the general structure of the piece; it's as if you're going out of your way to make the narrator seem aloof in his surroundings when it doesn't naturally fit since he's clearly describing someone who is very in tune with the items in the room. There's a disconnect, basically.
>People posting their shitty poetry
>In a prose critique thread
/lit/ is truly full of retards.
>>7616241
A little autistic, but if that's what you're going for, that's fine. I would prefer a description of a person's a reaction to the picture that includes details about what the picture looks like to a description of the picture with details. It is more natural to me to imagine imagery when part of an abstract thought than to read a physical description. I also don't like the word peppered.
The last sentence is good, though.
>>7616888
Well, it's the first paragraph. I could cut back a bit on the flowery detail -- I really like the flag of Cyprus bit, though. Keeping that.
He's spreading his dad's ashes on the beach and they blow back at him. I'll make it more clear. Thanks.
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, on the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
>>7616936
>Because what you wrote sounds like hipster garbage so I imagine you to dress like a typical hipster kid.
I always figured hipster garbage was postmodern stuff, personally. But thanks for clearing that up, I guess.
>The way you describe how your character is moving about and reacting to things is how people tend to act when they're spaced out but still awake, similar to when they're drunk or on drugs
That's good to know. --If you don't mind me grilling you more, what kind of reactions do you mean specifically?
What would you suggest, regarding the disconnect? Making the protagonist less in tune with the items in the room?
I'm surprised you didn't mention the melodramatic bits, though. Like the whole screamed like laughter business.The deal was that the protagonist was trying to hide his actions from himself, by filling his life with inanity and ritual. You can see why I gave up.
>>7616955
It's hard not to be mediocre when compared to Borges.
It was a complement.
>>7616966
dubs in a prose thread = joyce
I started reading this in an irish brogue and rapidly realized that it was James Joyce gracing our thread
>>7616989
Nice catch mate, I just wanted to watch other /lit/ tards try and call it bad
>>7616966
Literally one of the most beautiful things I've ever read. Bet you wish you wrote it.
>>7616983
Ah ok. Thanks! I took at as mediocre...but Borges style.
>>7616991
It's not a nice catch, son. It's one of the most famous and quoted Joyce passages on /lit/. Try something more obscure.
>>7616994
I do wish that. I wish I could write something beautiful.
>>7616998
Preferably involving nora's farts.
>>7614883
>I don't pedal in that bullshit
it's actually "peddle"
So as not to see anything any more, I turned towards the wall, but alas, what was now facing me was that partition which used to serve us as a morning messenger, that partition which, as responsive as a violin in rendering every nuance of a feeling, reported so exactly to my grandmother my fear at once of waking her and, if she were already awake, of not being heard by her and so of her not coming, then immediately, like a second instrument taking up the melody, informing me of her coming and bidding me be calm. I dared not put out my hand to that wall, any more than to a piano on which my grandmother had been playing and which still vibrated from her touch. I knew that I might knock now, even louder, that nothing would wake her any more, that I should hear no response, that my grandmother would never come again. And I asked nothing more of God, if a paradise exists, than to be able, there, to knock on that wall with the three little raps which my grandmother would recognize among a thousand, and to which she would give those answering knocks which meant: "Don't fuss, little mouse, I know you're impatient, but I'm coming," and that he would let me stay with her throughout eternity, which would not be too long for the two of us.
>>7610045
thesaurus abuse, big words where one needs none
>>7617019
This is like a marriage of a bunch of novelists, but in a bad way. It has no original feeling to it.
>>7617042
Not really. He said it was unoriginal, and it was.
>>7617049
Do you know who wrote it?
>>7617054
You misunderstand me. It is unoriginal in that it is literally not original. More importantly, it's by a fucking influential writer. I.e., one whose writing style is well known, extremely far-reaching and copied.
It's like complaining about Tolkien for being so unoriginal with his orcs and his elfs and his dwarfs.
>>7617067
He said it was a marriage of a bunch of novelists in a bad way. That's an autistic criticism of Proust and shows that you have no idea what good literature is
>>7617076
>autistic
>2016
>using buzzwords
>>7617081
>Changing the subject
I don't even know what you're trying to argue
Forthwith a change came over the waters, and the serenity became less brilliant but
more profound. The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of
day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in
the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We
looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and
departs for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories.
Contexte: Mélanie, l'amie de Louanne, vient de mourir.
Louanne n’avait accepté d’aller avec ses amies que parce qu’elle s’accrochait toujours à l’idée que sortir lui ferait du bien. Elle n’était pas excitée par l’activité, mais elle voulait croire qu’elle irait mieux après, elle voulait vraiment le croire. Sans cette porte de sortie, elle n’avait plus rien. Sans cette lumière, aussi petite soit-elle, elle n’avait qu’à se coucher sur le sol froid et regarder le plafond jusqu’à ce que la douleur terrible qui lui déchirait le cœur la dévore, que ses pincements de cœur la déchirent en deux et expose la plaie béante qu’elle ressentait à l’intérieur, que le mal se répande dans tout son corps et fasse défaillir, un par un, les organes et qu’elle soit enfin légère. Le temps avant cette grande peine n’existait plus; sa vie avait commencé à la mort de Mélanie; tout le reste n’était que de vagues souvenirs prénataux.
Anon was shitposting when the telephone rang. The rapid action of his gross fingers on the pube garden of his keyboard halted abruptly. "Now just who the heck could that be?" he said to himself. It was 2pm and the summer sun shone oppressively into the bare room. Anon did some quick finger math. "Impossible". He shook his greasy head, sending down a shower of neon particles and ran the numbers again. By the shape of the fist held before him, he knew the results were the same. "A big fat, stinking, dirty zero." he exclaimed. "Cero. Zilch. Nada." He was hovering over the receiver now. "But if I don't gots any pals, who is this customer?" The phone rang louder and he winced. "Probs some whore." A bright red siren, the kind you might see on top of a fire engine, scrolled in front of his eyes. "Nuh uh bitch" he said and just then. the phone, as if it could hear him rang so violently it fell from the table and swung from it's chord. In a panic he picked it up and said into the mouthpiece. "Talk to me Jack."
