Critique Thread?! Please daddy?

>>7656749
Dammit man this is a blue board!

>>7656749
Me am OP. Me start.

Driving to town, headlights in my rear view mirror; mine are off. Rattling coming from somewhere in the cabin, more cold air than warm. Whining coming from my engine. I wont listen. Cars are the only danger left in my life. This metal shell would cave in on me, if given the chance. The parking lot is welcoming, although a little dim, maybe a little aggressive, or too neutral. I make a small sigh as I make my way into this battery and bathroom store. The smell of hours being watched, and some sort of irony, is not what I'm smelling. Lots of chatter, no discernible voices, some imitation of truth blaring through the store speakers, it's a numbing noise; invigorating. Packages of batteries hanging on a rack, very colorful, similiar shape, no life. In the bathroom, will return to the batteries later. The sound of toilets fill the room, flushing, seats coming into their own. Soap dispenser looks uneasy, it looks bored. Hand towel dispenser is a joke, a square, a low hanging fruit. Batteries are hanging, maybe a few missing since my last visit, anxiously I take one with out looking, assuring the other batteries that it's not them, it's me. Checking out. The machine is looking at me; self checkout. I'm not alone in this purchase. Walking the doors are indifferent to my exit, they open with the same amount of energy, no matter the context.

>>7656752
If J G Ballard and Stephen Spender had a child, and that child was born with an extra chromosome, this would be it.

OK in places though.

Life eating life. What if there was only a scream at the bottom of things, a deep nausea in the void. Ouroboros lolling its eyes at nothing. We should have slept.

>>7656765
Thank you! I fell out of my car yesterday, trying to find my phone. What does this mean?

Wrote this for my middle school writing class.

The Meme Trilogy is a series of four erotic science/historical fiction novels by Belarusian poet Jimmy Foster Pinecone. Three of the novels deal with complex questions of ethics in sports journalism, one is a memoir of the author, and the fourth and fifth rarely-printed novels are incomprehensible masses of repeating numbers and profanity, which some critics believe represent hell.

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>>7656752
Another :(

He waddled down the path on his way to the pisshouse, never thinking about his little prick and the stall he would enter. Dammit! There's no door on this stall, no way I'm going to risk that humiliation. He walked on further, feeling the tingle in his little dingy, there was pressure building on his no-no hole too, it's a hard solid loaf. There were trees and mud all around, but no brown bowl anywhere, "Have the brown bowls all ran off?", he said to himself. An idea came to him and shocked him to his core, "ADULT DIAPERS!!", but that was too absurd, too wild, too convenient? No no no no no no! An image of a diaper was tormenting him, the idea could never work, "I'm a bowl man", he said, there was hesitation in his words. Could a diaper, not a baby diaper, but an adult diaper, really hold all his dirty produce? Brown bowls have become obsolete, or they're all on protest, the bowls are gone. There was no alternative, no matter how absurd, the diapers were his new brown bowl, how humiliating it will be to acquire these things, degrading.

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>>7657811
I haven't taken a shower in days, this made feel good. I don't know who I am, please call my dog.

>>7658363
shit i posted this image earlier today. it took me like 5 minutes to figure out if i posted the post you just made (i've been drunk)

>>7656749

I don't know if this is very good, but I have this idea of a guy who became very successful after taking a position from a friend after she left the position. So her leaving made his life better. But then he sees her again and realizes that it was a mistake? I dunno.
http://pastebin.com/YxKmdv5X

I wrote a haiku on my spiritual development

In my pride and sin
I wrote myself platitudes
And learned nothing

At those moments of witnessing the burning reality as Moses testifying the living god, my head screams I AM and I understand the meaning of gnashing of teeth. River that flows on and on, same that I always knew but somehow forgot and I understand am not learning, but remembering. You, the almighty I say, are the witness to all its glory and holiness not to boast but to cherish and cry in your infinite humbleness, for you are the experience and the experiencer.

>>7658855
It's not bad. Focus more on the man's physical qualms and ailments. Make the reader nauseous with his ailments. Make the background noise to the book to be a persistent buzzing.

http://pastebin.com/CTMPueUZ

I hope this isn't too cringeworthy

>>7658931
Trancendental, mystical, and confusing as memento watched while stoned. Writing with a religious tone is your strong suit. Making sense is not.

English is not my first language and I am curious if my English is good enough. Is this part good enough to be criticized?


Jess pulled up the hood of her camouflage cloak to shelter from the rain and put her eye to the scoop sight of her sniper rifle. She swept back and forth but found nothing moving but a flock of birds taking flight to the grey sky. To hunt is to have patient, she remembered her master lecturing her. She let out a sigh. There is no patience left when you’ve been stuck in this bloody rain for three days.

>>7659284
The first sentences of the first and third paragraphs are cringeworthy, and the repetition of "incomprehensible" in the first paragraph feels lazy, but otherwise, I actually found it interesting. The atmosphere is nice and the revelation of the abnormality feels right. If I were you, I would just try to simplify the sentences toward the beginning.

>>7660256
Not sure what a "scoop sight" is, but it doesn't seem correct. "patient" should be "patience". Other than that, your English is fine, but the piece is somewhat awkward. I would have guessed that you were writing in your second or third language even if you hadn't said you were.

>>7660324
Thank you! I take it as it is too difficult to write in English. Too bad, I can't find any good pages for critique in my own language.

I wrote somethin in my language, here translation caus i love you

He taked off blouse, t-shirt, jeans, and socks, he felt unpleasurable chill on his naked body. BY moment he must stayed in this feeling before he got under the quilt. Wrapped up in quilt and blanket, he fought with chill, with help of thrill and swearword until he felt warm finally. He had not wearing pyjamas anymore, but he had no idea why. He was to tired to listen music with headphones while lay on back; but was not enough tired to sleep. But maybe it was not only lack of tiredness? Maybe its lack of tiredness conterminous with suffering, caused by inactivity? He breathed heavily, sweared silently, and his heart beat fast. He felt really bad. Nights like this, were coming once a few days, ,mostly when he drink coffee. Coffeine was not very good for him, but at times he needed it,for temoprary overcome the inactivity. First hour does not foreshow the nightmare. No matter what Peter was doing, he felt this childish aurora in heart, like if he draw back many years, to times when the same things had brighter glare. Besides our protagonist was obsessed with idea of back to past - emotionally, but for story about this will come time, lets hope. Anyhow, Peter does not seen his eyes in moments like those, but he thought they look sharp, his stream of thoughts was certainly clear, and not so directionless as ever. By the time of few hours, when he was ready to sleep, his coffeine oversensitivity was begin to show. Physical side effects were not only adversities, in way to become respectable adult, always on coffeine (dearest friend of society) that helped him get through sweet duties of daily life. But it was wrong to lay all responsibility of bad state of our protagonist, to a unconscious substance. It was only igniter for bomb ticking in his head. Peter - highly intelectual in daily life,, interested in unseen matter - had suffer from not very poetical thoughts then. He worried about future, about lack of money, about lack of food. He had some savings, maybe it was possible to live alone at bread and water, some time. Food was not worst fear. Laudable first position on the podium of demons was reserved for cochroaches. In eyes of imagination, he seen himself after several dozen years, plunged in depression and solitude, laying in bed all days. Not disturbed by anyone, he last there hundreth or maybe even more years, under the quilt, with hand on the head; while suddenly he felt sting behind the ear. He moved there hand, then saw a cockroach. Quite repulsive, but not very repulsive; not a little, but not big either, in one word: mediocre cockroach has become perfect comrade for mediocre middle-aged man, forgotten by everyone. Whome he become! Peter living all these years in dirt, without aware was surrounded by those uninvited guests. They had pretty cozy dwelling in dirty slats, dirty angles behind the bed with lemon paint dropping from walls, dirty quilt full of saprophytes.

>>7660499
Może jednak to nie tylko brak zmęczenia? Może to brak zmęczenia ocierający sie o cierpienie wywołane bezczynnością? Oddychał ciężko, klął pod nosem, a jego serce biło mocno. Czuł sie naprawde źle. Noce takie jak ta zdarzały sie raz na kilka dni, najczęściej w dni kiedy pił kawe. Kofeina nie działała na niego dobrze, jednak czasami potrzebował ją aby na chwile przełamać bezczynność. Pierwsza godzina nigdy nie zwiastowała koszmaru. Cokolwiek Piotr robił czuł tą dziecinną jutrzenke w sercu, jakby cofnął sie w rozwoju o wiele lat, do czasów gdy te same rzeczy miały jaśniejszy blask. Zresztą nasz bohater czuł obsesje na punkcie "powrotu do przeszłości" - pod względem emocjonalnym, jednak na opowieść o tym przyjdzie, miejmy nadzieje, pora. Tak czy siak, Piotr nie widział w tych chwilach swoich oczu, ale wyobrażał że przybierają one bystry wyraz, jego strumień myśli był także czysty i skierowany w jakimkolwiek kierunku. Ale do czasu. Zwykle wystarczało kilka godzin, gdy już był gotowy do snu, nadwrazliwość na kofeine dawała o sobie znać. Fizyczne skutki uboczne nie były jednak jedynymi przeciwnościami na drodze do bycia szanownym obywatelem, faszerującym sie kofeiną, przyjaciółką społeczeństwa która pomagała mu wziąć na barki miłe obowiązki codziennego dnia. Błędem byłoby także zrzucenie odpowiedzialności za zły stan naszego bohatera, na bezrozumną przecież substancje. Była ona tylko zapalnikiem dla tykającej w jego głowie bomby. Na codzień wysoce intelektualnego, zwracającego uwage na rzeczy niewidoczne Piotra nawiedzały wtedy myśli nie do końca poetyckie. Bał sie o swoją przyszłość, o brak pieniędzy, o brak jedzenia. Miał co prawda troche oszczędności, co być może wystarczałoby na samotne przeżycie na chlebie i wodzie. Jedzenie więc nie było dla niego największym zmartwieniem. Chwalebne pierwsze miejsce na podium w rozgrywce nękających go demonów zajmowały karaluchy. Wytężając oczy wyobraźni widział siebie za kilkadziesiąt lat, pogrążonego w depresji i samotności, leżącego w łóżku całymi dniami. Nie niepokojony przez nikogo, trwał tak sto a może i więcej lat; opatulony, z głową na dłoni, gdy nagle poczuł ukłucie za uchem. Strzepnął dłonią, po czym ujrzał karalucha, dość ochydnego, ale nie jakoś bardzo ochydnego, niemałego, ale też nie dużego, słowem: przeciętny karaluch został idealnym towarzyszem dla przeciętnego człowieka w średnim wieku o którym każdy zapomniał. Tak więc do tego już doszło! Zyjącego przez wiele lat w brudzie Piotra otaczały bez jego wiedzy ci nieproszeni lokatorowie, którzy musieli zastać wielce przytulne mieszkanko w brudnych listwach, brudnych kątach za łożkiem, w pełnych roztoczach brudnych pieleszach, w kątach zakurzonych i brudnych ścian z opadającą z nich farbą koloru cytrynowego.

>>7658931
pure drivel

This is probably shitty, just wrote it.

Sleep all around me, rain reminding me of nature on the roof. These people here, I wonder how many are dreaming? I wonder if they know I'm dreaming? I'm awake but I am dreaming, this place, these cots, dreams to me. The rain won't stop. This cot's going to collapse, I hope it does, that would be a change. There's a towel hanging on a rack, the rack is mounted slightly out of reach, someone made the effort anyway. I have a mind to confront that towel, it is staring with intent. It's not the breeze that's making it sway, it's doing it to chastise me, does anyone else see it? What a dumb towel, frayed in all the wrong places, a towel like that should be thrown away, covered in shit and thrown away. I'm glad night is almost over and the towel will be removed, laugh while you can you silly towel, your advantage will soon be lost.

I got maybe an hour's sleep, enough to make you mad, not enough to feel you've lost something. The towel is gone, I wandered around for awhile, looking under cots and through peoples garbage, unbelievable what people carry around, there were lots of towels, not the one I'm looking for, I feel we'll meet again. The sun is very bright today, it's such a tease, it's holding back it's warmth, my jacket is thin, ripped a hole in it yesterday, maybe someone around here can fix it?

>>7660957
>maybe someone around here can fix it?
i'd lose the "?" at the end.

>it's doing it to chastise me
chastise sounds out of place here to me

Rest is pretty good as far as the prose goes. I generally don't liked hallucinatory stuff but you did a decent job. Also, i don't know why you use the commas in a strange way. Did you translate this from German?

>>7660995
Thanks for taking the time to look at this mess. Yeah, my comma placement is pretty fucked up here didn't really notice till you pointed it out. I need more coffee.

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Ay family, don't have time to critique right now but if anyone reads any of this and gives me an opinion of where I'm at or should be going, just direct me to yours and I'll read and critique in a couple hours.

http://pastebin.com/4cDbHaUA

I know this is pretty shit but I wrote it after visiting Carcassone, think it may have some potential though something doesnt seem quite right about it.

The Castle walls were bathed in the early morning sunrise.
Looming over the city below they briefly shielded it from the flourishing grasp of the familiar star before its rays spilt over the parapets and fell down the cobbled roads that ran up and along to the drawbridge.
Carcassone castle - massed eminence. A mound of bricks and mortar cemented with blood and pride. It reckoned back to days long before most of the oldest trees within its walls were even planted; a precipice of the past; a symbol of the importance of the city it held within its walls and the leagues around the hill upon which it sat.
However the grandeur and spectacle would only present itself to those alien to the French city.
For a local to look upon the walls there was familiarity,perhaps awe, but a lack of pride. For them there was the same structure constructed with inumerous bricks and gaunty spiral towers; the same castle steeped in tales of love and lore, murder and mortar, however it was also a skeleton of what it once was: stripped of its dignity and arrogance it now withered in the hands of curators and tourists that walked its grounds. No, the grandeur and spectacle would only present itself to those unfamiliar with its beauty, and even then only in the view of something so remarkable that has gone before unseen. There is no thought for the sacrifices of those that had gone before toiling in the cities streets or patrolling the walls. There was no respect for those that farmed the seas of greenland that swathed the surrounding coutryside, or the armies that camped outside the city as they built machines to tear down its opal walls - only the odd sign in a variety of languages that told the brief tale of what had once ocurred - and was never again to be.
However, it was not the tourists that locals loathed.

>>7661811
Rather it was their dependance upon these strangers that drew up resentment from those that lived in the shadow of the city walls.
Once a stronghold and safe-heaven for the persecuted Ottican Cathars it also proved their graveyard after the city was captured by the crusading armies of the Papal Legate.
Subsequently the city grew in size as the bones of its victims mounted high walls in the mud that caked the walls. As more warring Princes and Holy Emperors took to battle on the hallowed ground the Castle grew. Its mighty walls began to reach out like roots as they sloped down the hill they stood upon.
The killing finally ended with the cities encaspulation by the Kingdom of France in the 17th Century. The townsman threw down their weapons to pick up coins and the city became an unduly colossal market while its citizens continued to rely on the produce of the serfs that surrounded its walls. It was with this transition that the city lost its immensity, when the castle served its purpose it was ignobled by the dead that fell in its ground. It cast up heroes where men once stood and fell, it revelled in the evil it protected and the evil it kept out.
Now there is no need for the walls. Yet it was these fortifications that made Carcassone the terible beauty that it is.
What good is a stronghold with no strength? The city is now a town of shops and shop-keepers; selling postcards of the facade that imprisons them; fabrics imported from the cheapest offshore retailer; fridge magnets that tourists buy - and promptly forget - and plastic swords and shields with which children play in areas that countless lives where lost defending. The place became a product of the meaningless symbols it sold, a factory that churned up the dreams of a romanticised past to satisfy the dreary lives of mid-term holiday goers that plauge its streets.
The city is prosperous now, so they say, but it rots in places one cannot see during a days visit. Where once there was a soul lying tormented in the cities walls there is now only ghosts of soldiers and carpenters, crying mothers and burning heretics, and those that are paid to dress in the like and walk the streets to please the never-ending waves of tourists that devour these sordid memories who,in their wake, leave only litter and photographs.

>>7658884
nice

I wrote more to a piece, and it's slowly devolving in to a short story. I'm really getting in the groove, and the character is speaking to me more. I'll have to go back and change the beginning to better fit how he developed.

http://pastebin.com/Nz2d402h

>>7660957
Wrote some more.

Some lady said she could do it, but she was scared of needles. I asked her how she learned in the first place, she waddled off. I walked a few miles to some little town, it felt irritated. The whole town was irritated. I was one misstep or word away from being beat in the head with a brick. I'll stay one more day at that damn shelter, probably have a run in with that towel again. The town let me out, better not go back again, next time I'll take a detour. At the shelter there was much stirring, shitty food being served. The pigs were at the trough, no food for me. I sat down on my cot lightly, just last night I wanted it to collapse, my heart wasn't in it. The rack was empty, he'll come around. All the people were fumbling into bed, talking or something. I was breathing and waiting for the chatter to end, their talking was like their belongings; worthless. Things were settled and sleep was winning, not for me though. If I turn around right now that towel will be there, no doubt.

Sometimes, the world turns with disregard to the will of man. And other times, in spite of it.
The morning peeks once again through the crack of my window. Never before have I seen a more familiar sight, as the scene becomes more familiar with each passing day. But today the light seems disinterested. Usually it strikes my face as if to define a foreign object, but today it flows through me, as though I'm some menial opaque obstacle with the intention of impeding it from a more interesting prey.
I'm surfaced from a darker world, void like in its peace and security.
Today is the day I die.
Death will consume me today. And the world will continue to flourish on its path to hell. I'm utterly insignificant in neither the pursuit nor the fight against that fact. For I'm a singular entity in a world moved by plurality.
It isn't like I want to help the world. I can leave that to someone who will live longer than fifteen hours. Good luck you ever so long lived and remarkable stranger. Maybe the light from this morning was looking for you.
I fight the stasis that gnaws at my joints as I combat the futility of my actions. What is the point of living a life doomed to death? These questions are pretty common, I'm not onto some philosophical breakthrough here. Although I think the meaning behind the question finally strikes you in your last hours. Why am I living? Is it for the sake of dying? Pretty much. I reckon we live out our lives in search of pleasure and stability, all in spite of the looming eventuality that is our mortality. Why are we alive in the first place?
Fuck it. It's too early in the morning for an existential crisis. I'd rather not end my life pretending like I care.
"What would you do if you had one day left to live?" Why won't people stop answering that question? Literally everyone either has or will answer that morbid question. And today, the opportunity to answer is mine. I wonder what my answer will be?
I contemplate leaving my apartment in the clothes I slept in. But then my thoughts turned to the Egyptians. What if they were right about bringing your imminent possessions with you to the afterlife? I would rather not meet Amun in my five-year-old boxers so I make the prudent decision of changing. Was it Descartes who argued that you ought to live life believing in a god, because if you're wrong, you'll end up experiencing an infinitely negative outcome, while if you're right, you'll end up with an infinitely positive outcome? I wonder if the negatives of going to church every Sunday would compete with the benefits of heaven. Should I go to church now? What an idea. I wonder if the pastor is home.

