Critique thread

Sup, /lit/. I just moved here from Pacifica, California, which is on the other side of the bay from here. On the other side of the peninsula, which is probably the least hip town in the whole Bay Area. And you can get a nice ratty apartment there with a nice panoramic view for about $700 bucks a month. Anyway, this is something I wrote while I lived there. It's called Pacifica.

My balcony looks over Eureka Valley.

In the evening, I get to watch the land turn the color of brick, and then aluminum.

On the hills there are trees: eucalyptus and Monterey pine.

And in the sandy bed, a housing development.

Often, I catch my eyes, sliding easily - as if they rolled on bearings, or had been oiled - off the identical rows of houses of people, and back up to the more peculiar trees.

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>>8491673
>$700 bucks

>>8491673
Your sentence structure is unnecessarily complex.

>>8491648
Boring. Nothing interesting is happening, just boring descriptions and conversation that doesn't go anywhere

>fall into a coma
>wake up
>look around
>everything is black and red
>nurse comes in
>there's a giant indian man on her uniform
>ask why everything looks the way it does
>she tells me I'm in a Hawks' Hospital
>ask how they own a hospital
>she tells me the Blackhawks became a global entity, surpassing Google, Apple and Disney as the biggest corporation in the world
>ask how that's possible
>she tells me the Blackhawks have won 25 straight Hawks Bowls
>ask what a Hawks Bowl is
>she tells me its what replaced the Super Bowl, Champions League and the Stanley Cup after the Blackhawks won 40 straight of those
>ask how the other franchises in the NHL could lose to the Blackhawks for 40 straight seasons
>she tells me the Hawks Bowl is a game between the current Blackhawks roster against cloned all-time NHL great teams and players
>she tells me that the Blackhawks recently beat the 1980's Oilers-Islanders (a hybrid of both teams from those years), by a score of 18-0
>ask her who the Blackhawks captain is
>she simply refers to him as The Chosen One
>ask what makes him so special
>she tells me The Chosen One had a hat trick so great that it could be seen from every galaxy in the universe; helping establish galactic and world peace
>ask if we made first contact
>she tells me The Chosen One made first contact with alien lifeforms and made the Blackhawks an intergalactic entity, complete with starships, bases, and facilities in every sector known to man
>ask for proof
>she opens the curtain and I see Earth in the distance; starships maneuver around us
>ask if The Chosen One is even human
>she tells me The Chosen One is actually 69 years old and hasn't missed a game since shortly after I went into a coma
>ask how this is possible
>she tells me he is cybernetically enhanced to physical perfection and hasn't missed a goal in over 30 years
>ask about The Chosen One's real name
>she tells me he used to be called Kane
>mfw

>>8491648
Learn some punctuation bro; that's not how you use a colon nigga.

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So, I have a question and I dont want to start another thread.
How do you deal with your longing of being understood (aka exposition)?
Right now when I'm writing I'm trying to create imagery and situation to teel my MC interior development but most of the time his inner turmoils are very abstract and metaphysical and I dont think the reader will get what the hell I'm talking about.
Do you guys feel comfortable with exposition, straight up analysis and explanation of what's happening inside one's consciousness?

I would post the piece but It's in italian

Does anyone read high school based novels, anyway here's a description of the head

"Mr Carlson had curly hair like Justin Timberlake had back in his Nsync days, like someone poured a cup of super noodles on his head and left it there. I think people called him Woolyhead or Sheephead or something behind his back. He looked like a puppet from Captain Scarlet or Thunderbirds, as if someone was moving him around and posing him for the world to see. His mouth always sat in this weird upturned smile, you were never sure if he was smiling or frowning. His face was that of someone who had just smelled a waft of shit and wasn’t sure if it was him or if he should be angry at someone else for it. He was a puppet to the highest degree."

>>8493104

I don't really know, but seen different kinds of approaches to stuff like this and there's a fine line between sounding like a fedora-tipping edgemaster and a budding young isolated novelist.
I think you need to ground it in reality, in some sort of setting, like being trapped in your room or on some riverside stroll, or night walk through a city, and slowly let your thoughts carry you away, into a self-adsorbed, abstract all-consuming thought process which separates your mind from reality, like harshly/quietly cutting the cord of a boat in a anchored in a harbor and letting it drift out to open sea.

How you plan yourself to sound, like you're about to hit some rocks, triggering a chain reaction and letting the boat explode into a ball of flame, or float out into a serene space of nowhere and everywhere, is up to you. I think it needs to have some basis in reality so it doesn't sound so 'vague' so the reader can tell where you're coming from.

but this could all be bullshit.

All the inevitable realities which I have to face, it seems that the one illuminating light I carry with me like a small fire is my bitterness and cynicism. Without that, what would I be living for? It’s that bitterness and cynicism which reminds me what it is I want, it’s what keeps me from delving into the absolute depths of lostness and hopelessness. It’s been so long, but I remember there was a time where I didn’t know why I was feeling bitter, but I felt that I should feel bitter about something. It’s almost as though I couldn’t help myself from becoming bitter, but at the same time almost willed it. But if bitterness doesn’t stem from feelings of lostness and hopelessness, how would it be the opposite? It’s the reason to live, it keeps you bitter when the world is at odds.

To not be bitter, what would be that much different from not caring? Hopes and dreams and aspirations, these things aren’t merely concepts, they fill up a part of you. Is pain a reverberation from the depths of these unfilled caverns, the sound of hallow echos from these deep chambers? Would being content with nothing simply be to have no aspirations, to truly be detached from the physical world? The consciousness doesn’t run on emptiness, it runs on your deepest emotions, which play out in dreams as a depiction of these inner plays of fears and desires. To end with bitterness, shut it out and ignore it, and instead say “no, I am happy”, is deception. To end with bitterness, to shut it out and say “no, I am through”, is giving up.

To be consciously aware of what stifles feelings of peace, begrudging these stifling factors, is something you can always say belongs to you. If nothing else belongs to you, not your aspirations, not your freedom, you can always begrudge that which stifles you, with just as much power as all the combined factors against you combined. Life, death, justice, society, matter, all of it can be rejected. The freedom of the mind is true freedom, it’s the only true freedom, it’s like a limb. Perhaps that’s why l felt I needed to feel embittered about something, because perhaps what I felt was that I was missing a limb, and perhaps to feel that bitterness, to this very day, is the continued struggle of finding that limb which seems to be missing when there’s despair.

Struggle against despair, bitterness against despair, not despair against peacefulness, not struggle for despair. When I delve into uncertainty, my inner compass will be my bitterness and cynicism.

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>>8493398
And seriously, not to seem like the average memeing 4channer I'll add: existantialism, nihilism and cosmic pessimism are legit point of view for me. Something I hold very close tbph.
But to exclusively wrapped your modus operandi and your world's view and, moreover, your writing around them, it's pointless and, in the end, uninteresting.
You need to develop a narrative, you need to let something happen from there, even if it's just words, just a story.
What you wrote it's waaaaaaaaaaaaay to self centered. And not centered around you, let me be perfectly clear, but about those feeling you're trying to put on paper. Let something else transpire. How you've come there, where you can go from there. Put something about you in there, the real you, the one who eats and shits. It'll surely add more value to your prose if you try to stay grounded
The Stranger is a good and accessible example imho.

I'm >>8493104 btw, and I'm telling you this because it's what I've been trying to do during all these years, yknow.
That's the base. That's the theme. Now explore it and yourself.