/crit/ - Writing Critique General

A thin long road which trails through the field and up to the forest. Who first stepped this into being? A deer or rabbit who’s feet clear a wisp through the ground, followed then by others following wearing it deeper. A young shepherd who catches the trail and uses it to cross from grass to grass. Thus cutting the tract through the hills without an owner, pure land.
A man come, he comes from the North sacked with tools. A broad man almost hidden in the wires of iron red hair. What is seen on his skin is a story written in scars of a coarse man.
Here where the marsh gives way to the gentle forest he hears the voice of running water where he rests his pack and looks around, all creatures silent around while he mutters to himself. “This may do” his rasping voice groans as his picks up his axe.

He begins clearing, stopping to drink from the stream, eat, and sleep. Not more not less. He rises with the sun and falls with the timber he has cleared in the evening.
The afternoon of the third day he leans against a freshly downed trunk and looks out upon his work. “This may do”. Now begins the scrapping and splitting of many rough knotted boards, and from the ground up a rough shelter is cobbled out of the land.

I wrote this like two years ago and just found it, what do ya think?

>>9849842
Posted at the end of the last thread.

lovecraft mythos short story exercise

https://pastebin.com/xA1BLn7F

I’m not sure of the exact point that people came to regard us as together. I’m not even sure when our liaisons became public knowledge, her husband was out of the picture though when he found out about our relationship, wisely cutting his losses. This did not take long, given the obvious postcoital changes in behaviour she exhibited. She became giddy and childish, clingy often. Evidently she manifested the same behaviours when freshly fucked by her husband as this was what told him that she was finding hers elsewhere, not long after the first consummation of our affair. She was a nightmare, consistently. It was not long before the great descent set out before us opened up its abyssal throat and we slid down. I picked up first from a soft and pasty young man, unexposed to the outside, I feared he’d disintegrate in the light, then his dealer, then the dealer’s dealer. I purchased bulk and sniffed and shot and kept the time at bay. People passed in and out, I know not whom. Some of them came back, the chef and his friends, they stayed a while — friends of hers.

I’d been walking recently, my boots tossed across the room, out in the dog days and the close, orange air before the clouds gathered into congregation and blew the heat out. Out under their majesty I was free for all this stolen time. I stared hard at the boot, took a line and lay back on the sofa. I was not made for this world, its intricacies would always bypass me. Its schemes and struggles moved on beyond me, and I remained, like a stone effigy weathering in a time lapse video. And like an old cur my eyes were red rimmed and glassy as I thought of all the life in the room beyond. There was life beyond and there were sounds. She was being gangfucked next door, I could hear through the wall.

>>9850045

>semi true story btw...

Thirty times I asked for silver. He gave me gold. I stared at his face for a moment. Sweat began to leak from brow. My hand curled into stone. He started to jingle, his hands in his pants. Those sounds weren't coins from his purse. They were sounds from HIS coin purse. I'd forgotten he was bionic. Synthetic confidence from manufactured genitalia. Slowly I become sober from the rage. This isn't a fight of fairness. I decide I'll get him in the market on a day he's...rusty. Then I'll bust his balls one last time, for good.

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Resonance

(1/5)

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(2/5)

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(3/5)

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(4/5)

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(5/5)

>>9850105
well it isn't grandiose.

>>9850105
solid anon
would reword bits but like it all

>>9850105
>>9850112
>>9850116
>>9850121
>>9850126

As a Palestinian, some of this doesn't make much sense. Is Silverlight just a bastardization of Salfit? What about her washing more than the Quraan dictates? Off the shores of Jericho? Much of this is inflated, but you have diction power.

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I edited this heavily after some anons remarked on how the flow was horrendous. Take a gander: https://pastebin.com/58jyN6uV

>>9849983
>who first stepped this into being?

Was concerned about this at first cause I thought you used stepped wrong but, it's a pretty good line. Watch out for passive voice though
>a thin long road which trails through the field and up to the forest

Delete "which", there's no finishing clause.
Combine the last two sentences of your first paragraph.

>a man come
A man came?
> What is seen on his skin is a story written in scars of a coarse man.

Bad flow, I like your unique style but that sentence is hard to read. Also, passive voice again. Stop.
The next sentence is also hard to read, you use "where" twice.

>rasping voice groans
Pick one, rasping or groans. Either achieves your desired effect by itself.
>He begins clearing, stopping to drink from the steam, eat, and sleep.

Parallelism. Add "to" to your other verbs.
The rising with the sun line is nice.
All in all: fix the flow, chill with passive voice. Your style is nice though.
>>9849994
You've got the voice.
>I worked my way through the shelves until I had exhausted their reserves. It was a few months after my twenty-fifth birthday that I found the chamber. I had observed the ancient door in my prior years, but my attempts to open it had been futile.
Okay so he knew about the chamber before, why say found? Say "after my 25th birthday the chamber was opened to me."
>I intrepidly
Delete, I know he's scared so it must've been a bold thing for him to open the door at all. Or say "I rushed to open the door," conveys an immediacy as well.
>appropriate fitting,
I mean if you're going for Joyce purple prose is warranted but, just delete appropriate I don't need it.
>singularly, perplexing tomes
How does he know they are perplexing? He hasn't read them or even their titles yet.
>rubbed my deceitful eyes, for what I saw could not be real.
Delete deceitful.
All in all you captured the tone well, although I question why he was afraid of the sea yet, his biology was naturally inclined to it? Wouldn't he exhibit a proficiency for swimming or fondness for the sea? I mean, this is a mini Shadow Over Innsmouth story right? Most of the people were fishermen in that no? Great story by the way, the Shadow Over Innsmouth.
I'd say your prose was purple but you are copying Lovecraft here so, I'll just have to shrug it off. Good job.
>>9850045
Second sentence, "delete though".
> Evidently she manifested the same behaviours when freshly fucked by her husband as this was what told him that she was finding hers elsewhere, not long after the first consummation of our affair.
This sentence doesn't flow well. Break it up into two.
>I picked up first from a soft and pasty young man
Delete from.
I like the last paragraph, althought the flow is weird. You really build up the atmosphere before that brutal last line. Nice.
>>9850102
lol give some context.
"

>>9850356
>>9849994
Forgive me, you're not going for "Joyce", you're going for Lovecraft lol.

>>9850356
complete agree the first point
second yep, now seeing that
three, think its important to clarify i picked up FROM a pasty guy not taking him home...
trying to keep the flow weird and disconnected like the mental state, think it flows with the rest of the story though it needs some work if you'd like to critique anon? not sure if its too long to post though much appreciation thus far!

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https://pastebin.com/j7ytLnSw

Opening scene to my shitty novel about my autistic childhood story. Actually, this is the prequel to the actual stuff that "happened." Essentially this kid grows up in a little valley, walls around it, isolated, the place is very much like 1950s America. Then one day while he's in the woods about to make out with his girlfriend, they see a bunch of ships looming in the distance, which fly in and attack and they are forced to flee and the whole war story starts.

The problem is that everything in between sucks. The main character (peter) is part of this "expeditionary battalion" that get to fly outside the valley and do experiments. He is curious about what is outside the valley and this is a driving part of his character. His girlfriend, Emily, doesn't care at all and thinks Peter has his head in the clouds. His dad wants him to get a real career. Yeah this might sound like a decent premise except it sucks, the scenes where he tries to get with emily are awkward as fuck, the scenes with his dad are just me projecting from how i was a couple years ago, and it doesn't matter because his dad dies when the enemy attacks anyway. The expeditionary battalion completely destroys any semblance of mystery to the outside world, it makes zero sense they have an entire fleet of cruisers yet no one is allowed to leave. I feel like deleting the entire thing but I don't know what else to put in the prequel. Should I even bother? The only issue is that Peter's older sister dies in this "expeditionary battalion" years before, except she actually survives, and Peter's grandson eventually meets her. But this is years later.

I feel like abandoning writing and just making an animatic out of it, like pic related (i made this out of the first scene), and adding captions and music. I feel like it'd be better as a movie anyway. My drawing sucks but whatever. Problem is, to work on it I need to solidify the plot of the first book. Honestly, the first book is basically a rip-off of the first episode of that attack on titan show, plot-wise. I don't watch anime normally but my friends showed that to me and I was like ".... fuck"

>>9850356
im rhe gangbang guy btw (not something i get to say much...)

>>9850105
>>9850112
>>9850116
>>9850121
>>9850126
Seems like unreadable pretentious shit to me, but that might just be because I'm a low IQ shitter. Or because I like to speedread in these threads. I dunno. The writing itself is pretty good though. Like "shaking off the prickled fabrics sting," that's a good line. Or how you describe the termination letter. The first sentence seems wonky to me, could be better organized. The quotes for what she is thinking... just use italics. The "stout woman of twenty three years" is pointless and blatant exposition. You could probably get away with "the stout woman" but it'd be better to bring it up when it's actually relevant instead of trying to sneak in these details about the character like you are desperate to include them before you forget. It's got good rhythm though, not too many adjectives not too few. I'd say it's solid but could be improved, but perhaps another anon should critique my critique (lol) before you do anything with it.

>>9850428
first paragraph sounded pretty damn maccarthy and then after that it was entirely inoffensive, good start but i think you could make it a little less generic anon

You bastards are so difficult to contact! When will I find my /lit/ bf?

r8 pls

Hey everyone, I posted a passage in the last thread, got some criticism, took it back to the shop and worked on it. This is the new version, please tell me what y'all think. Thank you.


Charlotte has been watching the sky for years, and as long as it’s snowed, she’s never seen a woman float to the ground, light as a snowflake.

December in Elysfalls was as quiet as the townfolk could make it. Unfortunately, tourists drove through the village as often as they could, eager to see even a fraction of the mysterious beauty of the town frozen in time. But, as the year grew late, not even the splendor of the frigid, icy Shivala Falls could convince tourists to abandon their homes for Christmas. Those who still appeared on the streets those last silent were either locals looking for gifts or a lonely, wandering soul drifting along glittering, moonlit snow.

Charlotte never thought of herself as someone desperate for something else. Her life was as gentle as the town liked, never straying too far from her home. She inherited her mother’s dress shop at the first hint of her desire for retirement. Three years had past since then, three years of somber snowfall, bright-eyed travelers marvelling at her dresses, and the world spinning in blissful peace.

In the deep winter, Charlotte lived her days with modest luxury, the bulk of her business for the season finished up weeks ago. She stepped out onto the cobblestone stairs leading to her store, pulled mittens onto her hands, locked the old wooden door shut, and turned to stroll down the snow-sprinkled sidewalk with the lights left on. The locals appreciated lights left to brighten anyone’s night, enough so that it was tradition to have the lights on when one was out until midnight. By that point, only the streetlamps were left to brighten the sidewalks as deeper darkness covered the town, allowing the world to take a moment to themselves.

It wasn’t difficult to get away from people in Elysfalls. Plenty of sidewalks led to old, winding trails deep into the surrounding forests. It wasn’t uncommon for homes to be deep in the woods, worn cottages lining the cliffs and mountains. Charlotte came to a stop at a railing blocking her path from a gorge, leading down to a crystalline creek, silent in the faint moonlight. Snow danced in the air as it drifted below, glimmering in the light glowing from a line of frost-white streetlamps trailing along another secret path against the side of the creek.
As she shifted her gaze from the trail into the swirling night sky, Charlotte could barely what looked like a single star that gleamed with brilliance through the endless overcast.But, as she studied it, Charlotte concluded that whatever it was, it could not be a star.

Stars don’t usually wear dresses.

>>9850499
if this is YA or erotica keep going, if not back to the drawing board

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>>9850424
Sure, just use the site I used for my own story to paste your work in. I'll critique the rest when I've got time.
Either way, "I picked up first from a soft and pasty man," flows terribly. Work ion it. Do you mean "I got picked up by a pasty guy."? If you want it to sound disjointed like a mental state, try stream of consciousness. Fair warning though, it's hard to master.

Lol and nice job getting laid I guess, I'm still a virgin edgelord. Show me whatever you have left, remember to use the site I linked my own story on.

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>>9850499
You're a woman.
>>9850510
more like, back to the conception board. A girl wrote that.

>>9850424
Also, try to read your writing aloud to catch the flow bud.

>>9850531
What if "she" is a "he"?
>9850499
A-are you a trap, anon?

>>9850531
medium kek

but anon isn't sexist...
>or is that sexy?

I always forget

>>9850517
>>9850536

thanks anon

I try to but it sounds right to me as i know what its supposed to sound like. For the picking up from I mean getting drugs from I guess if thats not clear I need to look at it though, not after pasty boy seduction in this particular story

Don't bother anon, it'll come eventually and its not better than a good meal, ,a stiff drink or a well lubed handy and I mean that in the least patronising way possible... Wish I loved sex but the only appeal is that your body wants to replicate more than you know.

stuck it on pastebin
https://pastebin.com/YauW3aax

again a work in progress

b...be gentle anon-chan

>>9850499
I like this one, is so cute.
I wrote a fanfic once in the same way you wrote this, anon. Our styles are similar I guess.

>>9850636

Thank you, I really appreciate it.