Years later, when he would reflect on the words spoken to him that day, a smile would spread across his face and one word would leave his lips "Fuckin' Bitgch"
>>7616886
anyone?
>>7616241
Honestly, describing someone gratuitously is too far over done. A few hints of information and the reader's imagination should be enough.
>>7617248
>Please support 4chan by disabling your ad blocker on *.4chan.org/*, purchasing a self-serve ad, or buying a 4chan Pass.
Sure, why not. I'm anonymous, aren't I?
http://pastebin.com/yurEChS8
B-be gentle. ;_;
>>7616886
>>7617297
you use too many commas. if you want to nest clauses read some authors who do it well, study their long sentences until you understand their strucutre, and imitate them until you can successfully do it yourself. learn different breaks, their history and use like semicolons, parenthesis, em dashes, colons, etc.
some of the commas you use are just plain unnecessary, like in your second sentence. "I go home to my apartment, which I made into a museum of checks, receipts, books, and sketches, all carefully cataloged."
as it stands you have far too many unnecessary pauses which interrupt what might be a more natural flow and rhythm. you also need to organize and manage your use of time. if you want to mix up the present with the recent and distant past in a single sentece, you should probably find a way to parse it more clearly.
Decided the best way to get a response is to respond to others, this is a repost with some adjustments from my original but please do read through if any of you can, need to improve this pretty soon.
http://pastebin.com/tt31Hmz0
>>7610045
This is pretty fantastic, but too weighty. Doesn't need too much work, just got to lose some fat here and there.
>>7610584
My least favourite thing about this is the expletive use. It feels forced, like the single use of "shit" in a 12-A film. I think the best way to make it seem less heavy is to either make the protagonist consistently vulgar with an obvious reason why. Alternatively, you could cut out a lot of the vulgarity from the narration and place it in dialogue. But for a piece written for fun, it's pretty brilliant and foundationally sound.
>>7610778
I'm not much of a fan of the overuse of short sentences, but if it's from a diary entry perspective I suppose it's justifiable. Difficult to criticise without a little more content to work with, just to see how the writing style might differentiate between different levels of modality.
>>7610902
Pretty fantastic, I was going to say to describe it with a little more excess but that would come across as cheesy. Well done.
>>7610947
It's proficiently written, very fluent and easy to read. Definitely has potential.
>>7611275
The fatal flaw with this is that it's boring. Everything that I'm reading I feel like I've read before. Might be worth it to cut down on the short, dramatic sentences and add a few more descriptive sentences in there to make it feel a lot more real.
>>7614020
It's really simple, but I like it. I love the opening, it doesn't feel too in-your-face like the typical "Today is the day the world ends" or something equally as cliché. The narrator's voice is well written and feels very realistic, although it does feel at times a little apathetic. If this is intentional, then that's great, but if not it might be worth adding a little more emotion.
>>7614125
Credit for making it read as though it is both historical and modern at the same time. Pleasant to read, needs a few tweaks here and there but nothing that you couldn't pick up in a second read-through. Not at all bad.
>>7614130
Very long opening sentence. Definitely paints a very vivid picture, well enough written. It has potential if you were thinking of developing it.
>>7614433
The opening requires the reader to be unaware of the butterfly effect, otherwise reading that paragraph is bound to roll a few eyes. Quite like "Just try and figure out your own divorce", but I'd cut down with the cheesy use of "!" and "...". Towards the end, it reads like teen angst, and I feel like you thought the "Amen" was a lot more clever than it actually is. Needs an immense amount of work if it's ever to leave the ground.
(word limit)
>>7617120
>done to the race that peopled its banks
This could be better.
Otherwise, I like it.
>>7619891
>The opening requires the reader
That's from this scene, man. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9PzSNy3xj0
>>7619987
Now I feel like an idiot, but I still stand by that it doesn't read very well.
>>7619891
Thanks mate, from all of us.
>>7619891
God bless you, thank you for doing this.
>>7610045
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhzNTSMBlag
Someone critique my prose (someone is reading it in the video)
Think Calvin and Hobbes sort of stuff going on here:
http://pastebin.com/efnkvP70
This is a short excerpt.
>>7619891
YOu're the best for doing this. I gave it a thorough read over I did, a once over. Yeah, good once. Felt nice, has me talking like Andy, seems a bit like an odd bird.
No, seriously, this is great. Andy seems really fucking strange and I love it. He goes from this reasonable down to earth guy to this almost paranoid, dare I say mental person. He's so paranoid about earning her love because of mother, and then suddenly it's all out the window when she fucks up and disturbs one of his latent autisms.
I'm not sure how much of that you intended or not, but that's what I got. If you're aiming for a bizarre sort of story, I think you're on the right track. If this is supposed to be a serious drama about two titanous characters and their steamy love affair, I think Andy would need to be re-written.
Your prose and stream of consciousness is quite good. I think it rolled, sounded like the head of Andy himself. Posh? A little peculiar? Not bad, but that's the way it sounded. I'd need to know a little more about your aims for this
http://pastebin.com/9FQGshJj
>>7620338
Okay, thanks man!
Though I'm going to say "sunbeat" is used once. But I get what you mean with "The Ace"
I fully admit I have immense problems with diversity in pronouns and referring to people. It's not my strength, but I'm trying to work it.
>>7620353
> A sunbeat shed
>The sun was beating down today
>>7620362
Ahhhh, okay, that. Thought you meant the singular "sunbeat".
Gotcha.
Part two of >>7619891, before I get back to it let me paste more of my own trash;
She peers over the jagged jaw of the horizon, her eyes flittering over concrete teeth and into the burning uvula sun obscured by dripping clotted clouds, and she smiles. She knows that as vapours twist, turn and embrace each beloved tooth, as the sun descends from view and as a multiplicity of glorious golden cysts fill the sky, that she will never be alone as long as she has her vision.
