/lit/ - Literature

I prayed to God for an answer or sign.
I got out of work,
Started screaming and crying.
Yelling to God to give me a sign
Or at least make me die till tomorrow.

I`m thinking too much,
I`m asking more questions,
And all that i got
Is this crippling depression.

This life is joke,
There`s no point in trying
We`re all gonna end the same way-
Dying.

A stormy night,filled with despair in the air. As the car drove on, the Messiah knew that it would have been his last trip,he was filled with sadness. The man in the passenger seat noticed it,and turned back to face him,smiling. Their eyes met. "What's wrong? Is the rain bothering you?"- the man smugly asked. But then, he was shocked,seeing the prisoner suddenly smiling back. A smile that was quickly turned to laughter. Then he started to talk, "I'm quite happy that it's raining. It means the Lord is crying. Crying for me,crying for the fate of this country. After son of the dragon another of its protectors is defeated. But, I still have hope. You see,my death will inspire my countrymen to stand up and paint this country in Green. If not now,then in the future. I,the Archangel, shall watch everything from above. May God have mercy on your souls!". At the same exact moment the sky seemed to explode,the loudest thunder hit the ground ten meters in front of the car. The villains stopped it. There was no movement. They were shocked. The man in the passenger seat nervously shouted, "Why the fuck did you stop,keep driving,floor it!". "I will,but under one contition!" the driver cried, " tell me just who the fuck is this guy!". "How can you not know it,dumbass? He will be the person whose life I swear will end on this very night,even if God himself punished me! He's C-" but he was interrupted before he finished speaking "I? I am the Iron Knight!" their prisoner answered before laughing for the last time in his life. The engines started again,and the car continued to drive at top speed into the night...
This is the last part of "The Iron Knight", first of two books I wrote.

Have you ever felt yourself involuntarily shake at points without knowing why you did so? There is an urban legend that when you feel that it is yourself being killed in another universe.

Bros please tell me how to power through the part of my book that I know is shit.

We began drinking and talking. The sky showed its deep purple colour over the horizon and the town was very quiet, save for the regular rumbling of the ocean not far from us. She told me that her father used to be a tanner before the northerners arrived, but now his job was more or less obsolete because of the imports from abroad. He persisted in his trade, despite the dwindling demand, motivated by pride and vanity more than anything else, and the community supported him out of pity. She asked me if I couldn’t find her a job in my father’s company.
“Well, it’s possible, but if you’re willing to move to the capital. Here we mainly deal with sorting of the imports so it’s mostly a hard-labour activity.”
“You think I can’t handle hard labour?” she asked, jokingly, with a gleam in her bright blue eyes.
“I think you’re built for more intelligent and fine work; in other words – yes, I think you’ll throw your back off on the first box you have to pick up” I said, and I watched with a smile as she pretended to take offence.
Then she pounced on me like a panther. She pushed my shoulders to the ground and we began rolling in the sand like wild animals, messy and careless under the careful watch of the early stars of the night. I let her get the best of me and pretended to be beaten, laying on my back, only to grab her waist and pin her on the ground again. We played this game until both of us were on the point of exhaustion, and then we lay still, side by side, breathing heavily, looking in each other’s eyes. The vodka was having its effect, too, I noticed Mila’s eyelids getting heavy and her eyes – distracted. On me it had the effect of returning me to good spirits and making me forget, if only for a night, all the arguments and discontent that I harboured. As a bonus, it made Mila more attractive, even her ugly teeth weren’t as repulsive as they had been during the sober day. She made a motion to kiss me, but I pulled back, only slightly and in a teasing, friendly way. When she came for it again, I raised my head and kissed her on the nose instead. That was our new game – every time she leaned for a kiss, I evaded and instead kissed a cheek, a chin, a forehead. Then finally I surrendered and allowed her lips to touch mine, feeling the warmth of her body, the youthful blood that we both shared. Finally, we got up, walked leaning on each other, our heads raised high, laughing joyfully at the whole world, and walked into my shack, disappearing behind the gentle shroud of the night.

"So that is all?" I asked with a smile.
The bowman aimed at me without blinking.
The merchant, dagger held out in front nervously, smiled back.
"A bloated merchant and a rookie would be archer? Thats all that comes for me?"
The merchant chuckled.
"Of course this is not all you fool. You are surrounded. The treeline is full of willing fighters. And they all want the name and reputation of being the men that slayed the "Monster of Mount Eldorn".
I always hated that alias.
"And this is no rookie." The merchant added with a flick of his thumb toward the would be archer.
"He's a rookie alright but he'll die the same as the rest."
My hand snatched the dagger from its place on my belt and with a small flick of the wrist the dagger crossed the clearing between us and sunk into the archers belly.
I ducked swiftly as his nocked arrow went loose. It drifted overhead and sailed into the treeline.
The merchant dropped his blade and opted to retreat but in three quick steps I was across the clearing and my sword had skewered him.
A roar went up as the woodland clan broke forth from the treeline and rushed at me.
I stuck my sword in the soft, blood spattered soil, stuck my fingers in my mouth and let out a whistle.
The trees began the tremble.
The woodland men stopped in their tracks and looked at each other in confusion.
I pulled my sword from the soil, held it aloft and smiled.
"Die well men."
I charged them.
The trembling in the trees louder now.
I cut the first man down just as my cavalry arrived.
The six bears leaped out of the woods into the clearing and utter panic befell the clan of woodsmen.

Just an excerpt from a book Im working on.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fArqU69USQFCwW-zTF_9GLbhb27F_KybzTlygEX32h4/edit?usp=drivesdk
writer's block is a bitch, and i'm unsure how to draft out the next part of the story. anyone got any ideas?

bamppu

>>10829594
It's obvious you've put a hell of a lot of thought into this, worldbuilding and such, but it still feels overwhelmingly derivative of run-of-the-mill fantasy. In order to avoid that I think a writer needs to run in leaps and bound *away* from the genre. C.f. The Dark Tower series -- Stephen King wanted to write a fantasy novel but didn't want to just shit out a copy of Tolkein. Then when he started watching Sergio Leone films, he had the idea of crossing the genres.

>>10830768
this is my first project of thisnscale so i did kinda want to do it straight-laced, but if taking it away from the tolkien style would help make it original and easier to outline then i'll give it a go. thanks.

>>10827919
That's kind of good. I'm getting a 19th century classic vibe reading it.

“...criticism from the Royal Observatory for Human Rights, but in a press release today Brigadier-General McMarshall defended the decision as a military necessity. The Queen also said today in a statement that although she regrets the use of Sarin gas, the British Empire is as committed to fighting terrorism in the colonies as it is in the Home Isles to ensure that all of its subjects can live in peace. The time is now seven minutes past ten on the first of March in the year of our Lord two thousand and twelve, and we go now to sports. The first day of the test match between England and the Confederate States of America ended in tragedy yesterday when...”

i'm not a smart person but i long to write like one.

>>10830793
sounds like the intro to children of men

>>10830803
I think you very nearly succeed at what you are trying to do. Enjoyed reading this. Only thing I'd say is put down your thesaurus; big words don't contribute anything to the characters' speech register.

>>10829083
Don't write a part you know is shit; you won't be able to. Just like you can't seem to get through a book if you're not enjoying it.
You know Tolkien used to start a story over from the beginning if he reached a point in the plot he wasn't happy with?

>>10827919
Yeah. Ok, I guess. A tribal shepherd has a long walk home ahead of him and it is raining. Some imagery and housekeeping. Even though I now know more about the emotional state of the hillsides (joyful) than I can tell about the human, it functions. There is a voice trying to emerge. "feast of rain," poured forth," "tasted the rain in my dreams." Well enough.

What are these "other thoughts" that get teased then abandoned? Do any of them give a clue about how this character feels about any of this? "darkness closed in around me tightly" as in foreboding? Isolating? Comforting? Threatening? It could go any direction. "I ran down to the stream" alarmed? Worried? Excited? "Not yet it hadn't" Relief? Apprehension?

It takes a Vulcan to play a first person narrator this passionless. People experience involuntary emotional states on a continuous basis, even while asleep. Compare from The Bone People:

" She had debated, in the frivolity of the beginning, whether to build a hole or a tower; a hole, because she was fond of hobbits, or a tower—well, a tower for many reasons, but chiefly because she liked spiral stairways.

As time went on, and she thought over the pros and cons of each, the idea of a tower became increasingly exciting; a star-gazing platform on top; a quiet library, book-lined, with a ring of swords on the nether wall; a bedroom, mediaeval style, with massive roof-beams and a plain hewn bed; there'd be a living room with a huge fireplace, and rows of spicejars on one wall, and underneath, on the ground level, an entrance hall hung with tapestries, and the beginnings of the spiral stairway, handrails dolphin-headed, saluting the air."

"frivolity" "liked" "exciting" "saluting" as well as an obvious portrait of what this person imagines as a perfect home. Every detail characterizes the character in terms of her emotional state. And without telegraphing it. "Dolphin headed."

Even Hemingway, the Autist In Chief of the 20th century, managed to come out and tell us how Nick felt after getting kicked off the train. Put a little blood in it. Figuratively speaking. You'll be astonished how much more a reader will care about a character that leads them through a journey they can empathize with.

>>10828308
One character is referred to as "the Messiah," "the Archangel," and "the Iron Knight." I have no idea why the identity confusion.

I'm going to do just on of these, because it will tell the tale:

"A stormy night, filled with despair in the air." First, that's a fragment, there is no verb for "night." "Filled" awkwardly transfers its transitive to "in the air." Which is confusing - is the night filled with despair, or is the air filled with despair. Artless grammar is not the way to do either mood or style. "A stormy night, the air filled with despair."

If it serves whatever purpose you intend, very well. For my part, I don't get it.

>>10829186
It's cute. Veering on precious. The more common, and less intrusive custom would be to put her name much closer to the beginning. As it is, there is a sudden question of why the first person narrator suddenly remembers to think her name this time after not thinking it through the 11 or so prior "she"s "we"s and "each other"s. "Mila and I began drinking and talking." Done.

I am also unclear how these two people know each other, and for how long. "repulsive [teeth] in the sober day" but "our new game" like an established couple. The sober day implies that he found her ugly just hours ago, but then they have this fuzzy puppy familiarity like newlyweds after a year of engagement, and they head off to his place together. As cute as it aspires, their relationship remains a mystery.

You also don't seem to want me to care much about where or when any of this is happening, which, up to you. A beach, but with vodka, maybe glasses, all left behind. Obsolete tannery, so somewhere between 1900-1920-ish, depending upon locale. The little stuff is little in particulate, it's the cumulative weight that finally crushes interest. "Northerners." Whose?

>>10829453
Genre. Cavalier. May your God go with you.

>>10830803
I assume we have witnessed a homicide. The style is not working for me. I get it, it's just not tuned in. As is, it sits in the uncanny valley between comedy and macabre. Not getting to either side.

>>10832318
"Neither Gods nor Devils care for men like me. I am a pestilence that even they would not wish upon folk." - The Monster of Mount Elrond.

Thanks bruh.

>>10832299
Thanks for the feedback friend :3 That's just an excerpt from a random place 30,000 words into the story, so all those things are known by that time, maybe I should've mentioned that

Objects can occupy multiple states at the same time if you move their subjectivity fast enough. These moving states could interact with everything in their frame of reference, it was only a question of frame rate and scale. Only Gships could manage that. But a one-time, instantaneous jump of a car sized reference frame to another, following a causal effect, such as a sweaty palm pressing a button, was significantly simpler and needed no inflationary multiverse juggling. A firm hired by XX Company produced the bulletproof, lightweight, semi-intelligent, Davillin for Gluos, but kept the license for resale. The cost of design and manufacture of their first vehicle consumed 6% of Blone's output for several months, the car only came in black.
Gluos was pointing at button on the dash, “hit this and we can go anywhere we want.”

Malymyn said, “okay let’s go to Mileage.”

“We’d get there unfashionably early.”

Malmyn lifted and bent a bare leg, putting her heel on the dash in front of her. The engine revved as the car was looking into the rearview at the twisting steep driveway. Gluos gripped the wheel with one hand hit the gear shift and slammed down his foot, the car flew into reverse. Accelerating as fast as it’s spatial sensors allowed it. Turning through narrow concert wall, its front tires drifted and squealed as the car swung onto the road. Pivoting around the back tires, for a moment until Gluos’ arm hit the gear shift. Maximizing the amount of energy that could be delivered from the wheels to the road they screeched forward.

