Lit Crit

Opening with dreams is considered trite but it grabbed my attention so good work OP

>>9524293
>opens with dream
>unironically named protagonist Emmett
>"morning light" time of day chapter tag
>misspelled lightning

I stopped really quickly OP. Level up man, best advice I can give.

I didn't read anything there that I haven't read better in some other book

Your setting and character descriptions are generic as hell

I ingested that murky brown liquid and convinced myself it would supplement my will to life. I remembered in my youth how I despised this brown liquid. Now It was robust, it had flavour but the bitterness, which cannot be denied must always be acclimated to. Bitterness is something that I'm very familiar with.

You play too many videogames.

critique my fanfiction

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hLrXoh0GdOXJ3R3sbt9cfM0fxinyajzsGp10RCewGZY/edit?usp=sharing

>>9524293
>it's

Well if I spit into my hand again
And slicked its lack right back
Forget the protection I project on The
A head of hair walks past to put an end to me!

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Critique please:

Chapter One
The train was crowded, damp, and smelled a little weird. Windows were fogged up as drops of rain beaded down the outside of the glass. The car rocked and jerked as it sped across the rails, pushing Chloe Alexander against the door, and then against a chubby man when it moved the other way. She was used to walking to work in the morning, hearing the birds sing, breathing the fresh air deep into her lungs, enjoying the chilly morning air against her skin. Now, she felt like she was stuffed into a sardine can. Adding to her constriction were her clothes. She wore a tight, form fitting red blazer with a starched white shirt underneath, and a black tie for good measure.
It didn’t bother her. Not too much, anyway. She was actually thankful, not for getting pushed up against people she didn’t know, but for the opportunity that lay ahead of her.
Underneath her arm was tucked a black leather folder, with her resume packaged safely away in it. The paper could be read and understood, but she was concerned of making a mistake in the interview. What if she stuttered? Or forgot the answer to a question? Maybe her work experience wasn’t enough. Tension and anxiety were the last things she wanted to expose herself to, so she tried to think positively.
I can do this. I think. I can try my best. That’s all I can really do, so I guess I’ll just… try my best.

Here's the first few paragraphs of a thing i'm writing.
A gentle click-clack of iron rims rolling, bumping over tiny stones, this rhythm threaded into the rhythm of the horses' hooves and exhalations. The two chestnut mares stretch leather round their breasts, cutting into fur over skin over muscle rippling and pulsing with life. Inside the carriage the harpist sleeps, breath droning softly in the warm, dry air of the cabin, gusts from his lungs catching specks of tiny golden detritus and sending them twirling through sunbeams filtered narrowly in via the gap around the little pull-down blind inside the window. around them rests a low heath of autumnal golden grasses and scraggly little berry-bushes and down leftways in the valley stand dark thickets of pine giving way and merging into a denser standing of oak-elm forest around a stream glinting merrily silver in the afternoon light. the dry, rut-cut road curves smoothly down over the crest of a ridge, across an open dene and up over another ridge outlined in pale blue sky.

Now the sun sits a few degrees lower in its arc and rounding a bend into the mouth of a valley, becomes visible beside the road a cottage. a quaint cottage, a lonely cottage. lightless windows lie recessed back into grey-stone walls siting stoutly and a dark slate roof perches slanting above them and beneath oak branches bedecked with furry lichens and mosses. atop the carriage sits a golden harp swaddled tightly in linen and lashed in place with rope, while inside the cabin rests a large leather suitcase, valise and canvas travelling-pack and in the drivers foot-bay sit a medley of stacked-full hessian bags and small woodcrates of foodstuff.

Drawing close to the door of the abode the coachman sits high, whistles and pulls back the reins - horses whinny and slow to a trot, then a walk, then a standstill, letting the carriage fall at last to stationary.


Thoughts? plz critique

This might be a dumb question, but how do you go from an idea to a concrete plot?

Critique pls. Its not massively long.
I knew something was wrong by the way he called me. The usual note of apology had melted from his throat. This was something else. This was new, an entirely different morning start. Even before I had opened my eyes, I knew he wasn’t calling me to deliver a new lamb. This was trouble.
It was my mother’s voice that made me rise. She wouldn’t have woken up unless something drastic had happened. I couldn’t hear my father’s voice anymore. He must have floated out the backdoor, the way he often did in a hurry, and into the cloak of the night. I was tired of gathering clues from voices through the walls. I threw my old clothes on me, and made my way to the kitchen. While I listened to my mother make a frantic call in the next room, I looked out the window, surveying the horizon for the reason why I was woken.
Nothing stared back, save the swallowing shadows.
They couldn’t have woken me for nothing. Surely to God, they had a reason for pulling me out of bed at this hour. I was ready to abandon my concern, and return to bed, until a flickering hue on the hill ensnared my vision. Orange, red, and yellow tongues conquering their surroundings, threatening the earth around it. Shining, snickering, like a sinister star.
I left my mother, still pleading for assistance on the phone, to help my father. With a torch in my hand, I climbed over the four fences between our house and the hill field. It wasn’t long before I didn’t need the light of the torch. An orange shade had already begun to consume my surroundings. The night has a way of making the familiar austere. In the darkness, every ditch is a valley, every stream is torrential, every step is a risk. Urgency has a way of bleaching those fears from your mind. All that matters is your goal, even in the heat of the night.

>>9525321
>>9525321

I found my father at the edge of the field, shouting like a madman at the few people kind enough to help. Barking orders in a way that was second nature to him. It never seemed strange to me until I saw him to do it to somebody else. They tried desperately to mute the blaze, throwing buckets of water from the nearby streams at it. No point. The fire would ease for a moment, and then it would take back the price of its mercy with interest. It wasn’t long before we gave up. We just had to wait until the firemen came, and we prayed to God that their hose would reach the remote corners of the field.
It was only now that I could breathe, and properly observe the fire, in all its terrifying might.
If I had been any younger, it would have given me nightmares. Reaching ten feet into the air with ease, as if some artist had taken our priest’s sermon’s about Hell, and painted in on our property. Through its deep cackle, I could hear branches giving way as they succumbed to the flames, and the bullwire of the fence snapping in the heat. The scattered embers and blinding lights ravaged my face so harshly that I was sweating marbles on an October night. As it burned the wet grass beneath our feet, this cruel beast hissed like a snake. It threw white smoke carelessly into the air, daring any and all Good Samaritans to tame it. We stood there, my father, some of the neighbours, and I, before this Greek titan, a handful of Davids against a superhuman Goliath.
I could only imagine my father’s thoughts. Petty consolation in the fact that we had moved the sheep only yesterday, because we wanted them to be closer to the house to monitor the ram’s performance. Ultimately, a slap in the face when he realised what he was watching. His grandfather’s land, his father’s land, his land, and one day, my land, burnt to the barest while we watched, powerless. I wiped the sweat from my eyes, and he wiped the tears from his. We had to watch the fire eating away at a piece of our livelihood, and we had to sit and swallow it.

Longer than I initially thought.

"Blood!” The vampires chant, banging on the doors of The church. It's clear the church going to hold them off, with every push the doors get weaker, after every push the vampires are push harder. Millian is still searching for mardork. Mardork the first one. The carrier of the darkness. Somewhere in the catacombs he lies and waits, turning the remaining hostages into vampires. The doors finally give and the vampire rush in, screaming and yelling for blood. “Brother!” Wilhelm yells at the sight of first vampire. It's Ronald.


Akin to the older vampires encounter at the gate, when Ronald entered the room he held the same twisted look of confusion, However unlike the others, his focus did not dart from being to being, his dark eyes dialed in solely on Wilhelm.

Is Ronald still alive within that body, could vampires be more wild beast after the taste of blood?


There was no time to wonder the nature of the vampires.

As vampires peered further into the halls of the church, the assassin started her attack. Firing a volley of arrows only inches past the motionless Ronald, into the growing horde of vampires that have now darted past him.


The hero follows up as well, speaking words of brimstone and death, the stone tiles twist and rise into to a long row of spikes impaling the vampires ahead of Ronald and creating a trench to slow the impending vampire’s horde advancement. The assassin sustaining her onslaught continues firing arrow after arrow in the same pattern: past Ronald's head and into the horde. “I can't hit him” she shouts, he still uses his magic to dodge. “I've found Mardork, He's below us!” Millian said.


“A trap? He's smarter than he leads on” Ronald says breaking the twisted stare on his face. The church's begins to rumble and shake. Much like before with the encounter with Mardork, The ground begins crack and part, large sections of decorative tile gives, falling down into the deep below; Into the catacombs. ”I must meet him” Ronlad said with a smile, lets himself fall into darkness below.


The vampires are still chanting for blood, some attempting to push past the the trenches of spikes, others falling into the growing pit leading to the catacombs. “We must find him!” Wilhelm yells jumping straight after his brother into the pit of the catacombs. “That fool” Millian transforming into a dragon dives ahead after him, the sheer weight of her body breaking of the remaining foundation of the church sending the hero and the assassin falling along with her.

Stop with the descriptions. Get on with the actions. What are the main characters doing? What is at risk here?

>>9525321
I like how you described him listening to the various sounds in the house that was really cool.

I couldn't really imagine the orange shade, is it the sun? And "all that matters but your goals seem to come out of nowhere" DESU.
>>9525201
The horse part could use some work, I like the rest though.

I'm thinking of writing a short story from this plot.

>newly transferred student is enrolled to your school
>he looks like a drug junkie (unwashed torn clothes, bad dental hygiene, greasy hair, etc)
>named Garret
>you share a class with him and he does not have any pens or textbooks

>Garret steals your wallet; your wallet held a large sum of cash that you earned laboriously
>he runs off home before you can reclaim your wealth
>"fucking junkie blah blah"
>Garret comes back the following day with newly purchased pens and textbooks
>he has used your money to buy himself a chance at graduating school

>tell your friend about Garret as his misdeed
>you both beat the shit out of him for weeks after school
>Garret becomes increasingly absent

>one day you are called for by the principal
>Garret sits with his mother, a short scraggly looking woman
>blah blah blah you start to empathises with Garret
>you're invited to his grubby home
>you befriend Garret and accept that you misunderstood him and his situation

>Garret comes back to school
>your friend goes up to him at lunch and starts laying into him
>do you help Garret and betray your friend?

>A thing from a first draft that won't probably make it into my first novel

The Thing climbed out of the swamp water onto the bed of grass. Skeletal thin. Skin coarse and black as if once burnt alive but the grim reaper had yet to rob the bodily vessel of its animation.

The Thing cries out a hoarse guttural scream. Desperate. Reaching. Coarse black hands twisted and raised. The sound of water splashing hypnotises Meadow in place. The slippery black human corpse wriggled and came gasping with its hole for a mouth for crisp Shanton air; Meadow stood and watched for a moment longer than she knew she should. The world ceased to make any kind of sense; Meadow spun away and ran as the cries of the creature rattled in her ears. She ran as hard as her constitution would allow.

At some distance Meadow felt the mildew grass; and yet still even from a greater distance Meadow could hear the curse'd Thing cry out in agony.

Meadow knew she could have ran in that moment. Whatever gave the abysmal creature life was surely the work of a demonic evil, and if such a thing could be in such a horrid state and yet still cling to life, then what black forces governed its existence could also grant it unnatural speed

I dicreetfully recommend to everybody to have an eyecatching first paragraph, even better with an eyecatching first line("Call me Ishmael"). You're not only trying to set up your story you're also trying to sell it, which is arguably more important.

>>9525459
ebin

>>9524812
y
>>9524939
no
>>9524966
y
>>9524981
A big ramble about fuck all. Have a point.
>>9525201
Could you just say what the hell is happening instead writing every nothing detail. What's the story? Focus on that and keep it brief.

>>9525263
Plots are not concrete. Try and write what you can of the story and keep the plot in mind to see if it is on the right track. Keep trying to find out what your story is, why you are the right person to tell it, and be prepared to give up on many ideas for stories because most ideas are shit.

>>9525322
I like the specific nature of your writing. You can make a point in a sentence without rambling. I don't like where you take me out of whatever story is happening by saying 'I imagine, I could, If I had' etc, just describe what happens and what the character should take from the experience should be evident in their actions throughout the story you're writing. Be prepared to allow the reader to form their own opinion of a scene instead of having a character describe everything they should feel.

>>9525459
There's a lot of action description here. Make sure the scene has a real point for the character and is progressing the point. This reads as if you are trying to write what you think the reader might find cool and that's about it.

>>9525571
Fuck off and write it, then come back.

>>9525571
You put down the pen and stop writing dehumanizing dogshit. The good crook trend is retarded. He would have used the money to buy his drug of choice, stop fucking about. If you have him become friends with Garret (fucking limp wristed faggot of a name btw) have Garret betray him at the end. If you plan to have this end with the two chums graduating, kill yourself. Not in a meme way, suicide is just your best option, because life is way, way harder than coming up with a better idea than this.

>>9525628
>Here's mine:

In their twenties it was all about fucking hard and fast; now in their thirties sex between them evolved into a cerebral game.

>>9525263
add conflict and resolution of the conflict

>>9525651
Please tell me this is a meme, because I'm after pissing myself laughing. What the fuck does that even mean you pseudointellectual child?

>>9525659
It's not a meme. And its cool if you find it funny, sex is funny after all.

>>9525628
>discreetfully

>>9525664
I would rather get my japs eye caught in a door hinge than read anything written by somebody who thinks that is a good opening line.

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>>9525646
>Could you just say what the hell is happening instead writing every nothing detail. What's the story? Focus on that and keep it brief.
Elmore Leonard back from the dead

>>9524293
Trash
>>9524812
Trash
>>9524981
Boring but structurally sound
>>9525201
Solid
>>9525321
Meh
>>9525459
Trash but at least i loled
>>9525485
Bad advice
>>9525571
Thats awful
>>9525611
Ok i guess but change the name from meadow

>>9525659

virgin detected

>>9525668
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/discreetfully
>>9525651
Could work but I think the punchline should be better and more clear, sharp contrasts always draw attention.

>>9525676
I can see why you think its shit. I'm not defending it. It is a shitty opening line to be fair.

The coke is useless. Either I've built up a tolerance to it or it's shit quality. I'm suddenly worried that I won't have a ride home and I'm starting to freak out. I bump into three different people on the stairs, all oblivious to the outside world like their brain is on auxiliary power, overextended thanks to the variety of drugs available in this house. I rifle through my bag for my Virginia Slims but they're gone. It doesn't seem possible since I had them earlier. I start to wonder what else I'm forgetting, what else I'm oblivious to that everyone else can sense, can perceive as obvious.

And I can feel the bad thought starting to bubble up from some part of my brain and I feel an icy sense of panic that's combined with the thirst for a cigarette, for that drying feeling where the saliva on your tongue dissolves in nicotine.

I need a cigarette. I also need to get the fuck out of this house so I can breathe, so I won't have to deal with people gazing at me and judging me. I ask a stoner guy for a cigarette.
- Sure babe but remember he says.
- What? I say.
- What? he says.
- Remember what? I say.
- Peace and love babe. Remember peace and love.

I stare at him for a second and he turns away and talks to someone else. Does he know? What does he mean by peace and love? Again that feeling that I'm oblivious to the obvious.

I sit outside on a patio chair, find my lighter and light the cigarette. I can see John through the patio window. He and Miles and some boy in a rugby shirt who I don't recognize stand near the door singing Please Don't Go by KWS, grabbing anyone who tries to leave. They look so happy with their sunglasses on. Torched. Blazed.

Maybe I'm just not that important to him. But at least he can't see through me like I know everyone else can. Why can't they just be honest and tell me what that they know? Why all this hiding and guessing? But it's not guessing, for me at least. I know that they know the truth about me.

The look that stoner guy gave me. Remember peace and love. And sex. Remember love. Love is sex. Love brings peace. Why couldn't he have just said what was on his mind? No you can't bum a smoke you virgin, you loser, you pathetic waste and you're even more pathetic than the girls at school who sleepwalk through it, the ones with guts, moles, bad breath, the ones who pine for guys like John, write him sexy notes (anonymous of course) and crumple them up before they can summon the courage to put them in his locker. They're pathetic, but they can't help it. It'll take them a lot of Slimfast, Jergens and hours at the Iron City gym to be hardbodies. But you're a hardbody and you could get any guy you want if only you believed you could. But you don't believe and that's why you're a loser but I'll just give you the cigarette because I'm just a nice guy but that's the only reason. It's not like you deserve it.

That's what the stoner guy was thinking.

>>9525651
I have a quick idea: "sex was at once quick, intense and sensual but then their thirties cleared such blur away."

Daniel crumples and folds--the white page lying balled before him, it's jagged form tattooed in graphite. Each waving letter slipping on the paper's folds into the darkness underneath. If only he could see where they fell in this disjointed state. Perhaps, he believed, within the ball, somewhere among the avalanche of disappointing script, lies the inspiration he seeks. Ironically mocking him as it hides all to well within his crumpled failure. He thinks to himself if only he could get a good start, he then knows his work will become a masterpiece.

Trying two more times, taking Daniel late into the night, he tries greatly to arrive at an acceptable introduction with no success. Leaving his desk, switching off his lamp, and sliding between the sheets of his bed, Daniel gives up and eventually falls asleep. The crumpled sheets littering his study each weaving perfect lives into their impenetrable folds.

Threads like these only nourish your procrastination. Finish the damn book, then ask for critique.

>>9525980
Maybe they're such shut ins that they can't get critique outside of the internet

>>9525973
White page is kind of a pleonasm, and not an interesting detail in general.
The second sentence in the second paragraph is off too, the present participle is kind of wonky anyway, especially in that sentence.

>>9525836
Dont write about drugs if you dont know what youre talking about. Its cringeworthy

>>9526095
That's a big concern of mine anon. I've smoked weed but that's about it.

What about the drugs doesn't make sense in the above.

>>9525986
I cant speak for others, but a friend or someone I know might give a biased opinion out of fear of hurting my feelings, here people don't give a fuck about that.

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/lit/, what can I do to get myself to stick to one story?

As soon as I start writing something down, I get ideas about how to go back and improve it, or I can't decide about the exact way I want the events to g, or I just think the writing is bad--whatever.

Point being, I've never started a project that I haven't abandoned. And it's not even a healthy sort of abandonment where I go on to new things. It's just cyclical. I start story A, I drop it, I start story B, I drop it, C, D... and then we're back at A all over again. My preference changes depending on my mood; but the problem is that just about anything affects my mood.

I read about these people that get autistic over specific projects, and I feel so jealous. I just keep writing the same shit over, and over, and over again. I probably have enough first chapters (of the same stories, mind you) to fill an Oxford multi-volume history.

I just don't know what to do anymore. And because I've covered the same things so many times, they also bore me to a certain extent. Yet it's hard to start something completely new because there's no emotional connection there.

I know I'm being a faggot, but is there a cure?

>>9526112

Write from experience, don't make shit up. Sign of an amateur. Go do ayuasca in the jungle if you want to write about drugs.

>>9526160

Don't parade your work around to anybody until you've finished something.

>>9526112
Just go do some blow nigga

>>9526189
Why? You sound like a massive faggot

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>>9526363

Because that will give you a sense of fulfillment when you've accomplished nothing as well as a stress factor because people will keep asking about it.

This is scientifically proven. If you tell people about what you're planning to do, their acknowledgement kicks chems in your brain that make you feel like you've already accomplished something, and you're less driven to do it.

>>9526402
Lol. Youre a fucking sperg

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>>9526424

Because I cite facts? Okay, then.