>>7611227
Missed this one in my first list of criticisms. It's very vivid, and I love the way that you juxtapose the excessive descriptive writing with the more personal remarks. Got a lot of respect for you writing the first paragraph as it was instead of leaving it as a few short sentences. The best way to improve this is to develop it, give the reader a little more insight unto what's going on. Otherwise, pretty fantastic work.
>>7614883
Well, you've definitely created a detestable protagonist. If that was your intention, well done. Might tone down a little on the literary allusions, there are a few too many in there I feel.
>>7614918
Paint-by-numbers descriptive piece, I'd avoid from using recent neologisms, especially if the rest of your piece has been written to sound a lot more formal.
>>7614946
bant
>>7615045
I think you can push the concept a lot further. You're trying to describe inactivity and lethargy, but what I'm reading sounds like it's coming from a very active and attentive narrator. There are a few great moments in there, but I feel like they're drowned out by a lot of needless text.
>>7615074
It's alright, but difficult to criticize. Nothing noteworthy is happening, I feel like the drama you've described is just going to be shrugged off by the reader. It needs some development and direction.
>>7615085
caught me off guard
>>7615108
My immediate thought after reading this is "Whatever". It's far too plain to give any clear criticism on. I'd start by focussing on making the reader care about the scenario.
>>7616241
It's good for what it is, but what it is isn't much. After the first few sentences I felt overloaded with detail, the best way to make a face memorable is to give a few key details and let the magic of literature fill in the blanks.
>>7616258
>I delicately licked the slice of bright pink meat.
It's unrealistic, and paints a caricature of what people are actually like. Read through this, and imagine what you've written in video form. Then think of how to make that visualization seem less ridiculous, and apply those changes to your writing.
>>7616663
I really enjoyed reading this, only advice I could give is to read it aloud and amend all the instances where it sounds a little clumsy, otherwise, good work.
>>7616840
you sound like the kinda guy that butchers countless vulva across the globe 24/7
(over the word count)
Is the general consensus that one should write while avoiding the use of overly complicated and forced vocabulary? Most of the better works in this thread are the ones which seem the most simplest in their prose.
Part three of >>7619891 and >>7620404
>>7616842
This is really good. Takes some talent to write something as sporadic as that while it still being pleasant to read. Nice work.
>>7616886
It feels very bland, then all of a sudden the narrator talks about collecting bones and squirrel's skulls. I think you could highlight the neuroticism of the narrator a lot more than you have, and in a way that is a little more interesting to read.
>>7616896
Feels very dramatic while not being interesting. I would write a bit more about the man, since a plain description of his body doesn't give much reason for the reader to be invested. Might be good to compare his state of life to his current state of death.
>>7617019
really, really plain. Needs a little more personality, and a little less focus on trying to appeal to a literary audience.
>>7619594
It's quite nicely written. I feel as though you spent much too long focussing on that you (or the character) are a bad writer. You could probably half the length of that and make it quite a nice little opener.
>>7620271
if serious: not funny
if ironic: not funny
>>7620321
I feel like this is an attempt at recreating a tarantino script of some kind. Try and deviate from that.
>>7620426
It's more that the people that have written on here aren't familiar enough with archaic language to really pull it off. Better to work with what you're familiar with so there isn't anything holding back the message of your work.
>>7620426
If you can't overwrite something and try to, it becomes incredibly obvious.
>I slid the gun into my pocket and got on the bus.
>The gun was in free fall into a tiny vacuum of black Haggard Slacks. When the bus chundered forward and game to a squealing halt, I could think only of the gun in my pocket. Steam billowed out of the exhaust like smoke from a dragons mouth and I felt I was entering the belly of some mechanical beast. The gun was in my pocket. The gun was my light, my sword against this horrible beast. Anything tries to TOUCH me I stab (shoot). I am St. George of Penn Street, the great mechanical dragon slayer
>>7620296
Yeah, I challenged myself and aimed to write either a despicable or unrelatable narrator. There is a little more to it than that, but that was the basis.
I also forgot to give yours a once over in my three part criticism train, so I'll just do that here
It's very clearly and concisely written, and it's pretty funny, I think it definitely has potential. It got a lot better as it went on, which is usually a bad sign since your opening paragraph usually needs to be the most interesting. I'd like to see where it goes.
He was a rolling king. He could roll up anything: lint, bread, pennies, buildings, his classmates...The one thing he could not roll up was himself. He tried throwing himself at the ball. He tried lying under the ball while his mother pushed it over him. No luck.
Why did the ball not accept him? Was it repulsed by him? He wished it wouldn't give him false hope, allowing him to touch it and control it but not be a part of it. Whether the ball could fit in his pocket or fill the universe, he felt he was the real puppet in their relationship. As much as people screamed while stuck to the ball, they had each other. It didn't matter that he was free of the physical pain that they endured; He was in emotional pain, because he would always be an outsider.
One day, he wrote a letter to the ball. As a mute boy, he believed this to be the best method of communication for his sincerest feelings.
"Dear Ball," he wrote, "I wish to give up my position as roller. Please choose someone else, so that one day I may have the chance of being rolled up myself. I know it may not happen right away, but I don't mind waiting." He placed his letter on the floor, and slowly began rolling up paper clips, then thumbtacks, and finally the letter. To his horror, the ball hit a table leg, and the letter flew off. Had the ball had time to read it? He stopped.
Cautiously, he put his hands back on the ball. He pushed- nothing. "Did you understand?" he thought as loudly as he could, willing the ball to hear him. The ball rose,
and rose,
and rose.
Through the ceiling, into the sky, and beyond the clouds. His mother came into the room. "What's wrong?" she asked. He lay curled on the floor, in despair. Slowly, he rolled towards his mother, as she opened her mouth to scream. A new ball had been born, and this one piloted itself.