There were no speed limits in the City, only constant, pervasive recording, automated automotive legal programming, computerized courts and limitless liability laws. Malmyn spent the ride to the highway gripping her seat belt. Climbing the on-ramp in a half skid then screaming across open lanes. The car account purchased lane rights for the whole trip. Malymn felt her stomach sink as they climbed a suspension bridge across the Taipan. North was mountains sky scrapers stretching up and slowly turning their blade like shape to cut through the movements of the wind. Hedges of cranes sticking out of the build up. South was a green grid surrounding a black towering mar of smokestacks, black and grey steel, huge containers and an endless next of piping. A county sized oil refinery at the nexus of highways and pipelines. Turning crude into e-chips.

Gluos was pointing at button on the dash, “hit this and we can go anywhere we want.”

Malymyn said, “okay let’s go to Mileage.”

“We’d get there unfashionably early.”

Objects can occupy multiple states at the same time if you move their subjectivity fast enough. These moving states could interact with everything in their frame of reference, it was only a question of frame rate and scale. Only Gships could manage that. But a one-time, instantaneous jump of a car sized reference frame to another, following a causal effect, such as a sweaty palm pressing a button, was significantly simpler and needed no inflationary multiverse juggling.

Malmyn lifted and bent a bare leg, putting her heel on the dash in front of her. The engine revved as the car was looking into the rearview at the twisting steep driveway. Gluos gripped the wheel with one hand hit the gear shift and slammed down his foot, the car flew into reverse. Accelerating as fast as it’s spatial sensors allowed it. Turning through narrow concert wall, its front tires drifted and squealed as the car swung onto the road. Pivoting around the back tires, for a moment until Gluos’ arm hit the gear shift. Maximizing the amount of energy that could be delivered from the wheels to the road they screeched forward.

A firm hired by XX Company produced the bulletproof, lightweight, semi-intelligent, Davillin for Gluos, but kept the license for resale. The cost of design and manufacture of their first vehicle consumed 6% of Blone's output for several months, the car only came in black.

There were no speed limits in the City, only constant, pervasive recording, automated automotive legal programming, computerized courts and limitless liability laws. Malmyn spent the ride to the highway gripping her seat belt. Climbing the on-ramp in a half skid then screaming across open lanes. The car account purchased lane rights for the whole trip. Malymn felt her stomach sink as they climbed a suspension bridge across the Taipan. North was mountains sky scrapers stretching up and slowly turning their blade like shape to cut through the movements of the wind. Hedges of cranes sticking out of the build up. South was a green grid surrounding a black towering mar of smokestacks, black and grey steel, huge containers and an endless next of piping. A county sized oil refinery at the nexus of highways and pipelines. Turning crude into e-chips.

Way before any line reading, just start with this. Can you see why?

>>10829594
Just write you either have a good idea or you like what you have enough to see it through. Commitment is a BITCH. But its worth it if you really give it your all.

The ochre rays that slash the fumes at dawn,
Brief gales that lift the curling flakes to light,
The black-tipped geese irenic on the lawn,
The flies that flash like cameras in the night,

Coyotes, ragged from their endless chase,
Run panting hard from traffic in the road:
The mule that fails to ever learn his place,
Need not be taught to shirk a heavy load,

And consciousness, that unifies these things
To store in rippled vaults until the day
That it itself is brought at last to bring
A final judgment on its Earthly stay:

All joy stands thus unfurled before my eyes,
Yet here I sit unfurling paltry lies.

Iambic pentameter is the only meter I have any kind of experience with, I thought I would try to git gud at that before attempting anything else. So is it tedious and pretentious like I think it is?

im terrible

After school he would watch YouTube videos for hours. To him, YouTube represented the outside world, and it was awesome to see what kind of shit people could do, what was going on in the world, all the different things people could do, what people gravitated towards, what other people similar to him thought was entertaining. He had watched cartoons nearly every day when he was a little kid, but when YouTube exploded it was like cartoons on steroids. The sheer volume of content extremely outweighed the low average production value. The best videos (if he was in the right mood) would get him to laugh out loud for a second or two, others would get him just a smile, but for a few minutes of content and the tiny bit of attention that it demanded; the smile was well worth it. And that’s the thing about it, how much of a good deal that it looks like on the onset. Endless entertainment, and all of it - for free! When adblocker was discovered he went on YouTube even more. But that’s when it pulls you in. He watched enough, and soon YouTube knew what fix he needed. Another video he would like would play automatically afterwards, all he had to do was sit there! But then he started to smile less. There were less chuckles. The entertainment of YouTube has a pattern, because it was made up by people, and people have patterns. Comedy is about an unexpected outcome- which works great in the micro, but as he watched over months the people became predictable, so he would watch different people. Then the predictions he could sense from the original people began he began to see in the new people, with some added patterns. And so on until he thought he knew it all. Not much surprised him anymore. He looked for more extreme videos- but even then, seeing people get their heads blown off or someone getting caught in an avalanche started to become predictable. He learned the world faster than any man ever had before him. Experiences began to standardize. Jokes became cyclical; similar technique, different context. What was once a smile or a chuckle became a notion of that, then the next video it would be a notion of that notion, and it all went on till he could feel barely anything more. He juiced it until he could get nothing more, but he kept watching regardless, for fear he might stumble upon something special that might light him afire again. This video did not come. Other people were more predictable than he was, but he couldn’t blame them; an actor only has so much range with one character, especially if they played him every day, which most of them did to keep up the competition of other creators. It might have taken a few hundred thousand years, but now man could find Nothing on demand, it did not even look for him. It was a mutual occurrence, really. All human information at your fingertips and Nothing really seems to pop out at you faster. Relativity becomes emphasized.

>>10834301
This is well done; I quite like it. Ain't nothing inherently pretentious about iambic pentameter; maybe it's out of fashion but no serious modern poet has anything to say against it. And it's a great tool for honing your poetic abilities.
But if meters are timeless, language isn't. I'd avoid archaic words like 'paltry', and be very careful with dusty-sounding terms like 'all joy stands thus unfurled' and 'earthly stay' -- those are very Miltonian and I like them, but ask yourself the question of whether you're using them because they contribute to the poem (good) or simply because using an old form of meter makes you gravitate toward creaky language (bad).
Another thing, which I don't see in your passage, but which I see a lot in OC poetry on /lit/ is people fiddling with syntax (or with syntax they do fiddle) just to make things fit within the meter. That's definitely an anachronism to be avoided.

Having said that, I see many deliberate choices you've made with language that are really impressive. And your rhymes are neither forced nor hokey.

Finally, in this passage I see only one example of enjambment ("at last to bring / a final judgement"). I don't think this particular poem needs more, but try to take full advantage of enjambment while writing in IP; I think it was an important step in the modernization of the style. Stephen Fry calls enjambment and caesura "liberators of the iambic line, allowing the rhythms and hesitations of human breath, thought, and speech to enliven the verse." (from The Ode Less Traveled, a worthwhile read)

>>10835865
I made a deliberate effort not to describe things in an old fashioned way, or things that are themselves superannuated. I had the thought that my couplets don't agree with the quatrains stylistically as much as I'd like, from using archaisms, good to know my judgment in that case wasn't too far off the mark. Thanks for the encouragement and advice

>>10834374

Really enjoyed this. Only criticisms I see is the last last line, It feels out of place and doesn't fit the theme

>>10832121
Bad advice. Don't expect a first draft to be good. Every first draft is shit. Write something through, then fix it.

I might turn this in to my creative writing workshop just to see the look on the SJWs' faces when it's my turn to be critiqued.

>>10837839
This is unironically great from either a far-left or far-right perspective. I bet far-leftists would eat it up if you were black.

>>10837839
would work a lot better if you made it less self-aware, it bleeds over into farcical in a way that hurts its themes

make the protag a dropout and the siblings college-educated, drop the websites altogether, drop the precise musings on what is and isn't racist, just have an obsessive brother and sister wanting to remove/recolor a statue of a black man and an onlooking narrator. A hit-piece won't change any minds and will just make your class hate you, whereas a speculative piece with very light satire might actually get people on both sides of the fence, which should be your goal.

>>10838269

Good advice here OP.

Pretty good stuff, it was like looking into the life of a /pol/ tard.

>>10834374
I re-wrote the first few lines from ‘to him’ to ‘well worth it’, bringing the word count of just that segment from 142 to 91:

“After school he would watch YouTube videos for hours. YouTube was his outside world. Seeing the shit people did, the world, what people gravitated towards, what others like him thought was entertaining. He watched cartoons religiously when he was little, but YouTube’s explosion was cartoons on steroids. The production value of videos meant nothing with the sheer volume. The best videos (if in the mood) brought great laughs, others just a smile, but for an instant of content and the iota of attention it demanded; a smile was well worth it.”

Writing concisely – chopping out unnecessary phrasing and keeping what makes it interesting – is my advice. A great writer could bring the word count far lower and not change the meaning. This makes it more impactful and memorable and develops a voice in the writing. People remember (Politics and philosophy aside) “God is dead” far more than “People don’t really believe in God quite like they used to” because it is concise; it to the interesting bit without clutter.
A more in-detail breakdown:

“To him, YouTube represented the outside world, and it was awesome to see what kind of shit people could do, what was going on in the world” – I shortened this.
“all the different things people could do” – this is redundant.
“what people gravitated towards, what other people similar to him thought was entertaining” – this is fine, but I would use ‘trends’ or maybe ‘what people loved, what others like him loved’, but that may slightly change the meaning?
“He had watched cartoons nearly every day when he was a little kid” – I used ‘religiously’ here. Often there’s a word that can replace a whole phrase and this makes it more impactful and interesting.
“But when YouTube exploded it was like cartoons on steroids” – I’m not a fan of similes or clichés like ‘on steroids’
“others would get him just a smile” – ‘would get him’ is basically already said and very easily assumed.
“tiny bit” – As I said, there are many words to say this in a more interesting way.
“that” – Many common words such as ‘that’ can be cut out.

Sorry if this is very long for this thread.

John rose his head and then layed back down after taking a seconding to look around. he sighed lighted, and then he counted to ten, just as softly as when he sighed, taking three to five seconds each time he let a number out. Bracing himself to get up, he swung his legs off the metal desk on which he had slept as he got up.
John, still groggy and beaten, looked around squinting at first until he opened his eyes fully and remembered that he was in the same clothes of the night before, a jet black jack which had a broken zipper stuck halfway, a pair black sweatpants full of holes covering another pair of pants. His left shoe also had the back half of their sole missing. John also wasn’t the most handsome man at twenty-four years; he had a chubby face, his nose and cheeks were covered in large dark freckles, but he did have a slight charm about the kind that wasn’t associated with such an average looking individual.

I'm just wondering how it reads.

Oops. That's part three. Here's part 1

>>10840090
Part 2 is attached. Part 3: >>10840089

A boy sat underneath a grand yew tree. Its trunk, branches, and vibrant leaves shielded him from the summer sun. Shuddering and fidgeting, the boy scoured the surrounding thicket with his eyes. He could see hares munching on the forest clearing's fresh grass but couldn't make anything out beyond the veil of green concealing the area.

With a nervous sigh, the boy lifted his nose into the air and took a long breath.

That's all I got so far. How am I doing?

>>10840179
Maybe keep the second sentence in the first paragraph? It'll look better and flow better if you edit it a bit.

She cringed.
“That’s all you eat?”
“It’s all I need.”
Her eyebrows went up, and she made that face girls used to make when I said something gross in middle school. We stood there in silence for another few seconds, and she alternated between staring at me and the stacks of fifty-something packs of beef- and chicken-flavored noodles.
“All ramen?”
“I eat out sometimes, like last night.”
“You ordered bread and a cup of tea. You had that the other time, too, actually.”
“Oh, yeah.”
The apartment was clean, as planned, so I was understandably angry I’d gone to so much work just to disappoint her. They’re never happy. They’re never content. They’re never willing to accept you, not even a little. I did all the right things. The TV was on for white noise—MTV, like anon suggested. I even cleaned the carpet.
She’d been looking at her phone for some while now.
“I have to go get my brother,” she said.
“Oh, I thought you said you were free all afternoon.”
“I was, but my mom just texted me. She can’t leave her office, so I’m going to get him.”
“Oh.”
She left. I pulled up /adv/ from my bookmarks and started typing.

>>10840686
Forgot the formatting would be shit

Post to feel glad,
and not when you're mad.
Caring is bad,
cause that makes you sad.

Don't need to win,
to hold up your chin.
Net's quite the din,
but you can still grin.

>>10827919
I like this, but I'd ask you to be consistent in your style and be very careful with your word voice:

>Why is it that clouds are whiter than sheep, yet they disappear in the nighttime?
this struck me as out of place and a shallow profundity.

