Eternal Critique Thread

>Ikkabod
>clam

S m h m8

>>8534624
>>clam
Goddamnit, I had caught that in an earlier revision on my hard drive, didn't realize I hadn't updated.

>>Ikkabod
Mind elaborating? I realize that's not how it's usually spelled, if that's what you're getting at.

Wrote this in 5 minutes. Don't know what I'm doing. Pls no bully.

The many express ideals
The few live them real
Can talkers truly hold blame
for men naturally falter
Before the onslaught of life

Living real, you know above all
Men cannot be Socrates
He is one man long dead
Yet his spirit, like the man in life
Confronts the sordid nature of man

Yes! Men falter, for it is our nature
Do no fret, revel in this instead
Once fallen, there is only to rise
Rise like the Roman
Find the true road;
And March
For Rome awaits

>>8534839
I don't think that it's good.

Wrote this some time ago. Poetry is a fun pastime, but I don't take it all that seriously, still, some feedback is always appreciated.


When the brutally humbling, fashionable world
Like an American flag, unfurled,
When it thoughtlessly turned itself near inside out
And like a helpless child, full of doubt
Imputed magical powers to those few men
Unlike the rest, again and again

When our small world became a finger-pointing dog
A thing of white and black, a grey fog
A small, mere vessel for barking politicians
A domain of terms and conditions
A young, angry rebel; drowning in modern pills
Chasing those modern enthralling thrills

That’s when I tranced out of our delicate realm
To a light place where waves overwhelm
The heavenly shoreline where mind and matter meet
Where things are different, though complete
All is vague; through the trained eyes of my trusty pen
And it’s like being a kid again

Where every single thing is in it’s own right place
Where life flows without the human race
Where every single thing is in it’s own right place
Where life flows without the human race
And profoundly unusual thoughts/shapes float past
Whatever they can to make it last

Rocks and sand overpower my thoughts and my mind
I am good, I am refined

>>8534610
Not the original anon who critiqued you, but why the name Ikkabod though? That's a pretty uncommon name

>>8535688
The character is based on a close friend of mine who reminded me of Ichabod Crane when I first heard the story of Sleepy Hollow when I was young. I misspelled it to conform to naming conventions of the fictional culture he's from, as this story is part of a larger worldbuilding project I've been working on for a long time now.


I've never been into poetry enough to say whether I liked you work here but I definitely related to it. You're words got me feeling some familiar feelings just now. Would read your stuff again.

Dunno if this is the right place for it but I'm having a brainfart and I need to let it out.

Against governmental law = illegal
Against religious law = ???

>>8536207
impious
sinful
wicked

>>8536219
Thank you. Can't believe I couldn't even think of "sinful."

>>8534839
Try to rewrite this.

http://pastebin.com/kGXrDcEk

it is about rape

>>8535688
I liked it, but some things sound forced

>again and again
avoid this repetition

>finger-pointing dog
it sounds bad

the rest is fine

Part of a story, will post the rest if there is interest

Elmer watched him breathe his final breath. His fur glistened in the sunlight as blood gushed from his small frame. He seemed to bake on the asphalt as the life drained from him.
“Do not let my efforts perish in vain…” he said, before his closed in eternal slumber.
Elmer rested on his hind legs in petrified silence, in disbelief at the images his beady eyes detected.
His name had been Roger. He had arrived at Pete’s Pet Store earlier that day. From the moment Elmer locked eyes with him from the confines of his cage, he knew Roger was different. There was a spark in his eyes. A vitality he had never seen in any other rabbit brimmed from his movements, his exuberance, his fiery rhetoric. All new rabbits had a certain sense of enthusiasm that was inexorably crushed, but Roger was different. He was awake.
It had been a slow day in the store, and the rabbits lazed about their cage. Life in a pet store was devoid of all meaning. Eat. Sleep. Shit. Wait to be bought by some snotnosed kid who would simply use them as their plaything and discard them when they ceased to be entertaining. And so they spent their days, as was tradition, as had always been done, in aimless subsistence, dreaming of a freedom they would never experience. Their only solace was their mercifully short life spans.

Thinking about just doing a paste bin but here's something quick. Any critique would be wonderful!


She awoke, with fever induced excitement -
but unwilling to leave, her land of fantastical dreams

Dimmed orbs of dark, squinting at the winking light of a newborn sun -
Drowsy fingertips grasping at sheets, flinging them off her naked form

The soft whispers of robes, sliding, covering clammy, goosebumped skin -
A one dimensional protection against the unquenchable thirst of the wind

Seeping, twisting and slipping through cracks of a frozen house, as the world changed around it -
An electrifying shock as bare feet pressed against the icy chill of marble tiles

Soft padding of footsteps down an empty corridor -
Guarded by painted eyes, unblinking as time passed by

That looked away, from the door that led -
Out, out into the outside world.

The whispers of ghosts following her trail -
As she flings the heavily ornamented doors open, yet weak as they crack and bend

Down into her fragrant gardens she goes -
Toes digging into the soft vibrant soil, bursting with life

The tender touch of petals -
warms her blood

As the prick of thorns -
bleed rubies down her once unmarked hand

A blissful smile turns into grimace and sadness -
a head turned in question

Her life secluded -
to the eternal building, she called home


A dainty form, vanishing in and out -
discovering a new thing here, and here and there

The delighted laughs -
and muted whimpers


Always quick to run back to the heavily ornamented doors -
their hinges creaking, quivering as their form weakened

Until one day, she left -
She left, left too far that allowed for no hurried escape

Ending in a shy face, hidden behind a vine covered pillar, among rubble of ancient civilizations -
As a stranger, beckoned

With answers, and questions -
That he freely gave, and whom she freely went with

Years went by -
When she finally visited the house, with corridors of painted eyes

She slipped back into robes from her youth -
Snuggled under the sheets that had warmed her in the coldest of nights

She closed her eyes -
And as she did, fire was birthed into the house that had stood frozen, as the world changed around it

The chorus and singing of flames with their suits of red, blue and orange, reverberated in the home -
their contralto and soprano tones creating a symphony of scorch and ruin

Leaving a skeleton wall and blackened faces -
And the form of a sleeping maiden

As vines and trees creeped in and all other forms of green took root -
Growing and twisting, bathing in the warmth of the sun

A shelter alight with the beating heart of life -
A mass of roots and shyly peeking tendrils

Allowing for gentle breezes from the tenderest of winds -
Yet shielding from the mightiest of tempests, as their leaves shook, bending and turning but never breaking

Stirring in her slumber -
She woke, to find herself laying in a bed of grass

And never went back to sleep

>>8538111
I was getting a watership down vibe from it, it's not exactly bad but the tense and morose atmosphere seems especially forced and unnatural. I'm not sure what you could use, but instead of using darker language, perhaps push that dark environment through the actions of the other rabbits, perhaps quivering in fear instead just outright saying "this is bad"

Use more behavioral language?

Just my thought though. Wouldn't mind reading the rest.

>>8537320
eggy/10

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QG_OTC9o1ePXheJGlyiNr001j3P2mpMPuFrYWI_q3Ao/edit?usp=sharing

English is not my first language, grammar has always been an issue so any errors in it please point them out!

Hello my name is Mitko but my friends call me Mitkosa. I'm not sure how it's pronounced because it has never been said out loud (it's my nickname on the Plane of Battlecraft East European server. Anyway... Today I woked up at 6:30. It's a school day. I don't need an alarm clock - my neighbour (he lives below us - we're on the 13th floor of an apartment building) has set his expensive hi-fi sound system to play loud music at that exact time. He doesn't even go to work then - he wakes up to jog in the morning. Nobody complains because his dad is one of the 'big' cops in my small town. And also everyone needs to be up at that time anyway. He has shitty taste too - every morning it's the same old thrash metal songs. I put on my school clothes to the sounds of a track from the band 'Slayer'. I know that because my dad told me. I don't listen to much music. Usually when I sit down at the table to eat breakfast the music has stopped. Now it's the other extreme - it's super quiet. Mom looks upset again. Dad looks at both of us with judging eyes. We're eating toast and white cheese, with mineral water for drink. I don't feel like eating though, so I just stare at my loaf. I need to get going in a few minutes anyway - school starts at 7:30 and I need to catch a bus. I get up to start getting ready to leave, but my shitty dad tells me to sit down and eat my toast. I hate this guy sometimes. I sit down and quickly eat it up. ....
...
There's my bus stop. I can barely get out from the packed bus. I smell like sweat and what's worse - it's other people's sweat. I don't really care though - my mind is too busy dreading the worst part of my trip - the walk to school. As I cross the road and take the turns I need to turn, I see the big walkway that leads to school. You can see the other kids here - everyone with their group. The walkway is big enough so that it's not packed dense. I don't really belong to any group though. I'm really bad at social stuff. I try to join with the weirdo/outcast group, but when I'm there I notice that conversation stops and they're just waiting for me to leave. So anyway, I enter the road and just keep walking forward. Suddenly I hear a shout directed towards me - 'Heyyy look dudes, it's the jelly!'
Yeah I forgot to mention - my nickname is school is 'Jelly'. I don't know why. Everyone laughs at this. It's never not funny. Just as I was invisible before, I'm now the center of attention. I turn around. The group of kids who were fucking with me then was just behind me. As I turn around, one of them pushes me to the ground, saying 'Watch where you're going, jello" everyone laughs again and walks around me. I get up. As I was patting myself clean of dirt, someone slapped my neck really hard. It really hurt me. It was stronger than usual. The kid who did this is called Petar. He loves slapping my neck. Everyone else loves it too. (from here on out it's pages of more bullying screnes)

i am gay
you are gay
we are gay
we're /fa/

>>8538813
10/10

Critique related:

How can I ensure that the pacing of my novel is good? I don't know shit about pacing.

Currently I have an outline I am working on. In summary.

Set in a medieval fantasy world. The son of an aristocrat has been lifelong friends with a girl who commands the elite guard

of the army and another boy who wants to become a leader. They are at war with a kingdom of beastmen, but the real enemy is

the corrupt high council of the kingdom. They are looking for a constant edge on the beastmen and it appears, in the form of

a message. The message is that the near-mythical lost city of Under Heaven has been found, a last bastion of ancient

technology from thousands of years before, when war spread green fire throughout the planet and the world's advanced

technology was lost. The leader and the commander are sent to go get whatever weapons they can, specifically a legendary army

of metal soldiers.

The aristocrat decides to go along, wanting to prove to his father and his friends that he's just as tough as any of them.

They journey, and the aristocrat is forced to kill bandits and begins questioning himself. He doesn't want to become a

killer, and wants to be a hero, but finds himself under pressure to change his ideals. They eventually reach a monastery

where a tunnel leading to the lost city is located. The local religious group warns them that the army of beastmen led by the

general himself his already gone through the portal. And so the party hastens. Inside, they find themselves in a dead city

encased in a giant stone sphere. The city is mostly intact and empty, shades of the dead lingering around with no reason but

the ignorance of their own death. In camp, the aristocrat discovers the leader is secretly working with the rebels against

the high council. He tells his friend the leader that they'll deal with it when they return to the kingdom. The group reaches

the castle and defeats the beastmen. But in order to use the iron army, souls must be bound to the iron soldiers. And so the

commander and the leader sacrifice most of their men to control the army. The aristocrat takes this as a sign to show his

heroism and attempts to stop them, not because he disagrees with overthrowing the council, but because his disagrees with

their methods, but is killed.

>>8540471

20 years later, he awakens. He finds himself in a prototype artificial soldier, more organic than mechanical. He dons a

jester costume from his youth left behind and leaves to take revenge. He is consumed by hatred for his former friends and

plots to destroy the monarchy.Eventually he gains a group of rebel followers who shared his hatred for the monarchy. In this

new kingdom, the council is no more and absolute power is wielded by the king and queen. The rebels hate this, yet somehow

mirror the rebels from 20 years ago. Some big plan is concocted to break in and assassinate the king and queen. They go

through with it and the aristocrat ends up in the throne room with his weapon to the throat of the king. He realizes that his

friends have improved the kingdom and that he hasn't been fighting for his fallen comrades as much as he has been for himself

and that he wanted it to be himself up on that throne. In his moment of suddent clarity, he's a kid again like he was before

the journey. The king comforts him briefly and the aristocrat escapes, the rest of the rebels having been easily slaughtered

by the Queen.

He realizes that his hatred has compromised his heroic ideals and wanders, seeking redemption. He hears tale of a wish-

granting item deep below the lost city and, knowing where the city is, heads to look for it. He goes with intent to wish that

he had never gone with his two friends on their journey. But when he reaches it, he can't bring himself to wish for it. He

knows that experiences, no matter how horrible, have made him a stronger person. He instead wishes to be a hero. But nothing

appears to happen and he wanders off to find his destiny. I've unintentionally done a sort of Jesus thing with the main

character.

Now, I haven't finalized the details of each character thus far I have: Marche Montresor, the Aristocrat. Wields a bardiche.

Faris Nightshade, the Leader. Wields a magicircle and a sword. Aela Aquilla, the Commander. Wields a greatsword.

In addition there are lots of world-building details I haven't included in my post, such as how the magic works and the

magic-based technology, religions, etcetera.

>>8538813
Any more oh talentef one?

>>8540471
>>8540474
What.

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I would like someone to read this short story in full.
http://pastebin.com/ZTyy6Tvj

>>8538366
I'm assuming English isn't your first language so I'm not gonna spend too much time on the grammatical and typographical errors.
In the end you switch tense from present to past
>"As i was patting myself clean of dirt..."
Also the lonely kid who gets bullied story is very trite. Why is what you have to say different? That is what you should focus on.
Don't tell us that the character's dad is shitty. Show us.
Why does he smell like other people's sweat when he exits the bus? Interactions?
I also doubt someone doesn't know why they have a nickname. You need to change that to make the character more real.
Why is the walk to school his least favorite part?

You need to work more on developing your characters and writing with intention.


