Critique Thread

i guess i dont need to if i am first. Its in polish
http://pastebin.com/wWhx5ets

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>>9189717
Before I start my Critique, I used Google Translate to read your work. Is pic related accurate?

The Foolish King is seated shaking upon his throne, snorting lines of coke from his phone’s silver back. He feels it but it’s not much. His brain twitches, gives a faux-enthused half-shrug, not all that unlike his former lover who used to say I Love You Back but eventually only smiled back all sad instead. Either the world is earthquaking at the exact same rate as his body or the withdrawal shakes have simmered. It’s probably the latter: The Foolish King’s hands have cooled down to a meditative vibration. He hits the red button on the TV remote. The thermodynamic receptors embedded within the leathery complexion of his throne begin to whir. Mood-registered. On the screen appears a slickly-shot wildlife documentary about some bastard lion pursuing an idiot gazelle who’s about to have the term Pain In The Ass biblically redefined. The Foolish King nose-exhales, the quietly empathetic kind reserved for when someone makes a joke that’s clearly not funny.

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http://pastebin.com/WVsVJ41Q

Can someone read this for me and help me edit it? Basically I really like one of the characters from this game Contagion, she is my waifu and I am in love with her, and I found some friends to play with it and I promised them I would rewrite my story for the game so they could read it. I started out trying to write this trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at1yHOVitHg [Embed]

Can you guys help me edit this piece? I just finished writing it, have barely done any editing at all. I want to write a serial series and try to incorporate all the maps from the game but the trailer barely makes any sense.

I know this is real fuckin autistic and weird but please help me.

I can't decide if I should do (1) investigation segment of them trying to look for the "mystery" of the zombies, or (2) just jump right into the action since it's shitty genre fiction anyway.

Also I gave critique in the last thread so I will give one more then I will be 3 and 0.

>>9190194
The second sentence is really good. I would change:
> the withdrawal shakes have simmered
to
> the withdrawal shakes have settled to a simmer.
Just sounds better to me.

Also in the last sentence I would cut out the last part down a bit. And you really don't need to specify TV remote cut.

>>9189717
Very... Polish in nature. Very Slavic. ??/10, would get lost and confused with it again.

>>9190194
Pretty vibrant use of words, speaks pretty much about the main character and his relationship to mind-expanding substances, the small word count considering. I especially liked this one:

>some bastard lion pursuing an idiot gazelle who’s about to have the term Pain In The Ass biblically redefined.

I personally would've used a line break or two in the middle, but that's just me.

Now, here's a Pastebin for ya all:

http://pastebin.com/KYvpeLHE

An excerpt from a work-in-progress movie script that I've been writing VEEERRRY slowly on my spare time. The scene describes a funeral. The main character's last living family members have died, and she doesn't take it too well. If it helps, I've always imagined it having late-90's anime visuals. Think Ghost in the Shell here.

For the record, English is not my first language. P-please be gentle with me, onii-san.

It's been eight years since you went out to get milk,

Your echoing footsteps out that door,
Your last, fading smile vanished in my core,
I should've stopped you,
I should've went,
I should've been the one out that door,
You shouted goodbye to grab my attention,
I ignored you and that was my intention,
On that line with my friend,
As I watch life seep through like sand.

It's been eight years since you went out to get milk,

A screech then a bang,
The shrieks of horror rang,
I shouldn't have rejected you,
I shouldn't have lied to you,
I shouldn't have blamed you,
The feeling of bitter and unfairness,
Rushing out the door,
saw the person that I most adore,
You were lying on the crossroad,
blood poured, blood flower.

It's been eight years since you went out to get milk,

You were struggling to breathe, struggling to talk,
The trembling hands of the one who taught me how to walk,
I held your hands tight,
to make sure you won't be out of my sight,
I tried to keep my tears in to make me look stronger,
but each second felt longer,
than before.

Dad!

You hands went limp,
The sky turned grim,
Everything was a blur,
a mess,
a disaster.

It's been eight years since you went out to get milk,
It's been eight years since you called me daughter,
It's been eight years since I called you father.


I will only critique poems.

>>9190759
Then fuck off

>>9190765
Fuck you I write better than your shit

>>9190194
Nice little read anon, anymore you are willing to share?

>>9190770
Not really, that poem is shit

Turned this in for class last thursday. Kind of threw it together the day before.

Never Not There

This is a catalogue
of pieces from Ingrid,
whose head was found
toothless and bleeding

in a ditch in the mud,
by a rock near the sea.
Gently caressed
by the froth from the ocean.

A skinned finger,
close to a clearing,
Where she would hide
when oxygen atoms
turned into bricks.

A chewed leg,
bone marrow burned,
tied to a tree,
with a piece of her dress.
The one she wore
out with her friends,
stoned and joyful
forgetting the fact
that she was alive.

In the woods surrounding;
A thin torso
with so many holes
It let through the sunlight

Missing the stomach
Part of the liver
Lacking intestine
And markings around it

Leftover organs
arranged in a circle.
Stuffed with tapes.
Stuffed with pictures.
Written letters
in a made-up language
no one could read.

The ink mixed
and became one
with the blood

We look at the pictures
and see they progress;
Ingrid at 10;
Ingrid in high school.
Alone on a hill,
the ocean behind her

A long shadow,
standing in front.
Stretching beyond her,
holding her bones,
bleeding her eyes,
pushing them in,
into the cold
darkness of the water

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>>9190759
>It's been eight years since you went out to get milk.

But really, fix your rhythm and cut the melodrama. Bang and rang rhyme but fall awkwardly with each other, and makes it easy to stumble over the next line. Revise your shit.

>>9190686
>>9190194

I felt the entire opposite about that line. It took it out of the introspective mood I got from the first few lines, and made it almost campy in my opinion. This is good stuff though.

>>9190759

>It's been eight years since you went out to get milk,


AHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA


thank you made my night
hilarious

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Ben Quadrinos shuffled through the crowd with his head down. A sizeable group of reporters had amassed, but most were focussed on little Ani Skywalker, the surprise victor of the podrace.
“Ben! We going to see you back again!” he heard as he quickened his step. A few turned towards him, holding out microphones and holo-cameras. These pod races were watched all over the planet. The sight of the pods sweeping through the canyons and zooming through the underpasses was the only spectacle one ever saw on this sandbowl, a welcome distraction from endless days of farming or salvaging or some other menial task. He realised everyone had seen it; he’d have to face his older brother. He could almost hear him now, ‘Ben Quadrinos, four starts four losses!’. It was now approaching dusk, which after the twin suns had set, fell fast on Tatooine. He looked out at the dusty plains beyond the masses of people and aliens, all crowding in to get a sight of the victor.
He wanted no part of this life any more. The rejection, the pain; this world had no place for him. A single tear rolled down his sallow, swollen cheeks. He kept on walking, even as the jeers grew louder, the laughter, the pointing. He kept on going.

Soon it was night. Ben was still walking. His eyes stung and his legs were heavy, but he didn’t stop. It was too painful to be rejected by others. Never again. He didn’t care what would happen to him next.

a short story
Like everyone else before, he asked me "Are you not scared she might hurt you?".
To which i usually reply "She has hurt me before. But it was accidental. Mainly when she was a cub. She wasn't able to properly judge her strenght and hurt me in play. It was never something that needed medical attention. I never was afraid of her. When she came to me, we both were still almost babies. We grew up together and she is used to me".

I told no one about the times she showed her raw animalistic sides. The thought of her being taken from me was unbearable. She made me feel invincible. I needed her.

Honestly, i WANTED her to be a wild lion. She was supposed to only be tame when i tell her to do so. I wanted to posses her. She made me feel like a mighty goddess.

Pure muscles, fangs, claws and me, a meek accumulation of skin, hair and innocuous teeth.

She grew more violent and unpredictable every year.
She wasn't my little furball anymore. Her paws had always been a reminder of just how huge she would one day be.

There was not a moment i wasn't aware that a single blow of her paw could easily kill me. There was also not one i wasn't aware that she's a predator and i'm merely prey.

When it finally happened, i was already expecting it.
It felt almost reliving.
I knew i wouldn't survive, the moment her playful banter changed into pure instinct.
Patiently, i was awaiting her teeth to sink deep into my tender flesh, her jaws crushing my bones and her claws tearing my skull.

The last thing that went trough my mind must have been that i was sorry this majestic beast will soon be turned into a lifeless pile of organs and fur.

>>9190759
critique my pom please

The cat shat
In my hat
What a brat

He is so fat
That fucking rat
Please die, you bat

That cat
My hat
He shat

>>9190493
So is this fanfiction or an actual novel you are writing.

>>9191389
Go on

>>9191559
Rewrite something like this
Sunset found her squatting in the grass, groaning. Every stool was looser than the one before, and smelled fouler. By the time the moon came up she was shitting brown water. The more she drank, the more she shat, but the more she shat, the thirstier she grew, and her thirst sent her crawling to the stream to suck up more water.

>>9192074
A little of both... there's no actual story to this game, just a collection of character blurbs and maps. I decided to turn it into a story to see if I could maybe convince the deveopers to use it as the real story (I have talked to them before).

I just don't know which is better:

> zombie guy struggles into bar, bites someone
> gets shot
> other guy turns into zombie
> cops arrive and there's a slow buildup to more zombies showing up

Or

> jump right into the action with more zombies outside after first one, city is under zombie attack
> pros: more like game, easier to write
> cons: even more pulpy

not that zombie writing is going to be anything but trash anyway.

>>9190686
As a screenplay, this has both formatting problems, and content problems. Hollywood enforces very strict rules about formatting. Studio readers and executives are in a position to dictate terms, so there's no arguing about it.

Content examples:

>Two weeks later.

You can't describe that without saying how it will appear on screen. Your descriptions of action also need to be free of anything that can't be visualized on camera. For example:

>where the remains of [whomever] were once interred.

Unless you specify that we can see their names carved over empty tombs, there is no way to convey that information on camera. Again:

>full approval of David's parents.

How do we see that?

Go look for them, and you'll find plenty of examples. No one who makes pictures will get past the first page.

>>9193147
Zombie writing could be good

There are many different ways and ideas as to how humans experience the World. We can look at the concepts of rationalism and empiricism as standards set by previous philosophers, but we must also grow and evolve those ideas. Firstly I would like to separate the mind of the individual and how they perceive and the mind of the collective. I believe that humans are rich, conscious beings that work in their best effort to do what is right for them and those around them. They will struggle at times, and try to find the easiest way to do most menial tasks while developing rich work ethics and strong morals in order to improve on the society they live in. The individual focuses on creating an environment that best suits their needs from the things that they have perceived to make them happy. We know that humans experience through the five senses and through those experiences, they develop certain traits that will usually be a part of them for the rest of their lives. These perceptions cause us to form our perceived reality and to live a life in part to the things that affect us. The World as an individual knows it is an amalgamation of everything that the individual perceives, whether that is smells, sights, tastes and so on. Through those perceptions the individual is able to piece together they perceive as the real world. There is no true reality, as humans are only able to perceive their environment. The real world as humans know it is whatever they face how they interact with it and what they take away from it. Everything in life is a perception, but the way people perceive things is completely subjective. When we think of humans as a collective on the other hand, we begin to warp the reality that we have set ourselves on an individual level. We no longer hold as many truths close to us and rely on the perceptions of others to help grow ours. We can look at the very base line of things of how humans learn through in society. This does not account for everyone, as there are those who do not learn in schools, but for the most part humans develop their cognitive processes through things such as school and interactions with adults. The base ideas that were given to them were also just teachings from others. They learned through not only experience of the self but of the experience from others. In my life it has been harder for me to learn from others than it was to learn on my own. I had trouble understanding how others felt until I truly felt it. The collective hampers the training of the self, but also enables it. We live our lives very differently depending on our perceptions of things. As a collective we are trained to think a certain way and to interact a certain way to follow into a general idea of society. We are slowly starting to devolve from that process with the advent of the internet.

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> The Neon City

the cliff had grown with careless heed
'gainst cotton murk, it's jagged silhouette
eviscerates the panorama of the city

stern claw held armies of the tired feet -
thump'd ashen rock, the blackened husk
now only knows the neon splendor

young I took the pilgrimage here,
for tacit stand-off with malignant glow
of city and it's pattern'd cradles

height smote the crimson polis, made
jeering wrought of highways spill
into the veins of lonely palmister

the many lights reach out to grab
my skin with red penumbra; down the cliff
I went, one of the lights was mine.

>>9191507
seems kind of juvenile, and doesnt evoke any kind of emotional response from more, or any realy thought. proofreading is always good too.

>Pure muscles, fangs, claws and me, a meek accumulation of skin, hair and innocuous teeth.

this is worded poorly, it makes it seem like you are a part of the "meek accumulation" that she consists of, which i know isn't your intent.

just try reading it to yourself friend and you'll pick up on how awkward a lot of it sounds

--

I’ve only ever broken one bone in my life. The middle section of the ring finger on my right hand. I’ve never known how to refer to the parts of a finger between joints. The nurse who treated it called it the middle phalanges which seems too cumbersome for everyday use. She wore too much makeup. Enough that you could smell it. My mother always made fun of my fingers. She said I had spider hands. I started calling her by her first name in an attempt to annoy her, but in time it just became the norm. I always called my father “Dad” though. I always felt like we were slightly estranged. I could never quite pin down why. It saddened me sometimes. Saddens, I suppose. That feeling hasn’t diminished with time. If anything time might have amplified it. I think I regret the distance between my father and I more than I miss the gentle to and fro I had with my mother. She said it was a shame I didn’t play the piano. I always thought the same. My father and I once went shopping for a piano so I could start learning. Not shopping, I suppose. Browsing. I don’t think I’d really intended to start. What a waste.