Have fun passing your shitty unfinished writings until the end of time.

>>9526424

It's true. Why do you think so many people are "working on my novel" but never produce shit? This board is a perfect example.

https://mashulong.wordpress.com/

I only have one post. It's a stream of consciousness I wrote this morning. Pretty much uneditted outside of a quick spellcheck. Please let me know what you think. I'm not a writer, but I want to start.

>>9526424
He's right.

>>9526402
While this is true you can give the benefit of the doubt that what they wrote is a fragment of a short story or something
plus /lit/ is hardly 'encouraging' in threads like these, so what you say is rarely relevant.

>>9526437
"I’m ranting at this point."

No you started ranting almost from the beginning. I haven't read SOC stuff in a while but this seems pointless as a coherent piece.

It's honest and some of your experiences are interesting but you only dabble in them briefly to return to the general narrative that doesn't lead anywhere.

If it really is your first start it's not a bad one but I couldn't see a purpose to it as a whole.

>>9526431
Im sure that was an excellent ted talk
>>9526435
And im sure if you asked 100 published authors 95 of them would say they showed passages for critique or bounced ideas around with their confidants. The idea that you need to keep your novel secret is laughably absurd

>>9526500
I was mainly talking about the present participle in the second paragraph not the first though.

>>9526492
One other argument against sharing is that you can end up changing your approach to what the story should be about based on the feedback, and you gradually defer more and more creative choices to your potential critics.

I see that as a danger for some writers but not all, and certainly not a reason to not share altogether (unless you take criticism too seriously).

Also there is a big difference between "here's a chapter of something I'm working on" and "would this be a good idea for a novel?" Most of the posters here did the former while the latter is just a means to continue procrastination.

>>9526047
I should have edited this better. Looking over it, it's sloppy, just as you said. I was lax since it was short practice.
___________
Following this with two more posts critiquing most of what's above me. I did them without internet, so that's why I didn't get to all of them.

>>9524981
>Pros
It's good, ignore the other people who don't realize this is Chapter 1. I feel like I'm in her head and it gives a good introduction into her character. Writing is sound, grammar is sound. Even though we're just on a train here, following her line of thought gives motion into her life and the day, and that's plenty of progress.
>Cons
It's not a very attention grabbing introduction, though relateable for city dwellers and train takers. I don't do either, so this experience is only vaguely familiar to me and personally didn't grab me. Some people may not read on simply because of this. But it seems like you have direction, so it's nothing to bat much of an eye at, just something to consider.

>>9525201
>Cons
Okay brother, you're not trying to cum as fast as you can, you're trying to give us a steady picture, a good fuck. The overly excessive details utterly detracts from any sort of image I might try to form in my mind. Does the color of the horse effect the story? Does it's muscles pulsing with life effect the story? Do these details progress your idea? These are the sort of questions you should be considering when working. All these dense descriptions leaves me no imagination and is a clutter to read. Let me fill in the details around your story, and you focus on the story and characters. Not all of it is unnecessary, but a lot is. Also, your grammar is lacking all across the board and literally inside all of these meaningless details I've grown no more or less further into your idea than I would if you had gutted more than half of your word filler. Important details only. Most necessary words only. Study form and structure. I always recommend Strunck and White, it's easy to follow and will help anyone trying to write of their own interest while improving.
>Pros
You clearly have the imagination and attention to detail needed when writing. You've just got it focused in the wrong areas. Put the kind of detail you use for descriptions into the plot and events of the story and you'll find much more satisfaction and motivation. You'll quickly see your stories take shape, regardless of the small details. Keep practicing, reading, and studying others.

>>9525322
For you, >>9525646 gave some good advice. His qualms about your interjections of thought I can sort of agree with. But that's also the downside of first person. When you are telling a story from one character, you can't give them no thoughts. But, you can word it (the entire sentence) nicer than beginning with "I imagine", to make it less jarring. Let the scenery and events carry the thought.
Following your "I can imagine my father's thoughts" sentence, you can try something like this:
>"The fire reflected in my father's eyes seemed to radiate anger and regret."
You see? Your not saying that your imagining his thoughts, but the way I worded it more than implies you are. This way it doesn't pull the reader from the story.

>tbc in next post.

>>9525459
Is English your native tongue? No offense if it is, but this is laden with very simple grammatical errors. Most of which should be caught with even one additional read-over to edit and assure quality. If you're going to post without editing, you're not going to get a good critique. And I don't mean myself exclusively, nobody will take a piece seriously if there is more than one missing word within the first few sentences. Unacceptable. Your vocabulary seems trivial or else you need to vary your nouns. I don't want to read "The church, the vampires, the church, the church, the vampires again, the church doors, VAMPIRES!" Obviously I exaggerated, but the point is is gets boring and droning and nobody will ever finish it.

>>9525611
Very average. Needs work across the board but isn't excessive or utterly lacking. Read Strunk and White. Spend some time reading a book with a wide variety of vocabulary and study the words you don't know, or spend some time with a dictionary and thesaurus. Sentence structure is basic and uninteresting, again, Strunk and White is perfect for this. If you like writing, keep practicing. You'll get there. It's not as bad as a lot of other posts here.

>>9525836
This is good. Very few, minor grammatical errors-- nothing small edits won't touch up. I very much feel like I'm in the head of a coke fiend. I would read this, though I will say the stoner is overly cliche. Sounds burnt out on a lot more than dank, like he's tripping sack on something.
BTW, good touch with the Virginia Slims in her purse. I knew the character was a girl before the stoner called her babe based on her having them and digging through her bag for them. That's the kind of detail a lot of people who post can learn from. Something basic that serves a greater purpose. Not just frilly things.

Might critique more later as the thread goes on, depending on my day as well.

ITT: faggots try to get crit without submitting any crit themselves but that's probably a good thing because they are all shit.

>>9526540
I don't think all critics are good writers.

>>9526546
Maybe not, but all good writers are critics. Hence the shortage of them on this cesspool.

>>9526551
I myself have only critiqued, in these threads there are always mire fragments than critiques. This is one of the very rare threads where we need more phoneposters because they can't be bothered to type entire paragraphs on a phone but they CAN do critique.

>>9526402
Good advice. Took me awhile to realize this. I haven't posted anything I've been actually working hard on since I realized it, and I've made more progress than ever. It's hard to take that leap into 10,000+ words without a lot of advice. But if you feel confident to start a project, finish it first.

>>9526582
I propose that crits intentionally try to not flatter or be too positive in their critiques then. 90 percent of crits aren't positive anyway.

>>9526492
>And im sure if you asked 100 published authors 95 of them would say they showed passages for critique or bounced ideas around with their confidants. The idea that you need to keep your novel secret is laughably absurd

I think part of the reason why the no sharing view has died out is because of the proliferation of MFA programs and the "workshop."

It's almost seen as disingenuous to not share works in progress, at least in some circles.

>>9526169
Start small. Look at my post here >>9525973. It took me 20 minutes to get that down. If I actually edited it right, it'd take maybe another ten.

But something like that is hard to abandon before you finish. And once you start completing smaller projects, you'll find it easier to migrate into larger stories. Plus brainstorming short story ideas helps bring random ideas together. So if you spend a day and storm up six good ideas, look them over and see if any of them work well with the other ideas. Once you've got a large concept built up from smaller ones, think long about it. Work on the other ideas which didn't fit into your larger plan. Finish them first. Get a feel for your skills, where you can improve, what needs to change. Once you know the water you'll find it easier to swim into a larger piece.

The key then is what this guy says >>9526402. Take faith in yourself and grind it all out before you share it. Finishing something is the absolute most import part of being a competent writer. Half finished ideas don't get you anywhere, and give you no satisfaction when you lack the ambition to return to something you've had looked at. Ignore your worries, edit all the time, pay attention to your nouns, verbs, and tenses when you edit, not the image. Then read over in another edit and focus on your images. Watch order of operations: does it make sense to describe the features of the barn before its location? It's color? Does she take the spoon out then stir the chocolate milk? Think of natural progressions and attentions to detail. Once you start, you'll notice when you're describing something in a strange or nonsensical order.

I'm typing this quick, so sorry for errors. My internet time is very limited. Hope it helps or is cohesive.

>>9526604
Well yeah, most aren't. But if something is good, I will let them know. And if it sinks into the bottom of their unfinished writing pit, so be it. It'll be a lesson learned.

>>9524293

The opening portion seems to be a ripoff of Madoka. You alienated me from the outset by both beginning with a dream and doing so in the least subtle way possible ("In Emmet's dream"). You use repetitive nouns over and over (Emmet, dragon). We have no idea what Emmet looks like and we're already pretty far in. You rely on established constructs and do not really innovate all that much.

Less than 8 words in, you have a serious spelling error, it's lightning (the electrical force), not lightening (which means, to make light). While I am not a grammar Nazi, the difference between it's (a contraction for it is) and its (the possessive form) is huge and a grating error which detracts from the work.

>>9526490
This is the first piece I ever sat down and wrote by myself. I've wanted to start writing for a while and I've had free time so I finally sat down and gave it a shot. There wasn't much of a purpose outside of giving a glimpse of my thought stream this morning. I figured I'd just start by writing about the events of the last few days and my thoughts on them with quotes of what I remember thinking directly and see if I could make anything interesting out of it.
It's a start though. I appreciate the feedback.

The body jerked only a little. Then she was gone.
"She's dead," said Bell.
Mark turned to him with a look of amused disbelief. "I know she's dead, asshole. I just shot her." This guy. This fucking guy. He was more machine than a man. A walking, talking, reality-checker that confirmed every five minutes that this was, in fact, real life.
If only it weren't.
Mark holstered the gun and crouched by the warm body. He looked into the all-seeing eyes and wondered what they thought about him. Then he got real and searched the bitch. He looted the ID and scanned it. He got up.
Unchecked, the body would be gone in less than an hour. Almost scary to think about what went on down in this hell.
"What now?" asked Bell, his voice a low and tentative whisper.
"Now," said Mark, feigning some enthusiasm, "we smoke."
They made their way through a network of tunnels until they were far away enough from the body. Mark took out his pack and offered Bell a smoke, then lit up and looked down into the abyss. Far below the fires of the camp flickered, and the homeless wrecks that had claimed this territory shuffled about dazed out of their minds.
"You think they'll eat her?" asked Bell. The asshole fact-checker was leaning against the railing, his head dipped in despair. His dark skin blended in with the shadows, but his white jacket stood out.
"They've eaten worse," said Mark. He flicked the ash and let the smoke purge everything inside.
Bell took his sweet time to answer. Then, louder than before, he only said, "Fuck."

>>9526725
>A walking, talking, reality-checker that confirmed every five minutes that this was, in fact, real life.

I didn't like this sentence when I first read it but you kind of redeemed it with "asshole fact-checker" later on (which I liked a lot more). I would use "asshole fact-checker" in both places.

>>9526725
I disagree with your first responder, and actually think opposite of him. I liked the first description of him but felt that asshole fact-checker was a little forced.

Either way, this is very polished and reads well. Not sure why you posted this, you seem to know what you're doing here. I can't think of anything else to say besides I'd read it.

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>>9526773

I just wanted to participate and I didn't have anything else to post so I jotted this down, since I'm going to bed. It's late in my eastern shithole. I'm actually the eternal first chapter guy you responded to previously... >>9526169

Amusingly enough, the other post you directed me to >>9526402 was mine as well... Irony, eh? That guy got mad, but I was only advising him with what I learned by firsthand experience. The more I plan and talk to people about shit, the less likely I am to do anything. I guess it's different if writing is your actual day-to-day profession, but if it's a hobby, well.. I'd stick by my advice. (Too bad I didn't follow it myself for the longest time.)

It's funny, you know. When I randomly decide to write shit, I think it's okay, because I can use the skills I've acquired over the years without any value-judgments. It's not amazing or anything to write home about, but it reads like a cohesive story written by a human that cares that other humans are going to read it. I'm writing in the moment, thinking about what would be cool and what people would like to read, and that's it.

But whenever I sit down to write >muh epic project I get bogged down in details, because I'm so caught up in how I feel about it that my brain stops working. The writing part of my brain, anyway. So I just turn into this feelsy retard that can't think straight. In the same way a fanatic of any book won't be happy with any one adaptation, I'm not happy with any final version of what I'd like my beloved story to be like on paper. I love the characters so much that immortalizing in any one way and stressing any one theme seems unbearable in the moment.

I think this goes to show why professional writers are so much better at being, well, fucking writers. When your livelihood is at stake, when it's about being the breadwinner for your children, you don't really give a fuck about what you want. You care about what the readers want. But when you're doing your special snowflake life-long projects, it doesn't work that way.

Anyway, thanks for the ego boost. I'm glad I didn't post any of my "real" writing because that would probably get shit on for how idiosyncratic it is.

>>9526833
You seem a self-defeatist much like I've been slowly growing out of. It was ironic I replied to both your posts, but perhaps not? The Laws of Attraction are a very real thing.

I've learned, and am still practicing, to block out that doubtful voice. As you said, I also speak almost entire out of experience. But when you sit down and just write, and you're skilled enough to know how, the waters flow. But as soon as you build it up in your mind, it becomes something that can fall. The trick is to not build it up. To not idealize your passion, but appreciate it. Let it be no different than a quickie in terms of scale within your mind. Otherwise it'll weigh you down and crush you before you've given yourself a chance to unload it. You can't really fail, you can only not do well or improve. This is only more true as you get better and practice.

For people like yourself and I, it's all about getting past mental blocks.

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>>9526531
Thank you for the help!

>>9526725
I liked it, but it feels a bit meatless/thin, might just be a result of me not knowing the setting/characters.

>>9525973
Doesn't feel natural, the theme seems like navel-gazing too, although I liked the imagery.

>>9525836
Not sure about this, on the good side though

>>9525836
I meant to add, and forgot, that when you do dialog, you don't need all the he says she says. With how you've done it, simply putting 'he says' after the second 'what' is sufficient enough, and still isn't necessary. It's clear who's talking just by saying 'babe'.

The sun went down with practiced bravado. Twilight crawled across the sky, laden with foreboding. Joe and I sit and stare at the wall of the building. The building is beige, but the shadows make it shadow-color. Aerosolized grease. When I think of aerosolized grease, I think of Charlene. The fine mist the splatter of boiling oil would leave slowly accumulating on every surface of the kitchen. The gleaming exterior of a perfectly fried wing. We were an unstoppable team, her on the fryer, me with the sauce. We could outpace any demand, even on Super Bowl Sunday, and management knew how we kept the place running. But Charlene flew too close to the sun on our red-hot vinegary wings of tender goodness. We had a double double sixty-four order of destiny delivered to us that fateful night.

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>is there hope

>>9527463
I'm interested in the conflict and the way you set it up but the first two sentences are too descriptive. It's not clear what the sun setting has to do with the conflict and even if there is a connection it could be stated in a more simple way.

>>9527504

oh yeah and don't pay attention to my use of "allaying". it's cut from the revised version, forgot to upload it

>>9527504
>giant wall of text with no indents, line breaks and bad punctuation throughout
nope

Either tonight or tomorrow, I'm considering posting a story I finally finished after meaning to write it forever. I can't promise it's exciting. But it's thought out and has a purpose. I just want thoughts on it and advice or what was taken from it. Its 4,281 words and mostly edited. I may have some errors still, but nothing detracting.
Would someone be willing to read it, all of it, if I posted it? I only ask before posting because I don't want to put it all online if no one will look at it.

>>9527720

don't read joyce or faulkner homey

The steam condensed upon his face and poured over his weathered cheek bones. He avoided direct contact with the water by sitting at the leftmost end of the shower. It was three years past when Matthew had the custom bath and shower installed, at the behest of his wife. The brochure tried tremendously to dignify the seated tub, as did Fantine. However, no amount of false dignity would convince Matthew he needed seats in the shower; they weren't "that old." Moreover, the entire installation cost over four thousand dollars. Internally, he hated the idea of buying such an expenditure; externally, he managed a smile and agreed with his wife. Presently, he found himself glad he had agreed with her. What a difference three years can make; Matthew knew it better than anyone. He couldn't bear the scalding water on his flesh as he once could. With time, he came to appreciate the steam just as well. After all, a lukewarm shower wasn't quite so terrible if proceeded by a steam bath.

Any good?

I have a short story that needs some work. However, I'm hoping to submit it to literary journals. Is there some way I can put it in this thread discretely?

>>9527781

You can do what I did here: >>9527504

>>9527742
You're not Joyce sweetie

>>9527781
No. Not unless you find someone willing to let you email it to them. Otherwise anyway you post it here someone can look at it.

>>9527742
I don't buy the excuse of some great writer breaking the rules making it OK to avoid punctuation and organization. Anon is presumably not a famous writer or else he wouldn't be here.

Not including paragraphs in writing anything longer than a paragraph is just bad manners. As readers we should not have to work that hard to find meaning in an excerpt.

Sundiata admitió entonces que sus últimos momentos acudían ahí, a pesar de esforzarse y matarse entanto por dominar a su enemigo, no conseguía hacer que éste dejase bajar la guardia; a pesar de seguir intentándolo otra y otra vez, veía como todos sus sudores eran en ningún periquete tenían el efecto ora deseado; otra oración orada al amo supremo, otro conato que era amargo fallo, no podía imaginarse el fracaso; la alternativa a no obtener el triunfo ora significaba acabar arrebatandole todo lo que él estimaba.
Sundiata admiró como en sus últimos momentos el hechicero osaba vacilando, andando, cantando; hechizando todo el lugar arrojando humo y nubarolas de extremos colores, miles de ellos.


Opinions pls.

>>9527816
Sudaca

>>9527831
:(

that wasn't helpfull.

Ever since he departed from me I have resided idly, in a constant state of loneliness, longing uselessly for his return. I have felt since that a piece of my being departed with him, and found itself a home inside him wherever he may be. In this way I am always with him, and he is always with me, but it is not substantial. That piece of me.. my heart, my soul.. will stay stretched across this vast Earth to be with him. Until I can catch up with it, I will miss him, and continue to feel that aching pull.

Tom was gripped so mercilessly by his fatigue he felt as though on drugs, his being floating inside him, but separate; suspended in a membrane. The smell of the long black grounded him somewhat. Sitting at that table, one hundred conversations going on around him. One hundred people walking past that coffee stand, shopping, talking, blinking, breathing, thinking. Tom alone, smelling the coffee, trying to dissolve into the stagnant centre air. He’d dreamed last night four or five dreams, but only remembered one: his mother, like a surgeon, removing a large and pale yellow kumera from his asshole in one swift go.

"Only one more hour," he thought. "Only one more hour and then I can go home and I can sleep."

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>>9524293
i posted the part before this in a different crit thread, and got only positive responses. lets hope that this follows suit

>>9526870

You're probably right. It's just odd. I'm not a person with low self-esteem issues, yet I'm so pessimistic when it comes to artistic endeavors. Though, I'm not only hard on myself. Most of the time I pick up books and seriously wonder if the people writing them had any long-term goal at all. They're so soulless.

I can't remember the last time I've read a new-ish fantasy series that didn't make me feel the author was looking down upon the readers.

>>9527732

I'll read it, buddy.

>>9528048
First sentence is just naval gazing and really run on, second sentence is syntactically wrong(just try to read it), not a good start.
'In this way' is really formal and doesn't fit in the fragment which seems to try to be emotional. In general this fragment is purple prose-y, which has the effect of making the passage come off as wooden and detached. Try to avoid that.