Since I don't think I should critique without posting something of my own I'll reply to this with an exercise I did recently

>>8542696

Here it is:


We sat on the cold sand of the beach, our heads looking above us at the starlit sky. I turned to my right and whispered in her ear. It doesn’t matter what I whispered, I don’t remember what it was, but whatever I said made her giggle and give my shoulder a push. The abrasive smell of salt spread throughout the air around us. I got up on my feet and shook the sand off of my back and onto Vanessa before pointing at her and the horizon in front of me. Then I took off running. I looked back and saw her lying on her side, waving at me with those tiny cream hands of hers. I looked down at the footprints that trailed behind me and I felt like I was leaving my mark on the planet. In thousands of years, anthropologists would look at my footprints to discover some trait about their ancestors that we think arbitrary. Then the water rolled onto the shore and washed everything away. There I stood, transient once again. Maybe when I die, I thought, my body will be fossilized; that’s the best anybody can hope for, really. I realized that I’d run so far from Vanessa that her body was just another grain of sand in the distance. I got down on my back and stared at the ocean. It must be wonderful to be a fish: everyone cares about them—except, I suppose, other, bigger fish. I decided that I would lie there and wait for Vanessa, and when she got to me I would tell her about how I’d decided to become a fish and how I loved her and how I wanted her to join me. I knew what she would say. I knew that she would swing the strands of wheat atop her head across her face and purse her lips and, in the way she always talked, ambiguous between asking or telling, say, “But I’m already a fish.” My thoughts began to dwell on her lips. I wanted once again to press them against mine. My chest began to burn the way it always did when I thought about kissing Vanessa, and I decided I wanted to see her at once: to proclaim my love for her and kiss her the way she would never let me: with full control. With every step I took I thought about her. Her bright blue eyes that could drown you if you looked at them for too long. Her small rounded nose that looked as though it had been perfectly stitched into the middle of her face. Her large breasts that strained against the swimsuit top that she was wearing, and her generous thighs that slid a bit against each other like satin sheets on a late night. Vanessa would tell a joke and then laugh softly; her voice cracked with every word she spoke as if she were in constant apology. My face could feel the buzzing hum of her allure with every inch I gained closer to her, and soon enough Vanessa was back in sight. She was lying at the edge of the sand, half in the water. Of course, I thought, she was practicing for our future as fish. Then I was just feet away.

Vanessa was lying at the edge of the sand, her head and arms in the water, her swimsuit bottom pulled around her ankles, and her body still.

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>Andy knocked on the door of the house with a tin of red paint. A woman opened the door and greeted him and quickly showed him to his task. It was a wall of bare beige plaster which she wanted red. He was excited to paint and stared off out the window imagining the many great strokes he would assert in the near future and the fine detailing he would carefully apply along the skirting boards, He imagined even longer the pleased look on the woman's face, and her thank-you's, and her hair in the red sun light bouncing off the red wall. She was standing behind him for about a minute in silence waiting for him to paint.
She asked him if he was ready to go and he snapped out of his thoughts and said a single yep. He started thinking where to start, measuring up the wall with his eye, taking care to note that he would need extra paint on the filler where the plaster boards were joined, considering how he would need to wait for a while in between coats and considered how he would spend that time, perhaps with tea and a cigarette. Could he smoke in here? Could he drink tea in here? With her, I mean, She would expect conversation and what if he had none to give. "This wall is really great, I cant wait to start painting." he said. "Ok, well I'll just be in the living room if you need me." and she smiled and she left.

>That comment was inappropriately eager for a man whos' job it is to paint walls. He walked into the living room. "The wall is fine, I mean. A good surface for paint and an excellent drywall job by the man who did it. Give my compliments to him." He said, and considered it even more inappropriate that he was so aloof about the wall. "It's alright haha, its a bit of an eyesore if you ask me, can't bloody wait to get it covered over." and she smiled and he died and he looked at the floor scanning his empty head, which had had Michael Bublé - Haven't Met You Yet's opening lines on an ungraspable, idle repeat all day, for a good response. When he looked back up he said, a little too loud "It's a damned eyesore i tell you, and this paint here-" He winked "-She'll do the job i tell ye!" She did a little laugh and looked into the tv screen. "I'll Get right back to it then." He returned to the kitchen wincing his eyes. He thought for longer than he should have about how stupid what he said had been and then he looked down at his paint.

>>8542701
I enjoyed this. I was definitely able to connect with it, and I would definitely read more. I have a couple of comments, but take them with a grain of salt.

>I looked down at the footprints that trailed behind me and I felt like I was leaving my mark on the planet. In thousands of years, anthropologists would look at my footprints to discover some trait about their ancestors that we think arbitrary.
This didn't feel as thought-provoking or unique as I think you want it to. It might help to explain why he feels this way. What about this moment makes him consider leaving his permanent mark on things? Are we supposed to read into it like he's thinking about the permanence of his relationship with Venessa? If so, you could connect it a little more and it might feel stronger. Just a thought.

>strands of wheat atop her head
This image makes me think her hair is stiff and stale, rather than just simply wheat-colored. If that's intentional, maybe you could tell us it's stiff earlier so it doesn't seem strange.

Also, if it's nighttime, why can he see so well? Maybe I just missed something.

>>8543523
I definitely felt a bit of second-hand embarrassment, so good job there. The dialogue works well. I don't know if it's just a stylistic thing, but I disagree with a few choices made in the first paragraph. "It was a wall of bare beige plaster which she wanted red." Well, it's obvious she wants it red because the tin is red and you say it's red again in just a couple of sentences. "great many strokes" I would cut the great. "Assert in the near future" Assert is just a strange word here. Also I'm pretty sure sunlight is one word.

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Really iffy about a few pieces of this, but not really ready to refine it anymore. Please tell me everything you hate about it.

>>8536207
Heretical
Blasphemous

>Christ, I’ve made a habit of way overdoing these stories, huh? Well, the point remains: I suddenly remember Jesse. I decided not to jerk off, and laid back down. Thinking back, I probably should have gone ahead and jerked it. Sleep would have been better than lying in bed brainstorming all of the reasons that I’m a hopelessly romantic loser with zero conquests of any particular note. In fact, I lack any conquests of a romantic nature whatsoever. I suspect it’s because I’m a beta, but even that feels like a poor. I feel that I lack the naivete and submission that most betas seem to cling to and even wallow in. Maybe that's the naivete talking. Or maybe I’m gay, but who knows? Either way I'm still hopeless.

I don't like it from, 'romantic nature whatsoever,' on, but I'd like to here some crit regardless.

>>8542696
I can make no excuses. My 'book' was basically going to be a bunch of high-school torture scenes. I had to shorten many things out so it can fit on /lit/, but generally, yeah. It was supposed to read like a blogpost, but I keep forgetting to think about it.

>>8543523
Why did you just copy and paste this out of my pastebin? i dont understand.

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>>8544153
The better question is: Why shouldn't I?

>>8538178
what does eggy mean?

>>8544745
>http://pastebin.com/kGXrDcEk
its a meme word for edgy.

>>8543749
Holy... I want more...

>>8544785
good :)

Edgy poetry/10:

An honest man sits
Alone beneath a tree,
And the whole world dares to listen.
A man whose words
Are bittersweet,
But the world does not dismiss him.
In fact, he feels,
With every sin
The world begins to miss him.
An honest man, here, once sat,
And told the world so much.
When on this tree he hung his hat,
The grass forgot his touch.

>>8545308
Kind of like it

The three of us moved stealthy under the cover of darkness, save the only light coming above from the gleaming moon, with it's asteroid belt surrounding the pale white disk I could not help but think it was a skull grinning down at us, baring teeth like a chesire smile already knowing the outcome of their fate. I neared the mouth of the cave with trepidation, my breathing growing slower and quieter until I wasn't even making a sound save for the crunching of stone and gravel against my hard leather boots. I was always told by my masters to be cautious around these parts as rushing into something out here could very well cost you your life.

>>8545712

objectively bad:
>grammar mistakes
>"save" used twice
>confused similies, metaphors, imagery
>needlessly complicated descriptions and sentence structues

>>8544057
pointless posting such a short excerpt that is just navel-gazing

>>8543749
>ambiguous whether "a filthy street dog" is the narrator or "her" (I'm guessing it's the narrator, but the sentence is still unclear)
>"insecurities overflowing like foam from my mouth" does this simile work for you?

And then too many images and metaphors that don't really have a point?? It gets a little better in the last paragraph or so (imo) but you still need to cut like 50% out

>>8543523
ehhh this is kind of like the stories you'd find in an mfa workshop by a (sorry) white cismale

>some mundane task plot aspires to higher/deeper themes but never goes anywhere close to it
>characters thinking and visualizing mundane things
>stale prose

so yeah, it's really boring/pointless imo

>>8545772
http://pastebin.com/ZTyy6Tvj
Some anime fag posted only half the story idk why, heres the full

>>8545800
Still doesn't change anything.

>>8545800
>http://pastebin.com/ZTyy6Tvj

I saw this when I was scrolling up and skimmed it, and imo, my comments are the same

there's nothing to attract or engage the reader (who cares about Andy? Who cares about his task? It seems like Andy doesn't even care) and the prose is not nearly good enough to carry it along

ask yourself who your influences are and try to imitate what makes them attractive to you

>>8543531
pls

>>8538111
>gushed
I personally don't like onomatopoeia. Especially in a grave case like this... makes me think of gushers, gushing praise! Not blood pooling from a dying kitty :(

>>8540438
Just read it. I think A/B switching is pretty good, seems to work (you write the A plot and switch to B right before the climax, then you keep doing that, can be done with up to infinitely many plots to fuck with people).

>>8544813
such a cruel meme!

>>8538152
Common diction for opacity, nice. Spanish is the L1, so don't take me seriously much

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Should I keep going?

The man wore the entire garb. Tattered canvas tunic, prickled thorn crown and splintered wooden cross. His feet were mangled and charred and his face sullen and scarred. He carried the cross on his back and sometimes adjusted it to one of his shoulders. He journeyed through the heart of the city each day, rain or shine. The monolithic crowd was unkind to his undertaking and would spit on him and throw food. They protested his cause, especially during the holidays and would hit him with bike chains, snow, and bird seed. Metal pipes were uncommon but not unseen. He had learned to keep his head down and grew a thicker beard to catch the saliva. He never said a word.
He lived in a smokestack building on the outskirts of the city where people dwelled in underground drains and sold themselves into rope collared slavery. The homeless gathered outside of the wide brick building he lived in and massed together like ants to stay warm. The man was returning from his work when it began to snow soot out from a granular sky. He barked demonic coughs and his nipples were fully erect, shriveled and purple. He couldn’t feel his feet. The bottom of the cross’ corner dragged on the ground and he nearly buckled under the weight of his bludgeoned knee. A feathered homeless man turned away from the pack and watched him struggle home. The homeless man picked at the gap in his mouth and scraped out some dirt and sludge and motioned toward another member of the pack at the man. They moved toward him cagily like two midnight thieves.

>>8538212
>Using handtalk he responded.
I have never heard sign language reffered to as "hand talk." It strikes me as very awkward wording. Kind of subjective, but I would consider revising
.
>the suit, it’s purpose designed only to withstand the heat

First, you mean "its" not "it's" (which means "it is").
Second, The suit is designed to withstand heat, not the purpose of the suit. In other words, either remove the words "its purpose" or remove "designed" and move "only" before "purpose".

>The technology rebuilt his body as he slept, two hours meant a day of sleep in the suit

This is a run-on sentence. You need to make that comma a period or semi-colon or else add a conjunctive like "and" or "so".

Overall, you're English is actually fairly good.

My little abomination: http://pastebin.com/KHC73cHz

>>8547059
>you're English
Qualifications.

>>8547067
The fact that a fourth grader could point out a run-on sentence and the wrong usage of its vs. it's?

>>8547061
>http://pastebin.com/KHC73cHz
pretttay prettay good

>>8546948
"Common diction for opacity"
Mind explaining this a bit further but thank you! And spanish is my first language too desu

>>8547059
Thanks for the tips, I appreciate it very much!

>>8546997

obviously keep writing but there is not enough context in the excerpt you provided

I have no idea what's happening - that said, some of your metaphors and descriptions are very strange (possibly nonsensical?)

also

>either commit to the oxford comma (which you should) or don't

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Trying to into Ekphrastic Poetry how'd I do?

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Ernest’s paddle dipped quietly into the water and as he let his little dugout canoe glide peacefully downstream, he became suddenly aware how extraordinary alone he was at that moment. It frightened him a bit. The canoe floated, as if on air, through a wondrous silence; the sort of silence you might find only in a timeworn cathedral. The swallows that darted through the canopy of trees above him could be seen through the thick, morning mist. Apart from them, it was a world undisturbed by life of any kind… it was an eternal world and Ernest felt himself flowing through it like one flows through a current of dreams. What sort of dreams, Ernest knew not. He only felt himself fatigued and numbed-- his threadbare coat barely kept him warm but it was all he could afford. Despite all this and despite the tranquil river, he would not allow himself to fall asleep. For here indeed the quiet also meant caution, and like a watchful old Indian chief, he held the paddle idle across his knees and with his back bent, he leaned forward and peered downstream with a torpid gaze for any sign of life, especially human life-- the only kind that meant real trouble. But the small sandbanks on the shore were empty except for the fog that hung over them like apparitions. “Stay awake,” he muttered to himself. After a few more strokes he would pause and look-- sniffing the damp, soft air till a cold chill would steal over him again, then he would dip his paddle into the water and exert some energy. “Come on now. Stay awake, goshdarnit…”

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Wanted to kill some time with a Fantasy Draft of mine.

What'cha think?

Was thinking of naming character only address by their title. It goes with the Overall Theme of the novel. Would readers like it or hate it

>>8548030
No

>>8547686
First sentence is a comma splice. The third sentence should have a comma instead of a semi-colon. In the fourth sentence, the swallows "could be seen" is redundant. Bringing up the swallows implies they are seen. Say something more interesting about them. Is it common for indian chiefs to hold paddles on their knees with a bent back? This seems like a strange simile.

>>8548030
Your second sentence doesn't have a verb. Commonly people would say a person's legs are spaghetti, not their knees. I can't envision spaghetti knees at all. "The Golem rusting to its axles" should be "was rusting to its axles." "A strike of thunder, the flash of god" God should (probably) be capitalized and there is no verb in this sentence."Goldanna cut through the iron like cutting through jelly" sounds very strange. It cut like cutting through jelly? Would be stronger if you just said it cut through the iron like it was jelly.

That's not even everything in those first ~200 words. Biggest thing you could do is learn some grammar.

>>8549847
Thanks for the tip fampai. Grammar ain't my strongest suit, but that won't stop me from learning.

Did it paint an image for you though? Like, did you know what was going on story-wise?

Any Germans here? I'd need some advice.

>>8550103
Blame everything on the Juden. Heil Hitler

>>8547263
Utilization of common and familiar words and concepts to the reader to amount to a fresh, new inscape. And you've developed a clever one for the girl as subject, too. Seems she's a sad dole indeed.

Me encanto, anon. De veras.

>>8549917
I kept imagining Futurama.

What makes poetry good poetry?

>>8550537
If contemporary society derives pleasure from it, and its appended to all modern conflicts and stigma

No fucking meme, 'non. Look at Rupi Kaur (modern feminist) and then some Pound or Rimbaud. If you're anything like half of /lit/, then your poetry will never make it, but then again, the other half doesn't set themselves on same.

>>8550565
FUCK HOW IS POUND SO SIMPLE AND SO GOOD

1/2
What do you guys think of this. I'm experimenting with a new style. Before any of you guys start BTW the story ends up being an affirmation of religion so no edge-lord hate please.