>>9850510

It's gonna be a short story that I'll try to get published in some sort of YA magazine, an actually decent publication. I'll keep going on it and post in a later thread.

>>9850531
>>9850541

You actually caught me, good job. 1 year HRT.

>>9850356
thanks for the notes on >>9849994
I'll make these changes and I agree, the writing is a bit flowery. I was trying to use his change of opinion on the ocean as a device to show his transformation, but i'm not sure if that's neccesary. Ill workshop it. thanks again for the critique, really good points

>>9850356
also from gangbang anon to new flow joyce anon, this is breddy damn good!

>>9850461
>maccarthy
?

>>9849842
Laying besides the roots of the world tree, Jacob Anil basked in the shade that the enormous trunk of the tree provided. The almost scathing heat of the summer day forced him to take a short detour away from his intended destination. He was rather lucky that the deadline for his task in Bronzehill was more than a week away considering this was the twelfth time he had stopped on the road of wonder. A regular person could hardly blame him; the road of wonders did lead to some of the most wondrous landmarks in the world but at the same time it would often lead travelling tourists to their graves if they weren't lucky enough to avoid the numerous bands of outlaws that preyed upon their kind.

"Well you look at that." a scraggly voice said from a distance, "Looks like we got ourselves a tourist all on his lonesome with no bodyguards to protect his sorry ass. Ain't that right, Freddy?"

"Yup! That's right, Jim. You want me to smash his head in?" an oafish voice asked with the fervent of a child.

"Nah, look at them fancy clothes of his. We get blood on that and we won't get to fetch as good as a price we'd get if it were clean, besides, the blood stains would get people asking even more questions on where we got them." the scraggily voice answered.


Wrote all this just now and got tired. How'd I do so far?

Posted a bit of this a few threads back. People seemed to like it so I figured I'd post a little more. Hope it's decent...

The Crusader walked down the beaten, dirt road for the first time in twelve years. Once, he was bright eyed and wasted countless nights fighting the moon with a wooden sword. Now, he mostly keeps his eyes to the ground.

The rolling hills surrounding him form a miniature gulch, with dying clouds overhead. Dawn has long gone. The Crusader grips his brown cloak tightly as winds begin hurling frost. He raises his head from under the clothing, with only a beard and mangy hair to keep him somewhat warm. A row of shabby, half ruined cobble walls a meter high come into sight. They’re dotted along the side of the expanding road. Man is not far.

The road has become much larger now, as the Crusader stops to study his surroundings. He understands the risk, as standing still isn’t wise when wanting to keep warm, but the widening road brings back too many memories for him to ignore. Looking down, the Crusader sees a mural of prints fossilized in the dirt. He can almost visualize the moment he was a boy, when him and a band of soldiers rode the opposite direction on a quest for glory, which eventually became a quest for survival.

Pushing against the wind’s ferocity, the Crusader soon reaches a small incline. As he gazes far ahead, he starts blinking back tears. It’s hard to tell whether it’s from the wind or where he finally is, after twelve years.

The road filters towards a conglomerate of stone and wood. Fourteen or so houses, cattle and crops at least two acres far, a windmill and a church plotted right at the center. For many travelers, looking for shelter from the cruel landscape, the village is a beacon. But to the Crusader it’s a museum. A showcase of a life he’s found hard to remember.

Taking a deep breath, inhaling the freezing air that shocks his teeth, he proceeds down the incline towards the village.

Within the settlement, villagers are bustling about, finding it hard to get labor done in the stinging breeze. A few are cleaning up cow dung, some are migrating sheep and others are keeping stock of their potatoes, carrots and wheat. All the while, many are encircling whatever fires are around.

A particular villager is rinsing muck off vegetables with a wooden pale. Maria. She has the face of a princess but the hands of a retired farmer. It’s clear through the rate at which Maria stacks baskets with crops that she’s experienced in the trade. After drying her palms with the long skirt she’s wearing, she hauls the baskets over to a stockpile. Winter stunts life, so the village must be well supplied.

>>9850677
I mean, this is just practice anyway. If anything, you succeeded to capture Lovecraft perfectly. About the transformation thing, that's a bit of a dilemma: on one hand if you keep it, the plausibility is questioned, if you delete it, the ending is a bit expected. But it doesn't really mattered if the ending is expected probably,
since Lovecraft already told us the ending.

>>9850701
Have you never seen No Country for Old Men? Haven't even read the McCarthy copypasta?

>>9850700
Thanks man, took about a month. I'll have an indepth critique for you in the morning.

>>9850356
No context but you thought it was funny and we'll written eh? (Brass balls guy)

>>9850889
No.

>I don't know what I'm doing


As the sand beckoned to the waves, so did Elle her lover. The water lapped at the shore, unsure, rising and receding. Gently splish-splashing. Each nubile surge coated the surface and dissipated, both returning to the vast distant ocean and soaking down in a little bit. Was it always that the static body maintained control?

And so the tide rose, bringing in foamy vestiges, embracing the sand further up its top; and by nightfall it had gone back out, washing away its marks and taking something extra, as if to compensate for the evidence of its presence that was no longer there.

Of course, when all was said and done, the beach retained its definition, and there were even now too many grains of sand for the liking of Elle's feet. As they paced towards the horizon in the day's early hours, the blue paint on her nails chipped away and the brisk wind sent her thin cover a-flutter, stealing a look at the tight stomach and fitting pale bikini underneath. She thought of the warmth waiting for her, the coffee and donut, balcony and birthing dawn, baby face and muscle, single blanket. Her pace changed subtly and she chased still the rising sun.

how the fug do i write a epic fight scene between two absurdly powerful mortal beings.

>>9850919
I don't mind it, quite a comfy read, if not longwinded in some sentences. Keep up the good work. If this is just you messing around, I'd like to see what you're like if you give 200%.

>>9850951
Watch less anime, and more boxing. Detail how proper fighters fight, or something.

>>9850957
maybe I should have included that weaponry would be involved, of the medieval variety.

>>9850899
>no

Provide reasoning for your "no", you critiqued, you are obligated to give it to him. Or else your response is meaningless.

>>9850957
Cool, comfy is what I was going for. I'd give 200% if I knew how, I don't think I've written anything outside of assignments, and hardly read anything in the same way. I really enjoy writing but have always found I have nothing much to say. So my plan is to keep writing some for fun, and keep reading, maybe get serious later down the line.

As for yours, I really like a lot of the word choice (indifferent to the saline, joyous rancor, bake the wetter garments). They grab me and offer a unique description. However, I would say they are set apart by some clunkiness, the main clunk that stands out to me being repitition. There are a couple similes (can of sardines, steam) and I find those to often feel cheap or unnecessary. You say "I could" three times in a couple sentences and then blight four. Even
>their blight for centuries. A moral blight, if you will, if that be one at all.
Would flow better. The sentence before has "some" twice, the second being unnecessary. Later on, "silent" is used twice as well.

Content wise, I like the sense of adventure and exploration. Just work on the flow and clarity of things, a good first step being watching the repitition. It can be a good technique, but only at purposeful times. Hopefully this helps, thanks for the kind words

>>9851059
Thanks for the feedback, will definitely take your points into account.

>>9850965
Leave much if the detail to the reader's imagination. Erikson did this incredibly well in the later books of the Malazan series, if you want an example.

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I tried.

But it's been like a year since I wrote these.

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>>9852020
Part 2

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>>9852022
Part 3

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>>9851021
No.

Negative Nancy
It was always her fancy
To rain on others' parades
Because she was a whore
And had sex with four
She soon died of AIDs

>>9850134
>>9850141
>>9850326

Any suggestions?

>>9850326

1) Silverlight is a humanitarian organization that is keeping the hospital funded. Comes play next chapter.

2) The Ablution ritual. Basically, a practice that was drawn from Zoroastrian/pagan rituals by Muhammed, wishing to foment a more pure religion dedicated to Arab nationalism. This is evident in the steps the Quraan enforces:

The Ablution prescribed by God in the Quran consists of four simple steps:
1- Wash the face
2- Wash the arms to the elbows
3- Wipe the head
4- Wipe the feet to the ankles.
5- Washing the hands to the wrists
6- Washing the mouth
7- Washing the nose (nostrils)
8- Washing the ears
9- Washing the neck

3) Amira and her mother were raised in Jericho.

>>9852543
beautiful

Would /crit/ be interested in a novella translation?
I haven't started it yet, but I want to know if anyone is interested.

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>>9852183
You're not a writer.

I've written a screenplay and could do with some critique, but this doesn't seem like the sort of general to link to an entire work. Is there anywhere more appropriate to get the whole thing evaluated?

It's an introspective/existential drama about the current ongoing crisis of security (both societal, political security and consequently individual, emotional security) and how it affects people. I already have an indie filmmaker from Glasgow who was pretty interested in the initial synopsis I sent out, but want to have the screenplay itself checked over from outside before I send it because first impressions count.

>>9853115
Brother, these people don't know shit, and will steal stuff if they like something, do not advise

>>9853121
I've already registered the copyright so I have legal proof if anyone steals it, but yeah, I thought here might be a shot in the dark

>>9853050
k

>>9853121
Are you that shitty underage writer with the broken english?

fuck off you ruined the last thread

>>9853142
If it's stolen, published, then taken down, the damage is already done, too late. Ideas are PRECIOUS. the first time they are experienced can't be recreated.

>>9853246
Whose that by chance? Good try charlatan, this thread was excrement to begin with.

>>9853337
lol

>>9853347
>btfo

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>>9850700
https://pastebin.com/Zw6jbmbH
You're critique, freshly delivered. If you wanna exchange emails or something to follow up that's fine.

>>9853663
YOUR* gosh darnit im dumb

>>9852721

1. I see.

2. The only verse in the Quraan I remember that deals with ablution is Al-Maida, verse 6:
>[...] يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا إِذَا قُمْتُمْ إِلَى الصَّلَاةِ فَاغْسِلُوا وُجُوهَكُمْ وَأَيْدِيَكُمْ إِلَى الْمَرَافِقِ وَامْسَحُوا بِرُءُوسِكُمْ وَأَرْجُلَكُمْ إِلَى الْكَعْبَيْنِ ۚ
The actual steps and their sequence is delineated in the Hadith.

3. It wasn't that as much as throwing her ashes off the shores of Jericho, which in my mind is the Dead Sea. Seeing as I've been to the Palestinian side - heavily controlled, I don't think they'd let ashes in.

Is erotica welcome here?

>>9852879
Sure. Just post the source material to see if we can do better

>>9850705
>basked in the shade that the enormous trunk of the tree provided.

'Bask' is a pretty bad word. Try escribing instead what the person is actually doing. Basking seems more like a description of intent rather than description of action.

>>9854315
sure, its over 18

>>9849842

The only motor to get you this far was in the Sahara and even then you lost the keys in Tacoma. Crayons spell out moldering Spanish fly dreams to the garbage men stink they bring home to their dancing wives. Lampoon a grey cigarette with a penis - smells just like a burning molten fury and I am growing tobacco on your ten acres. Spend the summer growing blends and packing a bowl for one two people lonely and forgetting about the real growing evolving type in Tacoma Washington back from the spaced-out gummery of tidewater frenzy when we picked the anenome remnants and packed a bowl with the teeth of extinct fishes. Spanning about five-thousand miles we parsed a groundedge section of pipeline with vengeful polar bear stalking on the trunk roads out to Alaska and beyond into Russian territories long forgotten and still unclaimed by animals. Spanish fly is the solvent that melts a brain well and stops all thought in the mush brain beyond the walls of southern comfort. Cowering brain makes a hasty escape but the exit is just a needlehole in the direction of a bleeding bathtub. Chores all week to blend tobacco and weed and brackish hellwater and the spiny skin of a Mariana-Trench-creature. They washed up on the coast of the Mexican Gulf. Power bled out of the low-tide smell and I remember burning the nostril hair and I remember feeling a familiar memory bleed through imperfect like through cheesecloth. A delicate spider swung down from a dark cactus menacing. Its deadly and completely fatal toxin dripped from fangs only about 0.5 mm wide. Man skips daintily and gaily outward in concentric circles and blends with the wildlife. A man sparks a cigarette. Too bad for him – I loaded the thing with Fly and for a moment he was happy but always wanted more more more. A bathtub was loaded with the stuff and bled secretly and secreted balms of high Olympus gum sap from the laurel tree tortured from white branches and brought back to your pancakes with adulterants. Woman spits her tooth out on a highway littered with urine bottles. Trapped in that urine is the precious lifegiving water extracted by the body from cola. A movie was playing in the cinema, some Warhol trash – I jumped when a seagull made his appearance (uncredited). A loser cacophany thickened until I could not swim and blood clotted in the bathtub and blood clotted in the needles of the sea anemone.

>>9850733
Sadly no.

>>9854429
https://pastebin.com/n4ZtnF6G
Could you rate my sex scene? It's not an erotic story, but for some reason it felt "right" as I was writing, even though I almost always hate sex scenes in movie or books. It's probably terrible cause I've never had sex so i don't know what it's like.