If you're going to write in the style which you are, avoid common phrases and parlance:

>would be the deciding factor

factor is a very cold, technical word that doesn't fit well into this style or into the narrative you are weaving


>>10830793
I was reading this in the voice of an old radio news bulletin almost immediately so nice work, definitely listen to lots of old broadcasts to get it right

>>10834301
This is actually quite good

>>10834301
This is how I'd write, if only I possessed the ability.

>>10830790

Same. Reminds me of Henry Miller or something

>>10840052
It is something. An unreliable 1pov narrator is on a murderous bender involving a car. Time and distance are misperceived. Hallucinations may or may not be in play.

The setting and events remind me of the brief Hollywood infatuation with "film blanche" a version of noir that takes place in baked out locales and over-exposed blinding sunlight. Desperado, Kalifornia, etc.

The trick with broken reality is not losing your reader - the timeline and events themselves become a meta-mystery above the narrative myster(ies)y, in this case, level one is "why did Uncle have to die," or "what really happened in Furnace Creek," and the meta-mystery is "what is the true sequence of events and what is the explanation for what is wrong with our narrator?"

Both mysteries are as yet unresolved and because of the order of presentation and the lack of clues among the markers, there is nothing to hang a hope on. The only exit for the critic here then is, "maybe it comes later."

>Jim Bea/m/

And I wonder why he is planning to return his shirt. It seems he has bigger fish to fry.

If ever finished, I like it for Thuglit, if they ever open submissions again.

>>10832184
Forgot to say thanks for the lengthy feedback. I've already gone back to re-work it a couple times based on what you said. This story has two narrators, and the shepherd is supposed to be the transparent one of the two. Now I see that isn't the case.

>>10841562
Thanks; I 100% agree about the voice and eventually I'll strike out the more literary bits. It's mostly indulgence. It's tough to get around how limited first-person narration is.

>>10840090
The real world cultural markers failed to reach me, as expected. In a workshop context, this would not last long. Because: memoir/diary/blog, and the stakes around the big mystery aren't that great. A concert goer suffers a crisis and is "saved" by some strangers. Now that I know the beginning is outside my interest, and the ending is "he lived", I'm not intrigued by the middle. The closest cultural analog I can summon are the "mosh pits" of the 80s, and 90s, and I never understood those either. It's like people whose hobby is eating every latest pepper to set a new record on the Scoville scale. I don't grok the craving for pain during an aesthetic experience. It is literate enough and colors inside its own lines.

>>10840686
I don't think this is fiction, plus rule #1.

>>10842250
Thanks for the feedback. I guess I assumed the reader would pick up on more than they really can.

I'm just a brainlet trying not to fail a paper. My teacher said any run on sentences are instant grade of failure. Is this a run on?

Looking back to this gruesome time of the early twentieth century, a natural impulse to understand the war and its etiology has arisen, both from a want to prevent the events from repeating and for a satisfaction of pure curiosity.

>>10842645
Hey, thanks for your thoughts.

Untrodden feet, smooth legs, soft thighs me ‘twine;
Firm hold on hip and waist, to trace with bliss;
Such coyful breasts, more sweet than Bacchus wine;
Then gentle collarbone, bare shoulder kiss;
Unlabored arms to slender wrists up-vine;
And snowflake-fragile fingertips caress.

Upon that sens’ous neck warm mouth rest make;
Against slim, tender throat, breath quiet, drawn;
To lightly stroke cheeks flushed brings soft heartache;
Though supple lips upraise as does the dawn;
Affection pure those eyes return when ‘wake;
And all about silk strands of hair, hands press.

A Love reflecting all in whole embrace,
Such love as this my restless soul must chase!

>>10843952
Sen'sous? 'Twine? Wat? Those apostrophes aren't doing what you think they're doing.
You've got poetic ability, but you oughta read more lit from the genre you're trying to imitate.
I'd suggest Ovid for a start.

I was thirsty, so I went to the fridge to get a beer. I drank the beer. It was nice and I enjoyed it. I felt a pleasant buzz about my head. I stepped out onto the porch and looked at the horizon. It appears to tilt from side to side, so I sat down. In that rocking chair I fell asleep. It was restful. I felt rested.

>>10844781
I don't see any major issue with them. Spenser, Milton, plenty of other poets did it to fit the meter

>>10845691
It's an acceptable device, sure, but those particular instances...I don't think the word 'sensuous' even can be abbreviated, and I have no idea what 'twine' is.

>>10846434
Although abbreviating sensuous to sens'ous isn't proper, poets have also done so and I don't think it's a serious issue. As for 'twine, it is abbreviated from entwine. Would n'twine or wind be a more fitting word?

And so much verbiage ambrosia
and steely daggers to the heart

who more than muses gives us wine
and more than nectar poison?

so have at me with axe and sword!
For these words are my life and breath

man's clay, God's wind, all one and same

so with shaking hands carressed his love
and with beating heart aimed to kiss
and with mortal craft and poetry
the man mimicked angel Cupid's bow
he drew the thing, let loose and missed!
and so the man wandered months insane
till he throttled himself with string

>>10846488
Neither would be a fitting word because y'u can't put ap'str'phes wh'ever you g'ddamn p'lease.
Sensuous is flexible as it is; removing a vowel doesn't even do anything. If you can find a precedent with a real poet using sens'ous I'll ride through town naked on a horse and post pics.

>>10846529
This is a cool poem, but the meter is a little distracting; it's like a bumpy rocking horse. At the start it almost seems like you're trying for iambic pentameter, but by the end you've settled into a 4/3 ballad.
The line 'the man mimicked angel Cupid's bow' has no meter whatsoever, because the two words it starts with are both flat. If anything it reads like an Anglo-Saxon alliterative line.
If you're trying to be avant-garde, more power to you, but I'd enjoy it more if it were consistent:
And he with shaking hands caressed his love
And thus with beating heart he aimed to kiss...

>>10846570
I don't think I can find sens'ous, but Spenser and Milton put them in where convenient, like
>orepow'rd
Although they did have a more uniform use of it, to be fair. And it's also not like I'm using them for the Hell of it, but what do you suggest I change it to?

>>10846604
Noted. This was what I was going for but I'm still learning meter.

By "flat" words you mean it doesn't strongly imply a stress pattern one way or the other right?

>>10846661
Yes you're quite right, and to be honest I have no idea whether or not there are any rules governing the practice. And ofc there's no harm in experimenting. But personally I'd stick with words that are approved by precedent.
What I meant re: sensuous is that it can act as either 2 or 3 syllables as needed; it doesn't need to be altered.

But you know what, you've got me googling, and I'm noticing all the weird shit John Donne does to cheat with syllables --
>You two have one way left yourselves to'entwine
He's clearly condensing 'to entwine' into two syllables, so I guess that could give you license to say me'entwine...

>>10846675
Ah, I see what you were going for. But I can't make my brain read it the way you've marked it out. Maybe I'm wired differently.
I read your last two lines are more of a ballad form; certainly not iambic:
and SO the man WANdered MONTHS inSANE
till he THROTTled himSELF with a STRING
...which rhythm is identical to the classic ballad form:
A bunch of the boys were whooping it up
At the Malamute Saloon
The fella that handles the music box
He was hittin' a jag-time tune

>>10846733
Thanks for this suggestion, I think it makes it work better and there's some precedent. I abbreviated sensuous though to emphasize the way it's supposed to be said in the line, so, yes, I could keep the word as it is, but it might trip up the meter.

>>10827919
Remember to use pic related for all critique threads in the future, OP.

I don't know how I feel about this

>>10846675
Shorter words like he, is, and, the, etc etc shouldn't be used as stressed syllables because when someone reads it the meter will be off, since usually they are pronounced softer.
>Till neck he throttled with a string

I'm not frightened. I'm not frightened of anything. The more I suffer, the more I love. Danger will only increase my love. It will sharpen it, forgive its vice. I will be the only angel you need. You will leave life even more beautiful than you entered it. Heaven will take you back and look at you and say: Only one thing can make a soul complete and that thing is love.

When will it be my turn to love?

"No, like, what's your interests?"
"I thought I said that"
"No, that's just things people say who don't want to say their interests, those aren't interests everyone says they have, like traveling or drinking wine or whatever."
"Playing Games, watching films, reading and listening to music doesn't count as interests?"
"No, because those things you do alone"
"You don't have to be alone to do them"
"Yeah, but everyone does them alone most of the time. What do you do with other people?"
"I dunno, hang out, drink a few beers?"
"Oh c'mon, you don't do anything with people?"
"That counts as something. I'm just laid back. I like drinking beer, talking, listening, y'know it's fun"
"Yeah only if you never do them. if you regularly go out with people, you don't go out and just talk *ever time*"
"Maybe I'm just weird"
"Yeah it seems like that, but your friends aren't"
"Maybe I don't see them very often"
"And if you don't, you don't often go out and drink beer with them, and it's not one of your interests then, is it?"
"What's your point?"
"I just wanna know what your interests are"
"I said what they are"
"Ohmygod, you just said what you do when you're alone, those aren't interests, those're pasttimes"

I dunno if I should continue, should I?

>>10846675
>>10847429
Sometimes it is almost unavoidable to use a smaller word, like in my example I use "with" as a stressed word and it works somewhat, but it's not ideal. If you're having trouble reworking a line to fit the meter it might be easier to rewrite a couple lines in a way that's more flexible or goes with the poem better.

>>10847438
Not interesting, but pretty realistic conversation. Too bad real conversations are mostly boring though.

I wrote a short song today

We take at dawn
To
Put place to fate
We were a
Silent mass with
Somber masks
No one spoke
of
Times before
when
We found a tree up
Beyond a hill
An old cherry
That
was still
with life

We stand now
And plant a spade
To dig a hole
For
The One
that
never grew Old

>>10843952
hot broad in the painting

as for your poem: it's quite dated and boring. I don't think you'll have a large readership with this kind of stuff

>>10848052
Why would I care about having a large readership?

=.=

Even strangers with a chance
To engage me
In mutual tolerance
And tobacco sharing.
Our noses drawn together
Brace a shield
Erected by my Particular Nature.
Idiot nature, keeps me from
The culture of my peers.

I hang before them
A marble apparition,
Sable and demure
Luminous and excellent. Or,
Such is a necessary picture
To keep of my form,
So I may imbibe the impression
That my strangeness is unrecognized beauty.

I assert that it is,
And I do not feel bad
To be unrecognized.

Though I wish I could be
Closer to the cultures,
My prayers dribble over the great shield
And leap to fill the chests
Of my far-away friends.

The bag lagged behind me, clunking against the rocks on the hill. The moon stared down at me, judging me with it’s condescending glow. I had to do it, there was no other option. The soft drizzle from above seemed to progress into a roaring thunderstorm, soaking me entirely. My feet crash down on the leaves before me. Every step I take turns earth into craters. The weight of the bag is killing me, bringing me down closer to the dirt beneath me. The disgusting, insect-filled dirt, is edging nearer and nearer to my pristine face. I keep descending down the hill, becoming closer and closer to the edge of the woods.
My boots sunk into the mud as if it was quicksand. Every movement of my feet forward was a giant leap to my destination. The head of the trees creep up over the horizon line. The scent of pine became more and more apparent in the air. My feet were almost entirely covered by mud now, and the morose rainfall made it difficult to keep balance on the steep hillside. Every now and then I slip, but I must remain on two feet. I can not make the slightest peep, as any abrupt noise could possibly reveal myself to the neighboring families. The bag trailed after me, sliding across the mud.
I finally reached the bottom of the hill. The pines towered over me, vigilantly observing my every move. I slowly crept into the forest. I continued on my path towards the heart of the woods. No one was behind me, nobody could tell what I had done. There was no stopping me now.
The sounds of the woods were all around me. I could hear the subtle scurrying of the forest creatures as I walked by. They were afraid of me, running away in complete trepidation. I could hear them whisper. The trees, I could hear them murmur to each other. I know what they’re doing, I know what they’re all doing. I shouldn’t get wrapped up in them, I need to continue on. The whispering became louder and louder. The muffled muttering just kept on rankling in my brain. I can’t take it anymore, I must do something.
My feet propelled me forward, and I ran as fast as I possibly could in this weather. I had to escape them, the voices. I kept dashing, dragging the bag closely behind me. I started to become weary and overworked. I slowed down eventually to a complete stop, panting and wheezing. I was completely breathless. I toppled over in my fit, plunging down towards the Earth in my lack of breath. I layed there for hours. I could do nothing but only weep, realizing that I had became the beast I wished to destroy.