>>7620404
I liked the actual prose but not really the effect. It was almost preachy or just anecdotal. Try to give over the message that shes not alone cuz of her vision without explicitly saying those words.
>>7619891
I seriously liked this. The overall feeling was done really well. I loved the way the first few paragraphs almost had a poetic flow to the ends of lines. Really lent to his character. Certain techniques you kind of overused, like the repeating things
>it’ll get in the way, in the way of work
>put them out, put them out for good
While it completely fits the tone, you do it like 4 times each paragraph. I would keep it in but take out a few of the less needed ones.
Also, I felt like the whole paragraph
>Such a lovely girl
was a bit forced in giving us an understanding of the underlying themes of his mum. My favourite part was the part about her sitting down. It was flawless.
Mine wass >>7611227
Thanks man. Really nice to hear. I'm glad you liked the paragraph. I felt like separating the lines would cheapen it, there was such a nice murkiness about having a standalone paragraph.
God was angry. Emma could feel a magnetic repulsion from Church. She drove home in deep consideration. The right thing was to cut out Albert like cancer. Ignore him, shun him. But she could not, or would not. She looked forward too much to seeing him the next week. Her consideration of any alternative was shallow at best, a mental show for God - a barrier between herself and the Spirit erected with the mentality of a child. He could see beyond the barrier. Should she repent? Would it matter? She felt ashamed to repent, too ashamed even to pray. She would see Albert next Sunday and nothing would change. The diamond ring felt leaden on her finger and hallucination added to it the weight of the coming golden band. The radio sang
“Witchcraft filling your void...”
>>7620499
Not overwritten; communicates its point well.
A few things that could be better:
Don't use an ellipsis there; it's pointless. If you are going to use it, there should be a space afterward.
>As a ... sincerest feelings.
Awkward.
>He pushed- nothing.
There should probably be a space before the dash.
Overall, it's nice. Made me laugh a little.
>>7614020
Sure. id like to read how it ends
>>7620404
detestable protagonists and tarantino knockoffs are what I do okay.
>>7610045
Attention of everyone I've shat on! You can shit on my stuff here:
http://pastebin.com/2miad9VZ
>>7610045
I like it, I like that the narrator bakes the prose a bit too much because he's a poet. There's something in that. One thing i didn't like:
>In order to acquaint myself more thoroughly with his character I asked a number of questions intended to produce revelatory answers.
You haven't asked anything yet, and won't do in-frame for quite a while. What's the point of this sentence?
My only other complaint is, like, in Lolita, Humbert is a literature professor, so even though he's talking about grim shit, he has such a way with words that the prose coming out of the narrator's mouth is beautiful, and we are seduced by it. With your narrator, he overcooks his prose, so if it's a whole book of this, it's in overcooked prose. Even if there's a point to it, and I suppose you get round to making fun of your narrator's pretensions eventually, you've still got a book with mostly purple prose.
>>7610106
This is serviceable prose! Be wary of using too many words to describe simple shit when you don't need to. The first two sentences stick out. How much did describing the precise nature of the headache in almost a quarter of the piece really give the reader. You had a headache. Trust the reader to remember that.
>>7610502
Okie doke.
>>7610584
Hell of an opening sentence. Really lyrical. I love it. Reminds me of Finnegan's wake for some reason.
>voice kept to a gruff yet careful whisper.
You let me down here. I'm a big fan of the word "said". Let the reader figure the rest out in time. If there aren't any ships or soldiers in sight, why is he whispering? Because they're being careful? I don't buy it.
The rest of it is good. I actually give a shit about what happens next, which is a quality of a writer that I wish I possessed.
>>7610778
Fine, but watch for inconsistencies in your narrator's voice.
>>7610827
It's a bit much. The timing's off. Seems like you're rhyming for the sake of it.
>>7610902
I like this a lot. Actually the only complaint I have is that you said "caked with dust" instead of "caked in dust" and that's seriously minor.
>>7610947
Prose is fine. As long as your story's good you'll make a decent genre writer if that's what you want to be. You're obviously concerned with plot and pacing, which is something most people here don't even consider. Thumbs up.
>>7611103
I've read two or three things in this thread where provisions were meagre. Oh shit, there's an inn, too? With singing drunks?
>And so it was into this scene that the stranger burst
If you put this as it should be, "And then the stranger burst onto the scene", we'd both know it'd be bad.
You have a way with words. Try harder.
---
PART 2 COMING SOON.
>>7621218
PART 2.
Again, if you feel I've shat on you, shit on me here: http://pastebin.com/2miad9VZ
>>7611275
I have no idea what's going on. Like, this is really hard to read and you need to ask yourself honestly if it's going to be worthwhile.
>>7611300
Thanks for that, Joyce.
>>7614020
As good as other YA. Have you played "Horse Master"? I bet you fucking have as well. It's not as good as that.
>>7614125
Historical fiction needs an unbelievable amount of research. If this is what you're writing (and it is really good), I hope you're willing to do tons of research.
>>7614130
I'm reading this in the same voice I read Cormac McCarthy. Coincidence? I think not. It's good though. Just can't figure out if it's a forgery.
>>7614433
Yeah, Charlie Kaufman's a great writer. That priest's pretentious little speech is meant to be mocked within the context of the movie. That scene was deliberately cheesy. You're stealing the wrong passage from that film.
>>7614883
References to both Kafka and Bret Easton Ellis in like 20 lines? I get it, you read books.
>>7614946
Describing the weather at the beginning of a piece of writing is the most cli- oh. I see. It was a lampoon. A simple lampoon.
>>7615045
There's a few things letting this down from being really good. If you're still here I can try and help.
>>7615074
This is too much of well-trodden ground.
>>7615085
>A little while back, a full seven days (and I daresay an equal number of my wife’s delectable New England Boiled Dinners) had passed without a single action of the lower intestine
or
>I hadn't shat in a week.
Think about it.
>>7615108
I like this, even though I feel like I shouldn't.
>>7616241
If you like her so much, why would you call her a mulatto? Is your narrator of an older generation? Help me out.