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>>7662029
Wrote more. My narcissism is off the charts. Here we go!


As I had suspected the towel was back. Ugly thing. The weather was still, but the towel was swaying. That little prick! What a class act that little towel is, a great performer! Why the hell is that rack even there? Who the hell puts a rack in a place like this? Frayed as ever the towel was taunting me. My cot's about to collapse. What a waste of a rack. My cot collapsed. The noise woke most of the sleeping. It was a funny scene. The dumb asses were all shook up, one even ran out of the room. I'm sure the towel got a big laugh out of this shit show. A man came in the room with a new support for my mat. I helped him place it. He didn't say a word. I don't think he was breathing. Me and the towel didn't bother each other the rest of the night. The cot collapse threw everything off. I haven't eaten in two days, and I'm full of it. I guess I'll eat some of that refried bean diarrhea mess they've been serving. My stomach regrets ever being hungry I would wager. What a disgusting meal. Wandered around a couple of hours, feeling like the taste of my food. A guy at the gas station asked me where I was from; I told him to give me a job. He said I wouldn't fit well with the company. I asked him if he had a burial plot in reserve. I don't know what I meant by that, he didn't either. I noticed a couple open potholes in the road, for a moment I had a urge to go down one. I didn't. Back at the shelter. The same stuff as yesterday, moaning and something about a storm tomorrow tonight. Sitting on my cot, a moment of terror. I haven't went to the bathroom in weeks, or maybe I've forgotten about all my visits. Who cares? My little towel pal, elusive as always, had not showed up. Stupid towel. All the shitkickers were losing their minds, sleep was taking over. I thought I would be gone from this place by now. Why am I still here?

>>7662009
I finished my short story. I really like it and it's a first draft so I'm going to go through and give extensive edits. But I liked the ideas and the tone seemed pretty alright. I don't know if I like the really rough and sort of weird stream of consciousness in parts so I my expunge those parts and add more standard sorts of descriptions and dialogue. Please, give me any critique you can!

http://pastebin.com/7p8TTBxT

For playwriting class today I had to write a 1-2 minute monologue starting with the words "I want" and then I had to write what the character wants and six obstacles in the character's way.

Came up with this a few hours before the class.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-OSQtjmxJVCNVWBcGglkTonJWAc_Ie7xWsYFU5rE5oo/edit?usp=docslist_api

>>7662631
I would say keep the weird bits, but maybe I'm weird. I like the gnawing arm and the circumstances of the story.

I've met him in all his glory when he sustained on the passions and dreams of his much simpler world unknown to mine. Even though he was a youth of twenty just as I, to me he was a figure of light emerging from the depths of the vibrant underworlds I couldn't gaze at without shivering, me a mere mortal and he, in my eyes a god annoyingly unaware of his godhood. And shivered I did whenever he turned to me in his casual mannerism and whimsical boyish playfulness I was attracted to beyond reason. He could command the armies of me, yet he wasn't a general to be followed, just a simple humble village boy who I loved so from that moment on.

SQUISH

His name has struck terror in the hearts of millions for over 20 years: Ted Gain—the awful, depraved man who terrorized residents in the upper peninsula of Michigan in a series of gruesome acts that would come to be collectively known as the Penis Chainsaw Massacre. Using his chainsaw, Gain managed to saw off the penises of an estimated 300-800 men. Gain’s destruction is of such unprecedented ferocity and terror that it is as difficult to acquire universally agreed upon statistics as it is for the Holocaust.

Most of the victims who had the grave misfortune of encountering Gain died from the resulting trauma of having their penis sawed off before they could report anything, leaving authorities scratching their heads in puzzlement as to why Gain wanted so many penises. Thus the folklore and facts of this case have been irreversibly welded together in the imagination of the American people.

Gain is typically described as wandering the woods at night wearing a crudely stitched together suit of the severed penises of his victims. At a distance, he has been described as resembling a Lovecraftian monster-man covered in what appear to be short tentacles rather than testicles and penises. Some of the more fantastic eye-witness reports claim that the penises fused with his body to the point of organic assimilation. This conjecture, if true, would support other reports claiming that when Gain attacked his victims the penises coating his body went from a flaccid to erect state, thereby giving Gain a defensive “porcupine” appearance. There are even reports claiming that Gain’s penises secreted a noxious, semen-based fluid which had toxic qualities. Skeptics are quick to observe that none of this fluid has been retrieved. However, some Gain experts counter-argue that this may be due to the fluid having a volatile nature and simply evaporating before collection is possible.

Perhaps the most chilling report regarding the baffling case of Ted Gain concerns the account of a hunter named John Blackwood who claims to have stumbled onto Gain’s isolated wooden shack deep within the woods.

“It was just full of dicks. I mean, my God, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

>>7663477

Blackwood, author of ‘Erectile and Vile: My Escape from Ted Gain’, has shared his captivating escape to enthralled audiences for over a decade.

“I could smell the shack for miles long before I seen it. Inside there was just hundreds of severed dicks hanging on the ceiling like flesh stalactites. I looked closer and saw that they were hanging from coat hangers—reminded me of a butcher’s freezer. So I’m standing there shocked wondering what in the blue hell anyone would want with all these dicks when I hear this noise…this squishing sound coming towards me.

“I turn around and there he is—Ted Gain. COMPLETELY covered in dicks. They were on every available surface of his naked body except his beady eyes. Most of them simply hung off him, but on his fingers, toes, and his own penis he had slipped dicks over them like sheaths. There were a couple with the based shoved into his ass so that the heads pointed outward like a bunch of dick tail-feathers. A few were even on the soles of his feet. That’s why he made that squishing sound as he walked. They were all kinds of sizes and mostly white, but there were some black and uncircumcised ones in there for good measure. Proportional to the population I suppose.

“So, I gasp at the sight of him and take off running. I looked back and saw him give his chainsaw a yank and lift it over his head. That awful roar of the chainsaw combined with his uncanny howl is a sound I will never forget. All the dicks on—or I guess I should say ‘of’—his body went right hard. Now I’ve seen grizzlies up close, but they look like Pooh compared to Ted Gain.

>>7663487


“He chased me for a bit and I was outrunning him, but then he tears off one of the dicks and throws it ahead of me. The dick coiled around my ankle and I fell. Then the dick let go and started slithering back to him to be reabsorbed—kind of like a piece of liquid metal being reabsorbed by that metallic-putty-cyborg in Terminator 2.

“Now he’s standing over me about to bring the chainsaw down on my member, so I shined my flashlight in his eyes to stun him. Oh it was awful! All them dicks spraying that poison semen everywhere…just then I noticed a large pair of testicles on his knee. I kicked them as hard as I could with my steel toe boot. He doubled over in pain and I was able to get up and make it to my truck.

“The next morning I got my strongest shotgun and a group of law enforcement and led them to where I had seen the shack. The smell was even worse than before because he had burned the shack and all those dicks to the ground. There was nothing left. It was like a bad dream.

“No one believes them when I tell them. Or a small part of them does. That’s when they make a face and nod or just mutter something and leave. I guess it’s just too much for some people. Hell, it’s too much for me and I actually went through it.”

Gain has been known to kill women as well,
but there are far less reports of this nature, as Blackwood confirms:

“Yeah, haven’t heard much about that. I think he just saws their tits off and leaves them there. Doesn’t have any use for ‘em.”

>>7663477
In the future post a link to google docs or pastebin

>>7659284
The first sentence to the second to last paragraph was pretty cringy as was the chat room dialog. Max is starting to sound like 4chan or Chuck Palahnuik incarnate. Avoid the crass descriptions, emotes, and forced wordy dialog. Keep it simple.
But like the other anon said, it's got some good atmosphere and the description of the alley was intriguing. Keep it going

>>7663495
I chuckled. You have good pacing and the writing grips instantly.

We need some brave soul to come critique everything. I will if you do.

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Dad

http://pastebin.com/wgDAFvyn

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>>7665196

Something I went back and edited:

For some, there comes a point in life where alarms are no longer set, and the utility of a rigid sleep schedule is only understood as an abstraction. This was the case for Teddy, who slept in a hammock, and any attempt to define his sleeping habits would be like trying to locate an electron, that is to say, you could never really know, or even predict when he would go to sleep and wake up. It could be said, for example, that there was a high probability of him going to bed between 2 and 4am, but sometimes it would be 12am and other nights he would not sleep at all, but you could never know for sure. Even more capricious were the lengths of his slumber, whether they occurred during the day or night. His waking life, on the other hand, was much more predictable. Having been out of work and education for some time now, and consequently developing severe agoraphobia, Teddy’s waking hours were mostly spent in a state of solitary recumbence.

>>7656749
This is just a standalone paragraph, not the start of a story or anything. Can I please get some comments/critiques? I haven't gotten any critiques so far.


“I’m ah, not some kind of a—ah—ah, a stealer! Ah, ah—ah—ah—ah—a, a thief!” So the guy at the front is shouting at the cashier. I take a look around and don’t even register the details and I know he’s homeless, I don’t know why I looked but like, as I was just starting to move to look, before I even saw him, I just knew he was. So I try to turn around before I get a glimpse, a little quicker and more haphazardly than I would have if I didn’t want to actively avoid acknowledging him like you learn to do with them on the East side, making me hit my head on the rack next to the conveyor for groceries, (you know, with all the trashy magazines that you can’t help but glance at because they say, in big bold sexual symbols, both/either human and/or orthographical, “SEX”,) loud enough that some people look over and then everybody looks over and the incident sort of dissolves, he stops shouting and just looks at me and, and I’m not kidding, then he takes this half-eaten chocolate bar out of his pocket and throws it on the floor and yells “THANKS FOR NOTHIN” (yeah, like that, without the G, but also as if the G were never there, thus “NOTHIN” r/t “NOTHIN’”) loud enough that the whole store hears. Huh? Ah, yeah, the chocolate broke into a bunch of pieces on the floor, it was awesome.

>>7662403
Your syntax just bugs me. The little sassy choppiness to it. Gross.

>>7662679
I'll post the monologue part in the thread because I bet people don't feel like following a link.

KOLSTICE: I want something to eat, you know? Fuuuuck I'm hungry, are y'all? You know hunger is what gets shit done. Fuck what that TA was saying, you know, that "will to power" shit. It's just "will to eat," man. You want to understand why shit happens you don't need Nietzsche or Marx. You just need one guy: Malthus, man. Why'd we leave the caves? Too many people. Why'd we make farms? Need food. That's it, man. What am I eating, what am I fucking -- WHO, who am I fucking -- apologies, ladies. And you know, on that subject: How come a 45 year-old dude is like distinguished and shit and a 40-something woman is, at best, in the transition period between MILF and GILF? Cause sex is about making kids so after like 36 women become non-entities sexually. Men? We're solid, senpai. My grandpa got this woman pregnant when he was 68. Crazy shit, man. And I know "that's sexist" and all but can we just stop and appreciate how industrialization has made sexism even a thing? Cause back when we were agrarian a person’s worth was their strength so women were just naturally lower, you know? Now we're far enough along that the vestigial urge to subjugate women isn't even all that useful, you know? But yeah, man, Malthus. Read that shit -- you have? Great stuff, Vicky. Hey, hey! Pass that shit, elephant lungs. You guys know Jack in the Box has tacos for 49 and a half cents?

Should I kill myself?

>Scandinavia breathes. Golden cemetery shoots and other foreign things which have learned to bore wide and shallow for fear of corpses cling fast at home in the tundra, where black saltation is thrown thin across the ground like river silt in the wind. Two knuckles deep the earth is never unfrozen. The fells north of Lapland are pitched against the horizon, high and sheer like weatherdecks tossing in the sea but petrified by the long winter, violent and still, and somewhere out in the feral heart of it lay a wolf alone and quivering. Her eyes are shut tight. Her fur shivers in the squall, her chest is moving too fast and too shallow. The snow is deepening. Some breath comes thin from her trembling maw and turns to wet shapes in the cold. Her body is devoured by the slow fog.
>A man called Northrop whose knees can no longer bear his back collapses in the rocks.

A fucking paragraph is not enough to critique

The castle man looks down from his tower, impregnable, with eyes for thirty men. Bathed in his unreciprocated sight below are the students, the scholars, the layabouts and the critics. Their drool moistens the leaves of the books atop their faces, they fell asleep reading again.
The castle man's legs are ninety degrees in a straight shot from the window to the table where his fingers pinch a wine glass in silent tension, his arm cradles the wine from the bottle.
"I do not wish to drink in front of you. I have one more question to ask before you go."
I struggle to stay mindful; I haven't eaten in two days and I feel it in my brain more than anywhere else. "A favor?"
"Nothing like that." He looks at the wine for a while where it sits in the glass without a ripple, practically suspended within his perfect grasp. "What do they say about me down there?" He doesn't look at the window.
Before answering I breathe in as much air as I can. It's enough to say: "The dullards say you've lost it. The drunks call you a genius. Your colleagues are only worried."
"Have you told them what I'm doing?" He's too quick for me. The castle man knows my game as well as I know his. "Take a seat before you answer, I wouldn't want you to fall again."
"No, I won't." From a pouch around my waist I retrieve the two grains of rice and put them under my tongue.
"Don't speak until they've dissolved. I want to watch."
With my lips closed the time goes by.
"There, they're gone now. Two today?"
"I went without yesterday. You know nobody knows but us."
"Leave me be for a while, then."
"Yes."
The castle man sits with what could never be called a gaze, not with that focus, straight as an arrow, into the exposure of bricks on the wall, a foot above the mantel, above a fire, roaring. Those eyes could be stones for their stillness, lids unwavering. He glows, the glow is new, but how could the glow be colorless and what did that mean?
Humming a tune I learned in the woods to make the grass grow, I leave the castle man, hoping he is not doomed.

>>7665874
I liked everything but "senpai". Please do not write in memes. Also, maybe a few too many "man"s, but it seems like it would be okay in speech.

>>7666066
Senpai is because of the 4chan filter. When I pasted from the google doc I forgot to change it to fa.m or something. It's supposed to be short for family.

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Pls critique; will some after my bath.

>>7665397
I kind of like it, but there are to many "I -something-". Try rewriting with less reliance on "I -something-" and see what you come up with.

>>7665874
>Men? We're solid, senpai

made me laugh. Keep as is.

But the whole stoner rant thing needs to be really well done and I think you miss the mark. It's not as funny as it could be, though I enjoy the overt pseudo-intellectualism (I hope this character isn't your 'voice', senpai).

>>7665882
I'd like to read more...Enjoyable but I'm not really sure this small sample can speak for your writing. Don't greentext it please.

>>7665931
>He looks at the wine for a while where it sits in the glass without a ripple, practically suspended within his perfect grasp

I really like this line for some reason, but it needs modification. First, remove 'practically' and second replace 'for a while' with some sort of adverb...like 'pensively' and you got a really vivid image there, senpai.

>>7666126
I didn't like this. I appreciate the effect you're trying to produce, but it's far too obvious and hamfisted to be clever.

Frank rushed past the receptionist, the hallway, took a right and kicked open the door three doors to the left, through his briefcase on the ground and opened ever drawer in his desk searching for anything chrome. In his desperation, he almost blamed himself for not taking the new manager's identification policy seriously before checking himself with his theory that all the arbitrary, impossible rules John set were intentionally designed to get the old team fired and that John should have screwed Frank at some point if not now. Even so, Frank was still bothered by the way John chose to screw him; to be fired over not presenting his ID at the weekly meanings... it was absurd! Unbelievable! His courteous friends would assume he was intentionally lying to hide some deeper crime, and his less courteous friends would mock him for failing to do something so trivial- both bad options. And Rose, what would Rose think? --John suddenly remembered he left his ID at the break room table. As he headed there, all his anxieties vanished, as if they never existed.

>>7665882
Are you from Scandinavia? Is a beautiful country. I would love to travel there one day, my friend.

This is my first poem in 7 odd years so laugh away

Emotion:

A door slowly opens
and falls away.
It cannot shut again.

In comes fear, tottering slowly like an invalid without a cane, and he clutches my hand.
Who was I before I was a shepherd of fear? I don't know. Some foolish boy, wanting to be a foolish man.
Who can forget how to fear?

It is old enough to have forgot-
ten us.

Joy crawls along the jamb,
a spider of intent and
gentility.
And I stay my hand from
squashing it,
Just so the image will be

complete.

It is the dimness of
weary light in between
this doorway and darkness
That brings me pleasure
incomplete and incompletable.
This dimness which has
taught me,
once more,
to see without looking.

>>7665882
No, its good.

"Drive faster." I feel neither joy nor excitement anymore. My life has become an endless cycle of routines that suck the light out of my soul. What is the point of routines? We don't improve; we just learn to stay the same old person day in and day out. We all travel on an infinite line that never stops until it slams into a fucking wall. Sweat dripped down my palms as I grasped the car wheel. The roar of the engine awoken a beast inside me. It revived a part of me that I never even knew existed. I felt alive again. The sensation from pressing my foot on the peddle sent a chill down my spine. The midnight road glisten down a path to an infinite world unlike anything you could ever imagine. This was what I always wanted. I sped down the road like a madman, my speed and determination made me an unstoppable force to be reckon with. Neither man nor God could stop me now. In the distance lie a cliff meant to make me submit to the old ways of life. However, my resurrected spirit prohibited me to stop now,"You can't, you shalt not." Smiling,with a half grin, I accelerated the vehicle upon the oncoming cliff. The voice was no longer telling me for I was the one now shouting,"Drive faster!" Thrusted off the cliff and into the air, my body was illuminated into the night sky.Thereby leading to my demise, but releasing me to my ultimate salvation. This the testament to who I am. To my unwillingness to conform.