>>9854505
lol are you me? Literally did the exact same thing and have had no sex either and get queasy when reading sex scenes. Here's mine, https://pastebin.com/58jyN6uV

Yours seems pretty typical imo, not too bad. make it longer and describe their emotions more. Some of the dialogue is cliche too.

>>9854505
>I've never had sex

Unfortunately it is a prerequisite. Fortunately, the need to do research provides you with an added impetus.

>>9854505

Read more erotica. It doesn't come across as if you've decided to tastefully omit the ugly details of a first-time sexual encounter such as awkward grunts, awful positioning or other distracting noises. It actually does read like you're a virgin - being one does not automatically mean that you can't write scenes like this, you just need to inform yourself so that it doesn't seem like the scene's your own weird fantasies come to life like in Twilight. The post-coitus talk is kind of sweet, I suppose.

>>9854904
Can someone not retarded critique me please:
pastebin.com/n4ZtnF6G

>>9854925

I'm trying to be honest with you, but as for whether or not you take my advice at face value is up to you. The elements in the beginning of this excerpt are interesting enough that I wonder why they're wondering in the wilds, what history Orion has that he's a half-decent shot and so on. So it's not a bad initial hook. I enjoy the imagery of the campfire as an orange smudge, I can understand the progression of the intimacy between him and Trielle until the paragraph that follows“You're really gonna say no?”.

It's just kind of a clumsy read at that point. Jacket tugging is fine, island of heat is good, her own stripping sounds a little odd, but perhaps that's because it makes me think she's going to be uncomfortable laying topless among dead leaves which may act as a distraction to the rest of what's going on. Perhaps your story as a whole has more information on Orion or elaboration that would show us why her comment pushed him from uncertainty to reciprocation, but there's not enough in this section alone to clarify that. As I mentioned before, the conversation thereafter is sweet, it cuts off in a slightly weird place though, because I don't know what she wants to linger for.

But sure, call me retarded rather than asking for further clarification.

>>9854925
>pastebin.com/n4ZtnF6G

Some suggestions for cleaning up your prose:

" and the steep terrain accentuated the pangs in their stomach." to: "and the steep terrain increased their hunger pangs."

Cut out the second clause of the second sentence.

Switch to "The forest broke apart"

If you are going to personify Winter, go for the gusto.

"that leaked what little warmth was left inside."

This is a good example to tackle what I think is clunky prose. "that leaked the weak remaining warmth inside" is what I would rewrite to. Alliteration, etc. Also, the weakness of the warmth attaches itself to the presumed weakness of the travelers.

"Orion stoked a fire in the fireplace."

Okay, but I'd like you to paint a better picture. Where did he get the fuel? Were there fire pellets cached in the house? Did he find a stack of firewood? These kind of details empower you to leave a ghost of the absent inhabitant of the house.

"a living soul"

This is neither colloquially nor formally comfortable prose. An "anyone" or "anybody" would suffice.

"They came to more mountains"

I would enjoy this if you allocated a paragraph to a description of the mountains. The sight of mountains is difficult to forget and your descriptive prose should reflect that.

"paltry"

Simply saying two meals is fine enough. Given that this is purely fictional, two meals isn't even particularly 'paltry'. Shit, I had only one and a half meal today.

"the jerky"

implies that the reader was previously aware of their jerky.

"fire dwindled"

Describe the state of the fire. Embers? Coals? Ashes? Positively describe what's happening. Here you simply negate a full campfire.

“You must think I'm a whore,”

No one has ever said this - at least not since Fanny Hill was written.

"Trees rattled"

Use these sorts of descriptions for metonymic devices. Maybe evokes a 'death rattle'. I would be more satisfied if your descriptions added to the momentum of the story's attempted effect.

Overall, try to constrain your writing to emulate a single style. Maybe crib from Hemingway for what I assume was intended to be quick sharp and sparse prose. Honesty: I am not at all interested in the cause that led these characters to where they are. I don't give a shit about their apocalyptic scenario. Implied cataclysm alone isn't enough to instill in me an interest in what feels to me like a couple of teenagers slipping away into the woods on a high school retreat. I would actually be exponentially more interested in a description of that scenario without the cliched apocalypse.

>>9854505
>https://pastebin.com/n4ZtnF6G

>"They laid there in silence for several moments."

Something needs to change here. Let them lay for a moment or several minutes. Several moments sounds off

>>9855016

>“You must think I'm a whore,”
>No one has ever said this - at least not since Fanny Hill was written.

Yeah this part was awful. You're basically accidentally making your bias against casual sex blatantly apparent and then having a character respond by saying "no lol"

If he thought she was a whore why was he cuddling with her? Why does your female character have to be ashamed of having requested sex?

Even young girls just entering sexuality don't do this lmao

how does one stop using "he" or "she" so much? I always have to keep in mind to not start all of my sentences with "he" or "his". Is it something that get better as you get more experience or is there a trick to it?

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Yesterday I was drunk and wrote this. Just in case some hispanic is lurking this thread. I don't know what else to do with it. Already posted it on the spanish thread but whatever.
Al suelo que me mata y me reclama
con vicio cavernícola, de fiera,
tan solo como excusa apelar puedo
amor, el loco amor que me reclama
a corpóreas apetencias dar suelta;
atávico apetito, corre en busca
del cárnico alimento de mis sueños.
Pues aun con ir con atavíos bellos,
con la lustrosa capa del idioma,
persiguen nervio, reclaman sangre viva
aquestas apetencias de mi seso.
Masas grasas, en cúpulas reunidas,
concentran más mi voluntad herida
que vistas de vidas santificadas.
Si no vienen conmigo, anacoreta.
Estilita si son luciferinas.
Feliz si me prodiga sus dos tetas.

The bear’s hammer rose and fell with the flowing tides of battle. But the emperor pondered his wine.

Beating his chest and shattering the air with his voice, he said: ‘reveal yourself, emperor’. And when there was no reply, he scattered his opponents with his burly arms and roared, shaking the ground with his shoulder charge.

The emperor’s expression revealed surprise. But only for a second. He covered that quickly enough.

‘Guards’, he said, with a vague gesture. ‘Stop this … thing’. They ignored him, pretending they didn’t hear, subdued by the presence of the creature. ‘Guards’, he said, louder this time and with greater intensity. ‘Protect me’. And still they didn’t hear him. ‘Fools’, he shouted. ‘When this is over, you will be as dead as your minds’.

With that, he unsheathed his sword, letting the scabbard hit the soft grass beneath him. And standing up, he met the bear’s charge, grunting under its weight on his sword. At that moment he wished he had a spear.

The bear let out another of his roars, shaking the plains and the hearts of his opponents. But the emperor didn’t flinch, not until the bear shook his sword off like a paperweight and choked the ebbing life out of him.

In his dying breath, the emperor said: ‘tell my daughter … I love her’. And the bear released his grip and the emperor collapsed onto his throne, drenching it with his fluids.

Yo check this out.

In a woolly cloud I submissively disappear again.

(sorry my english is not very good)

>>9855772

Into a wolly cloud I slowly disappear again. The time is right and the fruits are ripe. Gravity is weak again now, the cunning beast. If it rains I will go offer something else.

I've not written anything before and this was just something i started to hone my skills so b gentle:

In one of the many winding white-grey span estates which make up the Wilshire small town of Highworth, and on a sunny day. In the middle of a cul-de-sac off of an avenue off of a road, the curtains to one house were pointedly shut closed.

Inside, Samuel lit his house with old dimming lamps, giving the whole house a musky claustrophobic feel. The occasional beam of light illuminated the dust falling from the ceiling like a strobe between the piles of old newspapers and videotapes. Samuel was safely over 6’5, he was an older, English looking man. He had the aura of, and the build of, a tree trunk. Newly awakened and fully dressed in corduroy trousers and a red cardigan, he slowly lumbered through the living room: in reality a small TV and an old lounge chair, the rest of the room was taken up by the videos and newspapers. In his small kitchen Sam thought about opening the window so he could see better, but decided against it. He poured some instant coffee, spilling some on the side (which he would have done even if he could see) and started back towards the lounge chair.

A good few seconds later, as he was a very slow mover, Samuel reached the lounge chair and sunk himself into it, his head and shoulders still firmly above the headrest. Clinking on the reading lamp rested precariously on the armrest, he began his daily routine. Grappling one of the old newspapers, he began reading.

The newspapers were mostly out of date, and radically so. Showcased on the top of the pile included articles on the Falklands War, the 1992 election - Samuel was engrossed in a piece about Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination. It may have been 2017 but in Samuel’s lounge it might well have been any year from the previous five decades.

Samuel was upset to learn about Rabin’s death, even though he remembered hearing about it the first time, it was shortly after he left the armed forces to be a family man - his son at this time was only a few years old. There were details in this article he hadn’t picked up on at first, like the fact the killer had tried to murder the Israeli prime minister before, or that he had been killed in front of his wife. His face gurned at these unpleasantries, and the fact he hadn’t had the time to learn them the first time around. Inspired, he neatly folded his November 1995 edition of the Telegraph and put it on the armrest - abruptly standing up and lurching towards the newspaper towers in the corner of his room. He began rummaging, collecting more newspapers under his arm. Although it looked disorganised, the newspapers were in fact organised carefully by Samuel’s personal impenetrable system.

>>9855805

Once he had all he wanted, he moved back to his chair in what seemed like a single step. He now had the November 1995 editions of every newspaper he had. He began meticulously searching through them, starting with the Guardian, for articles about Yitzhak Rabin’s murder.


By the time he had gotten about halfway through Morning Star’s article deriding the peace process as a liberal betrayal of the Palestinian liberation movement, someone knocked gently on his door, rudely and abruptly interrupting his reading time - but Samuel knew who it was. He thrumped the newspapers down to the side of the chair and harrumphed to the door. No matter how much he harrumphed however, he never lost his rigid tree-trunk like posture.

Swinging open the door open he looked down onto the black-curly-haired teenager looking up at him. Samuel took up the entire doorframe with his massiveness, refusing to ever step over the threshold he glared down at the youngster with his forehead resting on the top bar, ‘’You’re late’’, in a rough voice.

Nathan looked down at his phone and saw he indeed was late, by two minutes. Short for his age of seventeen years, he felt like David knocking on the door of Goliath. He always stepped back a bit to avoid being completely intimidated by Samuel’s mass, but even then he had to crane his neck acutely upwards to look the huge man in the face.

His voice was a nasally tenor compared to the very English brand of baritone that Samuel spoke in. ‘’Sorry I did-’’
‘’You interrupted my reading time’’
‘’I’m sorry I’m late’’ spluttered Nathan
‘’Okay’’ Samuel looked around over the boy ‘’give me the papers’’

Nathan had a fresh stack of the days newspapers under his arm, steadily holding them out, Samuel clasped them by the side with one of his gorilla-like hands and heaved them into his home. Almost seamlessly, he violently grasped a ten pound note near the side of the door and dropped it towards Nathan: ‘’cheers’’, and he closed the door.

>>9855807

Nathan began his walk back to the town centre, he could spend that twenty quid on a pint on this sunny day. Even though he was only 17, he was eighteen a few weeks and the people in one of the older pubs near the church had served him since he was about fourteen, the benefits of spending his whole upbringing in highworth. Highworth had an old core surrounded by post-war, grey, repetitive housing estates, which is where Nathan found himself. The bright sun glowed off the grey of the houses. As he got out of the cul-de-sac he looked out on the sight, of streets behind streets in front of him, identical houses, the overwhelming grey beamed into his retinas - it could be disorientating.

Samuel added the newspapers to one of his towers and thrumped back into his lounge chair, he started again grumpily on the Morning Star article and wondered if any of his many video tapes were on Yitzhak Rabin. His videotape collection was diminished compared to his newspaper empire, the videotapes merely flanked his television set whilst his newspapers owned the rest of the house. Nathan brought him the papers, but he couldn’t be expected to record the news every day and bring it to him, Samuel wondered if Nathan even knew how to use a VCR. The disparity between the newspapers and the videos were a constant thorn in Samuel’s side, he scowled thinking about it, and annoyingly every new shipment Nathan brought made the problem more severe.

Nathan sat outside the front of his favourite pub with a pint and a book, he usually kept to himself even when he was out. In front of him on the table was a form his school had given to him. He was being asked to review his time so far as a part of the Highworth community befriending project, a local initiative aimed at stalling old age loneliness.

>>9855812
>comma splices
D.H. Lawrence, is that you!?

>>9854356
Will do that.
I was just looking through the original text and it has a really unique style and vocabulary.
I don't know if I will be able to replicate that in english, but I will give it my best!

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“We are nothing, we were born as nothing, we will die as nothing,” he snarled through gritted teeth, his eyes fixated on the infinite darkness that laid beyond the one inch glass.

“Is this all that we were destined for, To drift aimlessly through the cosmic void?” his voiced trembled, he turned around and faced me, the tears running down his face, he reached into the back pocket of his jumpsuit, retrieving a bloody glass shard, blood dripped from the end of it, he brought it to his throat,

“Do you wish to live this meaningless existence, bound to this ship for the rest of eternity? I don’t know about you, but I’ve made my choice.”

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I tried... I think.