>>9193850
I don't want to do lame shit but I also don't want the whole "humans are the real threat" crap going on.

But, if I basically write that trailer word for word then leap into the zombies having taken over the entire city in the space of like fifteen minutes... it just doesn't make sense.

Not sure what to do. I want to stick to the game a bit but I don't want to make it really shitty.

If I'm planning on changing a lot of my story after I finish the first draft is there any reason for me to write things consistent with the old draft?

Cliffs of Addiction-

...here you are. Dumbfounded that you've found yourself standing here again. After you told yourself you would not do it. You knew how it would end. Yet here you stand, peering over the ledge. Staring into a swaying sea-canopy.
Does it please you knowing the fall could release you from the promises you've made? Does the thought ever cross your mind to recall the answers you had to find? To rewind time and see what you've seen in that swaying sea-canopy?
No.
The wind slips those dreams away as it drifts through the knots in your hair. Your feet, they leave the edge, and the sun evaporates you from condensing to the sea. And temporarily you are free. Reveling in bovine royalties revealed by the radiant star as it sparks the forest canopy and ignites your senses. A release from gravity. Weightlessness--stoked by waving leaves and risen by that radiant sun.
But you knew. Don't you remember? Before you took that step, of the promises you have made? Of the realities realized before stolen by the breeze?
In a moment, you condense, gripped tightly by the gravity of that churning canopy. Your head flooding with the memories waked by that swaying sea. Chilling you to your solidarity as that radiant star sharpens to a dull, glowing husk-of-a-face, shrouded in darkness, and mouthing to your mind the promises you had to hear. Spoken so clear, so long ago.

Your eyes close lightly as you're wrenched to the earth, the sea consuming your sight as it hungers for your entirety...


When they reopen, you see a swaying sea-canopy, far below the cliff resting at your feet. Relief flows through as you stare into the trees that are waving in the breeze. Was it just a dream? Was nothing as it seemed? With fear fleeting, you found believing that you'd be leaving was all but leaving you living.

Yet...
_________________

... until you decide to step away from that sea-canopy, a dream will always be your reality.


I can't fit my critiques in this post, so I'll quote and reply to this with my crits.

>>9195189
Here are my crits


>>9190194
Your prose is clunky; you use a lot of words you do not need and it jumbles your sentences. You use a lot of overly descriptive words that don't help the imagining or progression of the thought. The idea here is clever, but I couldn't see it developing much further beyond a short story. Keep on practicing and perfecting your method.

>>9190759
You slip in and out of a comfortable rhythm. Same for your rhyme scheme. You have a few good lines and rhymes (the attention/intention lines and the limp/grim/blur/mess/disaster stanza). But saying that, using words like 'grim' to describe the sky in a poem is too vague and ambiguous. Try more concrete imagery that's evocative, that's the heart of poetry. And within that heart is a whimsical innocence which this poem freezes cold in death. Which is to say that what makes a poem and poetry so great is it's simplicity and beauty. And this is just upsetting in nature. Not really ideal for a poetic catalyst.

>>9191199
Nice 1's and 9's. But not a nice poem. Probably would've been better to keep this for the personal collection given how morbid the imagery is. The way people are nowadays your professor will notify someone to keep an eye on you in case if shady behavior.

>>9194293
It just comes off as try hard- all the odd word shortening, and when the words aren't shortened, they're dense (poetry should be easy vivid reading) and the imagery is ambiguous and conceited and not very concrete. It just doesn't feel like a poem and reading it is like wading through too much syrup. Being encumbered by something which is sweet gives me no taste of sweetness.

>>9193195
Yes, thank you for your critique, kind sir. I will keep your words in mind.

>formatting problems
I'm fully aware of these, my writing tool is just a simple programmer's text editor that I'm using simply because it's free and feels good to use (Google for PSPad). All the pro writing tools command rather high licensing fees, which I'd rather not pay for something that is essentially just a free-time hobby project. You know, since I'm not realistically expecting it to get produced, knowing the sheer number of all the other hopefuls out there looking to catch a break.

For the time being, I will take creative liberties with the writing rules, just so that I could get the damn thing finished some day. And I also wish to have something that gives me the full picture about everything that is going on in the story's universe. But don't worry, I know it has problems, I just need someone to point out what they are. I'm a first timer, what can you expect?

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Pls critique this. I'm going to be in here throughout the night and giving thoughts on poetry

>>9190759
Not bad. Interesting subject matter. Lots of potential. I would just work on the rhythm, the syllable count.

Check this out
"You were struggling to breathe, struggling to talk,
The trembling hands of the one who taught me how to walk,
I held your hands tight,
to make sure you won't be out of my sight"

There's a good beat in the first lines but then on the last line specifically, it falls apart. Consider this:

"You were struggling to breathe
Struggling to talk
The trembling hands
That taught me to walk

I kept back my tears
I held your hands tight
I had to make sure
You weren't out of sight"

Or something like that. Just my opinion though. I don't want to give the impression that my artistic preferences are more legitimate or anything. I just genuinely think it would make the poem stronger.

>>9195544
Well done. Really appreciate the structure and the evocations. It would be better to include punctuation, though I can see your reasoning (if any) behind the omission.

Here's one I've been working on for weeks.

Convallaria Majalis
Pristine may-bells, in ever chaste,
What deathly guise have you embraced!
The nightingales dare not espy
What poison kissed; no tongue to cry.

For whom do your blooms droop in shame?
No Cythera could fade your name –
The knell that ebbs Lethe’s limpid tide;
The peal that outlived Babel’s pride.

Lily! shed not soft dewy tears,
Bled in your roots are buried years.
The wintry winds would soon comply
And waft you to the blissful sky.

Burns bright, alas! the stone of Cain;
The envy high that spares no pain
Has drenched you with Medea’s flask;
As of your makers, thus I ask:

When Persephone made you lithe,
Did she intend revenge so blithe?
Had Eve who cried you tender birth
Adorned your lips with bitter mirth?

Beneath the boughs my thoughts thus fleet
Benighted to spring’s lying sweet.
I have asked the willows why;
Their shedding leaves wept no reply.

I had felt an uneasiness about my heart ever since I left the apartment. The steps down to the base level floor felt cold and foreign despite my intimate familiarity of their qualities. Faces past me along the descent, shifting their glances away as I shifted mine. She had followed me, attempting to stop me, and asked for my wedding ring. As always, I refused. She cried and I tried not to. I concealed my emotions but not well enough; a tear had managed his escape. She yelled; stranger’s faces kept away, and my soul sunk deeper.

She had wanted to know why I was keeping the ring, but no answer given seemed satisfactory enough. Perhaps she wanted me to say something cruel, to give her some sort of closure to our tumultuous marriage; perhaps she wished I would reveal myself as some evil entity, hellbent on breaking hearts wherever I went. At least then she wouldn’t feel so betrayed—it would be an understandable reason; one that didn’t reveal the truth that I no longer loved her. I concealed my thoughts and sheltered my feelings.

I took a step forward. She said “Don’t come back”. A tear left me. She stormed upstairs. I heard porcelain crashing on the floor above—it was a wedding gift; a statue of Mickey and Minnie mouse as newlyweds. At least, it was in the moment just so passed. Before, it used to be complete, beautiful, and meaningful, but now it lays shattered about that concrete landing.

Rusted skies and sweet air, the hope for coming days remembered, but what melancholy for their loss. What an incongruous face I am; my mouth a soft lift while my eyes hold forecast, looking longingly on the dancing shadows across my eyelids. Where once all grew tinted red as the day settled out to its close, there remains only the cold bitterness of the wind that chimes even my marrow. Window unto window; memory unto memory. The release, to weep, is denied of me; so I must sit, and I must wander only the edges of these windows to the summer.

I awoke, I recall, to my boat crashing into something in the water--the impact was not kind to my headache, that much I know for certain. I slid a good five inches along the floor of my little boat, gaining half an ounce in wood splinters, and rocked about a good five seconds more in the waves of the impact. When the boat was still at last I looked up, and behold! A great warship, with all the signs of loving wear; the sails were in some places stitched together from cloth, in some others a Union or Spanish flag, and in another a pair of panties; the bottom was covered in a layer of fluffy moss that may as well have been the sole thing keeping the ship afloat; and the unmistakable aroma of dry Caribbean rum spilled overboard the vessel and eclipsed that of the bitter rotgut in my own boat.

>>9195855
Thanks a lot friend. After reading yours I can see what punctuation can do for a poem. I probably won't add it to the one I posted but I'll definitely remember the tip for future writings. So for that, thanks!

And yours was great. Well written, well structured, classical, and pretty. Good work.

>>9194419
Some sentences such as

>The nurse who treated it called it the middle phalanges which seems too cumbersome for everyday use.

Might not need the qualifier "for everyday use" at the end. It's a style thing but I prefer it shorter, since it's bot really needed to understand the meaning.

The whole paragraph seems to be like a thought pattern, like SoC, yet you didn't take liberties with stylizing it. You could very easily make the writing have no punctuation, letting it flow like thoughts might do. Once again, it's a style thing.

Other than that it lacks context, do I can't say overall if it's good, but it's not what I would write. Speaking of, this was my submission but I forgot to critique alongside it.

>>9195862

>Excerpt from a massive folder I have on my desktop for emotional outlets. Used this one for a Creative Writing class in college a few years back, and reduced myself to tears reading it in front of people. It's fairly edgy, though, consider this a warning.

If I could take, just a single moment of your time, a brief second to explain what I feel... I am unsure how much you would hate me. Who did you think I was? What did you think I was? I can't imagine, for any instance, what you saw in me. But that didn't matter. You looked past the pain. You looked past the abuse. You looked past the crisped up shell of a person that can no longer trust their own mind to maintain life. You helped me get better. And when I did, when I recovered, I took you for granted. Those memories stored of two awkward kids underneath trees in gardens that we didn't belong in, in hallways on the run from teachers. Those dashes of emotion on a fragile canvas, streaking across in vibrant explosions of orange light, red waves and blue waters. What was that? Where did that come from? Sitting here writing this there is not a single way that I could envision that spark between us now. There is no love in your heart for me anymore. But that's okay. You saw what I would become, and cut yourself away from the decay. It's okay. I understand. But I can never trust you again. I can never look back to you as more than a memory. You are a ghost upon pages of time, dancing across in an ether far from reality. I'll never tell you this. You'll never get to see this one, I'm afraid. I'll continue to trail after you like a dog, licking at the hands of an owner unconcerned, an owner browsing replacements. And that's not okay. I'm going to let you cut yourself away from me, deal the killing blow.

Fuck being hurt.

Fuck loving you.

Fuck loving hurt.

>>9192514
thanks for ruining my poem desu

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>>9191389
>>9192320

Ben stumbled out of the Twilek whorehouse into the midday sun, took a few tipsy steps and fell to his knees.
"QUADRINOS YOU SCUM FUCK SPACE APE, I DON’T WANT TO SEE YOU OUT HERE AGAIN!” the manager roared.
“E chu ta!” the Twilek spat, as the door slammed shut and Ben was left on the arid plains.

Back in the city, at the Mos Eisley Cantina, near the back of the bar, a porpoise-like creature called Jeb slouched over the bar. His eyes were dim, the joy that he had once been known for, gone, in its place, a tired apathy.
“Uhh, excuse me?” he motioned, as the bartender passed over him. “Bartender” he said now, using his big boy voice; still nothing.
Before he could ask again, Ben Quadinaros slipped into the seat next him.
“Ben buddy, where you been!” Jeb cried, “I saw the race –“
“Yeah, we all saw it,” the bartender interrupted, “Hey fellas we got big Ben Quadinaros in here.”
The room booed. “Quadinaros you would have gone faster if you’d taken a Bantha.”
“Come on Jeb, let’s get a booth,” Ben said as he dragged Jeb with him.
“Ben, what’s with you today, your eyes!”
“Just some Mandalorian spice.” Ben moaned, still aching from the last night. He thinks he might have gotten an STD.
“MANDALORIAN SPICE BEN?!” Jeb said a little too loudly, “you, you know that’s illegal right?”
“I’m sick of it Jeb.”
“What?”
“I don’t give a fuck. No one gives a fuck Jeb. You and me, we’re the runt of the litter.
“I don’t think I’m the runt of -“
“Yes you are Jeb, everyone knows it. I’m sick of being just spat on. These meatbags need to hear us, they need to respect us. THEY NEED TO BE TAUGHT!”
“Ben, I think that spice is messing with your head.”
“Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. You of all people know what I’m talking about.”
Jeb frowned; he did know what he was talking about.
“What you think that bartender really couldn’t hear you?”
He thought about it for a second.
“What, he was ignoring me, on purpose –“
“Of course he was Jeb. All our lives, treated like dirt.”
Jeb didn’t say anything, he knew he was true.
Ben reclined in his seat. His eyes were wild, searching the room.
“I’m telling you Jeb, something needs to be done.”

>>9189541


33 degrees
Pour it on me please

It's chocolate milk, swine.
If you've got the time,
You'll open up a Gallon
For the

Breaking down of all incandescent worshippers of the most holy bond between cap and ring

Weeping as your turniquet grip unleashes the richness of the god's nectar they scream in pain

How you've stolen from them their light, their guidance, and fervor.

Decapitation

Death by wrench

Null

>>9196327
It IS fairly edgy, but it's not downright terrible, apart from the end. "Fuck loving Hurt"? I think you can do better
The dog metaphor is lovely though

>>9193910
No, sorry. Read more, be more precise

>>9190759
This is just muddy, there is no balance. It's straight forward but there is no beauty. Rhyme scheme has no effect other than to rhyme. No cadence. Non existent Meter.