The Religious Person
In their mid-twenties the Religious person became wholly un-well mentally, spending much of their time constructing elaborate dialogues with their friends and family, mentally, which advanced certain very personal themes which they feared were totally unintelligible. It was in fact the unintelligibility of these themes which frightened the Religious Person most because serious consideration of unintelligible ideas seemed as clear a definition of madness as they could think of, although, secretly, they believed that these themes or ideas were actually just abstractions of very universal things, dressed up in abstraction so as to make them less painful to consider – but then here they would get going again because secret from who exactly?
From a young age the religious person had been told that they must love God and they had tried very hard to do so. Nearly everyone they knew in any kind of authority or advisory position opined that they must love God and the religious person did not stop to question the mandate until much later. Sometimes the religious person conducted these dialogues and advanced these themes to a God figure or their childhood Vicar, who they’d not been close to in the conventional sense of interpersonal relationships but who they’d felt a kind of intimacy with akin to what they felt with a few of their favourite authors, or even certain songs or musicians.
The religious person was also a fiction writer and tried abortively to commit these dialogues to prose, often finding them too unintelligible or horridly revealing even after just a few sentences.
The religious person lived – in their twenties – with a few people whom they no longer considered close friends.
The religious person – T/R/P from here on – considered rather that like their Vicar and parents and members of their congregation the people they currently lived with were trapped in a horrible kind of narcissism and concurrent self-loathing which they themselves must free themselves from.
For example, one of T/R/P’s flat mates, also in their mid-twenties, believed themselves to be part of a certain select group of people whom were terribly worldly and well adjusted and as a result very personable and hedonistic, the logic in this following that once all viewpoints had been considered there was little left worth doing but being vaguely scornful of most things while being incredibly kind to other people of this select group and having a huge amount of fun with these people for as much of the time as was feasibly possible.

>>8550670
Yeahh, that's why he's praised in /lit/ so fucking much

>>8550676
2/2

T/R/P sometimes sat with this flat-mate and their certain select group in the dining room of their shared flat. Here what would happen would be that the group would all say things that obliquely developed the idea that they all knew each other extremely intimately and that they shared a very deep understanding of the world that bound them together and revealed to them the fact that, everything considered, there was nothing better to do than what they were already doing. The problem for T/R/P and for the group was that they did not know each other well enough to pick up on each other’s oblique thematic advancements and so often had to feign understanding with very strict attention being paid to the idea that they actually understood the oblique advancements totally naturally and with great depth, so much so that what would eventually happen was that each member of the group would eventually obscure themselves more and more from each other member and end up totally isolated and alone. This upset T/R/P so much that they became extremely angry and disgusted and while sitting with the group would often end up feeling totally isolated and alone. T/R/P would often see a smoke cloud drifting very slowly accosts varnished Balsa wood.

>>8550677
Is this you? >>8550565
If so, Could you post some stuff you've written? I'm pretty fascinated by poetry being measured against contemporary society, because its a kinda of more visceral form. I really like reading and writing poetry, but in light of what you've said, its pretty mediocre. I'd really like to learn how to grow

>>8550528
Oh shit, thanks anon. That means a lot! Do you mind if I ask what you think it means? It always interests me to know what people think it means to them.

Muchas gracias hermano, tu ingles es muy bien por cierto

>>8550676
>>8550683
Seems a lot like DFW. only skimmed it, but ya. interesting

I posted this earlier in the year after a major setback with my ex. We broke up a month ago or two ago. I've posted it since but I haven't been able to get much feedback.

This one was at some asian-fusion retro bar,
She sat with her legs crossed hands in lap.
I asked her if she had the time
When she smiled and looked down she saw her watch had gone missing!

My face surprised painted a destroyer–
‘Let’s find it! We have no time to waste!’

A small child running in circles,
Als das Kind Kind war

Just like everything I think,
My feelings were disjointed
The minute hands on her clock flew,
But we were yet to find it

Do you know that feeling at the end of the night,
When everyone parts ways with hugs,
Or maybe just a wave and exclamation,
Or maybe just dismissal without eye contact?

Oh god, and the next day,
When you lay in bed criss crossing the ways she existed there
The way she smiled? The way she felt?
Do you lay in, lazy sundays, the thought of her,
Pure, innocent thoughts that only lead way to
The destroyer within us all

But this one lost her watch,
And I hadn’t the time nor intentions
To keep her from looking,
So so simply,
I let her on her way.

Just a quick questions friends, is there any distinction between Pathos and simple literary technique (power of 3 etc.), or is the latter a sort of subsidiary of the former? Cc.

My Hope, The Dream

It was like a fire burning inside me
in those last moments it raged and crackled
and then fizzled out
but i don't feel cold
I'm warm and at peace

>>8534839
be sure to consider meter and syllables. seems this is like a free style poem, but it's too long for that to work.

http://pastebin.com/QBxiU0rF

Here's my first piece.

English is not my first language.

Just some shit I wrote recently

Imbroglion:
As if by dybbuk their bodies trembled in the August breeze.
- Cigarette?
- No.
Lanky hands retreated the pack into the waistcoat’s tattered shabby. Giuseppe intoned, hesitant: – Your pupils are dilated.
- Yeah?
- Yeah. Know why?
- No... Religious passions?
- Dominus vobiscum.
- Pfftt.
A pause took hold.
- How far back was the straight path?
- Probably a kilo or two, trust me I know this detour and…
- Where was it?
- I don’t remember, we’ll probably…
- There’s nothing to track by out here.
- Sure there is, we’ll be fine.
- The town?
- About three kilos, through the valley there… gesturing nondescript to an illuminated ridge.
- Up through the west and then we’re home free, no?
- Right.
- A solis ortus cardine, sheperds and their lot.
A snort obscured Roberto’s further comment. In step:
- Ravenna O Ravenna!
- From your cradle…
- Subterfuge! Pataphysics!
- Merde.
Twilight passed, eventless, in alternating tones of mockery.

Tatterdepygmalion:
The arrival to Kars came in a fervid noon.
- Three kilos my ass.
- Lucius he shall be called…
- Do you think we could get a line to L’Araldo out here?
- Not a chance.
- Letter?
- Post is shaky at best.
- I don’t know if I can do this.
- Why not?
- Assignment’s three odd weeks, no?
- About. Two if the Cumhuriyet doesn’t pan out.
- Long time away.
His thoughts lingered on the comfortable corridors of his home, free from the obscurities of hinterland or disarray.
- It’ll suffice, Ankara is within a week anyhow.
- Who determined me fit…
- In a country with ata and apostle…
- Perhaps I just need to gather my thoughts and relax.
- …Aeneas a dark sea.
- Hmm?
- Yizhou what you need to, aether of us can go to the governor’s office to clear the matter.
- I’ll find our host.
- Card?
- Have it on me.
- Passport?
- Mmmhmmm.
- Attenborough’d?
- Of course.
- Alright. Get some rest, I’ll let myself in if you tell them I’m with you.
- Later, then.
The color of day departed with the hours, and as the minutiae-flurries of the two men ceased, they released themselves in collision from their fatigues and slept the night through.


>>8550683
Although I see the DFW comparisons, some of the vocabulary (a la "extremely angry") is a bit weak and deprives the story of the cold clinical style. Try reading Bolano's novels for a better idea of how to do this style

>>8552702
cool

>>8552755
Looks like what I'd whip up in imitation of Joyce, and so rather difficult for me to read personally, but it flows well and the sound is good. I feel it belongs as part of something larger with strong characters, or else it's just lanky & wanky, superficial.

>>8553047
It's just a small part of a novel i'm working on, so I hope to do character building a bit more later on

Thanks for the aesthetic comments though, means a lot.

looking for critique
The Stalker looked over the sullen, grey landscape he called his home. It was a land of grey crags, mossy forested valleys and old ruins of the previous civilisations that lived there, now only inhabited with rooks and rats and all kinds of beasts.

The Stalker was clad in a long cloak of a green wool, thick and heavy, and under that he wore furs, and under that he wore a tunic of linen without sleeves. His feet had simple buckskin shoes, and oftentimes he went without them, and as a result they were calloused and rough. On his legs were breeches of grey wool.
His red hair was tied into a ponytail as to not get into his eyes, and he had a short beard.
On his body he carried many things, a pouch for fire and for food, a fur blanket, and twine and rope. He carried a bow across his back, and a sword was at his side, and a short seax was strapped securely to his belt.
The Stalker was not a civilised man; he did not live in a stone house surrounded by great walls, and did not engage in petty arguments or visit brothels and drinking dens that the depraved inhabitants of the cities did.


Instead, he was a man of a lost race. He hunted game, he was skillful with a bow and light of foot, and ran for many miles a day. He carried an air of lost wisdom about him, and he was proud. Like the rest of his people, he was often grim and sad, but he could be happy at some times. He was a proud man, and viewed himself superior to the decadent city dwellers he despised. The Gods he worshipped were queer to foreigners, they were gods of tree and stone and river; often uncaring and often kind.


Across the land the Stalker saw a column of smoke rising, and saw tents being set up and his ears heard the happy shouts of men and the chopping of wood with axes. He knew that these people were outsiders to his land, and they were perhaps a group of mercenaries travelling through his land. He knew he could find knowledge there, and so off he bounded. His feet made no sound as he ran down the grassy slope, into the sunlight trees.

>>8550676

>certain very personal

I try not to nitpick people's writing, but don't do this. A lot of people add seemingly unnecessary words, and I understand if you're applying meter, or a voice, but this line crosses the line for me. Not using "very" is a commandment for me, and I'd like it to be for you, too.

Ah, you did it again... very universal things... very personable and hedonistic... very strict attention being paid... extremely intimately... very deep understanding... extremely angry and disgusted. I'd hold emphasis words in reserve. They lose effect like this.

I think you're too clinical with your approach here. These psychological details could direct a dramatic story. Too horridly revealing? You're admitting that you're too scared to do your duty as a writer. That doesn't give you a pass.

>would all say things that obliquely developed the idea that they all knew each other extremely intimately and that they shared a very deep understanding of the world that bound them together and revealed to them the fact that, everything considered, there was nothing better to do than what they were already doing

I'm afraid you're going to have to give an example here. I can't imagine what this dialogue would sound like.

> each other’s oblique thematic advancements

ditto

>T/R/P would often see a smoke cloud drifting very slowly accosts varnished Balsa wood.

What?

I get what you're trying to do, but I think it would be better if you added more detail with regard to this protagonist's friends.

This comes across as someone who's 1. complaining about his friends for not being spiritual, and 2. struggling with faith and existential questions.

Number one is strongly dependent on the characters and plot to produce an interesting story. Number two, similarly, is only ever going to be interesting if you link it to characters and plot, because this shit is some seriously well-trodden ground, and if you had something definitive to add to the conversation (unlikely), you should just write an essay instead.

Otherwise, you're gonna waste everyone's time- most importantly your own- building a story around some redundant navel-gazing.

>>8553557

The middle two paragraphs belong in your character study, not in your manuscript.

Start with the last paragraph, but punch it up through editing, and add elements of the first paragraph. You need to introduce the conflict early to engage the reader. How about something like:

"Across the sullen gray landscape of his broken homeland, the Stalker saw a column of smoke rising. Tents were being pitched in the woods there and his ears heard the happy shouts of men and the chopping of wood with axes. These people were outsiders. They did not respect the gods of tree and stone and river.

The Stalker gripped his bow tightly and checked the fletching of his arrows. His feet made no sound as he ran down the grassy slope, into the sunlit trees."

>>8550103
Noch da?

Live.
For life means nothing.
Die.
'Cus your writing is shit, /lit/.

>>8553897
Thanks for the feedback, I'm going for a similar vibe to Suicide as a Sort of Present, have you ever read that? I think I'm just going to go on as planned but I appreciate the result might be disastrous. It does end up with a full arc and not just a list of complaints. And the dialogues do end up being described in detail; I'm trying to develop the idea that everybody communes with an abstract sensibility, and that this is something you do a lot as a fiction writer and a lot as someone who believes in God. The flatmate communes with the abstract idea of a kind of easy belonging, which ultimately makes them lonely, and other characters emerge who do similar things, i.e project the religious impulse in ways that do them ironic harm. The constant meter supplying adjectives I think are a lost cause as this point but I will endeavour to explain the dialogues themselves.

>>8552721
It's shit. You go over old ideas and feelings without any sort of hook nor any fresh language or way of telling it. Cliche and without any deeper meaning which it seems to striving for.

triggered/10

>>8552721
>http://pastebin.com/QBxiU0rF
It doesn't seem very original or well crafted, kind of interesting just in that documentation of a somewhat believable idiot type way though

>>8554366
is that the piece you meant to comment on?

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>>8534610
All I have are two opening lines, but I assume this is enough to criticize. I rarely write, but I'm feeling more motivated:

"The boy's shadow led and lagged, in turn, ahead and behind, under the soft intermitten light of the empty street."

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All of my writtings are in Portuguese
but i'm high as fuck so I'll improvise something for you guys

a dance of mirrors on an invisible axis
seven hands to press on your back
a black exercise on semantics
a last word in the lacrimal sack
whispered hollowly into
the floor where slanted
you search for some last cigarette

>>8554445
>http://pastebin.com/QBxiU0rF
Yeah, on the other note. Your english is fine but the story is crap. I'm not sure exactly what you were going for but ending it with saying it's tinder's fault is kinda moronic.

>>8551459
I feel like you could take out the first few lines and it would improve. I would just start at >just like everything Honestly i don't like it. It's very sad and cold but not sad in a good way. Sad as in tired. Like you just wrote your feelings and tried to make them sound prettier than they are.

>>8554476
Ehh, that's aight. We would need follow up sentences to tear you apart.

Start of a short story

Down the dusty path four great femurs with feathered loins pedaled in meticulousness as a machine. Around, the whispering human shrubbery and boom a boom of a guiding bongo drum lurched the gleaming beast forward; and the damask vulva sighed here and here, exhausting wisps of perfume, cleansing the heat in way of her concealed prize. Now scraping by the shamble residences, now the upper estates, and through the courtyard now past the solemn priests, now the palace, where, at once the legs stood and knelt and the belly sank.

The first anklet birthed with such timid breath but presently the second. And the Dragonfly, ashimmer with wings of native gossamer stepped upon one tar mansteed then down and rippled unto the marble.

>>8545308
critique?

>>8554476
I would get rid of the comma after lagged. Also, I get the feeling that the light is coming in regular intervals, in which case "intermittent" is not the word you're looking for. If the light is coming in irregular intervals, I would still probably use something other than intermittent because it's almost redundant here and generally I feel like it's an overused word.

This is the last thing I wrote, for an assignment in writing class.

