/lit/ - Literature

>>17931138

I'm mainly rewriting this for coherence both between paragraphs and in sentence to sentence/word to word level. This is not a narrative rewrite or a character edit. I'll try to adhere to the general spirit of your excerpt.

He wanted to be in the sports bar four blocks from his apartment. Instead he was clinking six dollar beers that should have been four in front of a live band. Some new wave of post punk that should have been the free-select jukebox at Hut Hut Harry's. He never had a say where his friends were involved. They went places for 'moods': places that had dark cherry tables with hot blue lights. They wanted to feel like they were a part of 'something'.

Johnny wanted to feel drunk. He wanted heat in his cheeks, butterflies in his stomach, and the weight of his limbs and inhibitions off his shoulders.

At the sports bar he could black out, walk home, and then return the next day without being recognized once. In a place like this he needed an excel sheet to know the acquaintances from the friends' extended family or co-workers' gym partners. He didn't know the cute tomboy ordering a round, but he knew her boyfriend's brother who played bass in Phil's industrial nu-metal revival band. This run down bar filtered what felt like a million people through its slouching door every other hour and someone in that tide of faces would tap his shoulder and ask, "Do I know you?"

That's it for this one anon. But before I finished up I thought I should mention that I find it strange that Johnny seems to be in charge of hosting a party at this run down bar and, further, of supervising the party, actively engaging with a large group of people in order to negotiate conflicts or pre-empt them. Shouldn't his friend's (or the bar owner who they probably know) be doing that for him since he's on their turf and not the other way around? It feels this way, most likely, because of the line "Now he HAD to keep an eye..." and then the continual list of issues in the group dynamic, such as smoking and non.
This also sets up the narrative element or promise that Johnny is going to have difficulty managing the crowd and that he will either fail tragically or succeed, overcoming challenges in his way (in a way that forces his character to grow) before the night is out.

Good work anon. If you have any questions left just ask.

>>16855635
No, I didn't know it was Norwegian Wood. I haven't read Murakami yet. I mean that this isn't the first time someone has posted a published author as their own work and asked for critique (only for it to be revealed after I have obliged). I don't try to vet anyone's writing for plagiarism, I just critique it, thank them for contributing to the thread, wish them luck with their writing, and ask if they have anything specific to ask after the fact. I'd rather optimistically help everyone I can with their work than pessimistically sort through every post, afraid that I might look like dunce (I am a dunce).

>>16853928
I think those are the posts that stand out the most. Joyce was writing one hundred years ago and "Dubliners" isn't purple. I think the distinction is more between pre-modernist writing and modernist + post-modernist writing. I've been reading "The Rhetoric of Fiction" and this dichotomy is in part the advent of active narrator and observational writing. Some people enjoy very 'talkative' narration in their writing and try to emulate that. Some are chasing a specific brand of beauty that they find in description.

>>16853907
This isn't another 'gotcha' attempt is it anon, I'm not going to workshop this only to find it's Henry James am I? Jokes aside, I'm taking a look and I'll get your critique posted in another thirty minutes to an hour (it takes a while, sorry).