File: 1409545960238.jpg (141KB, 450x608px) Image search: [Google]

141KB, 450x608px

Here's my painfully cliche fantasy short story that I wrote.

http://pastebin.com/cMdYJcxJ

>>9196722
It does indeed reads as a cliche fantasy, but it's alright if that's what you want to write.
I think it is well written, but it needs some degree of originality or something promising from the start, a glimpse of what will unfold later or the implications of a conflict, otherwise the reader will be bored after a few pages - this does not to be the case, but it happens often with fantasy readers.

>>9196327
I will coment the paragraph without the last three lines. They should be dropped by all means.

I don't think it's good by itself, but it could be used in a longer piece. I've seen far more cringy and edgy writing in some of the big authors, but they make it work because the character's psychology and past has been well established and we can understand why he has been leaded to have such thoughts.

>>9195884
This is alright, but I don't see where it's going. Again, context.


I wrote this a year ago. I don't know if I shoud expand it or throw it into the flames
http://pastebin.com/8htng3jW

>>9195884
This would a much better poem if you fuck with line spaces and give it rhythm. But as a small paragraph, it's too short and self contained. It begs an adventure though we're given a scrying of one as is. Well written though, grammatically and linguistically it's tight and gets the point across without much fluff, but the fluff that is there isn't overzealous and encumbering.

1/2
Captain John Miller strode out of his lunar module, his feet digging into the soft lunar surface. The great moonscape that stretched before him flared with a great white intensity, greatly juxtaposed with the black horizon of outer space. In the vastness that engulfed the black sky hung spectacular view of Miller’s terrestrial home, the home to all who came before him. For countless millennia, ambitious men beheld the heavens and only dreamt of standing where he now stood. This single moment will be historically celebrated for thousands of years, a beginning of a golden era, and the dawn of a new epoch. He shed a single tear in awe of-
Miller’s monologue was interrupted by the astronaut standing beside him, who violently shook both his shoulder and his dramatic prose. The astronaut, lieutenant Adam Thomson, shouted into the radio and pointed a gloved finger to the horizon, where a shiny and pointy object stood in the distance.
The two spacemen exchanged curious glances before striding across the white plains towards the unidentified object. As they came closer, they saw an orange-clad figure in the distance, clutching a patch of red in his hands. The astronauts squinted at the figure and the red thing he held in his hands before realizing the identity of their lunar guest. They shouted in bewilderment, and as the orange jumpsuit raised his arms, aiming the flagpole at the ground, the two American astronauts began flailing their arms in anger and bounced as fast as they could towards him.
The orange astronaut turned sideways and haughtily looked at the two dancing Americans before firmly planting the flag into the dirt. He looked back at his lunar module and motioned to his colleague, who was in the middle of climbing down the module ladder before clumsily tripping on the last rung and collapsing with the gracefulness of a fat ballerina into the white soil.

>>9197834
2/2
“You commie bastards! We were here first! Leave!” Shouted Miller.
The soviet stood and looked at the ranting American through his visor with a blank expression, not only because he couldn’t understand English, but because he couldn’t hear what was being said through the vacuum of space in the first place. Therefore he promptly responded with a gesture, the only American one that he knew. He thrust his middle finger into the air, and the Russian shouted a profanity that only reached the sides of his helmet.
Meanwhile, his clumsy comrade, helmeted face now firmly planted into the dirt, picked himself up and dusted himself off just in time to see his colleague and the American buckled on the ground and wrestling each other, kicking up a large cloud of white dirt. As the two spacemen sluggishly swung their limbs at each other, the soviet astronaut shrugged, wobbled over to the scuffle and threw himself on top, promptly adding himself to the cloud of violence.
Lieutenant Thompson, who had only been idly standing around somewhat confused, watched the three roll around in the dirt like sumo wrestlers grappling each other in a bouncy castle. Unsure of what to do, he toddled over to the red flag and lifted it out of the ground, gripping it sideways in his hands. The two soviets looked up from their scuffle just in time to see the American breaking the pole over his knee and promptly kicking white dirt over the flag that now lay at his feet, just for good measure. The soviets scrambled up from the ground and furiously waddled as fast as they could over to Thompson, who was already hopping away in distance. Miller, still on the ground, hardly even bruised from the pillowfight he had just been in, picked himself up and snuck away from the two angry soviets and went back to his module.

>>9197836
My favorite parts were your riveting critiques of the other people who are just as hopeful as you are to get some advice, you ignorant twat.

On 4chan--

Oh how! Was I born with iron knees
To displease none fair but me?
To run rampant-ly (not ease-
Ily) among sober fields of poppy?

To which I do reply-sayin’
(a)lively hymn, what way
To hide my gay demise but through
Lying smiles and smiling lies.

>>9196651
A little overly complex, but I enjoyed it as ironic. And I also very much want a glass of chocolate milk right now.

>>9197972
Here's a bump cuz I forgot to clear sage from my name.

>>9196722

One sentence in your first paragraph bothered me. You say:

>Even during radiant morning, not even the bravest of men dare venture close to this tainted ground for fear of their mortal hearts being corrupted by the aura of evil that permeates from down below

Instead of saying 'permeates' you might be better off using 'radiates' or 'emanates'. Something more definite and active.

And goodness, please don't use sentences this long very often. Not unless you have a good excuse to, or you happen to be James Joyce. That sentence I've quoted is thirty five words long. The average sentence is best kept short, because the longer a sentence is the harder it becomes to keep a reader's attention.

You can dodge around this a little bit with semicolons and commas, but I'd advise getting good at figuring out how to break up some of your sentences into smaller, punchier pieces.

>This is the very first fantasy vignette I've ever written

You are standing in the mouth of a cave.

You've just fought a dragon.

The ground that marked your battlefield has been worn smooth by decades worth of coming and going. Claw marks scar the floor in jagged, quasi-geometric patterns. Smoke trickles past, its smell bizarrely sweet. There are blackened blast marks all around you, from where the monster spat flames in wild, spectacular arcs.

Blood fans across the cave floor and wall just in front of you, a brilliant crimson that doesn't seem like it will ever dim. Further scarlet dribbles indicate where the beast dragged itself off after you struck the mortal blow.

It must be further back inside the lair.

You listen carefully, but hear nothing coming from inside the cave. No groans and roars, no breathing even...just empty, hollow silence.

>>9195862
Nobody critiqued mine >.>

>>9198031
>just empty, hollow silence.
stopped reading here.

some things i don't like
> decades worth
>marks all around you
>from where the monster
>just in front of you
rest is great

>>9198031
Empty and hollow are synonyms. Try pervasive and hollow, it will get the meaning and dread more flushed out.

I wouldn't use bizarrely. Maybe unsettingly or quietly.

I agree with the above poster that
>decades...
Doesn't seem to fit well. Perhaps just describe it as the character would see it
>the dirt where you fought was pounded smooth by time.
Try that or something dimilar.

>>9197883
Are you seriously criticizing me for posting work in a critique thread?

>>9198165
>didn't read the OP

I'm not the person who called you a year, but I've posted

>>9198163
>>9196062
As my critiques while my story >>9195862 remains untouched.

>>9198165
>seriously criticizing me
>critique thread

See the irony? I've still contributed more to the point of the thread than you you sniveling tool.

>>9198066
I've got three in here not critiqued yet and I've given 7 crits. You gotta love it.

>>9198185
>>9195862
Is English your first language? Phrasing is awkward throughout. For example, "about my heart," "base level floor," "in the moment just so passed," "a tear had managed his escape," all sound stilted and could be reworded to be more clear. And those aren't the only ones.

>>9198278
Chill out, faggot.

It was my mistake, as someone more courteous than you pointed out.

>>9198298
It's my first language. I worded those specific sentences that way on purpose, though base level floor is a bit redundant.

"About my heart" using an antiquated version of about.

"A tear had managed it's escape" is symbolic language.

>>9198351
You're on 4chan. If someone wasn't being a dick and someone else nice, nobody would listen to anybody. But you've got eyes and a hand, and since you're on lit, I'm assuming you can read. You knew what this thread was and you thought you could tell everyone else putting in work to fuck off as long as someone gave you a crit anyway. Own up and don't act all offended.

>>9195202
I've submitted stuff this gruesome before and gotten no backlash for it. Poetry and art have no need to be 'nice', in my opinion. Art that disturbs you is usually whats most interesting to me. Thanks for reading though.

>>9198375
Just be careful using antiquated words. You can get away with about, that's not too bad. But don't push it. Using words in a meaning that's forgotten just makes reading your piece work instead of leisure.

>>9198710
No problem. I do usually try to make it a point that what I said is my personal preference and you aren't wrong. If it's written from the heart, it'll always be good to you and an audience fit for it. By no means change your style and keep up the work. Aside from my comments, there is interesting imagery there.

>>9198586
Calm your autism, anon. Go read a book.

>>9198713
Thanks for the advice.

As for the work, should I continue it? Would it make a worthwhile read? I would like to end it with the main character becoming so wracked with guilt he tries to return to the apartment, only to be beaten to death with a cast iron skillet.

>>9197972
What would you say specifically about it being overly complex

>>9196651
The mood bundled by this is integrated well. It is very infantile about mortality. It made me feel very dependant upon groceries and other animals; it also felt like the prose was launching an attack on me

>>9199440
I'm going to leave this here; no one has to critique it, but I thought it'd be due diligence to show that i rewrote the beginning of the story

Irrational fear of ideas covered not many minds in history, but it covered this one. If Norfael had an idea: there would be a howling; there would be an immense cajoling to discard that snippet. Ideas looked like mire all over, and the best way to conquer the chance of having an inkling was to be fatigued.
Trying to write a novel in his head, because he didn't really see it as a meaningful impression, meant that a cogency would be created, bent double by the second paragraph. The indelible shifting of the misty black angstroms was perfect - phasing qualia resembled a leaping gas lamp in the noisiness of the particles' gambol, chasing after spiders and architectural screws. All he could do was look at them, considering how much of a slump was triggered by the night.
Consciously: all he did was rap on the stool with an invented time signature, conciously cascading that every four clusters of thumping warranted a snare drum, and that this queue was missed. A knife against burnt toast is what the pattern sounded like, with great mechanical intensity, though perhaps accidental.
This moment he stopped his exertion and rested on the girder, being sly.
Suddenly: his heart exploded with red. A light at the trapdoor beneath his feet revealed that other people wanted to collaborate, an irretrievable mistake.
Burnishing the exit's metal plates with wire wool from nights before was a swift skint, then he opened the door past the foot berth given by a doorstop stone (which fell downstairs subsequently, and was a victim of breaking,) allowing himself to climb down, which he did.
He percieved the underside of this room - the corrugated mortar ceiling, and rubbed his forehead, blinking. There was a vapid thump, which marked the doorstop stone's landing. These exits reminded all of us of the graphs of the people, all of the erroneous chants made people argue from continents apart, or would do (he thought) if impressions were irrelevant. It was a flowing morning, it was an interrupted night.
Norfael coughed, because the lexicon he abstracted was no tonic, and the resonant frequency of his decibelic range generated earaches; the words melted on the ears like toxic wax when this man spoke.
Absconding, as he did on a regular basis, the abrasive enamel that was a solvent snare on the first rung of the descending ladder: he found a way he could hoop himself down, and port himself lower quicker

>>9199440
I had no idea he was talking about a refrigerator until this comment.

File: book cover.jpg (26KB, 324x499px) Image search: [Google]

26KB, 324x499px

>>9189541
google shortner - djLyw1

>>9199325
It's difficult for me to say without going into personal preference because I can tell it is supposed to be complex in its irony. So don't take it to much to heart. I just wouldn't say this is a piece that would be recognized, but one for a personal collection.

>>9198857
You should always finish what you start. There is certainly potential there, but I'd say depending on how much longer you plan on making it, just watch your level of unnecessary descriptors. Really ask yourself how each description contributes to the piece and if the piece would be lacking without it.

>>9198839
I hope nobody crits your shit man, you seem insufferable and blockheaded.

>>9199625
Being I've been handing quite a few crits and my contribution hasn't been looked at yet, I'm going to post an old story I'd forgotten about and recently dug up and did a little editing on. It's a little long, but I would love for someone to give it a read and tell me what they think. I apologize in advance if it starts out slow, I've been tossing around a new opening for a while and I'm still stuck. It's too long for the comments so I'm linking the pastebin. But it's not as long as it looks, there's a lot of line breaks

http://pastebin.com/pNHixySQ

>>9199695
things that i don't like
> devoured the open sky
>flock of chairs
>I was utterly dumbfounded
> isolation was difficult not to feel
it was hard not to feel isolated
>really gained respect
>I believe it is no accident
>hear just fine
>emotional support through my shoulder blade
>floats around

stopped reading here
>potted plant in the remaining corner by the door.

>>9199818
or "i almost felt isolated

>>9199818
I hate to sound ungrateful, but I mean, thanks for the effort? I read through loads of shit in these threads, but I do it to completion to give an an honest critique. I don't just say things I don't like with no context. Otherwise it just comes off like you're looking for a reason to stop reading it and not trying to help me out.

But like I said, not trying to sound ungrateful. I'm thankful for the effort. I just don't know how to work with what you said.

>>9199830
not the guy you crited but how tf can you "almost feel isolated"

>>9200065
Yeah, I was thinking that too... Oh well, what can you do, right? Hopefully someone else will give it more of a chance. It's really something you've got to read all the way, it's got a great payoff I think.

>>9200058
I'm sorry that it seemed that way. I was just listing things that I thought didn't sound very good. I'm not a good writer so I can't really give a complete critique.

>>9200080
Also it was rude of me not to read the whole thing

>>9200080
Fair enough. And I mean it's not like what you said didn't help dome, I do think some if the wordings you pointed out are strange. Although I can say a few of them are intentional due to the characterization of the narrator. Like the shoulder blade remark. He's saying that as someone who's just been told they're dying. So the attitude from the author here is that even though the doc is trying to show a supportive gesture, it doesn't help him at. It's meant to sound as awkward as it feels for him.