>>7616258
The opening sentence reminds me of sex so explicitly that I expected the rest of the piece to play into that idea somehow. But it didn't.
PART 3 SOON
>>7621222
PART 3:
Again, if you fee like I've shat on you or want to see my stuff, here: http://pastebin.com/2miad9VZ
>>7616663
Why are there so many ellipses? It's ok, I feel like there's too many words. Is your narrator someone who thinks he's smarter than he is, doing work that he feels is beneath him, but isn't? If so, I need a payoff where he learns he isn't all that.
>>7616842
The writing is really good, but you're in stiff competition if you want to write stuff that is so explicitly "poor me" about the day-to-day drudgery of existence.
>>7616886
This drew me in and I can't put my finger on why.
>>7616896
I don't like it. I'm sorry, it says too little with too much, and "In six hours the man would be dead" is a pretty cliche hook.
>>7617019
You "beat the drum" (get it?) on that music metaphor a lot, but there wasn't a payoff. Apart from that I really like the language. I'm having trouble figuring out what that partition is though.
>>7617120
Give real thought before you drop a "forthwith". What is the etymology of that word? It's fallen out of use now but when was it in use? Can you keep the language of that period alive for your whole piece? Do you want to? Writing in an old voice requires real dedication.
>>7619891
Oh, I really like this. My only complaint is that it's looking like it's going to climax too soon. Am I going crazy, or did you remove a line, something like "to continue the fish metaphor" after "hook line and sinker"? This is great self-editing. Having trust in the reader to get the fucking picture. Some of the best work on here.
---
If you feel like I've been unfair, or would have me say more, reply to this.
>>7611275
reminds me of the circle, by dave eggers, which is not meant as a compliment. could use some more subtlety.
>>7610045
http://pastebin.com/MB2hMJgC
>>7620928
Thanks. I've never gotten feedback before, so this helps a lot.
>>7621315
Who are you? Include my quote.
>>7621327
I have no idea what's going on. Like, this is really hard to read and you need to ask yourself honestly if it's going to be worthwhile.
>>7621332
Going to live-write my thought process reading this.
OK, so, you can write. That much is clear. You know words and how they form things to say stuff to people.
So, there's a discovery. It's important. This guy goes to the D.S.T.
His daughter doesn't like that. He's confined to the D.S.T.?
Watched by something eyeless? This feels like a moment of climax shovelled in way too soon. Who's eyeless? Oh, you mean the camera? She hates him because he doesn't want to be seen by the camera? No, he hates... her, because she hates him because he doesn't want to be seen by the camera? It's that simple? A father-daughter relationship? They hate each other, shown, not told, in paragraph #1? I'm really confused.
>He comforted himself by repeating the mantra of the age “To be seen is to exist.”
OK, I think I'm with you.
> that is when it was not being scoured away by white suited and masked civil workers, the same workers who could be seen testing the red recording lights on every street corner, or who could be witnessed talking on boxy cellphones to men in black suits seated in tendentious offices delineated by soundproof walls from the soft clicks of digital keyboards and garbles of mouths talking into headsets to people like Bill
It's a good sentence, but it feels like 2 chapters of subtle world-building built into one sentence.
So they're in a dystopia. Artists and reporters? How can it end like this? Artists and reporters are so different. What's the significance? It feels like 25% of a whole story somehow, even though nothing really happens.
Why is the first sentence separate? It's really making my brain hurt. Even if I read really tough shit it doesn't get me as confused as this. This makes some Pynchon look pretty simple.
All I meant was, I hope it all comes together, and that the payoff is worth the study.
>>7621374
*told, not shown
>>7610045
It sounds like shit. I stopped reading after 3 first sentences. horrible word use, pretenious.
>>7610045
Also, for the shake of being polite and shit, people will say they like your shit, but actually they don't. So don't say thank you and feel good just because some asshole says he likes your shit.
>>7621411
Anonymous posters on 4chan are well known for politely agreeing with things they don't like.
This was meant to be an assignment, but I went overboard and discarded these paragraphs (among others) from the draft.
>Spontaneity suits a journal most, but I fall in a habit of rushing my businesses. They say the first sentence is a drag. Writing is a drag, botched writing more like a sore. The thing is more advantageous if you take a closed reading, singularly, and jot your mind down, rinse thoroughly, repeat. No. No. I rush my businesses.
>What's not to hate about poetry? Many are the examples, since too often it's men dressing into their words like zoot suits, or like entourage, or flamingos to stow a backyard dug muddily up. This tone acts up similarly, I think. We would much like to think we are safe behind words, but words do not lend themselves naively to the reader, so many are the examples. Time present and time past are perhaps better spent listening to a Quartet or two, or four, some say. Then what demands poetry, — leave alone what is from what isn't — prose in vogue?
>>7621498
The language and writing is good, but you're Writing about Writing, and it doesn't go anywhere. What do you want us to say? If it's for an assignment, tone it the fuck down. If it's for an audience, say something.
>>7621539
Which is what I try my best to do. What happens is I slip on occasion and forget *I* am not supposed to be part of the audience I address, so I try and *impress myself.* I don't say it's my only sin, but it is a huge hindrance, true.
>>7621561
If it's for a non-fiction assignment, it has an obvious "narrator". This isn't how to do that.
>>7621580
Any advice on how to stick to the topic like adhesive?
On an unrelated note: I never had this problem writing in my native tongue until I was forced under odd circumstances to learn English, and then I started appreciating prose over content. I still read, to this day, more to augment my vocabulary than to enjoy the goddamn piece. It's weird.
>>7621855
Did you play it all the way through? Really dwell on how it made you feel. I was 100% absorbed in that world, in a way I didn't get from your piece. I guess horse master was longer, but once I took my writhing, slimy horse pupa home and dunked it in the nutrient bath, I was fully invested.
>>7621863
Looked it up as in googled it just now. Never heard of it. Do you think that my piece is not as absorbing because I haven't conveyed sense well?