>>9528305
Thel last line of the first paragraph really doesn't stroke with the rest of it. Ouch.
As for the rest I think you're trying to make the reader feel the tiredness and confusion of Tom by telling how he sees his surroundings however it doesn't seem to do the trick. The passage seems to give a vague assessment of the room but doesn't accomplish much more, it doesn't really make the reader really feel Tom's mental state. Try to focus more on trying to achieve that.

>>9527778
they weren't "that old" doesn't fit because the sentence constructed can't be a compound sentence like you seem to have tried to construct(unlike what the ';' would suggest)it's actually quotation of what he says and it doesn't make sense if he's talking about 'they'(who?) he's talking about 'we' really.
"Found himself glad" is wooden if you ask me.
"proceeded" should be preceded.
In general you're already on the right track IF you keep writing and don't procrastinate now. Keep it up.

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>>9524293
If anyone would like to read a longer, finished work that I'm trying to prepare for publication, I would be seriously appreciative. It's a sci-fi/fantasy/speculative fiction story set in a far-future society that has reverted to Neolithic era tech. The central premise is, "Is ignorance really bliss?", and the story concerns the nature, burdens, and quest for knowledge and truth, our relationship with the natural world, and the cyclical nature of history (if I'm not being too grandiose). It's written in a deliberately but deceptively simple style, and a lot of things are hidden within the text. It's 7,302 words but it's formatted in such a way as to read fairly quickly.

If anyone goes to the lengths to read the whole thing, I'd be so grateful, and would appreciate any comments, criticisms, and critiques!

>>9529591
shit, forgot the fucking link

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GbywSXiPMwKCJhbvrtjUbxERc1vEvWa9hZavxqHNZyA/edit?usp=sharing

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>>9529591
>>9529594

First of all, I seriously dislike the fact that they have Native American names. Maybe I'm alone in this, but it doesn't put me in the right frame of mind. But that's about the only thing I can say I would for-sure change (as far as my personal tastes go).

As for the story, I kind of feel like it's wavering between focusing on world-building or the MC in a way that doesn't make either stand out yet. I would like to know more about the MC before the Mystery-Talker shows up--about his clan, about his family, about himself. And it needs a lot more world-building.
Like, you have a passage where the Mystery-Talker is talking about how the mountains aren't what they seem, and how the world is different than how the clans-people imagine it to be. I feel that would be a lot more powerful if we're told beforehand how the clan knows the world to be. Not much point to a revelation if it's written on a tabula rasa.

I also think the Mystery-Talker needs to have a cooler entrance. Maybe they're hostile towards it at first and completely fail to harm it in any way? That would be a bit spooky. It doesn't have to be that. I'm just saying... A bit of flash doesn't hurt.

I have no real complaints other than that. It's nice, and I like it. The atmosphere reminds me a lot of the Imass-centered chapters from Malazan.

>>9529800
First, thanks for your comments. I'll consider changing the names around a bit so that they're a little bit less Native Americany. Also, I have been thinking for a while about changing the Mystery-Talker's entrance to be a bit more flashy, and for it to gain the Earth Eater's trust in a more convincing way. As it stands, it just kind of comes in (though this is part of the Mystery-Talker's abilities), and earns their trust. Maybe they're just a friendlier tribe than others and the world has other weird creatures, but as one person pointed out to me, they would probably have thought it to be something out of their mythology. Even if it looks similarly to them, I don't think it cuts it. So I agree with your comments there.

As for the whole thing with the MC and the worldbuilding...read on a bit. The worldbuilding stuff near the beginning is just to provide a frame, sets up the relationship between the narrator and Mystery-Talker, and, in a way, it's all deliberately vague. None of it is really explained (at least in this story), and that's kind of the point. The second half narrows the focus to the relationship between the Mystery-Talker and Red Deer, and this is the single most important aspect of the story.

Also, the MC is a woman, not a man :^)

I'd just say read on to the end to see what I mean. But thank you for taking the time to look over it and for giving helpful comments! I'll definitely take all of them into consideration.

In the back seat of the taxi, his face falling in and out of darkness, Frank pondered who he was going to be tonight.
He envisioned the bar they were meeting at: low lighting, soft jazz playing in the background, the sounds of conversation, voices meeting and melding into one another like waves rolling through each other.
All the textures required for intimacy, he thought to himself.
He imagined the sound of the wooden door, swinging open, when he would turn his head and see her walk in, wearing bleached jeans and a grey sweater, the same outfit she had on in her profile picture.
And this is where the scenario diverged. This was the point of no return, who he was when the date started would have to be who he was for the rest of the night.
The thought unnerved him, the distance that ran between who he would pretend to be, who he could be, and who he was; a yawning chasm with no bottom, the empty void that filled his thoughts on moonless nights. He almost got dizzy thinking about.
Frank tore himself away from that part of his mind now, and turned to his phone for one final review of the game plan. He opened up their messages and scrolled through:
Anna Herford, bachelor’s of education at Sydney University, brown hair, green eyes, likes movies from the 70s, and listens to an eclectic combination of rap, R&B and classical music.
That’s what she’d told him, what she had chosen to tell.
They’d been talking for about a month now, which was long enough for Frank to be able to glean other traits just by observation: when the conversation turned to a passion of hers, she would text in paragraphs, and when she finished she’d apologise for being boring, which told him that she was self conscious; when he asked a personal question she would always make sure to return the volley to him, something he appreciated. Their initiation rate was about even, which reassured Frank that she was interested, and none of their conversations had fizzled out or died prematurely, even if he said something stupid or weird she would just tease him and move on.
Frank turned his phone off and watched the passing streetlights, whooshing by and falling into the distance.
Before he pocketed the phone he noticed sweat marks on the case, and remembered that they’d never met before.

>>9528888
Nice quads. Read more classics if you want soul in your stories; it's significantly harder to find it in modern stories. I'm not self conscious either, but I'm smart and aware enough to understand that there are significantly better writers than myself. And that fact is daunting enough to instill pessimism in me when I attempt a piece I care about it. For fear it will never amount to anything of my hopes.
That's more what the feeling is, to me anyway. I've just come to accept I will only ever be as good as I will be. It's helped a lot.

Thank you. I'm still not set on the title, but right now I'm running with 'Nineties Kid'. A little precursor: the whole story takes place within an hour, as it follows a woman in her mid-twenties walking through her home town. It's very rooted in reality, and is divided into three sections based on the part of town she arriving to.

As I said, there isn't a lot of action. It's more of a contemplation piece, very symbolic. And I might have a few grammar and punc errors, just because I have some complex sentences I'm not certain are correct. I've edited it a lot, but it's easy to miss some things when you get over a couple thousand words. But they should be minimal, and not too distracting. I appreciate it if you do read it man. I'm interested in advice, especially on my descriptions and their clarity. Sorry in advance if it's boring/bad.

https://pastebin.com/bE7W6i81

The knocking was furious, and, when Mrs. Falls peeped the knothole, the Chesterfields sung their familiar hellos.
“Come in, please!”
Mrs. Falls skipped into the kitchen while making conversation with Lucus:
--“And how is little Mary?”
--Fine, fine; just wonderful.
Mrs. Falls had stretched her face with crow’s feet and dimples over her sixty years of life. She was a rounded old woman and was adorned with smooth skin. She wore the same crisscrossed sundress every Thanksgiving Day which almost aged with her, which had been the only thing she wore ad far as the Chesterfields knew. Her voice was firm, though, and was rightfully so, for she had commanded and ordered around her five new guests since they were born.
She stepped through the splintered halls and called at once for her guests to have a seat. One by one the Chesterfields marched into the dining room, marvelling at the brass copperware and the fine china. The cutlery was marble and gold-- a fine collection, Mrs. Falls would call it.
The room was unsettling, though. Something seemed to be missing, and if “missing” had been the wrong word to describe the room, then perhaps the word “uncanny” could compensate.

>>9530087
Skylar, why are you such a good man

Oh my oh my. A critique thread. Isn't that just sweet? Here i am sitting naked in my bath tub and thinking about the end of the world and you and your friends post your little draling stories andjerk off yourself and then suck the cum of the others genital area, occasionally from pubic hair, and there you go. That's how you roll. Isn't that wonderfully sweet just how nice and filled with stability our precious worthy existance is? Forgive me my ironic tone. I shouldn't be so pretentioius, to be quite honest with you senpai. After all i want to belojgn to no? Ahh, there i can feel it. yes, the first spark has created afire. First there was a sudden, out of nowhere... out of truly nowhere thre came a spark, a spark that represented my desire for other humans. And then the spark got larger and then there was a fire tha tconsumed me and then i started writing this post and i felt that i longer could control myself and was tied to a feeling that under no circumstances would i have chosen if i HAD SUCH A CHOICE. I felt a desire to be tied, dependent of other human beings, even if that just now just means that you can see and judge me by my words. Then i went out of the bath tub and dired my boody for 5 minutes straight. I wanted to make sure that i was super dry, with no wet spots left. It was hard to do since the carpet on wich i was standing as to let my drops of wettyness not make the bathroom tiles all swoosy and neckbreaking-causing, was moving all across the floorwildly due to the thing within gthe thing - it's soul. It is an underappreciated fact that even objects which are not man or wife, have souls, there and then and sometimes they even speak human words to me. Carpet said to me: Do not abide by thee, do not abide by thee, my lord save me, do not abide by thee. I used my valcron tile floor wooshing washer so that i could shake of my wetness (towels were out of supply on my homeplanet) SO that i could wibbble wobble of the last drops of my naked and moist human body. Once that was done i rolled out the cat door into the floor room where there was just a large floor and nothing else, except for 2 doors on it's end. One leading into the sleeping room where i lived and the other into the wild wild west, where cowboys lived and occasionally also sometimes me. The issue at hand here is obvious. How could i survive always having to choose between a wild outside world and the secured and comfortable inside. It was clear that advantages were tied towards robbery and mischievous robbery but inside i could grow a couple of plants just by myself, witness the joy of creation.Could the antagonism be resolved or was there something soulcrushing happppening? Just as to be sure i could the cuckoo's nest and asked the evil doctress and she warned me of the dangers of believing that films were real life and told me this wasn't a cuckoos nest with Robert De Niro playing Jack Daniels, a charismatic but outlawsih sire who united the patients in restance against her

+not stop drinking 3 bottles of whiskey 1our per minute and then be so drunk that i lose all form of self-suggestive control mechanisms to whic i can then succumb blindly like when you feel incestous desire but it's bad so without thinking you repress it and only once you've spoked to your psychonalyst for 5 years od you realize that everything came down to that one time your mother did this thing with you.... no need to specifiy. so i am writing again and feel now drained of spiritualy capability. so let me tell you the story of a friend of mine who's name is rudolph Langostino, who's a dreary and conbincing novelists, well-trained in structuring pleasant to read sentence, and the pleasure was due to very imaginative images through hwich e framed human existance. He would writes akin to: Haven't you see then 53000 neon lights outside the bar? when i look at them i wonder if i must perish before their unending, all piercing golden lights. An dthen he would win 3 oscars and in return to clapping noises in a japanese way, meaning with onsiderations of pureness in it. clapping was a big affair there, in his homeland. It was meant to show what lied inside you, meant to occupy the social signiifer of i don't care who, the emperor or something.IN OTHER countries clapping wasn't nearly as important. In russia whiustling was the big deal. you could whistle in a thousand different was. whistling was actually restricted to the lemperors who, if they were studious scholars, were able to whistemore than 8000 indiivdual whistels and would comose unique andONE OF A KIND songs to it. Emperor Masochismo was one of them. when he was 17 years old he would take strolls across his private personal jungltime adventure park and would while smiling with no bother, with no fleck of dreck on his heart, wander and think and whistle a song, a famous song of whistling in which a young mwoamn sacrifices herself for the wellbeing of her shepher dog who then lived on to live an nburndened and heavy with SATISFACTIOness life.... This dogs name was rowdy and he would often run up the heillu ith tongue waving at the world with supreme happyness and joy and now he was also running up the hill and where he stood the sun shine with friendly laughter on it's face but rowdy was looking at the coast and where he saw it there were trees making the coast look shadowy and thus coldish. rowdy ran rapidly on his 4 legs and went past various people who tturnd into tornados by berowdy going so fast by them and they would do clanking sounds of their brain being shuffled around in the head and would have stars in their eyes and vomit and one would die from brain truma Rowdy arrived with laughter in his heart and there he was in the shadow and the poor sun trying to take a look more at rowdy but there little rowdy had found a little bone and he was eaiting kon it with sharp teeth who grew in his mouth a long time ago and were in fidelity quality. he ate tree bark and the tree got tickeld very mu

>>9531918
In reference to what?

In general, I've had a hard, shitty life. A lot of the people around me in my life are aware that I've had a hard life, and because of the fact have against my will treated me similar to a leper. Lying to me to make me feel better, special snowflake treatment; the whole 'take it easy on him, he's had it bad enough' treatment. And between that fake stream of bullshit and the actual stream of my life's bullshit, I unconsciously developed an ascetic mindset. The value of a dollar is lost on me, but the value of an hour is beyond significant. I just want to help people and be honest.

I don't think you meant that about my story, but if you did, I didn't get it, and I apologize for the rant.

>>9530087
Also, I'm setting my story back to private in 20 min once my internet time runs out. I'm sure I'll be on tomorrow, but I'm still just a little weird about having it online for so long.

hey /lit/ I'm just lurking around here for the first time, didn't found a thread or stuff in the wiki about how to get into writing but want to do just that?

I know some of it is read a fuckton, and I've been doing that, but what else goes along with the process of getting started writing fiction?

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>>9532583

You could read some entry level stuff on how to write fiction. But most of these will really only cover commercial fiction and the basic structure of a story. Still, it's helpful if you know nothing about any of this at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4ZDBOc2tX8&list=PLH3mK1NZn9QqOSj3ObrP3xL8tEJQ12-vL

http://www.writingexcuses.com/season001/

I know people recommend both of these. I'm not a fan of Brandon Sanderson as a writer or a person, but he's nice and seems to mean well.

How's this lads?

Nigh-Rain on a Melbourne Train

Windswept trees and black clouds
Leer in over a dooming horizon.
Shades of beautiful things pass
As despondent as Dido
While I hurry through Hades.

>>9532815
Not great. No rhythm, and the only way to make up for lack of is to create sublime lines, but yours would better be in a pastoral or something of the likes.

Hades is far overused, bit dramatic for a subway

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Hey guys,

Hit me hard, like, go for it, just, look at my heart here, look at all of my vital organs, behold my trembling weakness--

Take unto your eyes these insecurities, mediocrities, and typos, and just, hit me with them hard.

A crow without its shackles
Wrapt the moon in cycles
Breathes endlessly into a stalling dawn.
Dawning, a relinquished freedom-
the cages of renewal-
Harking of something forlorn.

For its crag tower of cynicism lays impenetrable to outsiders,
unscalable by any,
black feathers bloom atop an ichor tower.
Crowed elements infallible
stray battlements unshakeable
The kingdom mocketh Silver and gold.

But stay, Babel hath spake;
It shall top by its own mighty weight!
Its bricks and tongues have scattered.

Reaching of the darkness
The central nerve unhinging
all its stones are spinning;
We binge about the hurricanes of noise.

The ending night speaks softly
We sit and wait unkindly
A single feather falls from fleeing crow

The sun will be forthcoming
lost wingtip not but gliding
‘Stead inked quill glides across my crumpled page:
Shackled till it reaches readers mind.

We now listen;
Speak now;
Soar-
-Unsteadied bells ring in the distance

>>9533677

More you are holding back so much and just composing yourself stop composing let your story out what the fuck are you doing it's good you're smart, trust yourself a little more, I mean-- Look, I actually can articulate sentences and cute girls do not notice the thinning of my hair which fills me with elation and excitement, but you have to center yourself more because,

Your story is just "story" and your being is just "being" and it's all in quotation marks not to mock you but because I think you have potential and these quotes will be realized and you will be realized and it will be so fucking incredible, I want you to know that it's incredible and I can see in what you're writing that you can do it but will you? That is for you to determine and I would love to leave punctuation out of it but we're mediated here-- you are there and I am here and hey, can you hear me now play Max Richter "On The Nature of Daylight" and please take my words in and hear me and I love you.

>>9533698
Friend, mediated- ay, marry

Is it worse to be ignored in these threads or deconstructed painfully ?

Wrote in like 20-30 minutes. What do you think?

A nip in the air was the best thing Atlantris was going to get. The arid desert heat was bearing down on his poor blond hair he thought it’d singe off by the time he found shade to cool his sweat. “Is there really no finer place to visit on holiday?” he asked his wife; Princess Dahlia was pampering herself up for the coming ceremony of her brother’s crowning, and she wouldn’t dare be anywhere else for as long as Lord Denathor was present at the banquet table. She had married the wrong noble prince a long time ago, and perhaps with this feast she had a chance at new love again. Love for her was a short candle, as it was for all her loves of the past, and so it was for Atlantris, cute and kind as he may be, he was a bore in the end, and not to mention nearing bankruptcy with all the donations he kept giving unto the poor. She needed a fresh lick of paint, a new, better man, that wasn’t afraid to tell her off when she deserved it; a rock and stone, not… jelly on toast.
“I gather storm winds rising, with the coming of the Dragon Princess,” said Atlantris, “there’s going to be hell to pay, and not the hot kind that boils your toes on a Sunday morning. Church was never in my favour anyway.”
“Oh do shut up,” snapped Dahlia, she was more than determined to deal with him just a while longer before she stopped caring for the rest of her life. He was poor, emasculated trash, and Lord Denathor was single, and that, for her, was all that was needed to be known. Good bye Mr. boring, hello Mr. lightning, and fast as lightning she had to be as well if she wanted to nab the poor prince of a lord at the banquet before anyone else could; there were rumours of his virility and good looks heard all across the kingdoms, and she needed no other hassle right now than a horde of bachlorettes who were all too desperate for the next Atlantris down the road like she did.

>>9533714
Why would you post here if you weren't prepared for the second

>>9533925
I'm just asking which is worse.

>>9533938
Depends on whether you're a slob(then the second) or not.
I thought thick skin was supposed to be a given here.

When I open my eyes, purple light is flooding my room. I get out of my bed and raise the blinds. The city outside the window is still shrouded in the remnant of the night. Some lit windows of the buildings shine in the gloom. I hear the sounds of cars. A distant siren of a police car.

I get into the bathroom without turning the lights on. I only see my silhouette in the quasi-darkness. The average height for a 14-year-old boy. Two hands holding the rim of the washbasin. Two arms upright. Head slightly turned downward.

I hear nothing in the direction of my mother’s room. I normally refrain from nearing that realm of the apartment, but the lack of human presence comforts me. I carefully approach the door of her room. I listen in. Nothing. I am a good listener and our apartment has good soundproofing. I hear no breathing. There is no one inside. She is in some dude’s place somewhere in the city, as always.

I plop down on the sofa and turn on the television set. Colors and sounds pervade my consciousness. I respond to none. I just love that they kill the quiet in me, the unbearable silence that haunts me.

The sun rises and ousts the gloom from the city. Everything loses the purple hue like stonewashed jeans. I get up and wear my school uniform except for the tie, because it feels like it’s strangling me all the time. I’ll wear it in front of the school building. Then lose it again once I’m past Mr. Keenan.
I check my hair in the elevator mirror. The elevator stops at the 27th floor and a man in suit carrying a briefcase gets in. He eyes me briefly then loses his attention in his smartphone’s screen. I see it all in the mirror.