But at the same time, even if you aren't a good writer, "you're" still my audience. And if all that is off-putting to you, I've got to consider it. So don't think I'm demeaning or ignoring your crit. I've noted all your remarks.

>>9200105
Thanks. For giving you some shit and being cool about it, you've got something you need looking at? I'll gladly help a brother out for being so chill.

>>9200226
I've been working on something but it isn't ready to be looked at yet.

I tacked the tin of blood as I scrapped to my hucks in the swamp commotion of the street. Buffle-headed and with watery eyes, I lifted my ernful noggin to clock my spit standing a spit away. Under the stone gateway of a garden, I was daring a rabble to guess under which cup a borrow-pence lay. I wore the white, yellow, black and red clouts of a Smoke bard, with a silver serpent circlet on my brow. I gawped as I clocked me, grinned and raised a swatch in my right donny. Then, my grin dropped and I gazed on me like I was an addle-plot, and I pointed at me, the swatch still high in the air, and snarled into the crowd.

>>9200251
If you post it, quote me and I'll check it out. Biding my time tonight playing New Vegas and browsing the boards, so I'll be around.

>>9200361
I haven't written that much of it so I just wrote this which is a short simplified version of the story:

As the gardener walked through the garden he saw a weed growing up his apple tree. He climbed the tree planning to smother the weed and shook the tree's branches dropping leaves onto it. The gardener returned the next day and saw that the weed was still there. It thanked the man for giving it a hat of leaves to protect it from the sun. Determined to kill the weed the gardener climbed the tree again this time dropping apples hoping to crush it. Instead of crushing the weed it thanked him for being kind enough to give it food. Angered that all his attempts to kill the weed had failed the gardener spent months guiding the tree's roots around the weed to choke it. The weed seeing that the man had circled him in roots thanked him a third time for creating a wall to keep pests out.

>>9200360
>>9199451
Too impenetrable.

>>9198134
>>9197836
You failed your d20 saving roll to avoid cringe

>>9197960
I liked this right up to the last line, which seemed too glib.

>>9196651
I always wondered what happened to Def Leppard.

>>9200557
It's funny, even for a quickie, I didn't like the last line either. I had a fee alternates, but I just couldn't land on one I liked ultimately, so I chose the best of the worst. Didn't think it'd even get a mention though, thnx.

>>9200543
May I ask what you're going for, since I'm getting a short-hand instead of the legitimate? I have a faint idea, but I'd like to hear what it is for sure so I can give you the best advice I can. Right now, Ive just got a lot of questions over any real advice.

>>9198134

what a fucking pointless critique

>stopped reading here.

really, you stopped reading at the end of the excerpt?

>>9200605
Like I said it's not really ready to be looked at yet
It's supposed to be funny.

>>9195855
This has some pretty powerful line, but i'm wondering if you use archaice language, because you feel like you're supposed to, or because you think it improves the poem in a specific way?

Consider cutting ANY couplet you think the piece could possibly live without and then expanding. I personally would like to see the flower less clouded by allusions. I feel it muddles in inherent emotional response that seems to come with nature poetry. That said. Mine is hardly any better.


Cubist Self-Portrait

My I died
in fatherland
when Georgia
was invaded
by I cracked
among the star
less night the god
less night the wonderful
night

The planes of my face
fly off and crash
and I crash into I
and I crash and
feel the ground of
me and I know the
still point.

And I am pointless
and revolutionary
and turns in me
my Euclidianship
revoked reordered
and cubed into my
self who died when I
invaded I and I cracked
among the sky
and I knew the other I
and we spoke for a time

now see this see
stretching before we
and me and me and I
and we glitter above the
sea and crash against the
door and crack open the shore
and peek inside

let light dwell outside the wall
and pale the paint of mind
and peel the I’d of signs
of glass and cold enzymes

the chainlink fence I and I and
I and I make up in spite of
ghastly cracks among the night
in peerless little pricks of light
shining through the fatherland
of Georgia, where red mud
is ground, “Here lays where Mars
collide” where Venus light
can pull the tide, where every
thing does spin inside my mind

The green coast of lines and lines
is marred against the orange rind
the melts into the horrid time
that passes by in flight.

Let everyone see among them
shelves that bare the weight
of light that can’t bare to stare
into that planeful nighght.

>>9200704
I actually really like this my man

>>9200710
thanks! it's super fun to read out loud, but hopefully it doesn't feel spoken-wordy (at least not too much)

>>9200704
>>9200710
likewise, great job, an abstraction falling in and out of spiralling rhythms

oh god /crit/ this scene I'm writing is coming out so shitty and I am literally forcing words out to make more than a paragraph of progress this week. Why is this so fucking hard?

>>9200744
I feel that.

I'm currently working on a comic, trying to start in media res, but the media res I'd start with is already so escalated, so I have no idea how to swing it.

>>9195884
pretty good. abstract but evocative.
I especially like
>rusted skies and sweet air
>where once all grew tinted red as the day settled out to its close

critique would probably be just to spread out the information. by cramming too much wordy descriptions into one sentence you kind of lose the vivid picture evoked originally. if you just spaced it out a bit more I think it would be better. but idk, don't take my advice too seriously


Black stars roll listless,
linger in oblivion.
Ghostly vessels on the infinite sea
Reeling in the blind eye of eternity;
Spherical silhouettes
swallowed by darkness.

>>9200744
try writing differently and then read them outloud. then ask yourself which one sounds the most natural

>>9195205
Download Trelby. It's easy, it's good, and it's free. I found it takes a good bit of persistent anxiety out of the process knowing that I am conformant as I go. Nothing hanging over my head about having to go back and check all the capitalizations and margins and slug lines, etc.

here's a little poem I wrote about DRUMPF

brave women crowd
through the streets
the racists head unbowed
no mercy from elites
that orange orc
that pudendal grabber
terror of new york
his fat jowls jabber
we will be the best
america great again
who could have guessed
the country would bear this stain?

>>9190194
I feel like this would be a really quirky enjoyable short story.

>>9190759
Madame you need to ease up off the super edge before you fall over it. But desu there's potential to this.

>>9191199
This strikes me as a kind of stream of consciousness thing even though it seems you have source material for this with how specific some of the imagery is. I enjoy the morbid oddity but it kind of lacks any real point imo.

Will include my own lyricism in a reply to this.

>>9203561
These are my song lyrics. I'll give 2 examples

"Scaring the Children"

I hold up my arms to brace myself
For fear of broken teeth
I hold up the glass to face myself
While you strike repeatedly
I bite down one last time
Waiting for the final throw
I clench the fist that I
Have let you hold on so

Tight
Tonight
Ive seen you in another light
It'll fade
away soon again anyways
But it's
Scaring the children
We're scaring the children
It's scaring the children
We're scaring the children

I run for a couple miles or more
Just to race you home
Your eyes were wild when you told
Me you'd take us both
That you'd find where I kept it hid
The sidearm beneath my bed
Not single word you said
Before, has left me so cold dead

But now
I know
I will never again doubt
Your promises
I'll never presume your premise
Between them I stand when
Youre scaring the children
When you're scaring the children
Yes we're scaring the children

^^written from the pov of my dad in his last relationship

"Flora and the Minds of Men"


"No don't pick me,
I'm no good for you"
Said a poppy
To a man so blue
He pays no heed
He forgets the truth
Poppy will bleed
And the man will be used

"Pick me only
And leave my thorns"
Said every rose to
A man so eager
Who can be lonely
With a rose adorned
Any words of prose
Can seem much deeper

Can the roots dig in
If the soil is so dry
Can the flora flourish
If the sun never comes
Man makes the world he lives in
And he lets the trees die
When he cuts and doesn't nourish
The truly important ones

"Lucky if you
Find the right of us"
Call the clovers
To a gambler
If word is true
He'll never know thus,
He'll try the world over
And be the rambler

Can the roots dig in
If the soil is so dry
Can the flora flourish
If the sun never comes
Man makes the world he lives in
And he lets the trees die
When he cuts and doesn't nourish
The truly important ones


^^ a kind of allegorical piece relating various flora to the various vices of men. Substance, Love, and Gambling. Poppies, Roses, and Clovers.

I have music for "Flora" but I've never recorded it. "Scaring the Children" is a work in progress. All in all I have like 30 backlogged songs I've written and a lot of them full compositions. If I could ever find an affordable studio and some new equipment and TIME to do it I could probably release my first 13 songs in the span of like 2 weeks. They're that ready. Ughhhhh.

PIRATE UTOPIA

See the wet flags unmoving and dripping over the head of these homeward revolutionaries drenched in saltwater and cold sweat and postagonal bliss, let your eye be a mirror to the sun and catch that perfect nacreous glint which will lend this image immortality – light, pain, nature and our shared ideals all merging in a moment of subtle eternity. This is pure fiction, accretive fabrication - but there was rain (there always is) and there was a revolution (there always is) and there were people and dreams of brief immortality, they all met here or could have met here or will meet here in the totality of time. The difference between dream and memory is an accident of fate, and love is better shown by the protean song of what a place could be than by enumerating only what is.

Think I wrote this after some kind of lefty debate, a couple of years ago.

>>9200360
Actually made me laugh with physical quality of the wordchoice.Good old brute force satire.

>>9201851
Cross between the ataraxy of an haiku and the baroqueness of Lovecraftian purple prose. I like it. Can't really advise you, but keep working with this subject.

>>9200704

That's some pretty wicked poetry man. I feel like you should be a Prog lyricist lol.

Favourite part was the word play and imagery of "the planes of my face fly off and crash and I crash into I and I crash and feel the ground of me and I know the still point"
None of your lines feel like empty words and images which I see with a lot of "abstract writing"

Wish I could have seen this my first pass through and included this with my other crits but desu that post was long asf to begin with.

>>9202914
Not terrible. Gets the point across.
I wrote this one election night and wrote it as a prog protest song

"Protest the Presidency"
Bigot
Bigot
How the fuck can you believe,
Every lie he's said
The people that will bleed
Stain his tie red
Duped for decades
By stigmas of men
Who will always
Ignore suffering

Bigot
Bigot
Bigot
Bigot

Protest the presidency
Redeclare your sovereignty
Don't just stand, or wait and see
It's time to fill the streets
Protest the presidency
Before the bodies do

How can you look in the eyes
Of your daughter ?
When you realize
You gave her rights for fodder
How can you look in the eyes
Of the family next door
As they pray to Allah tonight
Because their rights are no more

Bigot
Bigot
Bigot
Bigot
Bigot

Protest the presidency
Redeclare your sovereignty
Don't just stand, or wait and see
It's time to fill the streets
Protest the presidency
Before he fucks us all

Protest the presidency
Bigot bigot
Protest the presidency
Bigot bigot
Protest it
Reject it
Defend the weak
Fill the streets
Defend the weak
Protest the elite

>>9204307
it was on page five?

>>9196358
no problem

>>9202914
its shit

>>9203817
is this a joke

with rain in my heart i see you
cold and unloving now
where once grew fields of flowers
where we sang out and danced and capered

the rain once nourished our love
playful puddles we would splash
and lives full of feeling we shared
as partners under the storm

the rain is cold yet thinning
as the pain begins to retreat

the puddles are calmer and clearing
with a reflection beginning to shape

it is i alone with rain in my heart
but now an umbrella for two


just wrote that in the last 5mins since seeing this thread... fuck knows what my brain is doing

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Does this count? Original text is William Lloyd Garrison's "No Compromise With The Evil Of Slavery"

>>9205937
that sucked

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Excerpt from a short story I'm writing.

http://pastebin.com/ZgnFF2ej

>>9203726
Seems a bit droning, sentences are hard to follow without going them over twice. I'd advise separating the ideas out a little more.

>>9203670
Song lyrics are hard to judge without a rhythm and melody behind them, but from what I can tell it could use a little more descriptive words, the wording seems a little generic.

>>9194293
Really enjoyed this! I like floating through the vague imagery of what you've wrote.

distant sun sits at its zenith

a crater below, baked, where shanties toil
spitting into mud, youth decrepit and lost;
vagrants, the itinerant strangers
wandering in dust along cracked highway

voided tunnels wrought overborne oils
that numb sense and reason away
out of turbulent flight
yielding to drifted haze

captured air gleaming down glass
diffused about the tounge, a familiar cough
met with shaking hands and low mutter
alike with yellowed ink and paper

shelved off and disregarded,
so others could look forward
and chase the low gilded light
of the setting sun

>>9206440
Don't fucking post if you don't fucking give a crit. Holy shit

>>9206450
Below is my mine, just did it in two posts
>>9206265

>>9206450
Who cares faggot

Literally nobody is following that rule in this thread anyway

To give in is to give up
But I still can't make heads or tails of where to start
You are in or you are out
And it seems the hare has beat the turtle in the roundabout
Steady as she goes, but what if she rocks to and fro?
Pick up the pace! Drop and roll.
But I like the flame, if only for a little, for I won't feel much after a while.
Why start if the past is scripture for the ending?
The present is the recording of the past and remembering.
The future is worthless and prescripted.
If it is poisonous why do some bears eat eucalyptus?
Convey me the truth, tell me that I am destined for greatness.
Lie to me please, it will be another drop in the ocean.
Light at the mouth of the tunnel
Is the exit as we all go down the funnel
Into the stomach of some dark god
Who strikes is on the head with a rod
Depression flits and flutters
It got through my shutters
And sadly it shit on my head
I knew I should have stayed in bed

>>9206520
Shoulda linked from the start and save us both time.
>>9206607
Yeah and thread is shit.
>protip:
It's not a coincidence. You get the work you put into it. Why don't you ask your mommy to check your writing? She'll be nicer.
>>9206673
Same goes for you.