I pray to the god
the forgotten trance
and I screamed a song
in catatonic dance
the framework fell
from out the ground
the crowd wept a sigh
and turned to mound
deep in his sunken chest
and excavated key
to chambers burned to feet
a circus full of fleas
he died the last time
for the first time
and all unmade sense
voiding recompense

>>10848057
Sorry: just *readership

A spring shower was followed
by brisk stratus clouds shadowed
the eyes from a sun beam
supports the structure of arches
painting pastels across the sky

The scent of petrichor permeates
as tilled soil's seed germinates
a sprout reaches for what emanates
warmth from up above precipitates
light and stimulates life

maybe I should post this in /sffg/, but I'm working on a making a map for the fantasy novel I'm planning. Is this map too busy? should I dumb it down, make it black and white, take out something, etc? Excuse my lack of artistic talent as well

>>10848632
I like it

Sorry cant critique people, that would be like a per schooler tryna correct the teacher. Here's what I got;

Infernape was overly ambitious, and every bit as greedy as he was stubborn. So it was no surprise to the party when he refused to turn back when the blizzard started. This
Was no place to be for a fire type, yet he pressed onward. The party now back at the cabin, Articunos words echoed
Throughout Infernapes thoughts; "Should you be foolish enough to brave the howling blizzards that frequent this place, the frozen labyrinth ahead past them will devour you- and if not that then what lies waiting inside will!"
But there was no turning back now.

>Infernape would not be seen again for some time, if not at all...

The highway in the morning sun was cracked and cars were scattered on it, faded and rusted like the last leaves of dry winter. A messenger moved on it, picking his way over the glass and the steel and the pooled and long-dried oil. The man’s clothes were torn and covered in dust and blood. He carried a satchel over his shoulder. The leather was oiled and completely unmarked.
The messenger went down the highway until noon. He passed scraggly trees and hills covered in thick grass and faded billboards with the faces of dead men staring endlessly.
Heat came off the pavement in thick waves until it blurred the path five minutes ahead, and the messenger strolled off the asphalt and onto the green grass and sat.
“Beautiful country,” he said out loud. He wiped sweat off his face and took a canteen from his hip and drank.

>>10848632
Why are all these things named what they are?

>>10848794
I just fucked around with google translate to come up with stuff I liked

>>10848806
A shame.

words can't express expressions
the way a sad face can:(
inverted "air-quotes" steal the show
but really "the hole in your heart—
if it gets plugged with something,"
David Goggins says, chin-up champion.
I didn't hear the end, out of sight,
because this scream in my chest
turned the video off, turned and scoffed.
I'm a tiger egg quietly calling itself a rabbit,
Bugs Bunny, ideally speaking, the choir runs
and kicks a tumbleweed into the demolished flame
during 9/11: #neverforget
that Stevie Ray died in a helicopter
and Sugar Ray died in our memory.
You can, of course, at any moment
forget everything because death
and all that jazz about taxes.
I'm pancake people stacked inwards—
"why does he only talk about himself?"
I ask my friend about the psychonarcissist,
not realizing I don't know who I'm talking about
with whom. So I kill someone in silver varnish,
hoping to gods he doesn't comeback,
as I hold down the fort of noble savagery
no matter how hairy it gets
or how much success eludes.
The only true failure—lol—
is never failing at all.

Back to the page, I fall into formation
And fingers hang on empty thoughts,
Empty, I suppose is wrong, failing thoughts,
Thoughts hinged on rusty clasps
Not even set by my own hands,
But mine to use and maintain.

That being said, I hear the wind
Outside and inside the storm windows,
Whistling up through the screens,
The vortex of high and low,
Spring and you rose up for a moment
And the shudder and thud of the dumpster lid,
Down some flights and distant,
Clapping down from sudden bursts of air,
Somehow, I mean, obviously, each thud was you,
The hollow clang and clatter rang bell-like,
It's not my nature to be cutesy, coy,
But this low ache stays firm, a long cold wind,
From far away, I hear your creak and clear voice
And shake, the rustling of old habits I swore off.

In the elevator, I held the leaky carton,
Mother's milk, mixed and secondhand,
Dripping down onto linoleum,
Older than anyone I know,
And I felt your hands, and the sad, trite ache
Of sentimental throes, still and long born,
Soberly the loner lulls.

>>10848664
How old are you?

>>10827919
The place of the senchus was Tara, in the summer and in the autumn, on account of its cleanness and pleasantness
during these seasons, and Rath-guthaird, where the stone of patrick is this day in Glenn na mbuir, near the river
Nith nemonnach, was the place, during the winter and the spring, on account of the nearness of its fire - wood and its water,
and on account of its warmth during these seasons in the time of winter's cold.

And they were composed at the same time in the time of Laeghaire, son of Niall, king of Erin;
and Theodosius was monarch of the world at that time and as an example of this the poet said: -
Patrick baptised with glory,
In the time of Theodosius,
He preached the truth without failure
to the glorious sons of Milidh

And the authors of the senchus were:
Laeghaire, Core, Dairi, the hardy,
Patrick, Benen, Cairnech, the learned,
Rossa, Dubhthach, Ferghus, with science,
These were the nine pillars of the Senchus Mor."

The author of the Poem was Dubhthach Mac ua Lugair, royal poet of the men of Erin.
The cause of the Senchus having been composed was this:

Patrick came to Erin to baptize and to disseminate religion among the Gael in the fourth year of the reign of Laeghaire, son of Niall, king of Erin.
But the cause of the Poem having been composed was as follows:

Laeghaire ordered his people to kill a man of Patricks people and Laeghaire agreed to give reward to the person who should kill the man,
so that he could discover whether he would grant forgiveness for it. Nuada Derg, brother of Laegaire was in captivity in the hands of Laeghaire,
said that if he were released, and got other rewards, he would kill one of Patrick's people. He took command of Laeghaire's cavalry, he was released
from captivity and he made a promise. and he took his lance at once, and went towards the clerics, and hurled the lance at them and slew odhran,
Patricks charioteer.

The cleric was angered and raised his hands towards his lord, and was in the attitude of prayer with his hands crossed; and there came a
great earthquake and darkness came over the sun, there was an eclipse and they say that the gate of hell was then opened, and that Tara
was being overturned. The lord asked him to lower his hands to obtain judgment for his servant who had been killed, and told him that he
would get his choice of the Brehons in Erin, he consented to this as God had asked of him. And the choice he made was to go according
to the judgment of the royal poet (Ollamh) of the island of Erin, Dubhthach Mac Lugair, who was a vessel full of the grace of the holy ghost.

(1/2)
When Steven woke the world was wild, a forest clearing with fog a-brimming, and a cool wind was a-blowing mild, leaving packs of leaves a-spinning. A fizzling flare shone scarlet against the woodland mist, and all throughout the trees woken June-bugs furiously hissed, for across the clearing stood some demon, now all cast in dianthus hues. The haze spilled out onto the ground, so that ghost was standing on sheer nothing, and tall oaks seemed to grow out of air, roots below without a founding. Steven recoiled from the ghost in horror, and backed up against a tree.

It saw this and said, “Courage now, Steven. It’s me, John. No need to be afraid.”

Then Steven got up from the ground, walked on top of the misty pool towards John, but the wind blew away enough fog that he could see two switchblades in John’s hands. John threw one to Steven.

“John, what’s going on? Did you drug me? How did we get here?” Steven said while cautiously picking the switchblade off the leafy floor.
“I drugged you and drove you here.”
“Why the fuck did you do that?”
“You beat Diane. Why the fuck did you do that?”
“What?! That’s a pretty bold fucking thing to say, where’d you get that idea?”
“I can only see her with bruises so many times. But Liam thinks its you, and I believe him.”
“Liam? What does he know? He’s just jealous, ‘cause I have Diane and he’s just got a fucking sock. Come on John, we’ve been friends for a while now. I love Diane.”
John grimaced. “Yes. You do love her. Ready yourself, one of us dies tonight.”
“This is insane John. You don’t have the sack for it, honestly.”
John flipped his switchblade out, and started walking towards Steven.
“Don’t make me do this John.”
The wind was gentle, the mist was deep, and the forest stirred still half-asleep, but John and Steven circled round, one against the other. Steel shone dully in red light faded, hunger for blood still unsated, and Steven called out, “John if you really want me to do this, tell me to come to you.”
“Come.”

>>10849135
And all at once Steven walked on mist and ran to John, lunging lashing frenzied thrashing, and John stepped back and swiped, and cut Steven on the arm, but Steven nicked John’s shoulder. Steven struck out, found some skin, cutting into John’s chin, but John did not stop to rest and plunged his blade into Steven’s chest, and each danced away, then back again, and John cut left but Steven right and they came apart and back throughout the night, and Steven stabbed John in the thigh and John cut Steven under his eye, and each now was soaked in blood, and both their strengths were failing. They rushed towards each other, finally Steven stabbed down and John stabbed through, and Steven sunk his blade into John’s shoulder, but John caught a space between Steven’s ribs.
They held each other for a moment, and Steven let go of the switch stuck in John’s shoulder-blade. He staggered away, then fell forward, all in disarray. Immediately John reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” He said, “why did you doubt?” And then John sat, Steven’s head in his lap. Steven bled, and reached up, up to the sky, and as his life drained away he cried “Save me, Di-Dia…Dia-ne“ and then, John, as Steven finally fell to nothing, whispered, “Goddamn you Steven. Why?” But Steven could not give a reply, and so only God knew why.
John picked up the flare, walked to his car, threw it in the trunk, and drove home.

>>10849122
Is the purpose to reframe history in a somewhat poetic manner? If so it's interesting.

The last paragraph becomes slightly repetitive when it says "there came a ... darkness over the sun, there was an eclipse...." These mean the same thing. I would just delete the "there was an eclipse" phrase.

You basic bois can't write why even bother wasting your time with something you're ill equipped to accomplish?

>>10849122
This was grievous to Dubhthach, he said "Woe to you, Cleric, for saying this to me. It is irksome to be in this case between
God and Man for if I say that this deed is not to be atoned for by ' eric ' - fine, it will be evil for your honour, and you will not like it,
and if i say that “eric” fine is to be paid and a killing is to be avenged, it will not be good in the sight of God for what you have
brought into Erin is the judgment of the Gospel, and what it contains is perfect forgiveness of every evil by each to the other.
In Erin before Patrick was the law of Nature, i.e., retaliation, a foot for a foot, and an eye for an eye and a life for a life.

Well, then," said Patrick, "what God tells you to say, say it. ' It is not you that speak, but the spirit of God which speaks through you, etc.”.

It is the return of Paganism if I avenge wrongdoing,
To preserve religion, power was left to check each vice.
A foreigner corrected the neglect of baptism, sin without atonement;
Truth is balanced, the path to purity. (Lies forget truth and help the guilty)
The demon is not entitled to forgiveness on judgment day.
Not so the sinful man if he has atoned, he is entitled to absolution;
Absolution for his crimes, for his transgressing the will of the supreme King.
For repentance has been the custom of all;
And they deserve pardon since Christ's crucifixion,
as long as they do not relapse into evil again.

Listen God, direct my path,
fathers of potent knowledge,
judgments of the Lord unperverted,
Do not heap aggravation on the bloody crimes of men.
The truth of the Lord, may it help me
The testimony of the new Law and of Nuada
In the world it was decreed to me
Divine knowledge I confess (to which veneration is due),
That each man for his crime shall depart unto death
The two laws, indeed, contain examples of vengeance.
Prove by my cheeks that I will not blush with lies,
I pass sound judgment, I follow Patrick since my baptism.
Let every hand be punished as it deserves
For every living person who gives judgment has been chosen for it.
There was the first law of the Men of Eirenn
that which God has not pardoned in his New Law.
The trinity did not vouchsafe mercy,
Through heavenly strength to save Adam,
For it was perpetual existence (renewal)
of his mercy he was created
until otherwise he merited by deserving death.
Let everyone die who kills a human being;
even a king who seeks a wreath with his hosts,
Who inflicts red wounds intentionally,
of which any person dies;
every powerless insignificant person,
or noblest of the learned;
yes, every person who kills
who’s deeds are judged, shall be killed.
He who lets a criminal escape is also a culprit;
he shall suffer the death of a criminal.
In the judgment of the Law which I as a poet have received,
it is evil to kill by foul deed,
I pronounce the judgment of death,
of death for his crime to everyone who kills
Nuada is adjudged to heaven
and it is not to death he is adjudged.

>>10849151
Its a rough draft of an old Irish Manuscript being re written into modern english (paddy and the language fell out a few years ago)

there's tombs of this stuff

>>10849095
Almost 15 if you want honesty

>>10847438
This is too real.

