Critique thread?
Go easy on me.
It was cold and quiet in downtown Dublin and all around the church, the air rang midnight.
From the squeaking halt of a polished black Porsche stepped Shanice. She was tall, thin and pale. Her glossy black hair seemed like an extension to her car and her lacy, crimson dress shone like blood against it. She took out her phone.
‘Jonny’ she said. ‘Do you have the shit?’
‘You bet…’ Jonny replied.
Shanice was respectable. Nothing could ever get in her way. She was what her mother called ‘a REAL woman’. She’d never been one for the mob business, but after marrying to a drug lord on her sixteenth birthday, and then murdering him after he’d raped her, she soon took over the family business. Now, vulnerable and timid Shanice went by the name of Mrs Carson, the ultimate force in drug trading.
‘It’s all prepared Mrs Carson’ called a young man nearby, who soon emerged from a dark alleyway with a large bag of cash.
‘Thank you’ she said, slipping five fifty pound notes into his pocket. ‘Here’s a tip.’
The young man fell back and smiled. ‘I’m Danny, by the way!’
‘Look after yourself, Danny boy’ said the confident Mrs Carson, as she drove into the night.
Danny watched her leave. ‘What a woman’ whispered.
>>8285782
>>8285782
Your dialogue is far too stiff. The description of Shanice's personality is, to be frank, rather too heavy on somewhat cliche'd mobster nonsense backstory. You should show character through action, not a biography. There's also very little tension, characters just zoom about this barebones set, and the pacing of just one paragraph is pretty all over the place.
Don't ask people to go easy on you with critique. You shouldn't give up, but you need to read and examine what other writers are doing more.
>>8286054
I've been intentionally trying to write poorly for an experimental story I'm workin on. This is very good criticism. Thank you.
>>8286068
Well you succeeded, but if it's satire then I think the humour element needs to be drawn out slightly, perhaps made a slight bit more heavy handed on the bullshit of your scene.
Why on earth are you trying to write badly anyway? It sounds like an easy way to cement bad habits.
Here's something from a short story I'm working on if someone wants more, I've another three or so pages to show but they're still a bit rough and I'm trying to decide if I want a decisive difference between the two narrators.
Not OP.
Putting such large and irrelevant excerpts disrupts the pacing and flow of the story (the parts in italics). You can correct this by shortening those parts.
>>8285782
>Dublin
Joyce fanfic
>>8286074
Planning on writing a story about a novelist's assistant who plots to murder the novelist. The bad writing is what the novelist churns out. I took a lot of inspiration from my hatred for Martina Cole.
>>8286074
Well you can actually write which I think is rare for /lit/ critique threads. Did you do the writing in the excerpts, too? Really, it's quite good. There are a couple of times where I feel like you sacrifice clarity for the sake of poetry, and I don't think that's a necessary sacrifice to make.
>begin their long push to the doors, cutting through misfitted suits like a poor tailor.
They aren't technically cutting through the suits. First I was thinking blockade might be better, like a "blockade of misfitted suits," but that sacrifices the analogy. Maybe a "sheet of misfitted suits"? Maybe even a curtain of misfitted suits? Then again, maybe it's best the way it is now.
>But every vague journey into my mind is greeted only with nothing
This is just strange when the normal way to say it would be "isn't greeted at all." Maybe describe it as a blankness instead of "nothing." Technically nothing can't greet something, you know?
Anyway, you write like you're more well read than me, so take these criticisms with a grain of salt.
>>8285782
As >>8286054 said, your dialogue is stilted and, quite frankly, unreal - as this bit
>She’d never been one for the mob business, but after marrying to a drug lord on her sixteenth birthday, and then murdering him after he’d raped her, she soon took over the family business.
is. It reads more like what a satirist would write as a pulp story before subverting it. If you really want to nail the feel of the thing, go on YouTube and look for real drug deals or stuff like that, see the "real thing" before trying to copy it off.
>>8286074
Nothing to say here, quite good and I'd relish the chance to read more. Thanks for posting it anon, keep up the good work.
Here's a thing I did, short and without a specific aim in mind. If anyone can read Italian, I have plenty more to post - essays, for the most part.
http://pastebin.com/BcFBmZLK
And here's a little something, an essay-ish thing I've had to write for a honors school that kicked me out. I think it's at least smirk-worthy, you tell me. If you want. Thanks for the time anyway.
http://pastebin.com/hTe0ukjg
>>8286074
I don't have any literary criticisms for you, but this is definitely something of which I'd read more.