Abel cranes his neck toward the autumn leaves, his spine lodged decently in the ridges of an oak tree. A redness reaches all around him, every blade of grass and inch of grime and dirt resembles embers. His unfocused eyes roam and find the light that floods his little corner, his pocket of the forest, a dome of wood and dying foliage. His thoughts verge on completion but granulate to nothingness. His body aches with tiredness, his head’s weight stuns him. A fickle wind invades his calmness, and he shakes, underdressed and lacking water. The cold Fall teeth bleed Summer dry.

>>8554992
really bad

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Mergers & Acquisitions

1.

Every dawn I plank for an hour straight. Then, already slick & trembling, I run in escalating streetlight tags to the CrossFit class at the warehouse gym three blocks from me. Eighty-nine minutes later I`m back in my apartment making breakfast. 3D fractal zooms, drone camera footage, & the Selma Summers Show play mute on the screens in the background.

Recently I shifted from the werewolf-alkaline-acid diet to the Paleo-Atkins stack. For the last month I`ve been switching between the two diets for six days of the week -- Paleo on Monday, Atkins Tuesday, & so on -- followed by fasting with a lemon detox enema on Sunday. The results have been . . . impressive. Last night at Demens/Furorem, my second favourite bar/niteclub, I could feel the eyes of all the moisties & betas on me, straight miring how truly a e s t h e t i c I`ve become. So I don`t feel too bad about yesterday: the spelt dumplings (homekill venison & hydroponic kale) at Bistro Squilibrato are so good as to be illegal. I`ll probably eat-cheat again for lunch: maybe the brown rice rolled in organic bull bladder kelp at Uchiko.

I wax my shadow bald every morning after breakfast (all variations on beards & moustaches are so over, dead last spring), & I get the stylist to laser my undercut fade every fortnight. My hair`s getting quite long, so lately I`ve taken to braiding my topknot. Dreadlocks may become vogue again, but until the fad is peak I think I`ll stay on the hush-hush; I`m meant to be keeping a low profile, after all. I plan to get my ink (which I flew all the way to a genuine Yakuza tattooist in Shinjuku for) reworked: the sleeves of waves & carp bloodied over with watercolour prismatics & double-up line vectors. To work I wear only normcore, resort pastels, & splatterpaint t-shirts; at the restaurant or discotech it`s always precisely & simultaneously the market collapses of 1929, 1987 & 2008; & on the street it`s a vapourwave windbreaker over a black & khaki ensemble with more than a hint of fascism.

I start work at 10 & leave the office by 2.30 so I have time to catch an Uber & then stand outside the animal rescue centre & watch the dogs being taken on their daily walks. Legally the volunteer walkers can`t do anything if you`re across the road & all you do is vape & smile & wave. Yesterday the lurcher puppy I nicknamed "Nibs" smiled at me & wagged his tail, & it kindled my heart. I got a promotion last week after recoding our website & app, resulting in a stealthier traffic flow & better adclick revenue, so now I`m earning enough to sponsor a few extra African orphans; I`ll visit them all when I fly to Burkina Faso next month to escape the cold. I`ve always found the city`s winter too sinister.

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2.

The Selma Summers Show this morning is about women who are attracted to food. I catch the end of the segment about a girl who has sex with pizza slices, avocados, & chili con carne. On the other screen is footage of murders & executions taking place in a marmalade desert under a perfect blue sky that looks like a desktop background.

After the break, Selma Summers interviews acclaimed rapper, mixed media artist, fashion mogul, & cultural icon Kanye West. I`ve been a big fan of `Ye since hearing a leak of The Life of Pablo (2016) a few months back. His early albums The College Dropout (2004), Late Registration (2005) & Graduation (2007) are a little too street for my liking, a little too ethnic. It wasn`t until My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010) that he really came into his own, both artistically & megalomaniacally; then, ignoring that abortive collaboration with traitor & usurper Jay-Z on Watch the Throne (2011), Kanye`s visionary seed blossomed in full with the dark yet undeniable genius of Yeezus (2013).

Watching Kanye pontificate quite rationally about the state of the world & his vision for art, I`m suddenly moved by his candor, instantly aware of a kinship cynics might mistake for zealotry. Selma sits bewildered in the twin armchair across from him, insensitive to his deep, unabashed sincerity; & I pity her for not sharing our optimism. In the void behind my dark brother`s blank eyes I have found a perfect mirror, bright & cosmic.

On Kanye`s Wikipedia page I ctrl+f for "solipsist", "disassociation", "psychosis", "drug", "narcissism" & other terms that my psychotherapist has the nerve to use in reference to me, (the weekly sessions with her are a condition of my soft sentence & monitoring after what happened at the PetSuppliez! store), but there are zero results, & I feel vindicated by this confirmation of our shared sanity. I know that if we were to meet, Kanye & me, we`d find in each other a kindred spirit. Perhaps we could collaborate.

At first he might ignore my emails & tweets urging him to grow out his hair, but soon he`ll see we are of one mind. He will see that even though my eyes & skin are far fairer we form a pair of mirrors across the globe, shining blindly into one another. He will grow his topknot out, let it ooze long & sharpen it like my own gelled spike, & we`ll form a pair of horns, one black, one white, on opposing coasts & in opposing hemispheres, & as two human spikes we`ll merge & acquire that perfect obscenity of the amalgam devil, & together, united, we will skewer the world.

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Attempt at a Sci-Fi

Yeah it's pretty cliche I know.

>>8555201

Maybe 50% of it is better than what I find in my city's lit journals. The rest is on par.

>>8555201
>>8555203
Kinda shit tbqh anon. It's like shallow reference to Patrick Bateman but noncommital in its insanity.

>>8554613
Fair enough lol. Figured /lit/ critics would jump on anything.

For some reason I liked it a lot, authenticity really is a huge component of good writing, and that tiny sentence feels sincere to my personal experience.

I'll add to it this week between classes maybe

To the person who politely requested I finish my poem, I can't do it. It is holding me down. I could only write this draft of an introduction to the piece (equally cryptic), and now it hurts to look at it. I leave you to make anything out of it. I do not want it anymore.

http://pastebin.com/dXM9eGHK

>>8556377
At line 26, it's "a word is high heresy." I don't know how the mistake got there.

>>8556377
What>>8556379 said

>>8555515
My thoughts as well.

The key to American Psycho was the absolute obsessive fixation on tedious detail whether it be the subject of fucking Whitney Huston or violence. I always figured that the long ass boring passages of album reviews worked because of their form.

Condensing it to short story form robs it of that purpose/quality.

>>8550856

I think it's, as some stanzas point it out in gross vividity, some uncanny conflict within herself projected through the surroundings. Its quite pretty, and I mean it with the best intentions. And it reads beautifully paradoxical as every hypotyposis you diligently described like:

>Down into her fragrant gardens she goes -Toes digging into the soft vibrant soil, bursting with life

>The tender touch of petals -warms her blood

Should normally solace a person with a mind in wear, but this isn’t her case. My best guess is about a destructive esteem for herself and nature makes for a despondent depression.

Gracias, hermano, sigue publicando aqui y puede que te vuelva a criticar

>>8557057
?

>>8557435
What

>>8558167
You're fine, mate.

1. NIGHT. DARKENED ALLEYWAY.

There are TWO light sources: a faint sodium yellow light from stage left which implies the existence of a STREETLIGHT and the white-blue light of a SMARTPHONE. The SMARTPHONE is shining up into the impassive face of a GIRL with her knees up and her back to the ALLEY WALL. It is cradled in her hands like an egg or a rose. She does not see the ski-mask-clad BRIGAND as he creeps toward her along the faded yellow beam. Now there is a THIRD source of light: the GLINT of a KNIFE.

The ASSAILANT stands beside the GIRL, gesturing with the KNIFE. She does not notice him, intent on her SMARTPHONE, so he knocks the PHONE from her hand.

It takes the GIRL a few seconds to notice the KNIFE. Her face quickly goes from shock to resignation to sullen, almost self-righteous anger; while she is struggling with these emotions, her ASSAILANT picks up her PHONE and places it in his POCKET.

The ASSAILANT waves the knife almost lackadaisically in her direction.

ASSAILANT:
Pants off, or I’ll cut them off.

GIRL, resignedly:
You don’t want to do this.

ASSAILANT:
Are you an idiot? You’re alone. I am waving a knife at you—

GIRL, hurriedly:
Trust me you don’t want to do this—

(1/2)

>>8558413

ASSAILANT:
Is this some kind of trick? I have knowingly violated moral strictures and forsaken the social contract! I am standing here pointing a knife at you. I am the rapist and you the soon-to-be-raped. Rapee? What I’m saying is that you don’t get a choice in the matter at all.

GIRL, lips pursed:
What I’m saying is that you don’t want to do this to /me/.

ASSAILANT:
Oh! And what makes you as to believe that you have anything special about you, girl?

The GIRL swallows. A complicated look passes across her face, and she drops her pants. She continues to look the ASSAILANT right in his eyes. She possesses male GENITALIA.

ASSAILANT, mildly surprised:
Well, that’s fine. I was planning on anal anyway. You know, I'm all for trans inclusitivity
—

GIRL, voice now undeniably masculine, standing. Tears well in her eyes; she is tremendously uncomfortable with what she is saying, but willing to take any risk at this point to escape. Her wavering voice grows clearer as she speaks.
Look. I’m also a rapist. What else could I have been doing in this alleyway this late at night?

ASSAILANT:
Gosh golly gee! I have a woman tied up at home right now actually! You simply must come along with me and rape her!

GIRL:
Um no I’m good I can um find my own unwitting victims. Can I have my phone back?

ASSAILANT, practically jumping with glee:
No, no! I insist! Presumably you were planning on the factor of surprise to overwhelm your prey; a purist gesture, to be sure, but I must remind you that I have a knife!

(2/2)

I walked heady
into the sweet,

damp night, however caught I was in its
leverage. The dogs across the street yelled
for me, impetuous, drummed

my porous skin into air, like
a mother praying for their child, making
me alive again,
embryonic.

Sunspots blossomed over the fullness of night, and
I curled, ashamed, inside
their morning light.

>>8558569
>leverage
what the fuck
No

>>8558569
Too sparse

>>8558611
If added more to it, would it be good?

>>8558585
Ok.

http://pastebin.com/pGXPNLh7

First thing I have wrote that wasn't for work/university for a long time. The very first thing I've shared. Spend around an hour or something on it whilst watching Daily Politics.

Drops of condensation slide calmly down the side of a glass of coke. Oscar’s mother, Linda totters out quickly; a caricature of the upper middle class housewife adorned with a summery dress and carrying a gin and tonic, the ice of which chinking as she glides through the garden. The drink is provided to me despite a polite series of declinations, a feeder of both food and drink Mrs Urquhart is almost neurotic in her pursuit of making guests feel ‘at home’.

> declinations: incorrect usage.
> Oscar’s mother, Linda totters out quickly; a caricature of the upper ( should be a comma not a semi-colon )
> declinations, a feeder of both food and drink Mrs Urquhart is almost neurotic in her pursuit of making guests feel ‘at home’. ( same issue as above but swapped round )

>>8558418
You had me at 'purist gesture'. The surrealist twist is amazing.

>>8559925
Thank you, I had meant remonstrations.
Other than grammatical issues how did you find it?

>>8559937
thanks for the validation!

I finished writing/editing this today.

The Window:

The window was a mosaic.
Its tiles, interpolated and shapeless, repeatedly
Repositioned.

The window was a painter finding their
Vantage,
Ever reevaluating their
Perspective.
The window was an unfinished canvas,
Each brush stroke a new
Vision,
Every drop of paint a new
Picture,
Every splash a new
Depiction,
Every moment a new
Portrayal
Of the same world.

The window in the rain was a memory,
Resurfaced in the dry house, with
Eyes habitually cast down towards the
Same desk in the same room with the same walls,
Away from the wet canvas.

>>8560072
>http://pastebin.com/pGXPNLh7
is make me leaving an unreality.
> this isn't right. I would never say that in preventing someone from doing something I was making that thing an unreality. It's very odd phrasing.

Hmm, there are lots of little mistakes which are quite distracting. You also use too many adjectives. The flow was well managed however , and I was somewhat interested in the scene itself.

>>8534610
>http://pastebin.com/x5QzWy6Z

>salty, shifting silt
>mass of damp sediment

nigga just say sand

File: book.jpg (101KB, 900x900px) Image search: [Google]

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Sometimes I feel as if I'm entering and leaving a coma. In certain moments, I feel full of life, the future looks promising, and the vicissitudes of life seem distant to me, my fears and my own mortality aren't but a melancholic joke told by a despicable figure. But then, as if stabbed in the back by an old friend, life loses it's joy, and I that once laughed of that melancholic joke, understand it's true meaning. The blindfold of transient ignorance falls off my eyes, and nothing more pleases me. As the infirm who wishes to renounce of his own consciousness, through morphin, so that he could finally forget his pain, so I wish the remedy for my unnameable sickness.

>>8561963
The first half sounds like a diary and the second half sounds like a highfalutin version of the first

remember, /lit/posters, leave reviews on other's work before you post yours~

>>8562083
I disliked the first half too. However I think "highfalutin", or pretentious, is too vague to describe something.

>>8562098
not that anon but how is highfalutin too vague? second half sounds pompous and overinflated, even relative to the first.

if you can't even use words like "of" and "it's" or bother to google the proper spelling of morphine, why should anybody even give you the time of day?

>>8562098
I wouldn't usually use pretentious which is why i tried something slightly more descriptive. But it is just unnecessarily flowery and it comes out of nowhere.

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The motive, animal; the brighter lights
of titans, guiding hand to mouth
by the better angels they harbor

Of those, lesser spirits of our nature
sliding, spoken, but not yet sounded
forward, tilting at the hilt

And unbuckling, the most great
temptations that bind the artist
to the colours and the easel

>>8558639
not more content, rather more insightful, less insipid content, and more meaning in them, as of right now, I dont see the inscape

>>8561963
Idk man. It fizzles out

ivory sentimentalism is a result of the inablities of man to accept the eternal consequences of their actions, without their inputs within the great controllosphere of life itself, the ideas cannot be expressed properly. an unending repetition of misunderstandings that make the idea of the individual of a very plain concept or idea, when most other species would see it as a useless or even harmful way of thinking. these waves of sound and thought resonating through our minds and bodies can't even begin to be described, as they'd be seen as inconceivable by those around them

first attempt at a stream-of-conciousness

(excerpt from uncompleted "play", written in notepad while psychotic and under the influence of ~200 mg of pure ethylphenidate)

after greenville-- neither suddenly nor subtly arriving in the fifth and sixth months after the occasion: well after the occasion of its resolute-checkmate refutation Jesus' presentation of imself, neither sotherly nor suddley-- was drawn to a deeper, wider (experimental (/casual))(stimulations of) nostalgic territrees.