>>7616913
You sure have a problem when you don't understand he saying you wearing "a chinos and black rim glasses". A person who can't understand that figure of speech (I don't know the English for it) should not write. Just give the up and do the world a favor by finding another hobby.
>>7621883
OK, so you set up weird animals, in the terminology we use in the real world, but they're different. Horse Master does this in almost exactly the same way, except:
* In Horse Master, there is suspense as you figure out, slowly, over time, just how NOT A HORSE the horse actually is.
* In Horse Master, the slow, drawn out introduction to the horse mimics our introduction to the world: it's like ours, but different, and the ways in which is it different are teased and revealed over time.
* In Horse Master, I feel like I have a full mental image of what a horse in this world looks like.
* Horse Master barely wastes a single word.
It's not to say what you wrote isn't good, it is. Especially if it's aimed at YA. I think the storytelling could use work. I'm equally guilty of this.
>>7621606
You're fucked up mate.
>>7621606
I can't help you there, it's always been extra effort for me to write in prose rather than dead, rhythmless, fact-and-argument writing. If it comes naturally to you it's probably to your credit.
>>7621926
I feel like the lion in my story is sort of window dressing to the narrative
>>7621940
Sure, but the weirdness of it suggests a lot about the world. It's the only part of the story that has some otherworldly creature, and it comes in real fast. It's a real focal point. It's referred to in the first sentence of the story. You referred to yourself as Lionposter.
Aside from that, are we talking general coming-of-age YA? I guess if it's just a small part of a whole bunch of other shit in the world then fair enough.
I guess it's just that when the piece is totally normal except for this one thing, I want to find out more about the thing. At this point, I don't really care about the kids, I want to know more about the lion. Maybe make me care about the kids first?
>>7621374
Here's a little more from later on. I posted it earlier, but it pasted wrong. It's partially in Bill's voice.
The empty husks of lights swung in the air conditioned breeze. Bill sat writing furiously in his journal as his fellow support group members droned on.
“I remember when I found out, that day in the office, it was cold.” said Ernst. Bill had never seen Ernst, but his voice, like crushing leaves in autumn, and smoky smell projected an image of bones and paper. But it wasn't the voice, or his endless innanites regarding his story on Discovery Day, but rather the way he moved on the tile. The slapping footfalls that screamed fuck me flip flops and nights on beaches sucking Milwaukee's best— mother's milk for the disaffected. Ernst was a frat boy with cancer.
College years a revolving door of bars and streams of faces grimacing at denied ecstasy. Hawwain shirts dangling away from beer swollen breasts. A husky voice crafted from cigarettes and cracked speech. Textbook, really.
"For why do we share in the satisfaction of our doings? Seek not the acceptance of the onlookers to your desires and endeavors. Keep your works under the scrutiny of your own regard. Satisfy not the judgments of those apart from they that know of nothing but their own works. Grace can not be found in the mediocrity of the common, for the common are gods among the riff raff; And the dirt beneath the feet of them is their heaven. Should a man not beset his eyes on the sky to find approval? The wonderment of the stars is as the pride of modesty; For in humbleness is a reward not given but found. There is not a map to guide a man to gold. If gold has been found, surely it would be gone before another can claim it. The irony of which is that even my own words are of ill favor to the ideal. I and all are of lead and filth. Pass thy judgment and cast me aside."
And at twenty-one Claire stared up into the faded yellow peeling ceiling and knew how little she knew about the future to come. At twenty-one, Claire had no idea how time felt. She had spent the first five years of her life uncollecting memories, and the following sixteen within institutions timetabled to the point where time had surrendered any relevance. Time had always been out of Claire’s hands; but now that she was ‘out in the world’ she felt a terrifying amount of liberty. As if she had been dropped into the Savannah plains, or desert hills of the Outback - the empty space, stretched out before her in three hundred and sixty degrees of dry heat, was the temporal platform she’d just now been given the permission to explore.
She was paralyzed in that bed. From the moment her body hit the sheets and sunk into repose, a cobra had bitten her and it's venom began to metastasize inside of her. Just a few moments before she was able-bodied when she was summoned to down her pink, chalky pills. The nurse stood before her dressed in their milk-white uniform, handing her a medicine cup filled with tap water. She draught the water down with the capsules as the befuddled nurse too, downed some lime julep she hid in her thermos. The girl extended her tongue outside of her mouth and lifted it up, showing the nurse she had swallowed all her medication, then shuffled to her room. The lights were cut out. She slipped into bed and then her body was taken over and her muscles went completely numb. Her eyes started on the white wall as they did every night, focusing on each crack in the paint, becoming hypnotized by every speck of dirt in the crevasses of those cracks. A fiery stinging noise began in her ears as if almost on cue. Every night was the same routine. This routine didn't feel like treatment to her. She didn't feel any difference, she felt lethargic. Whatever clamor the nurse was making never comforted her sleeplessness either.
Wondering if this is too terrible to even continue
>>7622660
There seems to be a bit of tense and pronoun and general grammatical confusion going on here that makes your prose difficult to judge.
>Just a few moments before she was able-bodied when she was summoned to down her pink
>The nurse stood before her dressed in their milk-white uniform
> the befuddled nurse too, downed some lime julep she hid in her thermos
The flow of the writing feels a little off, I can't really explain why, other than certain connective words and use of punctuation seem jerky when I read it in my mind. A good way to get around this is to read the sentences out loud to yourself and hear if they sound pleasant.
You should keep writing because even if you end up not liking it any practice is good practice :)
I feel like I've finished this
She peers over the scowling jagged jaw of the horizon, her eyes flittering over concrete teeth and into the burning uvula sun obscured by dripping clotted clouds, and she smiles. She smiles, because she knows that as vapours twist, turn and embrace each cutting tooth, as the sun descends from view and as a multiplicity of glorious golden cysts fill the sky, that she has the key to make the snarling beast turn away.