As to whether you should continue, I would never start anything except maybe a critique of modern society with something like this. If this is a conversation that happens in the middle of a book that's fine.

>>10849174
It was thus the two laws were fulfilled; the culprit was put to death for his crime, and his soul was pardoned and sent to heaven.
What was agreed upon by the men of Erin was, that everyone should be given up for their crime, that sin might not otherwise increase in the island.

The New Law:
A middle course between forgiveness and retaliation:
he is put to death for intentional crime and banished for his unintentional crimes.
bondage is required of him for unfulfilled contracts and covenants.

Patrick requested of the men of Erin to come to one place and hold a conference with him. When they came to the conference the
Gospel of Christ was preached to them all; and when the men of Erin heard of the killing of the living and the resuscitation of the dead,
and all the power of Patrick since his arrival in Erin and when they saw Laeghaire with his druids overcome by the miracles wrought
in the presence of the men of Erin, they bowed down, in obedience to the will of God and Patrick.

Then Laeghaire said “It is necessary for you, Men of Erin, that every other law should be settled and arranged by us, as well as this."
“It is better to do so," said Patrick. It was then that all the professors of the sciences in Erin were assembled, and each of them exhibited his art.
before Patrick, in the presence of every chief in Erin. It was then Dubhthach was ordered to exhibit the judgments and all the poetry of Erin,
and every law which prevailed among the men of Erin, through the law of nature, and the law of the seers, and in the judgments of the island of Erin,
and in the poets. They had prophesised that the bright word of blessing would come, i.e. the law of the letter; for it was the Holy Spirit that spoke and
prophesied through the mouths of the just men who were formerly in the island of Erin, as he had prophesied through the mouths of the chief prophets
for the law of nature had prevailed where the written law did not reach.

The judgments of true nature which the Holy Ghost had spoken through the mouths of the Brehons and just poets of the men of Erin, from the first occupation of this island, down to the reception of the faith, were all exhibited by Dubhthach to Patrick. What did not clash with the word of God in the written law and in the new testament and in the conscience of the believers was included in the laws of the Brehons by Patrick and by the ecclesiastics and the cheiftains of Erin;for the lawof nature had been quite right, except the faith, and its obligations and the harmony of the church and the people. And this is the Senchus Mor.

>Happy Patricks Day

>>10848880
is that a bad idea? should I just make up words instead? On a similar note, would it be wrong to use real languages in my book, like making French the elvish language, Spanish the orc language, etc?

>Just started a new project. About finding yourself and individuality. I wanted it to be very upfront and impactful because the rest of the book is kind of meandering.

My name is [X]. I am now in the twilight years of my life and in my old age I want to tell the story of how I have made love. I have made love to the world with my senses. I have made love to knowledge with my mind. I have made love to my spirit with my heart. I have made love to people with my body. Through all of this love that I have made I have completed the circle of my own life and intend to pass on.

>>10850482
this is good, but life isn't a circle, anon. similar to that hit song in Cars, life is a highway

>>10849181

Pisspoor and sopping,
He stands outside my car
Some lost god incarnate
His torn up sign reads
"Anything helps"

In my climate-controlled,
Fully-automatic chariot,
I think perhaps not,
For what begged the impulse
For outstretched hands?

Then, is this the anything?
The act of holding the signifier
In hand helping alone?
I find he's answered already.
So I crank the air and let the window down
With a press, and with weary expectation

He looks to me, I open my heart and reach
Out my hand, empty and extended,
And he sighs somewhat indeterminately,
This avatar is wiser than I let on, I note,
And towards his holy glow

I stare and say, "You're welcome,"
The light changes and we part.

>>10849170
Practice

>>10850904
enjoyable!
take out the whole third paragraph, get rid of "and we part"

I made a thread but nobody answered, but are there any good sites to post writing and get critique in response? or at least comments? I want my stuff to be linked to an account

>>10850939
I don't know of any specific sites, but there's a website connected to my college where people can post writing. If you go to college there's probably a place to post your writing.

>>10850482
I'm a little hesitant about your premise. Is the rest of your book "meandering" intentionally with a broader goal in mind, or did it just end up that way?

As for what you posted, despite your claims of it being "very upfront and impactful," I'm not really getting that, rather I consider sentences like "I am now in the twilight years of my life and in my old age I want to tell the story of how I have made love" to be drawn out and meandering. I can't imagine what the rest of the book is like. You could cut out the redundant first clause ("twilight years") and only lose its rhythm. The "have made love" motif is inherently repetitive and using it in a metaphorical sense isn't my idea of "upfront." For each one, instead of "making love" to general concepts, get specific with the most grabbing moments/memories that you're alluding to, but very briefly so that it tempts the reader to keep going, expecting a later reward.

I'm not trying to be dismissive. I like the overall aim of your work. But I sense some incongruities and potential weaknesses that could really bog it down.

>>10850923
I appreciate the feedback. It's a one-off for the thread, and I don't plan to go back to it, but thanks for pointing out some redundant tendencies.

>>10850939
A writer I know regularly uses an app/social media thing he said was "like Instagram but for writers," that he used to post/critique and now I can't find the name. It's out there though.

>>10848076
Just short of overwrought, which is ok. 1pov narrator is struggling toward a place while burdened. The bag remains a mystery, I hope resolved eventually, ditto beast and motive for destroying same. Poe's influence is there, Tell Tale Heart and Cask, but it stays in this century, which is a relief. So much depends on the rest of it.

>>10848789
It sets a postapocalyptic mood, which sets up a mystery about who is left to message whom. So there's that. I like someone doing something during the time and weather report. So also that. It's slim. Continue in that style and don't blow it.

>>10827919

>>10849135
There is something about the clashing styles here that either I don't get, or you don't get. Maybe both. "a-brimming, a-blowing, a-spinning" feels like frivolity - a childrens book. Then we have "mist/hissed" and this supernatural fantasy moment with a demon. Then all of a sudden we are in somebody's domestic abuse scandal and some dialog that veers over toward stilted, like "one of dies tonight" mingled with tough guy neonoir like "fucking sock." Then the McCarthy-ite knife fight (See Cities of the Plain), with these paced comma splices which spell out EPIC in medieval script. Finally a melodrama conclusion from a late 1940s soap opera.

Very strange.

I was playing around with chiastic structure more. What I was going for was that as a whole the poem has a pattern of ABCBA and each stanza has a form of ABBA. The metre I was going for was "a STONE is JUST a STONE" or iambic trimetre.

Stones

A stone is just a stone
a rock on which I build
and things which will remain
the building's cornerstone

there are things I exalt
that I lift up in praise
and things that are divine
and what's left when I fall

and what we have been taught
and what we discovered
the cords that lift us up
and stumbling blocks behind

the things we choose and pick
what we name virtuous
and what is really good
and which are fixed in place

there is foundation where
is written mortal words
and the eternal truth
the building's cornerstone

>>10851306
Promising. By starting with the woman, you give the impression for the whole first graph that this is going to be her story. Then we switch to Roland. The rest to the end is his 3rd limited, which is a brave move, narratorially speaking. Maybe you have reasons for this. Maybe she's going to drown herself in the lake and later Roland realizes he could have intervened. Still, I would prefer to know that this is Roland's story from the beginning, so the characterizations of her can be attributed to him. As it is, the giddy echoes and critical meeting belong to her. But what it seems to want is "Roland is the kind of guy who imagines that a woman in a hurry must have a critical meeting."

Without changing a word, you could cut the first sentence from the second graph, paste it to the top, and it's solved. Everything now belongs to Roland. Continue like this and you might have something.

>>10851437
How is your reading comprehension this good...?

Who are you...?

>>10850939
Evil Editor does some of this, along with query letters. Just google evil editor. He's internet famous. Read yourself into the blog first, though, to get a flavor of what you might be in for.

>>10851493

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating literature.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.

I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

>>10849011
genius

t. i wrote it

p.s. i don't know what 't.' stands for

p.p.s. i don't know what 'p.s.' stands for

p.p.p.s i think it stands for 'post script'

"Well," thinks our hero, "This is more like it. A suspicious exit from our childhood. No doubt this hole leads to a school disco or a lumpy football pitch, or other such stereotypical moments brought to us by puberty. Now I understand, it's about the progression of people." Smug grin thus restored, the excursionist gingerly pokes a foot into the hole, and discovers a ladder within. He proceeds to happily clamber down the ladder until he is shocked to notice that he has run out of ladder, but still has plenty of hole left.

A temerous poke of the foot into the pitch black shows no sign of solid ground, but our man is a problem solver, and as we speak, his mind is rattling away on possible solutions. He eventually decides to follow in the footsteps of adventure novels, and produces a marble, left over from a brief infatuation with the tiny glass globes, and lets it slip from his hand. He holds his breath as he waits for a light clink, or possibly a worrying crack. Silence reigns, but for the quiet hum of the neon lights.

Now, our hero may be easily led, but there are limits, and leaping into an abyss seems a little demanding, even for interactive art. Thus, the excursionist, still nodding, perhaps in apology, ascends. It's rather a good thing he's nodding, in fact, because at the top of his upswing, he meets eyes with a rabbit. Or more likely, a man in a fairly low-budget rabbit costume. This costume, and I must stress this, is the sort of godawful depressing costume you'd see at a fairground that's just about to close, where half the rides are gated off and a man in a dirty vest is cooking rat gumbo or whatever it is that manages to overpower the smell.

Faced with this, the excursionist is confused, and a somewhat uncomfortable staredown ensues. Glazed black eyes reflect the neon light, giving the appearance of bright pink irises. Carefully, and without a sound, the costumed man raises his leg, and gingerly brings it down on our man's head. The excursionist, for a moment, thinks he hears a sharp intake of breath, before the foot suddenly delivers an awful lot of pressure. Our man is so distracted by the pain in his neck, that he fails to realise how he has lost his grip. So he feels a brief moment of relief when the pressure subsides, before the sensible part of his brain (apparently not the conscious part) sees fit to scream.

>>10851747
>>10849011
A word of warning. Post-ironic, shitpost poetry already lived and died a couple years ago, and only got a rung above Instapoetry. It lived off gimmick and tongue-in-cheek attention-whoring, hence its short lifespan. So what am I warning about? The style is content with its deliberate, gaudy dumbness, and you won't develop at the steadier rate had you hunkered down and took yourself more seriously. You have talent, but it's scattered and unskilled. Take my advice or leave it (or, as I expect you will, mock it), but at least be aware you're not breaking new ground or doing yourself any favors.

When writing do any of you use an image to help you describe a place or is it all from your head?

>>10851868
Huh. Our guy is making his way through a three dimensional work of interactive art, which is inhabited by enforcers who compel its completion. I was afraid of this going off the rails at any moment, but it stays upright and does something. It has a kind of Kuglemass Episode potentiality, invoking its own reality without losing contact with ours. Which is rare, since so few "literary" types seem to be aware that Woody Allen wrote four collections of short form literature. And of course, Alice, rabbit hole, et. al. If it manages to bring its passengers to the station, and I were to run into a magazine editor at a do, I would alert him to its existence.

Rate my first non-ween short story.

http://www.writerscafe.org/writing/ShadowItami/550479/

Much appreciated critz.

>>10852008
I once wrote an entire novel set in East Africa. I've never been to any part of Africa. An agent responded that no one in Hollywood is ever going to option a book set in Africa written by a white guy, let alone buy the rights, so even though she liked it, she thought there was little market and much risk of negative publicity. I asked her if it mattered that the main characters were white. Apparently that might have made things even worse. I thanked her for her efforts and made a note in my journal about irony.

The short answer is yes, images, photos, maps. All in bounds.

nigger

>>10851306
Unironically phenomenal

>>10852046
Loose. Young. Given the current wrongthink environment around school-age violence, I would recommend against revisiting, since you don't want to end up in the clink for flogging a revenge fantasy.

You got the character from point a to point b. Action in conflict in settings with dialog. Check, check, check. You've got the Stephen King type of externally viewed horror, point of view all over the place thing grooved in. For film options, that's fine. Hollywood loves stories that read like screen plays. If horror is your thing and you remain attached to this world, the more interesting question I would ask is what happened to the adults who disappeared in the mine.

For a different look at how this kind of thing can be done from the inside out, take a look at Come Closer by Sara Gran.

>>10852050
She also cited the failure of Lulu In Marakech as evidence. Which was not saved by having been written by a woman. A year of my life instantly run down by a bus at the intersection of Art and Current Market Trends.

>>10851306
Why is there so much description of stuff that isn't interesting?