-(dabs in nostril delicately with an elongated qtip while holding a small (eye-drop sized) bottle (ryb bar design on bottle) in his other hand; the man-- still (read: as before) lost in archiving a point a meter beyond his feet-- then shovels koke(blowcain) in his nose, rigidly, determinedly, and also very quickly, given ordinary nasal/facial configurations' limitations)
-(looks on inquisitively, then with pantheons of hypercritically tensed focusing sphincters(coll. *focusphincter,s* (wide usage); "Study Assholes" (recent coinage by MLW3.hsgdi0w0, the divergent metacommunity of upper-right(brotalitarian)-autist language engineers who speculate developing branches of neological opportunity with dreams (passive or active regardless) of nurturing intellectual real estate to tilt an idea from the sheen-haired hell of the type of straightedge content person to start shooting work the night his kid is born, to erstwhile go to the patent office with jellys uncrushed for the DNR order: they've stickied-- in administrative capacity-- a string and ribbon campaign of "class id-ing and critically interpreting colloquialisms, short viral anecdotes, memes, cringe, raunch, ethnic foibles, and, hell: even some carefree moist-mannered *unloaded* jabs at each others' personal backgrounds might make it in to a final version of what we're whimsically terming 'good newspeak'" to market themselves among amateur peers while making moves. their battlecry: "making language work... hey, someone's gotta do it :)": a motto adopted by the community to represent its casual utilitarian ideals (the phrase is also reflected in the group's public title, which is an abbreviation of the phrase. this name is considered to be more "world friendly" than alternatives, as a succession of latin characters and numbers cannot be considered offensive in any sufficiently client worthy culture, as opposed to, for instance, the group's official name: RetardFaggit (shouldn't have made it an anonymous poll)).)) melting the fuck apart from his attempts to focus on an infinitely distant subject as he has just been blown the fuck back by sheer cognitive whiplash looking at this man just basting his nose with gear)
-(a lighter click bites through the cereal bowl clinking of mci spoon against throwback vial; its flash lights the watching face. back in his shot, he is smoking a cig while doing tons of coke)

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Anyone willing to critique my autistic writing? Part of a 600 page autistic novel I'm working on.

http://pastebin.com/aQTj0wEF

Will return the favor.

Spying a likely leather-bound volume across the clearing, Sebastian races over only to discover that the book has fallen flat atop of a strange mound of mud. Hitching his jeans up at the crotch, Sebastian squats down to take a long, bewildered look. The novel has slipped from a branch and crashed onto a pile of clotted earth, and from between its pages little black figures are pouring. The words, Sebastian marvels, the words are running loose. They come out daisy chained and hyphenated head-to-tail, polysyllabic and monosyllabic, Latinate and Gallic and Old Anglo-Saxon, strong plosives and weak skittery fricatives, a blackletter exodus flowing out into the tallgrass and swarming mindlessly one over the other, clumsy as are all newly livened things, liquidated paragraphs with the sun glinting off their twitching serifs, their bulbous typeface—just as senseless as they have always seemed to Sebastian as they now go escaping their Man-given order and jumbling his vocabulary back into the shaggy tabula rasa of the prairie. The boy thinks he is witnessing a miracle here. Language rejoining nature. Transubstantiation, if he knew the word. He claps his hands over his eyes and rocks on his heels. He swallows a laugh. He considers calling back to Miss Lauriel but then thinks better of it. Throwing a quick glance over his shoulder, he finds her sobbing into the pages of another dead book. That poor girl has had enough of God’s acts for one day, Sebastian thinks.

>>8563856
daisy-chained should be hyphenated, fuckass

>>8563783
mix your sentence structure up.

first sentence is weak: try "The wounded girl arrived a few nights after" or "the brought the wounded girl in shortly after he arrived" - place emphasis of sentence on girl and being brought in, since that's what's important.

quick critique of tranny play segment posted above pls

>>8563897
Thanks, bitchface

>>8563914
sure, dickforehead. tabula rasa is a smooth wax tablet; not something that goes too well with shagginess.

>>8534839
>>8538111
I hope you're joking.

>>8535688
not as bad as >>8534839 but still very bad. quit trying so hard, you don't pull it off.

>>8538152
misplaced comma seems like in the first stanza, even if it's what you're going for, it's clumsy; fantastical dreams is cliché; unless the dimmed orbs of dark is her dreams, take out the comma in the above stanza; assuming it's her eyes, cool it on the eye-related words in the same line, "squinting and winking" two words apart is clunky; aaand you lost me at "naked form."

>>8538366
this works because the author's speaker is linguistically retarded and so the author doesn't seem linguistically retarded, which is the last thing you want to seem as an author. learn from him.

>>8563937
Yeah, that's what it is literally. I was using it in the more figurative (and common) sense of the primary, pre-lingual, blank state of something before it has outside impressions. Fucknut.

>>8542701
let's not assume your reader is retarded and that they know that the sky is above people's heads. don't use clichés in writing, faggots. your writing style is simplistic but it still doesn't call for starlit sky. you're not overreaching with the sort of meter of the prose, don't use words that you don't understand, though. a smell isn't abrasive, let alone the smell of saltwater. I'm not reading he rest of it, write something else.

>>8563856
try harder to mimic Joyce, we are amused.

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“Kill yourself Earthling!” the huge octopus-like brain commanded. Its long, thick, purple tentacles flapped restlessly. “You are worthless!” “You will never amount to anything.” Its high pitched, echoic voice hurt the human’s ears. “Life is only suffering. You know that deep down you truly want to end it all, but are too cowardly to go through with it. Don’t fret, once it is over, you do not have to withstand life’s torment anymore.”
Each sentence the monster said, although it hurt, ringed true to the human’s ears. As consequence, his mental health was diminishing rapidly, as if each word slashed a piece of his self-confidence.

>>8563970
Thank you, your majesty.

>>8562742
it's profoundly superficial (see what I did there?) but there are a few phrases I like.

>>8563960
I know. i was just concerned that you'd overlooked the smoothness that tabula rasa implies. maybe consider some kind of reference to a non-language ratified lack of framework? formlessness can be messy too, anusnavel.

>>8564007
Good advice. I'll tool around with it a bit, cuntlips.

>>8563907
>>8562742


it looks pretty good to me. I like "brotalitarian" but the rest seems a bit jumbled.

> as opposed to, for instance, the group's official name: RetardFaggit (shouldn't have made it an anonymous poll)).)) melting the fuck apart from his attempts to focus on an infinitely distant subject as he has just been blown the fuck back by sheer cognitive whiplash looking at this man just basting his nose with gear)

This part is pretty good, most of the rest is wank, though. I'd cut out as much as you can without removing all of the filler. Can't tell what the hell this "play" is supposed to be about. Transsexuals? Sorry if I am reading the wrong play. I do like the parentheses here and there but some of the random dashes piss me off. It's good at the beginning and end but its either too dense or too long to sustain my interest. I'm a pleb tho.

>>8554639
Can someone critique this?

>>8564484
critique somebody else's work first
if you already did just hang around and keep critiquing.

>>8564590
I did critique although i like the critique to be separate from my contribution. I'd usually leave it alone i just got antsy cuz its the start of a story i think I'll actually finish so I'm really interested to hear feedback

>>8564265
you were reading the wrong play, that one is mine. it's literal garbage, I just get interested whenever I find a text file on my computer I don't really remember writing

>>8564660
seconding this - the two-post play further up was the one I was asking about. you did crit someone else's stuff though ao you're figuratively karmically neutral.

>>8564666
nice trips, I'll check yours out since I didn't have time to do another critique after posting my psychotic thing last night. it'll be a few though

You come out here on a whim every other night /

Wet plastic pools on the corner, kids with Reebok tracksuits /

earnestly try to mug you off. Alleyways. Cheap weed too /

all conspiring to hammer out those raw, awkward first times /

and dull them down to a £3 Tesco Meal Deal. /

You downgrade from Marlboros and jerk off to stale romances /

to make them stay fresh. They said this would happen, /

but that doesn't stop that one song stuck on repeat. /

It keeps on playing, crooning days of crimson sun streaks./

Days when the streets would overflow with liquid amber. /

>>8534839
This overall isn't interesting for another person to read although i didn't mind the last bit (once fallen>>8535688
....). I would have taken out the second rise though and done
> once taken there is only to rise
> like the roman find the true road
You repeat a lot of words (falter, nature, man, rise) and this isn't long to begin with. If you continue writing for yourself try to notice that and experiment with different words.

>>8535688
The beginning reads with the tone of Dr. Suess. I don't really mind that but there are too many instances of you trying too hard to keep the rhythm and failing. Then it transitions into immature rhymes and then the abrupt ending kills it.

>>8538111
This is really bad but you probably could refine it to at least be ok.

>>8563975
the same dumb bojakc hosreman nihilism. I'M BORED O F IT STOP

>>8563975
>ringed
>echoic

prose is shit, composition is shit, subject matter is shit, your pic is shit.

this has no redeeming value. consider enrolling in a fifth grade english class or killing yourself.

>>8565121
And what about his mother, anon?

>>8565191
I feel bad for her.

>>8564666

Nah you got satanic trips and it was my mistake so I'll critique you. Karmically neutral doesn't matter, if I give 5 bucks to Salvation Army but steal 5 from a gas station it's still morally wrong.

>>8558413
>>8558418

This looks good, just two things, (1) pick between egg or rose, I can't decide which but make a decision, it's dilutes it having both and confuses me. You might also want to change "faded yellow beam" to "faded yellow beam of light" or "through the cone of yellow light" or something else. Also not sure that THIRD should be capitalized. Also not sure any of these props should be capitalized but I'm guessing sticking to convention is not your goal here (and it does add something to it so that's good)

> The ASSAILANT waves the knife almost lackadaisically in her direction.


I'd say he does it lazily, "almost lackadaisically" just screams 10th grade english assignment to me. The word doesn't really fit here.

This is a good little play but I would like it to lead into smoething else.

> as she speaks. Look. I’m also a rapist. What else could I have been doing in this alleyway this late at night?

I think there should also be a color here. Or maybe another line break for:

GIRL:
Look I'm also a rapist...... etc etc

Pretty good shit though. I assume this is not meant to be at all realistic or serious, because it COULD be but the second post really breaks it down into comedy.

Overall I rate 6/10 with 8/10 potential. Pretty good.

>>8565603
>pick between egg or rose
I actually put both there to de-emphasize this; is it something she's waiting for? or a message of love? (eventually it will turn out to have been both)

>beam
yeah gotta redo that

>not sure props should be capitalized
just a stylistic thing - it makes them almost characters.

>does add something
yesssss so glad that didn't fall totally flat

>lackadaisically
Mr. Rapist-san is meant to talk in a mashup of oldschool political cartoon style and fedora-wearing highschooler. I was planning on having him do things in language that is frankly a little extra, but that's a little too meta when it interferes with understanding. yeah I should probably cut this tho

>line break or more color
yeah

>lead into something else:
yeah. I meant it to deal with the absurdity of being a tranny (ms. tied up in basement will have more to say about that, and about the connection between trans sexualization, trans acceptance, passing as cis, and rape)

>not meant to be realistic or serious
absolutely not. beginning is supposed to be a little overdramatic for the silly fuckery that follows.

thanks! your taking the time to read this and post thoughtful comments really made my day.

>I feel like my writing is shit and too minimalist
>critique pls

This is something I wrote really quickly last night with some minor edits. I feel like it's pretty shity but I don't know what to do with it. I think I might be able to. Work with it.

He has awoken, and the linens are not dry at the one place and there is shame. It is not large, and so he remembers the dream and he shudders. Then he needs to piss. He sits down to piss and covers the door over the window. He does not like his reflection. He thinks again and pushes It down and pisses, and he thinks again and does not want to think about It again and is disgusted by It and It goes up and he pisses on the floor below and in front of the toilet.
He is in the shower and feels It grow and there is a shaving razor he has used on his legs and he gets in the fetal position and attempts to cry. He is in front of the mirror and is nude. He takes the razor blade. it is on It. He moves it down to Them, and hairs are pulled. He enjoys the pain and there is shame. There are no tears, but sweat hangs from two sacks without feeling. They are given by drugs no longer used, and he is weak. He presses closer and thinks what good it would be to do the act. There is shame. He drops the razor. He is stoic for a moment. He has crumpled. He can not cry. He thinks of Her. She is short, and She is blond and twig like and small and plump in the face and silk-like with her grace. Her voice is high. She is happy. She wears this makeup and Her hair is always made up too, and he is ashamed from the envy, and he can not cry, because there is no will.
He is in bed. The time is 12:07 A.M. He dreams. It is lucid, and he is in front of a great mirror and he is nude and there is long hair, a figure in the mirror, and It is not there, and he is happy. There is clothing, and he puts on what he likes and awake, It is eager, and there is hate, and there is shame.

>>8565758
in well-intentioned honesty, it sounds a lot like a high school anaphora assignment. has a warm hearty good journal entry feel, though

>>8565758
>the one place
if you want to do this super terse stuff you gotta have good control of your rhythm.

He awakes. The sheets are wet; he shudders: he remembers the dream; he is ashamed. He needs to piss, so he sits down and does not look at his reflection. He aims and pisses, and tries not to think about aiming or pissing and succeeds; the piss goes everywhere.

this is coming from a tranny: wtf is the It shit. it's a dick. it is on your protagonist's body. if you want to pull the whole "not thinking about it" thing off just don't mention the dick and make it obvious that it's there, and the two-personality thing makes protag sound like a hon, which, well, maybe that's how you meant to write him. at least for me it's not so much having a dick as it is not having a vagina, though for you/protag it might be different.

mostly what I'm concerned about is that this is presenting the Official Trans Narrative which is unoriginal and also bullshit. it's kinda hard to separate you from protag, I think. Nevada (by imogen binnie) has flaws but one thing it does well is present just how much being trans can drain somebody's identity: if you're trans that immediately becomes the most important thing about you whether you like it or not. That, to me, is much more interesting storywise than the same old legbutt gut punch of dysphoria again and again - not that it's not valid, but experience and narrative aren't actually all that factually related.

life advice: even cis women are constantly worried about being pretty. try not to get caught up in that mkay?

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>>8565121

A father shares wisdom and values with his children shaping what they might become through direction, correction, and example.

Does this sentence have correct grammar? It feels weird around the point between "children" and "shaping" but I don't think it's actually correct to change anything.

>>8563783
>She was certainly dying now. And there would be no unending paradise for her.
But whyyyy no paradise. Not too shabby desu, it reads like airport fiction, but I'd say it's solid and I'm curious for more.
>>8562742
Just fuck me up senpai 'nurturing intellectual real estate' i like that a lot
>>8565758
This feels like Curious Incident of the Dog etc etc; it's outside looking in, I don't really feel anything but revulsion reading it, 'because there is no will' that's a pretty big maxim 'he cant because there isnt x' but 'they are given by drugs no longer used' i like that implicit past interjected between present tense.
>>8566048
A comma might help with flow (unless you're going for that run-on urgency) but it looks correct to me.