>>9206692
so ya gonna look at my piece?

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>>9206692
Yet you're still bitching while people that did follow the rule still don't have any critiques

>>9206702
>>9206709
Yeah no shit. I've got three floaters in this thread with no crits. But the top three or four posts have like 10 crits a piece (cuz that's practical necessary). No, it's the deplorable laziness in these threads that just runs me down man. You guys don't give a fuck about the purpose and integrity of the threads. You just want someone to tell you you did a good job. Meanwhile people like me want good, honest advice about structure, style, flow, and overall integrity but get looked over because it's long or not immediately easy to crit. And no, I'm not linking to any of mine, I don't care for crits from 19 year olds who are hoping to get lucky in multiple figurative meanings. I did, but these threads just disappoint tine after time and Im tired of keeping them alive. If you can't follow the two basic butch rule laid out clear as day in the op, then you can't give good advice.

>>9206244
Which song in particular seems generic?
Cause Flora is a simple alt/folk tune so I never intended to write intricately worded prose, moreover a thoughtful lymeric.
And "Scaring Children" I'm genuinely interested in what wordings seem generic?

>>9206752
Hey man its 4chan so nothing is going to go 100 percent smoothly. These threads are pretty damn cool so don't sweat the small stuff.

He cant hold the old mans gaze. His eyes penetrating, burning like cold iron. His face is weathered. Rigid, either to proud or to bear emotion. But his eyes betrayed him. They swam with malevolence. Blue irises flecked with sorrow and rage. His hand trembled from the weight of the gun. He cast one last pitiful glance at the old man as he gently lowered the hammer. He sat the gun on the sink and turned his back to the mirror to finish brushing his teeth

>>9206842
>penetrating, burning eyes
>cold steel
>weathered face

ditch the clichées

>flecked with sorrow and rage

that's not how eyes work...

other han that, i want to know how comes he has to shoot a man whilst brushing his teeth so i guess

>good job

>>9206842
*Rigid, either too proud or brittle to bear emotion.

>>9206852
Its a mirror. Thanks for the critique

>>9206842
Good. Felt the last sentence was rushed and anticlimactic.

>>9206859
oh yeah... rushed that last sentence tbqh

>>9206875
>>9206871
Good feedback thanks

>>9206821
Hey man, it's /lit/, one if the slowest boards on the whole site. There's just no excuse to not take some time be genuinely helpful. THATS THE POINT OF THESE THREADS. Not "be helpful to a couple people" and the rest? oh well!
I'm sorry. I'm coming off as high strung, but this thread could get no bumps for an HOUR and only me down to page 5-6. That's plenty of time for a soon-to-be-poster to open the thread, search out a post in need of crit, give it a careful read and some good, thought out advice, and then post their work with it. You're just deflecting and putting off your own laziness because it's easy to do that online. But if these threads were filled with posters who actually took care of each other, they'd go from being "pretty damn cool" to "fucking awesome and helpful". They'd probably be the most successful threads on the board amidst all the shit posting.

But keep deflecting and arguing semantics with me. I dunno why I bother here, 90% of the posts are high school school tier anyway (non-coincidentally).

>>9206886
Well I think an issue is besides the sub tier quality content posted, many people (myself included) don't know how to give good, thorough feedback.

>>9206936
Just be subjective. It doesn't have to be a professional critique. As long as you've studied English, read at least a couple of books, and know how to avoid personal opinion over subjective opinion, you can give a pretty good critique. Just read their shit, try and get the message, see how well the writing reflects the message or character(s), and don't assume it's bad. Always assume what you're going to read is going to be good. If you do that, it's easy to give an honest crit with good pointers
>You used past tense though you're writing present
>line 'x' seemed clunky and didn't help develop anything
>you used 'y' word though you didn't need it
>did you mean for your character to change voice here?
>your message wasn't very clear, explain it quickly so I can help?
>grammar is weak, flow is lacking here and there, I find myself rereading lines occasionally to be certain what it means
>Try a little more word variety
>this character seemed flat
>that character didn't really mean anything to me
>your image wasn't clear, try "z" for a descriptor instead, it's more accurate
>this is cliche, try something more unique
>too short, too long
>get my point?

Just little things that you are sure aren't personal preferences, but that genuinely are bad or need reworking/reconsidering. Not
>I don't like this
>this sounded funny to me
>this was stupid
>it was good
>it was bad
>I stopped reading
>go fuck yourself

Your working with someone's idea, you're not writing it. Just think about it. Anyone can honestly crit if they really want to.

Opening paragraph of a short story I'm doing. Tear me to shreds.

Cliff faces his window, watching dust trickle in the light. As a child he thought he was seeing air itself manifest. He had an understanding that space was not nothing. Nothing was something else, different. Space is just the thing that lets the world be. The dust was space cracking for a little, matter glitching out. He tried to catch it but it always eluded him, so instead he’d breath it in, assuming it would get trapped in his lungs, like fish on a net, or Chinese factory suicides on a heavy shift. He’d breath in and wait to cough up space itself. But nothing happened. He’d absorbed nothing. Now he was full of nothing.

Is it really time to get up again?
Another day of pretty much the same,
Are you tired of it all? The cyclical,
the mundane, the tired and tried.
the same predictable bus on the way to work,
Same faces lit up by phones, the same children
And old folk, waiting for their stop.

How naive are those that tell you to live spontaneously,
I am living life fully,
Feeding every craving,
Seeing everything there is to see,
There's only the prospect of hearing the yet to be spoken
That many of us cannot help but appreciate,
Even that is fleeting,
Like all roads, cyclical of unfinished work
So just breathe they say,
The unpaved soil is bound to get moss,
Man's concrete bound to be destroyed,
Just relax now, it's all just an interlude
For the eternal excitement of the unknown

>>9207047
i like the idea of dust bwing air materializing. i can remember thinking the same as a kid. so relatable aka i like it.

on the other hand, i don't see how it's adding up. it just seems like this character gets endlessly distracted.

what's the intention of this paragraph?

>>9191389
WELL HELLO BEAUTIFUL

>>9207047
Very navel gazel-y without a concrete theme. Just caught up in minute details that lead to nowhere with some unimlactful metaphors. The delivery is good and solid, except for a few fragmented phrases between commas. I think for an opening paragraph it lacks a hook. Is it another story about nothing? What makes yours special?

Cheers look forward to second paragraph.

>>9207077
>>9207092

For a while I've had this idea for a story about a man creating a personal god out of body parts from different animals, but I've been unable to really write any concrete scene, so I figured I'd try and just write whatever came to mind that could relate to the theme. The character is supposed to be obsessed with the physicality of the world, and how he can't escape it. I'm having trouble landing the story down in concrete detail. Any tips? Also, thanks for reading!

>>9207103

Short stories are a very technical demonstration of storytelling. I think you need to flesh out a plot or a theme with an outline. You probably also need a timeline.

Writing what comes to mind is good if you don't know how to start it continue a scene. For an opening , it's either you capture us with good prose or a prospect of a good plot or both.

>>9207136
Thought about it some more, wrote this. Perhaps it sets the tone a bit better. Thoughts?

Cliff set alight every book he owned. Naked in his yard he smelled a mix of ash and sweat and cigarettes. It all engulfed him like he wanted. His skin dripped into the humid night. The fire blocked the moon. He went to touch the flames and they licked him and it hurt. He was glad it hurt. The fire talked with ease, made itself understood. It didn’t need the work that humans did. The books they did. The fire was brute. Its meaning was not lost in the bullshit.

>>9207047
>or Chinese factory suicides on a heavy shift

I'm curious why you use such a strong metaphor all of the sudden? Is a Chinese factory a main part of the story?

>The dust was space cracking for a little, matter glitching out.

The flow of this sentence seems off: particularly with "space cracking" reading to me as one verb instead of 'noun verb' (I had to read it multiple times to understand), and the use of "glitching out", unless that fits to a theme later (sci-fi, technology or something) is abrupt as well.

I do like the vague introduction of the character, it makes me want to learn more about him.

>>9207239
>Naked in his yard he smelled a mix of ash and sweat and cigarettes

Now this opening hooks me! I love this imagery. Do you think it would sound better dropping "a mix"?

>It didn’t need the work that humans did. The books they did. The fire was brute. Its meaning was not lost in the bullshit.

This part was initally unclear to me, awkwardly worded. Perhaps make the connection between "It didn’t need the work that humans did." and "The books they did." through syntax a little clearer (because it seems that the fire actually DOES need the books to feed off of).

Overall a big improvment to the first submittion.

Perhaps you could look at mine?

distant sun sits at its zenith

a crater below, baked, where shanties toil
spitting into mud, youth decrepit and lost;
vagrants, the itinerant strangers
wandering into dust along cracked highway

sifting, with broken hands,
overturning the fine grains,
hoping to find...
alas,

voided tunnels wrought overbearing oils
that numb sense and reason away
out of turbulent flight
yielding to drifted haze

captured air gleaming down glass
diffused about the tounge, a familiar cough
met with weak hands and low mutter
alike with yellowed ink and paper

shelved off and disregarded,
so others could look forward,
squint at the gleam
and chase the low gilded light
of the setting sun

>>9207073
>the same predictable bus on the way to work,

Do you need the work "predictable" here?

Maybe someone can chime in, but syntactically would it be 'better' to have "...the prospect of hearing the yet-to-be-spoken' or something along those line?

The five lines of the second stanza are really strong, but I am unclear on what

"Even that is fleeting,
Like all roads, cyclical of unfinished work"

Is trying to really convey. The ending is pretty nice though feels sort of trite ("For the eternal excitement of the unknown"), I feel like this is common way of ending it (which is not necessarily bad, and I think it fits with rest of the piece).

How do you feel about mine?

distant sun sits at its zenith

a crater below, baked, where shanties toil
spitting into mud, youth decrepit and lost;
vagrants, the itinerant strangers
wandering into dust along cracked highway

sifting, with broken hands,
overturning the fine grains,
hoping to find...
alas,

voided tunnels wrought overbearing oils
that numb sense and reason away
out of turbulent flight
yielding to drifted haze

captured air gleaming down glass
diffused about the tounge, a familiar cough
met with weak hands and low mutter
alike with yellowed ink and paper

shelved off and disregarded,
so others could look forward,
squint at the gleam
and chase the low gilded light
of the setting sun

>>9207136
Was thinking of writing a novel in both Third person and first person, part of the thematic and themes. Would it be publish If I did?

>>9207282
Thank you!, will look into the syntax change.

As for your poem, I enjoy some of the very dreadful and almost apocalyptic imagery. Specially the "vagrant, itinerant strangers" line. It has a really nice rhythm to it, same with "out of turbulent light yielding to drifted haze" and "chase the low gilded light of the setting sun." However, I feel like I've read something really dense, yet I have no idea why it is dense. The main issue I find is that its simply obtuse, unecessarily so in my opinion. I get a sort of survival narrative, perhaps a metaphor for resilience, but its only a guess. If you want to clarify it its up to you, as I dont feel it totally detracts from what you try to do. It would help though, as it would be more fulfilling and rewarding to read. I would also consider changing the line about the void tunnels, as I feel it becomes really wordy at this point, and makes the line stand out awkwardly. Keep the meaning, but try using a more concise language.

On another note, I find the line "youth decrepit and lost" to be bordering on cliche, same as "broken hands," but thats minor and nitpicky.

All in all, pretty damn good man. Got any more to share?

>>9207323
no

>>9207319
Youve got a concept, now make it work. You can get "published" easily

>>9207239
Much better than the first entry. Now you have questions like "Why is he burning every book", why was he glad when he got burnt. Delivery was okay, nothing too outstanding but it was concise and clear enough to be understood. Again, I like the mystery of this paragraph and would read more.

>>9207300

Lots of fragmented imagery that seems to be connected by the rise and the setting of the sun.. It feels bleak, like an old undeveloped English road that still used wooden planks when it got too muddy.

Poem reads like people just trying to get through the day.

I don't have any stylistic critiques because the style fits the fragmented imagery. I will say that there wasn't a moment of poetic beauty in these lines. Perhaps it was intentional. I don't know much about poetry, just go by how it sounds to me, so there's my two cents.

>>9206886
Heres some advice. Quit being a faggot

>>9207716
You proud of that statement anon

>>9191507
What the other anon said. It sounds too awkward and barebones. I think you can add more to it.

-

http://pastebin.com/XUfiJSmc

Beginning of my short story. It's unfinished.

>>9209389
Story is nice, like the prose, I get the feeling this you are writing a introspective novel. Have any more to share

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He was good at convincing himself of things using only the internet. One time, he'd eaten a Family Size bag of Hot Cheetos that made his innards feel like magma. After perusing WedMd for about five minutes, he was sure it was stomach cancer. But a new kind of stomach cancer. He imagined himself lying on an operating table, stately looking scientists and doctors surrounding him, with his stomach sliced open, his lips and fingers still dark red from the Cheetos. They were dissecting him, nodding every now and then, before finally telling him that yes, it was in fact stomach cancer, but a cancer unlike one they've ever seen. He grinned coyly. He had finally secured himself a Wikipedia page, although it wasn't the one he had originally wanted, which was to be like a second Ted Kacyznski, or something cool like that.

>>9210518
decent kek

I would like some critique with this, I wrote it some time ago, but I'm always looking to extend it and make it better.
http://pastebin.com/beh6eVK1

>>9209389
pretty good. not too baroque or abstract, but still descriptive.

Why do you niggers always ignore my work even after I give critiques?