#

I cross a few blocks through the forest of buildings reflecting the morning sunlight, before reaching my school. One of few things I don’t hate about my mother is that she bought this apartment so close to the school. She definitely intended it to benefit herself, who works in this neighborhood too. But I do benefit from it. I don’t have to endure the hellish morning commute in this city. The rat-ridden subway, bedbug-ridden buses. But rats and bedbugs are okay. Their biggest problem is that, they are human-ridden.

A few early arrivers in the same uniform as me emerge from the subway exit in front of the school building. I pass the gigantic revolving door with a few of them.

Damn, I forgot to put on the tie. I hurriedly take the tie out of my pocket and accidentally elbows a girl next me.

“Watch it!” She snaps. Her navy-blue eyes are full of irritation.

“Sorry.” I say.


“You don’t sound like you’re sorry at all.” She snaps and walks away with her friend. Her brown hair bobs up and down to her irritated gait.

I see the girl and her friend approaching the scanner as I tie my tie. Mr. Keenan says hello to them but they ignore him. They scan their cards and pass the turnstile.

Geez, I didn’t even elbow that hard. She acted like I’m a plagued corpse or something.

>>9533673
You have quite a strange style of writing, to be honest, I don't know if it's good or it's bad.
But, I think I like it. It's weird and elliptical and the whole thing is strangely hypnotic
I don't know man. I don't know if I could ascribe this a good/bad judgement, but its interesting for sure. I see something in it, even if I don't know what. So yeah
cool

>>9534015
solid i guess
I really like this line
>Colors and sounds pervade my consciousness. I respond to none. I just love that they kill the quiet in me, the unbearable silence that haunts me.

>Premise: A guard to the doors of heaven has to face a dilemma. The man who devoted his life to saving thousands of lives, many of them Christians, didn’t believe in God. Rejecting him would mean rejecting his charitable work, but accepting him would set the standard that the rules to get into Heaven have no meaning. The decision Davit makes sets the standard for all the other guards and how they decide who gets into heaven, and who doesn’t.

---

A man guards a lavish fence.
The fence is a marvel to look at, coated in white and gold that shines in the sun’s endless rays, and decorated with intricate patterns that twist and turn like maze puzzles. It stretches as far as the eye can see in all directions. The fence has an opening every mile that’s guarded by a man in white robes and leather sandals.

Wrote in like 5-10minutes. What do you think? Is it Reddit-tier?


I have a riddle which needs an answer. A strapping young lad such as I and a person of the opposite sex are standing together on a bridge, eyes gazing onto one another. Due to some unforeseen circumstances, we are more-or-less alone, with nothing but the light of the city in the backdrop and the moon’s light bearing down on us. The woman’s face is slightly flushed and eye’s a bit teary. What does she say in such a situation such as this? Would it be:

A) “I’ve always loved you, since the day we first met.”
B) I made the entire scenario and instead just aver “A night such as this is quite lovely, don’t you agree?”
C) A trick question; we start kissing one another and it goes back months prior revealing this spiel.
D) “Would I insinuate that you mayhap know of magic?”

To any rational person, the obvious answer is, in fact, D, for several reasons. The first of two: The Strapping young lad is I, Caden Rayden and not Devin Townsend and despite or in spite of my personal attractiveness, if a common wench such as her would ever confess her love towards me, I have reason to assume someone put her up to it. The second of two: is simply due to the fact she is not a normal person, to begin with.

While I may not know her name, there is one thing I do know and that if a person ever said those words in any serious manner, there is something wrong with them, or they are part of the secret club. For those who either don’t know or don’t care what I’m talking about with my outstanding world and the important people that live therein, people such as the person in front of I can use magic.

>>9524293
>the sky cracked with lightening
>lightening

8 words in for fuck's sake

The first lines of a 91 lines poem of mine

La Mort du Prince

Au milieu des vallées, entre une forêt gaie,
Surchargée de gibier, et des champs fromentés
Se dresse le château vertigineux du Prince,
Le grand cœur palpitant de la riche province.
Les marchands souriants barbotent dans la cour,
S’offrant plaisanteries, mais toujours en concours
Pour les yeux du seigneur, avec, si deus vult,
Quelques mots maigrelets dont il ne donne moult.

(I am >>9534909)

>>9526725
The writing is quite efficient and light. I easily understand what you mean, but the prose itsellf isn't beautiful by any mean. Seems perfect for fantasy, sci-fi and such. It seems a bit too "immature" for serious literature. I enjoyed it though.

>>9527463
The two first sentences were great, but then
>Joe and I sit and stare at the wall of the building. The building is beige, but the shadows make it shadow-color.
1. Why do you have to repeat "The building"? Using "It" would flow much better.
2. You used "bravado" and "foreboding", but can't think of a color for the wall? "shadow-color" is disgusting, especially after writing "shadows" a couple words before.
I'd be fine with those two things if they were done to emphasize something, but it doesn't seem to do that here, it just looks awkward.

The rest is quite good.

>>9527504
Why exactly three capital letters?
The scene is unclear - where does the second guy go?

The style is interesting, but I have no idea what you're getting at and I would quickly get bored. The prose of course isn't beautiful by any means.

>>9527778
Quite nice. Doesn't seem to be anything special, but could make good book.

>>9528048
Sounds like a teenager trying to be poetic.

>>9528305
>as though on drugs
Disgusting. Which drug? It's as descriptive as saying that something "tastes like food".

The rest is just alright. The only interesting line is >He’d dreamed last night four or five dreams, but only remembered one: his mother, like a surgeon, removing a large and pale yellow kumera from his asshole in one swift go.
>>9530012
I love it.

>>9531592
Nice and balanced. I like it, keep writing like this.

>>9533714
depends how shit your writing is...

being ignored is just annoying

>>9534909
Scheiß

>>9534015
>begins with char waking up
>crutch cliche of bathroom mirror for char description
>I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, annnnnnnnnd, I
>autistic level of details that advance no action
>inbent fascination with colors and noise
>misanthropic paranoia
>socially awkward description of social awkwardness
>multiple time and weather reports
>nothing happens

You are proud of this because it took five times longer than it would have if you had greentexted your entire story, then just taken the chevrons out, which would probably be significantly better, and the effort makes you feel entitled to some recognition. This is what drives agent's assistants to premature high-functioning alcoholism.

>>9535201
Geile Kritik, Brudi

We entered the hotel room around midnight, both weary from the day's journey, yet both full of energy and lust. She asked me to fuck her, and I obliged. She fell asleep soon after. I lit a cigarette and leaned on the balcony outside the room, taking in the sights of the city before me. A group of boys scurried through the gaslit streets below, innocent and full of life.
"Hello!," I shouted, and raised a friendly hand.
The young men ceased their play - a rigorous game of capture the flask - and raised their eyes to the shabby man on the balcony.
"Haven't you a home and family to be at this hour?" I enquired.
The smallest boy stepped forward, rather defiantly.
"We've a right to privacy, mister!" he shouted.
"Oh," I said, "and what need have you of such a fine flask?"
A smile pursed his lips.
"Why, good sir, a man has as much right to his liquor as he does to his privacy, which is what I'm trying to teach these sorry bastards."
The three scoundrels burst into laughter and commenced to name calling and prodding each other. After wrestling the portliest of his friends from him, the young boy resumed his oration.
"You see, we're trying to decide who partakes of the sweet ambrosia, and who does not, by a little game."
"I see. And what does your father think of this little game?"
"My father?! Why, that old wanker was deep into his own flask when we first started playing, just three streets over!"
We all laughed aloud and none more gaily than the speech's deliverer.

With all his charm, I could see he was getting restless. I flicked my dying cigarette at the young vagabond and bid him adieu with a kissing wave, one trailed with smoke. He returned to his cohort and they ran into the night as I turned my back to them, resuming their game as if it had never paused. As I entered the bedroom, I fixed my gaze upon Clairé - her delicate, naked body bathed in the phosphorescent light of the city lights streaming through the balcony doors. The night had grown cold, causing her nipples to stand upright. Her skin, a milky white, bristled with gooseflesh. She seemed an angel. And an angel she was. Gently, I laid beside her on the hotel mattress - that foreign land known best by lovers and thieves. I pondered what little difference existed between those two classes, lovers and thieves. A lover, I reasoned, was simply a thief of the highest caliber. Someone who burgled that which is most sacred. A strongbox. A jewelry store. A wife's womanhood, salty and intoxicating. Indeed, I was the greatest of thieves, and I slept that night acknowledging my conquest.

Critique this please.

>>9533792
This is so many flavors of bad I honestly don't know where to begin. There's no sense of place or time because your language flutters between high fantasy pseudo-medieval and carelessly modern. The only line that struck me as remotely interesting was
>a rock and stone, not... jelly on toast
and that doesn't even make sense in context.
Try harder/at all. This reads like you're twelve and it's babby's first LotR fanfiction.

>>9534824
Proofread more, there's obvious errors scattered about. Specifically learn the difference between I/me/myself.
Also, this isn't a riddle; it is however incoherent. At least you're introducing ideas (there's a witch offering sweet magicks maybe?), but you're presenting it in a bad approximation of the sardonic style favored by light novel protagonists. And even then, what's being said isn't particularly interesting. Ultimately this is filler that I don't care to read.

>>9536257
The diction was perfectly fine in the first paragraph, but then you appear to have gotten skittish and started using the thesaurus once a sentence thereafter. Knock it off, it doesn't make what you're saying interesting, just dense and borderline unreadable due to bathos. And the final paragraph is even more egregiously bad.
It's an overwritten narrative where nothing of consequence happens.

>>9531592
>reads Dubliners once

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>>9536302
>Specifically learn the difference between I/me/myself.
B-but I do know the Difference. I just thought characters should say something against the norm due to their personalities.


>this isn't a riddle;
I-i know that anon.
>incoherent
You're right, I wrote this very tired. I apologize.

>At least you're introducing ideas (there's a witch offering sweet magicks maybe?), but you're presenting it in a bad approximation of the sardonic style favored by light novel protagonists. And even then, what's being said isn't particularly interesting. Ultimately this is filler that I don't care to read.
T-thank you. Let me go kill myself now.

>>9536351
Only the dead, but I don't think that seeped into it

Is it really so similar? I've nearly completed the novel but now I feel self conscious about sending it out in fear of seeming a try hard

>>9526637
>internet time limited
>username
what are you?

>>9536323
>even more egregiously bad
Ironic since you ripped on him for seemingly using a thesaurus too much.

>>9536389
Someone who's down on their luck and lost nearly all of their luxuries.

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>>9536367
>wrote in 5-10 minutes
>gets a relatively fair critique which was maybe a little excessive, but still insightful
>brb kms

>>9536489
>light novel protagonists
Hurt me more than it should.

>>9524293
I think this is pretty good as far as construction goes: it has good passing, a hook intro, and the right degree of abstraction. You don't dwell too much on the details of background description and the narration of the action scenes is simple but effective. You also handled the dialogue well. The story definitely feels like it has a purpose and is going somewhere!

I do have a slight gripe about your subject though. Dragons, a kind of old English fantasy setting, blacksmiths, mysterious magic cabals, etc...this stuff is so trite at this point and we've all read it a thousand times before. I'm guessing you've already mad up your mind about how you want things to unfold; just make sure you do it in an interesting and unique way or else it could risk feeling derivative.

>>9536534
pacing* not passing

>>9536323

We entered the hotel room around midnight, both weary from the day's journey, yet both full of energy and lust. She asked me to fuck her, and I obliged. She fell asleep soon after. I lit a cigarette and leaned on the balcony outside the room, taking in the sights of the city before me. A group of boys scurried through the gaslit streets below, innocent and full of life.
"Hello!," I shouted, and raised a friendly hand.
The young men ceased their play - a rowdy game of capture the flask - and raised their eyes to the shabby man on the balcony.
"Haven't you a home and family to be at this hour?" I asked.
The smallest boy stepped forward, rather defiantly.
"I've a right to privacy, mister!" he shouted.
"Oh," I said, "and what need have you of such a fine flask?"
A smile pursed his lips.
"Why, good sir, a man has as much right to his liquor as he does to his privacy, which is what I'm trying to teach these sorry bastards."
The three scoundrels burst into laughter and commenced to name calling and prodding each other. After wrestling the fattest of his friends from him, the young boy resumed his speech.
"You see, we're trying to decide who partakes of the sweet ambrosia, and who does not, by a little game."
"I see. And what does your father think of this little game?"
"My father?! Why, that old crank was deep into his own flask when we first started playing, just three streets over!"
We all laughed aloud and none more loudly than the speech's deliverer.

Seeing through all his charm, I noticed he was getting restless. I flicked my dying cigarette at the young vagabond and bid him adieu with a kissing wave, one trailed with smoke. He returned to his friends and they ran into the night as I turned my back to them, resuming their game as if it had never paused. As I entered the bedroom, I fixed my gaze upon Clairé - her delicate, naked body bathed in the phosphorescent light of the city streaming through the balcony doors. The night had grown cold, causing her nipples to stand upright. Her skin, a milky white, bristled with gooseflesh. She seemed an angel. And an angel she was. Gently, I laid beside her on the hotel mattress - that foreign land known best by lovers and thieves. I pondered what little difference existed between those two classes, lovers and thieves. A lover, I reasoned, was a thief of the highest caliber. Someone who stole that which is most sacred. A strongbox. A jewelry store. A wife's womanhood, salty and intoxicating. Indeed, I was the greatest of thieves, and I slept that night amused with my conquest.

Any better?

>>9536323

Also, here are the additions.

The following morning, we breakfasted at a quaint restaurant alongside the Rue de ---.
She ordered an eggs Benedict, I ordered an omelet. As we sat across from each other, I noticed her countenance begin to change from arrogant and content, to worried and fearful. A tear dropped from her left eye and raced down her cheek. I smiled in an attempt to cheer her. Looking over my shoulder, she suddenly screamed - a shrill and horrible scream. I turned around. To my surprise, a man of great stature stood in the center of the Rue de ---, bearing a revolver in his hands. I rose from my seat and offered up my hands, disregarding Clairé's shrieking. From the corner of my left eye, I spotted the young vagabond from the night before; he was sipping from his silver flask. He offered up a wave, as if to say, You sorry bastard. The gun-wielding man walked towards me at a steady pace, and stopped ten feet directly in front of me. He was sweating, and his hands were trembling. It was at this time that I realized he had not once looked at me, but rather at Clairé. I turned to see her completely still, sickeningly pale. So pale in fact, I quite lost interest in her. When I turned round again, his eyes were on me. Thinking him to be a man of reason, I stepped forward with outstretched hands. As I did, I noticed a sharp pain in my chest, followed by a sharp ringing in my ears. Falling to the ground, I saw my young friend; he maintained his casual drinking.

>>9536323

Last part.

A small crowd of people gathered round my body. I peered through the crowd to see my assailant beating Clairé with a closed fist. Someone soon stepped in front of my view. His shoes were tattered and his clothes smelled of hard liquor. I assumed the town drunk had come to pay homage. Looking up, I saw the town drunk to be none other than my young friend. He knelt down beside me and felt his hands against my chest.
"Quite the predicament you're in, mister."
"It's just a slight wound, kid."
"Tell me, was the bitch worth dying over?"
"To be frank, I'm quite over her now. Not sure what I ever saw in her."
"That's the nature of the game, I suppose."
"Ah, and I've won the game."
"'Won the game,' mister?"
"Yes, I was the greatest of thieves," I said, through a mouthful of blood.
"You? The greatest of thieves? One cannot lay claim to that title just for tasting another man's wife." The young boy laughed aloud, overcome with the current situation.
"Do you see this here flask?"
I nodded in the affirmative.
"Good. I stole this from my old man, right out from under his fat, greasy nose. It's genuine silver, y'know."
I admired his conquest.
"And take for instance this fine piece right here - as beautiful a gun as any I've ever seen before."
Reaching into his coat pocket, he produced a revolver - one quite connected with myself. He spun the instrument of my demise around his index finger.
"Dense bastard was so busy beating on his old lady, he didn't notice me swipe his piece."
He laughed again and chased it down with another swig from the flask.
"Y'know what these fine treasures make me, don't ya?"
I swallowed back a mouthful of blood in order to speak.
"I haven't a clue."
"Stupid to the last, aren't you? Well, I'll tell ya. They make me the greatest of thieves in all the world!"
He roared with laughter and splashed liquor upon his face. I began coughing profusely and felt life slipping from my grasp. In vain, I tried arguing my claim with the young drunkard. He had the upper hand. After all, I had stolen one night with a pale housewife, and he a revolver and flask.

"The greatest of thieves," he chuckled as he stood up. He tucked his revolver into the backside of his trousers and snuck outside the -now large- crowd surrounding my corpse. So armed, he stumbled along the Rue de ---, laughing and sipping all the way.

Still shit?

>>9536638
>Any better?
No.

>>9536662
don't ever use peer as a verb unless you're talking about a mariner and a spyglass.

actually just never use peer as a verb ever.

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Welp.

>>9536389
he's australian

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>>9525836
Did a rework, hope you don't mind. Took some liberty in parts. Pic unrelated.
.....

This coke is shit. Can barely feel it hit my throat. Fuck this place, and fuck these freaks crowding up the stairs. I gotta get out of here, I gotta get home somehow. But, none of these rail jockies can fucking stand let alone drive my ass back now. Fuck me. And, I can't find my Slims. I know I brought them.

This is bullishit! One of these assholes stole them from my bag, and they're probably sucking it down and fading out while I'm losing my mind. And now, all the weirdos are staring at me like I'm the one with a fucking problem.

‘Peace and love, babe,’ says a stoner guy. I jumped. I almost walked by him thinking he was just another blotch on the wall. I could barely see his face, and his eyes were nearly closed, but he had a cigarette sitting on his ear.

‘Um, hey,’ I said, ‘could I bum one?’
‘Sure, just remember, okay?’
‘Remember what?’
‘Peace and love, babe.’

He laughs and turns away gabbing with someone next to him who I also thought was just a blob on the wall. I hear them chuckling behind me and making their droning stoner sounds as I step out into the porch.

At least I can smoke without a bunch of people gawking at me. I sit on the deck, flick the lighter and drag on it. The only ones there with me are the porch light above the screen door and my shadow running away from my legs. I hear more laughing coming from the window, and John is there with Miles and some boy in a rugby shirt all charging through the house singing Please Don't Go by KWS to anyone who’s trying so leave the house. They're infectious, loud, wearing sunglasses, John’s shirtless, the three of them marching arm-in-arm begging no one to ruin their revelry.

The porch light flickers behind me. A moth bounces around the lamp helplessly. The door is still, and only a silent blankness lingers behind it. John isn't there in the window anymore, just the kitchen light and the sound of people stream through. Other than that the night feels empty, and I feel small in it.

They didn't even have to kick me out or tell me to leave. I swear I can hear that stoner guy’s laugh still. ‘Peace and love.’ Love him? Yeah, I bet he'd let me fuck him! That's all love is! Why didn't he just say ‘SEX, bitch! Yeah, I'll give throw the virgin girl a bone, she's probably dying to get it in her! At least the other girls crumple up their love letters and keep their heads on their desks so we don't have to see those moles and zits and mangled faces! But, you even got an edge on them! Hardbodied with a flaky heart - Oh you poor thing! Here's a cigarette for your broken heart, virgin girl, now go on and be alone!’

>>9524293
>"Old Hugo's daughter, the one with the large..." Nico motions to his chest "...Personality."

Most reddit thing I ever read on here

Figuring out which of three short story premises I was to pursue.

>early 1900s inspector for a asylum in rural england becomes obsessed over an inmate who is in turn obsessed with a bitter orange tree. He was originally sent on these inspections to look for men/women suitable for military medical trials.