It’s hard to know when exactly I decided to become a domestic terrorist. I’m a college educated white man from a well-to-do family. I make a good salary. I live in a cool apartment with high ceilings. People enjoy my company; pretty girls even.

When I shop at Saks, the sales staff doesn’t follow me around the store. I am almost always successful at hailing a cab. I have never once had a stranger approach me and ask to touch my hair. When I get stopped for speeding by police, I don’t get shot dead.

Suffice to say, life’s been pretty good to me. America’s been good to me. In a couple of years, trickle down economics may even be good to me. And yet lately, all I can think of is plotting and carrying out the assassination of an elected official.

>>8566048
>A father shares wisdom and values with his children shaping what they might become through direction, correction, and example.
I'm having trouble with this one. My instinct tells me that you need the comma, but if you said "... values with his children BY shaping..." you wouldn't need the comma. I don't know what that sort of construction is called, where you add a subordinate clause without using a conjunction, otherwise I would google it.

>>8534839
It's really obvious that you put no time or thought into this it's shit

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>>8534610
Penultimate chapter to a story I've posted bits and pieces in here before. I will critique after drinking.

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>>8543531
This is good enough to me suspect professional plagiarism.

>>8567979
ah gack, the auto-correct changed my Siamesely to Siamese. It's an iffy sentence though.

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>>8567984
Not bad. Maybe publishable if you do some editing, though it is hard to say from only this excerpt.

My thoughts:
>piece of light
Clumsy wording. Change.
>give them the time to unfocus
change to "give them time to unfocus"
>glass bowels of an underworld
nice
>grease of another
doesn't jibe with the tone, unclear. Consider changing.
>more mute
more muted
>and there is rain on the Sienne
nicely incorporated imagery
>portals for my wetworld
Clumsy. Change.
>drenched dark dog
don't fuck up a nice phrase with alliteration
>the ant passage
Execution is fine, but the idea is staid

Everything afterward is good with the exception of the final line which is a bit too obvious and direct to serve as a conclusion to what preceded it. I recommending ditching it and ending with the question of everything being switched around. Seems to me to serve as a much better capstone.

>>8553954
Ja, jetzt wieder. Mein Anliegen hat sich in der Zwischenzeit aber schon erledigt.
Trotzdem: Wo kommst du her und was liest du zurzeit?

>>8563950
The commas are intentional and it doesn't turn sexual anon lol but thank you for the critique nonetheless. I appreciate.

>>8557387
Aww thanks anon! This isn't a poem but since you liked that, perhaps you wouldn't mind critiquing this either.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QG_OTC9o1ePXheJGlyiNr001j3P2mpMPuFrYWI_q3Ao/edit?usp=sharing

and

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11-tGEDHOnwpvZHNwtJnmseakCnq5RrHEH4-CdFcELpQ/edit?usp=sharing

>>8568670
Ich bin er nicht, der du mitgesprochen hast, aber ich moechte, mein Deutsch zu ueben. Nun lese ich Jane Eyre. Es ist ja ein klassisches Buch, doch ich habe es niemal im Gymnasium gelesen. Meiner Meinung nach ist es sehr impressif, ich fuehle mich wie Jane in gewisser Weise.

>>8568809
Woher kommst du? Seit wann lernst du schon Deutsch? Und wofür? Soll ich deine Fehler verbessern?
Dein Satz wäre so richtig:

Ich bin nicht der, mit dem du gesprochen hast, aber ich möchte mein Deutsch verbessern. Zurzeit lese ich Jane Eyre. Es ist ein Klassiker, doch ich habe ihn [ihn, den Klassiker, so wie du es ursprünglich geschrieben hast, wäre "es" richtig] niemals im Gymnasium gelesen. Meiner Meinung nach ist es sehr beeindruckend/impressiv (impressiv gibt es im Deutsch zwar, wird aber nahezu nie verwendet). Ich fühle mich wie Jane in gewisser Weise.

>>8568877
Danke fuer die Hilfe.

Ich komme aus Amerika und lerne Deutsch seit drei Jahren oder so. Trotzdem habe ich keinen Lehrer, ich lerne es selbst. Ich mag einfach Sprachen und kann auch Franzoesich und ein bisschen Russisch.

Richtig brauche ich mehr oft mein Deutsch verbessern.

Should a character with bad self esteem's arc end with them accepting who they already are or with them becoming who they want to be? Which feels more satisfying from a reader's perspective?

>>8568920
Wie regelmäßig lernst du? Für drei Jahre klingt das alles schon mal recht gut.

Übrigens, wenn du über deine Schule sprichst, übersetz "High school" am besten nicht mit "Gymnasium", sondern mit Schule oder einfach mit High school. Schreibst du Gymnasium, würde man denken, du wärst in Deutschland zur Schule gegangen.

Was ist dein Lieblingsbuch?

Pasted this in a thread a while back and got no response so I'll try again:

http://pastebin.com/snfq8nif

Be harsh, but tell me how to fix the problems you see.

>>8568998
To me, the wording seems a bit clumsy. I would change

>In the winter, there are fears that hide in all things

To

>During winter, there is a hidden fear in all things.


It's a bit cliche overall but I would find new ways to word things or metaphors. I didn't give much of a critique, but rushed on time so only read the first sentence which happened to bother me.

>>8568752

In their respective recommended orders, the first has a very imaginary, ethereal tone to it; you remind me of McCarthy, with less-fevered imagery and some (much to my liking) very well-executed hypallage, while the second changes the writing style drastically and then the story begins getting told in fastidiousness and auspice. Cut out some cliches (you know which ones), though, and replace them or splice the text and leave as you deem fit

liked both of them, all in all. Is the header in the second recommendation you?

>>8545308
CRITIQUE?

>>8545308
If EAP met Rimbaud, thats all

>>8569137
Thanks for taking the time to read them, thank you. I appreciate the critique.

The first one you read, is much more my natural style and came after having a very vivid dream as well influences of having just read Dune. I actually haven't read any of McCarthy but I'll definitely check him out.

The second one, yes that's me. I completely forgot to delete it like I did with the first one. I've always been very doubtful about the second story but couldn't pin-point what so thank you. You nailed it exactly.

>>8567984
That's probs the best compliment i've ever gotten. Thanks.

>>8568958
Ich lerne die Sprache mit Deutschsprächigen 4channers und Duolingo. Selten lese ich deutsche Zeitungen und schau deutsche kino auch an. Ich hoffe, bald kann ich Kafka lesen.

>>8568950
sometimes low self esteem is an excuse for someone to stay the same. so if they accept their faults and decide to change, that is best.

>>8568240
Thank you for your very helpful advice, although I'm yet reach twenty and publishing is a distant dream rather than a reality. I'm just slightly gushing over a reading of Fear and Trembling for this piece, but perhaps overt philosophy will hurt the dramatics, it's certainly a tendency I have. As for your piece, I think its solidly composed and reminds me strongly of Lolita, perhaps just more for the America-by-car-with-a-fucked-up-child theme, but it is, certainly too, publishable with far less editing.

>dried into
nice, economic metaphor. unless a typo, then don't correct.
>Spanish moss
another nice, simple image
>huge, woeful
I think perhaps one or the other if you want to be precise, but personal preference
>red-rover
good
>glass box
another good one
>tadpole pinched in it's beak
good
>the whole cow imagery and the clouds
lovely

Sorry to have put in no negatives, I enjoyed your piece too much to combat a happy hangover and be a more scrutinizing editor. Good luck with your work.

>>8545308
Not half bad.
>>8546997
>mangled and charred and his face sullen and scarred
good, pretty damn good actually
>rain or shine
this I also like
>massed together like ants to stay warm
but ants only mass, warmth is not involved. this is too far fetched

I think your image and piece has potential but your flow is no good, too rigid without enough punchiness. You should always keep going though, it's the only way to learn you cross-bearer.
>>8547543
Not half bad, fine last three lines. I'm no poet though.
>>8563783
>only three came back; x
should be, only three came back: x
It's an interior clause
>>8567979
I'm this idiot.

>>8568950
I would say go with the former, it would achieve more mimesis, and all great character arcs involve inner change. The latter is hackneyed and less realistic, but could still be done well.

>>8570751
Magazines love young writers, and (contrary to popular opinion) love being the first to publish a person's work. I highly recommend you going back over your piece with a critical eye once you're done and then sending it out to some places.

>>8570930
Thank you very much for your advice. What would be an ideal word count? The thing sits at currently around twenty pages, but I feel I can stretch it out or cut it to fifty or five.

I.

Yesterday I was sat by myself when the devil came and sat beside me.

He reminded me of how wretched and miserable I had become, and said:

"What have you done to deserve this? You have never asked for much, you have always been humble. You have only ever asked for one thing, and he denied it you. What he has given to so many other men, men less intelligent and less sensitive than yourself, he has denied you. Is this not injustice?"

I said, "perhaps it is injustice. I never asked for much, did I?"

He said, "no, not for much; but he has denied you even the little that you asked for. But that is not the greatest part of the injustice, for that is that he has made you wretched and miserable, an outcast; you walk about like one already dead, your soul barely has the strength to drag your body across the streets; and where are your friends, or your family? Why is there no one to comfort you, not a single one, and you are left to suffer alone, entirely alone? And this would be bearable for you, if it were not the fact that others do not suffer, others worse than yourself. For you are far better than those who stand above you, and why should you have been left to rot in the pit so that fools could pass over you and mock and sneer at you, while they are praised and live in ease?"

"This world is absurd", I said, "if there is a God, then he has to answer for what he has done to me, while he has left so many untouched."

"You never deserved this humiliation. You are better than this world he has created; he should have given you better. Follow me. I will show you what to do, I will introduce you to my friends, I will raise you up over and above this filth."

Then I said, "but if this is true, then I will surely have to burn forever with you and with your friends. What can you give to me that is worth eternal torment?"

He said, "everlasting revenge and spite, against humanity and against him. Yes you will be burning, but your burning will be a reminder to him of his own injustice towards you, and you will be able to forever curse him for giving to you less than you deserve, and for humiliating and oppressing you."

"And what would I have to do, if I followed you?"

He said, "I will take away your wretchedness. I will give you power in the world. I will introduce you to others like yourself who have also sworn against him. You will have to do as I say and spread corruption, to corrupt this foul creation so as to mock the one who made it."

I asked, "and I will have to worship you?"

He said, "yes; and I will make others worship you, men and women."

Then he shook my hand, and left me alone again. Then I thought to myself, "I don't know if God exists, but at least now I know that Satan does." Then I saw the Son of Man being crowned with thorns and mocked, and I said to him, "if I follow him, I will also have to hate you", and he looked at me.

>>8571141
II.

That night I left the house of my father and my mother, but whether it was in dream or in body, I know not. The full moon could be seen, but no stars. I walked the streets beneath orange streetlights, until a shadow of a man stood before me and said to me:

"I am the man that does not exist, the king of this world that does not exist. I am the laughter where men are mourning, I am the hoard of wealth where men are starving, I am the eye of the seducer where the faithful spouse waits at home. I am the vanity in men's eyes."

"Yes," I said, "I know who you are, but where are you taking me?"

He took me away from the streets and into the woods, where it was so dark I would have fallen, if it was not for his guiding me. At last we came to a clearing, where a fire was burning. There were men dressed in robes, whose heads were covered in hoods and whose faces were dark; yet I perceived that they were men of power, famous in this world.

Then my guide said to me, "come, for you too have been chosen, and you must see for yourself and decide."

Then I saw the altar upon which a child was writhing covered in blood and screaming, and already upon the altar many children had been sacrificed. And a priest stood over the child with a knife making ready for the sacrifice, and behind the altar I saw the following abomination: an evil figure with the body of a man, but with the legs of a goat, and a head like a bull with two great horns. And I perceived that everyone was worshipping and chanting. I was astonished, for I had never imagined such evil, or, if I imagined it, it never entered into my heart just how evil it was; but now, for the first time, it was though I was truly beholding evil.

Then I lifted myself up, and I said within myself, "now I understand; now I know the difference between good and evil, and the great distance between good and evil; now I know that there is a hell, and why there must be a hell, and why they that go there must remain there for eternity. And thanks be to God that there is a hell, because men deserve it, because they have worshipped the beast instead rather than the creator."

>>8571144

Then with great anger my guide took hold of me and lead me out of the woods, and back to the streets from where I came. Now all around I saw the light coming in, and the night disappearing. For the first time I had known wisdom, and understanding of this world.

My guide said to me, "you have greatly disappointed me. Do you not want your revenge?"

And I said, "I was ready to hate everyone: my father and my mother, my brother and my sister, my oldest friends, even myself - especially myself. But there was one I could not hate, and you know him: the Son of Man."

He looked at me with contempt, saying, "so you think he let himself be crucified for your sake?"

But I said, "how has the son of the morning become the father of the night? Isn't it true what Jesus said, that you fell like lightning from heaven?"

But he had already fled at the mention of the Name.

Now morning was coming in, and I returned to house of my father and my mother, and began to rest.

>>8571032
You can find a venue for most any word count. The obvious answer is: make it as long or as short as you feel it needs to be to have the greatest impact on the reader.However, pragmatically, keeping it south of 8k words will provide you with a lot more options, and it is generally easier to publish shorter stuff.

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Never understood poetry but I'll give it a shot

>>8571626
you didn't need to say you've never understood poetry. its pretty transparently obvious.

>>8571626
What

>>8571626
Horrible

I

Flesh rotten hours, plague stricken minutes
Seem to go by indefetigable.
Resurrect me my dear love, or a flux
In time, nothing short of a miracle
Could wrench me from this prayer. I have son
Offered you again, to be turned away
In the name of faith for the only One.
I need the Grand Inquisitor today.

II

Where did you go? Us eating the apple
Was too much soul? Rip out our clavicles
Disembowel our hungry mandibles
Consume us and bring world to a standstill.
I would give everything for you; freedom
Burns my heart, makes me wretched.
Now I am a hunter, spurned of kingdom
Aiming at God, deepest hate of Him from
Me, burning, a hundred arrowheads fletched.

I only hate you because I could not
Love without you, could not take with conscience
What your absence took away. The abscess of
my chest, the hole, yawning, burns hot.
Everything good pours away and above
You must be laughing, or at least asleep
And dreaming. Feel not too deeply now. Leap
into a new mask. My heart burns for naught.

III

Why does my chest still yearn for you? Or a
Thing like you, in human form, imperfect
Unloving but loved, uncaring but cared
For. Why, when you went away you revealed
The absence of essence, the absence of
Soul. Why when given the reality do I shudder? Why do I cry
At the gentle wind and the sticky leaves? The morning sunrise?
Why do I cry at the glorious sunrise? Why do I wander alone
Cruel, disaffected, disassociate. Is it me?