She can watch the bestial snarl turn and melt away to reveal a swirling incandescent mist of stars, spinning on the axis of a single searing eye. The eye watches, benevolent, warm, obscured by jutting canyons adorned with vapourous waterfalls. And the eye watches her; watches her sit behind her window, through a crack outside the gorgeous round egg of space and time.
One day she will need to familiarize herself with the old snarl, but until then the radiance of her current vision encompasses her, and fills her with infallible light and boundless love.
>>7624030
corrected the opening of the second paragraph to "She can watch it melt away.." immediately after posting because i realized that was stupid
The world all around me, life is an endless gripe. I can't stop complaining, positive thinking is not for me, death ever encroaching, life ever fleeting. The dead are laughing at me, grinning at my futility, thumbing through the pages of my short life. I want to escape with my dignity, every day my chances lessen.
>>7610045
rob smokes roughly fourty cigarettes a day
there is a ball on the inside of rob's cigarette which
if clicked will give the cigarette a spearmint
kick
he says that it's nice to be given the option to choose
he says that it's not too harsh
he says that it's nice to have a little spearmint
kick
i don't want to tell rob that the cigarettes still taste like shit
i don't want to tell him that the mint sensation means nothing
i don't want to tell him that he might as well buy menthols
because without fail he will always
CLICK THE CIGARETTE
kick
kick
kick
>>7624043
i-imperatrix?
m-marry me pls
>>7624043
>>7624282
Becuse I'm nice.
This is my first attempt at stream of consciousness. Pls no bully.
>>7625641
You can't even stick to one tense for a single paragraph, or sentence. And you posted a fucking picture of your writing instead of just posting it.
What is wrong with you?
>>7625649
I meme too much.
>>7625652
Next time at least edit your shit once before asking other people to waste their time doing it for you.
>>7625659
It is edited. The tense is fucked up on purpose. Did you even read it? Time is going in all directions.
>>7610045
>as he masticated with perverse animation
was really annoying to read
>>7625667
It clearly isn't. It's hard to divorce your knowledge of the story from smaller excerpts but just try, and then reread this.
Regardless, there is no excusing "I have seemed to have..."
It's embarrassing that you are trying to defend this.
>>7625686
Your critiques are not legitimate. It's embarrassing that you are trying to defend them.
>>7625702
Delusion grows ego not ability but I'm sure it doesn't matter as long as it makes you feel good, right?
>>7610045
>I asked a number of questions intended to produce revelatory answers.
the crypticism here is entirely unnecessary
>released a soft crunching sound
gum makes a crunch? and in this situation I don't think a sound is "released"
>I took this to be a sign that he was confused, perhaps even threatened, by my presence.
I suggest removing the second comma or maybe reworking the sentence.
>>7625694
kek you really dont know how to write
>>7625694
>I stare into the dim lit candle which burns like the now dying embers of my heart once burnt.
add a 'had' before the once, for the sake of clarity
>sullen despair
r u 4 reel here m8
> Still yet, I do not even know of her maiden name, only of her beauty which I hold in admiration - her name only being of that which I should label a beauty so fair.
Consider punctuation after beauty or reworking the sentence
Overall, it's ok but too sappy.
Lou was two and a half pounds when he slipped out of his mother's vagina. She knew she was pregnant. It wasn't one of those poof a baby stories sometimes shared between the really obese, though she was a little on the fat side. It was just that Lou was so early. Thirty weeks. Almost two months early. No joke, she thought she had to take poo, but sitting on the toilet, it felt much bigger. And coming from the wrong hole. There's a behavioural tendency in all sorts of mammals to hide for cover and solitude immediately before giving birth. She stayed in the bathroom but moved to the tub and ran the water. She whispered for her husband and he came. He knew exactly what was going to happen and said, “No no no no no no no.” He picked her up. Walked her to the truck. Sped to the hospital. Dad used to say that he cupped her vagina the entire ride there as if he were trying to clot an open wound. He said he could feel Lou's head thump against his palm over every bump and pothole. “No no no no no.” Mom cried all the way there. He is going to die. He is going to die. They arrived at emergency and the attendants pushed her into a chair and pushed her down the hall to a room. The doctor was already there. Dad lifted mom onto the bed. The doctor opened her legs and Lou slipped out. Lou. That was the sound her vagina had made. Lou. He fit comfortably in the palm of the doctor's hand. He sat in it like a beach chair, not making a sound, his lungs not quite working. They plugged him into all sorts of machines. Tubes were everywhere. Wires monitored things and computers beeped at every beat. And then for ten weeks he just grew and grew and grew and grew. Eventually his fat hid the veins that had once seemed glued to his skin. His colour became normal.
I wrote this today. I'm considering to make a very short story out of it.
http://pastebin.com/bcTuZHnW
>>7625811
>http://pastebin.com/bcTuZHnW
>midnight hour
Just midnight.
>who gained notoriety after his eating-his-own-feces performance, meant to be what he described as a “representation of the decay and renewal of human life,”
I don't know. Try "gained notoriety after eating his own feces to represent the decay and renewal of modern life". But maybe I'm just making it sound like me.
>a subject-matter of which
"Of which" is lazy.
>bore of the waiting
Maybe it's personal preference again, but "of the" doesn't do anything for me. You could rewrite the sentence and save two boring words
>in the wait for that guy
One isn't "in" a wait. One waits.
Unlike a lot of the stuff posted, there is the semblance of a narrative, but you never quite get there. We, like the character, are waiting for something to happen. I get that. But I don't think I'd wait any longer.
Language needs work. You use simple language, which is good. But you crowd the simple language with useless language. Try eliminating and rewriting when you find yourself using "of", "which", "for to", and that sort of thing.
I'm going to write something short specifically for this, I don't know how it will turn out.