>benevolent machine intelligence constructing a list for a colony of humans for a ark, chooses a suicidally depressed man for his low rates of heart disease, cancer, etc. Follows the man as he is forcibly relocated to the facility and is surrounded by the best and brightest.

>old man spent the last 20 years reconstructing a miniaturized version of the city he lives in, follows the guy who has to clean out the old man's home and discovers the miniature city. He becomes obsessed over strange incongruous details between the real and the miniature.

First time writing a poem, am I hopeless?

"Fictive Love"
I told you once
That, having you, I knew
That I had never known love
Before, and what I thought was true
Was a fictive web I strung
(idle sighs of dreaming young)
That burned away on meeting you.

Loving you, I learned
That all loves are pretty-patched
And weaved together with those strings—
Eventually we each are matched
With lovers-of-imaginings.

I sit alone and pend
On how much each of us was loomed
From the fictions that we tend:
And if I knew you, or if we’re doomed
To love reflections in the end.

might come across as "edgy" or whatever but here goes(1/2?):

"I'm just delivering the mail."
"Please, help my husband!"
The husband had taken the mesh frame out of the apartment window and began to climb out of it.
"How can I help? He's already out of the window. I'm afraid of heights."
"Go talk to him!"
"It's not my job!"
The husband was now hanging out of the window, with his hands grasping the sill, his legs and body dangling in the air. The mailman decided to talk to him.
"So...what's the problem?"
"I can't see you, man. Poke your head out of the window so I can see your face."
"I'm afraid of heights."
"We've all got things we're afraid of, boy. Face your fears."
The mailman timidly stuck his head out of the window. He tried to focus on the husband's face but couldn't refrain from shifting his eyes towards the huge, sprawling city. One could truly fall into it at a moment's notice.
"Look me in the eyes, kid."
"What's the problem?"
"THE problem, huh? Well, you're right. I do have one sole problem. You see that bar over there?"
The husband took his left hand off the window sill and pointed towards a neon lit building with a sign that said "Cocks and Dicks".
"Sir, put your hand back on the sill."
"It's a gay bar, y'see? That, right there, is the problem with our society."
"What do you mean?"
"What do I mean? The fags! Fucking each other in the ass. All the time, 24/7. Nonstop fucking."
"I'm not making the connection."
"I am going to KILL myself because of them. I hate them with every fiber of my being. There's no point in living on this Earth among people like that. Ya know what I mean?"
"Not really."
"You're not one of those fag apologists, are ya?"
"I don't know. I don't have an opinion on them, really. I just don't think you should kill yourself over them. I mean, they're not fucking you in the ass."
"I love my wife. Don't even joke about that kind of thing. Now, I'm going to let go of the window sill. I'll land on the pavement. Have you ever tried to imagine how many people have ever stepped on a single spot? I mean, like, the exact same spot. It's crazy. Must be millions. I wonder if anyone's stepped on the exact same spot twice. But anyway, I'm getting off topic. If someone would just...exile those fags to some island, then I wouldn't have to kill myself, now would I? Such is the world and its cruelty. Now, if you'll excuse me."

>>9539684
The husband let go of the window sill with his left hand again, but the mailman managed to catch it in time.
"Hey, what are ya doing? You gotta problem with fags?"
"I just said..."
The husband pulled his hand loose, reached into his pocket, and lit a cigarette.
"Look, this ain't no cornball comedy routine. I'll get around to falling, don't you worry. I just want one last sensation. What are the chances that I land on a fag? Human fag, ya know? I think to myself, I shouldn't contemplate things in such a manner, but that's what my head points towards. Ya see, when you can imagine all the infinite outcomes in life, then it starts to lose its purpose. If anything can happen, then nothing can. Ya dig?"
"I'm...just delivering the mail."
A man in a dandyish suit entered the room holding a book.
"Hello, Jordan. How have you been? Not well, it appears. I've got just the thing for you. "The Book of Miserable Lives", it's a chronicle of the harsh conditions that people throughout the years have lived through. With this, I will attempt to mitigate the importance of your quite frankly trivial existential crisis. Look at this girl, you see. No arms, no legs, beaten by her parents, starved, bullied in school, never had a relationship, and most of all, never achieved wealth. Yet, she carried on, she lived to the age of 92. Perseverance, strife. The two most important qualities in life. Now, allow me to help you up."
"No! The fags run rampant!"
"Oh, please. This is silly. I've just showed you that people have it worse off than you. Isn't this enough to convince you that your "struggles" are absurd?"
"They're absurd, but they're my struggles. I'm absurd. So be it".
"Alright, Jordan, so you hate 'fags'. Do you know that there are people out there who hate you? You are a 'nigger', after all."
"That's fine."
"So, everyone hates everyone. What's there to worry about?"
The mailman chimed in: "Perhaps you're putting this in a very pessimistic way."
"And who are you, pray tell?"
"I'm...the mailman."
"Mailmen shouldn't transgress their natural calling. You think that you know better than I? I'll have you know I'm a doctor. Don't bother trying to one-up me."
"It's...not a competition."
"Will you two quit yer yapping? I'm trying to die here. I want peace and quiet. This is my last sensation. Are you really so cruel as to ruin it for me?"
"But it doesn't have to be. Have strength."
"I'm weak. You're right. I feel much better".
The husband let go of the window sill and fell to his death.

Here lies a man who hated fags. Don't weep for him.

"Should someone's personality be defined by one trait? If they deem it so, perhaps."

"I have thoughts that occur. If I make an effort to change them, they will change. As long as the thought of changing occurs."

>>9539688
A papier mâché model of Jordan lies on the pavement. Soaked by the rain. What's inside? Hollow?

"You could have saved my husband!"

The mailman went about the rest of his duties sullenly. When he got home, he immediately stripped down to his underwear.
A man waved at him.
What?
His building was having the balconies worked on.
"It's 6:00pm. They should already be done by now!"
Some people work different hours than others.
The man on the balcony kept flitting glances and smiling at the mailman.
"Can't he just fuck off?"
No.
"I hate maintenance workers. I really do."
The mailman reclined in his chair.
"I could have saved him?"
"Your balcony's all done sir! Nice and stable."
"I'm not here. This is my home. Don't acknowledge that I'm here. Pretend you didn't fucking see me. Privacy."

This just in: a local maintenance worker was brutally murdered last night by the tenant of the apartment he was working on. The tenant had also, shockingly, sodomized the corpse of one Jordan Ubik. Ubik has been known for spreading homophobic hate speech around the city, spreading pamphlets and giving speeches at right wing meetups. Some speculate that Jordan and the tenant had perhaps engaged in sexual behaviour before the incident.
"I knew it. He was closeted!"
The tenant was a mailman.

Who will deliver your mail now?

I'm just...

end


hate to be a slimy fucking shill but check out my blog if you're somehow interested (http://justycorrigantailor.blogspot.ca/)

I usually write in my native language, so this is the only readable excerpt I can post here. It’s my first attempt at automatic writing. Pessoa said he experienced automatic writing as in someone else moving his arms. I felt that way too, but it was probably just because my whole body was numb from sleep deprivation at the time I was writing. The wikipedia page about automatic writing also focuses on the paranormal/psychic aspect, which confuses me. As I understood Breton in his manifesto, automatic writing is essentially just writing without really thinking. Anyway, I am mainly looking for critique on my grammar and/or word usage:


How do you do? the man said, which stopped me dead in my tracks. Dazed, I turned my head around to look at him. Heinz and I had been up most of the night before drinking hand sanitized soda & scotch and gobbling down our last packets of Normison while shouting ever-increasingly vulgar remarks against the door across the motel hallway, behind which a group of young girls from a football team were allegedly sleeping, and so I was, as one normally is the day after a night of gallant buffoonery, rather… gone. That is, I was disconnected from the plane of physical existence. Sure, right now my body might have looked like it was walking around the airport, and maybe it actually was, but the point is that my head and my mind, much like those floating head doctors you used to hear about on the television, was somewhere else entirely.

Where was I then? Well, it is a good thing that I am asking myself this, because I was in a very cold place struggling to develop a theory, months old at this point – and here I have the opportunity to reflect on it further. See, there is something fishy about Heinz. People don’t seem to recognize him. Wherever he goes he is, in fact, unnoticeable. I can’t help but think that somehow Heinz is completely invisible to eyes other than mine own. This first occurred to me early on in our friendship, and I will soon delve into further detail. Before that, however, I feel it would be necessary to shed some light on this cold place where I am at, which coincidentally also holds the location of mine and Heinz’s inaugural meeting. Or at the very least so I think.

In Nepal there is a mountain massif called Dhaulagiri. I once found myself, as you sometimes do, climbing around one of its peaks. [...]
__________

While this excerpt is just the result of me designating about 10-15 minutes to write something largely at random, I am considering trying to turn this into a more coherent story. It would follow the increasingly paranoid narrator and his imaginary yeti friend Heinz, oscillating between several different narrative perspectives. If I manage to make it Vonnegut enough, although still sincere, and write in my native language, I think it might sell.

I also have a fetish for longer sentences and regularly masturbate to the 1,288 word long sentence in "Absalom!, Absalom!".

>>9539684
>>9539688
I like it. What's your MBTI?

Can't critique though because I don't know much about satire and your prose seems fine.

I have a question for you though, I imagined the man to be a white and middle-aged, but he turns out to be black. So in my mind the man transformed into a black man in an instant. It was a bit jarring. Don't you think you should have hinted at the man's ethnicity early, like when the mailman first sees him?

>>9537982
This is the OP of 9525836

Love this, may steal from it

File: Rageagainstthemachine.jpg (95KB, 650x510px) Image search: [Google]

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Based on a true story

>>9540112
Erase it all. Cut your eyes out. Try again.

>>9540120
but anon, how will i post without my eyes?

>>9540125
braile

>>9540152
You thought of everything. But honestly, that bad? Not even a smirk at the last sentence?

>>9540166
it's just too short

Writing is way too casual, which you were maybe aiming for, but it's almost like you didn't care at the time of writing it
last line did get me though, fag

>>9524293
Sorry OP but I dislike your style. Each sentence starts with the same repetitive boring shit "Emmet turned", "A woman", "A dragon" "Hot tears" "She turned" "Emmet screamed" None of this excited me as a reader and I find it dull. Try and spice up the structure or at least the sentences... e.g. Instead of starting with "Hot tears", you could say "Translucent salty drops streamed from Emmet's dilated pupils, cooling his cheeks, flushed crimson, until they landed with a "drop!" on the surface of his worn out boots"

>>9540187
I knew that last line was fooking gold.

I didn't want for it to overstay its welcome, but yeah i guess i did end up cutting it short.
I'll do a rewrite, spruce it up a bit, see how it turns out.

>>9537982
nice
I really like this line
>Other than that the night feels empty, and I feel small in it.

>>9524293

It was, after all, just desserts. He had come to realize his own character assassination was first designed when he was a boy, too young to realize the depth of adult cruelty, too young to fashion defence constructs of his own, too young to even realize he was under attack. He, the young man, the one with much potential, the one who enjoyed solitude but did not shy from being social, the one who the girls were enamoured with, the one who was a certain girl's certain type. He was also the one who fell so very far from grace, who looked for a grip where he could, who had so many wounds in his back, who grasped a ledge and held with continued strength as they pried off his fingers, hoping he would fall into the abyss. And who are they? Well, they're over there. They're being served their just desserts now. He is carrying it on his shoulders, it is quite the meal. The desserts he serves he makes sure everyone gets a helping of, no one soul is exempt; he would loathe to be impolite to his dining guests. The guests who could also be known as the architechts, the ones who had power, or the ones who possessed substantial influence. Yet here they were, at his table, being served his desserts, which he had fashioned just for them. The most tragic part of the tale, I do believe, is that they publicly cheered him on, while secretly hating the desserts, hating them vividly, hating them with such a passion that they devoted time and money and effort into stopping their server. The architechts hated the desserts but tried to describe them as worthless, worthy of contempt, and constantly tried to stop eating; they did all this as they gulped down every last bite.

r8? h8? appreciat8?

>>9541297

I actually like the content but are you trying to be DFW-esque?

>>9541297

I like it. The prose is, like >>9541302 pointed out, heavy on the DFW. Seems almost like you tried to imitate him to a degree. The content is good, and the way its delivered is engaging. So I really don't have any criticisms except that it sounds like DFW.

rate my poem, pls no bully I am bad

The Divine Tax

He's grown tired of your sins, your indulgence, your charters
So he's sent down a brave man to be his martyr
In the weave of all fate, he has sent this man forth
In search of atonement he will be THE LORD'S retort
He endures persecution of the most subtle, taxing type
Yet he isn't deterred, he knows what he does is right
An answer to all those who find themselves in this plight
He will carry this cross, and venture through the long night.
Needing no recognition, no accolades, no awe
Striding ever forward as you lash his life raw
At the end of the day, he highlights one fatal flaw
Your corruption, your arrogance, your intent to do wrong... so--
THE LORD imposes a tax, and will sit in judgement before long.
His collector you've beaten, you've battered, accused
But THE LORD sees all, nothing escapes his omniscient view
He sees no guilt in this man, as many others have, too
Merely a poor soul that's been battered and bruised
His collector holds shame, yes, that much is true
But not for the vile crimes of which he has been accused
THE LORD has chosen a champion, who has put forth his soul
To battle this evil that has taken firm hold
Now the powerful, powerless, they vie for that soul as their own
In their pride they can not accept his disregard for it all.
So they chip at his resolve, try to melt him like wax
Though it may be small, he collects THE LORD'S divine tax.

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>>9539822
Take, homie. Pic unrelated again.

>>9524293
He stood twirling the stalk of a rose around with his long, thin fingertips in one hand, and jacking off with the other as he gazed pensively out the window into the romantic and lavish summer distances. He had on his desk a notebook opened to the first page of his masterpiece (it was to be (in 8,032 pages) a long, detailed, flowery, ornate and beautiful work describing how, for the past twenty-one years, he had done just what he was doing here: obsessively twirled rose stems in his hand and jacked off with the other -- mostly, however, he just masturbated).

He masturbated to anything and everything. A well-done passage from Nabokov or Joyce particularly served well to swell him to the four-and-a-half inch heights of monstrous manhood. He also masturbated to such writers as Hemingway and Beckett, for balance. He masturbated to any and every flowery or somehow aesthetic writer. He particularly loved postmodernists. He pulled it off to Gass, wanked it to Gaddis, and stroked himself to David Foster Wallace; Pynchon made him choke the chicken often, and DeLillo, on the other hand, did not often succeed so well in arousing him, but when he did (those opening pages of Underworld!) he came gobbets of thick, sticky semen that soiled utterly the library book, so that he had to either move to a different city or somewhat shamefacedly pay the fee for its replacement, claiming (with a self-effacing smile) that he'd lost it.

"I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments..." he thought, and lost it, coming onto the floor. No one lived with him, anyway. He felt satisfied and relaxed. He decided that was enough effort on his literature today. He felt proud of himself, and decided to reward himself by going onto his laptop and browsing /lit/.

"A critique thread," he saw, overjoyed, and a slow smile spread across his face; "I'll post my work here."

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I'll rate some other posts in a follow up post.

"I sometimes find myself asking - what would the 10-year old version of me make of what I've become?

I think he'd be impressed at my recent studio recordings of songs I've written that have garnered the attention of people that want to promote me. He'd be proud of my day job as a social worker, helping the developmentally disabled.

But he'd be mortified by me doing lines of coke off a combat knife with strangers high on peyote at the beach.

There's a bizarre thought that goes through your mind while you're high on methamphetamine at the Panda Express with the kind of cynical girl only made possible by high intelligence and being the sole survivor of an otherwise fatal auto collision.

The thing that I am was once a gradeschooler, too afraid of rejection to talk to girls and with hopes of becoming an astronaut. That, has somehow morphed into a somewhat nihilistic psychonaut engaging in the kind of debauchery I used to detest."

>>9541394

I can't judge your writing because its not properly formatted. Am I supposed to read it like poetry? Is it just fragmented sentences? Is there supposed to be some sort of coherence? Are you merely musing about what a younger self would think of your own self now in a disaffected uneven thought process? What's your style, pal?

My post
>>9541394


>>9541372
I'll admit, I guffawed.
>>9541344
Not bad at all.
The language itself is fairly good in my opinion.
But the simple rhyme scheme is my biggest complaint.
That isn't always a bad thing but I think if following a simple pattern of rhyming as in yours, it's best to have at least 2 rhyming words or at least multi-syllabic rhymes.
The subject itself is a little cliche but I think you approach it in a nice way.
Overall I'd say it's the work of an amateur, but one with much potential.
>>9541297
The sentences are slightly long in parts. I'd say you need slightly more variety in sentence length and perhaps inserting a paragraph in there somewhere might help.
The subject is interesting however a little hard to follow. Which may not be a bad thing depending on the rest of the work (unless that is the whole of it)>
You've got good description though.
>>9540112
A bit silly but I think if part of the right kind of work (Such as a story from the POV of a slightly crazy/eccentric person) it could work to humorous effect.
My only suggestion would be to try to avoid cliches, like "the details are fuzzy."

>>9541403
Mostly the latter, it's supposed to be formatted in such a way to be reminiscent of the fragmented style of thoughts as they come through ones mind.
Mildly related things floating by and flitting through your head.

The whole work isn't that way, but there are other pieces within it that resemble that specific example as well.

>>9541403
>>9541417
Also the last "paragraph" (the thing that I am....etc) is supposed to represent the "bizarre thought" that goes through ones mind mentioned in the paragraph previous to it.

>>9541417

Now that you've clarified >>9541394 for me, I'd say its alright. But that can't be your formatting, it has to be taken as a specific segment of writing that the entire piece is not consistent with. With that out of the way, I like your contrast with what you deem acceptable now, and still do, as opposed to what your 10 year old self would appreciate, and what he would detest.

>>9524293
I hate you for writing this

>>9541447
Thanks mate.
That's a fair point.

The formatting does make it difficult to follow but I like unconventional "presentation" in my work.
Not quite to the extreme degree as say danielewski but somewhere along the same pathway if that makes any sense.

Though there probably is better ways of doing it for that particular passage.

As it stands I'm currently not even to the editing phase, I'm just working on finishing the overall before I start nitpicking about that kind of thing.
Otherwise I'll never finish it.

Did you post anything ITT?
I'll give you some critique if you want any.

>>9541471

Oh its ok man, you already got mine

>>9541297

I critiqued yours and this dude's >>9541344

If what you're going for with the formatting is some sort of literary technique then I say go for it. I'm not familiar with danielewski so I don't understand that, but I understand what you could be going for with passage. Also yeah, I always find myself editing, re-editing, and finalizing before I'm happy with anything I write.

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>>9537715
Same guy, tried improving it a little.