Is my freedom in willing chains and bounds?
Does it lie in floating on unanswered
Questions and winds, deep and dark as they may
be? In physical dependance? In the
Effexors and seratalines? Blessed
Ivan, lover of mankind, yet lover
of nothing. You know my suffering, now then
Tell me my solution.

>>8575809
i am this anon, by the way

>>8571626
eh. cliche-ish, no form, and terrible. keep going

>>8571149
>>8571144
>>8571141
good shit, though a little cliche filled, and old writing style. it'd be top gold if this were like, the seventeenth century

>>8568240
really good description, though i feel like the first sentence is unneeded- you're going to show the reader in painstaking detail where they're going, so why give them an overview?
pretty description

>>8572999
>>8574270
>>8575569
>>8575831
Alright Ill do rhyming in my next hit single

I am after death in the no place
But because Death is on vacation
Everyone gets a day off
To go to some yes place
And mine is the ice cream factory
Where I lasted three days
As a teenager, boxing fudgsicles,
And there I am back on the line
That whispers like a long tongue
Dark prophecies about my co-workers
And just like before they come down
Faster and faster, and in my haste
I cut my finger on the edge of a carton
And pretty soon the foreman comes
Shouting down the line about
"Can it possibly be fudgsicles
With BLOOD on them,"
And he traces the trail to me
And starts bellowing like
A whole orchestra in a pit,
But this time, because
Death will be home soon,
I do not guiltily acquiesce
Like before, but instead
Unwrap a fudgsicle, and biting
Off a hunk down to the stick,
Say to him that he is beautiful,
That they are all beautiful,
And he should give them all
Vacations and raises in pay,
And just then, to everyone's
Astonishment, when it looked
As though he might really blow,
I just faded out, like in some films
Solid to vapor to wisp, to nothing,
But not before I scooped up an
Armful of bloody fudgsicles to take
Back with me, something frozen and
Sweet, and bearing the sticky mark
Of seriousness, my life so handily
Upon a stick.

At my house, Mark sits down in the sitting room as I go to make some coffee. Espresso shots before bed are my dumbest habit but somehow the ritual helps me sleep despite the burst of caffeine. I stare at the steam rising slowly from the coffee machine, disipating into the air and invisibility. Watching it, I feel a calm terror. I feel like I'm slowly disappearing myself, every time I go out I feel less present, less in the moment. If I could just disappear, who would even notice. Or care. Or feel anything at all. I wonder if would feel anything and then the coffee's ready. I put the first cup under the nozzle and press the plastic button. The cups feels with thick, dark liquid. I repeat the proccess for the other cup.. I decide to put the cups on saucers to present Mark with some veneer of a respectable lifestyle. I try to psysche mself up again but after watching the steam I don't even feel myself walking anymore. I feel like my face, my eyes, my movements have been disconnected from my mind. I walk in the sitting room door and put the saucers down at the table. As I sit down on my couch and look up at Mark, sitting in the corner couch I freeze. He's holding his palm out to me and in it are two small, light blue pills.
“What are those?”
“The name doesn't matter. The effect is all that matters.”
I swallow. “ That doesn't sound like the line of a fan of Wittgenstein.”
Mark laughs and then his laugh falls away back into the grin from before.
“Go on, take one. It'll be fun.”
I tentatively take it from him, just to hold it myself and stare at the small pill. It's smaller than my thumb's fingernail. Seeing me holding it, Mark cups his palm to his mouth and grabs the espresso, downing the scorching hot liquid.
I stare at the pill and my initial disbelief and upfront denial of the situation melts away. Nothing feels real. I sit down on the couch with my feet firmly against the ground but as I stare at the pill, I become gradually convinced that I'm sitting on the edge of a cliff and the wind is blowing hard around me. I realise that I'm clenching my jaw and try to stop but I can't even breathe and I take the pill in my palm and grab the espresso and I can't even remember any reason why I shouldn't and I and I-

poem I wrote for class. I'm new to this so I know it's quite terrible, but any criticism would be very helpful. Thanks.

Solitude is the ship
drifting languidly across the harbor
calmly swooning over the water
penetrating and still
its white sail grasping at the breeze
while the sun shines vulgarly overhead
blotted out like smeared oil
smothering clouds with prehistoric light
while pillars of smoke float upwards in the horizon
curling their fingers towards the sky
slowly rising above a lighthouse on the rocky shore
the monument of isolation.

Consciousness was born from our backs
as we watched the separation between us
and the world open up like a gap
now I lie stretched out on the deck
facing the infinite expanse of the sky above
and in a moment of eternity
as the melodious breeze blows from my soul
my memories disappear.

>>8576111
>rhyming
Get out

>>8554604
Thanks man. I don't really know how to change that.

Does anyone else have critiques for >>8551459

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ODE TO THE TRAUMA OF DISILLUSIONMENT

when love comes i close my eyes again
the apricot quaalude clandestinely dissolves into gin like viet cong
and in a paseo millonario limousine i visit the dimly lit ATMs inside my heart
love is a millenarian calling from a divine emperor
and i will crash the nakajima fighter plane containing my prostitution money and my fifth grade spelling bee trophy
i will drown in flames for the national mythology, for the hope that you would withdraw me from my life like a guidance counsellor calling me out of math class

the words i said to you came from a wormhole millions of parsecs away
and in your bed you could barely make out my texts,
which were astrally projected to a planet in another district,
and had already been obfuscated by my cerebral disease, its electromagnetic mitochondria in tandem with the metaphysical corpse of my childhood
a corpse buried under walled cities made of earth and semen

your face was a bright harvest moon
and i, a lowly farmer planting fucks to give about high school and all alone save for the ghosts of other people
now you’re a ghost too
and i know the illusion of you more than i know myself

a breath away from my mouth you moaned:
“your hair is so soft…”
i fucking remember!!! and maybe you don’t remember but i’ll also forget those days not so unlike the day i aimed my plum tree blossom gaze and absurdly saw the quiet beauty of your face

nights in thailand miles from you was purgatory interzone and i saw the sun rising east
but my face had been misled and a paraplegic janus imprisoned me in the past
you gave your own ningen-sengen and the world became a nightmare dotted with nightclubs where you’d go and kiss other girls
love made me into another ewige schwule
yet the narcotic freudian fantasy is nested inside me like a cockroach infestation in a hollow pastel sink,
and it hovers over the southern slums of the eternal bogotá sprawling inside my mind

>>8575831
>good shit, though a little cliche filled, and old writing style. it'd be top gold if this were like, the seventeenth century

how about these then :^)

-

Mourning a Virgin Departed

Death took thee ‘fore thou life did know:
Thou gentlest of all human race.
O how thy joys were simple sweet,
Unsoiled by this polluted place.
O finest cup of liquid pure,
That never passed man’s lips unchaste;
By cherubs took past clouds and stars,
Whom only angels now may taste.
As Hand of God doth raise you up,
Thy virgin fragrance heaven fills.
Now thou art feasting with the saints,
We hungry sit ‘pon earthly hills.
So do we famished souls now cry;
Thy soul our tears do bid goodbye.

-

A Contemplation of Beauty

Yet thy beauty is no earthly beauty,
From which celestial height did you descend?
Thy shining face makes the sun seem dark,
How high thou doth make my soul to ascend.
Thy eyes framed with lum’nous intelligence,
Thy breast o’er-swelling with bountiful love;
How godlike thy knowing, loving spirit,
The picture of divinity above.
Modestly movèd is thy living body,
By thy undying soul of precious cost;
Thy lips the prophecy of pleasures mild,
Thy hair’s the mem’ry of paradise lost.
O blessed Eve, my blessed broken rib,
My body repair, as thou once did in Eden’s crib.

i wrote this poem about premature ejaculation:

I rent my clothes and beat my breast
Because I cum to my behest
When ladies scream and squirm for more
It only makes me blow for sure
I didn't mind when plowing a broad
But now I've a girl whose prowess I laud
Will she go if she can't cum?
I guess I'll just learn to use my tongue

We pride ourselves on being civilized people. Yet what if the names for things were utterly different? Italy, for example. I have a friend named Andreas, an Italian. He has lived in Argentina as well as in England, and also Costa Rica for some time. Everywhere he lives, he invites people over for supper. It is a lot of work. Artichoke pasta. Peaches. His deep smile never fades. What if the proper name for Italy turns out to be Brzoy—will Andreas continue to travel the world like the wandering moon with her borrowed light? I fear we failed to understand what he was saying or his reasons. What if every time he said cities, he meant delusion, for example?

>>8578829
This is nonsensical.

The thing about the moon feels random and out of place. The last two sentences don't make sense given the setup of the argument. In the second to last sentence you switch tense and I don't know why. Then, what does it mean to "say cities but mean delusion?" Do you mean that he means to say "Delusion" but instead the word "Milan" comes out? Or do you mean that he is under some sort of delusion so his cities aren't what he means? You need to be more clear.

>>8578721
seek help

>>8577666
I don't know either. I read it again (starting from just like everything) and i liked it a bit more but that feeling stayed. It feels caught in the middle ground between a stream of conscious diary and a poem.

This is me though so take my critique how you will >>8554639

>>8545308
I'm gonna get a lil selfish and ask for another critique that's a bit more in-depth

Already posted this:

We sat on the cold sand of the beach, our heads looking above us at the starlit sky. I turned to my right and whispered in her ear. It doesn’t matter what I whispered, I don’t remember what it was, but whatever I said made her giggle and give my shoulder a push. The abrasive smell of salt spread throughout the air around us. I got up on my feet and shook the sand off of my back and onto Vanessa before pointing at her and the horizon in front of me. Then I took off running. I looked back and saw her lying on her side, waving at me with those tiny cream hands of hers. I looked down at the footprints that trailed behind me and I felt like I was leaving my mark on the planet. In thousands of years, anthropologists would look at my footprints to discover some trait about their ancestors that we think arbitrary. Then the water rolled onto the shore and washed everything away. There I stood, transient once again. Maybe when I die, I thought, my body will be fossilized; that’s the best anybody can hope for, really. I realized that I’d run so far from Vanessa that her body was just another grain of sand in the distance. I got down on my back and stared at the ocean. It must be wonderful to be a fish: everyone cares about them—except, I suppose, other, bigger fish. I decided that I would lie there and wait for Vanessa, and when she got to me I would tell her about how I’d decided to become a fish and how I loved her and how I wanted her to join me. I knew what she would say. I knew that she would swing the strands of wheat atop her head across her face and purse her lips and, in the way she always talked, ambiguous between asking or telling, say, “But I’m already a fish.” My thoughts began to dwell on her lips. I wanted once again to press them against mine. My chest began to burn the way it always did when I thought about kissing Vanessa, and I decided I wanted to see her at once: to proclaim my love for her and kiss her the way she would never let me: with full control. With every step I took I thought about her. Her bright blue eyes that could drown you if you looked at them for too long. Her small rounded nose that looked as though it had been perfectly stitched into the middle of her face. Her large breasts that strained against the swimsuit top that she was wearing, and her generous thighs that slid a bit against each other like satin sheets on a late night. Vanessa would tell a joke and then laugh softly; her voice cracked with every word she spoke as if she were in constant apology. My face could feel the buzzing hum of her allure with every inch I gained closer to her, and soon enough Vanessa was back in sight. She was lying at the edge of the sand, half in the water. Of course, I thought, she was practicing for our future as fish. Then I was just feet away.

Vanessa was lying at the edge of the sand, her head and arms in the water, her swimsuit bottom pulled around her ankles, and her body still.

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I really, really like your story OP. I'm not very good at this whole critique thing, but I really like the way you write you character, and I like the way you set up a scene.

Could you guys tell me if this poem is way to autistic to give to my crush? We have a very strange relationship, we both love each other very much but he wont commit because of anxiety issues. He asked me to write him a poem (taking poetry at uni) and this is what I came up with.

The shortest way between two hearts,
Two arms.
Baring hearts across their fingertips, never to touch.

Two souls intertwine, a future uncertian
Time will fly, and you may leave
Beyond the reaches of my arms.
But when you leave I'll let you know,
My heart will keep you near.


Plz no bully, first try in a while to write something like this.
Keep in mind that the both of us are super sappy.

>>8545308
>>8580609
I'll bite. Overall i like the effect but it doesn't add up the more i look into it. The man sits alone but people are clearly near him. It sounds like you used the word alone because it sounded pretty. Also the whole world listens obviously the world isn't dismissing him. I think you could change the first to be something like ' the people stop to listen'. I hate the in fact. It's not an essay. I think you could do with every sin he feels the world begins to miss him. The next two lines are so it of place because the poem is in present tense now I'm wondering if this is a different man. They just seem to be placeholders. I like the last two.

This is mine if you want >>8554639

>>8580701
It is very sincere. Just my stupid opinion but i would start with two arms, just because the shortest distance wouldn't be two arms it would be like two chests. Ii actually sounds like your arms are the longest distance between you two because you won't take the leap. So it doesn't make sense. Also, you go too abruptly from the connecting you share to telling him he could leave. > two souls intertwine (warm words) >a future uncertain (cold and distant). I would add something, maybe even use the first line in here.

>Two souls intertwine
>The shortest way between two hearts

>>8580784
My intention was not to imply that the people of the world are listening to him, but rather the earth itself. The man is confessing his sins to the world around him (the tree, the grass etc) and is for once an honest man.
The second part is me attempting to tell the story in a different, more abrupt light. Obviously it needs work because the meanings were so vague, so I thank you for your critique.

I'm gonna be honest about >>8554639
It's very interesting, but I don't like the way the sentences are structured. I had to read it twice to actually understand what was being said, which could easily be a fault of my own, and the "boom a boom" is strange. There is good imagery, and I imagine some four-legged beast (like a lion) perpetually walking. I don't understand the sexual reference, but that is probably because this is just the beginning of the story. Also, the relevance of the dragonfly is lost on me, but again, context.
>Overall, I think this is a good start and I'm interested in reading what follows.

>>8580846
>>8580846
That actually makes this more interesting to me but it was lost on me. The imagery of the actual world listening is wonderful you really shouldn't waste it on saying the whole world is listening. I forgot to say it on my first post but this has almosta biblical feel to it like Jesus but doesn't sound preachy or
anything

My biggest problem is always being vague. The 'beast' is actually a litter (like a palanquin) and i had this image of it being like a womb so it's draped doorway is where i get the vulva. The boom a boom is really just what i imagined the sound of a processional bongo to sound like. And the dragonfly is meant to give the image of a very tall, oily black and beautiful woman. Although that's going to be a major part so i don't think that will be lost. Basically is a short story about the most beautiful woman who has never been seen and is now being married off. The next bit was going to be how the servant that she stepped on to alight her carriage kills himself for having been touched by her.

>>8580817
Thanks Anon, Ill fix that up right now!