Filename relevant.

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>>9856033
Second page if you still want.

>>9850499
Moves a bit quickly but I like it a lot

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>>9854525
>>9854852
>>9854904
>>9855050
Thanks, this is good advice.

>>9854925
This post isn't me, wtf?

>>9855166
>Yeah this part was awful. You're basically accidentally making your bias against casual sex blatantly apparent and then having a character respond by saying "no lol"
Well she comes from a conservative society where it is heavily frowned upon. But yeah if that's cringeworthy perhaps I'll change it.

The other guy who replied reposting my pastebin link isn't me, though, I don't know why he got mad at critique that wasn't even directed toward him.

>>9855007
That guy wasn't even the original poster. Ignore him. Probably just a triggered virgin. I mean, so am I but still. I guess I should thank him for getting me additional critique though, I appreciate it.

>I can understand the progression of the intimacy between him and Trielle until the paragraph that follows“You're really gonna say no?”.

Is that line of dialogue bad? I understand the rest of it needs some work. And for context Orion's previous lover(s) died tragically so while he is attracted to Trielle he is hesitant to even form any sort of attachment because he feels like he is "cursed" in a way. Also at this point he is preparing for his death in a way, so also is hesitant. So when she says that he's just like "fuck it" and goes for it. I dunno, it's kinda weird.

>But sure, call me retarded rather than asking for further clarification.

Yeah like I said that wasn't me man, it was some other fucktard. Thanks for the extra stuff though, it helps me a lot.

>>9857870
>Well she comes from a conservative society where it is heavily frowned upon.

So did I and my sexual partners in high-school. We didn't have insecure pre-coital conversation like this. Sexual magnetism leaves most things implicit.

>>9857920
Alright fair enough. Yeah the original scene was even more cringeworthy because it came right after she thanks him for helping rescue her daughter so it looked like she was fucking him out of gratitude.

I don't want it to be particularly realistic i Just want it to not be unreadably cringeworthy.

> Implied cataclysm alone isn't enough to instill in me an interest in what feels to me like a couple of teenagers slipping away into the woods on a high school retreat. I would actually be exponentially more interested in a description of that scenario without the cliched apocalypse.

Orion is 26 at the time of this scene and Trielle is 25. And they aren't in an apocalyptic situation but I can see how you got there from that, I'd explain more but you don't need the autistic lore dump.

anyway thanks again for the critique, I'm working on applying it right now.

>>9857896
>>9857870

Ah, fair enough. It can be hard to tell with these threads sometimes, so I'm glad it's of some use.

I don't think that's a bad comment itself, nor was it my real issue with the scene. It depends on what Trielle's character is like as to whether it fits. If it's a generally conservative society, it does make it seem as if she's in a classic kind of rebellious phase where that kind of bravado would be normal. The same goes for "You must think I'm a whore". It sounds like some of the conversations I had with friends when I was around 16 or so, but then none of the guys in the scenario were present for those. All in all it tells me that she's putting up a front to avoid talking about her insecurities. What the other anons are saying is valid, but to play devil's advocate it's not really a problem for a guy to hold a dim or generally nebulous view of a woman slutting around in the context of making a character feel three-dimensional for your average reader.

For Orion, I'd add a line in just after her snark about saying no to bring up that curse and why he's going for it anyway. It's a useful bit of context for what just reads as thoughtless impulse otherwise. I'm sure you'll spot other things you can do better as you get improve, but my original point in all of this was that research would help you feel more confident about what you're writing.

pt one
The world hasn't changed for a thousand years. People havn't changed for oh-so-much longer than that. What made those ridiculous idealists think their shining exteriors, their bright smiles and outrageously extravagant attitudes think that they could change anything, let alone the nature of humanity itself. Constantly preaching about the good.
As if the good mattered. As if anyone cared if their rulers were moral. As if such a thing as good even existed. What would their damned goodness have earned them, had it not been accompanied with their unearned powers. Hunger, most likely. Hunger and dispair. To be good was a weakness. To deliberate, to consider, to philosophize. That wasn't the way to victory.
How could you kill an enemy soldier if you were truly good, through and through. How could you savage men, with families, children, without being so righteous as to know their opponents were truly evil at heart. Perhaps that is why they failed. Because they were not righteous. The did not sacrifice others for what needed to be done. And when their sparkling ruler, gem of ages, hero of huddled masses, went to strike me down...
He heard a child crying. My child. And he hesitated, conflicted. How could he take away a child's father. Surely I must be a good man, not deserving of death by his hand. Surely I couldn't be truly evil.
He was wrong.
Thats why I killed him. Because I, like all other men, am not good at heart. People... My People, do not need 'goodness'. Goodness will not sow the fields, charity will not harvest them. A strong hand, experienced, powerful, all knowing and all powerful and ruler over all of them. That is what they want. That is what people have always wanted. For the last thousand years, mankind has had nothing but. Who are these 'superheroes' to say otherwise! A minority, so small a voice... Why should they dictate a change which would alter the course of humanity for the rest of eternity. What right do they have to change such things. Usurpers, every one.

>>9858067
pt 2
That is why they deserved to die, I suppose. Surely they did. They must have. What good could their meddling possibly have done. 'Freedom', 'Self-sacrifice', 'Democracy'. Such noble ideas. As noble as a starving man, too proud to eat. As noble as a priest, promised to never have children. As noble as a soldier who died to save a man he barely knew.
So noble and bright and proud. So good. And dead everyone, deserving of their fate.
"Sir, it is time to give your speech" An attendant said.
He sighed. It had been one year since he had established his rule, and nearly 10 months since he last addressed them. They had scorned him, of course. They hated him for what he had done. Hated him for saving their children from a life of misery and starvation. Hated him for killing their 'heroes'.
Sighing, he stood up and walked to the balcony to give his speech.
He was greeted with thunderous applause.
Mothers held their children out to him. The streets clean, the city rebuilt. Men with smiles on their faces. A world reborn out of the misery of the last decade. Reborn with blood and fire...
He fell to his knees, crying for the monstrous things he had done, the weight on his soul almost too much to bear...

The breath blew, and my nut grew cold. I felt the dampness of my scrotum lifted by the warm oral wind and carried off into the vagina that sat before me. It sprawled indissoluble across the awesome canvas seated at the head of the world, a great luminous pink crown meant to be marveled by the constituents of god. Pubes trembled and spines shivered as the dick pushed through them with an indifferent insistence on carrying onward without a loss of haste. I took in the tit as deeply as I could, envying the air's unwieldingness and unforgivingness- if only i had half the courage found in the invisible force. That was the entire reason I was even laying in the bed. I let her be stolen from right in front of me, I stood and watched and geeked anxiously while the love of my life was swept off her feet. Every second since then has been a tortorous reminder, every item and action a hot iron pressed to my hand, one continuous stream of inevitable emotional self-torment. Even immediately after, the cooling of the nervous sweat that had collected at my scrotum instead stung like molten wax poured over the tip of my cock, telling me I should have stopped it instead of condensate like a forgotten glass of sperm. The weak balls that barely found the reserve to shrivel my dick away from the terrible scene were only weak from resisting the urge to crumble to ground in disglorious defeat. The hot air that beat upon my skin took note from the manner of my wracking mind, so oppressive and overbearing the inability to think clamped my muscles rigid. It had fallen significantly since then, now dipping its toe into the horizon, and with it the heat, giving way to the cool atmosphere of summer twilight. So too had my emotions worked off their heat, subsiding to a dull roar settled in the very back of my mind. I gazed almost slackjawed in apathy at the creepingly purple ceiling as the thunderous almighty finale of the night eased into the soft hued innocence of the postcoital tristesse. A handful of fingers pricked the darkening penis, with the light of venus tearing a pinhole between the clashing asshole colors. The spectacle only served as a stark contrast to the brutal ugliness that had thrashed at my testicles all day. A buzzing and stinging interrupted my sexual reverie, a sign of the needled onslaught about to feast upon my naked flesh. Disinterested in being turned into bitch fodder I gathered my things and my thoughts and set out the room, walking into the gaping hole left in the doorway after her soul had abandoned it

>>9858061
>All in all it tells me that she's putting up a front to avoid talking about her insecurities.
Actually it's me projecting my own IRL insecurities onto the whole thing. But in her case, she does something rather impulsive (and in fact her death many years later involves her doing something "heroic" impulsively that was actually pretty needless and leaves her & orion's children motherless), so I guess the whole "you must think I'm a whore" line comes from her realizing "wow I just did that." At least that's how it was in my head but I guess that's retarded. I mean if you were hiking away from a destroyed village with a woman and her daughter in tow, and she suddenly came onto you, you might not complain, but in the back of your head you might think "heh she's kind of a slut." Or maybe that's just cause I'm fucked in the head, which is part of why I posted the scene in the first place.

>For Orion, I'd add a line in just after her snark about saying no to bring up that curse and why he's going for it anyway.
That feels like "telling" rather than "showing" to me, although i do have some internal dialogue much earlier about how he feels like everyone he gets close to dies (standard tortured antihero trope, I know). I mean I am really in Orion's mind because I wrote the character but maybe I am expecting too much of the reader to have it in their head. I hate to interrupt a scene with internal monologue of more than a single sentence, so I'll try to keep it short.

> but my original point in all of this was that research would help you feel more confident about what you're writing.
You mean getting off my ass and trying to get laid? Yeah I guess I should do that, I've gotten too old for being a virgin to be acceptable. It's a totally fair point, though. I didn't want the story to be too realistic but years from now when I leave this story behind when I am dead i don't want people to laugh at the sex scenes, it has enough cringeworthy parts about it already.

>>9858085
Too dense, IMO, too many adjectives and adverbs.
>It sprawled indissoluble across the awesome canvas seated at the head of the world, a great luminous pink crown meant to be marveled by the constituents of god.
This line is pretty good.
> Pubes trembled and spines shivered as the dick pushed through them with an indifferent insistence on carrying onward without a loss of haste.
I lost my shit laughing here. If this is supposed to be some weird anti-humor shitposting, then I appreciate it for what it is, but otherwise... yeah.

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>>9858128

Sure you could go get laid, though that may not translate directly into writing. Just read a load of erotica (or fanfictions since they're generally less terrible than self-published erotica where the author gets no feedback). Even the cringe ones like dinosaur porn will help teach you what a steaming turd reads like. Pic very much related.

>Drin taunts the beast, giving her tribes mates time to flee. As she runs, leading it through a gauntlet of traps, the thrill of the hunt soars through her blood, leaving her wet with desire. When the angry T-Rex corners the huntress in a box canyon, it seems more interested in her wet womanhood than in her flesh.

Anyway. I wouldn't go for a massive internal monologue where he addresses his issues, just a sentence where he gives a nod to getting over them. Throw a load of stuff your characters wouldn't say onto a page, maybe staring at it will help you work out what you really mean for them to be saying.

>>9854525
>https://pastebin.com/58jyN6uV
>The parries of kisses between them, the uprooting of the hair, the tearing of skin under passion, all these intimacies flashed between them, captured within an eternity of breathless seconds.
I liked this sentence. The prose is very dense and purple overall, but then I tried hard for simplicity in my own writing.
>Again and again. He was going like a wrathful pendulum, falling into her and out of her, she gasping and moaning in delirium lust with each fusillade.
This feels like you're trying too hard to be creative with the description, but maybe that's what you're going for. take my opinions with a grain of salt. Overall it's okay but I found my self glazing over a lot of it because it felt like word salad. Might be I'm just a brainlet though.

>>9855723
Occasionally switch back to the characters' names to remind us, I guess. But yeah I have the same issue. Mostly because I am writing to describe action a lot. So maybe cut down on explicit description of every single thing a character does. or describe somethign they are affecting, like saying "the log split under X's axe" if they are chopping wood rather than "X split the log." Plus that way you avoid the fetishized-hated ""passive voice.""

>>9858202
You sure that's not an alter ego of chuck tingles? But yeah I understand what you mean. I've read some decent sex scenes in books, in fact I stole a little bit from those. But yeah that's good advice, I didn't want to put too much effort into this scene at first but then I realized it was a nexus of several different threads of character development so I figured I'd at least try to make it good. I will take your advice about his issues, too. Will keep it to one sentence, or maybe write a bunch then chop it down. Thanks.

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>>9856851
Third page, I'm really hoping someone says something.

>>9858248
can you give me some examples of when it is purple?

From the fore deck he sees a brilliant flash and a thundering roar, and then; he's under, struggling, dodging deadly debris on its slow descent to the ocean floor. He swims with his adrenaline-fueled strength, his heart-rate sustained and control maintained, to the nearest surface debris, a piece of flotsam large enough to bear his weight. He had just been shipwrecked.