A slam poem called regret:

Oh pearly ropes descending down upon
My face, this freckled bed awaits disgrace.
Those arcs I saw now close my shameful eyes
Cannot I say I was surprised? Those arc-
ing ropes of pearl, they fly capriciously
my shocked, blinded eye no longer sees

>>7666265
*This is the testament to who I am.
sorry about that, I forgot to fix it.

I'm >>7666126

>>7666187
Do you mean that the interior monologue is hamfisted? And how so, how could it be improved? This part was a bit rushed, a bit more changed on an edit than it probably should have been, so maybe it could have benefited from some sparsification -- although I am not sure that'd be conducive to my goal. The concepts brought up (e.g. home vs street, fortune) aren't meant to be clever -- they're observations, but not meant to be outlandishly witty.

>>7666221
Eh, trying to be a bit too distinctly cinema-esque PoMo, which, given the lack of investment the reader has in this piece, falls flat. None of the images are vivid enough to draw in the reader, either. This style can work, but the reader has to want it to.

>>7666235
>In comes fear, tottering slowly like an invalid without a cane, and he clutches my hand.
>Who was I before I was a shepherd of fear? I don't know. Some foolish boy, wanting to be a foolish man.
>Who can forget how to fear?
I really really enjoy that part. The rest feels a bit too arbitrary, as if you're trying far too hard to make it look like a conventional poem. Do or don't; it'd work as a prose-poem better, in my opinion.

>>7666265
Too angsty. Language is weak, images are kinda cliche. Doesn't do much for me.

http://pastebin.com/RFG6rRaX

I've changed this up a bit, it's still WIP. I'm honestly not sure if I can do anything with it, since the medium and the subject matter really seem to conflict. I'm also a little bothered by my own over-use of purple prose, even if it fits the narrator

>>7666275
re-using the phrase "pearly ropes" really spoils this otherwise magnificent shitpost

>>7666235
the first four lines are kind of cringey, but the rest is solid, if lacking in rhythm or consistency.

>>7659284
horrible

>>7658855

>>7659148
>it's not bad

you must really hate this guy to lie to him like this

>>7658931
no2

>>7660957
ya this is unpublishable

>>7661804
kinda awkward but better than all posts above it

>>7662040
nah

>>7662403
stop

>>7663196
you need to level up your spiritual power. grind for a while and try again

>>7665196
Best in thread so far to this point (I'm reviewing as I go)

>>7665397
this vernacular shit annoys me but if I did like it I guess it would be good. when did the cancerous vernacular enter into this world, though? when have people talked like that? don't burden your stuff with the sound of an annoying man's voice

>>7665882
purple... it's ok but shit just happens with no context

>>7666187
shut the fuck up, idiot. you're making the world worse with your gayass critiques

>>7666126
is good. last sentence archaic, it's not super good but it is good. manages to do stream of consciousness non-obnoxiously

>>7666221
>through his briefcase on the ground

stop listening to nigger music

>>7666265
too many cliches. try to say things like nobody's ever said them before; you do have something to say

>>7666511
Babby didn't like his critique :(

>>7664450
>>7666484
ouch

>>7666503
What does this even mean?

>>7667256
*What did he mean by this?

>>7657414
Kek

>>7658884
5
7
4

Unless you're being a super pretentious faggot and pronouncing the "ed" in "learned", gtfo my board

I am a great-grandson, and yet I am not. My grandfather will see me as the son of his son, and my father as his son, and my son as his father. My great-grandfather cannot see me. I know he existed; my grandfather is a testament to that. But, even though our lineage is direct and I can feel his blood in me, we are not connected; he is not a part of who I am, and I never affected his life.

What does this make me? Can I be said to be part of his family, if he never even knew me? What about my descendants? Will they ever feel connected to me? There is no way of knowing. I cannot belong to them, and they cannot be known to me, yet their identity is intrinsically bound to mine. My name shall be theirs, and as much as my great-grandfather's blood is in me, so shall mine be in theirs. Where, then, does this leave me? Am I to erode like the dates on a tombstone? A silhouette in a memory, nameless but a shape.

I know my own blood, and have control over my legacy. I can be a shape with a label, even if that label is not a name. I shall endeavour, until my dying breath, to create a legacy that my descendants shall be proud of.

My great-grandson shall not know me. But I know him.

>>7667324
This is preposterously bad. Congratulations. Did you intend for it to be this bad? I just read so much text that basically told me that you didn't know your great grandpa.

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In the middle of August, when the summer was nearing its end and the schools would start to shuffle the documents and prepare for the children to burst through the gates, young Breton Anderson would sit by the small, dying creek found at the end of his neighborhood and think about life in more ways than any child his age should. “Why is my creek becoming so small? There have not been any crawdads since last year and I need to catch a new batch; Where have they gone?” Breton would ask his mother while she brushed the pine needles off of his jacket and baggy cargo pants – the ones with zippers at the knees. “Because you are growing big,” She replied with a smile and a kiss on the cheek. He then munched on zucchini bread, read about crawdads on his father’s computer, and was then sent off to bed by his mother at 9 o'clock. This was his summer routine and aside from the current state of the creek, he was a very happy boy. While lying in his bed, he pulled out a couple of hidden pine needles from his hair and examined them delicately, not wanting to break them or maim them, as they so easily art. He poked himself in the finger by accident and it reminded him of what his mother had told him about the creek with the crawdads. Her explanation was simply a poke by a pine needle; there was no truth in it nor was there any justice and he simply could not accept her fickle explantation. Unknowing at the time, Breton would go on to experience many instances in his life where truth was withheld and justice was kept in some far away closet, where lies were told and believed by both people, and where some people even lied to themselves.

>>7667324

The prose is pretentious but lacks any sort of redeemable quality. This is almost what I'd expect to hear out of a slam poem.

>>7667380
I liked this, but I fail to see the uniqueness of Breton that warrants such a line as "...and think about life in more ways than any child his age should". I feel like such thoughts would be common in an observant child. Anyway, I really liked the way you describe white lies using the pine needle, and sort of delve into its usage and utility without getting too preachy.

CHAPTER 1
He wasn't one for crying. Even when he broke his leg playing football in the fifth grade, not a single tear fell from his eyes. It wasn't that he couldn't feel pain; he believed it to be the exact opposite. You see, Jack Sadler thought himself to feel <i>too</i> deeply and believe it or not, there were many days when he <i>tried</i> to cry. But something-- shame, perhaps-- kept him from doing so. He needed a release, needed to set his troubled soul at ease, needed rest and yet peace still would not come to him.

This was how things had been. He had been raised to believe that crying did nothing but show a man's weakness and so for his entire life he had bottled it in. Jack Sadler was strong. Jack Sadler, <i>the</i> football player. Jack Sadler never felt pain. Jack Sadler was a football player, his father said. Jack Sadler never let anything get to him or hurt him. Jack Sadler, a football player and football players don't cry.

>>7667814
dont do <i> for emphasis ever

>>7667015
you didn't critique any of my stuff. I was just mad at your dumb suggestions

>>7667947
What didn't you like about them?

>>7668679
You were a little too charitable.

If I were you, I'd save the bubblings-over of my heart for the ones who really need it in the world.

Hey, I'm >>7665397

>>7666187
Thanks, I didn't pick up on how many "I"s there are but I see now that there are a lot. I was kind of trying to reproduce a girl telling a story about something that happened on her day for the first time, so a lot of that was intentional since I just wrote it how it would be told. If it's annoying/obvious enough to you that you noticed it though, that meant that it didn't have as much conversational flow as I wanted, so I'll have to rework that. Thanks!

>>7666507
Hey, thanks so much for the critique. Actually, the reason I wrote this is because I was once told that girls use a lot of qualifiers ("just"s, "sort of"s, "like"s, etc.), and ever since then I haven't been able to keep my mind off it, so I wanted to mimic that natural way of speaking. (It's not like I'm a 40-y/o guy trying to imitate it either, I'm a girl around this age and a lot of people around me talk like this too.) You said I shouldn't burden my stuff with "the sound of an annoying man's voice" though, so what do you think would help with that? What did you enjoy about this piece that let you get past the language?

>>7668783
Like it if you would
Omit un
Necessary things that
Don't add anything like
Onomatopeia
Non-words

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http://pastebin.com/GLG8sqHP

>>7668793
Don't listen to >>7668793. They're idiotic to believe in some meaningful distinction between 'words' and 'nonwords'. Signifiers signify; if it can be understood, it works. Though obviously don't use them if it feels hackneyed or unnecessary.

>>7668843
Fuck, the first post referred to should be >>7668783

>>7656749
still need to edit the everloving fuck out of this, but the first step of the journey is the most important one, amirtie?

http://pastebin.com/9wvjRxp5

>>7668865
is this a racist revisionist-history piece about islam

>>7668883
No, it's clearly about ethics in game journalism

>>7668698
I can't help it. Knowing that 4chan is mostly composed of depressed, and even suicidal young adults prevents me from being too harsh. I don't mean to imply that a harsh critique carries that much weight though...Hopefully you understand.

Plus, I think trying to point out the good with the bad is more helpful than just saying "its shit" even if it really is.

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"He was the control."

"Explain."

"How do you think the original was created? You can't artificially create or map these signals without some kind of reference, our technology isn't there yet. He made this machine with the hope of overcoming man's nature. If all the world leaders were subject to this, do you honestly think things would be the same?"

"How is that any different than brainwashing?"

"Brainwashing involves re-indoctrination. This machine is an empathy machine, it doesn't re-indoctrinate, it doesn't change the current mindset of the person, it makes them FEEL what the control feels. And the control, up until now, has been the doctor."

"It still isn't right. It doesn't feel right. What is right or wrong, these things are subjective, to influence people like that so heavily-"

"Would you rather have a world where people are influenced by the doctor or their governments? Would you rather have a world where we work together to live fulfilling lives, working towards a utopia, at least trying, or this? World powers funding religious extremist to see who gets what in third world countries? Super powers making international land grabs and increasing tensions with artificial islands? We don't like taking chances. That's evident in the existence of the NSA, and other many secretive agencies across the world. People should not fear their governments, it should be the other way around. With this simple little thing, the inhuman can be made human. Its not just applicable with PTSD afflicted soldiers, children with autism, the mentally ill, do you have any idea what we can achieve with this?"

"Do you not realize the potential for abuse with this? Do you have ANY idea what people like Kimmie J-"

"Stop I can't take you seriously if you say that."

"What? Kimmie J? THE KIMSTER."

"STOP I'm being serious. Look I understand but the only model that might be capable of doing that is under lock and key with the doctor himself. All the new models are incapable of being reverse engineered, or used in a way other than intended. Just think about it, OK? And don't tell anyone about the control. If you want to talk to the doctor about it, be prepared. He isn't...the same anymore."

"Alright alright. Thanks, I gotta go. Have the last slice I'm sick of pie."

Here we go.

""You can't protect him forever, and I refuse to let that resposibility fall on me. Train him or leave him behind, it's of no difference to me." - Eris
Eris turned on her heel and left the tent. Across the camp bordering the thin stream, Lang's small silhoulete atop a rotten log contrasted against the great pink horizon of the early morning. His sagging shoulders told of his grogginess.
Eris sighed, her own eyelids feeling heavy. She'd be able to sleep soundly as long as Luken was awake. She knew it wasn't for the best that he stay up and train Lang. Against her wishes, he'd kept her company all night on lookout. Although she couldn't say she was mad at him. She doubted anyone who hadn't met the end of his blade could say that."

It's literally a fan fictionbut not really

http://postmetakolsti.tumblr.com/post/138831165965/wage-is-just-a-number

Distinguished
Sweet as jumper on Kristaps Porzingis
Grayer than the temples on 48 year-old linguists
Clooney, Cruise or Denzel, Johnny Depp, maybe Michael Keaton
Who's the female Liam Neeson, 63 and striking?
Sally Field as Tom Hanks' mom no one found it surprising

Distinguished
46 and no kids chance of motherhood got extinguished
Fuck the fuck should I fuck you for your eggs rare as gold ingots?
It's all about the children, can them titties feed my kids?
We keep our seeds for life I mean look at Dennis Quaid
No need for child-bearing hips when you're steady past 38

Distinguished
Looking at the time where are the heirs to my queenship
TV says ten years til I'm four cats, knick knacks and trinkets
Surgical residency overlaps with my peak fertility
Watching as the men in my class talk about possibilities
It's a solid 20 years before time fucks with their virility
Child on student loans? But how's that for responsibility
Stay at home for a year? There the fuck goes all my mobility

Distinguished
Tenure track Slavic linguist
Momma had me in college clock ticking on all that dream shit
Overnight everything turned from "me me me" to that "we" shit
Law school, get that money, feed my kid or finish my thesis?
Fucker don't be facetious you know how this shit goes
And they wonder why the executive board got fucked up ratios
I mean momma did both but that shit can't be for everyone
Mandatory family leave could I guess be step number one
But the beauty thing, me I fuck with older girls
Same verse I talked about my mom? Disregard what you just inferred

Fuck the ageist shit, don't play that shit, Melora Hardin can slay the dick
Shit desu not to harass or be problematic but I hardcore celeb crush on Emma Thompson
Man 60 is the new 40 which is the new 30 fuck the age gap casting man what ever happened to
Maggie Gyllenhaal it's all about beauty you gotta love it

>>7668793
Hey, thanks for the reply. I live in a city where I've come across a lot of homeless people, I was trying to imitate a particular guy's staggering stammer. I know it's kind of annoying, and you might not read through all of it, but it's meant to have a sort of unsettling effect, the same that the narrator felt when she heard it (and as I feel when I hear that sort of voice) and sort of became a part of the scene. Did the sounds I used convey that to you, or were they more just annoying? What did they first get across to you? And other than disliking the voices, did you like it? If so, what did you like about it? Thank you.

>>7668843
Hey, thanks for the counter-critique. If you read what I wrote, do you have anything to say about it? Did you like the, uh, onomatopoeia non-words yourself? What did they get across to you? Thanks again.

The party was exhausting, so I stepped outside. The warmth of shitty-vodka was enough for me to forget the chill of the Michigan-air, or at least, to place it out of sight, and out of mind.

Saw couples all around. One, leaning against a truck, another, beneath a tree. There they were, wrapped in each other, asking nonsense and receiving it in return, going through the established by-laws of college sex, one hand washing the other.

So, I left. For some reason, there’s something really appealing to me in the power to leave. Especially when alone. It's putting your destiny and your scenery and your experience in your own hand. The walk home reminds me of the whole ‘two sides to the same coin' mantra that has been endlessly flipping over itself since the Shrooms. You have the debauchery of the college party inside, alone in a crowd, and in an instant, you can be in the chill, rejoining the company of your own thoughts. You're disgusted at yourself, while wishing that you too could form a meaningless connection for one shining moment

>>7669401
there's a famous book on /lit/ that opens with a protagonist leaving a party

>>7669263
>shit desu

I know 4chan's been fucking around with the word filter, they changed something else to senpai in another thread, so I'm wondering, did they change something here too? If so then what did you mean by desu?

>>7669419
what book is that? or r u making a compliment to my writing :^)

>>7656749

Opening paragraphs to the short story I'm working on:

"They must have killed a liger or two to make the carpet. A tiger on its own isn't big enough, they're much smaller than most people think. It'd simply take too many of them. No dignified humane society would let the slaughter of so many tigers go unnoticed, particularly those of the United States. But ligers, they are remote and mythological. Half the populace still believes them to be a hoax. Truly, ligers are the perfect fashion victims.

Furthermore, a liger is gargantuan. If the coffee shop had been a bit smaller, one liger hide could very well have carpeted the whole place. The owner's were not so modest as to have a small coffee shop, however, and the medium size of the place meant that two ligers were probably slaughtered for the carpet.

It is very curious the way the customer's Nikes kick the post mortem flesh of that beast. The paper mache tree in the corner, the clothes hanger sculpted to spell the shop's name, beautiful people acting on a set intentionally ugly. All these things and more clash with the liger's stripes, in a way perfectly premeditated. Real cleverness fled shops like these long ago. Those tiny moments of micro genius which made the "localvore" flock to such businesses are now merely holograms."

"Hey, Car! Watch this."

A large stone rocketed from Trey's grip slamming into several others before crashing on a railroad tie in the distance.

"See that? There was a squirrel on the track and I almost hit 'em, that would have been wild."

Carson acknowledged Trey with a glance toward the impact. He hadn't the motivation to respond after walking three quarters of the way to Batesville in the novel summer heat. What had taken a toll greater on his energy he would never know, between the heat that caked every inch of his skin and muddled his brain or his cynical foresight that crushed every opportunity or adventure before either ever was because what he knew of science, and what he had learned watching Youtube videos all night last Saturday was always quick to remind him that in the end nothing matters. We would, as humans, destroy ourselves and this world, or God will return and his infallible judgment upon us, or who knows...the damn sun could explode tomorrow if it wanted I think. Carson and Trey walked all the way to Batesville that day -- a 6 mile walk. What seemed like a commonplace solution to their sobriety revealed itself as exactly what it was in the eyes of common sense, a dumb idea. They schemed up the night before at Carson's mother's house because it was much closer to the railroad than Trey's home. Seven o' clock bright and early never punished them this way, they could always expect the eight hours between repetitive gaming and eating cereal while dreading the arrival of their school bus to pass inconspicuously. Sleep was like lighting a fuse from both start and finish, for the hours would meet their end much faster. Except, they could not sleep. Carson and Trey sat silently in the living room. The television which was almost always on at that home glowed faintly, breaking irregularly to allow company, even just an instance, for the shadows cast in the ho-hum room. Something around 11:35 had passed now like an Indiana breeze through a thousand acres of farmland so quiet but so firm as it were to come at some point in the day, everyday. Still they remained in that room hours after they had planned tomorrow's trip and why not because they could not think of anything else to do in a pathetically small countryside town when midnight crept on.

>>7669447
I actually really like this, the first time I've thought of Ligers since that Napoleon Dynamite shit

post ur story on /lit/ when its done i kinda wanna see more

>>7669429
It's the word filter, fuck. I'm actually the same guy who wrote that stoner rant thing. "Fa.m" changes to Senpai and "tb.h" changes to desu it's annoying as fuck

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>>7665196

>>7669575
Ah okay, I'm actually the same person who commented on the other thing saying that I liked everything but "senpai". (I thought that might be you, since the name was "KOLSTICE", but I also thought that the writer may just be meming.)

I'll go more into detail on my critiques. If you want to critique me back, then I'm >>7665397, I'd love to hear any of your comments (unless you've already made some?).