The rooster crowed as Jenny jumped over the tenth shack roof in the avenue line, the sands of her heel scrapping to the streets below her, and the threats of her pursuers getting louder and louder as they closed-in to her tail. The dawn was rising, the streets were in bustle, and high up in the clouds was a sun shy to peek through the grey smog chocking the city landscape. The red, sombre flag of the hammer and sickle tied to every antenna, every speaker, and every camera sticking out from the dreary world below.
Just another Thursday as far as Jenny could tell. Or was it Friday? Depends on who they were decorating the city gates with first; Christians or Spies? One could often see a line of the poor saps hanging down from Figure Row on their way to the markets, and if you were to take one of their crucifixes - you could fool the guards into thinking you were one of them. And as the law states: “All forms of Religious Propaganda are punishable by death.”
Luckily for Jenny, she was just the distraction. The real cohorts of their little operation had already nabbed the goods from the supply truck before the guards even knew they were there. The High Rulers sure loved their potatoes, and it was a good thing that food was constantly in demand, otherwise there would be nothing to sell to the formerly-rich masses, who’d now trade-in their own jewels for a shot at bread. Jenny thought it light to think how the loss of the basest necessities can easily change one’s philosophical outlook on life.
“Come back thief!” the guards screamed behind her; Jenny was already too busy tugging leg to see all the commotion her pursuers were making, but if it wasn’t for the constant spear-chucking, rock-slinging, or foul language - she’d probably never would’ve figured out that it wasn’t a good place to be…
“Or we'll have your head on a spike!”
Or dangerous, for that matter. Fact is - she never liked looking behind her; life was always about moving forward; always struggling, always being chased, and if you got caught - you were caught forever, and that wasn’t just because the High Rulers had you killed-off for pointing the wrong way to parliament, no; it was also because a life tied to money was never fun without the chase anyway. Or so Jenny convinced herself. She was nearing the end of the shack avenue and either had to get down on street level – and risk more guards – or try vaulting over the barrack walls just ahead of the last roof’s edge - to see if she liked the idea of getting chased by professional soldiers.
She smirked. “It just never gets any easier, does it?”
Time was fleeting before the roof’s end. Jenny had to decide if it was now or never, prison, or splat.
So on the beat of a strained pulse - Jinny folded out her steel staff mid-run and dug it into the edge of the very last sandstone roof.

>>9541512
>the sands of her heel scrapping to the streets below her,
What is this supposed to say. There seem to be multiple typos.

>closed-in to her tail
"close in" is not hyphenated, it takes the preposition "on"
this also seems like a awkwardly mixed idiom

>The red, sombre flag of the hammer and sickle tied to every antenna, every speaker, and every camera sticking out from the dreary world below.
This is a fragment; you missed a word.

>she’d probably never would’ve figured out
either: "she probably never would have[...]" or "she'd probably never have[...]"

>Or dangerous,
not properly connected to the previous idea

I didn't want to read it at first but I ended up liking it.

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Absolute bottom of the barrel beginner.
English is not even my native language.

rip me a new asshole so I can git gud pls.

>>9543285
fug :DDD

>>9543825
?

>>9524293
An ad on youtube asked me which movies I would be willing to see in theaters:

Baywatch
Alien: Covenant
Pirates of the Caribbean

I've never felt so satisfied selecting, "none."

please give it a read over

p 1/2

Eric Jung was a very tired man. The ache of fatigue hounded him with each passing step of his weary gait. How many years has he spent treading these same paving slabs? He did not know.
One foot. And then another. And then another still. It was endless. The filth of the streets pervaded every inch of his being, from his battered old shoes to the yellowed whites if his eyes. As a boy he had looked up into the black of the night sky with wonder, was he staring into another world? Was it just a void? Was God staring back? In his youth he was so full of questions. Now he simply treated the starry blanket before him with icy contempt. Each time he saw it, it's ugliness and emptiness grew more apparent to him. The white shining dots that had once been beacons to him were now blemishes and the deep black space between them, once a dream, was now a hollow cavern. Was there life on other planets? Eric sincerely hoped there was not.
One foot. And another, each slower and more aching than the last. A good dog would take itself out into the woods to die, but there were not woods for Eric to go to. A tense and exhausting prolonging of his life would have to suffice. His existence, or lack thereof, stared him in the face like a mocking adversary, taunting each move his wilting frame took in the greying maze. Was there life after death? Eric sincerely hoped there was not.
Up the old steps and under the archway. A single drop of water stopped from the ancient stone arch and splashed weakly onto his shoulder. He paid it no mind. He stepped through the tall dark double doors and entered the office where he spent most of his waking life. There were people in the hallway, but they weren't speaking. He immediately walked past them all, sat at his desk and began to work. He stared forth onto the blank pages, filling them with number and statistics that meant nothing to him. He answered yes or no questions with great skill and filled each second with a numbed tread. Across the office he quite by accident made eye contact with a woman. She smiled to him. Eric thought that if they were animals he would have fucked or killed the woman for this interaction. But he was not an animal, so he smiled back. It was a thin and weak smile that ended their little back and forth across the office. He had seen her before but had never spoken to her. He doubted he ever would. Regardless, the happening had shaken him a little, and it took him a few seconds to return to his work. He wondered what she wanted. Did she want anything? What did he want?

>>9543959

p 2/2
Random acts of kindness made Eric uncomfortable, in that same way that opening the curtains in a dark room stings your eyes because the light pours in. He thought it was best to avoid such things in future.

Onward went the day, second by second it crawled forward. The blood in Eric's body moved just as it should have and he thought nothing of it. Neurons fired and jumped the synaptic gaps all over him. This tiny journey went as unnoticed as the leafs dropping to the ground outside. His hair grew a fraction of a millimeter, and his received the strain of gravity gracefully and without complaint. Yet still Eric sat, tired and unmoved by his bodies loyalty. He wished the seconds away even faster than they came and went. The clock struck and off went the alarm to signal the end of the working day. Eric grabbed his coat and fled the building as quickly as he could, with only enough time to reflect on the fact that he had no idea what time he left each day. He then realized that he did not care, thus concluding the train of thought. He thrust himself back into the cold and walked and walked. Back through the cobbled streets and through the jarring wind. He rushed home but he had no idea why. He entered his sparse apartment and he sat down, considering his position. Why had he come back here? What was here for him? The hours he spent at work labouring his soul away paid for this place, but when he was here he wanted nothing to do with it. He was never truly present, but somehow he still felt the crushing weight of his life constantly. He wandered his tiny room looking for something new and exciting onto which he could impress his empty eyes, but he could not find anything he had not cast his eyes on a thousand times before. There was nothing else for him to do. He had to go to bed. At least he was fed and had no tangible problems. But sometimes Eric wished he could suffer, so that he could feel and see a reality beyond what had become much too apparent to him was all he had. Sometimes he would hear about trivial things like economic downturns or a natural disaster, but these concepts bounced off his brain the second they made contact. His tendrils of feeling did not stretch very far, even within himself. He had little to spare far others. He slid into bed, closing his leathery eyelids, relaxing his pockmarked face and feeling a warmth wash over him. It was not unpleasant, nor was it anything else. He felt the oily darkness of sleep beckon and he welcomed it. Would there even be a morning after the night? Eric sincerely hoped there was not.

>>9538885
I like it but try working with the meter a bit to make it flow better. For example the last stanza has the And that seems superfluous and maybe the or for that matter.
Keep writing!

Wrote drunk, revised sober.


Beginning oft becomes the thorniest
Horniest dilemma: to begin? Or to beg-
(the ignorance of sovereign Existence)
-in stead of the sensation which treads ere Creation:
Enduring realization regarding inevitable impermanence.

Banality! Art thou Art's Bane?
To cohabitate with Insipid and Profane,
Man is left little choice (and less voice)
but to take, and take,
and pray:
his excess may his soul fill, his mind empty, his pockets line, so help him G-d,
Have a nice day!

Beauty, I gather, hath more class than that.
Tarrying not for the baleful,
flitting past the disaffected,
and sidling nervously 'round the overzealous,
She coyly lifteth shroud-cloth from her dearest
and into the marrow of his meaning
breathes

thus:


"submit"

>>9524812
You change the subject to bitterness to quickly. Try prolonging and describing this aspect of bitterness a bit before adding, "Bitterness is something that I'm very familiar with."

>>9543959
>>9543963
Some basic spelling and grammar errors, and a few sentences sound a little awkward, such as "He stared forth..." but you have some very well-crafted lines in there. Keep writing!

>>9543959

>How many years has he spent treading these same paving slabs?

I know you're trying to find a better word for roads, but its just not working here

>One foot. And then another. And then another still. It was endless.

This can be one sentence

>A single drop of water stopped from the ancient stone arch and splashed weakly onto his shoulder. He paid it no mind.

I know you're trying to go for some descriptive ambience, but this is not good

> The blood in Eric's body moved just as it should have and he thought nothing of it. Neurons fired and jumped the synaptic gaps all over him. This tiny journey went as unnoticed as the leafs dropping to the ground outside. His hair grew a fraction of a millimeter, and his received the strain of gravity gracefully and without complaint.

This is one idea that you expressed in way too many sentences

And I would just repeat the same criticisms on your prose. Work on it. As for your idea, I don't know what the aim of your short story is. There is no inciting incident, its just about an office worker who works and doesn't like it. There's no greater struggle, there's nothing he's striving for, no great adversary that he can test himself against, no retribution and justice to be gained, nor just chaos to be perpetuated- as cliche as those themes are.

>>9544237
mmmmmmm how indubitably homoerotic

>>9541297

Good work, man. Is it just a piece by itself?

-Public Service Announcement from Your Local Friendly Tax Collector-
That magical world they told you about

was wearing a mask all along.

It’s ugly underneath,

and it’ll bite your throat like a hungry dog,

if it gets the slightest chance.
That’s right, there’s not a single unicorn,

treasure chest,

or castle in the sky.
It’s just cement roads,

faulty streetlights,

and the inherent suffering

that all living things share.
It was all a lie.

Jesus and the easter bunny,

all of it was a fairy tale,

or at least gross exaggeration of the truth.
But now you must join in the elaborate charade.

You must look upon the rotting foundations beneath the world, all that you hold dear,

take its weight upon your shoulders,

and do it with a smile,

while you tell children the very same lies

that blinded you.
The skies may darken with ash,

and the rivers may run dry.

But even so,

you mustn't forget

to pay your taxes.

>>9544861
Formatting got all fucked up. Ignore that.

>>9544822

Its a piece by itself. It's called "Just Desserts", a double entendre indicating the popular slang phrase, and a dinner meal, a finishing touch: "Desserts".

Clouds hang over brick buildings. My eyes follow their movement. Raindrops leave streaks of water on the giant window I am leaning against. I look into the eyes of my own reflection in the glass. Two transparent brown dots. I look down and cars are beetles and people ants on wet streets down below. I have vertigo. In the dizziness-induced darkness, I see myself falling down 63 floors and splattering onto pavement among all sorts of cars and cabs into a mass of flesh, bones, and intestines.

I imagine my skull cracking open and my brain splitting. My cerebral functions would stop and all the demons hiding in my mind would vanish too. The darkness dissipates. Although the sun is nowhere to be seen, clouds lit by daylight are bright enough to make my pupils contract. I walk backward to plunge into a sofa filled with soft silicon that envelops me like a womb. My eye are fixed upon the window in which the shining clouds and building rooftops are still visible.

I think of smashing the window with a hammer. Then I ponder the difficulty of sneaking a hammer into my room and the hardness of quadruple fortified glass. I think fortified glass shatters into harmless, pebble-like pieces but in my mind the glass nevertheless shatters into a thousand pieces big and sharp enough to be lethal. I see the gravity-fueled glass raining down on unassuming pedestrians.

I imagine the innocent pedestrians, their heads pierced by sharp glass, moaning and bleeding on the ground. I don't want to hurt them. People who wanted to get to their school, work, friends, lovers, family, etc. People who breathed freely, who looked without fear.

I would never want to hurt them, even though they are never like me.

#

Front lights of the tramway car exhale yellow light into fog. Wet air chills me. A few people are on the platform but no one is in the street. The fog is thick. It obscures the dark window of the delicatessen facing me. My hands are deeply set in my pockets and my breath is visible in the air.

The tramway car arrives and leaves the stop as I get on. Beside the driver through the windshield, buildings and city structures appear out of the fog and pass by as the car accelerates. I close my eyes and listen to the sound of the engine.

I wake as the car is about the leave the stop I should be getting off at.

I say, “Wait!”

The driver looks back at me and grunts as he opens the door. I hop off and suck in air. Cold air is mean in my lungs.

No one is in the lobby as I pass through the revolving door. The concierge nods at me.

You are a man in a mask in a theatre.
You have no role
Your life is tragos and you’re the kid of the goat
Purple robes of cloves and Dionysus’s front rows
Are filled near to the end.
You are now a mime.
You turn away with a pivot but are stopped
So the crowd is now red and scarlet with
Their crimson letters; stretched A’s
A is such a cruel, hellish letter.
A human and all of Asia and the Arts are cruel.
So in front of this crowd of crawling crows
You’re sick and silent and hold a glass vase
Mr. Merley calls you Houidini
Ma calls you sad while Pa says you have no Dad.
Jess calls you sweetheart but you have no heart
Because you’re a mime.
“Shhhh” goes the usher in and under the steps
Red rosy seats sprawled like jeers of rites of blood.
You jump. You dance and you squirm.

So you quit. You’re out of there and you reek of tears.
And Mr. Posterman makes a run for you
But you slip away and you mime him
Your mask is green now, you green-eyed monster.
Greed and the salt sprinkled on the stage
Tomatoes

Tell me where my money is RIG( )T NOW--
Help my fathe--
Ready to start? Come with me ( )ver
Only in New York.

>>9544465
Thanks you too

>>9545128
Kind of terrible.

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Critique -

He hates all the people on the street in dirty everyday clothes, advertising their belief that the world arches over a pit, that death is final, that the wandering thread of his feelings leads nowhere. Correspondingly he loves the ones dressed for church: the pressed business suits of portly men give substance and respectability to his furtive sensations of the invisible, the flowers in the hats of their wives seem to begin to make it visible; and their daughters are themselves whole flowers, their bodies each a single flower, petaled in gauze and frills, a bloom of faith, so that even the plainest walk in his eyes glows with beauty, the beauty of belief.

>>9540209
Are you fucking serious

I didn't know it at the time, but at around 11pm on Sunday 22 June 1985, I was to cum in Veronica's tight juicy clam for the last time. We had rented a room in this shitty motel a little off some highway somewhere in Maryland. I'm not exaggerating when I say it was a shitty motel. Like, there was literally shit smeared across the walls and the stench hit your nose like mustard gas when you walked down the corridor. One time I even saw a fully-formed sausage of fecal matter adorning the already unpleasant green, floral-patterned carpet in there. It had left skidmarks behind it for a good few feet as well so I can only assume whoever left it there had been dragging his ass along the floor while he forced out this monster turd. So anyway on this particular day we were fucking pretty hard. Some old guy was watching us through the open door (they were literally hanging off their hinges so there was no point closing them), probably jerking off. She was riding me reverse cowgirl style and I felt like I could feel every individual skinfold in her vaginal canal while her tight pussy pulled at my cock like it was all it knew how to do. I had a firm grip on her soft sweaty milk orbs and she had one finger lodged deep inside my butthole. It felt fucking amazing and I had to bust my sweet sticky load inside her after about 20 seconds. She got off, meat chute dripping with my would-be offspring like icing falling onto a cake.
"That's 200 dollars" she said, and soon after I paid her she was gone.

>>9545128
>>9545283

Lol, I read the poem, then read the reaction post while simultaneously thinking how bad that was. That is absolutely horrible.

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Back in his office, Professor Morris tried his best to recall the series of unlikely events that had led him, after eleven years of employment, to call one of his students a faggot.
There he stood, eyes vacant, brows circumflex, replaying the day’s events in his mind. He woke up this morning, that’s for sure. He didn’t distinctly remember brushing his teeth, or swallowing and chewing, or cursing at the other commuters, or walking into the University’s psychology dept.’s building, but he was sure that those things had happened today too. After eleven years of employment the whole morning routine becomes like one big automatic blur. Eleven fucking years.
Maybe it wasn’t very wise to flee the lecture hall right after making that fatal mistake. If only he’d continued lecturing as if nothing’d happened. As if no homophobic slur had ever been articulated in Room 1445C in the Rotterdam building. Eleven years, three months… sixteen days. To be exact.
It was likely, Professor Morris theorized, that, before he rushed out the room, only 4 or 5 students out of the whole damn 200 were actually paying attention anyway. But you’re primed to ignore that unfortunate truth after eleven years of employment. Eleven godfucking years. Fuck. FUCK!

And so Bobby Morris’ mind then jumps, for whatever reason that minds jump, to one sweaty high school summer many many years ago. He’s standing in the basement where his dad Dr. Morris is hunched, watching news from Canada, a split screen of news anchors and guests talking. Or rather arguing. Yelling. Cacophony. This one guy pleading for the other person to “PLEEEEEASE LISTEN,,,,,,” in the kind of hysterical ungraceful manner that makes people really not want to listen.
Bobby had felt pretty bad for the guy. The guy sounded like an idiot. Bobby didn’t say anything, but he wanted to mention that none of the people on the screen seemed interested in learning. Just propagandizing. He let out a burp, and then he went upstairs, making his way through the living room and into the green-carpeted room where Mozart played from his MacBook. He could still hear the televised hollering all the way down here.

>>9545717
I like the parallel between your moral depravity and the deterioration of the motel

>>9543959
>>9543963
I like it my dude

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>>9543285
bumping my critique request

please rape me for my bad writting so I can better myself.

My arm shuddered like a cold engine before I pressed the call button.
She answered after 5 rings.
"Hi, so I'm by the bridge," I say, affecting a lightness I don't feel
"Ok honey, I'm still getting ready, call me back in 20 minutes"
This was a sure sign she was not alone, but of course I didn't know that back then.
I turned right and walked down by the river, knowing I could cross the next bridge
and meander back up to call her in 20.

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I haven't written in a long time until today. Should it stay that way?

>>9547482
I like the plot I suppose but really don't like your writing. Those little inserts about the cold engine and lightness are really forced sounding.

>>9543285
Ok I will try to help you.
Where exactly does your writing start?

>leas
>whats
There are many errors like these. Fix them.


You used "something something" incorrectly the second time you used it.
There's a lot of random capitalisation throughout the piece and conversely some words that should be capatilised aren't. Your punctuation is very poor.... It looks as if you don't know how to use any of the punctuation marks.
>fish?,
This should be capatilised and you shouldn't be using commas between the words.
>?.
>?!.
Unacceptable. Only "?!", quotation mark + the various punctuation marks, and in very specialised cases,".," are acceptable mixes. In what language is this acceptable?

>2
>7
These should be spelled out.

Is the subject talking out loud to himself? What he is saying seems really unrealistic, if so. They seem more like thoughts, the type you wouldn't say out loud. For example:"There was dust everywhere,"
I just don't see anyone saying that to himself, and I talk to myself a lot. The tense you chose to use here does not fit seeing that the event is happening to the subject right at that moment. If he's talking to himself he might exclaim that there IS dust everywhere but even so it doesn't sound like something someone would tell himself out loud.
You're also missing the subject pronoun in the second part of the sentence.
Did you proofread this? You should go over it again.
There are word use errors "could" when you mean "cloud", "tough" when you mean "though" etc. Seriously just clean up the structure paying special attention to punctuation and spelling. Make sure the word you write is really the word you meant to write.

The piece itself is very muddled. I get that you want to reader to feel as confused as the subject did to have this animal come suddenly crashing into his apartment, but I think there was also a lot of unintentional confusion caused by your very strange punctuation and out of place words.
I think you shouuld have put your comments in the text field instead of including it in your piece.

You've got a lot of work to do but if you clean this up it might be eligable for a better critique.