Fuck you

>>9211278
link it to me

>>9211342

>>9206244

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>>9190759
Basically what >>9196704 said

Rhyme scheme is awkward and forced

“She’s wrong!” I shouted, clenching my head. “She doesn’t know. She’s not here every day! If she’d just look in a damn mirror, she’d know I didn’t do anything wrong!”
My chest and cheeks felt hot and tense, like every muscle in my body was aching so terrible to do something drastic, quick and powerful. Steven was a nice fellow, but he had a way of pissing me off, too. I got up from the bed and started pacing around the cell, walking the same circles over and over again and breathing heavily.
“You weren’t even there,” I said, looking at him narrowly. “You don’t have any reason to judge me. No one was there, how could they possibly assume what happened!?

>>9210518
reminds me of lil' cheetus
>>9202914
I like it
>>9195963
Prose is OK, though out of context it's not very interesting, besides the panties

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Now hardly here and there a hackney-coach
Appearing, show'd the ruddy morn's approach.
Now Betty from her master's bed had flown,
And softly stole to discompose her own.
The slip-shod 'prentice from his master's door
Had par'd the dirt, and sprinkled round the floor.
Now Moll had whirl'd her mop with dext'rous airs,
Prepar'd to scrub the entry and the stairs.
The youth with broomy stumps began to trace
The kennel-edge, where wheels had worn the place.
The small-coal man was heard with cadence deep;
Till drown'd in shriller notes of "chimney-sweep."
Duns at his lordship's gate began to meet;
And brickdust Moll had scream'd through half a street.
The turnkey now his flock returning sees,
Duly let out a-nights to steal for fees.
The watchful bailiffs take their silent stands;
And schoolboys lag with satchels in their hands.

>>9199695
I think the first paragraph is very vivid and effective, and gives a grounding voice of the character (like in "It still is, of course, just as beautiful", I really like how that reads). Personally instead of grandiosity I would use vastness.

Wow its a total shift from the first paragraph to cancer, and caught me by surprise.

I think 'tell' should be 'telling' in the 2nd paragraph. Delete "are" in, ".. they come with multiple motivational pictures are strung along the wall..". I liked the decription of the doctors office and its something that every reader can relate to.

30. What are you trying to communicate with 'relinquishes' other than he gives it to him?

I like the transition to from 42 to 45, also the building mystery of the doctor. I think it would be interesting to have the reader discover for themself that the doctor is reading Niko's thoughts (rather than "He said just what I was thinking. How could he have known that, there's no way!", it comes off as too showy (maybe show the actions of the doctor more))

Although I do not understand the ending (it seems worlds are sort of colliding here) I do like the vagueness you leave.

Fun to read altogether!

>>9211781
What is lil cheetus

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>>9211797
art

>>9211369
I like this. I feel
> If I'll ever know love in my lifespan

It just feels a bit randomly thrown in; I know it's not, but feels a little out of place.

Here's one I wrote this morning

You, kookaburra, laughing
Brightly in the tree;
Me, the wretched stranded beneath.
You deigned come to me
But I feared vicious talons

>>9211869
Thanks, appreciate it.

I can't speak much outside of contemporary poetry, but I like the setup for this one, though I think it falls a little flat at the middle and end. I get that it isn't supposed to be contemporary, but you might consider softening up the antiquated language a bit more. May seem a little less forced.

>>9211894
Cheers, I'll redraft it!

>>9211767
The word fellow felt pretty awkward, but I am curious as to where this goes next

>>9211869
Very tight writing. Do you think you should break up the third line a bit more? Such as 'Me, the wretched, stranded beneath '? I feel the language is very tightly used throughout (in a clean, fluid way) but the word deign may throw off some readers.

>>9195884
I like. As prose. I want a whole story written like this.

>>9212117
Yeah I get that. Would you reckon splitting the line or just putting in a comma or something?
And thanks, I'll rephrase that!

Deep Sorrows

by T. W. Chambers

Sing a song of sixpence
A pussy full of cocks,
Four and twenty children
Were baked into some socks.
When the socks were opened,
They all begun to weep
Was that not a dainty dish
To set before some sheep?

~fin~

plz r8, no h8, appreci8

>>9195884
Love the Prose, could be made into a short story if you are up to the task.

>>9195862
Some sentences could be shorter I.E everyday use could be remove, its more a style thing, but nonetheless you should consider it. You might watch out about uses of archaic words. Your doing fine but its still something you should watch out for. Since few can pull it off.

>>9191507
They're a few poorly worded words which you should check, the other problem it seems rather juvenile and bare-bones which you should fix.

>>9196722
You weren't lying with the cliche. but that alright if that is what you want to write. Needs a tad more originality. and watch out for falling for the same pit traps from other fantasy writers.


Chapter one
Ever since the death of her grandfather, Alice could no longer sleep peacefully. The vivid nightmares of her dreams would not let her. So she often laid on her bed trying to find meaning to her nightmares. It often involved children borne from the shadows dancing, and once she got near them, they often scuttled down towards a village in the distance.

Then she would be left to wander about in a place she knew nothing about. The sky was darker than the one from her world; there were no stars in the distance and no moon to give any light. Then a blood-curdling scream that would quicken her heart would be heard in the distance, which was when she would run aimlessly trying to gather distance from the source of the scream.

Yet it always ended the same. The hands of a cloaked person would be around her neck tighten its grip, no matter how hard she resisted it, and just right before it could finish, she would awaken from her own premature end. She never told anyone of her dreams. Not her own mother who she shared everything, obviously, but no one else, not her own father when he notice something was amiss with her, definitely not her grandmother who was still reeling with the death of her husband, and not the priest of her village for fear he would denounce her for being in the world of demons.

What happened in her nightmare was something she needed to do alone, with no one else ever finding out. She glanced over; arm outstretched seeking the oil lamp which her grandfather built for her. She started propping herself when she could not find the oil lamp. She found it on the small table where she would often be learning on how to read and write her letters with a hen’s feather with a small ink bowl.


Tear it into me.

to lie with you on rainy days
your head resting on my shoulder
convinces me in many ways
of things inside me that are older

every look a god's command
i worship you in silence
now the only thing that i demand
is for this brief time to be timeless

>>9200704
I love this, it feels almost like a chant with an intense rhythm that's arranged around your use of "I"

>>9211803
Wtf is the gif

>>9190194
Too many words considering the simplicity of the passage.
Some of your sentences were too long; including words that did nothing but reinstate already inferred images. The continuous use of foolish king bothered me, as i feel the title is too long. The idea is neat, and I believe with some changes it could be witty and even rather fun to read.

>>9212573

It's simple and clear with simple ABAB scheme. However the last line is not impactful and bit awkward to me.

>>9212686
Srs neko-poster.
Its a commentary on the drug dependency and hedonistic culture of today's from the perspective of a nursery rhyme, because after all, who is harmed more by drugs and vice than our precious children?
I would appreciate if you'd give some feedback.
Thanks you for your reply

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>>9212725
>Children
>Not precious
Look at all that preciousness...

>>9212619
It's like eight years old I think. Vibes of irony you wouldn't get, youngster.

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>>9191389
The start of the second paragraph reiterates what has already been said in the paragraph prior. I'll consider for a moment it as a whole, as it will be easier to critique. I found it adequate. The echo of his brother came off as rather superfluous. I'd solicit you to reconsider the line including "single tear."
>>9191507
In the beginning you say "he asked me" and then continue to say "to which I usually reply."
Should you have said "to which I replied"? or were you extending from the story to give some authorial narrative insight? I'm confused.
As for the rest of the story, you tend to restate things often (see the predator line), and the form in which your text takes is rather obscure- this could be due to the pasting of it on 4chan, I am not sure. The idea is one on which you could practice, as it harnesses the possibility of emotional introspection; a phenomenon rather perfect for writing. Keep at it.

As for my own story, it is my first, and therefore should not be expected to solicit any sign of experience. It's the opening of a book idea of mine, concerning two families; one from the town, and one from the city. I've posted pictures(?) however, they may not be in order, so please turn your attention to the file names. If it didn't work (my computer is acting up) here is a pastebin link http://pastebin.com/LScZqjDu

>>9212785
Okay, I was foolish. I don't know why I expected multiple photos. Regardless, I wasn't even able to post the correct one, with the meat of the story! Instead, I posted the "ending". Please, if interested, click the pastebin. The passage is rather long, that is, in comparison to the picture I've mistakenly posted. Thanks!
http://pastebin.com/LScZqjDu

>>9191389
Unironically, best writing till now in the thread.
>>9191559
10/10

>>9195544
Could be easily made into song. It's well written

>>9200543
It works short. Dont bother writing the rest.

Here's a poem of a couple of days

the taste of your kiss
when you drank too much
of your cheap sambuca and
you didn't know who I was

it comes to me ar 3 o'clock
when blood goes sweet
and I lay in the light

and I try and take it back
and I try and push iy down
against my salty lips
against my swollen tongue
but you're not here

there's nothing there
there's nothing here

The clock strikes one.

I dart my bloodshot eyes around. My heart beats like a drum. It still follows. A vibrant red oozes from the long running gash on my arm. The taste of fresh bile burning my tongue keeps me awake.

The clock strikes twelve.

>>9210241
>>9210241

Thanks! Unfortunately I just started it yesterday and having trouble on how to continue it. It seems that everytime I get a good idea my beginnings are usually good or even great but then I don't know how to continue it.

>>9211229
Thanks!

>>9211793
Thanks very much for the AMAZING critique, hands down one of the best I've ever gotten. It's funny, I'm not sure if the edits went through to the link I posted here, but a short while after I originally posted it I actually made at least one of the edits you suggested (tell to telling) so as to not break tense.

Yeah, with how the story unfolds, I was torn for a while on the lines once Niko "realizes" the doc knows what he's thinking. I tried to kind of show it with the side-by-side "fucking Brunelleschi" remarks and building strangeness of the docs actions, because I was trying to keep Niko's reactions as rooted in reality as possible. I'll definitely work on it.

As for the end, and idea of the story, "Niko" (as the narrator), didn't exist in the doctors office. It was the doctors imagined younger self. Where it gets complicated is the fact that I wanted to play with tesseracts. So even though it was Niko's imagined younger self, the doctor "Ron", being distraught at his terminal diagnosis and loss of wife (his finger was indented because he still wears the ring when not at work) slips into his memories, literally. So what began as a helpless imagining literally sucked him into his memories to live on, as his current mind dies from stress and age. The note and the I WANT TO DIE, it was him accepting that his life was over.

So all that, and I'm saying that the story suggests that when you die, or are truly ready to die, the sweetest and most prominent memory of your life consumes you, and you go on living again "in the past". There's a lot of dream logic and the subtext ([all these phrases]) sort plays as the devil and Ron (the real, current doctor imagining himself) is the role of god, as he's created his own self and alternate reality in his memories. So when the flip in realities is made, it establishes his (what was) future self as the creator, which visit why he slowly transitions from conventionally helpful to seemingly omniscient (Light shows you who you are; sound tells you. Together they helped you create something they will never see or hear.)

Sky scars melted the cultural mind. Having nowhere to turn, the waiter raced through the streets towards the burning towers. Seven towers caught flames at the same tame, was it a terrorist attack? It ddin't matter, it was a common thing to say anwyay. At every moment morbid watchers who later would masturbate to the mayem wateched with ecstasy suicide jumpers, who attepting to avoid a death in the flamed, chose to smash their head against the groud. Blood everywhere, nobody minded. Sometimes people stop to take a picture and keep walking. It didi't matter at all. The waiter had some hope of saving a russian whore whom he had fucked in the ass once or twice. He knew she had gone to the building to perform a blowjob. When he got there, he saw the flabby silicone tits melting on the hot ground. The waiter thought he could take one home to masturbate later, but rejected the idea after he remembered her tits always smelt like shit, the bitch never took a shower, she just put some chinese perfume on her dirty skin.

>>9213797
What the fuck

>>9211342
>>9211353
>still no reply

Well I guess I can go fuck myself then

Here's my first sentence.

Dead Tree's, Godless skies and a man with no eyes.

>>9214156
Intriguing

>>9214156
Dead tree is what?

>>9214156
Go on

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>>9214125

Really liked the vagueness of the gathering of people before realizing they are clones, and then wondering about the rest of the world.
I really liked paragraph 2 with the description of nostalgic items.

A very strong, intriguing opening and middle. I would've liked to see more of the narrators voice and opinions / experience to the constant,y shifting word more often rather than just the end.
I feel like
The symbol given to us by the strangers came from our enemies in the war that destroyed the planet.
Could be rewritten to provide a bigger punch to the reader. But I love how it opens the idea in the reader that things are gonna go to shit in the world due to past hatred again wantonly.

The ending feels abrupt, and this part felt particularly awkward:
But they were met by the enemy. They cared more about destroying each other

Overall the world feels already fleshed out and I enjoyed reading it. Sorry you had to complain so much but I critique sort of slowly.

I ask the mycologist about the confectioner but he doesn't answer, so I ask the confectioner about the mycologist. Again, no answer. I tried asking them about themselves instead. Silence. I later learned they were dead.

Las brujitas, ay las brujitas. No hay mujeres tan linda en toda la tierra. Sus bechos son firmas, con pezones rosas. Y llanos. Son super llanos. Si tu fuera poner la cabeza encima de esos, puedes escuchar sus corazones. Son pequeñas, con latido corto, como un conejo con coño. En eso momento no puedes resistir tus impulsos. Necesitas quitarse la ropa de ella. Ella exhala. Su aliento tiene fragancia dulce. Es preciosa. Todo de la escena está guardado con acción. Y justo antes de entras ella, te das cuenta, de repente, que mexicanos inteligentes no existen.

>>9214156
Grammatically nonsensical. Wouldn't continue.

>>9213223
Glad you were happy with the critique :) very cool story you wrote.