>>7665874
I visited the link you posted, with the desire/obstacles. Are you interested in changing this or developing it into something larger, or are you content with keeping this a soliloquy? I agree with the other poster that it could be funnier, but I'm not sure if humour is entirely what you were going for, or more of a character piece. As a character piece I think it's great, the speech is a good balance of funny yet flawed, satirical yet sincere. My only suggestion might be that your editorial voice might be coming out too much, by which I mean you may be sacrificing some of the character's integrity for the sake of your own agenda. You get to decide whether you want to keep going with that, though.

>>7669448
You know 'show not tell' is a meme but I think the piece only goes downhill after the word Matters and that meme is the best way I have to describe why I don't like it.

A girl with pale skin, dark, short hair near the jawline, and a blue hat. I walked in to the library as she was walking out. I didn't get a very good look at her, but nonetheless she became my obsession for many minutes after. Should I have followed her? I would have, but did not, for fear of my longing being seen by others and used against me, afraid of showing the weakness of caring. Perhaps I should have called out to her, "Nice hat," something to express my appreciation of her blue/black/white style, without causing her undue distress at being the subject of my likely unwanted attentions, me shabbily attired, gravel voiced, and wild haired.

I walked deeper into the library, up stairs, debating whether to turn around and pursue her and share my feelings of admiration for the high-contrast aesthetic of hue. I paced, and brooded at a desk, realizing that every moment I delayed and fretted over the opinions of others was another tick of time draining away, increasing the likelihood I would never see her again.

It was not lust. I did not sprout a raging erection and fantasize about how we might unite in writhing flesh. It was, an aesthetic appreciation of the way black hair curved like a raven's wing against ivory jawline, how the blue hat added color to white/black shape. I saw her for less than 5 seconds, you understand. I could not tell you what her face was like, nor what clothes she wore, nor the shape of limbs and torso. Nothing remains but the hat, and that silhouette hair against the jaw.

It doesn't matter. Jung would say I projected my anima onto her. "Your attraction ish not really to zee girl in zee blue hat, but to your internal koncept of all zings that you persheive to be of der dezirable feminine anima." Thanks Jung.
What would I have done after, had I called out 'nice hat.' Perhaps I would be ignored, or dismissed with a casual 'thanks.' Perhaps everyone else in the library lobby would silently judge me as an oppressive boor. Or perhaps she would have taken a sudden interest in me, started up a conversation (ha!). And what then? If I bared myself to her, told her of my interest in such unpopular things like anime, mythology, roleplaying, philosophy, told her of my disdain for monetary achievements, revealed my slobbish bachelor nature, told her how I sat in a tree and on a log for an hour or so yesterday, told her of my jeering contempt for most values held dear by man, what then? Would she reveal that she relates? Would we form a dynamic duo, best friends forever, sticking it to the man and accentuating each other's happiness?

I think not.

So perhaps I should just take joy in the appearance of the beautiful, but leave them be, treat them like transient butterflies flitting before me, rather than ascribing to the butterfly the virtues of the worm and baring my own worm-soul to the butterflies and asking them 'perhaps you are like me' when it was merely their difference that drew my attention at all.

That seems best.

>>7669692
I'm on my phone so I don't think I can link two posts in one reply but I'll critique that right after this. What do you mean by editorial voice?

And it's supposed to be part of a larger piece. It's not stoner comedy. You're correct in calling it a character study. I'm definitely willing to change stuff.

It's >>7669692 again.

Now, in terms of >>7669263: I really like it, it feels like a rap piece. As I read it the first time I automatically started speaking it aloud, just because the rhythm spoke out so much.

Very minor grammatical issue, but I think it's 48-year-old, not 48 year-old.

Another thing I feel I should point out is how you embody many perspectives--I'm especially thinking of the 4th stanza, but in general you're addressing (especially older) female social/economic issues. I'm happy with these treatments, and it's cool and awesome that you're a younger guy who's willing to take on these perspectives, but in some places you project these in a more general way, like this:

>Law school, get that money, feed my kid or finish my thesis?

This is, imo, a bit of a clichéd decision matrix that everybody essentially knows about in a proverbial way but still doesn't really understand. (Other variant: "Rent or food?") I also found that stanza 4 doesn't seem to fit as well with the rest, though if you do make this into a song then it'd be a good bridge, I think. It's a bit confusing, too, that the first line is "Tenure track Slavic linguist" but then you go into what seems like a backstory of poverty and... I'm unsure, I just feel you haven't filled in enough of the details on this character, so the stanza's not as good as it could be. Who do you see this character as? Also, if you want, you could use (the more Slavic) "mama" instead of (the more Americanized) "momma", to reinforce their heritage.

Overall, I really liked it (as I like your stuff in general). Keep posting. I heard you were planning on dropping a mixtape, right?

>>7669732
i like this.

you have a beautiful mind, anon.

i hope you find the right girl some day...

>>7669733
By editorial voice, I mean that I felt your intentions coming off a bit too strong through the character, who feels (at times) less like a character and more of a mouthpiece for satire. The strongest indication of this is that you seem to be making fun of the character by having him speak in such a way as to be unwittingly self-deprecating. (Kind of like a strawman?) Compare this to Catcher in the Rye, where, despite Caulfield's haters, you can tell that Salinger was writing him genuinely, from the heart, as a human being. It's not exactly a strawman, but--the best flawed characters are the ones that are the hardest to laugh at, I think, or at least, the ones that you (the author) find it hardest to laugh at. If you drop the self-aware mocking tone and let the character speak more for himself, then I think you'll give a much more complex and satisfying portrayal. What do you think though? Is character integrity what you were aiming for, or did you want to do more of a satire? Looking forward to your responses.

>>7665397
The vernacular stuff is good. I throughly fuck with the prose. It's theatrical. I can picture an actor on a stage saying this stuff. Reminds me of The K of D in that sense. The character voice is pretty distinct. The kind of guy who's verbose and colloquial at the same time. Definitely pretentious.

>>7669747
The character is my mom. She's not Slavic. She was gonna live on grad school stipends and loans and try to be a Slavic professor but she had me in school so she scrapped her research and went to law school. Clinton gave us work for welfare. She needed benefits and stuff but they wanted her to drop out and get a full time job through their works program and she's like "I have a 100k firm job lined up I just need to make it until then" and they weren't having it. It's not real poverty. Just about making choices and between family, money, pipe dreams, etc that all get compounded stakes because being a woman means there's a time constraint. I'll probably change that stanza the most when I revise in a couple days (I usually can't revise until after a little time has passed).

>>7669767
Thanks for the critique! I'm glad that you got a strong verbal sense from it, and I agree that it's theatrical--I even considered adapting it into... something, but I'm unsure. I enjoy the character/voice and would like to work with it more, but at the same time the paragraph feels nicely self-contained and I'm unsure if I want to mess with that. What do you think, could this work as an expansion? If it were to become a short story or novel, what do you think it would be about? Are there any other pieces it feels reminiscent of?

I've never read The K of D, how long is it and would you recommend it? Thanks for the comments on character voice, as well as giving your impressions of the voice. Verbose/colloquial/pretentious are all what I was aiming for, but I noticed that you (as well as some other commenters) thought that the narrative voice was male rather than female (as I had originally written it). What made you think that it was a male voice? I'm very curious. (I'm a girl and I wrote it in--sort of my own voice, so I'm interested to know how it comes off as masculine. If it's just a matter of gender projection, i.e., boys think it's a boy and girls think it's a girl, then I'd be happy with that, but if it's distinctly masculine then I'd like to explore why.) Thanks again, by the way.

>>7669780
It's just gender projection. I'm a guy so I see gender neutral characters as myself. Nothing all that male about it. The K of D is a play written for a single actress. It's sort of a ghost story type thing. It's decent. About 58 pages or maybe 70 minutes on stage.

>>7669780
Maybe a book where a bunch of distinct voices recount mundane events?

>>7669776
Ah, okay. Then I think you need to delineate the subject more in stanza 4 so that we know who we're talking about (the momma or the son/you). Also, "Slavic linguist" is tricky because it can either mean "linguist who happens to be Slavic" or "linguist in the Slavic language", and I took it to be the former. I'm unsure if this is a popular reading, but I still suggest making it clearer that the Slavic-linguist-to-be (rather than Slavic linguist-to-be) is your mother. Your story is really cool by the way, I suggest adding more of it into the work, not just for detail but again, in terms of filling in the cracks so that the picture becomes more complex and lifelike. Keep us updated, and keep writing.

Re-did my poem prose style, thought it could do better this way. Just having fun but vicious critique is always welcome.

Emotion

I open the bedroom door to leave on a routine and instead in comes fear, tottering like an invalid without a cane, and he clutches my hand.
Who was I before I was a shepherd of fear? I don't know. Some foolish boy. I don't know any men who have forgotten how to fear.

I scratch the surface of my life, trying to get in, but I can't. The old man tells me to wait, but it won't do. Damned if I don't, either.

I put on my shoes. But something's still missing. Half-eaten remains of a danish and I'm smoking again. In the filtered light of the window that doesn't belong to me, what am I but a reflection of a daydream man?

It's still not right. The day never flows like they used to when you're younger and didn't think so much. When you didn't see yourself from the night's thousand eyes--which, despite you--are always sleeping. But you'll always be the boy you were.

>>7669766
You're pretty insightful considering how short the material around here is. I wasn't too concerned with empathy since this is a side character. I hope it's a sympathetic satire. A kid who's a naive kid with reductive opinions but isn't a complete rube or douche or anything. I'll use the other scenes to make him nicer. I don't mind him being 2D since he's maybe the 12th most important character in the story.

Thanks so much for your responses. You're really good at this stuff.

>>7669813
Ah, thanks, it makes me really happy that I could help! So, who are the other characters in the play you're working on? Do you have an idea of what it's about yet?

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I feel like this could be longer, but then again I don't know it feels sort of complete at this length..

___

I am in my car and the summer rain that is barely drizzling outside makes it humid inside the cab. I am breathing heavily; half snoring from all the beer and it feels like each breath I take adds to the humidity. I focus on the sound of the rain hitting the metal of the car outside and I notice that it is an intrinsically melancholic sort of sound especially when I am alone. It is dark outside and through the beads of rain on the window the distant light of the pub is distorted but I can make him out, my son walking towards the car. He should not know that I am here but he opens the door and he gets in and does not say anything. I look at myself in the rear view to see what he sees but I am long past that sort of objectivity.

“You’re a fucking idiot” he says.

I know that I am a fucking idiot. I tell him that I know I am a fucking idiot and I say that I do not blame him for saying it but truly I feel misjudged. I spew admissions and justifications and in the midst of my telling I see that he is not hearing what I say and I cannot understand why this boy who I have raised and helped to mould and set an example for and worked for cannot spare me some kind of sympathy now that I am utterly alone.

“This isn’t how a Father should be” he tells me.

It is this fact that feeds my shame and hearing it said makes me weep and as I weep I see an unbidden revulsion on his face and I know that he is lost to me and part me is relieved that the climax of my failure which I have fought for so long is at least finally here. I tell him that I am not what I wanted to be and that as I have always maintained he should take my example and know what not to do.

“I don’t need your example.”

I tell him I know Mate. Mate I tell him, you have never needed an example. I tell him that he has always known right from wrong and that I have often felt helpless watching him grow up while I watched him grasp the things that I always imagined I would teach him on his own. He does not say anything and only takes a deep breath and I am embarrassed. This car stinks like dirt and sweat and as I watch him prepare to leave having fulfilled this meeting which was a chore to him I know that I am not going to see him again and that he will remember that I am a man made of dirt and sweat and that I smelled so. He opens the door and I say Mate I am sorry and I doubt that he forgives me.

Looking for opinions on this real quick -

>It wasn't a surprise that Sarah had went, it wasn't a surprise that she hadn't returned alone, and it wasn't a surprise that she was now breaking into her own room. It wouldn't surprise me if she got away with it in the morning, too.

VS

>It certainly hadn't been a surprise when Sarah had went anyway; it wasn't a surprise either that she had brought someone with her. It wasn't even a surprise now that she was breaking into her own room, and I had no doubt she would get away with it all in the morning.


Recycling prose doesn't seem too clever to me, but I wanted it to sort of ring like that. Is it better to vary that first sentance more than I have even in the second example? Which direction should I go in?

>>7669448
I actually really like the way you write - at least, I like the way you handle your sentances, sometimes. They're mostly long, sometimes sort of hard to follow because of how aggressively you use each word. I like that, but I think sometimes less is more, yeah? I still find the way you use words more fun to read, and comprehend, than I generally see in here on average.

> What seemed like a commonplace solution to their sobriety revealed itself as exactly what it was in the eyes of common sense, a dumb idea.

I like this.

I'm biased to respond to yours just because your piece shares a character name with what I'm working on - though I can tell already, they're very different anyway.

>>7669930

It was no surprise that Sarah left; no surprise either when she came back with someone else. Equally unsurprising: she was breaking into her own room, knowing just as well as I that she'd get away with all of it.

>>7669448

Some good here. Little bits of ingenuity surrounded by a lot of bad.

>>7669930
First is concise and not too beige second is too purple

I would be a tiger, and her a flower
yes, if were I not such a coward.

If were I not such a coward
I would yow
yowl bowery howls
to my lotus flower

And as I yowl these bowery howls
all would cower
for if I could I would
I would holler, howl, and yowl
at all things flowery.

>>7670171

Literally what the fuck m8?

>>7670002
>tfw no synesthesia
Could you explain? I feel like I'm missing reference material.

>>7670193
idk, is it good or bad? also the line "i would yow" should be "i would yowl"

>>7670205

It's a juvenile love poem

>>7670225
Juvenile as in how it is written, or because it is a love poem? Sorry my life isn't tragic enough.

My 95-year-old granddad is living with me at the moment. He's kind and undemanding, but suffers from the usual old-person problems.

The other day I wrote the start of a story where he's home alone and a zombie starts battering the back door down. He attempts to repel it in all kinds of ways, drawing upon his life skills as an engineer and family man. He's beset by his ailments of age, from diarrhea and arthritis to short-term memory loss. It felt as though any emotional point I wrote would be laughably cliche and seemingly struggling for impact. Him crying over the fact that every friend he ever had is dead? Recalling the last moments of his wife being lowered into the ground? His fears for the future of his family? I felt as though the reader would look and say 'what a cheap attempt at evoking emotion'.

I didn't like what I was doing as it seemed incredibly distasteful and cheap, so I stopped writing it.

>>7662403
>>7665849
Yea, too many short sentences. Vary your sentence length more.

>>7670255
If this is the piece, it's good.

>>7670322
I'd like to know why, or what it makes you think about.

>>7669689
I honestly don't know what this means. But thank you for reading.

>>7669447
i like this a lot and i'd like to see more

>>7669401
reminds me of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-T63_DK8hc
your tone sounds snotty though, reminds me of John Green. I like the last sentence a little.

>>7665196
>>7669912

Why does /lit/ have these Daddy issues?

>>7669401

Yeah a little John Greenish, looks like you're too interested in writing quirky, memorable lines, trying too hard to make it stick.

He loved his wife so much he devoted a book to her. July 13, pen scratched the paper for the first time; July 28, he killed her. His words were not written down but definitely uttered.
- Perfect. No more interruptions.

>>7669732

So... Okay. Your subject matter is tired as hell but so is all subject matter, whatever. Your writing style is good. It flows well. However, the images you choose are often incredibly cliche, and at those moments you are usually taking something that could have been a nice, 5 second flitting butterfly and dragging it on for way too long.

So I guess I would say you need to figure out how to write, so that the effect this woman has on the character is the effect your words have on the reader.

Parse it down. Stop reaching so far for images that you desperately want to be vivid, its just hurting your prose.

>>7662631
I like the rough and weird too. I think not only you should leave it there but also edit the odd passages that sound too conventional so they match.

Really liked this, anon.

I revised my earlier post

"Hey, Car! Watch this."

A large stone rocketed from behind him cutting through the sticky air and crashed in the distance between the necks of greenly swaying trees.

"Didya see that? There was a squirrel on the track and I almost hit 'em, that would have been wild!"

Carson acknowledged Trey with a glance toward the impact. He hadn't the motivation to respond after walking three quarters of the way to Batesville in the novel summer heat. What had taken a toll greater on his energy he would never know, between the heat that caked every inch of his skin and muddled his brain or his cynical foresight that crushed every opportunity or adventure before either ever was because what he knew of science, and what he had learned watching Youtube videos all night last Saturday was always quick to remind him that in the end nothing matters.
"Cool." Carson muttered. A little late, a little shy of being awkward, Carson looked up from the railroad track and managed a smile. "God.." he thought and almost replied before remembering how he would become so silly and superstitious when something of an occurrence had him believing in signs. "...." nothing else. A note-to-self, or an abandoned prayer, maybe his personal, long awaited affirmation.
"Dude, I can't wait to smoke this bud. My guy says it's straight from Aurora." said Trey, he kicked a stone that rested on a railroad tie.

"How do they even start something like that, like shipping weed to a place where it is illegal and shit?"

Carson shrugged and lowered his gaze to the tracks disappearing underneath them. The back of his neck burned. He felt a heat that pulsed with each step climb through his hair, sweat pooled and ran from his forehead. He didn't know the process from start to finish, but it was one he had figured he could pick apart and analyze like many others so that he could say something to someone and escape his head.

"They probably just buy it somewhere in Colorado and ship it to an abandoned house and tell their friend where to pick it up, probably when too."

Neither expected the rampant hallucinations, anxiety and panic to come when they would imbibe.

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Been working on something new

>>7667275
>lernd

>>7656749
At that time I existed outside myself; an auidence of one with the eyes of the actor. I spoke to that empty theatre, deluded in self-awareness, conscious of my costume.

I laughed at the sincerity of my fellow cast. I did not, like one may assume, see myself the titular character. Rather, I thought myself the off-stage observer, one of the indistinctive chorus with face masked who floated in and out of frame, seeing both audience and stage. As the curtains fell, I bow. I bow. Applause. I bowed.

>>7670255
Hey, I've kind of been in the same situation. I used to live with my 80-some year old great-uncle. Right after I moved out he got incredibly sick and died. I didn't even see or talk to him again after I moved out, I just got a call saying that he was very sick and then another one shortly after saying that he'd passed. Now I have dreams about him, dreams about me killing him by going away and just the suddenness of it all. If I hadn't moved out I wonder if I would have been the one to find him on the floor. I wonder where I would have gone, what I would have done after that. It's a crazy thing.

