Hello /lit/, I am currently devoting a lot of my time to becoming

>>9593799
pls halp

Today's world isn't communicated via literature it is in social media.

50 shades of gray

>>9593965
>>9593969
Guys, please.

>>9593799
What are your short stories about?

I dunno, try Mark Zuzack or sci-fi or some shit.

>>9593976
I actually don't know the answer I can't stand contemporary literature.

>>9593984
A variety of topics really. The problem is that the worlds they play in always feel antiquated. I find it extremely hard to construct a story in a world where internet and social media pervade every part of the worlds fabric. What would Kafkas "The Trial" look like if the protagonist had a smartphone and was constantly checking his facebook? What would "Notes From The Underground" be like if the protagonist spent all his time shitposting on /r9k/? I just can't imagine those stories would have had the same depth within the scenery of todays world.

>>9594035
>What would "Notes From The Underground" be like if the protagonist spent all his time shitposting on /r9k/?
please do this please

>>9594035
>A variety of topics really
Like what?

>What would Kafkas "The Trial" look like if the protagonist had a smartphone and was constantly checking his facebook?
Yeah, why not? You could emphasis the feeling of isolation being just a click away from other human beings.

Then it turns out

The isolation was always there.

And prison will be no different...

Or some shit.

>>9594078
The last three were about:
1. A store clerk that has a recurring dream in which he dies in a nuclear explosion. After several weeks of this recurring dream he writes his dreams down in a diary every day. The story more or less starts with one of those entries. He then heads to work where he has a psychotic episode. Everything around him reminds him of radioactive decay and radiation. He ends up having some kind of epiphany and makes his way back home after work. Back home he stabs his landlord and neighbour with a broken beerbottle and watches them bleed to death. It ends with another dream in which he falls from the sky, hits a city and annhilates everything around him. The story is supposed to tell a somewhat twisted story of emancipation.

2. A big parade goes through an old city. Everything is superficialy festive but beneath the colours and the music you can see and hear the poverty and desperation of the huddled brown and gray masses that are watching the parade. It turns out that the parade is the celebration of the death sentence of the last remaining member of a former revolution. The monarch displays the tortured revolutionary and has his servant read the verdict. The revolutionary has been sentenced to death but will be tortured further until a new revolution has been established. This is because the political philosophy of this fictional country dictates that the ruler is only legitimated in a dialectic relationship with a revolution. The story ends with the king proclaiming the start of state terror to hasten the genesis of a new revolution and ordering his guards to fire at the surrounding people.

Pretty convoluted but for some reason I liked the idea.

3. Two people wander through a forest and weird stuff happens. The story is told in first person view and the other person is referred to as "you". It ends with "me" killing "you" because spoooooky magic made "me" think "you" were a monster. I really just wanted to try something new with that story desu.

>>9594136
sounds like some shit Ligotti would write, desu

>>9594240
Ah, I've seen him recommended before. I should really check him out. I write in my mothertongue, German, though so I am not sure if reading English prose would have the most carryover to my writing. Maybe I should check out a German translation? Ah, I'll figure something out. Thanks.

>>9594300
why don't you read some of the German classics, ETA Hoffmann, Achim von Arnim, HH Ewers, you're sure to find something very inspiring in there./

also, this recent short story anthology sounds remarkably like some of yours: https://www.amazon.de/Gift-Das-Geschenk-sHan-Li/dp/3942829444
there are more reviews on lovelybooks.de

>>9594312
I read plenty German authors its just that most, if not all, of them wrote one- or twohundred years back in very different time-periods and I want to write for todays world. Having pondered my issue a bit more in the course of the thread I have come to the conclusion that my main problem might just be that I am too afraid to "take the plunge", so to speak. I want to make art for our times but am too afraid to deviate from themes that the greats of the past have dealt with extensively.

Thanks guys n girls.

>>9594332
the themes basically don't change; the setting and style does.

read good quality stuff, even - and dare I say - especially - if it is from the past - your own writing will be all the better for it once you develop your own voice.

>>9594136
#1 seems very contemporary given the looming possibility of nuclear war.