>>8580897
>>8580817
Two arms.
Baring hearts across their fingertips, never to touch.
They dance with each other, never to become one.

Two souls intertwine.
The shortest way between two hearts.
Time will fly, and you may leave
Beyond the reaches of my arms.
But when you leave I'll let you know,
My heart will keep you near.

How's this?

>>8580900
I personally think it's better. What do you think?

>>8580902
I like it better too, thanks a lot Anon.

>>8580912
No prob. Good luck

Alright, I wrote this sort of as a joke after reading a story posted on /r9k/.

Let me know the places it sucks and any places you enjoyed. Typing it up is making me realize how bad it is, but I really just wrote it for a lark.

Recess had become even more hellish since Mike stood up to his tormenter. The social dynamics of PS 308 were not something to be messed with, and he was punished for his sins with even more aggression. Pure, hot, child aggression powering those pummeling fists. He didn’t mind the pain as much as the shame he felt in being beaten by a girl. Carmen had hit puberty early even for a modern girl, and she liked to throw her frame through every boy she thought a wimp. Mike had been her favorite pansy-boy ever since he had hit her back early in the school year. She would scream misandrist and homophobic slurs the likes of which only a hormone fuelled child could conceive, all while boxing his ears and rubbing dirt in his face, mouth and nose.

His burgeoning sexuality also came to his attention that same school year, and the contrast of his experience to many of the other boys cemented in his mind the dangerous link between Carmen and his homosexuality. He blamed her for making him different than the other boys, also believing if he had acted more masculine, not allowed her to abuse him, he would have turned out differently.

>>8581131
cont.

This belief would cause him much shame for quite a few years, but by high school, Mike and Carmen had gone their separate ways. Mike worked though his shame by the time he started college, and decided to join his school’s LGBTQIX club to shed his old skin. The first club mixer helped him shed some anxiety, and by the second he was quite comfortable, even managing some awkward flirting. A sexy twink, just his type, walked in late to the party and Mike decided it was time to really make a move. He was decently sloshed by the time he saw him, so his inhibitions were easily overcome. He stumbled slightly into the new dreamboat. “You’re hot...wanna make out?” This newcomer was not nearly as drunk as Mike, laughing at the absurdity of the situation, but still game apparently. Mike was led off down a hallway where much flesh was pressed. As Mike’s pants were worked open, he tried to develop a bare minimum of intimacy. “W-wait, what’s your name?” “Oh Mikey, c’mon. It’s me, Carmen. Don’t you remember? I go by Jarrod now though.” He took Mike’s penis in his hand, working the shaft as he watched Mike process such nonsense into sensesense. “Oh...god...how...you knew it was me?” “Mikey, ever since middle school I wanted to suck your litle dick. God, looking back on when you stood up to me, that got me so hot.” Jarrod’s hand stroked Mike’s cock faster, covering the tip every few repetitions. Soon Mike was exploding into Jarrod’s hand, filling the petite cup. “Oh god, that was so hot,” Jarrod whispered as he raised his cummy palm and smeared it over Mike’s face, making sure it got on his eyelids and mouth, and finally his ears. He walked away, obviously delighted. “See you around, buddy.” Mike just stood there, dazed and cumstruck.

>>8580636
the imagery is a bit cliche the only thing that stood out for me was

>Maybe when I die, I thought, my body will be fossilized; that’s the best anybody can hope for, really

the whole your chest burning when kissing vanessa can be said in a much more original and emotion invoking way. the fish thing has potential but i think you're overdoing it.

In the end you're putting a lot of images, emotions, into a small piece of text. you have to take advantage of every sentence to make it as clear and "tasty" as possible since there aren't much.

here's the first paragraph of a short story i'm writing. any critique welcome.


Sometimes I hear him late at night missing steps on the roof, cracking shingles and struggling to hide a bottle in the rain gutter. “Para despues”, he says, knowing well it’ll save him a free buzz one day he’s dry and broke. Back when I was ten I saw him dig a girl out of the yard, all black and sour from the months and rain and critters that it saw. The salt of the sweat on his brow that day was worth gold and he drank her guts with ice. That was back in the summer when Pa could afford to hide bottles outside in grimy places. In the winter he went for indoor hiding spots, like the oak chest with the broken lock in my room, the only hiding place he never recalled. Sometimes when Pa was asleep I’d peek like a perv into the chest to look at the forgotten girl who teased me every night. I’d caress her curves, lusting for the secret sips she held inside. Pa wouldn’t notice if I drank, but I never did. Good boys can wait. I gave her up about a month ago when pa was desperate enough to turn the whole house upside down looking for a drink before his shift. Colored layers of clothing were sprawled all over the floor and he was almost ready to go out searching into the lonely blue. I left the bottle inside his boot knowing it was the last thing he was missing to put on. He knew I’d left it there but said nothing. He marched to his room, slamming the heavy door behind him. A heavy thud of snow fallen from the roof like a lifeless body hitting the ground. That night no girl called out my name.

The young prostitute, who's shown (hunched) only from the left side during the act itself, seems beautiful in a fragile, skinny-flanked, visible-ribs way, while the old specimen has the slack ass and pointy little breasts of a man made grotesque by years of dissipation. The intercourse scene is done under bright lamps, without any sort of soft focus or light-jazz background score to lighten the atmosphere of clinical detachment.

What the sad blond submissive boy doesn't know is that the dissipated old specimen had secretly palmed and old-fashioned one-sharp-sided razor blade when he'd gone into his burgundy-tiled bathroom to gargle with cinnamon mouthwash and dab Calvin Klein-brand Pheromonic Musk on his flabby pulse-points, and as he hunches animalistically over the boy, he's holding the business end of the blade right up next to the sad boy's anus as he takes his pleasure, so that the blade's sharp side slices into both condom and erect phallus on each outthrust, the hideous old specimen unmindful of the blood and whatever pain's involved in the phallic slicing as, still hunched and thrusting, he peels the slit condom off like the skin of a sausage.

(1/2)

>>8582211
The young male prostitute, hunched submissively, feels the condom-peel and then the blood and starts struggling like a condemned man, trying to get the condomless flabby old specimen out and off of him. But the boy's thin and delicate, and the old man has no trouble holding him down with his soft slack flabby weight until he's grimaced and grunted and taken his pleasure to its end. It's apparently an explicit-homosexual-sex-scene convention that whoever takes the submissive hunched position keeps his face turned away from the camera while the dominant partner's phallus is inside him.

(2/2)

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>>8534839
fucking put in time before shitting out your pseudo-intellectual, poor, bastard """""writing"""""

you are SCUM, buddy

>>8535688
...trash. fucker.

>Rocks and sand overpower my thoughts and my mind
I am good, I am refined


jesus FUCKING christ

http://pastebin.com/xxE1Ufn9

Opinions? It's sort of like an origin story, the first in a series of episodic adventures.

>>8578721
>I didn't mind when plowing a broad
>but now i've a girl whose prowess i laud

doesn't work well

also cum and tongue don't rhyme, shit poem, 0/10

>>8583495
>It was a dark and stormy night

Stopped reading

>>8583878
plz continue anon it gets better i promise

I stare at my daughter some nights and whisper:

Mary Magdalene Mary Magdalene

When she wakes,

Doves on the windowsill and

A pile of amputated hands,
Clutching stones

Road spinning – lost time
forgotten hours – wily winds
Path swirling – sense of self?
It's fine to stumble at twelve.

Sun burns – awake again
Eyes scream – four or ten?
Trees mutter – joyful regret
It's fine to stumble at twelve.

Head shouts – hour's wrong
Fingers trace – lover's gone
Roll out – hit soft stone
It's fine to stumble at twelve.

Smell sour – floor's stained
Mumbled morning – thoughts feigned
Open wardrobe – bleak and empty
It's fine to stumble at twelve

Light's faint – dimming eyes
Spirit's pale - broken ties
Beast staring – warm, doting
It's fine to stumble at twelve

Stairs conquered – new heights
Catch breath – fading sight
Cupboard reached – grim anticipation
It's fine to stumble at twelve

Round, solid – redemption found
Ambrosia reaped – gleeful sound
Sink a mess – hobble to the door
It's fine to stumble at twelve.

Autumn blossom – sun still burns
Leaves brown – wince as discerned;
They're green – roses blush red
It's fine to stumble at twelve.

Sunset at sunrise – moonlit walk
Grave still stands – pop the cork
Fall to ground – solid, round
Howl to the night – Sun looks back
Tears shimmer - fading lustre
For me, it's fine to stumble at twelve.

>>8583901
>pls delve more into my bait

no.

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R8 dis B8 m8

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>>8585376
R8ing B8 pt 2

>>8583495
not bad. you need to make up your mind if you want immature humor or subtle humor though. sometimes the jokes felt like they were written by two different authors.

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First real effort at poetry, any thoughts are appreciated.

>>8585378
is this halo fan fiction

Sometimes instead of outside, arguments will happen inside. One will threaten another. Certain boundaries become expelled. Brothers are not allowed to bury sisters. You and I communicate because of so many pixels. A day is just a day away. The gods and the goddesses are angry with us.
From the tap, only blood spouts. The dishwasher mimics the art of the sick, she bloodies the plates and the forks and knives. There is only one spoon and we each have to clean it.
There is a soft way out of this, to be brutal and honest and thus, in one of the million ways it could be interpreted, just and benevolent. Humans cannot understand that, though, most anyway. They believe they can exist on their own. It is because of others, those who live the soft way, that others can live as they want: crude, indulgent and mean.

>>8543531
fucking great

>>8586842
Sounds pretty close, doesn't it?

>>8586928
I don't understand what this means, sorry

>>8586928
Whoops wrong guy

>>8586853

>>8586887
Interesting but meandering

But it's the humid dazzle of city lights, the cherry-painted sky, those amber snatches of memory that stand out most of all. Four years old and already I yearned for the nocturnal romances of the metropolis; the naive mirage of stone cathedrals, purple mosaics and Persian rugs. At the utmost core of every city there hides the impalpable idyll of limpid love. It takes more than a simple sentimentalist to find it. You have to be a yearner, a liar, a charmer, and a thief, you have to be as human as it is humanly possible; a complex interweaving of contradictions; a pristine scoundrel, a filthy man-of-the-world, that's it, fellatio at the Schumann concerto! You know, the ascetic sensualist. The impotent colonialist. The sexually charged Tibetan mantras. The nun's sweaty hand when she shakes yours. If chastity is a sin, an incapacity for aesthetic recognition is one as well. Be a good Baudelaire, dammit all, "les sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir, Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige!". O, to shy away from days of indolence!

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Who's ready for Children's Fantasy Kino?

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>>8587177
Oh god, that looks tiny. Sorry I forgot not everyone's Asian. Here's a proper size.
1/4

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>>8587194
2/4

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>>8587206
3/4

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>>8587210
4/4

>>8587194
>>8587053
>>8585376
Give someone a smack if you want a smack back

>>8587750
I take it you didn't like it

>>8587750
sorry :(

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>>8587194
4u

>>8587906
and i can do more if you want me to continue

>>8587913
Go ahead senpai... let it all out.

>>8587924
not sure if mocking

if it wasn't, then np and i'll do more

>>8586842
Images only come together for me at the ending, but the last one is nice. The first four/five stanzas seem to say much the same thing for me; they could all do that if they had a common thread, but without it they're a chore. You could have one that says as much I think.

Good for a first effort; keep going.

>>8584136
Ooh, horrorcore poetry. Interesting. I like it, even if it's too short to be carried by such an inhuman image imo.

>>8584607
Cool themes throughout, but not concrete enough for me to become invested, and the odd form of it throws me a off a little bit. Not bad though!


Okay, some poems from me quickly. Feel free to tear me apart:


Poem 1:

A foot, a foot
Amidst word woods
A foot to bring me glee
Two feet will meet
Will meet two feet
The word woods set a-free

Poem 2:

when Time did clasp her hands in cheer
and clap and clap and clap our lives away
I swear those eyes shed not a tear
for those we lost today

Poem 3:

Between my lips a single rose
the stem obscured from sight
in my heart a garden grows
dripping neon in the night

I would say I do love thee
yet I choke upon these words
and only fly red petals three
that skim the air like birds

when finally you grab my hips
and fill me to the brim
the words still cannot–will not–pass my lips
for I am never him

he comes and goes with pretty flowers
and I hold them in the nighttime hours

>>8587978

Also, would you prefer Poem 1 as

A foot
A foot
Amidst word woods
A foot to bring me glee
Two feet will meet
Will meet two feet
The word woods set a-free

?

Thank you

>>8587946
I ain't mocking anyone. Let it ALL out.

Hit me with your best shot.

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>>8587206

Im here to hijack your golden ratio playback last entry delete river info attaché's cache deliberate wanton bimbo I'm not here it goes long after time to give up a ton of sin moon light body disseminates body evaporates body lost body loss of life God robbed me via secret hobby left sleepin in the lobby forgot me all playback on the patio blowin plumes into my radio they waft around explode on my speakers and tumble upwards dissipate like body disseminated body evaporates body lost copy boot face dogs body

>>8585376
Amateurish. Think about what your words actually mean. The Hive Mothership mistily peaks over? How does something mistily peak? It's not misty-eyed, so I assume you mean there is mist around it, in which case say that instead. Also, just use "he said" instead of coming up with all of these complicated things like "his eyes quivered" and "he grinned." It will read better.

>>8587053
Good. Pretty sure your semi-colon use is wrong, and you lose me at the end, but obviously it's meant to be that way. But yeah, it's good.

>>8587194
Awful.

>>8587053
Nice. Your imagery is great, but improve it grammatically.

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this one is a little rough hewn, but tell me how you feel about it
from
>>8543531
>>8547543
this guy
pt1

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>>8588171
this is pt 2 out of 2

>>8587978
Very helpful critique, thank you.

>>8588223

Which one were you?
Mind critiquing one of mine?

Thanks.

Well I'm new to /lit/ but I figure what the hell. This is the first chapter of a thing I'm writing, it has a lot of characters with southern accents like from around where I live. Just tell me what you think. Tear me apart if you have to.

http://pastebin.com/Khe734hW

>>8588094
>>8588122
>Good
>Nice

Thanks guys, I really appreciate it. I don't write often but this kind of positive feedback really gives me confidence to keep at it. And yeah, I tend to use semi-colons a bit too freely, sorry.

>>8588260
I was the dude who wrote the first time poem. And yes, please show me which post is yours?

>>8588094
I'm the annon who wrote the amateurish dreck. I'll keep in mind the vocabulary and prose next time. If there's anything else I can do to avoid looking amateurish, l'm all ears.

Can you at least follow the story? Did it paint an image? Was dialogue and exposition fumbled out the butt?

>>8588379
I wrote the poems underneath my comment to you.
>>8587978
Thanks!