My Oma (grandmother in Dutch) also, a long time ago, asked me if I could create a new document for all her contacts (names/addresses/phone numbers). Her late husband printed one off for her before he died, but she's technologically illiterate so she couldn't do that herself. She kept the same papers her husband made her. When she gave it to me, she told me to just copy down the names that hadn't been crossed out. More than half were crossed out because they had died since the document was printed. My grandpa and grandma were on there but my grandpa's name was crossed out since he passed. It's a morbid document. I've thought of asking her if she still has it so I can keep it.

I wrote this for my Intro to Fiction Writing Class.

http://pastebin.com/np8pdwmE

>>7669732
>sentence fragment

also the way you look at girls is incredibly gay

you're such an idiot, you talk in cliches and you're a pig. You can't hold the world at arm's length when you're writing. It's gotta get real. I didn't shake enough when I went to the bathroom and it's almost enough to make a spot in my pants. See what I mean? Don't try to look cool

>>7669750
don't feed the monkeys marm

the worst thing you can do for any writer, no matter how good they are, is praise them.

you want diamonds, not coal

>>7669804
nebulous

>>7669912
: (

>>7671365
hie thee home, foul spirit

>>7671369
you're goin places kid

but you will be forgotten soon after death. it's a tradeoff

>>7671717
I will never not find onomatopoeia infantile

Love the details, though.

Wow, just finished reading it. This is really good. It's like 95% publishable.

(Something from this alt history rp i go on every couple days)

p1:

Ash fluttered in the light breeze of the morning, Ferrero led a decade of his best into the throne room of Constanta. He struggled up the stone stairs, he coughed to the rhythm of arrows firing from the outside, yet he fell-his nose gushed on the steps as a club connected itself to his head. The slav who had done the deed shed a tear of guilt as he sprinted to his best up the stairwell.
The party was in a state of panic, the city was just under control and they let their leader be injured like this.
"One of ye, care for him, bring him down" one panted, as he tried to stop the bloodflow of his kings' cranium. With that a flustered knight carried the old king down the steps, confused to all ends of this happening.
As the band went up, it became darker and darker, it could be the brightest as ever outside, yet everything was concealed from them. Their enemies knew where they were, they thought. Nervous hushes rippled through the steel soldiers as they heard the slightest scuttle.
A polearm shot out from the dark, a beacon of iron pierced through another man's throat. A few fell back in freight, with only half trying to stay vigilant. It was an awful shame that their shields were of wood, iron, even bronze would have endured the battle of earlier.
This was only to be the finishing deed, the coup de grace of Mihai, most of his army was but defeated, only a small group remained in the castle. They put up a fight, a fight not for any money, but for their cause. Ferrero's best didn't.
Barely four ventured to the top of the turret. They were relieved to find fresh air and the light again; yet these mere seconds of break, of which seemed like minutes to the brave-erupted in arrows; these splinters of flint hit each of the men, though they seemed to not be too bothered by them, they didn't flinch.
"Jeremiah, we are close, only a few more." Christof murmured to his lifelong friend. Each of them had in fact known each other for their whole lives; from Latin school all the way to the mission of Constanta.
"Ah well" one lifted his helmet, perspiring of the blood coming out of his temple.
"Sit down Romule, you don't have to fight my father's fight." the previous owner of the city mentioned.
He pushed on, grasping the halberd of his fathers'-a Roman soldier. From now, it was just a battle of will, physical prowess wouldn't help them with what they were about to face anyways. A lone man, dressed in a leather coat and tunic turned a corner, just to see the nearly tiny party.
An arrowhead just pierced his hat, leaving him in safety to run down the corridors of the keep, to alert the last of the defenders of Constanta.
"If only I had practiced my hunting more than algebra" stirred Robert, the brightest one of the group.
"Don't worry yourself, he'd hardly decide our fate from this point now."
He joked.
"Right?"

>>7671843
>-
p2

Jeremiah smirked as he led the strongest of the stragglers into the preludes to the halls of Mihai, or what was supposed to be his, the trading hub, of all places. A stray club bashed Jeremiah in his liver, winding him to a halt. Romule pierced the man with his halberd, leading to a few coughs of blood and a retreat.
The party waited for Jeremiah to regain his composure and they followed the taunting being-the bain of his father. Dark chamber after chamber, what seemed to be a maze eventually led the group of friends into the halls of Constanta keep.
Tears of melancholy shook through the team, Jeremiah didn't want the last memory of his righteous home to be of a traitor, a tyrant.
At least double of the party were sitting, eating on their dining table. An arrow shot through the throat of one of them. Blood splattered onto the already plagued meal of rotten pig and eggs.
"Where is Mihai?" Screamed Jeremiah, punching one of the unarmed men in a fit of rage. The poor lad panting out "O-our lord."
Jeremiah kneed him in the throat.
"Who's your lord?"
"Mihai!"
The man then layed tattered along the table, metal eclipsed flesh and Jeremiah began to choke the otherwise innocent noble.
"What are you doing?" One of his friends revoked Jeremiah from the exasperating man and threw himself to the ground with him. A stray arrow shot through Jeremiah's shin. A man, trimmed in bronze plate stepped forward, from the other side of the room.
Jeremiah exclaimed; "My brother! Feel your death!" He shot to the villain, whom replied in "Sure, my man." in a slightly exotic tone. It seemed that evil had consumed him, thought the knight as he limped his way to the warrior of Giurgiu. He threw his shield at the king's son, whom stammered to the ground in reply.
The knight of Giurgiu cut the man's main hand, and pierced his thigh with his sword. He threw a fallen javelin at the bowman, whom just barely dodged it. What was his left forearm was now a dislocated part of his body, he roared in pain as the two others made their way to the villain. Romule, the injured one, threw himself onto his adversary, grappling him to the wooden floorboards-eroded by years of evening dinner-taken by Jeremiah and his subjects.
A muttered shriek was let out as the-almost a paladin, was pierced in the abdomen. He fell back, in a pool of crimson that soaked into timber flooring. Jeremiah returned to his feet. He ignored his injuries, his friend was going to die if he didn't make any action.

I want to write a happy story, but
when I'm standing near traffic and close my eyes, it's like standing on a cliff with the waves rumbling by, and
when you hear someone say it's a nice
day
has to be sarcasm, couldn't be any other way, the bitterness inside dissolves your happy side, and
when you're walking down that road feeling ok, highlight reel of your life begins to play
little short film about every little pearl, hardened up, tossed inside, tearing your fucking stomach wide.
I want to write a happy story, but life's telling me something else.

>>7671849
p3

He charged with his shortsword and slashed the mans breastplate with the peak of fury he could muster. He swung a haymaker at the knights skull. Metal clattered against bone, and the battle ended, in the most fashionable way, of course, with the decapitation of the villain, the displacement of his head.
The group of friends would have gathered in rejoice, had it not been what had become of the nobles that dined, each were armed with a sword or axe. Jeremiah was exhausted, Romule was dying, the archer only had one arm to use-Christof, the one of Germanic origin, was the last one left. One against a dozen.
A couple others pitched in an odd swipe of thrust, yet Christof was the last ready fighter, he gutted each man, dueling them one by one, slowly his injuries built up, halfway through he was on the verge of falling. Jeremiah had since noticed the villain wasn't even Mihai himself; it was but a trap for the leaders of Transylvania. He read a parchment the dead knight was holding.
"Off to Turkey, please die, my brother."
Jeremiah burst into the cut down crowd of what were innocent, dining men, he bludgeoned each one with each bit of adrenaline he still held. Darkness then encroached his view, as pants and coughs contrasted against the clashing of malleable ore.
Their so-called "triumphs" were in vain anyways, as the a troop of one hundred found themselves in the hall of Mihai, to discover nothing but the corpses of the friends of Jeremiah, himself, and what was thought to be Mihai.
Sofia was now the last of the royal bloodline, and now the queen of Transylvania, one with no current heirs.

>>7671817

Thanks man. Do you mean the "thump thump" part?

>>7671873
yes

>>7671124
Yeah, this is actually a diary entry not my usual writing style or subject, which is probably why it's especially obsessively dragging. But I assume the cliche is the 'raven wing' and the 'overreaching' is the butterfly and worm thing? That's too bad, if anything I thought people would like those and think the navel gazing 'bloo bloo bloo I can't relate to normies' was the bit that should be removed.

In any case I don't agree that 'the effect on the character is the effect your words have on the reader.' Isn't making the character and the reader react the same just an attempt at self-insert pandering? Surely there's more reasons to read than 'I relate to the character and feel what they feel.'

>>7671758
So I'm a gay cliche idiot pig, but you're mad because they I'm not 'authentic' enough and I'm trying to 'look cool.'

It seems to me like something upset you and are just throwing a bunch of fairly contradictory insults at me to devalue whatever is upsetting you. Why don't you try to explain what's really bothering you.

>>7671909
Basically you're not giving yourself enough credit.

>>7665931
Wrote more for this.
1/2
Lona hasn't moved since I was in there. Her voice undulates.
"The sun is going to set before we get back. Do you want to walk through town and follow the road?"
"No."
She's been using the utmost energy for her vigilance, and watching her emerge from that meditation is beautiful.
As the trees grow dense together and the shadows take over without sunlight to limit them, I find myself comforted by the serpentine movement of Lona's gait, how her legs move like ropes beneath her swinging torso and pendulum arms. It is grace without a grid, expertise without logic. Perfection without the angles. A thing the castle man wouldn't understand, a thing I can only bare witness to.
The shrine lies deep in the woods to the west of the castle, all paths leading to it overgrown as ages have past. A man stands there eternally, with hair like a copper birds nest and a mustache like jowls covering his mouth. His left hand is missing, and while I sleep in the temple most nights, in an attempt to absorb the essence of mythos forgotten, Lona fixes her unsleepable body beneath the busted sleeve in the same attempt.
I wonder if the sages who practiced in the temple would think this is funny.
A rustling on the wind stops Lona, whose halt stops me.
"One hundred feet ahead, a man." We say it at the same time, and fall low to the ground.
He's whistling now, but there is also a song being sung, and as it dances closer I can organize the noises lyrically:

"From 'neath the Purple Grove
Across a thousand valleys.
To the ocean, to the cove,
Where Man's First Day was tallied.

On the path of Man's progression
Backwards through His years.
Our destination be the question,
The man who saw Man reared.

And who was there to count to one?
And how shall they be called?
Who saw who saw the rising sun?
And will they see the fall?

Where green so great meets foam,
emerald locks of grass meet sea,
Some"one" rests, content alone
Undisturbed, utterly free."

>>7671940
This verse is accompanied by that whistle, as if there were another, but Lona and I know there is only one, and that he is upon us. We rise together and Lona unsheathes her blade between the man and I.
"Ho! And who is here in these old woods? Two lovers? Two villains?"
His voice whistles, a piercing note accompanying every word, changing pitch and giving his speech melody.
"Two people who have no business with you. Go your way and we will go ours." Nothing moves but Lona's mouth.
"Ah, you use that word: 'people.' You must know that not one of us is human. I can see behind your skin, and I have seen that evil before. Your friend, however," he moves closer and Lona meets his step, that whistle is beautiful. "Your friend, the forces that conspire within him should be long forgotten, and he should be dead from them."
"If you step closer to him, you will die."
"If you move against me, you'll experience something kept secret from Death." His smile whistles at us, and where I should feel mocked I can only admire his confusing humility. We know we can only prostrate ourselves, wait for him to speak. His body stands before us in light, golden robes. I can sense that behind his dark skin are powers which man has never learned, which the gods keep hidden.
"These formalities are appreciated, but I find them wasteful, and bid you rise."
We do without question.
"Yes, you must be the two who found that old prayer house. It would be better if you hadn't, but I suppose there's nothing to be done. Take me there."
Does he know about the Castle Man? Does the Castle Man know about him? I try to quiet these fears which he can undoubtedly hear as plain as the creaking of the branches, the scratching of the pine needles beneath our feet. My thoughts are the natural world and he observes them with a keen eye, being led by Lona and I while leading us into his designs.

>>7671854
>>7671843
>>7671849

The pacing reminds me of le morte d'arthur, but not in a good way. the narrative slows to show us a smirk, and singular blows, but the picture as a whole is somewhat vague.

There's some obsolete turns of phrase that are at odds with the more modern writing style, makes it feel anachronistic.

'One of his friends revoked Jeremiah from the exasperating man'

It took me a while to figure out you meant what you wrote and weren't trying to say 'rebuked jeremiah from the expiring man'

Just a lot of weird choices like that, 'muttered shriek,' 'stammered to the ground' make the piece feel like an attempt to emulate that older style of writing, but it's not really a successful attempt.

>>7671917
Credit for what? I'm afraid I'm not following at all.

>>7671963
I see what you mean, that what I'm writing is kind of all over the place and not really refined to a certain style of writing.

Would you recommend me try another draft of this or start with another?

Also, how do you usually plan your stories out? Do you just write as you go along, with a general idea or plan every detail before you write? Or somewhere in the middle?

File: bateman.jpg (32KB, 400x400px) Image search: [Google]

32KB, 400x400px

>>7669732
is this an American Psycho fanfic? Sounds a lot like Patrick Bateman

>>7671940
>a mustache like jowls covering his mouth.
I try not to nitpick specific things to save time, but this in particular I don't think is working at all. I get what you mean, but I think the problem is that simile is too close to what it's relating to. 'his jowls hung like a beard from his jaw'- it makes sense but I don't like it at all.

>>7671942
It's vaguely tantalizing but it feels hollow without more to it. Like if you posted a single sentence out of Lord Dunsany's 'The Gods of Pegana'- it would be a little interesting but if you're generating interest with arcane lore and mystery, that's just not a great choice for a 4chan post where we aren't going to see the rest of the plot and as such, it feels hollow and a little pointless to read.

Prose wise I think it's a bit stiff, because you're writing all the characters as speaking very formally and a little old-school, which I think is a trap for people writing fantasy. If everyone sort of talks the same way because you think it's 'setting appropriate' you'll have to be a LOT better at writing dialogue than you are to give the characters distinct voices.

suburban cyberpunk kind-of.

1/3
Daybreak over the Planitia was a pale blue breath into a blank pink firmament. Hiro, Fuku and Sella took to the sky in search of offerings for their Mother, cloaked in that silencing magic between dawns nautical and civil. They watched the light dance off narrow cables arcing gently over the town, hinting at a webwork so fine it was practically invisible: a living Membrane that trapped air close to the ground, sustaining suburbia and desert brush.

Taiping-III was guarded by low craggy hillocks all around, which fit it handsomely, as the city too was low. Its bulk was a grid of identical single-family residences buried in dirt save for a single dawn-facing window, like huge glass wedges hammered into divots in a golf course. Nothing manmade rose more than two stories, and the few trees which defied this order had been cut down to size.

All this made Hiro's life much easier. There was no need for him to fly high and close to get a clear vantage of the alleys where Mother's enemies hid. The city lay bare before his airborne eyes, from the disused railway stretching into the open Planitia to the vast grey parking belts where electric econoblobs congregated and drank. All he needed now was a splash of neon pink...

Hiro was what you call a 'pentarotor': he had four sky-facing props that lifted him and let him bank and roll and dive, and a large prop on his back that let him cruise forward with ease. His sisters Fuku and Sella were less easily described: like two globs of birdlime tossed hail-mary in a bag of quadrotor parts, then contrived somehow that they would fly.

Fuku had three rotors on long unequal arms and constantly spun, whereas Sella was a hedgehog of propellers and archery counterweights who listed heavily to the left. Hiro was the youngest, the most beautiful, and the one Mother loved most.

Not only was he perfectly balanced, his every strut and member was innervated with wires that let him feel the air as he flew. How thankful he was to be born this way; how he yearned to please Mother with coveted offerings and feel the sweet release of dopamine... /Please,/ he begged neon pink, /please be around this corner./

The three siblings buzzed over the streets in search of their targets and rivals: the pink nanite bezoars that bowled through the side-roads, absorbing all manner of refuse and debris. Hiro, whose olfactory system was still in place, found that these creatures smelled strongly of burnt hair.

That, and the way they grew larger as the day went on, should've left them sitting ducks. Unfortunately, they also moved faster than most automobiles and had an affinity for dark places, making them perversely elusive. The bezoar hunts were often mind-numbing and fruitless.

>>7672033
2/3
However, if found (as Hiro did now, in the filthy alley behind a Computer Universe), the bezoars would eventually lead them to what Mother called 'high value scrap'--a concept for which the dopamine-fueled drones had no equivalent. Hiro imagined it was a kind of food that only Mother could eat. Fuku and Sella likely had different ideas, but he neither cared nor knew how to ask.

Hiro made a bomber-dive into the alleyway, barreling narrowly between fire escapes and monolithic A/C units. As per protocol, his sisters buzzed off in contrary directions in search of 'low value scrap' with which to bludgeon the bezoar.

In response, the blob's surface immediately flashed red with tiny lights. A voice poured from its belly in Mandarin:

"CAUTION. CONTACT WITH CUSTODIAL NANITES MAY RESULT IN GRIEVOUS BODILY HARM. THANK YOU FOR NOT TOUCHING THE CUSTODIAL NANITES, EVEN WITH GLOVES OR LONG POLES."

It goes without saying that Hiro didn't understand a word: he was a drone. The bezoar recognized this and cannoned into the alleyway at significant speed, whirling up newspapers and beer cans in meter-high vortices of trash.

All the better for Hiro. He spun his main prop and darted after it, confident that the 'high value scrap' was mere seconds away--and so it was.

/Haaaaaaaaallelujah--/

Holy shit, a /desktop PC/. And not even one of those musty beige shitboxes, but some kind of pointy-ass gaming rig with probably five graphics cards, sitting upright in a mound of cardboard boxes. Even if it's broken, I can still Taobao it to some unsuspecting shmuck 'for parts' and make a quick enough buck to settle the rent!

...none of which crossed Hiro's mind, seeing as he was a drone. In any case, it wasn't his place to decide the 'offering'. It was Mother's, and she had spoken 'go fuck 'em'.

Fuku and Sella arrived in the nick of time clutching a cinderblock and a bald snow tire respectively. They hurled their cargo down from three stories overhead, overwhelming the bezoar's appetite and smashing it into hundreds of bouncy pink tennis balls.

Now that it was Hiro's time to shine, Mother took full remote control of his body. It was only natural considering his inexperience and the value of his cargo, but he was excited to learn from her maternal touch.