There is a brunette beauty, sparsely clad, on a bed; dark music on ivory bed sheets. With crossed arms concealing breasts, lidded eyes and lolling head, the sleeping damsel dreams demure. Yet the fair bare thighs and supple-sweet calves carve a scenic route through the white Alps of those snow-sheets, driving the music to crescendo; sweet piano, cello, drum; driving eyes to the pieds, prunelles de mes yeux.

(About a high school teacher with a foot fetish)

>>9214554
>the sleeping damsel dreams demure
dumb
the rest is good

>>9214558
Thanks, wasn't really expecting anyone to reply. What don't you like about it

>>9214568
the alliteration just sounds cheesy and forced

also, the way I read it, it looks like you intended "demure" to modify "dreams". demure is an adjective, you'd need "demurely" if that's what you're going for

>>9214590
>being a grammar slave outside of standardized environments
i kekked a hearty kek

>>9214554
This reads like you wrote it.

>>9214602
Whatever you say man
it doesn't sound nice to me though, there's a time and place to break the rules and that was not it

>>9214602
>Forgoing grammar for no discernable purpose

>>9214590
Cheers mate. I'm trying to find a balance with it sounding a little forced but not unreadable, my POV character is a failed academic who is incredibly pretentious and showy and thinks he's a literary genius.

>>9214612
Exactly, there is a reason why rules exist and reasons why they can be broken, but usually its confusing and unnecessary.

>>9214632
No

>>9214156
Dead trees, Godless skies and a man with no eyes. Rose smoked her third cigarette of the hour, her thirtieth of the day; in the grey and wilted park, which was once green.

>>9214495
Thanks for the crits, my dude

>>9214932
why do you use a ';' where you do? very choppy sentence. Cool imagery though.

Do some shit like in Mason & Dixon and consider:

>Rose smoked her third cigarette of the hour - her thirtieth of the day- in the once green but now grey and wilted park.

Is anyone willing to critique mine?

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>>9215144
Well post it pal

>>9215415
Mine
>>9212540

>>9196593
not terrible i guess. but the dialogue is a little hamfisted and repetitive.
ben's final line, where he decides to get revenge comes a little too soon and isn't sufficiently developed. needs a little more meat in the middle
On the black and white security camera feed, a boy stands in the snow, his shadows splintering underneath the glare of the floodlights.
“Ok, play it.”
The image starts to move: first the child is running, he stumbles, then he looks over his shoulder, and hurries off and out of the camera’s view.
“Rewind.”
The tape warbles backwards.
“Ok stop – no, just – a little bit forward – there.” The video is paused on the boy’s face as he looks behind him.
Ernest leans forward. He tries to glean some context from the boy’s pixelated face: is it a look of fear? Is he running from something? Or maybe confusion? Perhaps he’s lost.
Ernest pulls back and folds his arms, “Is that the only footage? What about the path up ahead, there are no cameras stationed there?”
The man operating the console checks the monitor and shakes his head.
“Well we never thought we’d need it,” the portly resort manager interrupts, trying to downplay the error that will inevitably circle back to him. “That path, nobody uses it,”
“Where are the boy’s parents?” Ernest says, his eyes fixed on the last image of the lost child. He notices the footprints trailing behind the boy, the uneven, limping rhythm of them. Was the boy hurt maybe?
“They’re just waiting outside,” the manager replies.
Ernest turns his back to the glare of the screen and goes to the door. He opens it, as his forearm shoots up to his eyes, wincing in the overwhelming brightness of light reflected by now beaming in through the open window. He walks down the hall and finds another door, entering an ornately decorated office, perhaps the manager’s. The boy’s parents are seated with their backs turned to him. Hunched over, the woman’s shoulders shudder as she sobs into her tissue.
Ernest eases the door shut and toes towards them.
“Mr and Mrs Kowalski?”
He circles around the vast mahogany desk and sits down.
He hasn’t met the boy’s parents yet, and takes a moment to study them: The woman has eyes red from crying, porcelain skin and a runny nose. The man, the father, looks more distressed than sad. His eyes are red too but they’re not downcast, they pierce right through Ernest, who tilts his gaze down.
“Mr and Mrs. Kowalski, my name is Ernest Pavel, I’m the officer that’s been assigned to locate your child.”

>>9190759
I don't like the way this flows. There's definitely potential but I think you need to rethink the overall structure to aid what you want to convey.

Here's an opening from my upcoming novel:

The air seemed especially fraught as the sun rose on its shimmering pedestal over the dark mass of the city. Skyscrapers hung from the earth like brushed icicles, cool phantasms meeting a fiery desert dawn. The faintest whispers of light passed through the plexus of steel and concrete, fanning out blood-red across the blue-grey, lighting each anastomosis with a calling flame as the sun continued to rise, surging forth to reach the dormant heart of the city and setting it pulsing again with the ichor of a new ferocious day. Double-backed over the crest of the skyline, along the crimson recess that stretched out like an alluvium sea, someone staggered towards the municipality with a breathless, feverish intent. She was an addict. The cracked and drooping sacks of flesh that hung off the osseous form of her face, the translucent mucul slither that dangled from her nostrils with gravity-defiant stickiness, the oversized chocolate brown hoodie and grey joggers that pulled and sagged away from her limbs, damp with the fruit of her hyperhidrosis - caused not only by the baking Arizona sun, nor by the incongruous nature of her outfit (likely chosen as to conceal the tract marks of hypodermia), but more prominently and presently by the crushing withdrawal - these were all clues as to the nature of her person. Phoenix shone like a rough, imperfect jewel as she continued towards it. It embodied, quite literally, the sort of redemption she sought for herself.

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Does this sentence sound like I am guiding my mother, and a dog, by hand? Or does it convey that I am guiding my mother by hand, and my dog, through?

>By hand I guided my mother and my dog through

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eJ_VzwODYBgU0XPTRH4qnzm7-S7DpcyOWFulJxsJib4/edit?usp=sharing
please be honest, any critique is welcome

>>9215579
oh woops, there should be a line break between my critique, ending with "middle". the start of my thing is "on the black and white security camera feed"

>>9216044
wrong

>>9216115
?

>>9215832
The latter

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My brother (another writer, my main confidant) told me this would be more suited to a novel than a short story. What do you think:
“Quid rides?
Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur.
Why do you laugh?
Change but the name, and the story is told of yourself.”
-Horace, Satires
I woke up one morning with a vague, shapeless pain inside of me. I took a benedryl and tried to forget about it, contenting myself with the pain of the cold shower instead. When I departed from the shower I still felt that inner sense of greyness, of emptiness and pain that greeted me when I awoke.
I am a student in my second year. If people ask me my major, I tell them that I am training to be a renewable energy entrepreneur. Nothing could be further from the truth. Instead of looking to the future, I look to the past. I am studying latin, the dead language. I am contented with the idea that it was the tongue of my forebears, but who knows what endless tsunami of human coitus fills the gulf between the noble Romans and my Italian grandparents.
I went to class, determined to ignore the pain unless it continued to fester and riddle my body with symptoms that were salient. And fester it did. During a lecture on Cicero, I felt the pain continue to kiss the insides of ribs and wreak havoc on my interior, leaving my love of Cicero on the roadside, replacing it with a vast tract of blackness inside of my mind.

>>9216784
>9216784
This is just the opening.
A summary: A slightly autistic latin student has a pain that is impossible for words to express. He goes to several doctors several gurus, who all give him different diagnoses. These diagnoses are created based on their own backgrounds as professionals. For instance, a hospital doctor prescribes him opiates, as "mental and physical pain are indistinguishable." He goes to a psychologist who tells him that his pain is a neurosis caused by a lack of tough love from his mother, who conditioned him at a young age to play sick by giving him extra attention, extra love when he feigned illness. A guru, a sikh, a "seer," tells him his sickness is caused by his attraction to the exterior material desires of the world, which is causing a disruption of his own metaphysical needs i.e. lack of spirituality, lack of meaning, lack of connection with a higher power etc.

when i told you
you did good
i forgave you
where you stood

>>9215832
well the latter in context, but yeah it is worded ambiguously.

it's your piece but i'd favor something like
>holding my mother's hand, i guided her and my dog through...

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/lit/
O salient sorrow!
The content the constant the tentative approach
Young men lying in one another's arms
Wishing to be heard!
O the hordes
O the inboxes, the postages of stagnation!
Attend my vanity you anonymous strangers
I will only become more unhappy because of it
/gif/
O the unborn children!
Holocausts of semen
The horrors one likes to harbor
From gag and facefuck to make me feel young again
What is manhood in an age of unreality!
Impulse race! Dopamine Spike!
No tenderness, no arms or body to hold
no warmth of beating heart,
Senses numb, circuit spike!
Conduit of electriciy of the mind
O reptile brain! Set me free!
no terseness in these walls of depravity
No hope of further sensitivity
Impotence will be my cure!

>>9189541

I wrote a book. If I put it on /lit/, would anyone read it?

Yes it's finished. Literary fiction, 65k words

>>9216830
post it. i'll give it a try but can't guarantee i'll force myself trough it if it's shit. i'll give you a critique though

>>9216699
>>9216816
Thanks for the input!

I wrote this
>>9216819
and this >>9216784
I am going to critique this >>9215946
Purely on the subject, if this is personal, I feel for you on many different levels, man. I suspect you are young. Youth is not all roses and sunshine if you are of a certain breed, like you and I. Guitars are incredibly hollow, and yet through their hollowness they can make beautiful music. Channel that hollowness into something external. The relief may be temporary, but know that relief is as temporal as strife, chaos, and unhappiness no matter how long it continues.
Writing is a process of articulating subconscious highly emotional internal feelings. Once you articulate them, you are no longer carrying around these feelings of subconscious emotional baggage. Writing is a way out, believe it or not, and your misanthropy can create something great.
On a grammatical level, the first two clauses are a run-on sentence. Insert a period afterwards. Do not be averse to long sentences, but remember language began as music before anything else. Short sentences break up monotony. For example: "I am a paradox," sounds much more profound than the indirect "my character is paradoxical." You also have a ton of other grammatical problems such as inserting an "s" after words that are not plural within the context of the sentences.
What you wrote is bad. Do not take from this that I think you are a bad writer. On the contrary I understand you wrote this out of a sense of desperation, an impulse to cleanse negative emotions, to let off steam in the case of an impending implosion. Write endlessly. Write beyond fatigue and exhaustion. When you feel you can't write anything else, that your mind has been emptied, write even more without regard of quality or coherence because this is for you not for anyone else.
Best of luck man. If you ever need a conversation email me [email protected]

>>9216856
no problem

>>9216188
you know where you are wrong

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The Bar

The man sighed, letting his gaze rest at the window, facing the quiescent street outside. ”It’s been a while.” he thought to himself. ”We’re living in rough times, are we not?” he quietly muttered to nobody in general, looking at how the wind whipped the seemingly everlasting and fierce rain against the freshly cleaned windows.

He bended down, grabbing a white handkerchief before cleaning the last few glasses, checking the bar for what must be the tenth time and flicking the light switch; a dim but nonetheless warm dark yellow light flooding the old bar, the pool table, the worn out dartboard, the tables and sofas in the corners.

He’d let his hand trail towards the switch next to that, flicking it, letting the electronics such as the slot machines play their obnoxious starting music, a few letters on the chipped neon sign out front flicker a few times before finally piercing through the cold and stormy night, akin to a lighthouse calling for any lost ships seeking refuge. You’re welcome.

Overcome by nostalgia, he’d smile a little, preparing a small note before gently taping it to the window, before seating himself back behind the bar, enjoying the aura of this smoldering, venerable old bar. Drinks are on the house.

- AT

>>9216856
So qhat are you writing?

>>9216830
If you post it here, I doubt you can publish it anywhere since it'd infringe copyright.

Unless you want to self-pub

Daintily, despite his huge hands, Gregor set the coffee cup onto the grey-and-green mottled desk. It was placed by the nervous informant, brewing there, in its stark enamel cup, colder. Colder, until it became a sort of acrimonious tar. The type of which you'd find weeks after a volcanic eruption. Igneous.
Gregor then placed himself carefully across from the cup and informant, who couldn’t help but shiver and fidget as if suffering Tourette’s. The manner in which that mousy fellow spoke, moved and even sat had something “unsettling” or “queer” about it. Seeming, almost, like he was acting out every type of tic or eccentricity he could think of. It was, however, announced in the small black binder underneath Gregor’s armpit that every practitioner who’d seen, and analysed him, had decried him as the very embodiment of “neuropsychiatric”. A source of great medical experimentation and, subsequently, revenue. On the other side of the palm, or leaf, whatever you want, Gregor was ‘composed’ if anyone ever was. All his movements were considered in a sincere depth. Like a passage of Beethoven or Bach, he would animate that hulking frame to and fro. Nuanced. That was what Gregor was. He placed, with as much grace as a cellist with his bow, the black binder onto the mottled table. Then took a deep drag of air through his nose, seeming like an Amphitheatre resonating with sound.
Peer Gynt. Morning Mood. Suite No.1, Op. 46. Edvard Grieg, the large man ironically named Gregor thought to himself, left hand over right. Edvard Grieg… left hand over right… And, in a moment of synesthesia, but with body language and classical music – instead of colours and dates – melding into a singular thought, Gregor placed his left hand over his right. In his mind, the music played and he seemed more graceful, more nuanced than his body should have let him. It was so very graceful. As if seraphim had descended to place Gregor’s hands over one another in such a pleasing position.
The informant bristled, their hairs shaking like trees in a winter wind. The static energy of anxiety embedding, straightening and animating them.

>>9216819
I really like this, even though it's a shitpost poem. How long did you spend on it?
>Dopamine Spike
This bit is slightly meh, tbqh desu. The imagery of electricity here isn't exciting. I definitely think the /lit/ part was stronger.
Other than that, I recommend you fuck around with meter and, dare I say it, rhyme. Best thing about you is you don't use olde timey versions of words. That's the ultimate mark of a pseud.