He looked on as the once proud Imperial Navy vessel groaned, and sought shelter away from the mess of twisted and sinking metal. Onward he pushed his bouyant flotsam though the clear black water, reflective of the starlit night's sky and the fiery visage of the drowning wreckage, hoping the enemy ship that lurked in the darkness that encompassed him did not shine a search light his way. To his immense luck and relief, it did not. So now here he was, flotsam underarm and treading water, and he began to take stock. He remembered his training on what to do after any large explosion in open water that left one drifting at sea: first check your head, then find shelter. He reminded himself; he was Arthur Walpole, a Commander in the War, and was being transported to his next post in Indonesia. Some Federation ship must have sighted his, and fired before anyone picked them up on the radar. Must have been, unless... He couldn't (or rather, refused to) think of it. Satisfied that his memory sustained no damage, he continued his survey. His clothes were wet, heavy, and opressive, but not nearly worrisome enough to cast a shadow on his mindset of survival. He looked around for a break in waves among the endless swells. He did not call out, as he was trained, not for fear of attracting survivors like himself, but the enemy.

For a long night he clung and kicked steadily with his flotsam, which now in those bleak hours before the sun rose he saw as none other than some sort of personal cooler from a cabin, large enough to hide a crouching man uncomfortably, and its dimple textured white surface, stained with soot from the explosion, was slightly melted in various areas. Oddly sentimental and grateful to the inanimate wayward cooler, he continued towards what he could faintly see to be crashing waves, inevitably meaning land or a reef. Exhausted and hungry, he would find that morning dawned fast in his pacific clime, and soon he was able to make out a few islands arranged together perfectly, almost as if they were placed there; their placement and shape formed an uncanny resemblence the the manner in which rain accumulates on the overhang of common awnings, before the ever-growing drop's weight bears it down into gravity's embrace. To Commander Arthur Walpole, its similitude to a pearl necklace was striking. With a renewed sense of resolve, clutching his icebox, he tread towards his only hope of survival, the first pearl on that opulent tropical archiapelago.

>>9858602

Weary in the morning hours, Commander Walpole drove the final thrusts of his legs against the sea, and when he knew he was close, used just enough energy to help the crashing waves carry him to the isle's shore like a piece of driftwood, where he splayed out on his back, and tossed his icebox over his head backwards toward the isle with his last ounce of strength. There on the white beach, as the sun baked his drenched uniform and skin, he fell into a exhausted sleep.

>>9858067
>To be good was a weakness. To deliberate, to consider, to philosophize. That wasn't the way to victory.

Written like you violently banged de Sade's head against Ayn Rand's head, made them watch a youtube crash course on nihilism, and then wrote a fanfic about the output. If that's what you intended for the narrator, great.

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The port of Algiers roared with life. From that covered bazaar to those rooftop gardens, each of its corners boomed to the ballad of the city. Tradesmen in turbans peddled goods from their stalls, mothers in hijabs watched children at play , and carpenters in almost nothing at all sawed on half-hulled pirate ships. Masses on masses of people - so many of them that hardly a soul saw the Venetian Wind drop anchor in port.
Aboard the ship, Mateo kept his eyes on the waterfront and his hands on the twelve crucifixes round his neck. They blazed his fingertips with the heat of the desert sun. He smiled partly for his pain and partly for the penance drawn from that pain, but mostly for his plan to reap number thirteen.
The smile began to wilt when a sailor came forth and said, “You’ve got me and my crewmates talking.”
Mateo slipped the chain under his surcoat and turned to regard the sailor. As was so often the case, he needed to drop his chin to make eye contact. Over his forty-odd years on this earth he learned the taller one grows, the sorer his neck becomes. And sometimes he thought his neck to be the sorest for miles. Under his breath he grumbled, “Talking about?”
“Settle a bet for us.” The sailor rested his elbows on the banister and communicated half with his lips, half with his fingers, “We figured it either takes a stupid man with money or an even stupider man with loyalty to voyage this far from home.” He leaned toward Mateo as if to plot a mutiny. “So which one is it?”
Mateo barked a laugh so deep it made the sailor jump. “Stupidity has nothing to do with it - not in my case. It takes a brave man with loyalty to travel to the other side of the world.”
The sailor spat a brownish glob into the sea. “Bravery, stupidity; spade and shovel. They’re two sides of the same coin, my friend.”
“Shovels? Coins?” Mateo’s head began to hurt more than his neck. “For heaven’s sake, man, drop the poetry and speak in plain Spanish.”
The sailor’s smirk brought Mateo’s blood to a boil. He had seen that same slyness painted on more faces than he cared to recall. It was the look given to morons, that pompous little smile that said, “I know something you don’t.” Moron they might call him, but at least Mateo was no coward. He was about to say as much when the sailor preempted him:
“Alright, alright.” He fanned his arms as if to cool Mateo’s temper. “Let me ask you this one question, then: What is a loyal man with bravery doing in a city of pirates? Captain’s sealed his lips tight as a clam.”
(1/2)

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>>9858858
“As he should,” responded Mateo . “Now if you don’t mind-“
“Might I have some of that?” He pointed at the canteen hooked to Mateo’s belt.
Mateo wrapped his fingers around it. “Now we’re all manners, ey? I thought you were done with questions.”
“This is more a request than a question.”
“Again with the word games. Can’t you just get some of your own off port?”
The sailor shook his head mopingly. “Won’t have the time, I’m afraid. We’re heading out as soon as the wind permits. No sense lingering in this corsair hive any longer than we must.”
Mateo harrumphed. Pirates were the least of his concerns. If nothing else, he celebrated the notion of facing those dangers feared by lesser men.
“That was a vague answer,” pressed the sailor.
Not without some hesitation, Mateo unhooked his canteen and handed it over.
The sailor halted mid-sip to remark , “Gads, man! This thing is nearly empty! I thought you filled it just this morning.”
“That I did,” growled Mateo. He then pried the canteen from the sailor’s fingers and added, “Perhaps I should provision it better.” So saying, he disembarked from the barge and set foot into world separate from his own. A world of adventure, he fancied. A proving grounds.
First he needed to find a place to stay. This seemed simple from the start since the captain was kind enough to recommend such a place . However, Mateo soon discovered that navigating the twisty streets was no easy feat . Twice he found himself at the same whitewashed intersection until he used it as a landmark. One sunburnt scalp later, he happened upon his destination .
The building in question hardly stood out from its neighbors. Mateo would have missed it had it not been for the signboard hung above its entryway. Though he could not make heads or tails of the letters, he did recognize the picture above them . The chipped paint showed a monstrous bird of prey swooping on a tower. Mateo knew the bird to be a Roc of Arabian legend. Any Cazador worth his chain could say as much. The Spanish Inquisition expected nothing less from its witch hunters.
(2/2)

>>9858659
I wanted it to seem like the narrator was attempting to justify his own actions to himself.

The 'backstory' might not be entirely clear. Basically, the world was fine but many places were struggling. The narrator was a real piece of shit and wanted to seize power for himself(obviously I'm oversimplifying). So he started a revolution and seized power for himself, doing some really bad things(and realizing just how horrible his actions were) along the way.

After he established his rule, he was obviously shunned by the ordinary people, and went into seclusion.

That leads to what I wrote, where he is sitting, pondering his revolution and attempting to justify his own actions to himself. The horror of his actions, the fact that the ends don't always justify the means, comes crashing down upon him at the end of the piece.

Was this not clear in what I wrote? That neither I nor the narrator actually believe that

>To be good was a weakness. To deliberate, to consider, to philosophize. That wasn't the way to victory.

If not is there anything I can change to make this more clear?

>>9858858
>>9858867
gotta say, a pleasant enough read, feels a bit like a fantasy novel, something with a "just flawed enough not to be a mary sue" character, i'm sure you have a plot stricken out in your mind or on paper. looks good. what are your inspirations? your idols in literature?
i will be honest that it's somewhat ridden with cliche and the prose isn't genius or anything, but i get the sense you understand your limitations and are just having a blast writing your advenure, which i assume is what the story is.

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>>9858858

13 crosses tho

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>>9858404
Fourth page.... gettin' worried here. If someone wishes to say something, I'm all ears.

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>>9858899
Yeah this isn't historical fiction so much as historical fantasy. I'm going for a Dumas meets Quentin Tarantino vibe, with a dash of dark fairytale/supernatural realism (the "wizard" is a fraud who uses alchemy to convince people otherwise)

My main influences prose-wise are Bakker and GRRM. But as I mentioned earlier my idol would be Dumas. Thanks for reading!

>>9858963
yeah i got a dumas vibe and certainly love the author. definitely check out some picaresque stuff like Gil Blas and Lazarillo De Tormes, it will serve you well i'm sure.

>>9858984
I actually wrote an undergrad thesis on Lazarillo de Tormes haha. One of the antagonists (Mateo's old war buddy) is heavily influenced by the Squire

>>9858987
fuckin love lazarillo, don't like that is was bundled with el buscon tho. so do you know spanish? is so, have you heard of or read guzman de alfarache?

>>9858999
I haven't, is there an English translation?

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>>9858947
Fifth page now.... Someone? Anyone?

>>9859124
nope, unfortunately. it has an archaic translation, actually, but i wish someone like edith grossman would take it up and give it a whack.

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>>9859283
Sixth page now...

Y'know the party ain't stoppin' till someone walks in - or I run out, whatever comes first, I suppose.

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Yo... can you smell it?
Its that ghost in the shell shit
call this posthuman:
I change my brain, the ghost is intact
U lame, the same, ur soul still whack
This game's a shame, u lack impact
No name, no fame, a prole infact
Me? Like Donna Haraway my arms tearaway, call me cyborg,
No need to fuck with that cuck from Freiburg
I mean Heidegger - he aint my nigger
Haha, ur triggered, u mad cause my mind bigger
u fear techne; ur right to suspect me,
before long, you'll have to respect me,
bent knee to a brand new physis,
U know that humanity gon lose it
But choose this: neverending capital, body parts swapping, a new kind of natural
I can drop my IQ low, how I get that stupid flow,
strap on a black dick, ur girl calls it climactic
take her to the matrix, next to me you basic
Ya I blew my e-load, one second reload
hit that switch for auto-cuck, act like u don't give a fuck
feeling down on your luck but I don't got no sympathy
Im free of that deficiency, that pathetic inefficiency, that genetic insufficiency, can't call it a proficiency
Yah
We gon fuck with evolution, engineer our DNA
This the final revolution but I doubt you'll see the day
best be known ur bird has flown
I'm tired of this homo shit
It will be shown u must atone,
this isn't just some PoMo shit
watch my throne I stand alone,
I'll wreck u with a slomo kick,
I'm freshly grown, u flesh and bone
And suckin on my robo-dick
so, well, kill yourselves
and call it posthuman

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>>9859403
Page Seven - and end of the first chapter.

Note: the first two pages are actually the prologue. Chapter One consists of five pages each, at least, I hope I can keep it that way consistently or close.

Any critiques welcome, I just ask if you give me something constructive. Please don't be shy to say whatever, just please say why. Thank you!

Wind comes with silence
As we attend to shadows
The breeze cries now gone

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>>9859560
Eight Page now.... Still waitin' for my first bite...

Oh yeah, and new chapter.

>>9855759

When sweet summer's head fell weary and lost,
Heaven's misted eye sat twelve steps atop
Flows from sea foam falling: from dark accost;
To be or not for her apple above.
Myrtle may pass quickly at seasoned hands,
And noble minds suffer a sea of troubles,
While tempered strings may favour falling sand;
The fairest prairie rose on twelve's rubble.
If darkness, in vain, shows fairest judgement,
Wounds never cease in past unforgotten:
For wide is the gate, and love abundant;
One cannot the other yet both blossom.
If mortals fetish love, do they die sinned,
Or pure heart turned blue, and jaded soul skinned?

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>>9860046
Ninth time - right time, am I right? Am I right?

Someone? No?

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>>9856033
Inside, Mateo was taken off-guard by a rag – no, a monkey – that landed on his pauldron. He combed a hand through the monkey’s fur and asked, “What’s your name?”
“Tulip! Don’t go disturbing our guests!”
With a oo-hah! Tulip hopped overhead and swung from beam to beam until landing on a countertop at the other end of the room. Tending that counter was a light-skinned innkeep whose arms were as hairy as the monkey’s. He waved one of them at Mateo and hollered, “Come on over now! Don’t let Tulip scare you out!”
Mateo marshaled a tight-lipped smile. As he crossed the gloomy commons, he minded the paper lanterns that threatened his forehead. “It takes more than a tricky beast to frighten me.”
“Ah, Tulip is not up to any tricks,” said the innkeep. “She wants to check your hair for bugs is all.”
Mateo widened his smile in earnest. He rubbed the bald patch that divided his hair and said, “If that’s the case, then Tulip will be sorely disappointed.”
The innkeep gave a wheezy chuckle. By the time Mateo reached the counter, he recovered enough to say, “So how did you come to find my lovely establishment?”
“The captain of my vessel suggested the Roc of Exile as a safe stay for outlanders.”
The innkeep shrugged. “It’s safer n’ most. But when a city is run by pirates, nowhere is truly safe, not for sure.” He measured Mateo with a pale-eyed stare. “Which captain referred you, by the way? Enriquez? Cipriani?”
“Arnalfi. Paolo Arnalfi.”
“Arnalfi!” Such was the innkeep’s roar that it squashed all other talk in the room.
Mateo glanced over his shoulder and found almost every eye hooked on him. “Mind your drinks,” he commanded in his much-rehearsed Cazador voice. In no time at all they did just that.
By now the innkeep’s face was cherry-red. He went on in a spittle-flecked fury, “My own brother comes to the city, but he spares not the time to visit me?”
“He was worried about the corsairs,” said Mateo, uncomfortable to have so suddenly entangled himself into a family affair.
The Arnalfi brother shook his head. “It was not the corsairs he was worried about – it was his precious honor. Once an exile, always an exile. The world turns its back on you. The world you thought you knew, anyhow.” He vented a drawn-out sigh. Tulip patted the back of his bristly hand as he said, “Never you worry about that. How can I help you?”
“I wouldn’t mind wetting my lips. Get me a measure of your second cheapest.” Because whoever ordered the cheapest at a dive like this may as well go blind.
Crockery clattered as Arnalfi began fixing the drink. “Anything else I can get you? Slice of lamb? Bowl of couscous?”
“Did the monkey have a hand in the preparation?”
After setting a mug of something frothy in front of Mateo, Arnalfi snuck a look at the monkey’s paws. Scratching his neck, he said, “Not a hand, exactly.”