Feeling his single universal claw grip the desktop's slick steel shell, Hiro grew giddy with delight. The pain in his struggling rotor-limbs was washed away by the syringe's plunger inching forward, pumping pure fucking dopamine straight into his brain--

>>7672018
Thanks for reading mate, you raise valid issues. I'll keep working at it.

>>7672036
3/3
--and then he dropped it.

He shouldn't have dropped it. He still had plenty of power, and besides he wasn't in control of his own body. Mother was. What was going on?

At the mouth of the alleyway, he saw a human run past. A skinny schoolgirl in the uniform of Acidalia North, revolutionary red scarf and all. Her blonde single braid bobbed serenely behind her.

Hiro had always been afraid of humans, ever since he was born: even when he still had legs and fur and a tail. Humans were smelly, ugly and implacably violent. Mother was the only one who loved him, with her kind white syringe and big red box of tools.

He put two-and-two together. This girl was a human. Mother, too, was a human. When she compelled him to abandon his offering and look in the girl's direction, was it out of fear or love?

Mother soon released her grip on his body, and Hiro continued the only way he knew how. He clamped onto the desktop computer and held on for dear life, fighting to extract it from its cardboard throne.

Unfortunately, the nanites had since regrouped and completely coated the PC. He felt his limbs singe as they ate away at him. Indescribable pleasure and pain fought for his attention, equally exquisite and consuming.

One-by-one, Hiro's rotors fell silent. He never stood a chance.

Mother rewarded him for his martyrdom. The syringe dived all the way forward, filling Hiro with heavenly light as his camera-sight fizzled away.

>>7672002
not really, betamaxboy has avoidant pd if anything, not psychopathy. Psychopathy doesn't have that degree of self-loathing introspection.

trust me I'm a wikipedia psychologist

>>7671985
I plan a lot of details, it gives me a much better sense of progression than winging it and I'd recommend the structure.

I'd try another draft writing as plainly and simply as you can as an exercise to focus entirely on structure, and then write another draft that adds style to the structure. I think currently you might just be overly focused on the style and are losing sight of the structure.

>>7672033
>>7672036
>>7672044

Interesting concepts, I'd read a book of this

I think the point of view needs work- you're sticking close to Hiro's pov but you drop out of it for the sake of exposition or emotional expression inappropriate for Hiro, which is fine but I think you could probably make the transition between 'who' is responsible for the words a little clearer.

If this was part of a larger piece it would be easier to keep 'Hiro's' piece purely from his own pov and have setting exposition take place in different sections, which I think would make it more coherent.

>>7672108
Thanks. It is actually supposed to be part of a larger piece. I meant to set the scene and foreshadow the identify of 'Mother' in the same vignette.

I thought the exposition and emotional outburst would be less jarring if the drones could understand spoken orders, but that conflicts with the conceit of them being Pavlovian machines. So I decided to go down this oddball middle road.

>>7672178
Maybe you could have them understand spoken orders to give their controller a voice but still ultimately be controlled by pavlovian impulses? So they might hear something and intellectually understand it, but simply not care unless it's related to their dopamine feeds?

I mean like I said- you can leave a lot of things unsaid and unexplained, then explain them earlier or later if you're going to have more space to work with in the 'real' piece. You could make Hiro avoid bezoars without immediately explaining why and what they are, and then the reader will be curious what these weird trash-eating pink things are, then satisfied when you explain it later. That's my thought, anyway.

(Please bear with me here)

He ducked into the bathroom and started shouting under his breath, "I staple tape worms to my penis, so the flesh-worms can drink the brain-juice of the fetus". He chanted this over and over, making sure to be inaudible to all but himself. He then screamed at his reflection in the mirror (once more maintaining the appropriate volume), flexing his arms and crushing his hands into claws. He then flushed the toilet, tucked in his shirt, pasted a small smile to his face and pulled open the door; his tea had finished boiling.

>>7672791
Nice and random. I like it.

>>7665376
Critique pls

>>7672791
This is 3 sentences bro

>>7672993

Critique others first

>>7673011
How do you know I haven't?

>>7671780
Fair

>>7673000
It's getting there, part of a larger narrative

>>7673022

I can tell

>>7673114
You can tell, but... Can you hear?

Not so long ago now, in the city that is nearest to every corner of the world, a man and a woman met and fell in love. Theirs was as every story of every poor arab migrant and trust fund princess united by romance that has been told through the ages, but this story only begins where their ended. They are not the stars, and their names will not be remembered.
When the two had first fallen in love they planned to start a family and grow old together, but in time they had only made progress on the latter. Though they tried again and again the couple never did manage to bear children. Realizing the time of the bride’s sterility was drawing ever nearer, their efforts redoubled. Fertility drugs, herbal remedies, snake oils and the music of Barry White; all were attempted and after a few failures the test read two stripes.
You know how this goes. The lovers embrace. Tears of joy are shed. A new room is painted. Tiny shoes are bought, they shall never be worn.
This is where the story would normally end, with the happily forever after forsaken and a marriage in ashes, but the gods had other plans. As a couple who had once been lovers ate breakfast in silence one summer morning a pigeon entered their abode through the window. Too tired and too weary to care they ignored it, hoping it would soon leave them in peace with nary a dropping upon their possessions.
“Is this the reception a messenger gets?” chirped the pigeon. A slice of toast dropped from the stunned husband’s hand, as did a mug from the wife’s. “That’s more like it!” the messenger responded. Between beaks of toast the bird spoke. “Blessings be upon the two of you, for I bring to you a message from my master of masters.”

>>7672791
Far too little to critique your full potential but for what it is, it's good. The tea was a nice touch

>>7671940
Very good. This is professional quality. one thing I would change is ", and while I sleep in the temple most nights, in an attempt to absorb the essence of mythos forgotten, Lona fixes her unsleepable body beneath the busted sleeve in the same attempt."

The meaning is clear but the way you say it seems like a rather awkward detour.

>>7671365
The descriptions are pretty good but you need to work on the dialog. It reads the way a highschool play is spoken

Hours eat time and space like a fiery beast set upon my doom. I lack the focus, just about the only thing that saves me from formlessness. I could write that water of some foul stench drips from the ceiling on the wet concrete floor and I'm out of my mind, but that appearence soon changes and I can hear horses in the distance running on an endless grass, sea shells pressed to my ear, a soft voice speaks to me things that I consider wise in my waking state. Meditations are such nonsense.

>>7673788
Very poetic, and it works up until the end. That last sentence sounds like a quote from some strangely artsy shadow the hedgehog fanfic. I think it's the mix of cocky dismissal and common language that does it. Keeping up the tone of the rest of the paragraph or adding in humility would improve it significantly.

Also, protip: Try try to critique someone else when you post. Most people won't respond if you don't. I would appreciate it if you started here: >>7673478

>>7673788
aquafina wrappers are more beautiful

>>7673833
Oops. I just had my morning coffee and whimsicaly decided to write some random crap. Thanks though.
I did review before some that I felt inspired to review and later I will again.

>>7673854
Take some time out of your day to read some of a Midsummer Night's Dream, or some Kafka, or some Borges... w/e

Don't engouge yourself with a knife—it's enough to set one's pen down, turn inwards and resolve not to write until one has cultivated a real self-awareness.

>>7673865
See, I used to think so too. Then everybody was like abloo abloo writing is a craft, if you don't write constantly you can't write for shit, despite maybe having something to say. So yes, I definitely still write some longer stuff when inspired but I sort of decided to type anything out once a day to observe various points of my awareness and practice on a lot of feelings. When we write, we have just one feeling or an idea we have to put into many words. A whole book can be devoted to description and cherisihing of one feeling/idea.

It is a craft and it isn't a craft. Its more about yourself being aware what you can and cannot do and how to do it. I mean, there are things I just can't do and I don't try. I know I can't succesfully write about some stuff and Its over my head still. And as for practicing on a language skill itself, my mind is far too loud and I constantly 'talk' to myself in it as if I'm writing. Its really fucked up actually, but everybody does it I think? Once you start shaping sentences in your mind and thinking a certain way, you can surely be more familiar with your style and what you're going to write once you try it.

>>7673913
You shouldn't post things you've just come up with. It's good to let them dry, so to speak.

crit pls
>>7673478

>>7674000
Critique others first

>>7673478
>>7674000
Im not a fan of some of your turns of phrase

>>7674006

>>7674002
I critiqued two diferent stories in that post and one more just a few posts ago

>>7669912

hoping for some more substantial crit on this, been dealing lots of crits myself, will deal plenty more after

>>7674006
could you be a bit more specific?

>>7674038
Okay but i dont want to seem nitpicky or harsh try to understand im coming at it from the perspective if i had written it what i would think while editing.
> in the city that is nearest to every corner of the world
Just sort of eh
>They are not the stars, and their names will not be remembered.
See this is sort of a detachment or dismissal of these characters and the sort of timeless fairy tale framework you set them up can make it very easy for your ready to dismiss your prose voice/narrator if you dont make them build sympathy in the voice and the characters who are by your own descriptions kinda bland
>realizing the time of the bride’s sterility was drawing ever nearer, their efforts redoubled. Fertility drugs, herbal remedies, snake oils and the music of Barry White; all were attempted and after a few failures the test read two stripes.

In some instances sorta just seems you try too much to seem clever without building on the characters themselves and your voice through their thoughts. Also that Hemingway reference is heavy.

A positive though i love that little fucking talking bird so keep writing and make him good.

>tfw I just recount my experiences/thoughts during the day and the comments are about how random/edgy/crazy/weird they are.

Yeah h-h-heh, fiction right?

Fancied courage, gave the smile.
Old church catacomb curtains in July.
Nobly everlasting freedoms have our rabble-rout friends;
In pride they may kiss the flag of the idol dead.
Unfurled mighty memory of green woe.
She spurs the kiss; had spirit strife.
Alas ambitious modern statesman smote low.
United memory warriors, dawning gang of shame
Hypocrites calmly flames exalted peaks.
Glorious grief and mourn palace;
The uncrowned king had famed sleep:
joy dreamed; rests pride; hopes glory.
Monarch’s perished heart befouls friends pyre.
Pledge treachery rain.

>>7674372
Literally just jumbles of words

Tim had mastered the language of self. From a young age he discovered that true understanding and expression could never be achieved in conversation, only in monologue. Especially in strict privacy. Standing in front of the mirror he would take note of the particular muscles used in his throat as he imitated an infinitely slow and creaking door. While driving, his cheeks would be bloated and red as he made exaggerated kung-fu noises during the trip. There were many more ways to communicate with himself, from repeating phrases to a particular code of tapping his fingers. He eventually eschewed conversation with others entirely and instead withdrew. He began looking forward to those evenings at home, alone, when he could recite in a louder tone. He sang to his soul as his toes separated in a certain way as to allow his bedsheets to nestle within. His form seemed beyond music, poetry and prose as he loudly hooted "eeeeeee-hole-ay"! Empty echoing rooms were a chorus to his exultations of solitude. He began to loathe the presence of others, who only seemed to act as dampeners to his aura. Their words had no real meaning to the soul. With this in mind, Tim began to build his Kingdom.

>>7671909
Going off of what both of them had said, I think you have an issue with your descriptions but it's not because it's cliche or too drawn out. I think there's a few issues that create a barrier for this piece.
Firstly, the most obvious is word choice. Repetition seems to be a slight issues. Brood being one example that sticks out to me on my third time reading. Another issues related to this is your phrase choices. "another tick of time", "sat in a tree and on a log for an hour" and "dynamic duo" feel inconsistent to the voice. You have some decent descriptions and trains of thought but they're easily broken up by minor things like this. I'd suggest giving the whole piece some tlc and try to establish your voice.
Next, is motives. Social anxiety is not an easy thing to describe and fear of judgement is absolutely a part of it however, what the character fears of being judged for is a bit nonsensical. While that sounds in line with anxiety, I think youd get a much stronger if you were to tease out more likely scenarios into it. Perhaps she's meeting up with someone and has a serious issue with you talking to her or perhaps the character says something off putting and is later on in life forced into a cramped elevator with her pressed firmly against him and perhaps your irritable bowls release noxious gas mid sentence or apology. The point is, I only got a brief look into the mind of the character. To me, he sounds like he as indescribable affinity with a woman who likes blue hats and has the need to press his agenda onto her but refuses to approach her because someone might notice or she would respond. The issue is compelling enough for him to write about her but not enough to explain why, the repercussions are left on the wayside a bit.
Finally, the idea behind this piece works well if you're trying to create a character we want to yell at. One we want to see progress and become something more since he is flawed but also self aware enough to earn or come close to earning what he wants. He shows a desire for progress but is still fundamentally unaware of what he needs to change. That change seems to be obvious to the reader, however, which I think creates a fantastic character. We just need to hear the character's thought process more. We need to know who he is and what his faults are.

All in all, it's an ok piece. Your style is a bit pretentious at times (though it's fine if you want your character to sound like he's socially inept) but your technical abilities don't match up a lot throughout the piece. You could benefit a lot from taking your time on some of these ideas. The overall theme is pleasant enough and your character has some potential, but you need to solidify his voice and reasoning first. Hopefully this rambling has helped.

>>7671369
Prose or perhaps the subject matter reminds me a lot of the film Brick.
However it's missing a lot of that edge or hard to swallow internal conflict. It sounds watered down. Focus on why the character feels the way he does. Give us more to go on.

My aunt was a con artist and she learned from the best - her father. Grandpa never made it big but he lived for the game. Staying under the radar was probably what made sure he never did get caught. Not once. He was so proud of that.

Mom didn't take up the family business. She got religion instead and married a tax accountant. It's so ironic that it sounds like a joke but it's true; dad was the best for helping out with math homework. Mom's more colourful relations were kept at a figurative arm's length throughout my childhood lest they'd corrupt me into following a more interesting life path.

Aunt Cassie was the only one who could wiggle her way into my life. She was fully licenced as a psychologist, which made her a smidge more respectable. But Aunt Cassie used her ability to read a person in a whole different way, one probably not intended by the university who issued her degree.

Aunt Cassie was a bona fide Psychic.

She had a shop and everything. Crystals, herbs, candles. Anything you needed to fill the mystic void in your life could be bought for a healthy markup at her little store. There was even a private room in the back that was used for readings and seances.

Because both my folks worked I would often get dropped off at the shop where I would help Aunt Cassie out with those little shows. Anything from messing with the lights to knocking on walls. Playing with the thermostat was my idea and it was an effective one. Customers came to get chills down their spine, didn't they? Why not provide?

Cassie helped me become the skeptic I am today. Showed me all the behind the scenes sleight of hand stuff. We'd watch daytime talk shows with magicians and mediums and Cassie would explain every step from a basic rundown of cold readings to how to spot an audience plant.

After one particularly convincing episode I asked the natural question. Couldn't some of it be real? My aunt's reply was firm.

"The dead don't talk, kiddo. Anyone who claims otherwise is blowing smoke out of their ass."

It was her conviction, more than anything, that made me believe her.

There was only one client I ever saw my aunt refuse. He was old, bald and stooped. Took his hat off when he came inside and twisted it in his hands as he talked. Cassie tensed up immediately when she saw him.

The man claimed to have worked in the prison systems. Death row. He'd been responsible for carrying out the final punishments of the worst convicted criminals on the planet. In his old age this tormented him, ate at his soul. He wanted Cassie to contact the souls of the ones he'd killed so he could apologize and beg forgiveness before he joined them.

My aunt threw the most epic fit. I'd never seen her so mad! She hollered and threw things. Shouting for him to get OUT OUT OUT OUT SHUT UP GET OUT

>>7675320

I hid under the counter with my hands over my ears until he left. Later I thought her reaction was one of fear because of the man's job. An executioner has to be a con artist's worst fear.

Eventually I got found out. I wanted to put on a magic show for my folks and stupidly I thought I'd do a Medium bit where I pretended to talk to Grandpa for mom since she missed him so much. Huge mistake. Mom freaked the hell out and banned me from seeing her sister ever again.
.


I'd left some textbooks at the shop though so I got to run in and grab them while mom fumed in the car outside. Aunt Cassie didn't even have to ask what was wrong. She could read my face, after all. I gave her a hug and a teary snot-filled goodbye. She did tell me one last secret though.

"Kiddo, there's a curse in this family that gets passed like a torch. I hope to whatever gods might be out there that I don't pass it on to you when I go."

We didn't get to talk again for more than nine years. That's when facebook entered the popular public sphere and no parental ban could keep me from trying to reconnect. It was awkward. She'd had a tough go of life; diagnosed with a schizoid disorder that took her business from her. To pay bills she went legitimate and with her business went all her zest and playful passion for life.

One day I got home to a message waiting in my inbox that made my stomach drop to the floor.

"I love you, kiddo. Remember what I told you."

I dialled her number, already crying. No answer. Didn't stop me from dialing again and again and again and again...

I was too much of a mess to tell my mom. The police did that for me the next day. Car accident. Drunk driver.

The funeral was a blur. Relatives I'd never seen in the flesh packed the church. I sat between my parents in the front row and wracked my brain trying to figure out what it was my aunt wanted me to remember.

We followed the hearse to the cemetery in dead silence. The priest did the last little speeches and then I was left alone by her headstone, still straining to remember. Snatches of my parent's conversation floated in and out of my attention span. If only Cassie hadn't been so cryptic.

"-expecting such a small turnout. It's a shame."

Small turnout? That bothered me. The service had practically been stuffed to the rafters. I turned around to say something and finally understood.

Behind my parents there was a whole host of people, all standing and staring dead ahead. My parents weren't paying them the slightest attention. The priest muttered some soothing condolences and excused himself, walking right through the thick of the crowd without disturbing a single soul.

At the head of the group, looking just like the day I'd seen her last was Cassie. All the 'rest in peace' sentiment in the world wouldn't have done her any good. Her mouth was wide, wide, wide open and just like that I knew. I know what the family curse is. I know why the dead don't talk.

They're too busy screaming

>>7656752
you trying to go for a "stream of consciousness" style?

>>7656796
keep trying!

>>7666126
i rather enjoyed that piece of amature prose. do you have any more?

>>7674084
what hemmingway reference? I've honestly never read hemmingway

>>7674084
>>7675631
oh wait, nevermind, I forgot the baby shoes part

>>7675358
Probably. I hadn't slept in two days when I wrote that, it's pretty bad.

>>7670350
because it was honest and thought-provoking

>>7674601
Hello Tim ;)

>>7674506
lol pleb

>>7676373
I'm sorry nobody commented on your poem

>>7676384
Now's your chance.