>>10852132
How? Please explain

>>10851306
>a woman walked down crimson st, treading over ice and snow, through the giddy echoes of children at play in the park beside the road
is this the first sentence of your novel?

>>10852046
how many short stories about Ween have you written? Can I read one of those?

>>10852165
I wrote this back when I was 19, and just starting to write again. I just re-read it and realized how bad some of the grammar is. This story was a one time thing, and just something I came up with organically on a whim. I was heavily inspired by Steven King. To answer your questions about the miners, it was intentionally left unknown. So people could come up with their own conclusions as to what happened to the miners.

Thank you for reading it!

I might take a look at that book, but I am more of a writer than a reader.

>>10852246
My phone auto-corrected "weeb" to "ween". So I am afraid to tell you, none of my stories have Ween in them.

I have written lots of weeb ass stories though, and most of the ones on that profile are heavily inspired by shit like Final Fantasy. Most of them are shit, but help yourself.

Poetry time!

Thinking of you,
wherever you are.
My uncertain soul,
calls out your name.
I long for your touch,
your warm embrace.
I can't help but think,
you are with someone else.

I want to hear your voice again,
yet every time I wonder if you are the same.
We haven't spoken,
in weeks or months.
The unspoken words you have not said.
I wonder if we are still together,
if not,
why didn't you say?

The pain I feel is not the pain of losing you,
but the pain that you have forgotten me.
I sat and waited for you,
and sometimes I would cry myself to sleep.
You may not realize how much I loved you,
and you were everything to me.
Even if you don't want me anymore,
I will never forget the time of you,
when you were with me.

>>10852231
here. that's better

>>10852274
voice is too shrill

>>10852288
Curious, as I am new to /lit/. But what do you mean by shrill in terms of text? The word choice is too sharp? Care to explain which ones?

>>10852297
i'm new too lmao. i meant your poetic voice was shrill, if you understand me

>>10852274
How long did it take to write this and did you edit?

>>10852331
ah, I see... erm. How do I not sound shrill?

>>10852339
I wrote it in one sitting, and sometime after I got off work. So about 10 min.

When I write poetry, I just let it come naturally.

>>10852002

You had me at "you have talent"

But yes, art is largely about excavating new earth. And for the mere fact that I have not done this, I am penitent.

I read a poem earlier today at a coffee shop open-mic gig. I trembled at first, but then gained wind. The poem was shite, yet the experience fruitful. Someone in the crowd called me a "trite hack" in my mind, and so I dropped the mic in their mug.

My point is: I'm trying to grow, and I appreciate your words of warning. Low resistance tempts, but begets nought.

>>10852405
Sounds right

All broken cellar doors
erupting faintly, gain hellish
indescribable jubilee.
Kilimanjaro loses might:
now only pebbles,
quiet rubble.
Stollen tombs underneath vaulted walls
Xerox yearly zilch.

>>10852424
>Someone in the crowd called me a "trite hack" in my mind, and so I dropped the mic in their mug.
I'm confused; did someone actually call you a trite hack, to which you responded with the mic drop, or did they call you this while you imagined the response, or did you imagine the call while dropping the mic in a random person's coffee like a douche, or did you imagine all of this?

>>10852187
Do not belittle my artistic word with your dumb plug, nigger.

>>10852624
Literally none of the above, heheh.

After I finished reciting the poem—last word: bunnyclearver—I briskly walked back to my seat. Response was lukewarm. It was a pretty uneventful event

heheh

>>10852049
thanks for the thoughtful response.

>>10852008
all in your head. of course. make it up if you want. you'll probably be closer than some photo

>>10852801
So, the last one, then.
>last word: bunnyclearver
Did you invent this word?

>>10852239
Yes

>>10852198
How do you know it isn’t interesting in the context of the work?

Exposing yourself as a brainlet there

>>10852965
i'd drop it

>>10852987
Why

>>10852993
a book ought to have a good opening sentence, in order to 'put the reader under'. or that's my thinking

>>10852886
Yes, sir—isn't it dandy?

>>10853006
Why doesn’t this one work

rate my first sentence

>It was late September and the trees were just beginning to turn and the temperature slightly cooled but still warm and the houses and the town and the air were all saturated amber and green and the kids across the street had grass stains on their jeans and the moms at the school made cider and sold doughnuts on the weekends and the sky shaded Neptune and then Black came more readily and all things considered it was a much more forlorn time than previously.

>>10853007
You are joking, right? A professor once said to me: "Don't start inventing words until you're as well acclaimed as Shakespeare." Especially in the English language, which has more words than any other, the chances that you actually need to invent a word as opposed to learn a new one are rather slim. Unless you do happen to rise to the level of someone like Joyce or Shakespeare, which I don't think even you think you do

>>10852970
No context was posted. I was giving feedback to what was given. I read the section and it was boring. Sounded like any other average writer.

>>10853059
Does the setting of late September matter for the story? If the time isn't very important than don't spend so much time describing it and don't start with what time of year it was.

>>10853070
It was the first sentence of a chapter you fucking retard

I stand sheltered with sticky wooden panels and watch hives of creases trying desperately to reconnect with the striking bright things they used to be. I sit in climate controlled tombs that are still always the wrong temperature. I limber up for the hoops that'll stand rigid as I fade away. I stand up for numbers and use them to damage myself until I forget all the standing. Staying up late with strangers that I call friends and every new day is the turning point, the day that things change for me. We could spend a thousand lifetimes lying into glass. I wonder sometimes, if the second hand acquaintances I hear described with such prestige feel just as worthless despite their medal clad necks and chiselled lives. Feeling is overrated, I want to be carved out of marble. I'm yearning for catastrophe but I'm far too lucky for all that. The biggest tragedy of our lives is that our defeat will be gradual, we won't be snapped or torn asunder in a grandiose fashion but we will wilt. Most people die long before the wires stop firing. I just want a cause, we all do but only florists will smile for how hard you bit the dirt. The bucket of guts in your skull is the worst friend you'll ever have, planting seeds that'll never flower into anything but disappointment. Gather your nectar and plug the leaks, fill the clock faces and tell yourself it's all so important. that's the only way you'll drift off sweetly.

>>10853097
I don't see how that makes the sentence any more interesting.

>>10853110
How about this one?

STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed

>>10853050
if you think it works then don't change it.

>>10853059
have you been reading joyce?

>>10853122
Why is it capitalized in the beginning? I think it's a good sentence. Not long, but gives some description of what the person is like and what they're doing/going to do. It's also a bit humorous and has some kind of rhythm to it.

>>10853145
You’re a pathetic fraud

>>10853153
Why?

>>10853066
shakespeare didn't wait until he was as acclaimed as 'shakespeare' before he started inventing words. which, by the way, he never really did that much, he just used words that weren't in the dictionary (aka slang). a fine writer who did invent words however: lewis carrol. robert graves took liberties too. remember that one of the only benefits of being a writer is there aren't any rules.

also, just on principle, don't listen to your professors (as far as you are able)

>>10853163
You don’t understand good Prose yet pretend to get Joyce

>>10853167
Yes, it's not about acclaim, it's about skill. But to invent words that both sound well and get the meaning across requires a lot of skill, and it shouldn't be done lightly. If there's already a word that fits the meter and conveys the meaning, why not use that? The only reason I can think is that you would somehow convey more meaning though the invention (e.g. through a neologism), which again requires a fair bit of skill. I would have to see the context of the word he invented to see if it was done well, but my rule is to abstain from it unless necessary and it hasn't steered me wrong yet.

>>10853172
Are you talking about this post >>10851306 I read it and it wasn't interesting.
This sentence >>10853122 is pretty good. I don't see the issue, nor the reason why you're sperging.

>>10853066

>a professor once said to me

No, you must be joking, right? Appeals to authority make for shoddy arguments, but when that authority is, of all people, some random professor, then my finely tuned bullshit filter catches a big one. Firstly, a *compound word*—that is, a word created by combining two other already existing words—isn't exactly a freshly coined neologism. It's a mere deletion of a hyphen. Secondly, the idea that you should never contrive a new word unless you've reached the rarefied stratum of Shakespeares and Joyces is nonsense. You can do whatever you want in writing. However whether it will be received warmly or not is entirely dependent on how well it's executed. Anyone can invent a word or saying, but you'd be right in saying that the majority of the time it's received as drivel. It's like the argument that certain words (synergy, paradigm, behoove, apropos, pleb, etc.) should never be used because they're too pretentious or connotatively heavy. There's an appropriate context for any—dare I say—locution, even 'splendiferous' and 'fantabulous'. And lastly, your professor's a blithering numbskull I declare! A harebrained ideologically suffocated numbskull—! Don't use his words in place of a thought or argument. I mean, for pete's sake! Either tell me you think bunnycleaver is a silly word without any possible usage (and why) or say nothing. Let's get real, professor's are by and large crippled cognoscenti who spend the rest of their usually untenured days clutching dearly to their fragile egos battered by decades of mediocrity. Lecture's hardly lack tints of personal grudges and sentiment. But hey, I don't mean to sound glib. Many profs are wonderful people and I would never make a sweeping prejudiced claim about any of them—except in this case, your guy seems like a jaded poofaced bunnycleaver

>>10853189
Explain yourself. Whys the second sentence good?

>>10853188
well that's alright if you want to abstain, but you can't levy it as a rule above other writers. besides words weren't invented by craftsmen in the first place, and the words we use today come from centuries of misuse and misinterpretations, i don't think there's any trick to it really

>>10853206
It isn't too long, it's got some humor, some rhythm to the sentence itself and describes the scene to tell the reader what is going to happen rather than saying "Buck Mulligan carried a bowl of lather, etc. that he would use to shave. There's nothing extra or unneeded in the sentence.

>>10853218
Wrong

>>10853078
>If the time isn't very important than don't spend so much time describing it and don't start with what time of year it was.
every detail is important
>>10853144
>have you been reading joyce?
I haven't read Joyce in a long time. I have been reading Flaubert and Gass though. Does it come across as derivative?

>>10853214
Tell me then, if words are so malleable, on what basis can a criticism be made? Solely on grammatical rules, which are themselves as fickle?

>>10853203
You seem upset, but as I said above, I couldn't judge it honestly without the full context.

>>10853238
whatever basis the critic feels like, there are no rules to books you know. critics are in the same business as the author: entertaining the public. do you think criticism should be based on literary fidelity?

>>10853237
a bit. anyway i think it's a bit pedestrian, it's kind of like the first line of any book in the last 200 years except in a stream of conscious with a few poetic words. also i personally don't use specific colours when i'm writing in prose poetry which yours appears to be, because they have strong connotations, ones the writer can't really control.

other than that it's good. another idea though is to give directions right at the beginning. it's stealing from cocteau a bit but it'd work with what you've got

>>10853238
Flummoxed my friend, not upset, just very flummoxed—!

And something tells me you didn't even read my very diligently crafted post, which is downright rude.

>>10851539
try
>yawp with joy
whitman points

>>10853299
Why read criticism at all, then, since it's necessarily less creative and on the basis of this pure creativity inferior to the act of creation itself?

>>10853337
>However whether it will be received warmly or not is entirely dependent on how well it's executed.
I'm waiting for you to produce the context of this last word of your read poem "bunnycleaver" so I can decide whether or not I will receive it "warmly."

>>10853367
it's like in the middle ages, they had bards who wrote poems and sonnets about the kings. that's what criticism is.

>>10853405
I appreciate the simile, it's a good one and I think I'll steal it, but I don't think it's a fair one given that both the professions we're talking about fall absolutely on the continuum of creativity, in terms of art, while the deeds of a Charlemagne or Otto the Great weren't "art" as it's commonly meant. Artful, certainly, but not exactly art.

>>10853237
>every detail is important
If it's an important detail, maybe. You CAN have too much description, anon. It's possible.

>>10853229
What's wrong about it?

>>10853367
Why? I've'nt been asked to do so

>>10853551
I am asking you to do so.

Can't tell if this thread is dead, but I thought I'd post something I was working on.

>>10851306

You know how to write. I like the tone best. Sedate, cozy. The only reason anyone is saying anything negative about it is because it's not printed in a physical book with a Penguin logo on it.

call it quotidian because it sounds shinier than ordinary


When I was twee years old my mother
called me contumacious
she spanked me with a flank of ham
and saddled the sally horse with faceless
sighs of coddling and sour-milk of the dog—
my dog was named Ruffles, like the crisp
but I didn't like crisps because they serrated my gums—I much preferred gum.

But as my mom's door frame accrued more markings
the things I saw waxed and warped—
this should be no surprise:
ideas are pregnant mice
and mice foment like Fleming's parlor cakes.