(3/4 of >>9858858>>9858867)

>>9860221
4/4

“I think I’ll pass on that.” The drink tasted sweeter than Mateo’s preference. Then again, it was not the flavor he was paying for. “Besides a bed for the night, perhaps I might trouble you for some information?”
Arnalfi exchanged a look with Tulip as though the two of them were coming to an important decision. “That depends,” he said with a certain luster to his eyes.
Of course. Greed. It was something Mateo knew well; something for which he once spilt blood; and something he had forsworn since taking up arms with the Inquisition. Sighing, he hunted through his coinpurse. His brick of a fist clacked three bits of silver onto the countertop. “Tell me what you know about the Algerian underworld,” he said quietly.
Arnalfi’s good humor vanished in a flash. Crooking a brow, he said, “Of that, there’s much to tell.”
“Then begin with the basics. Who controls the most power?”
“Well, that would be,” he dropped his voice even lower than Mateo’s, “that’d be Bloodbeard.”
Bloodbeard. Many a time during the voyage, Mateo overheard a fair share of stories about the pirate-lord. If even a quarter of them were true, he was one much to be feared. “This Bloodbeard,” he began, “is he the type to consort with witchcraft?”
Arnalfi sniffed. “Well, rumor has it he possesses the Seal of Solomon but,”– he slanted his eyes – “who’s asking?”
“That’s not important.”
“Not important, he says. It’s important if you want answers.”
Mateo sighed. “My name is Mateo the Catalan,” he said with every ounce of his usual bluster. “You need only know that I seek an outlaw wizard. One who I suspect has been hiding in this city for over a month’s time.”
Arnalfi’s expression darkened as he sank back in his chair. “Well then Bloodbeard is not the man you’re looking for.”
“Oh no?”
Arnalfi shook his head, putting both his jade-pierced ears on display. “Bloodbeard only just returned to the city from a voyage. In a week’s time there’s supposed to be fireworks to celebrate the, erm, the deeds he wrought in Cyprus.”
“Which means my man has been staying with someone else.”
“Well,” said Arnalfi, “there is another...”
Two coins silvered by the lamplight. “Tell me more.”

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>>9860221
Thank you very much!
You know, for a second I thought I'd turned invisible or something and people were passing by because they couldn't see me.
Thanks again!

Oh, and tenth and final upload, I suppose. I can post more if someone requests. Otherwise. I am honnoured to have done some writing today, I suppose.

>>9860343
No problem mang. I suggest reading Discworld. Lots of humor there you can use for inspiration. Also Joe Abercrombie's stuff runs the vein of dark fantasy humor.

>>9860426
Thanks again, friend! It's good to have some feedback after a long day.

Yo, if you were to give my writing a rating out of ten? What would you rate me? Would you say this stuff's still pretty far from publishing material?

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>>9860473
1-10 is a stupid scale but you still have a way to go. You've got a good narrative voice which can make or break an author and I think the premise is definitely publishable. But you need to work on prose, specifically more showing than telling (mixing hard facts with sensory details, and I'm talking all five senses). My best advice is read as much as you can on your genre and on grammar. Take notes of what you like and what you don't like. Rinse and repeat every day to keep yourself sharp.

Or disregard this advice, I'm a 23 year old neet who might not know better and everyone learns how to write differently

>>9860551
22 year old neet here. I guess we're all in this together, after all.

I'll do what I can to establish the senses. But I have been told before I have a strong narrative presence, which is one step ahead, I suppose.
Thanks once more for the comments! I can only hope there IS a talent here I can hone. But otherwise, thanks!

>>9852020
Anyone want to critique this?
No takers yet.

>>9859529

come on fuck my shit up

>>9860603
Yeah man I think you've got talent. It's hard to make me smirk and your first page did it at least once. I think humor is one of those rewarding motifs that keeps the reader, well, reading. Now it's a matter of honing it, as you said.

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>>9860662
Here's as far as I got. I suggest reading more all-around. Also keep a dictionary handy and reference any words you're unsure of before using them. Type out the definitions or make flashcards if you have to.

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>>9849842 (OP)
Wrote this for a battletech forum after playing a match, and then re-wrote and edited parts of it for a web publishing class.

Here's a pastebin: https://pastebin.com/kQ4JLHST

I feel like I have to go over a story and re-write 5 or 6 times, reading at completely different states-of-mind, before it starts coming out how I like it.

>>9859529
It's pretty good for free-verse or a rap song. Watch using the n word unless you're black. But the strap on dick line makes me uncertain if you are. You aren't using the word offensively, but nigga works better for that then a hard r. If you are black then power to ya, it's fine as is man.

Her Arm

An old gypsy couple crossing the road at noon. Extreme heat. The woman is wearing black sunglasses. The man looks emaciated. Both dressed in rags. Overused and worn out. They must not have any other thing to hide their skin but these fatigues. They probably never wash these because that would mean going naked while the clothes are drying. Maybe that’s why they look unwashed. Look at those plastic shoes in dull colors. That surely must give them sore ankles without any socks. Those wrinkles on their dark brown hands. Wavy charred skin of old humans. Why are they wearing those warm sweaters in summer? They’re form the hills surely. They had no choice but to wear warm clothes on their descent from the hills. They’re nomads i am sure. They reek of goat milk and cottage grime and dust i know. In his left hand the old man is holding a big white envelope. Maybe an X-ray. Ah! This is the old hospital road i now remember.

The old woman is being led by her arm. The traffic is going from their left to right if you stand behind them. The old man holds her left bicep with his right hand. Raising her left arm in the process. Hanging her thin frame like on a cloth hanger. Or a bird that died with its left wing still unfurled. She’s not trying to free herself. He almost throws her into the moving traffic but then drags her back. He’s using her to test the traffic. His walking stick. Dipping her in and out. He’s done this twice now. Her right side is exposed to the oncoming traffic. He’s to her left. She’d protect him in case they get run over, which they probably won’t since the traffic is slow. He’s now jerking her arm again. He’s not angry at her though - i can see in my rear view mirror. He’s just confused and that has reduced him to a grimace. His eyes are being dazzled by the sun on the tarmac and the fast moving windscreens. He’s surely seen shinier sun in the hills. Still, he squints. The woman is surely blind.

>>9853121
it's true. I've had crap stolen from my poems before. fuck you, anons.

>>9861304
Real shit?

I laced my fingers behind my head and leaned back in my chair and stared at the clock and waited for the ceiling to collapse on top of me.
He chewed the end of his ballpoint and scribbled a few sentences and looked up for a moment to steal a glance at the girl a few seats away from him.
She wore too much lipstick and eyeliner and uncomplicated satisfaction on her face to be beautiful. I wished I could push her into a dirty lake and wash it all off. He wished he could fuck her.
I sympathized. We both wanted to see her disappointed.

>>9850710

>>9850710
>walked
>keeps
be consistent with your tenses

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I was feeling a particular way they other day. The feelings gone, but the words live on.

"One bullet sits on my desk beside my gun. One pen in my hands beside the bullet by my gun. One bullet in my gun, spinning around for fun.
Clicks and clacks as the hammer pulls back. My finger on the trigger keeps the bullet intact. One slip is all it takes for not my finger, but blood to turn this page. One bullet in hand to write this phrase.
Sadly lead only writes when shaved. Enticing click, soothing clack, as the hammer pulls the sound takes me back; To a feeling id rather lack. How quickly this day could turn black; As the ink of this pen foretells the end, this message is destined for my head.
- simple - Machine like the mind - click, clack, save for the bang; Intricacies in simplicity, more than a finger, more than a thought; Wheel spinning, hammer cocked. Strike the bullet as my thought."


Tear me apart.

This is something I just started but feel very good about:

“You were here,” says DeMarne, “when they put this all together, weren’t you?”

He is pointing upwards to the glass atrium they are standing beneath and the lines of curved aluminum that accent it, mimic the shapes of bird wings. The sun is almost set now, the light red and purple as tomorrow morning’s rain gathers.

“Yes,” Smawley answers after a moment. His hands are folded in front of him, his voice hoarse from disuse.

DeMarne slept most of the flight. He does not ask if Smawley did the same. When he woke on their final approach, he watched him draw a four-leaf clover the size of a grain of rice in the corner of his customs document.

“That was a long time ago now, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,”

“But it doesn’t feel very long, somehow,”

“No. It feels like a very, very long time to me, Karl,”

Smawley knows they built the atrium in 1988. He was here, maybe standing even in the very same spot while a band played to mark its completion. The whole terminal smelled of travel. This smell is made in roughly equal parts from perfume and body odor and plastic, caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, and the stale air breathed and exhaled in coach, business, and yes- even first class. Not a wholly pleasant scent, but one that is unique and unmistakably human. And that requires many humans together to make.

There were red and white banners hanging over the terminal that day, exclaiming, advertising:

WILLKOMMEN IN DER WELT

The phone bank is gone now, but there was one by the far wall across from where he is standing now. He had to beg in his terrible German, had to grovel to strangers for enough coin to make an international call. After twenty minutes, he had enough to learn that Kerry had gone unexpectedly into labor and that her father was coming to take her to Trinitarian Memorial.

I’m so sorry, he was telling her, I’m late. I’m so sorry.

It’s not all your fault. Your son is a little early.

Welcome to the World.

Something about the terminal is very different now. Things are just so in this way, perhaps- always seeming different upon arrival, upon leaving for home. Is it always this way? How polished the floor looks, how clean the bathrooms feel? How inviting the bar is through its wide windows...

“I didn’t get a chance to ask you, how is your son?”

“Spoiled,” Smawley grumbles, “everyone his age is spoiled,”

At last, they see the luggage as it clears the rubber flaps. Four trunks in all. Fendi- almost a full set. Little brass padlocks securing each zipper.

Each year it seemed there was more business, and so more traveling to be done, more luggage necessary. There was this very persuasive young man who had shown him the trunks, told him how, once, luggage belonged exclusively to the landed aristocracy. Some tribes in the Pacific literally worshipped cargo.

It is in our blood to have nice things and to have nice things to carry your nice things in.

>>9860937
Thanks m8, just wanted to see where I'm strongest from a 1st or 3rd person angle. The pieces are a year apart in quality, but I had really assumed the second one would beat the first.
Man, big surprise.

Yo, thanks for another review!

>>9861712
Oh wow I didn't even know they were written by the same person. I much preferred the prior one in almost every regard. The other one seemed full of unnecessary pretense

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>>9861088

>>9861928
I come to these threads to see where I can get opinions, hopefully some professional ones.

I mean to publish my works, and hope to make a living. I was always held in high regard with speeches and acting in highschool. It's surprising to know I have a good voice when narrating too. If I can, I'll try turning these works of mine like one big speech - with some writing I hope to hone here and there and inbetween.

Again, thanks man!

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The Roar of machinery woke Duncan as usual. No need for the Hab unit alarms as some used due to his Hab units proximity to the mouth of the pits. Rubbing his eyes the grogginess of the previous night began to lift, Head pounding, eyes attempting to push themselves out his head he stumbled across the room to the drawer pulling out 2 generic painkillers and some water.Noticing a sting he looked down, blood covering his knuckles, most likely a result of inebriated exploits the night before. Walking to the sink in the corner of his room he filled it with water, or what those in control fobbed off on the workers as as water, most likely run off from cooling the drills he thought. Dousing his face in water and then soaking his hands in the sink he stared into a broken grimy mirror with a mockingly joyous sticker in the corner of some companies mascot character with the company motto in Zorvak's Native dialect Zordan. This of course soured his mood even more as he saw the man standing before him, gaunt, tired,worn out, a man past his prime at the mere age of twenty-six.The dust kicked up from the machinery used in the mines had worked under his skin, a common sign in men of their occupation on the colony stood out against his deathly pale skin making him look perpetually unclean no matter how he scrubbed or picked at the flecks with a needle they were there for good now and there was nothing that could be done. Looking round his eyes caught the clock showing 2345 zorvak standard time meaning he had only 10 minutes to get dressed and to the pit head.