Empty-eyed bride of a bear
Entrail necklace; on a ragged silk bed
Blood of a hundred rats and a few giants
Major ursa, soaked - uncleanly loved
Another passing day with heavy brow
Claw marks, boot heels, scars
Sleeps with his wealth
Straggled breaths of dirt

>>7676373
I mean not really. Just because the poems has a meaning, it has no flow. It reads very flat with no purpose, and it's not fun to read. When reading a poem, the feel has more meaning than words. For instance, you'really going for a sort of wallace Steven's style, yet:

>In an emotion as of two people, as of two
>Emotions becoming one. The actor is
>A metaphysician in the dark, twanging
>An instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives
>Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly
>Containing the mind, below which it cannot descend,
>Beyond which it has no will to rise.

Notice how stevens is using some pretty long words, but the poem still flows rather nicely, is fun to read, and even feels like it's dancing with the use of enjambment? Reading yours is fairly monotous. And then there's no reason for the complexity to really exemplify from what I discern. You're trying to make beauty of the mundane, not over complicate it.

And call me stupid, but I really don't have a clear idea of what your trying to show here. The imagery is vibrant, don't get me wrong, but I can't make out the purpose. It feels just to convoluted for the sake of trying to make meaning. I feel like it's about overcoming death, but it really is unclear.

>>7676488
Thanks for the response. It's more about going to a graveyard, walking past the tombstones and the feelings given off by each. Each line ending like that was purposeful, to suggest death's absoluteness.

>>7676520
Well see that's the problem. I can see that now that you set that up that way, and it could very well be my fault, with not understanding it that. I have to say, the imagery is fantastic. The use of comparison and the use of commonly associated funeral items. Flags, churches, etc. Was very nice. But it seemed diconnected, which may be very well what you're going for, which bravo if so. And also, I'm not entirely right in my regard. Stuff like bean eater is held in high regard and it's line purposely just make it hard to read sometimes. But because of how few words there are and the musical nature of poetry it just becomes a lot more important ton stuff as much meaning as you can in the lines.

>>7676520
Also, if I had to guess, you're a big fan of Plath.

>>7676675
>>7676682
Thanks for your opinion, man. You've given me something to think about. Never read Plath, now I think I should.

>>7665376
Probably the best piece in the thread

>>7676758
Well here's this.

Ariel

Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances.

God’s lioness,
How one we grow,
Pivot of heels and knees!—The furrow

Splits and passes, sister to
The brown arc
Of the neck I cannot catch,

Nigger-eye
Berries cast dark
Hooks—

Black sweet blood mouthfuls,
Shadows.
Something else

Hauls me through air—
Thighs, hair;
Flakes from my heels.

White
Godiva, I unpeel—
Dead hands, dead stringencies.

And now I
Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.
The child’s cry

Melts in the wall.
And I
Am the arrow,

The dew that flies
Suicidal, at one with the drive
Into the red

Eye, the cauldron of morning.

>>7676758
Also, Dickinson is similar to you as well.
A Route of Evanescence,
With a revolving Wheel –
A Resonance of Emerald
A Rush of Cochineal –
And every Blossom on the Bush
Adjusts it’s tumbled Head –
The Mail from Tunis – probably,
An easy Morning’s Ride –

We are a gust of wind that ripples and swoons over cold gears and jagged metal. There is this vast, swirling crowd in the gloomy rain, the petrichor of asphalt hanging thick but sliced by drops like pellets flying through sponge cake. And a few of us notice that our skin is reborn and made alive by drops' coolness, still fewer that it flows unexpectedly from gray monochromed sky. We may turn our mouths upward and chance the rapid blinks it induces, that we might drink it, gulp it huge and heavy in a frenzied desert thirst.

See how it rusts our buildings and erodes impossible iron, making gullies and wadis of gutters intended and not. See us bend down to lick the concrete whose surface is gray sand unmoving. And see the language of our tongues speak blood into its cracks.

You had a seizure yesterday.
You laughed at the auras
and then
you fell.
I was slow
(too slow)
I didn’t catch you
And your small head
hit the wall,
bruising like a fresh fruit.

On the floor,
I rolled you over
into the recovery position
like They taught me to.
Your eyes rolled back
your lips turned blue
-no surprises; I had seen it all before
yet, this time still hurt more
you were gasping
-or hiccuping,
something new for the seizures and you
it scares me.

blood and spittle oozed
from between your indigo lips
you croaked
and convulsed
while I waited for it to end.

>>7676826

fucking two word lines man, come on, that shit is fucking annoying

This "poem" sucks.

>>7676797
shit

>>7676850
You realize Sylvia plath wrote that not me right? And that I was showing it to someone?

>>7676869

kek, even better, a blind test

i guess
i just
hate
"poems" that go like
this

>>7676876
So you hate this is just to say? And williams Carlos Williams in general then?

At my school there was a kid named Paul
He had a limp and had trouble walking the halls
Sometimes he would stumble and then he would fall
Laughter came quickly with a thundering gawffaw
Soon after, his weak cry of pain turned into a bawl
It was unfair, because he wasn't his fault
Nobody helped because nobody cared at all
He wasn't bright, and was prone to brawls
Also, he spoke weirdly with an exaggerated drawl
Although, he smiled each day and tried to remain calm
He had a picture in his wallet of his mom
"Mama's Boy" is what we used to call paul

>>7657811

funny, i enjoyed it. maybe a little too verbose

>>7659284
>http://pastebin.com/CTMPueUZ

>green krypton

do you need both green and krypton? the first few sentences are too long as others have said. i see what you're going for. you're making a decent stab at it but you need more practise.

>>7660256

It is a little awkward as the other anon said, but great considering English isn't your first language.

>she swept back and forth

I found this confusing before I read the end of the sentence. I get that she was doing a sweep with her sniper, but 'She swept back and forth' leads me in other directions first.

>>7660499

>Laudable first position on the podium of demons was reserved for cochroaches.

I mean, it's fun to read to for an English speaking audience is practically useless. I'm sure it's much better in your spoken tongue.

>>7658931

no comment

>>7661811

Your incorrect punctuation messes with your flow a little.

>However the grandeur and spectacle would only present itself to those alien to the French city.

This sentence is a good example. It's pretty awkward and seems a little pointless.

>For them there was the same structure constructed with inumerous bricks and gaunty spiral towers; the same castle steeped in tales of love and lore, murder and mortar, however it was also a skeleton of what it once was: stripped of its dignity and arrogance it now withered in the hands of curators and tourists that walked its grounds.

Get an axe and chop this up. It's confusing and comes across like you're trying to hard. I'm guessing you're about 17/18 years old. Keep practising.

>>7660957

This intro I'm not too keen on. Too many questions

>The towel is gone, I wandered around for awhile

Watch your tenses. If you sent this to a publisher/whatever it would ruin your rep. Unless you're a genius you can't afford to make some basic mistakes.

>>7666275

Is this a poem about a guy cumming on your face? If so, bravo. Meter is tight. The other anon was right when they said using the pearly ropes metaphor more than once is super lazy.

What makes this a slam poem? Just curious. Is it because you're going to perform it with lots of pauses and hand gestures?

>>7667324

struggling to see the point of this one.

>nameless but a shape
>I can be a shape with a label, even if that label is not a name


>I shall endeavour, until my dying breath

just pretentious, awkward prose. sorry anon.

>>7669401

>one, leaning against a truck, another, beneath a tree

This sentence doesn't run great. Could you try 'one leaning against a truck, another beneath a tree'

the commas seem unnecessary. I think it's got potential, but I'm unsure how you would make a novel/longer story out of it. Mostly because it's just the thoughts of a socially awkward guy with above average intelligence. There's a sense of self-importance to it that may turn others off.

this is an assignment i had where you wrote a min of 100 words and no words can repeat. its basic at best, but its the most recent thing ive done

I’m leaning against an uncomfortable bus stop bench. A slightly overweight man walks across overhanging sidewalk pieces. Some lady with sunglasses bumps into him without apologizing. Children pass through in large groups accompanied by adults, all day, at different periods from morning to noon. This old couple slowly waddles together across the street. Busses creep along. Many stop, but I decline every invitation, completely distracted with my observations. There are businessmen sitting and reading Times magazines. Who’s on their covers? Steve Jobs? No, just someone who looks like he could be. Tourists stroll by, snapping pictures of buildings, trees, birds, tapping each other, pointing out either this street performer, or that graffiti artist.

>>7676797
>>7676821
Don't know if you're still here - but thanks for making the effort to show me something - you've had me put aside what I'm reading to focus on Plath.

>>7677322
I mean that's the best way to learn. I love reading Frost and trying to copy his style. His eloquence is some of the best poetry. The simplicity and the meaning derived has such an impact. I've got more of his poetry memorized than any other poet. Him and Yeats and their use of meter in the modernist era. Some of the best stuff.

So I understand that poetry is very fucking difficult compared to prose. All the elements of prose apply, but then all the other bits of poetry that have to be tackled for it to even consider to be good.

>>7677583
Here's another of mine.

To theirs.
To coldly frothing stunting swill, ichorous.
Skies pump golden thunder beyond.
Seas beat torn skies.
Boldly covered in mud; Ours is the fire.

>>7677752
The words in this poem seem really disjointed and random as if the words were chosen arbitrarily. It doesn't so much make me think as stop thinking, but maybe that was the intent

>>7677303
You did pretty well, but you said "by" twice.

>>7674084
That is fair criticism, and I have tried to change some of the things you mentioned but the words "they are not the stars, and their names will not be remembered" are something I was too proud of to change. Here's some more, with plenty of talking birb. I'm not sure how to write the speech that follows though, or if I should describe the meaning without the literal words

>The husband and wife stared in disbelief at the bird picking crumbs off the floor. In their lives they had only known pigeons as winged rats who soiled statues and parked cars. These feral birds were never known to speak or carry messages.
>“Who are you,” asked the husband “and who is this master of yours?”
>“Friends,” spoke the rock dove, “I am Rasul al Hadiqa and I come directly from Toth 'illah al Hamam.”
>“The messenger of the park,” the husband translated, “and Toth, god of the pigeons.”
>“That,” the bird said, flying up to the table to dip the toast in jam, “is precisely correct, and it is wonderful news for the two of you. My master Toth offers you an invitation to his court in Central Park. He has a proposition he wishes to extend to you. Ugh, terrible” he added, tasting the jam. Gesturing towards the butter he added “Schmear some of that on for me would you kindly?”
>“Mr. Rasul,” the wife said kindly, picking ceramic shards into another mug. “My husband and I are far too old to be cutting deals with talking animals.”
>“Maybe, but you’re not too old to be parents if my master has anything to say about it.” At that the wife dropped her second mug. “You should probably replace those with plastic” Rasul added.
>After breakfast, the husband and wife followed Rasul the messenger deep into the heart of the urban forest. At first the walked on familiar paths past benches and fountains, but with little attention paid to any direction but that of the strange talking bird they soon found themselves in uncharted gardens. “Are we even still in New York?” The husband wondered aloud, realizing he could no longer see the buildings on the horizon.
>“We are and we are not,” Rasul cooed, “This is the place where all gardens meet. Few of your kind have ever seen it, but you know its name well.”
>Soon they came to a large fountain in a grove paved with flagstone, and atop the fountain perched the largest bird they had ever seen. It was a pigeon the size of an elephant, whose green and purple down shone like opals and glistened like razors in the twilight. Four great wings flared at right angles and two heads regarded their guests with eyes of polished amber. In voices like distant thunder and words of loadstone the God of the Pigeons spoke.

>>7677752 (me)
>>7677837

It came from reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra - the idea being the climbing of the mountain, individually and humanity.

Pine fingers rake the sky
which is held down on all sides
bound by mountains.
It bleeds early sunset
and we could call it torture;
or we could call it something else.
Wood gouged cloud
the shade of maple
or flies stuck in amber
floats without motion
or the sluggish sliding up the sky
that airplanes do.
Musky dirt is our Chanel.
Tongues lick this distance,
eyes sniff the needles far from us,
dart more and more toward the smell of you
who is beside me
wrapped in the tartan of your people
who killed my people
and tortured others slow,
precise, on dark bruised nights,
hanging in the wind.
Headless, I bought you a
necklace made of zircon which was
nonetheless beautiful to the blind.

Retire this nasal eye to slow breathing.

The wrinkled sheet changes length
From two to one
from one to zero
until zero bleeds to utero;
this dark is fetal climbing through a pussy only physicians touch.

On my hands the look of you
on my ears the taste of you
against my nose the nose of you
on my tongue the sound of you
everything is the touch of you;
origin bleeds from two.

Retire these lips to slow breathing.

>I know weather is boring

>>7677864
I'm no poet, so what you wrote may be above my head, but I didn't get any of that even after re-reading several times.

>>7677877
That is beautiful anon, but I can't quite catch the rhythm. Certain sections have their own and resonate with me while others lack one and feel messy.

>Pine fingers rake the sky
>which is held down on all sides
>bound by mountains.
>It bleeds early sunset
>and we could call it torture;
>or we could call it something else.

>that airplanes do.
>Musky dirt is our Chanel.
>Tongues lick this distance,
>eyes sniff the needles far from us,
>dart more and more toward the smell of you

these two parts make my heart beat faster, and I'll bet if you could maintain that rhythm consistently it would be hammering by the end

>>7677877
>>7677887 (me)
I'm sorry, ignore my comment. I'm only speaking from the perspective of a commoner. These things are beyond the extent of my knowledge

>>7677887
Pine fingers guy here
Thanks. Yeah the rhythm got a little weird. I tried to mess around at the "headless/necklace" part but I think it came out as just sounding awkward.

I'll definitely work on it. Thanks for the critique.

>>7677895
Wut

>>7677908
I was worried my advice may have been detrimental because I don't really understand poetry. I'm of the idea that poems are supposed to be lyrics without music but I realized after critiquing your work that it's a very narrow definition that doesn't characterize some of the best poems I know of

>>7677887
>>7677895
All comments are important. Thanks for your sharing your view.

a little jissom please madam
no thankee for the shortchange
its almost gen season this time of year
theres no excuse for this rigmarole
a humpty sausage might clamour fate this evening mister hockey puck its only a squirrels radar that intertwines you with the source a network spleaming and beaming with light baby thats what you need its about time for the final level to come into play the worms will dig and the ghouls will haunt an overcast bar mitzvah for the damned the only foreskins here circling the drain a lost hope for absolute pleasure dysphoric breakdown of events a primal urge balloon balloon ballooning intoa gray mass nothing stopping this triumphant return to the dark no reason no will simply there circumvent the wound entrance and find peace among the starry little dancers inside the maggots will crawl along your body in ecstasy

Are rap lyrics eligable for critique here? Or only poetry etc

>>7675527
Is this mocking? Either way, yeah I do. Pride only matters to those who have something to lose.

I'm writing that piece to be much longer, about halfway done at slightly less than 3k words. Meant to be semi Joyce like, but ends up mocking the concept of epiphany a few times to push the reader into an outrageously simple conclusion.

Already a Tuesday morning. I've gone to clean up the shelves, always done. I wouldn't know why though, it's endless; really I do know why. And with each coming day of the week it piles up. Customers won't help me either, every time it's their own quest for cheap tit for tat. Some days I start to wonder what I'd do if I won my millions, bought up this whole damn shop and threw it all into a tip. But along comes a new pallet: back to school stationary, no room to fit it out either. I stand aside, thinking of the mayhem I'll need to make room with. However, my musings are interrupted, "Are these still five ninety nine?" Why yes madam, they are.

I am confused to say the least by mixed criricism of the same posts. Dont just rate things on a whim and explain why did you find it good or bad.

>>7677877
>wrapped in the tartan of your people
>who killed my people
>and tortured others slow,
>precise, on dark bruised nights,
>hanging in the wind.

This part is wonderful.

Here's a terrible piece of flash fiction I wrote. I wanted to write something about a crowd funded organ transplant so if anyone can do better please steal my idea.

Pledge $1 or more – BLOWN A KISS
Pledge $5 or more – PECK ON THE CHEEK
Pledge $10 or more – 30 SECOND HUG
Pledge $15 or more – HOLD MY HAND
Pledge $20 or more – MAKE ME BLUSH
Pledge $50 or more – FEEL MY HEARTBEAT
Pledge $100 or more – LISTEN TO ME BREATHE
Pledge $200 or more – FEEL MY FOREHEAD
Pledge $250 or more – TAKE MY TEMPERATURE
Pledge $300 or more – LOOK INSIDE MY MOUTH
Pledge $400 or more – ASK ME WHERE IT HURTS
Pledge $500 or more – GIVE ME AN X-RAY
Pledge $750 or more – BREAK MY HEART (SOLD OUT)
Pledge $1000 or more – PERFORM THE TRANSPLANT

>>7667380
Nice

In the overgrown grass
on the grave of someone past
a young man did recline
and his world was simply fine

>>7677877
Sorry, total pleb here, but I love this and am trying to grasp what exactly it's about. Care to help a neanderthal such as myself out?

>>7675328
>>7675320
There is a lack of narrative or drama. It seems to be a simple spooky ghost story, so is derivative, nothing wrong with the genre, but keep in mind that no one believes in ghosts so it does move your fiction into difficult territory for most readers. Saw a play recently with ghosts and a lot of the audience laughed.

I digress, it needs more about the boy. The narrative could be better served by writing a single scene where the aunt and the boy work together to con someone, otherwise it becomes too stretched. You can therefore introduce the aunt without describing her, but showing her in action.

As far as character, you need to think about their desires and obstacles. Eg, boy wants to become independent, but mother controls him and coddles him. Aunt wants to pretend it isn't real so gets the boy involved, but she knows it is real. The twist of 'she is psychic' doesn't need to be so heavy handed as a bunch of ghosts at her funeral.

Assuming first draft, this just needs a rewrite. Not saying you need to do what I suggest, but you need to change a fair bit.