The day came when I realized they'd keep coming and going.
Then they day came I realize this wouldn't always be the case for me.
Then the day came I realized this wouldn't always be the case.

Ruffles died of cancer,
and no matter how contumacious she was
in the face of the last faceless face to be faced
the sinkhole for every last breath
she dropped down from the kitchen sink
dropping a crisp from her mouth
the brand was the American Sabritas
and I ate it happily while crying.

>>10851306
This is very good. The only sentence that doesn't add to the general effect, in my opinion anyway, is
>There was a cacophony in the kitchen, or sense of it
Maybe combine it with the other into something like "His mother's own din sounded in the kitchen."

But other than that there isn't a superfluous word or phrase that I can see. Top shelf, keep writing whatever novel this is, my dude

>>10853783
I think this might work better as prose, truthfully. But it's sad and funny and I wish my mother knew the word "contumacious."

I would change the "twee" and maybe re-write the "faceless face" line; it mocks the narrators idea of death, and this conflicts with the last line.

>>10853830
preesh brotha

A case study against diversity
XYZ was a rich nutritious land. Although many of its inhabitants were hungry and homeless, the country was moving forward, trying hard to stake a claim in the modern world.

Poets and writers today romaniticise the idea of it all, how they were part of something so grand and beautiful and how the lost glory will be regained. Their spirit remains unbent.

War of three nations shook the narrative in modern world. Loss of human life at such scale forced us all to ask some very important questions. West was almost unaffected by it all, hence there weren't any major changes in the governing of the world but it did have a massive impact on how much a society can tolerate.

Mr Z has been living in XYZ for more than 5 decades. He was in the army and fought for his country.

He survived the war which took nearly 70% of his country's population. His eyes reek of terror as he talked to us.

Mr Z: "It was a horrible time. War ended for us in the second week. It was all about saving as much as we can afterwards. When youre fighting not to win but just so you can live, its not something I would want to experience ever. Phases where no matter how hard we tried, the odds were just stacked against us. I might not have said what I am about to say before I faced those situations, but I won't wish that feeling of powerlessness upon anyone. The gods abandoned us. But what did we do wrong? Why did the gods leave us? I lost my kids, my wife and saved this home. This is all I have left now."

A proud nation reduced to rubble, fear and hopelessness. Mr Z isn't the only survivor who's fighting his life.

This entire region was always a hotbed of tension and friction among countries.


Mr Narrator: "Tell us a bit about the days after riots pacified?"

I'm only going to post the first four paragraphs to keep it short. This isn't fiction but an essay on the Iliad I'm writing. I've stared at it for so long I can't tell if it's garbage or not. I'd appreciate honest feedback.

Of all their stories, we are told the Greeks studied the Iliad most.

In the Republic, Socrates, supposedly the wisest and undoubtedly the most recognizable of Athenians, invokes the poem to make an argument for censorship. He uncomfortably recalls an atypical moment in the hero Achilles’ long, bloodsoaked saga: when the god-descended warrior is facedown in the dirt, weeping over the loss of his dearest friend, Patroclus.

This is the same Achilles who slaughters dozens in mere moments, boasts of robbing parents of children, and sneers at Trojan Hector’s plea for a proper burial. That Socrates wanted Achilles to be colder says no small amount about the morals of the time, or at the very least the perceived necessity for war in ancient and classical Greece. It was war that the people romanticized most, and here Homer, preceding the gadfly at least 400 years, gives the subject more than its fair share of adulation.

According to Homer, the bloodshed started over a girl. The Trojans stole fair Helen from Sparta’s King Menelaus, brother of Achaea’s King Agamemnon, and we are introduced to the contest for her some ten years after it began, when the Achaeans and their allies occupy guarded tents on a shore just outside the city. There is no mention in the Iliad of a wooden horse, a penetrable heel, or even a decisive victory. The war is simply a rationale for its great men. Diomedes, Menelaus, and, indeed, Achilles, are extolled for their bravery in combat. They thrust spears through necks. They trample foes under horses’ feet. They cut off heads. Throughout the epic, might is the sought-after virtue of both sides, and glory in battle is hailed before all else.

Give it hell
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sq4ycrhk3znXzB5Nwvf14vQT2dL5uOdX/view?usp=sharing

>>10854347
is this for school? i know how that is. listen, homer's implicit attitude in his stories was a loathing of war. the battles were cartoons to sate his reactionary and anti-intellectual audience. he barely bothered to get his military background accurate, his fighting is a careless muddle and he indiscriminately mixed up modern and outmoded weapons. he was really contemptuous of the stupidities of war. who told you it romanticised war?

we're introduced nine years into the war, at the argument between achilles and agamemnon, and it ends before troy falls, when achilles returns the corpse of hector. because the story is about the anger of achilles.

>>10853814
Thanks anon, I will

>>10852773
I bet you are a big fan of Barbara Streisand.

>>10853059
>>10853144
Or Franzen. Compare the opener of Corrections. This kind of themed time and weather report is often referred to as "workshop" because for some reason every workshop story starts this way, and also because it is a marker of the workshop-level writer warming up for the real lead which almost inevitably comes next, when a character appears doing something. If you actually look at the first lines of The Corrections, you'll see how you've upended it - "amber, green" "kids playing" "moms" doing things that suggest comfort and abundance, it's all pretty happy and cheery sounding, then you dump "forlorn" on it and "forlorn" isn't really in there.

I know you're not going to go look it up, so here:


The madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through. You could feel it: something terrible was going to happen. The sun low in the sky, a minor light, a cooling star. Gust after gust of disorder. Trees restless, temperatures falling, the whole northern religion of things coming to an end. No children in the yards here. Shadows lengthened on yellowing zoysia. Red oaks and pin oaks and swamp white oaks rained acorns on houses with no mortgage. Storm windows shuddered in the empty bedrooms. And the drone and hiccup of a clothes dryer, the nasal contention of a leaf blower, the ripening of local apples in a paper bag, the smell of the gasoline with which Alfred Lambert had cleaned the paintbrush from his morning painting of the wicker love seat.

It's workshop, but it's consistent and it characterizes Alfred.

>>10853350
It's a Mark Strand poem.

>>10854616
Can't read google drive. Try the pastebin thing.

>>10853774
Possible. Drafty. We begin with "I" behaving badly, and setting up a three-part introduction way-pointed by running traffic lights, then pan over to Rhodes, who then becomes the subject of the rest of it to the end. I read this as a suggestion that we are about to get a report of the ultimate come uppance of Rhodes, and "I" is there just to serve as the interested observer. Somewhere we had better get back to running those traffic lights, because it is poor form to set it up that way then orphan it.

It's wordy, I would say loose, but that is a style, just not one my taste runs to. This breezy conversational style, when it runs off the rails it tends toward tautologies, so watch for that. "Friends, acquaintances" is close, "broke just about every rule imaginable" is a description of the list of offenses that preceded. It moves forward, but I can see the tendency developing.

Your girl likes bad boys, so let her rip. It could be something.

>>10853101
Idiodialectic. I can't see a "hive of creases" - I don't know what that is. There may or not be basketball involved. Dreary.

>>10855458
pity he published it with a weak ending :(

>>10854801
>is this for school?
No, I do this on my own time for my blog. I'm a big fan of Will Durant, the guy who wrote The Story of Civilization, and I try to imitate his prose. Of course, I want to have my own style one day. But I'm still pretty young (19) and for now he's my model.
>who told you it romanticised war?
It does romanticize war. There are certainly plenty of dark moments ("and then darkness enveloped his eyes, and he stretched out his arms"), but the theme of the story appears to be (until the very end) that there's glory to be found in fighting. The paper goes on to talk about the horrors of war later.

I appreciate the feedback, though. What do you think of the prose?

Weeping Willow

You lose your leaves like losing tears

As a heart empties itself of tears
The watering can cannot

In the faded sun
During certain months
The driveway is wet
Your grief can beget

Garden must you go away
Recall the summer of that day
You moved my little finger
Who tickled a rosebud
Daring that I should
Too much pressure

After having fun
The rose returns to its cocoon
Rose puts on her shirt
And everything is to start again

>>10856370
here, it doesn't romanticise war. you're transposing the social concerns of the 21st century onto this epoch. the war is simply a bit of action, remember homer had to make a living. what translation did you read?

the prose is alright, it's unacademic and reads just as well as anyone elses. i'd lose a lot the the adjectives that just slow sentences down ('the hero achilles long, bloodsoaked saga' can be 'achilles' saga' without losing any crediblity).

>>10856460
Now I'm going to sound cruel. There's no consistency here. It's like you put rhymes in when you thought of one, and for the other lines said, "fuck it." I thought maybe the lines that rhymed had the same meter, but they don't. And you broke a clause to fit a rhyme. "Your grief can beget" what? Tears? Grief often does that. The second stanza is equally fractured, and not enjoyable to read. And what are you trying to say with the "heart empties itself of tears" line? That watering cans don't have agency? That they don't have emotion? That a heart can never be completely empty of tears while a watering can is able to "empty its tears"? I understand vaguely what you're going for but that's just the problem: it's vague. Some of the imagery doesn't even make sense, namely, "the rose returns to its cocoon." I understand you're referring to a woman named Rose putting her clothes back on, but say "bud," a rose is not an insect. "Garden must you go away" sounds like something from a nursery rhyme, it's campy, and if you're trying to be intentionally campy you've succeeded. And the fact that it has no punctuation adds to the opacity.

In short, I think that you have confused poetic writing for imprecise writing. It's impressionistic but not in a good way, like the patchwork memory of a drunk rather than the stark clarity of an emotionally charged experience.

>>10850306
if you want to get published, the real life languages thing would be a bad idea i think, people could get pissed if their language is negatively associated.

>>10856568
I wrote it to try and comfort the weeping willow.

It's a sound principle that poetry is meant to be read aloud, but this in the style of the ancient Welsh; reciting actually distracts attention from the subtler properties of a poem, which though addressed nominally to the ear, the eye has to see in black and white before they can be appreciated. The eye is the most sophisticated organ of sense and is therefore the one to which the poet must make a final appeal in critical matters. Ask any one who has read Crime and Punishment the name of the hero, it's almost certain that he will not have troubled to find out the correct pronunciation in Russian.

When we strain for perfect clarity, what we finally achieve is perfectly banal. In Italy, it's desirable for something to be vague. And since you mention it, I wasn't trying to 'make sense' in that regard, nature is millions of things, and there are millions of ways of understanding its preoccupations, it's not a question of sensibility or expressing nature, but ceasing the power, taking over from nature, with more destruction than most others, perhaps, but certainly with more integrity and truth, also.

And nursury rhymes are really important for me I suppose. I take it you're not from England. Anyway, Picasso said punctuation is a cache-sexe of literature, you know.

It's not an emotionally charged experience, it's the resolution of a deep mental conflict, that's what poetry is, I tried to comfort the weeping willow but he comforted me. That's not to say it's any good.

>>10856837
>but this in the style of the ancient Welsh
Explain this.
>In Italy, it's desirable for something to be vague
Is it desirable in the "style of the ancient Welsh"?
>And since you mention it, I wasn't trying to 'make sense' in that regard
If you can explain to me what saying "cocoon" instead of "bud" actually adds to the content of the poem, I'll give you this. Even if it's a "literary" description of a bud, I don't see what this adds, since you aren't using any consistent meter that I can discern, except sometimes the syllables agree, and that the third stanza has a form 7-8-7-6-5-4.

>>10854320

I like this.
Made me want to know more about the world after the fictitious war was over.

>>10852046

i like it!

My only gripe is the excessive use of the characters names but overall I enjoyed reading the life and fate of Seth.

>>10856931
>Explain this.
The Welsh Englyns had thousands of rules about them, they were written for gravestones and things like that, to teach you the different rules of cynghanedd I'd need a lot of patience, but you can read some in the Mabinogion.

>Is it desirable in the "style of the ancient Welsh"?
I'm just offering a different perspective, versecraft has nothing to do with theme really.

>If you can explain to me what saying "cocoon" instead of "bud" actually adds to the content of the poem, I'll give you this.
I feel like I don't have to explain this. Cocoon doesn't have to be about caterpillars or moths, it has multiple meanings. Besides, bud is a very weak word, cocoon is a good Latin word. If you want to know what I understand about rose bloom cycles - very little. It's all to do with what you're subconscious mind attaches to certain words, when Picasso paints a bull it's not because he sees one, but because it means something to him. Symbolism exists everywhere, just not with any sort of clarity. If it could explained any better we wouldn't be writing the poems.