>>9218197
I wrote this by the way, so, you can critique it now.

>>9218267
>doesn't use olde timey words
>says "O...........!" About 10 times

Yeah, because that's not emulation over inspiration

>>9218311
"Skylar Rodes"
Something tells me you browse deviant art too much

>>9218378
Never been there. That's my pastebin handle

In a neighborhood, the poorest neighborhood of a miserable city is where our work begins. A little girl, the littlest one, no older than five or six years is seen somewhat dirty and unabashed. In her small house, made of cardboard and pieces of wood that her family has been able to collect from the surroundings, there is a scene that she wishes didn’t exist. For several hours her parents have argued, fighting because they have noticed that his older brother has started to steal, his father discovered it a few hours ago. “Damn, that’s how you pay me, you bastard, I kill myself so you can eat and that’s how you repay me, but you’ll see.” Her mother can only cry. As that terrible scene develops, our little girl, the girl of our story sighs watching the gray and cluttered clouds of her damn city. Meanwhile, a dog, the neighbor’s dog has brought her a small balloon that has collected with his snout. The guardian of the block, a small canine that is seen to endure grief and hunger. The girl, our little girl, can only take that gift and embrace it, to forget the situation of her family. Tomorrow will be another day, a much better day, she thought.

>>9218602
BTW this is translated using google, sorry.

>>9217357
I kind of like the sentiment that this bring to my mind. I imagine that your goal is to give us a glimpse into this tiny world using as few lines as possible. I would edit down more, probably taking out the passage that starts with "He bended down" and focus more on world building, though without so much "fancy" prose, e.g.
>he quietly muttered to nobody in general, looking at how the wind whipped the seemingly everlasting and fierce rain against the freshly cleaned windows.

It's a good draft, but needs some rewrite and editing.

>>9216813
Bob Dylan-esque.

I am. >>9218646
I will now post the first few paragraphs of an erotica I am writing.

Terry, once, successfully jerked off in the back row of a conference hall while a speaker was doing a presentation about the most efficient way to remove a jam in copy machines. The night before, he had cut out the bottom of the left pocket in his pants, which then allowed him to put his hand in his pocket and play with his cock. To make sure it was not too obvious, he did a test run in front of the bathroom mirror. He had to reach deep inside of the pocket to initially pull his dick in that direction, but the actual stroking of cock with his fingers was barely visible. It looked like he just casually had his hand in his pocket.

He arrived at the conference hall early that day to make sure he got a seat in the back. After half an hour, the conference hall was nearly full and he had a woman in the chair to his left, a man in the chair to his right, and a group of women in the row in front. About halfway through the conference, he was bored and horny and barely able to follow what the speaker was saying. He put his hand in his pocket and began to rub his cock. He kept his eyes forward at first, to make certain that no one thought he was focusing on something else.

Terry’s cock slowly expanded and lengthened. He thought that one might be able to see the tip of his dick poking out from the top of his pocket, so he made sure to keep it covered with his hand. He glided his fingers up and down his shaft, sometimes taking a risk and plunging his hand deep into his pocket to stimulate his balls.

Suddenly, he felt contact with the woman who was sitting to his left. Their arms had touched accidentally, or what he thought was an accident at the time. They were in seating comparable to that of a movie theater, so it was understandable. Terry pulled away a bit fearing that his stroking had caused his arm to enter the personal space of the woman. He made sure his posture was centered and he had his eyes forward. Then, he felt contact again from his left, and the woman coughed.

Terry, with his hand still on his cock, slowly turned his head slightly in the direction of the woman so he could get at least a peripheral glance of her. She had on dark blue leggings that were so tight they seemed to suffocate her thighs. There was a massive bulge in the center of her crotch. Terry turned his head a little more in her direction. Long locks of blonde hair draped on her shoulders. Her breasts were round and full and extended well beyond her core. The bulge that emerged from her crotch was enormous in length and circumference.

He wished that he had the courage to reach out and touch it. He might have done so if they were in an area with more privacy, but there was no way he could lean over and put his hand on the woman’s cock without the person on the side of her seeing. He turned his head in her direction more obviously now, and she did the same to him.

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>>9218646
Thanks! "The Bar" is the first thing I've ever written. English's my second language so all advice is appreciated.

Thanks bud!

>>9218709
I got the feeling English might not be your first language from "He bended down...". I think "He bent down..." would be preferred.

>>9218141
It's a short story. A sci-fi emotional crisis about losing a dog. I'm submitting it to my school's literary contest as an attempt to build confidence as a writer. I've been working on it for a while now and just finalized it last night.

>>9195884
Would improve with line spaces. Otherwise, bretty decent.

>>9217357
I find the way this is written pretty clunky honestly. The flow is uppity and disturbed, and some of the imagery slightly misses the mark for me. For instance: 'looking at how the wind whipped the seemingly everlasting and fierce rain against the freshly cleaned windows' would read better as 'looking at the how the wind whipped the rain, fierce and seemingly everlasting, against the freshly cleaned windows.'

Also cold and stormy night is too close to 'it was a dark and stormy night' for my liking.

It's a nice little vignette though, but if you want to convey the narrator's nostalgia for the bar, perhaps work with more sensory based ideas and take some extra time to describe with a warmth and in a way that makes us want to be there. Keep it up.

>>9215784
This is me by the way. Can I get some feedback? Cheers.

>>9219082
>This is me by the way. Can I get some feedback? Cheers.
Your writing has a good rhythm, but it is ultimately purple prose that feels like you were just looking up words in a thesaurus.

>>9219129
Well I'd argue some of used to invoke an overall image (the city as a body and the light as blood pumping through its veins, hence anastomosis and plexus and ichor). Others are neologism (hypodermia, mucul). I agree it's pretty purple, I wanted a vividly descriptive image to open with; I don't think I can lose the descriptive construction of the language without losing something narratively. It's partly just how I write I guess. Thanks.

>>9219082

>Also cold and stormy night is too close to 'it was a dark and stormy night' for my liking.
Exactly what I was thinking when I read it. Although, as English is his second language, perhaps the purple prose is probably due to a lack of refinement. >>9217357 read more English authors.

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1/2
There, on an empty stretch of shore, everything was as it had always been. The tide came and retreated, leaving its mark on the sand. Cascading mountains just in the background sat idly under an overcast sky, and the tropical trees swayed lazily without a care. Against this backdrop of tranquil calm, history remembers this day for when the long ships came.

They came over the horizon, far out at sea, but they were seen by no-one. Not one, but many ships, speeding across the expanse, arrayed abreast like a horde of oncoming dots. The dots became larger, sprouting rows of wings that raised and lowered in slow but orderly succession, and then they were shouting, grim commands that propelled them ever nearer. Their voices were hoarse and masculine, well-disciplined and fierce, and the ships advanced as one, just off the shore now.

The first ship to land had a high sail, white patterned with alternating red stripes, a black emblem glaring from the middle. The rudder beached with a gritty scraping sound as it split the sand and caught fast; the other ships landed as well. The commands stopped, and the paddles fell naturally. From the lead ship, a burly figure hopped over the bow and landed steadily into the sand. His compatriots disembarking as well, he looked on at the forest spread out before him.

Quickly, a scouting party was assembled. Lightly-clad youths set off into the brush and vanished out of sight. Meanwhile, older and stronger men lifted large boxes and barrels out of the long ships, setting out basic pieces of furniture and setting up camp. Singing insects filled the scene with buzz.

After a short while, the scouts returned, sweat streaming down their faces as the unaccustomed heat exhausted their energy. Hands on their knees, the captain strode up to them and made his silent inquiry.

"The forest goes on for some time," a scout said. He had to catch his breath. "It looks to be uninhabited."

The captain nodded and walked slightly beyond where the scouts were standing. He let his gaze focus onto the trees and he squinted to see as far as he could. More woods. He turned around and saw a host of ships beached on the shore, with men drinking and eating salted meat, some whittling away at crafts. Walking towards them, he summoned his voice and commanded, "we are to scout these woods, I want a proper party formed at the ready. Suit up and let's get to work." Several of the men stood up and reequipped themselves, walking over to join their captain as the rest continued their preoccupations. The youths unburdened themselves and found some cold cuts to munch on.

>>9219548
2/2
Shortly thereafter, the scouting party advanced into the brush, single file, at a gentle pace. Insects blared ear-piercing noise while, high up on some of the taller trees, cacophonous birds called to each other over the shroud. Boots crunched onto leaves and twigs while bushes scraped onto armor. Onwards they pushed, following their captain into the unknown.

After some time, the leader of the pack gave the signal to hold and maintain silence. The leading men advanced up to the front and whispered to themselves, inaudibly to the rest. They gazed out in a single direction, pointing at it and looking at each other wide-eyed. The party gripped their weapons tightly, unaware.

As they sat there idle for quite a while, some of them started to hear what they swore was voices, coming from roughly the same direction the leaders had pointed at. Is someone there, they thought. Suddenly, the leaders gave the signal for the party to gather around them. Speechlessly, they indicated that the men were to circle around the clearing ahead of them: that there were indeed people there and they wanted to take them by surprise. "On my order," the captain mouthed. The men nodded, and silently yet quickly spread themselves around the clearing. Once everyone was in position, the captain slowly rose to his full height, raising a single arm high into the air. With a quick look to the left, and another to the right, he lowered his hand and, in a single fluid motion, gripped his weapon tightly while raising it over his head, bellowing an ear-splitting warcry that brought adrenaline surging into the veins of his men around him.

An explosion of shouts and yells followed as the party leapt into the clearing, axes swinging. Blood squirted wildly and bodies hit the ground, the flesh-ripping slices of blade on bone erupting into an aural slaughterhouse. The men methodically butchered their foe, a bloodlust consuming them, hacking and hacking until their appetites were quenched. Their captain held up an arm.

Some of them ripped off their helmets to rub thick salty sweat from their eyes, others had hands on their knees and panted. The battle rush over, they looked at their smitten foe and noticed his dark skin and curious apparel. A few bodies wore strange headdresses, others were clutching odd icons in their hands, and none of them wore very much clothing. They had been milling around a hollow cave with some stone-crafted seats littered around a fire, a couple of tents nearby.

They were not alone.

>>9189717
Very Slavic, kurwa japierdole.
Need vodka and beating woman now

>>9219548
>>9219586
I like it dude. The prose is clean and clear but expressive

>>9218661

I have no idea what I'm writing but its definitely intriguing. My sister is a novelist for smutty stuff like this, but not nearly as creative. You have talent and creativity; use it to make money or to write smutty things for yourself. Your choice.


I wrote this about my pending divorce.

The owner’s manual says
change the oil every five thousand miles
High Octane, Unleaded fuel only
keep tire pressure around thirty-two
check the treads every time you drive

doesn’t say anything about
leaky trunks
the rainwater
My neglect
rusting the
jack and iron

tire blew out on the interstate
Tow trucks don’t come at two AM

The owner’s manual does say great many things
about preventive care and routine maintenance

it won’t say
how to love

>>9221567
*reading not writing.

to own a log cabin
you must first earn it by sweat
to be a young hermit
you must live in social sects

>>9221663
garbage

>>9221663
Social sects sounds like social sex

Then the rock after I found it the first time around was when... I found this rock, which [as we speak] [or as I speak] is right here, in room 262, within the artroom with Mr. Hamill as the morning teacher. And then the rock which was found in June of 2007 which was the beginning of my sixth grade in middle school. And thus, while this rock, which definitely is the rock is the rock that was found when it was, which was the 15th of the month of June of the year 2007. And the reason why this rock is something that while it is not something constructive for me to do, [in itself] I do agree that it is not something for me to do that’s constructive, I do think that the fidget rock that is to my left here and now [as I speak] I do think that this rock in a way is somehow something constructive to do. The reason why that this rock is something to do that’s constructive is because the stone when it is applied to the constructive things I could do I believe that whenever I’ve been with this rock and fidgeting with it, I believe that 100 out of 100 times I would start thinking of ways I could compare this rock to maybe another rock, and maybe to how it looked then [meaning the day that this rock was found(originally)(At least) and while this rock today is 9 cm shorter than it was when it had the ‘front-cap’—meaning the part of the rock that…. I really love the way that I showed love for my rock which is the rock that eventually was lost in school in the middle of winter in January of this year[2012]and I believe it was lost not on the 18th but the 21st of January 2012..

I believe there is collusion between journalists and government though not of the kind you think.
What I believe is that the US government has been involved in international activities that, if revealed, would cause widespread civil unrest. The President may or may not be aware of these activities, but this is irrelevant. However, the world of journalism and reporting do know of these activities, but they do not report them. This is not malice or conspiracy but rather mercy. Widely accepted, or rather, widely believed, ethics of journalism command an unrelentless pursuit of, and loyalty to, the truth. These lofty ideals proved themselves useless when the journalists discovered the activities of the government agencies. If the journalists concealed the information, they betrayed their principals. But they knew that if they released it they would be responsible, in some way, for the violence which would occur in response, which may go so far as to end the U.S. dominated global order. And so it was that the senior levels of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal became conspirators overnight in a scheme they only partially understood. I know this because my boss is one of them, and I will prove it.

>>9190686
>>9220061
what does that mean tho?

>>9225241
>>>/pol/
>>>/pol/

>>9223638

i wanted to write "a social sects" to make it sound asocial but keep the sex portion of it, but it doesn't make sense grammatically

This is kinda short but it feels fairly self-contained and I didn't have much more to say that was related.


Such things cannot be written with words that can be said; less, that are known. Nothing is told that is not ghostly reflected by the other mind; not a word can be said to the deaf.

>>9225684
You should structure it like a poem then.