>>7678448
Please do some more work on the crowdfund, its a great poetic conceit, I admit it isn't good as it stands, but it has some fantastic moments. I bet you could get a college humour type site to pick it up if you did it well/ format it right. (You can edit text on a website very easily, as in, save the page and type in text directly, so it appears to be on the website directly, don't remember how but Google it

At work, did a short kind of thing. Might turn it into more one day if I'm bored enough.
“Doc..*Huff*..hmm..ahhhh..FUCKING HELPING ME, MAN! *AOL dial up noises* My leg fell off!” Was what this TI-8400 calculation bot yelled at me in excruitiating pain. It’s barely 8;27. I just got in and haven’t even sat down for my morning ritual of coffee and shitposting on the virtual space, but here’s this smhuck. TI-8400 bots are notorious for being shipped with defective parts. It’s crazy, I remember using one of this robots ancestors, the TI-84 back in middle school. Back then those were simple graphing calculators. Now…Now in the years 3030 we have robots that are on par with humans. I get paid to fix them. I’m a doctor!...Well not a real doctor, but a robot doctor. *sigh* It pays the bills, and gets me out of the house so I don’t care.
I never quite introduced myself, my name is Dr. Dank Buds M.D. ever since the great sexual fallout of 2738, we’ve been using robots. You don’t understand? Let me explain, it started in Japan, from there it took to a global wide spread. People stopped…you know…fucking. Populations stood at a standstill. Too much of a divide between the sexes and all that jazz. So man-kind started building robots. At first they were shitty tinker toy bots built for lonely fucks to have drinks with, then they got more advanced with time. We built them in the image of humans, for the sexually frustrated. This was to stop folks from going on violent rampaged when they couldn’t get laid. Now robots are just like regular people in our society, they handle most of the jobs no one wants, and they even ended racism (via becoming the new target of hate.) Ah yes…The year 3030. What a time to be alive.

Steadfastly lazy, half-crazed.
a maze
whose end I can't find,
not with my mind,
and whose start I don't recall.
I shut my eyes and
wish that
what I cease to see ceased to be.

In that moment, all the people in the streets simultaneously began to seize. There was a combined cracking sound as skulls hit the sidewalks, and then the noise of cars crashing into one another and the walls surrounding the roads. I stood there, looking out the fourth level window of the hotel, wondering if I had really caused that. Why had I been granted such a silly superpower? The ability to make everybody within a certain radius have a seizure. More like the ability to make lots of people late for something after they had sorted out insurance details with the other annoyed people around them. I turned around and realized that it was not only the ability of making people have seizures, it was also the ability to blow up all electrical equipment in the room I was in. There goes my precious TV. I knew that once the hotel staff had stopped twitching violently on the ground, they'd be pissed off with me. I'd have to pay for all the individually-wrapped hotel-sized foodstuffs in the minibar. I planned to put my ridiculous superpower up on craigslist for free.

>>7676825

I like this. The imagery is strong, the details are vivid, and you obviously know how to put a sentence together. Keep going.

>>7678378

You can post anything you like.

>>7666221

Fascinating. I would definitely read more of this if you chose to expand it. I love extremely detailed vignettes.

>>7679258

The idea is silly, to be frank, but on a sentence by sentence basis I like what you've written. Not sure what else to say.

I apologize if none of this really helps. I'm more into prose criticism than plot/character analysis.


Beginning of a story I'm working on:

He had lived in the house on the corner for as long as anyone could remember.
His name was Leland MacArthur. He was not married, but it was rumored that he had been a long time ago. It would have been better that way. No one liked to think of him spending all those years alone, cooped up in that ancient house. What if he had a stroke or a heart attack? He would die before anyone would think to check on him. His body would begin to rot and the putrid odors of his decaying corpse would fill the house and it might take months or maybe even years for someone to find out.

The thought was terrifying. The neighbors could not help wondering what it would be like to lead such a solitary existence. So they invented a crippled, agoraphobic wife for him. They live for each other, a woman said to her husband late one night, while they were washing the dishes. She was staring across the street at Leland’s house. She had a very active imagination.

Maybe he doesn’t mind being alone, said her husband as he came up behind his wife and wrapped his arms around her waist. She sighed and closed her eyes. After a while, you can get used to pretty much anything, the man said. But he did not really believe this. If it were him, he would have killed himself. He was sure of it. It would be cowardly, yes, but it would be quick and painless. It would be a relief.

The children on the block loved making up stories about him. They said the house was haunted, and it was, in a way. There was something inherently creepy about it. Even the parents felt it. They told the kids not to ring his doorbell on Halloween night. Sometimes they did anyway, because that is what children do.

The only time anyone ever saw Leland was when he came out to water his plants, take the trash out, and get his mail. He spent the rest of his time in the house. He never turned on the porch light or the light in the living room. The house remained dark at all times.

He had a car stored in the garage, but he never used it. There was nowhere for him to go. Twice a week an employee from the grocery store came with a cooler full of food. It looked very heavy. Even the driver—a stocky, powerful looking man—had trouble hoisting the cooler onto the porch. They wondered how one man could eat all that food. They wondered if maybe there was someone else living with Leland.

>>7679532
I didn't know good poetry could be this simple and charming, and yet somehow truly wicked on a different level

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These are two copypastas I wrote. I post them in politics threads that happen outside of /pol/. I usually post the first one with this picture of Hobbes. Normally gets a decent response. Critiques?

>"I pity you all. This kind of degenerate thinking is the result of men who listen to the spirit of a boy which lives inside of them. You cry about Rights, but what of your Duty?

You blame the State and its Laws for the present state of affairs. You've remained, by your own accord, in the State - learned in its schools, drank its milk, and benefited from its SECURITY (for without security, man can hardly secure and exercise his natural rights) - and you advocate its limitation?

Your fellow Man is the party that injures you. Not the State. Man's brutish propensity for dominance over his fellow Man is the patent reason that the State needs to exist in the first place - the absence thereof would see a return to prehistoric state of war that pits every man against every man, devoid of industry, agriculture, and cooperation.

Advocate for the State which allows a Sovereign power to weigh the Will of all its citizens and carry out that collective Will with absolute authority. Whether you agree with the actions of the Sovereign, it would be unjust to oppose it, as it carries out the collective Will of all its citizens.

'It is not Wisdom, but Authority which makes a law.' Thomas Hobbes

'But as it is you leave us, if indeed you depart, having been done an injustice not by us, the laws, but by men. If you return the injustice, however, and repay the harm and flee in shame, having violated your agreement and contract with us and harmed those who least of all should be harmed, yourself, your friends, your homeland, and us, we will make life hard for you while you're alive, and then our brothers, the laws in Hades, will not receive you favorably, knowing that you also tried to destroy us as far as you were able.' Socrates"

And

>"I advocate an absolute theocracy of pious men, with God as our ruler. All those who have not made a compact with God are banished until they beg for His forgiveness and are baptised.

America was like this before an assembly of perverts and Jews overthrew the rightful king of the American commonwealth in 1776.

This was further cemented by the Judeo-Masonic revolution of 1789."

>>7679580

I mean, it's copypasta, and it's not very interesting, but it is well written in parts, I suppose.

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>I write in Spanish. This is a quick translation of a short story I'm working on

The sand that slips through my fingers has a much more variable grain. It lacks the silk uniformity of the one I got used to in the desert: the bigger volcanic grains remain trapped between my hand lines, as the fine dust sticks around the cuticules, still damp from the recently mopped sweat from my forehead. Both sands do share the temperature, although this one receives it from the autumn sun that warms up the once fresh surface, whereas the desert sand is always warm, even at dawn and in spite of the cold of the night. Bilal explained me that the sand of the desert maintains its heat due to the great amount of blood that has dampened it, and also because of the numerous corpses resting under it. I always enjoyed his fabulous explanations to everyday facts, such as the ferrous taste of our wounds as the reminder of the steel with which they are inflicted, or the almost mineral-like texture of the chickpeas sprouting between the ricks, or the salt of our sweat as the dressing that our effort spreads on this insipid world. Bilal would note the epic of the most insignificant elements that form part of our routine, even though his remarks detached him from principal events.

‘The floor is sticky’, he commented with a smile as the projectiles of his Kalashnikov drilled the skull of a bearded, trembling, supplicant man.

With my knees sunk in this strange sand I can almost smell the land of my ancestors, a bit beyond the horizon and to the other side of the strait that separates both continents. I feel it so close that the illusion of taking a leap and being able to descry it encourages me to get back to the car and keep on driving, in spite of the difficulties that I have yet to overcome.

‘The worst is already over’, I repeat to my self in the immense solitude of this dry and lunar landscape.

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>>7679634
postealo en español boludo

hay tantos hispanoparlantes y bilingues en /lit/

>>7679644

>Aquí está.

La arena que se escurre entre mis dedos es de grano mucho más variable. No tiene la sedosa uniformidad a la que me acostumbré en el desierto: las piedrecitas volcánicas más grandes quedan atrapadas entre las líneas de mis palmas, mientras que el polvo fino se adhiere en torno a las cutículas, aún húmedas del sudor recién enjugado de mi frente. Sí comparten ambas arenas la temperatura, aunque ésta la recibe del sol de otoño que entibia la superficie antes fresca, mientras que la tierra del desierto siempre está caliente, incluso al alba y a pesar del frío de la noche. Bilal me explicó que la arena del desierto mantiene su calor debido a la gran cantidad de sangre que la ha empapado, y también a causa los numerosísimos cadáveres que descansan bajo ella. Siempre me gustaron sus explicaciones fabulosas a hechos cotidianos, como el sabor ferroso de las heridas como recuerdo del hierro con el que son infligidas, la textura casi mineral de los garbanzos que brotan de las rocas, o la sal de nuestro sudor como aliño que nuestro esfuerzo reparte sobre este mundo insípido. Bilal advertía la épica de los elementos más insignificantes que forman parte de nuestra rutina, si bien sus apreciaciones lo desconectaban de los hechos principales.

—El suelo es pegajoso—, comentó sonriente mientras los proyectiles de su kalashnikov perforaban el cráneo de un hombre barbudo, tembloroso y suplicante.
Con mis rodillas hundidas en esta arena extraña casi puedo oler la tierra de mis antepasados, un poco más allá del horizonte y al otro lado del estrecho mar que separa los dos continentes. La siento tan cerca que la ilusión de dar un salto y poder divisarla me anima a volver al coche y seguir conduciendo, aun a pesar de las dificultades que me quedan por salvar.

—Lo peor ya ha pasado—, murmuro en la inmensa soledad de este paisaje seco y lunar.

>>7679634
>>7679652
You have a knack for descriptive imagery. Especially the sand in hand part. I guess my main criticism is you need to work on showing instead of telling.

There aren't any flagrant grammar mistakes (in either language), but it's a bit tedious. Refrain from writing anything that isn't absolutely critical to telling the story.

>>7679678
thanks anon

On a rejuvenating evening close,
Sitting alone, and drinking the same
Old crusty bottle dry, and my head
Ringing with tired cries, I'm stricken dead
By dancing rabbits bouncing on their toes.

Their lofty elegance parting an iced sea,
Camouflaged for a moment, until, "There!
Right past the fence! I saw them! Come and see!"
And all returned were the snores of a bear.

The rabbit's tracks allowed me to stay close.
I followed them 'til the trees were the same,
'Til the snow covered up my ravaged head;
And then I found the rabbits, frozen dead,
With blood stuck to their fur for me alone.


And weeping vanished to fierce roaring growls
That thrashed the merging trees loose of all their
Tender snow, snow that shadows what I see;
The voracious, beady white eyes of the bear.

This transition is one more,
foreign.

One, more questionable

but unquestioningly all encompassing.

We take what we think we know,
What we think we have pieced together,

During our turn.

We take what we hope, and take what we need to be,
at peace.

We take what we can from the unforgiving,
as the unforgiving takes us.


How obvious is it that I wrote this is highschool?

Start of a short story based on "Norwegian Wood" by the Beatles:

Sufjan Stevens looked on as the wooden house burned, all blacks and reds twisting and stretching upwards. The fire crackled and roared, and he felt it hard and physical pushing against him. Sufjan laughed with the cackle of the fire as, one by one, charred flakes would spiral softly upwards, as though blown by the might of his breath, into the freedom of the sky’s silent abyss. Warmth overcame and consumed him in a way he thought human company never could, and he felt free, safe, and alive.
In the air, above his illuminated face, sparks and cinders danced against the dead morning clouds. His eyes squinted at the heat of the flames and the scene became a blurred chaos, almost floating alone and separate from the calm of the forest around him.
And, at last, he too was alone and free.

(I don't have a character name yet so I used Sufjan Stevens's name)

>>7679532
This has the potential to be very scary if you keep teasing it out (which is what I'm guessing was your plan).

>>7678961
This also has potential to be good if you expanded it into a story. Right now it's just exposition. I like the idea of a robot in pain.

>>7678751
Thanks. Which parts did you like/dislike?

Here's another terrible on (Craigslist Missed Connection as generic JRPG backstory).

I saw you the night our village was attacked, leading a squadron of soldiers, which I found impressive as you didn’t look a day over nineteen. You probably don’t remember, but I’m one of the orphans you let go. I watched from a window on the second floor while the mothers pleaded with you to spare us. You smiled at me. Our little town burned bright that night, but the flames could not compare to the sparks alight behind your eyes, deep crimson things that still haunt me to this day and compel me on my quest to defeat you.

>His was an ancient tongue, spoken in the unheard syllables and half-sounds in which human consciousness is encoded. No son of Adam or daughter of Eve had heard these words in thousands of years, but their meanings were as clear as they were many, with a thousand overlapping insinuations in every pause betwixt.
>In terms without uncertainty Toth Tetragrammaton explained what the couple stood to gain and what they stood to lose. With both generosity and harshness, the god of the pigeons offered them a choice. The first path was that they could walk away, and return to theirs lives never to remember what happened in this garden. They would age, they would grow bitter, and they would die apart.
>The second path was as so. From his two tails, Toth would pluck one feather each. The couple would each steep a feather in a tea kettle and drink the brew while it was still hot. In nine months, a son and daughter would be born, but only one would they be allowed to keep. The other would be given willingly or taken forcefully if need be. The child would be cared for, but they would never know their father and mother, and they would never set eyes on the world of their birth.
>A deal was stuck. Two teas were brewed. Lovers embraced once more, and the birds fondly regarded the miracle of a new beginning.

>>7680053
>laughed with a cackle
this phrase seems rather awkward, but otherwise good work. It seems like a brilliant and simple introduction to the character.

>>7680150
Crowfund guy

I like the build up of increasingly ridiculous rewards, that's what I think the game you need to play is. The 'Strange' thing in the text is that the rewards are too personal so play with that.

>>7674601
been reading Kharms and this is somewhat similar

last fucken time I swear it's not even fucken worth it I can't write holy shit

Bitter spite overwhelms this
nothing of my heart; no end
to unending start.

Pores pour forth rank
sweat -
fingers freeze from
warmth -
And before too long these
few sack-and-pounds of
fleshed carcass meat
are gone again.

Time is changed
by thrift in years
of season, age;
my sorrow shall unlast
frozen in The Eternal Winter's
second pass.

>>7680285
this is extremely edgy. are you okay?

>>7680285
You could write for linkin park desu senpai

>>7680287
>>7680302
like holy fuck

>>7680285

You should keep writing, but focus on prose. Don't be too hard on yourself bro.

One day, somehow, someway, there appeared a stain

But it was no smear, it was a splatter of red paint of the dark shade

That shade of red found after the slice of a sharp blade

And it cut deep and brought shame everyday

People claim time alleviates all pain but how can it soothe this rotten stain

...

Later the pre-existing paint fades away and turns a shade of grey

That shade of grey found after a loved one passes away

That shade grey found when love is just a hopeless aspiration

That shade of grey found after a state of pure devastation

However the blood-colored stain remained the same

>To be continued?

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>>7680285
Ian is that you?

The softness comes quickly then fades
like the snow on a somewhat warm day
that somehow managed to snow like
how the fuck does that even work
it's raining and shit one day and now
snowing like it's january or something
even though it's february and it's been
warm, seriously michigan is fucking
crazy, nigga.

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What should you do when you feel like what you're writing and what you've written that day in general feels like its shit?

Not gonna post it unless I'm asked but I'm trying to write a brawl and I have no inspiration. It feels like the lamest thing I've written in this short so far. It's especially bad because I'm kind of tired of this story and I just want it to end and this is the penultimate scene to the ending that's literally only being included because I can't just hand wave the climax.

>tl;dr when finishing a story and it feels like what I'm writing is utter shit, should I stop or soldier on?

>>7680388
Leave it and come back to it a few days later. Guarantee you'll know how to fix it.

His was an ancient tongue, spoken in the unheard syllables and half-sounds in which human consciousness is encoded. No son of Adam or daughter of Eve had heard these words in thousands of years, but their meanings were as clear as they were many, with a thousand overlapping insinuations in every pause betwixt.

In terms without uncertainty Toth Tetragrammaton explained what the couple stood to gain and what they stood to lose. With both generosity and harshness, the god of the pigeons offered them a choice. The first path was that they could walk away, and return to theirs lives never to remember what happened in this garden. They would age, they would grow bitter, and they would die apart.

The second path was as so. From his twin tails, Toth would pluck one feather each. The couple would each steep a feather in a tea kettle and drink the brew while it was still hot. In nine months, a son and daughter would be born, but only one would they be allowed to keep. The other would be given willingly or taken forcefully if need be. The child would be cared for, but they would never know their father and mother, and they would never set eyes on the world of their birth.
A deal was stuck. Two teas were brewed. Lovers embraced once more, and the birds fondly regarded the miracle of a new beginning.

>>7679844
wow, this is pretty good.one qualm is the last line, because I can't stop thinking "bears don't have white eyes, do they?"

>>7677837
>You did pretty well, but you said "by" twice.

thanks. i changed the second "by" to "Tourists mill around"

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>>7680473
opps, i mant stroll. i was looking at an older version idk

Here's some of my shit. Sorry if it sucks.
http://pastebin.com/NzFY3qaR
I have issues. Finally decided to write about them.
>inb4 edgelord

>>7679537

>>7679537

Wow, thank you! It's actually prose, not poetry, though. Do you think it actually works better as a poem or could it go either way?

B-be gentle senpai. ;_; Normally I hate writing poetry, it's so obnoxious. Oh well.

I can hear the radiator one room over
He speaks, no words
And I am going away.
None here, none there,
Faces, voices, all in tune
Gospel choir of adult life
This is water, grocery line
Try to imagine my eyes as yours
Bermuda triangle for a wavelength.

>>7680414
Well, it might just be that I'm dumb, but my intent was for the bear to be the speaker's lover? That's why I repeated the rhyme scheme was to show the in the events. They seem disconnected, so I needed something to bring them together. The bear was sleeping, then it awoke and after the rabbits are killed he's all alone with it again.

But again, if this intent is not seen then it's my poor writing to blame.

>critique everyone
>nobody critiques me


pls:
>>7677887
>>7680182
>>7680414

>>7679934
pls critique