Route 317 saw fewer drivers than typical that winter; for strange rumors were about, and the truckers who had once constituted the highway’s regular traffic now increasingly found cause to avoid it entirely. Hob Whitcomb, the source of perhaps the most menacing of these reports, hotly swore after his last haul to never set foot or wheel on the ‘three-seventeen’ again. “And you’ll do the same if you don’t want to end up like George Chandler,” he would often add as he concluded his account of his journey, giving each new audience a knowing look. But then Hob, a paranoid type, had long been marked by his propensity to superstition and outlandish sentiments… Received wisdom suggests that certain temperaments are ill-suited to the monotony and seclusion of long haul trucking—if studied excessively, the blank and seemingly infinite image of rushing asphalt can excite bizarre thoughts in susceptible minds, and a number of Hob’s co-workers were quick to intimate that the man’s crack-up had been several years overdue. “He’s a demented old fruitcake looking for attention,” declared one particularly blunt observer, “Don’t encourage him.” Others, however, were not so convinced. After all, there was an unmistakably eerie quality to Route 317, that lonesome spread of road which extends hundreds of miles across the unsettled Yukon. Driving conditions could be treacherous, truckers frequently went for days without a phone signal, and Hob’s story, though absurd, was told with such singular fervor that inwardly it made many think twice. Better to risk a late check-in and take a detour around the highway, most eventually decided.

>>9548501

I found this decently intriguing but I'd really cut down on the long sentences. Same with short or non, it's fine to have a few for effect but this was tiring to read at the start. Break it up a little and it should be fine.

New story I'm working on still a pretty early draft


https://pastebin.com/DbwL3rQC

>>9548348
first paragraph has way too many adjectives.
>Rain falls on the asphalt beneath the lamps of the compound. The compound's network of lights casts the clouds in an amber glow. There is a thick fog that obscures even the nearest repurposed apartment complex. And the rain falls harder.
something like that maybe? im not sure what picture you had in your head.

as for the rest, the writing gets better and less cluttered with adjectives and more clear except for the fact that im not exactly sure if this is literally a story about ants or ants as a metaphor for people. if it's about people then i would just say what people you're talking about and let's be honest, describing people as ants was never that creative or original to begin with.

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>>9548493
What about now sempai.

Yes, everything in there it is supposed to be there. even the person/narrator/whatever you want to call it.

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>>9548794
Writing exercise number 2, I took into consideration >>9548493 senpaitachi.

What do you think, is my writting less horrendous now?

I don't know where this is going but it just came to me. This is merely a skeleton right now

>They hadn’t anticipated this. At least it wasn’t as serious a consideration when weighed against the benefits; the achievement and ambition of their project. The engineered human triumph against linear time. The two of them, husband and wife, power couple, dual professors of applied abstract engineering at the state’s sole corporate sponsored laboratory, Doctors Claire and Bruce Ross.

>The notion of loneliness wasn’t accounted for in the calculations. Claire brought it up once briefly, in the doorframe, she remembers, asking Bruce what the potential for the psychological cost might be. The models and computer simulations were sound and accountable. The science wasn’t the issue. She wondered how they might cope together, what happened if there were second thoughts. Last regrets. She remembered how quickly he reacted. So violently. Barely entertained. Clenched jaw, scoff, and typical frown. He deemed the inquiry insignificant. “Claire,” he said. “Not now. It’s too late. You’ve changed too much since I met you for you to revert back to that. I’ll forget you even asked.”

>The isolated highways of the galaxy made Claire think about her alternate life. Her other trajectories. The sense of longing for home wasn’t assuaged by the golden arcs and arms of the Milky Way. The privileged human access to this galactic sector, God’s neural component, Einstein’s right-brain. She watched him hook up the vacuum to his colon again. Bruce was dying. They both communicated only by their shared sense of continual departure and laconic panic.

I no longer live in this house
My spirit passed on, it feels so wrong
to be back.
There's a cobweb on my bedpost
The spider is more at home than I am
Black mold on the carpet

It wasn't always decay
Uneven walls and floors
Rafters open up to the world above me.

The shadows in this room are wrong
They are frozen before movement
Hiding what I used to see
It was not always like this
There was growth, exploration
The feel of carpet on bare feet
Your soft touch, skin worth traversing
Nervous eyes, sheepish words, unfinished actions,
The carpet is dead
And the actions are history.

I've brought something here that I shouldn't have
Tainted room
Boxes stacked throughout,
Frozen creatures of stone
It is all wrong
What's left has gone cold.

I will depart before I'm told.

>>9524293
I'm just a fantasy reader, have zero aspirations to write. I don't give a shit about grammar and spelling, I get what you are trying to say I'm not a retard, besides the small details will be flushed out later.

I liked it, and want more. As of now I don't see much of a place for this to lead besides Emmet going & doing something in the north, but it's the only place we have heard of so far. Maybe it turns into a love story here in the... place(?) Or I guess he could just go the career route.
>Get characters name
>talks about some stuff, maybe plot, maybe just a dream
>Get another name,
>get a couple path ideas that may happen
>get some info on our characters, not too much to keep us away from what is happening, but enough for now
>A decision is made, whether or not it will be kept
I like that the character is introduced slowly, I have always liked it this way, just seems natural in a way to me.

It is really forward, no BS and that is refreshing in a way for me.
>Off the bat gets MCs name, no wondering who we are reading about
>Says it is a dream, again no bs
>still can't help but think it has meaning even though it didn't start crazy mysteriously
>they are blacksmiths, quick and to the point with some character description thrown in
>talk of romance, but not in your face. The vibe kinda says it is just a thing, probably not serious, but possible
>spends most of his time working, little time to hang out
>also finds out MC has a power
A lot of info in a small read, sets up fast with a little of everything. So yeah I would like to see more.

Only thing that throws me off is
>Nico "still though. If you.... calling."
He just seems to be coming off as some old wise man, maybe just because you use the word unwise, idk. It reminds me of spok when just before the image I had was a big farmboy looking dude, so maybe some character development for him soon, or a rewording would be nice.

Thanks for the read.

>>9525571
I would say has great potential, just needs some reworks.
maybe he buys himself pens and textbooks, but also picks up some weed, maybe even trys to smoke you down... I don't know, he is in a weird situation because, yes he wants to get an education, but also he just stole from you and is in the same class. If this happened to me I would have been in someones office that day.

>>9525201
This advice
>>9526531

>>9548794
Better, but still bad. You're not proofing with enough attention.

A strange story overall.

>>9525646
A bit lazy but good advice.

>>9525686
Complete trash

>>9535026
Mediocre non-critique, only doing it because socially obligated, not out of true hatred for people who can actually create things.

>>9541417
Passable but very shallow.

>>9524293
pretty bad op.
>starting with a dream
>dragons fighting
>epic storm fight of destiny

and that's as far as I got. Considering that I've read the dresden files, that's pretty embarrassing. If you're going to do epic, then it has to be absolutely beyond epic, or it's just trite.

The stone woman before me is carved into delicate curvatures accentuated by her form- collapsed sitting with knees hunched, dressed in toga, and crying. She is inside of a hollow hemisphere large enough to contain two of her, and her right arm is outstretched to the direction of her stare. Gripping tight the rim of the hemisphere, her left arm bends up against the inner wall. Surfing along her breasts, a cloth of marble gently flows down into her lap and the basin she lies in. Returning to the face, her eyes, disarming yet betrayed, are welled with tears streaming along her cheek bones.

Does she choose to stare so intently in my direction, her curled fingers slightly pointed to me, as though expecting my hand slipped into hers? Once a hold of my hand, does she expect me to hold tight and pull her out? Or would she grip firmly, attempting to pull me in? Walking around the figure, I look carefully to her left hand gripping the basin's edge. Her forefingers bend over and outside of the lip as her thumb, it's knuckle locked tight, presses against the interior. It's unclear if she is lifting herself out of the bowl or pushing herself in.

Now behind the sculpture, the tears along her cheek can be seen down the back of her neck, her left shoulder and arm, off the elbow and onto the basin wall where the droplets fall, pooling at the bottom, covering the feet and buttocks of the woman. Slowly I continue to circle round the figure. Looking again to her hard face I feel even more that the right arm reaches to bring me in. For it is not my hand by which she desires to be rescued but my eyes, my being. I thoughtlessly reach to her hand as I stare into the hollow retinas of the empty figure filling the bowl. After nearly grasping the hand, shame grips me stone tight.

I pull my arm away and reach it into my jacket. Beginning to leave the statue I take out my phone, dialing a number before placing it to my ear. Glancing back to the sculpture, as the ringer chimes, I note the name of the piece before making my way out of the building: Amor Matris.

>>9551770

Your writing is very stiff and unnatural, tbqh. There is good 'unnatural' writing, but it tends to be highly rhythmic.

Also: "can be seen" is a very bad construction that stands out on the page.

>Looking again to her hard face I feel even more that the right arm reaches to bring me in.

You shouldn't ever have to say "even more", because if what you're adding makes something more than it was before, that addition will do all the work, without your commentary about your intention with the addition.

And tbqh, "love of (the) mother" just strikes me as unbearably cliche.

I'm interested to know what the story is about, though. If you have more I would like to read it. I think the prose is really all that is wrong here, but the idea and the pacing seem at least interesting, though I wouldn't want to read a huge volume of this writing.

Gold receded into a sea of white, purplish-speckled and dotted with dew, smelling of lilac, or lavender, or thyme. The aromance, like sand at the behest of tides and currents, travelled (almost independently) this way and that, to the balmy breeze. Fanny-Marie Leon's quivering pinkish nose flared and collapsed as she took in gradual bursts of air, and aromance, until she felt rather faint. She couldn’t help it now. She capitulated to overwhelmed senses, buzzing hot with energy. Taking three steps back, left first, then right, and right again, she stopped awkwardly. Then stood frozen-like, so still she could have been a statue, her legs splayed out like a pair of compasses. Holding in breath despite herself reddening, the ribs felt as if they were expanding. Expanding like tiny Zeppelins, paired at their steely noses with a tether of flesh.

As a mystic's glass-orb clouds mysteriously, the pale eyes began to go murky with a pillowing effect to it. Probably tears, probably. Inside, she held in that air and that aromance and that pollen, too – either real or imaginary – where they all festered: fertilized eggs. Sapping, sapping, sapping to the point of utmost exacerbation, she finally let go of it all. It escaped her like a memory. Her lungs, deflating quickly to their smallest physical limits, burned as if rubbed in alcohol. For a moment, or more, she didn’t know how long, Fanny-Marie forgot where she was. A body doesn't always feel heavy and grounded, as we are accustomed to. A fabrication created by Newton and his apple. Sometimes bodies can begin, without any due warning, to not only feel as if made of noble gases, but rise, float, transcend whatever makes up the air. Fanny-Marie felt this, and to her surprise, she didn't panic. Feeling, thinking, saying, doing nothing. It was peaceful. She enjoyed the way it felt, floating above herself, above the white-purple petunias and the garden. It was something that couldn’t be explained, she thought to herself as she descended to her stable, normal state. She thought it impossible, yes, impossible to tell anyone how she floated. They wouldn’t believe her, no, they wouldn’t. Her feet touched the ground ever so softly. Then the world come back to her. She began to see the men. Had they seen her float? She began to feel the burning lungs. It hurt. She began to smell. Petunias and pollen and aromance.

Who were those men, congregating round her and speaking in tongues, dressed in red smocks? “Miss Leon,” a man shrouded in red approached. “Are you feeling well?”

>>9551585
he couldn't just shoot for different?

>>9529591
I'll read through this today/tomorrow during my breaks/lunches

>>9551846
Yeah I purposely chose a piece describing a statue and the character's reactions to its features. It's actually challenging to describe the interaction fluidly do to the immobile statue and his excessive mobility (or her), so I tried it for practice. This is the entire piece, I'd never write it any longer than this.
Looking back, I already see loads of edits I could've made too. And yes, I feel the stiffness you were talking about.

The story's itself is called love of the mother for the the statue takes into account the viewers unfamiliarity with it. Hence the hollow hemisphere. It's a representation of the earth by the artist as he believes it will be seen by the viewer. The woman is initially to be seen as mother earth depraved within the empty world. Her tears are filling the basin for her sorrow is the only substance available to fill an empty world. But then the sculpture takes the name love for the mother because it's synonymous with mother earth/the world and a mother and her child. So as the viewer of the statue realizes this, they're gripped with shame because they are aware of the neglect of the earth but are oblivious to their neglect of their mother as the person who cares about them more than anyone. So as they realize this, the person is leaving the piece and calling their mother.

>>9551846
>stiff and unnatural
How would a writer fix this?

>>9552321
Pretend that you're not actually writing your story but that instead you're telling it to your friends at a bar.

>>9552321

You should listen to a few very good orators and read a few writers with fluid prose and try to create a similar rhythm. You either can do it or can't.

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Part of a Gnostic influenced larger poem I'm working on

My first time here. I'm rewriting this over and over. How is this for a prologue?

"It... worked..." Cézar muttered on the dirty and bloodied ground.
Three lives were saved, yet his was about to be lost.
He couldn't move his head and he was starting to lose his vision. The vibrations in the ground indicated they were moving, hurriedly trying to do something. Desperately trying to save him.
But it wouldn't work, it was as simple as that. He couldn't even feel pain any longer.
He could feel the hole in his entire back closing slowly. His spine was regrowing, his ribs hugging his lungs like a cage. A connection between the two sides of his body was felt again, even though the damage was never enough to separate them.
"I will help too!" Shouted a boy.
"DON'T!" Replied a girl worried. "If anyone interferes I won't be able to balance his natural regenaration. He will lose years of his life even if he doesn't develop tumors".
'Ah' Cezar recognized those voices. Gabriel and his quirky friend Raziella. From what he could gather, she was the one trying to cure him. Their voices were murmurs to him, but he knew from the tone they were shouting.
His sense of smell was starting to return. Smoke tainted the air, his own flesh was burned by the light.
Yet, at the same time each of his senses recovered, at the same time he could hear better the worried of them, at the same time he could hear Ana crying, Cezar could also feel his life slipping away.
His heart was beating slower and slower, his own heat was being lost and his consciousness was falling.
He knew all too well what happened: he failed his role. His journey ended there, dying a dog's death, forsaking his own life for the people he loved.
'I told you from the beginning Mithnite' he remembered the first time he met that angel. 'I am not the hero you were searching for'.
His body was flipped over with care. Raziella now tried her hardest to make his heart beat again. Electricity accumulated on her hands as she tried to massage his chest.
The night extended above him, the unreal purple that belonged to the gods. A citadel in flames fell from it in the distance - the place they escaped from.
The wind felt pleasant as the leaves from nearby trees were carried in it.
And finally, he saw around him the trio he saved. Worried, fighting and praying for his life.
'I may have failed as your hero... but I know I did the right choice in the end, Mithnite and thank you... for giving me a purpose and for showing me the joy of life again'.

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>>9552705

Do you guys like my poem?

the light is so different
even the sound of the rain here has changed
for the sun is now neon
and the earth
concrete

>>9552962
reminds me of a bad cyberpunk short story I wrote in school called "Under the Neon Sun"

in a good way

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>>9552705
first draft

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I wrote more. Please critique.

“Please enter the office. Good luck, Ms. Alexander.”
Her heart felt like it was about to explode out of her chest. Breathing was getting heavier and more laboured. She hoped she wasn’t sweating. Last thing she wanted was for her face to look greasy. She turned the handle and opened the door.
Papers were strewn across the floor, and piles of them were stacked everywhere. Bookshelves in the corners were covered in cobwebs and looked like they hadn’t been cleaned in months. A bald-headed Williams was reading over some notes, not seeming to notice her.
“Um, Mr. Williams?”
“Please, sit,” he said, still not giving her his attention.
She pulled out one of the leather chairs and lowered herself onto it. She looked at the clock and was five minutes late. Better than being late, she thought. The weather outside had gotten worse. The rain got heavier and the wind started blowing it hard against the window panes.
“Ms. Alexander. Welcome to the FBI branch of this wonderful city. I look forward to this interview.” His eyes were a piercing bright blue.
“Thank you for the opportunity.” She pulled at her collar.
“So, lets have a quick chat.” He leaned back and let out a sigh. “Why do you want to work here? What made you pick us?”
“Well… I’ve always wanted to serve my country. It’s given so much to me and I thought it was time to give back.”
“That sounds like the diplomatic answer. I get that a lot. Besides that, what else?”
“To be completely honest with you, I also got kind of tired for doing the tax returns of the farmers back home. Mind numbing.”
“So, you decided to come here and capture frauds and con artists?”
She smiled and nodded. “I think I have what it takes.”
“Do you?” He typed her information on his laptop and pulled up her information. “You have a degree in accounting. Perfect GPA. Do a lot of auditing work?”
“I did what I could.”
“You passed our test with flying colors. But that’s all just academics. How do you think you will perform in the field?”
She drew a blank. Before she could answer, Williams cut her off. “You seem a bit inexperienced. Maybe in a few years.”
“Please, give me a position here. Anything. I can get you guys coffee. I can type up your files. I can mop the floors.” Did I really just say that?
“We have all of those positions filled. I’ll give you another chance. Let’s try again. What skill, what one thing do you bring to the table that no other accountant can? Take all the time you need.”
Chloe tried to think of an answer. She was never good with interviews, and it seemed like Williams already decided not to hire her before she walked in. Think, Chloe. You gotta have- “I can shoot can of beer with a pistol from a hundred yards away.”

>>9548553
>My name is Gobu, it is a short name, but that’s fine, for we goblins have no need for long ones.
burst out laughing and then closed the document

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>>9553213
Please don't post girls as bait. Also I feel like your starting the story before the there's any story. You don't have to narrate each event. Unless this scene is actually relevant to the plot, I'd tl'dr, because it's fairly boring.
It's pretty readable though.

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>>9553366
It is. She's getting hired and after she gets teams up with a guy and then immediately after there's a murder. This is the first chapter.

Silkworms 1/?

I

Entirely s p r a w l e d out beside some
busted old ragpile of shirts and
other things, foreign contents,

you lay.

And maybe it was, like rainbows, like
magic, a trick of the lights
but there was some
radiance, measured, that poured out- soapy
dishwater, steel
wool,
well kept and maintained, a sort of enchanting mirror

and the oil of you caught my eye
not for lack of things
to see
but for lack of you
and me.

I can’t begin again under
this aromatic smog, gone and spent
like a paycheck made for rent, divorced
from so many tithes and tiny
responsibilities.

A lone smile shadows valleys
behind which a river ran
at some point. But
now there is no trace. But
now there is no trace.

You can’t remember quite when it all came
crashing down around about your name
but you and I would never be the same

Gone and spent, not for lack of
depth of character. I once gave myself
to the whirlpool to find a matching sock
for the one hanging limply (that makes
two of us) on the shelf of the room
not quite abandoned
but getting there.

>>9553512
2/?

Give it time. This is triage.
Time is ether you said as you gazed
into a firmament of plaster

What the fuck does that mean?

There are mosquitoes in my breath
who buzz incessantly
and I have mostly given myself to them

There are spiders in my gut lately
who have run out all the butterflies
but I will have words with them later

You see, my dear, there is nothing
quite unlike the feeling of drowning in air
of being pressed down
flat against gravity, halfway between
Auto-eroticism and the Cretaceous Period,
intoxicating,
don’t you think?

The spiders are protesting, gone
are the days long
past when my spiders listened to reason.
Now all they listen to are
other spiders

Imperceptibly, you moved,
It must have been my imagination
getting the better of me but I
swear I saw you move
as if to motion to the world you still drew breath.
Perhaps it was involuntary,
but I moved in tandem,
similarly, involuntarily
to run parallel to you again

Could I bring you back again?