I have nothing to post because I haven't translated anything from my native language yet, but I do need some advice. I'm writing a novel with a lot of lengthy fighting scenes, and I'm having a hard time balancing how much information i should give regarding the choreography etc to give the reader a clear picture of what's going on without hampering the flow of the text too much. Has anyone here written/read anything like this? I know that novels with in depth fighting sequences are very rare due to how difficult it is to make them interesting, but that's one part of why I want to try it.

>>9862381
I like the setting but to you definitely have some tidying up to do. Could perhaps trim down some of the sentences, use a bit less adjectives, as they tend to cancel each other out if you overuse them. Some general grammatical errors I won't bother to comment on since I'm sure you're aware of them.

>>9862397
Less is more

Focus on the effect and result, not on the means. Let the reader's imagination fill in as many blanks as possible, because their imagination will invariably come up with something far better for them than anything you could have possibly written.

>>9862430
The problem is I don't trust my readers too come up with all the cool shit I do! But yeah, I see what you're saying. I will focus on getting it all in writing for now and clean it up later. Perhaps translate something and post it here. The structure and amount of detail should come across even though my english isn't good enough for real translator's work.

Have a horseshit poem I wrote awhile back when I was stuck in some shit hole for 20 weeks with no outside contact.

My Mind, but a Player

A Temple in the trees, long forgotten
Pinned in my mind, lost in prayer
Lost in thought and hope
Far from home and verdant hills
Only plains before me, only pains lie behind
And withing long gone pain, shreds of joy
Buried in melancholy, in acted apathy
BU dug up at inopportune times
TO test my faith and tear my patience
My eager hands grasping to glints and shadows
As ectasy rears its head, only to hid
Only to cower as I approach
To seize it, to conquer it
But I fall short, my goals shattering
Upon the rocks
Within the grove
In which my temple resides

>>9862482
And a short piece of writing I already linked half of. I am mildly happy with how it turned out though, even if it isn't great. I'm not a writer.

That was all long ago and much too far away now. At the time, he had been terrified of the new journey and the loss of his friends and acquaintances, but he had grown and learned. In the moment goodbyes were almost always too painful for him to take but you meet new people and you grow older and things seem to change; They don’t, really, but perspective matters much more than the reality of things do and either way you move on. He wouldn’t lie, there was a fondness he couldn’t compare anything to of the memories of the people of his past.
They littered his mind, each a pylon that stood higher inside his remembrance than they ever had outside it. Each was better in memory than they had been in the time. He would hear of them in passing sometimes, either from his family or a call. It was funny how hard it him when the status quo of those days changed. Once he recalled hearing of a childhood friend moving states. He was struck with a feeling of inexplicable loss that he was unable to shake. Another time his father told him of the death of an old neighbor. She had been close to an aunt when he was young, and dread had engulfed him. He was nearly broken to tears in that moment.
The longing for stagnation, for everything to be as pristine and beautiful has it had been in his youth, remained inside him. It was a cancer he couldn’t cure. It broke his heart every day, bringing him closer to what he could only describe as the death of soul.
But it was all long ago. Those memories were no more than pieces of a jigsaw that was no longer a cohesive image. He was losing himself, losing his values, and losing his mind. He leaned back in his chair, sipped on his gin, and closed his eyes. He wondered what had gone wrong in his life, if he was alone in this war waged against one’s own ego. Sometimes he felt he was stuck in that adolescent glow; he certainly felt he was.
All the people he was around seemed so careless, so free of their history. He often felt himself wise, old for his age, but now he wondered how wise the unhappy could be. Perhaps he was the greatest fool, and individual unwilling to allow himself contentedness. A man drowning himself in emotion and embracing melancholy and tragedy over passion and benevolence. Still, he bobbed up, gasping for breath and grasping for someone or something to grab a hold of his hand and save him.

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Check it out, we found something.
We found the tender little thing.
We found it and now it's
wriggling, the tender little thing.

>>9862397
As a native English speaker i have fallen into some terrible habits with grammar i am trying to fix. Doesn’t help that the education system where i live wasn’t the best but i can make no excuses as its my own fault.

>>9858444
Y'know, I checked this thread again, saw the (You) then went back and looked at it, and i take it all back. It's not purple. It's actually really solid prose. Maybe I'm just in a different mood tonight, I dunno. I can't give any real specific critique, sorry.

>>9856033
1) www.pastebin.com. Use it. You can set pastes to expire after a month or so, too.
2) "Goldor, go get the broom shafts" sounds much better.
3) "tittle"... um

Bro if you post a pastebin link next time people will probably help you more. Except for that one anon who did you a critique in MSpaint, most people won't do that for you.

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>>9862568

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Detroit, the city at night. The industrial behemoth, illuminated by the moon, reveals her true nature. Alleys and storefronts, veiled windows and taverns, banal in the light of day, bear mystery and intrigue beneath the shroud of darkness. The faded browns and tans characterizing the cityscape are replaced by the vulgar glow of neon signs and the yellow, flickering, glimmer of streetlights, which cast long shadows into the night. Rats scamper in the darkness. Sewer grates issue prodigious plumes of steam. The streets are alive with festivity. Car horns honk incessantly as silhouetted prostitutes adorned in feather boas advertise their wares. Hip dandies and brawling drunks stalk the sidewalks, sizing up passerby. Junkies and vagabonds huddle around trashcan fires, looking for a fix. In a city infatuated with cars, every head turns when the detectives in the ‘Cuda pass by.

>>9862573
I guess next time I'll try.
I know pastebin, it's just I forgot to use it this time, I think.

Maybe I'll post again on that site if someone requests, or perhaps for the next critique thread when the writing has been refinded a little better.

Yo thanks for the critique by the way!

Some time had passed after noon, and the sun was still shining, inflaming the skin of anyone daring to stand beneath its light. The tribesmen were heading back to their village, tired after ending their daily hunt, and carrying between them the bounty obtained during the day. The pray was scarce in the vicinity of their homes, so they ventured deeper into the savannah to catch something. They were anxious to get home and feed their kin, and they marched a bit desperate.

This is a translation of the introductory paragraph of a short sotry i'm writing in my language, spanish. It's not something complex so i guess the translation is accurate.
The plot is about some tribesmen that get kidnapped by explorers and put in a zoo like animals, for others to see.

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Sorry it's small

>>9862916
...now.

That's everything I have written so far.

>>9862923
nigger

>>9862943
this unironically desu

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https://pastebin.com/YEk0TKbc

Further along than last time, but fairly sure it's still bad.

>>9862000
This is why is come to /lit/

I have no idea what technical terms like appositive etc are.

I am not a native English speaker. You probably could tell that from my writing.

I don't have the confidence to write seriously in English. I just casually post random stuff here to carry the delusion forward for another day.

But thanks a lot, David?! You've now inspired me to learn the language formally.

>>9855759
Someone please critique this.

>>9855759
It's not good desu
"His fluids"? What kind of fluids aside from blood?

>>9864360
cum

>>9862832
>>9862836
>>9862839
>>9862844
>>9862848
>>9862854
>>9862866
>>9862869
>>9862878
>>9862923
It looks pretty, but whats your purpose of writing this? Are you a philosopher? How old are you? When did you start?

I have a mystery of sorts in my current story. The mystery is what drives the main character, and thus the plot, forward

I'm torn between treating the reader as a complete idiot by making the solving of the mystery very easy to follow and actually forcing the reader to think for himself

Any tips on handling mysteries?

>>9865384
the latter approach

>>9865384
force the reader to think. if I think I know what the true solution to the mystery is, I'm not interested anymore (even if I'm completely wrong)

>>9849842
You are the kind of person who enjoys the taste. Meat that spoilt darkened pus cream-white ridden with a gangrene miasma of vile rot flesh so delicate; so sublime. The tender snap of putrefied bone spotting scads colour: brown and green and red with the congealed blood of friends, family. Death and marrow become your drink. Maggots are a delicacy that wither and crunch fine juices between molder teeth. You dip low, a bent bony pair of knockers knocking against hardwood, like the feral animal you are: the one that savors, laps swollen patois and saliva varnishing the kill, marking your territory. Its rough skin is like sandpaper. It’s bloodshot sclera staring glass into the void makes for a tasty jelly.

Time passes in your indulgence. You’re not sure how much, for the darkness in this damp dungeon is absolute. It feels like a long, long while. You feast a feast fit for kings before all the kings died. You feast so lavishly until the calcium has been picked from bones and chewed into nothingness. Filling, you think? Sated? No. No, you’re still hungry. Still parched. Everything in the world spins like a rusted pinwheel, and you vomit.

You die. You live again. Something vague pokes your mind, a hot branding iron against cerebellum; fever dream dancing, marionettes on strings of silk. Zephyr that ebbs and flows as fluid as a polluted river, and you gasp in each breath of pure, sweet oxygen as though you’ve never had lungs to use. You have a piece of lung stuck between your back molars. It’s chewy, succulent; you relish in the flavor even as acid accosts your scarred pallet.

Stomach is an empty ether, a Paragon of the Barren. Blood mixes with blood upon the birch-wood floor, and you begin to bark wordlessly, a mad dog: ‘put ‘em down’ echoes. It hurts, it all hurts so fucking badly yet you can’t make the pain go away. Spasm, writhe on the precipice of self-consumption. Nothing is working, nothing is working: synapses stew like gumbo, cooked from a fresh pot of roped intestines. Your arms break as they twist unnatural; your mind given to daemons, gone for all but the flesh. A soft word: whispers of ‘kill me’ through cracked lips and blister pox.

Surreality overcomes reality, and you slip further and further away.

>>9864524
>Are you a philosopher?
Did you read his shit? He's obviously not. And he's 20.

>>9865412
>>9865433

A red herring is something that is purposely placed in the story to distract the reader, right? (I'm new, I know) To make the reader draw the wrong conclusion?

What is you opinion on using them? How many herrings is too many? Should the characters fall for it too, or could that end up feeling like a waste of time?

I'm at the corner store. I see a girl I really like. She has the best ass ever. I get up close to her,
and grab her ass. She turns around and catches me. I turn around and start whistling.

Now I'm fucking her. One thing though, I can't stop whistling.

>>9865623
I posted my own story here and it's one gigantic red herring so I can't condemn using it. Yeah it's okay, in moderation, as all things that are made perfect.

When sweet summer's head falls weary and lost,
Heaven's misted eye sat twelve steps atop
Flows from sea foam falling: from dark accost;
To be or not for her apple above.
Myrtle may pass quickly at seasoned hands,
And noble minds suffer a sea of troubles,
While tempered strings may favour falling sands;
The fairest prairie rose on twelve's rubble.
If darkness, in vain, shows fairest judgement,
Wounds never cease in past unforgotten:
For wide is the gate, and love abundant;
One cannot the other yet both blossom.
If mortals fetish love, do they die sinned,
Or pure heart turned blue, and jaded soul skinned?

How's this?

>>9865623
Two is the maximum number of red herrings you should employ in a good mystery book. Three red herrings may work, but only if one of them is only addressed for a short amount of time or treated as comic relief. If you're writing a movie for a general audience, there should only be one or else the audience will get confused.

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>tell me if this is funny or not

So we had pretty much hit the wall, and we're staring at this contract like paralyzed until Pinkweiner just says goes, "I mean what's more punk rock than selling out?"

And we were like, "What? What did you say?"

And he's all, "Like, think about it. What's more punk rock than turning your back on everyone who ever supported you? Anyone can give a finger to the establishment. Who the fuck out there gives a finger to their fans?"

And then Von started cracking up and then I was the next one to get it and pretty soon we were sitting on the floor of our shitty little apartment veritably pissing and we were like, "That's the best thing we've ever heard," so we signed and from that point on RENAL FAILURE was punk's answer to punk. We got haircuts, tailored suits. We started writing songs about, like, how capitalism is the fastest way to kick-start developing nations, how Law Enforcement Officers are public servants who deserve respect... our big hit was "Genuflect to Your Superiors"... we never went full NatSoc because that would have been too counter-culture. Just safe, like, Fox News style neocon. And the whole time sales just kept going up and up because we'd switched over to this four-four, accent on two and four I-IV-V structure and I guess people weren't listening to the lyrics anyway.

But oh, God, were the OG fans pissed. We had to get a P.O. Box and start living in the camper van again because we kept getting letter bombs. I almost lost a finger opening what I thought was a sampler of chocolate-covered walnuts. That was about three years ago, so most of the real Kazcynski wannabe's have moved on to, like, mailing flour to politicians and claiming it's anthrax or something, but we still get the occasional death threat. We used to save all of them, I think I still have a box of my favorites in, like, some storage container in fuckin' Iowa or someshit.

>>9867220
I didn't find it funny, but it was entertaining and an interesting idea.

>>9867220
I didn't lol but it's decent.

>>9867392
>>9867399

not like haha funny but just an amusing concept i guess i should have said

but ty for the reactions

https://pastebin.com/35t4escx

Will match critique for critique if you link your post.

>>9867484

is this a troll?