I walk back and forth over the same path on the platform. My heels purposefully land on my toes with each step, as if I'm trying to trip myself. I make little progress this way, though there's nothing to progress toward, except a certain time that will get here with the train no matter how I walk. But I do it anyway. There's no one else here to watch me fumble around this late at night, but I doubt I'd care if there was. I never cared before certainly I wouldn't now. After many laps time died and the train arrived, and when it did my steps turned fast, precise, and to the point. That point being an escape, and the seat inside the door to the left. No one else got on. There was no one else who could get on.
>>7625883
yawn
>>7625702
I think he's right.
To me it reads like you've discovered Joyce and have been overwhelmed by how natural the language sounds without realizing how unnatural, rather, how contrived, composed, and created his language was. His is the most unnatural of all natural sounding language because of the meaning that every word and association has been constructed with.
I think you posted a picture of your language rather than the language itself because you think that the aesthetics of the font and of the published-style of the format make your writing seem better. But it's a sham and you should learn to depend on the language itself.
You use too many exclamation marks. You're hyphen usage doesn't make sense.
I'm sorry.
>>7625822
Could somebody read this one please. I read another's.
>>7625667
I got that time was going in all directions, but I have to agree that it's not good at all. It's bland, man. No feeling, no thought, no substance.
>>7625919
Please.
>>7625986
Uh, it basically reminds me of Palahnuik but with less polish. Keep working, develop your own voice.
>>7625995
>Uh
why
are you retarded?
>>7626032
I knew it.
>literally begs for critique
>can't handle critique
People like you don't belong here.
>>7626037
Haha.
I was the one begging! Not whoever that person was.
Thanks for the critique. Whoever gave it. I've never actually read Palahniuk, so it's interesting that you think it reads like him.
>>7626037
why the fuck would you write 'Uh' unless you were a fucking retard?
>>7626049
Not either of those anons, but here.
>>7626073
*bows*
I stand corrected, my sir.
>>7626076
We're all friends here anon, no need to give me the *action**high fives*
>>7626097*high fives*
yes!
I reworked it, if anyone would like to read it. It's just a part of something that's become pretty large.
Lou was two and a half pounds when he slipped out of his mother's vagina. She knew she was pregnant. It wasn't one of those poof a baby stories sometimes shared by the stupid or forgotten by bigger women, though Mom was a little on the fat side. It was just that Lou was so early. Almost two months early. Thirty weeks. When it happened, she thought she was heading to the throne to make a movement, but when she sat down it felt way bigger. It felt like a world and it was coming from the wrong hole. She stayed in the bathroom. Pregnant people like to be alone and lots of them die that way. But she moved to the tub and ran the water. She whispered for her husband and he came. Maybe when your wife is pregnant you are always listening. He knew. He said, “No no no no no no no” and picked her up. Walked her to the truck. Sped to the hospital. Dad said that he cupped her vagina the entire ride there as if he were trying to clot an open wound. He said he could feel Lou's head thump against his fingers over every bump and pothole and misallocation of curb. “No no no no no.” Mom cried the whole way there. He’s going to die he’s going to die he’s going to die and Dad kept saying, “No no no no no.” They arrived at emergency and some Jamaican attendants pushed her into a chair and wheeled her down the hall to a room. The doctor was already there. He snapped the wrist of his latex glove. Dad lifted mom onto the bed and unbuttoned her pants and tugged them. They stuck to her calves and he couldn’t get them off. The doctor pushed Dad away and spread Mom’s legs with her jeans hanging from her ankles and Lou slipped out. Just like that. Lou. That was the sound her vagina had made. Lou. He fit comfortably in the palm of the doctor's hand. He sat in it like a beach chair, quiet, his lungs not quite working. They took him away and plugged him into all sorts of machines. Tubes were everywhere, stuff going in and out. Wires monitored things and computers beeped at every beat and then for ten weeks he just grew and grew and grew and grew. Eventually his fat hid the veins that once seemed glued to his skin. His colour became normal.
>>7626171
i'm srsly doubting the medical authenticity of this.
Here's another from the same story. Different characters.
Margot ate her sandwich with relish from little packets she carried in her purse. Is relish really just crushed up pickles, she wondered, reaching for another package. Digging around in her purse, the cuff of her white sleeve rode up and scrunched to halfway up her forearm. Dots like mosquito bites spotted along the good veins. They were from the transfusions that she’d been excommunicated for. She wasn’t an addict or anything. After readjusting the sleeve, she found a note that was written on the torn corner of another note. CANCEL DAILYBURN SUBSCRIPTION, and then in little letters, it’s not helping. She’d developed a habit of watching subscription based workout videos after her weekly transfusions. Exhausted, she’d sit on the leather couch, the neat tight pull of her blonde ponytail now loosened into the frayed end of a rope. Her son would bring her a cup of coffee and they’d watch together, sharing a bowl of popped quinoa chips from the health foods store. The bald lizard workout man led almost overweight women through stretches, resistance training, and aerobics to the treble of uplifting discotheque. There was a new episode every day. It was always the same beaky man. He was inspiring. Maybe that’s why Margot liked watching him. Her son just liked being there. When she got bored she’d get up and do laundry or empty the dishwasher or clean behind the microwave with natural cleaner spray, but usually she’d just keep the workout going in the background. Her son would keep watching. He’d be tired too. Respect your bodies! We’re feeling it! How are your legs? We might be able to get one or two more reps in. Time to move a little faster. Let’s do a little jog. Maybe a double under. The ladies he commanded looked so nice and normal.
Been reading too much Tao Lin, writing an insomnia scene.
**
He rolls over and unlocks his phone, the light of which makes his eyes shrink their aperture. The last thing he'd been reading was a Men's Health blog post linking insomnia with the blue light emitted from smartphones. Insomnia, the article went on, was strong correlated with poor job performance, which was linked to a lack of advancement within one's field, which lowered one's likelihood of achieving financial stability, linked to Persistently Lowered Mood, linked to depressed performance immune system and from there, ultimately, an early death that would, likely, take place alone.
The image accompanying the blog post looked like a stock photo. It was of a photo woman in bed on her side facing the camera, crying. In the background a clock on a nightstand showed 1:49am on a digital face.