Exit stage left we raced
our hearts- our hearts our own
pacemakers leapt us from stagnation
led us deep into temptation
and found us swirling down and back
again.

But it was like hanging there, a horizontal drop,
a chasm as wide as winter
and twice as long, gone out for a drag but always
back again
before you knew it, back again
and I kissed your back again,
a desert of moonbeams that dared
and arched in little ways
to maybe feel a sense of thirst, I closed my eyes,
and you moved, imperceptibly
against me.

>>9553518
3/?

II

Give me a break, I’m not quite
broken in to this place
and now some fuck’s gone and
broken into a place I call home.
Can’t catch a break, I swear I’ll find
that son of a bitch
one day.
Maybe someday
Maybe Sunday.
But not today, I can’t be bothered, Im all
broken up about this

He didn’t take anything you said
but that doesn’t make it better;
people going all where they’re
not supposed to go,
I’ll go
rough him up.

Not like I would
if I could;
gotta stay on that moral
high ground, grounded in a
higher carbon-copy sense of self
worth; It’s not worth it-
when all the world around you in a tiny square room
is buzzing

it can be hard to hear
the whispers of the cricket
playing chicken with your spiders.

Be humble in all of your spiritual
wheeling and dealing, there are
angels at the pearly gates who would love
to have what you have.

But magnetically I was drawn, Etch-a-Sketch™,
back to you.
My moral magnetic compass pointed mathematically,
unquestionably, defiantly south.
Down south where arid winds
air winding trails of salt and honey
and your very own silk road
Marco Polo, Ralph Lauren.

I’ve given a lot of thought
to you
wrapped it up and tied it
in neat bows of
terribly inconvenienced neurons.
Mom said it’s better to give
than to receive but what does she know?
I say
it’s better to give then receive.
Maybe that’s too much, like
asking for stars in the sky, like
wishing the days would roll back, like
hoping that whatever tiny bit of sand in my
not so hourglass figure isn’t running
out grain by tiny, tiny grain, like
praying that my leg doesn’t fall asleep as
you fall asleep on my leg.
There’s this urgency to youth
and you’d think we’d keep it under wraps
but everyone knows- when you gotta go
you gotta go.

>>9553527
4/?

III

Set adrift, an unfinished message
in a bottle;

You took me
in like a river always
moving
to you mouth crimson banks-
an ocean of teeth and tongue
speaks:

“There’s old blood in the willows
hanging dust, is weeping
and there’s new blood in the pillows
October red, is leaking.”

Set aside, an unfinished book
on a shelf;

You stole me
from, like a kiss against
a softly sighing sky-
plain as day and brilliant still;
speaks:

“Take heart, my friends
they will not tell a soul!
For all the ways a diamond ends,
she started as some coal.”

Set down, an unfinished sculpture
in your hands;

You kept me
out, cold wind knocking
like a beggar or a caroler
on Christmas Eve
speaks:

“Can you imagine that race,
the time it must have took,
to get all the way to outer space
just to get a better look?”

Can you still feel the place where the dragonflies did
land?
Can you still kneel at the crown of Ozymandias and cry into the
sand?
Can you still think of all the ways to kill a man with a single
hand?

Cuz you told me nothing lasts
forever and a day
and I believe you.
But nothing passed the finish line
that cold and fateful day.
Do you believe me now, dear?
See, there’s nothing much to fear.
Just march on down until our time
in that old sweet Main Street way.

If I told you this had
the happiest of happy endings,
would you
believe me?
Or do you know,
already, the way it ends, the same as
it began? Such fire is beautiful violence.

I guess we’ll see.
You’ll see.
You’ll all see.

>>9553532
5/5

IV

I don’t need a watch to tell you
that we’ll be here for a while.
We’ve been swept up with the dust
Underneath tomorrow’s pile.

Now we’re closer than we’ve ever been
but at the cost of our own shedding skin;
we don’t know about these butterflies
that came bursting from within.

Another day spent in the snowstorm
where we’ve never felt the heat.
We’re several days from getting home
and running out of things to eat.

You took my hand and found a place
Where you could sit and rest your pretty face
You looked closely at my beating heart
and asked me for a taste.

I took it out and held it
and you acted quite surprised
that I would give a part of me
to someone I despised

But I just sat right there and smiled
at the you who were my wildflower
a brief moment of proximity
our senses were beguiled

You took my hand and set me down
There were no more laps to run;
waited patiently for blood to flee
under our neon sun.

Then I watched you walk and I watched you turn
in a way that made my spirit burn,
holding tightly in your tiny hands
a tiny gift you can’t return.

As you walked beyond my sight
I tried uselessly to keep
a toothy smile drawn on my face
as I felt the urge to sleep.

When I see you, you’re not there
a silent phantom in the chilly air
I’d look for you if I only knew
quite why you’ve gone, and where.

But today I’m getting on
with the machine inside my chest
He tells me not to worry
He’ll take care of all the rest.

But I’m just scared of getting old
and the things I know I should have told
you while we were sitting there
two lovers in the cold.

must i be the one to mention
every time you claim you're brimmed
by a cosmic intuition
how you often leave the stove on,
or perishable goods out overnight?

and i shout across the table
while our guests shuffle silverware
and rush the intermission
must i be the one to ground you
every time you think you're right?

>>9553512
>>9553518
>>9553527
>>9553532
>>9553536

jesus kid, just jerk off or something

>>9553213
>his eyes were a piercing bright blue.

>>9553033
I like it, although the line
>of what would next take place
takes the reader away from the moment, and i doubt that's intentional

First draft. Not sure where else punctuation might be good.

Sprawling is its shallow,
in a veneer with pores
and genuine vacant
skinning cardboard
people and homes
as corrugated hallow holes

of flimsy drunkenness
beating its guile drum
giving separation
sound like soft speech
barring its teeth
to the sun

jagged points of rooftop
teeth bite into the skies
tearing down horizons.
it cuts the soles
of our feet and
in pain I collapse bleeding smart

Its snare gnawing away
from fleeing it holds us
down so to be guzzled
into its throat
of its beliefs
I struggled

>>9529800
>Malazan.
I keep hearing of this book and have had enough, time to buy it. Is their a package deal out there that I could buy or just use amazon? I know sometimes there is small versions and large versions of books, is that the case? Someone help, I hate small books.

>>9529591
If I use Keep notes, will you be able to see them?

>>9553872
That's hardly a critique fucker

If multiple statutes are irreconcilable, the most recent statute prevails, unless provide by Section 311.031(d); this is an implied repeal. TEX. GOV'T CODE § 311.025. The doctrine of lex specialis is codified in section 311.026. When a general provision and a special or local provision conflict, the court should first construe the statutes so that effect is given to both, but if the conflict is irreconcilable, the special or local provision prevails as an exception, unless the general provision is more recent and the intent is for it to prevail. Tex. Gov't Code § 311.026

This is similar to the doctrine of pari materia. Burke v. State, 80 S.W.3d 82, 85 (Tex. App. 2002). “Statutes that are in pari materia share a common purpose and are to be construed together.” Id. If there are two statutes in pari materia, the State must prosecute the more specific provision and vacate the other. Id. For example, the charges of aggravated assault and intoxication are not in pari materia because, while they cover the same general class of persons for the same result of the conduct, there is a clear difference between the two provisions in object and purpose. Id.

The doctrine of lenity is codified in section 311.035, where “a statute or rule that creates or defines a criminal offense or penalty shall be construed in favor of the actor if the statute is ambiguous” including an element of the offense or a penalty imposed. Tex. Gov't Code § 311.035. This does not apply to the Texas Controlled Substances Act. Id. The ambiguity of a statute is a matter of law to be decided by a judge. Id.

In a civil statute, the legislative intent is determined by examining “he old law, the evil, and the remedy.” Tex. Gov't Code § 312.005. The statute also “shall be liberally construed to achieve their purpose and to promote justice.” Tex. Gov't Code § 312.006.

>>9554156

>muh scary rich Texas

>>>9554071

It's entirely your own fault

>>9529591
So I liked it overall. Started off stronger than it ended imo, pretty limp dick ending. you should allow me to make edits (2dicks) just so I can easily point some stuff out.

I'll read it again, because maybe I missed something, but I felt like their was unanswered questions that kind of annoyed me. Did the cut on his hand kill him? Why was he empty? Was he just full of gas?

Really just felt that this story could be a lot longer.

Now you’re out there in these seas of cement.
Swim to the shore of the curbs of the land.
Set sail to the Glaucus of the street.
In the black coral reef.
Now you’re swimming alone, kid.
You try to take your mask off but its not a
Mask anymore it’s just you.
You hail a yellow boat in your sea of smoke.
Hear the sirens call!
Here the sirens call.
Listen to their song and you’ll be happy some say
Listen to the sirens call and you’ll be sappy mom says.
Cries for help tend to wash up on shore in
Black sea of New York city.
--“Where you headed, wandering soul”
--”Down to Colten, there where love’s old”

Down to Colton the Chiron man oared
Down the only alleyways a man could afford.
Down the sea of sorrows, down Dreary Lane
Up the corners and crackhomes, splashed blood stain.

And now you’re off, you’ve grown so tall
And now you go to life.
You’re stage will look after you in school and all you go
So long as you wear your terracotta mask in your steel world.
Where are you now?
I’ll help you on your sidewalked pavement through hell.
I’ll sharpen your blade and your eyes moreover,
And paint your skin hock and your eyes grey
Peel your nails back and over
And scrape your fingertips
The pen is mightier than the sword
But a bullet will steer the lord.
You go to the tunnels on 8th Avenue and you
Take the first car.
You huddle in with the other lost souls and you
Breathe to yourself
An incandesent crecent moon fades in this purgatory
So that the phones and the lamps shed light.
Your eyes are reflecting your history
His story.
Johnathan’s. When Johanthan got shot and when you weeped.
Let the images pour and let the people pore through the photos
Oh when they look in your eyes. . .
When I look into your eyes I see your lies.
I see the billets de doux crumbled and the doves speared
They just see the guns and the smoke
Hark, we’re moving.
You talk to the other wandering.
One man has no home and one man had no home.
Dripping grey faces with black scruff
Long fingers shake when they are pulled out in beg to you
So you flip a quarter to them and it lands heads.
Heads.
“That’s good luck” you think.
One piece of the puzzle. A drachma for a lonely man
In tartarus of the world.

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so because I am autistic some of my friends want me to write a story based on the video game contagion which we've been playing lately in which jessica is my favorite character, so they want me to write a story based on that for them to read. I started the first chapter based off of this trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at1yHOVitHg

And here is what I have so far: https://pastebin.com/D6DErj6w

My question is mainly how to proceed from here, I am not sure if I should go right to this part where there are zombies in the street and a bunch of them came out of nowhere, but it doesn't make sense the city would already be taken over. I've tried emailing the developers to ask more questions but they are all AWOL and never reply.

I know this is shit I am just making this for my friends, so I don't expect it to be original or good or anything, but my other writing projects are stagnant so I need something easy to keep my momentum.

so basically my question is whether to have the "investigation around patient zero" scene with things slowly amping up, or have more shit happen right away and get right into the story of zombies taking over. Also general critique would be nice but I know I am a terrible writer.

Our old house was obscured by the black and white that had overcome the photograph. I skimmed through briefly before setting it down nostalgically on the small table near the bed. Mother began to snivel, and after a few shaky breaths she began to sob. Her tears washed the checkered tiles. Each tear fell with a slap, and with meaning. I saw through her tears and I saw Russ’s grave. I saw the car torn to two and a gravestone half buried someplace in the country. I watched the tears roll and shake, and I made my way to her. I embraced her and patted her back gently so that she would not wake the tiresome patients that would be looming by the room. The petrichor of her tears overlapped her perfume, and Nurse Vines walked her out with a caring arm.
The room was tense with all sorts of emotions.
Uncle Clyde planted his arms on the arms of his chair to support his body and slowly got up, wading over to behind my back. He stopped, loomed over, and outstretched his hands to make a dramatic shrug. His hands fell back against his legs with a smack and we found mother to be equiquiously happy. I seemed so philosophical at that moment for no reason (it was my birthday, after all) and plastic compared to the usual state of a depressed person.
I walked to the nurse across the room if I could go to the bathroom. Patients cannot go unattended, with an emphasis on the mental directory, because of previous incidents. There had been multiple accounts of drug use and two suicides within the stalls, and the hospital was sued for a small fortune. Ever since PQCA passed, it’s been a superficial environment around here. No longer a zoo--no zoo sounds too mean. Zoo has that swipe to the listener that sends a too far primitive essence to it. No, it is a hospital surely, and there are people to care about. If you were a patient, you’d hope to have a doctor who is a pure philanthropist. That may not happen, though.
My minds all over the place. I’m a cancerous man, I can do what I want though. I’ve got my perks.
Nurse comes up. Nurse walks me over. Nurse guides me back to the room. The all too familiar process of my life. That’s not to say I am sad. Sad has a loose meaning. I’m human, with some exceptions.
Mom was alright when I came back to my little room. Everyone seemed to have abandoned the tense air for some lighthearted feelings.
That’s fine.
Timmy ran up to me with a toothy grin and urged me to make a balloon animal.
“I can do a few things. There’s the snake, the caterpillar, the worm, or the hotdog. I can also do the hotdog caterpillar.”
He looked confused like I was some used car salesman.
“I want a dragon.”
“A dragon? Okay.”
A fucking dragon? I went for the balloon, blew my foul air into it, and made a worm. I tied two other balloons to make it look like the hotdog had wings.
“Here you go, Timmy.”

The leathery tank of Ayutthaya,
The powerhouse pacifist,
Brought tumbling by an alopecic monkey
With a metal trunk.

Despite the cold, Getter perspired, droplets of sweat crawling down his back, neck, and forehead. Cliff Getter, offensive network security. Basic grade clearance. Getter inserted his ID chip, which was swiftly regurgitated with the familiar bleep of admittance. The handle was icy as he turned it, and as he passed through the threshold he paused, surveying the low-ceilinged bay, the rows of GOAL7s, all illuminated by flickering fluorescent lights. He shivered, sucking in his breath. Goddamn, it was cold. You didn’t notice it so much during standard hours, hours when the bay was full, cramped with humanity, long rows of white hats in white plastic chairs, hunched over cyberdecks, thin, silver cord puncturing the neck and temple, wires attached with minuscule suction cups and magnets across arms, legs, torso, man and machine fused in an uneasy, unholy combination. You were inundated with humanity, with the stench of cold sweat and the body heat of others. Now, however, the bay stood empty, the silence nebulous. Getter flicked his cyberdeck on, the monitor screen and the LEDs of the matrix simulator alighting in a many-colored glow. Getter exhaled, slowly. He’d been working at AMTA Network Security in the penetration testing unit for nearly a month, and he still had nerves, nerves that showed no sign of easing.
/Where the hell is Reagan./

>watchu thank of this intro niqqas

This is a short scene:

Amy steps outside. There is cold air to breathe once more, life-giving as water. She looks up for the first time she can remember. The act of lifting her head feels ritual-like. Something is completed.

Tonight the stars are washed black. Stormclouds swell grey. A great shatter of web-lightning breaks the sky, lingering in an after-image of brilliance and white wonder, then tinkles away.

Time had stopped for that moment, and it was forever that moment. All possibilities hung possible. At each ghostly fork was frozen the freedom to choose in any foreseen direction; all taken whitely at once. How possible is anything! Amy’s heart stutters.

Gallant lagging thunder rolls in overhead. It implodes, a huge subsonic rumbling down into the core of her. Movements of massive air, more massive than her: settling giants. Suddenly you understand why the Greeks did it. With a tingling in her fingers, Amy becomes an ant, nay, smaller, a mite. And the hillock becomes the entire cosmos of limitless direction she can never reach the end of, can never find the meaning of. Vertigo swoons her head. Her eyes roll. Weak-legged, she kneels, overcome by a faintness, some profound weightlessness, something almost religious — and for a fantasy of a fleeting moment, almost raises her arms in surrender to the sky and devotes herself to unfathomable Gnosis. But she would never come back.

Flinching, she returns, to the now. Jaw hanging, unattended lock of hair swishing across her eyes, sternum rigid, sphincter slack, she breathes worldly air again; vaguely underwhelming oxygen. Molecules. Explainable in terms of explainable terms. Electrons and nucleus components. Outer shell 6e, inner shell 2e, nucleus of 8p and 8n. Diatomic non-metal, electron configuration 1s2 2s2 2p4, atomic number eight. Strength returns to her limbs. Blood — erythrocytes carrying bound oxygen, leucocytes feeding on pathogens, plasma carrying all sorts of goodies, thrombocytes/platelets with nothing to clot just yet — circulates. As a matter of fact, Amy stands. There’s some grass clinging to her knees, itching. She brushes it off and looks over her shoulder at the yellow-lit doorway. No one’s there. But the glass-clinking, the bantering, the chair-skidding, the table-knocking noises of joviality rollypolly out. They sound oddly near in the motionless night air, with nowhere to go, like they’re right behind your ear.

>>9554369
I don't get it, but it sounds nice. Adept rhythm. I had to look up a few words, so a significant chunk of the poem's meaning eluded me. Can't give any insight on implicit meanings. I like the line "The powerhouse pacifist" though.

>>9554369
shit, sorry, >>9554692

was meant for >>9554347 's poem

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Same Guy as -----> >>9541512
Pretty much went berserk, and didn't really bothering with the latter edits.
Rip and Tear, anons.

Genre is Sci-Fi
https://pastebin.com/EHGW9ykL

Have Fun.

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>>9554200
Thanks for your notes 2dicks, your comments really pointed out a lot of stuff to me that I didn't even really realize (like her mother being called Slender Finger and the Finger thing). I'll definitely be making some changes based on your critiques.

As for the ending, Sky-Egg committed suicide, and the reason for its suicide are explained in its monologue to Red Deer. Basically, the entire story is about the search for meaning. Sky-Egg's purpose is to provide the fledgling humans with knowledge, but they do nothing with it or even outright ignore it. Still, it had been trying to find some kind of meaning in its endeavor by striving to know for deeper and deeper mysteries. But it realized that there's no "answer" to anything and that the reality it sees before it is the only truth that there is. It finds that unbearable. Red Deer is unsatisfied with her life in the Earth Eaters and sees Sky-Egg as an answer to her questions (such as why Fragrant Grasses and her other children died, why was someone else chosen over her by her "husband", what does any of her life mean), but she literally cannot understand what Sky-Egg means in its monologue, it just breaks her. She's kind of like the embodiment of human striving, our desire to know, but also our ignorance and inability to grasp the truth.That kind of goes along with all of the unanswered questions thing: so much of the background is nebulous and unexplained because the reader is supposed to try and find answers and come up empty handed. I wanted to portray a world that, like the Neolithic must have been, is full of secrets. The cut on its hand thing was just meant to show that it doesn't bleed. As for emptiness, you kind of figured it out earlier on in one of your comments, it's a robot, or at least an android of some sort (strange snakes=wires), of extremely elevated intelligence from the old world meant to instruct this new evolution of humans about the past and gather intelligence about them.

But thanks for your comments my nigga. All is duly noted and I'll be making changes to the story. If you have any other questions feel free to ask.

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I used to stand tall and proud
Six foot two broad shouldered wide chested
Big hands long stride firm grasp on the world around me.

But at some point I began to fold
And contort my body until it matched yours
In some perverse show of solidarity.

I wanted to have something in common so much
I cut off my hands and stunted my legs
And cut my hair and bent my ribs.

Doubled over in pain I looked at you and smiled,
But you looked at me with disgust.