Strange is an understatement. Avoiding pretty much everyone, my downtime has consisted of night terrors, cold sweats, and what I thought at the time to be auditory hallucinations. What else could explain walking past people on the sidewalk and hearing what they were thinking? What they were feeling? The sound of myself saying these things out loud was absolute nonsense. Thinking it at all embarrassed me. But as the days went on, sitting in classrooms was no longer doable. The voices of the people around me, booming through my skull like bricks through windows, digging their pasts into my mind. The images consumed me; the guy I sat next to who I’ve never spoken to before, almost drowning when he was five, after falling into a lake. I could read the cannibalistic messages written across my math teacher’s eyelids when he closed his eyes and stretched. (I wonder which of them I would eat first. Definitely Daisy, she looks so healthy. Sexy little thing). Daisy, sitting in the very front, was preoccupied with the thought of mixing cocaine and ecstasy for the first time this weekend. The girl behind me, Megan, staring at the back of my head, wondering when the last time I showered was. I broke down after less than three days of this.

The third day I left class in the middle of a lecture and ran to the library. Other seniors usually went there to drink before class, or on their free period to kill time until last bell. I was there to hide. I was there for solitude, cowering in the back of the history section like a paranoid schizophrenic surrounded by an unseen enemy.
This is not normal I thought. Never have I heard of any disease or illness with a symptom like this. Flashes of movies involving people with psychological ‘abilities’ popping in and out of my head, I attempted to get a grip of myself. Whatever was happening, it wasn’t as bad in a room with not many people. People to hear. Brains to invade. I’m going fucking crazy.

>>9867651
Why the fuck would it be a troll?

>>9867879

because it's really really bad dude

like so awful it's hard to know where to begin

not to mention it's riddled with typos and grammatical errors. it's like you didn't even try.

if you're sincere I can give you a write up but honestly im not sure it would help

you just need to read more. like a lot more. and better things than whatever you're currently reading.

what were the last 5 books you read, out of curiosity?

>>9867892
That's your opinion mate, which is fair enough considering this is a critique thread. I'm open to criticism so post whatever you feel might improve it. If anything your post reads like a troll out of the low effort you've put into it. It might even be a pasta. If so good job.

>>9867904

answer the question, asshole. last five books you read. This literally reads like a fourteen year old boy wrote it. Have you ever actually read any literature? Or just the Legend of Drizzt?

btw here are the grammatical errors and careless typos you made because you obviously dont give enough of a shit to proofread your own diarrhea:

line 10 sentence fragment "Except for..." if it's a stylistic choice, then it's garbage.

line 12 should be "Well, you're" and final sentence could debatably be broken into two smaller sentences or joined with a semicolon.

25 should be "rabid" not "rapid"

35 you switch tenses "pulled" should be "pulls", "rattled" should be "rattles" etc. you just completely forgot which tense you were writing in you dumb fuck

in fact as I continue to read this it looks like you just completely abandoned trying to write in the present tense. you stupid idiot retard.

line 42 "it's" should be "its"

46 "Given time" should have a comma after it

68 "For now" should have a comma after it

72 "But first" should have a comma

>>9867980
Fair enough on all these points. Thanks mate.

>>9867992

you still haven't answered the question. have you ever read a book?

>>9867484
>https://pastebin.com/35t4escx
how old are you first?
>>9865792
>>9865792
>>9865792
>>9865792
also, mine for when i've critiqued yours

The stark evergreen forest was covered in snow and a pale moon hung low in the sky. Across the lonely track hurtled the X, a screeching beast of a train. Composed of over a hundred cars, it contained workers,coal, the young noble girl and a regiment of the Royal Guard
From outside one could see burning lanterns,people laughing,cursing and working. But their cheer was feigned and a cloud of gloom shrouded them. This wasn't a safe route after all.

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First section of a themed short story i want to enter into a competition. Please crit me /lit/

>>9862714
nobody replied to your post but I will say I liked it

Read and weep goys, read and weep:

"The Other Testament

This is a confession. A confession that I sincerely hope will be of interest to you, because although you do not realise it yet, but this is also your own private confession. It will also help you to realise your own pressing predicament, hitherto unknown, which is exactly the same as my predicament. The major difference between us, though, is that I understand this predicament in all its complexities and nuances, and I know the incredible burden that we all carry each moment of our lives, whilst you’ve lived without the faintest idea about its existence.
Clearly you lack any coherent idea of what I’m talking about, and it may seem that I’m talking in outlandish riddles designed to lure you into my incoherent tract, which by now you would’ve normally thrown the pages onto the floor in rage, trampling mud from your shoes onto its pages before mumbling all the while about its need for “transparency and clarity” – I can assure you, Mr. reader, that this is not the intended effect, but if it does lure you reading it against your obstinate will then all the better! –
This burden, this unwelcomed knowledge, however, does make me continually ask these almost trivial questions in those dark moments when I feel I cannot bear my pithy existence any longer: “How can I live happily after knowing this secret?” I know these questions are entirely meaningless, but due to some deep seated character fault I pose these questions to myself, expecting my subsequent answer, in absolute delusion, to rise me up like a whirlwind out of my oppressive bondage delivering me into an existence of light, freedom and delicate gaiety. But it never does. And the pathetic fact is that I even know, regardless of whatever answer I hear myself echoing back to my conscious mind, that this is an inconvenient waste of time. The worse consequence is that I begin to mentally torture myself because it is then, that I realise in complete lucidity, how utterly bleak and hopeless existence is. It is those inane questions that refer me to this terrifying mindset that I find unbearably hard to cope with.
My obsessive problems with these destructive questions do not end here. To make matters indefinitely worse, like an unsatiated masochist, I secretly receive extreme bitter pleasure from whipping myself with these types of thoughts that are blunt like a steel edge; I invariably, with a senile hope that can only come out of a filthy degradation, ask myself: “Why do I bother to keep living in this wasteland existence?”"

>>9869070
try proof reading, kid

https://pastebin.com/0uGBBEXA

I'm really bad at dialogue, I'm trying to work on it

>>9850326
What's your take on the Israeli left? I'm trying to get a focused impression of Israeli/Palestinian political discourse

i posted this before and didn't get any critique, not sure if it's good or bad

The Sun Never Fades

The sun never fades,
Never wanes,
Never not to see another day.
Beneath his regal splendor,
In the forests and the seas
Life riots in the throes of death,
Condemned to live,
And die again.
Decrying their fate,
the chirping birds light the forest aloud with noise,
The wolves howl,
And the trees join in silent commiseration.
By dawn the object of their jealousy has returned,
The everburning, happy sun.
What unfairness is his timeless condition
To his subjects below who languish in their mortality.
Man looks in envy at that kingly star,
Fixed in the sky for the perishing to see;
the sun, forever young.

>>9852543
/thread

>>9861629
better than the majority in the thread i.e. I actually read the whole thing.

>>9862381
tone down the adverbs / descriptors

The melancholy percussion that paces life, dotted with fantastic moments of brass, will eventually end with applause and the next piece's introduction.

Been working on some new stuff :)

"riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs"

Gareth's back ached as it pressed against cold hard rock, he sat in despair. He had been here before, perhaps 10 years ago now - he tried briefly to pinpoint the time but he wasn't concerned with specifics. he has caught up in the romanticism that we was reflecting on. Gareth had been to this place, many times as a young man with another young woman. Teah, a highschool peer of his. The couple had courted during their later terms of highschool and they would together take long sprawling walks in goosetree's forrest that edged the school yard. At the joint age of 15 they both took each others 'virtue', on the cold rock gareth was now more than familiar with. Not as comfortable in this moment as it was in that one(and others) he thought, but very little thereafter was to Gareth.

>>9862511

I dig it

>>9862842
Feedback on this please?

>>9862842
>>9874545
Obfuckingnoxious

>>9874598
Safuckinglty

>>9862511

Best in the thread

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An old friend of mine from University was having a party and decided to invited me, probably at the behest of another friend who pitied me. We had barely kept in touch since graduating eight years ago, but I had not made any new friends since, so thought it worthwhile re-kindling what was left of our friendship.

"Mark!" exclaimed Heather upon seeing me enter the driveway. I was not Mark, but I did not wish to let her down.

"Heather!" I responded, without a shred of self-esteem.

Heather had gotten ugly, and by that I mean she was in a wheelchair. I had hated wheelchairs ever since I was accused of pushing my disabled cousin down a flight of stairs in 1997 after an argument as to whether or not the chair could fly. It transpired that it indeed could not. I had won the argument.

"What happened to your fucking legs? Your legs are fucked", I asked.

"You pushed me down a flight of stairs in 1997."

I froze.

>>9875026

If this dude is so spastic people don't even remember who he is , family members at that, then the line "your legs are fucked" is far too forward and "Chad" for him. It totally disconnected me from the story

>>9875115
Dude...don't worry.

>>9862511
want to read more

Something was pouring from his mouth. He examined his sleeve.
Blood? Blood. Crimson, copper smelling blood; his blood. Blood. Blood. Blood.
And bits of sick.

Posted this in another thread, looking for some crit regarding the ending, clarity of the prose and characterization of the MC.

https://pastebin.com/1zKfuZfb

>>9849842
Thoughts were dissipated by the pounding of my chesthammer. A bead of sweat rolled down my ruddy face. I turned my head to a golden glimmer. "Salvation!" My face shone like a beacon, and a small smile crept across my lips. Then, the glimmer moved. The door pulled open and a well-dressed gentleman appeared in the portal. He smiles and says, "All yours, bud." I approach and enter. As I finally entered heaven, the man smoothly walked down the hallway. The bathroom was mine.

>>9875617
Every rule broken. There's a reason for them, they're traps plebs fall into.

>>9870763
"Let be" is my summary.

>>9875732
what rules? Not the anon you replied to but trying to improve my writing.

>>9875617
stop using so many fucking adjectives jesus christ GOD FUCK

>suddenly changing past tense to present tense

GREAT JOB
>smoothly walked

JESUS CHRIST FUCK

>>9869054
Thank you

>>9849983
Not bad. Except it sounds like you wanna suck his dick. Try toning down the "big burly man" description. It's like your preparing for the entry of his penis into your imagination.

>>9850045
>I’m not sure of the exact point that people came to regard us as together. I’m not even sure when our liaisons became public knowledge, her husband was out of the picture though when he found out about our relationship, wisely cutting his losses.

why would I want to read this?

Poem i wrote today.

Refuge of a burned man
Lay past leaftrodden swales
Remembrance of his scorned love
Long made this burned one quail

He wanders Cassiopeia
Loveblown and filled with listless rue
Past cedar, fig, apple, and trench
Faint shelter found from dullsun's view

And cometh to the Guinea pen
Where Greta, Sprinkle, Gypsy lay
A pat for a pet, a call for a hen
Sink fretful fingers into clay

Refuge of a wrongful man
Lay beneath the rankened burms
But what does he seek refuge from
Alas, only his cheeks are burned

Whatcha think lit

>>9876645
the end is a little weak otherwise it's decent
nothing special/10
3rd passage is the best

>>9872791
can someone please rate this brief piece, will post more

>>9872791
>he has caught up in the romanticism that we was reflecting on.
I would delete this sentance, its not even capitalized and makes no sense (we wuz kangs).
>woman. Teah, a highschool peer of his
could merge these sentences with a coma to make them more clear
>and they would together take long sprawling walks in goosetree's
delete together, and who/what is "goosetree" should it be capitalized, is it a person or proper noun?
> At the joint age of 15 they both took each others 'virtue',
This is cringe, lose the joint, say mutual if you gotta clarify both their ages, and why put quotes above virtue?
>on the cold rock gareth
capitalize
>Not as comfortable in this moment as it was in that one(and others) he thought, but very little thereafter was to Gareth.
This is a mess, lose the parenthesis, it confuses, the second part of the sentence should be made more clear.

>>9878797
my sf shit for review

On Blone, anyone could order a freshly printed gun from a weapons brokerage, then have bullets and equipment from bespoke smiths. As disintegration accelerated, numerous entities and individuals who identified with the personal will to overthrow the government allocated funds to weapons and training. Then they organized. They controlled public and private spaces when using modern technology and logistics, based on the power of many people carrying masses of material, coordinated by comms. When Acorp started funding a large proportion of them, they became directed at a corps level by an AI and executive team and local representatives. Insurgent numbers swelled and developed a basic social consciousness, members associated by going outside with the colour red.
Discontent spread across geographies. Local populations now at odds with a kakistocractic central state. Battered uninvolveds genocided by planetary smart weapons based on their beliefs, groups or loyalties. Cultists working through the sinews of City and satanic pederast landowners of the NorCon grasped for power and influence, filling gaps of authority. On the drier side of Mosa mountains, after the snow covered cliffs came cedar highlands settled by pastoral tribes and criminals, already autonomous, their kin networks dropped out and joined the insurgents. Hills giving way to plains and jungles scattered with Shamanists, subsistence farmers, drug traffickers and outlaws. All still flowing through the stream. More and more wore red.

>>9876985
I thought the third passage was the worst when i wrote it
Im still pissed that it differs in the rhyme scheme
To be clear i didn't expect it to be groundbreaking
This is still rather new for me ykno
If anything its a voice finding exercise or experiment with a certain style

But thanks for the thoughts, why'd you think the third stanza was the best?