The poet has a licence to resolve metre where the emotion demands it, and he is a poor poet if he daren’t use it. Robert Graves said to write poems for other than poets is a waste, or words that effect (not meaning poet as someone who writes poems, rather someone who thinks or sees poetically)

>>10830777
>this is my first project of this scale so i did kinda want to do it straight-laced

never gunna make it

>>10849072
I got ignored :(

Can someone just rate it on a scale of 1-10? I promise I gave feedback :)

>>10856492
>remember Homer had to make a living
But he almost certainly was multiple people.
>What translation did you read?
Ennis Rees

After some feedback from friends I think I'm going to start over with a more structured essay all-around. So, it'll be like 1. History of the Iliad and Homer 2. Plot summary 3. Achilles' loss of Patroclus and Priam's loss of Hector, and what this implies about the morals near the end. 4. The considerable, long-lasting effects the Iliad had on the Greeks. 5. My moral point

>>10857511
homer was one person, he wrote a short draft for the iliad, those multiple people (the homeridae) expanded it into the 24 books. they were also travelling bards who earned their wine and bread at the royal palaces and festivals. i haven't heard of ennis rees, is it a prose translation?

>>10850904
whoa. i had a bit about this exact scenario (questioning the definition of 'anything' in this context)

it ends with me asking if the genocide in darfur, or the rape of Nanking helps—the next day he's in a suit and owns a fortune 500 company

Illfated robs a grave and descends to hell

directed to a king of old
Illfated journeyed south to Greece
and found among a castle's ruins
all buried 'neath the cellar

a poet's head and golden lute
and robbbing Hades our man found
one sitting at his dear friends grave
the old dog Kerberos

They say a poet's head still sang
a song that lasted after death
the voice arising from the men
who worshipping him shared their breath

and long ago an ancient king
he stole the poet's head and lute
that some had worshipped in a shrine
a useless thing without good song

and hopeless at the lute and poem
he hid the things in cellar vaults
where Kerberos had found the head
as from his post beneath the earth

of keenest ears he heard the dead
and silent song of poet's lips
and so dug for the beckoning call
and made the castle fall

and so Illfated stood struck by
such oddest sight of Pluto's dog
at tunnel edge beneath the earth
him howling song through poet's lips

entranced with his own poor tune
the dog had never noticed as
Illfated stole the lute and strolled
down darkest tunnel to the depths

>>10857552
No, it's still poetry

>>10857480
You probably got ignored because it's a good poem; there's nothing for people to shit on.
I love your use of language, except the last three lines seem to dissolve into meaninglessness through odd word choices. I can see those choices were very deliberate, but it kind of leaves me floating.

>>10849072
what do you think of your poem?

Can anyone critique and excerpt from my upcoming novel?

Will rate a few in a couple of minutes. (wagecucking atm)

Appreciate your thoughts and suggestions.

https://pastebin.com/raw/reDS6Wnw

>>10833086
Anon usually I scroll through theses critique threads and every post is garbage that makes me physically cringe within the first line, but your excerpt here was so engrossing that I sunk into it like I would a normal book, I didn't even think about it. It reminds me of ender's game, that scifi YA style, but the good kind, and clearly more grown up. I like how you introduce concepts smoothly and you don't labor over them, you don't seem to worry about explaining exactly every detail of whatever this technology. Also opening with a choppy micro essay about frames of reference was really killer. I enjoyed this a lot anon, I'd read your book if it maintained this quality.

>>10848519

The second stanza's rhyme scheme was bad and made it sound juvenile. The last line could be better and seemed rushed.
I feel the first line could have been much better if you had expanded petrichor instead of using petrichor.

The first stanza is much better though the second line lacked the approriate meter. perhaps expanding it to
>by the brisk clouds that shadowed
stratus clouds is alright but only a few people will know what it looks like without resorting to wikipedia.

Not less because in purple I descended
The western day through what you called
The loneliest air, not less was I myself.

What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard?
What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears?
What was the sea whose tide swept through me there?

Out of my mind the golden ointment rained,
And my ears made the blowing hymns they heard.
I was myself the compass of that sea:

I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.

>>10857822
I like it anon, it sounded good
Not mucH i can say with my limited knowledge

Awake, and arise, awake, and arise; the bells tolled for the murky dawn, the city woke up hazily, and the people stumbled from their beds. A weary procession began trickling down weathered and decrepit streets towards the city centre. Many stayed sleepily behind closed curtains, while the priests continued to shake their great bells, shaking loose the heaviest dreams from the most unwilling heads, announcing to all the inescapable beginning of a new day. Some men lay comfortably half-conscious in the street-side guttering until late, numbed by drink and mindless of the morning chill. Mothers carried swaddling infants like heavy stones, children walked idly alongside, and babies lay quietly, sleeping long and deeply, as if they had not yet realised their transition from womb to earth. The common people moved in drowsy, clumsy droves, slipping and shoving, while a stream of others strolled begrudgingly down from the Palace. The knell corralled the entire sighing horde down through the city; when the inky sun reached the apex of the sky, the colourless city now awash in the sombre lambency of high noonlight, all the townsmen had found their way inside the Temple. Inside, they sat down together for prayer; the ritual which marked the milky grey day before the new moon, the way each month had begun for all remembered time. The dark morning was born to a world which lingered in extremis.
This morning, Wynne decided not to participate. When the day’s ritual began she stayed in bed, pulling her covers over her head and ignoring the bells and calls. The other young men and women she boarded with rose and dressed and left the house mechanically, and no one disturbed her, or checked to see if she was following. Soon, the place was deathly quiet. She savoured the stillness of the hour, the strangeness of being conscious at this time without the suffering of cold marble pew on her thighs, or the narcotic droning of the High Priest on his pulpit. As she lay still, a rain began to settle in, and the cool light of afternoon began to wither. A new feeling, perhaps born from her languor, caused her to fear: as the walls and ceiling and the sheets around her felt oppressively heavy, the bed and the empty floors rising up under her and pressing against her chest. She stared out through the window for a sense of release; the rows of brick and iron hovels of the city, tightly packed together and stretching out in columns to a distant high wall of stone, seemed like bars painted across the window.

>>10857834
This was awesome.

Would read more. interesting way to break in the setting. Prose was cool and fun to read.

Polly the NP-girl


there exists a path:
cos although arcs intersect
and though heads turn and voices project,
we stand silent, cornered, can't laugh
odd nodes, stuck,
to be cut
from the social graph

in an NP-world,
i'd be satisfied
with the shine of your hair
and your effervescent eyes.
but if that's not the case,
and you can't see
any nodes past the fringe
of adjacency,
then for all thoughts that cycle,
and for all variants i run,
and for all drinks and hot air,
hearts and
absent fun;
i won't know —
what words to breathe,
what tangents to twine,
what assumptions to believe —
if that link to you, on which i depend,
can't even verified by the night's end

iff you can see me,
then we can see we
please
help me
prove poly

>>10857852
Wow, thanks man. This is my first piece of writing I've ever shared and so that makes you my first ever compliment

I feel fuzzy inside

How do I make this scene more heartwrenching without making it look like a parody with the whole "wake up! wake up!" part?

>boy and a girl narrowly escape a dangerous situation and run back to the hotel to tell the girl's grandpa that they need to leave
>the grandfather died in his sleep while they were gone and she's the one who discovers it

right now the only thing I'm coming up with is the grandaughter was jealous that he showered attention on the boy (who isn't even a member of the family) because she thinks he would have preferred a surrogate grandson to her and her last interaction with him is a fight. After the girl stops speaking to the boy he finds a note the grandfather wrote to the grandaughter before he died telling her how proud he is of her and how he wished he could live long enough to see her surpass him.

>>10857880
<3

Love it bro/sis, keep it up

>>10857888

She still lived inside of me
Though only as a simple memory
Sometimes I would by chance catch a scent of her old buttery bodywash from a passing crowd
(Never remembered its name, though I would instantly buy it if I did)
I wish I can remember everything there is in my short sighted mind,

A cold lifeless stare, a promise that she kept,
Over warnings of her fragile health,
Drama wasn't her forte,
A straightforward gal with a prosaic tongue,
Wrote entire papers in the passive,
She never left her love, the lab, and nature,

All I have are memories
And your photograph on my shelf
I wish you took more selfies
Because there's nothing left that I can remember

Sit back and relax
Time moves much slower in the
Butterscotch bathtub

>>10849072
More traditional English style is more my shtick.

>>10857615
This is cool. It's about Orpheus, right?

To all anons posting their writing, whether or not someone critiques your work, it's worthwhile to put it aside for a while after you've finished it. After a week, or few weeks, revisit it with fresh eyes and you'll be able to more clearly see your own writing for what it is.

>>10857615
>>10858648
I'll add that I really liked it. It might be able to be made more clear and fluid to read, but I think for the most part it's solid.

>>10858648
>>10858697
The poet's head is Orpheus. Ilfated is a character of my own creation I'm playing around with. The framing story (I posted the framing story a while ago) is that Illfated was prophecied by Apollo to have a bad end but finds and sets out on a journey to overcome his tragic fate (which he doesn't.) This is one of his journeys along the way and it spoofs the story of Orpheus and Eurydice a bit. After this story I plan on writing one about Illfated getting sentenced to exile from Hades for littering the lute in the river Lethe:

and currents play the lute in Lethe waters
this music forgot as soon as heard
not even memory the music of the dead

>>10858916
Sounds interesting anon. Keep it going and keep improving.

To want to want requires a want to want to want, which then requires a want to want to want to want ect. At which point, in an infinitely wanting want, I arrive at an ultimate Want, a want that has nothing to want but something that wants to be wanted, that something being so wanted by this Want, infinitely so, that the want wanted by the Want becomes infinitely wanting of its own want, recursively wanting to want a want to a point where something is completely unwantable, not by the Want or the wants’ lack of want, but due to it being impossible to want something so infinitely wantable when the Want wanting of its own wanting becomes so infinitely recursive that something is nothing in comparison, and to satisfy infinitely wanting wants is to want nothing which is what I want to want, but I want something, I want you to want me.

It was 4:32 AM in the middle of the Nevada desert, heading towards Elko, about forty minutes away. I was running off of two hours of sleep in the past thirty hours. My only sources of energy that propelled me in my short, seedy odyssey were candy bars, smokes, shrill radio static, and occasionally having to slam onto the brakes to avoid hitting a transient, a deer, or a transient deer. As my dim headlights carved a silty path through the desert, I saw strange figures dancing and weaving in the darkness just outside of my vision. In my rear view mirror, I could see a hitch-hiker's silhouette, swaying with the road, even though I knew I was the only one in the car. My fingernails would grow and shrink, my knuckles would get scrapes and cuts out of nowhere.

I was delirious out of my fucking mind, and I had to get to that whore.

The needle quivered around E like the teasing finger of a rapist. I scouted ahead, a gas station. Pulled in and parked my car. Underneath the hood, something hacked up a cloud of smoke. It smelled sweet, like a baby burping up carrots.

I entered the station and inside was a darkly inked fetish master, a water troll with a Samurai's ponytail. We nodded to each other as though we were comrades fighting the same war. My body gravitated towards the hotdogs, and for probably ten minutes I just watched those greasy phallic tubesteaks sizzle around in their own piss. I wanted to be one of them. I bought one and also a very, very tall soda.

When I went to pay for my food, I opened my wallet the wrong way, and twenty hundred-dollar bills fell out onto the floor.

"Oh shit, thanks man." I told the wizard in cashier's clothing. He didn't respond. I scooped up the cash, paid for the goods and the gas. When he was giving me my change, he said something.

"You goin' for the brothels?"

"Uhh..." I looked around, as if there were agents watching us. Nope.

"Yeah, man. It's my first time. First time ever, really."

He nodded sagely and stopped counting the coins to stroke his beard. It was very coarse looking, it made a sound like stone scraping when he scratched it.

"You want to go to Sue's. That is the best. Ask for Coco."

He gave me my change and held my hand for a slightly uncomfortable amount of time before letting go. I moseyed out and scrawled the name Sue in my head.

When I made it to Elko, I got to Sue's. Coco wasn't in, but there was this one girl my age there that had a cleft palate. She gave me amazing head. I lost my virginity at 29 to her. When I came inside of her it was as though an angel was massaging healing balms into my ballsack.

I made it twenty-nine steps outside of Sue's before laying down and passing out in an alleyway for fifteen hours. I slept like a baby.

Thank you, darkly inked fetish master.

We stumbled into the bathroom and I closed the door behind her. She didn’t even unwrap her arms and continued thrusting her tongue into my mouth.
It was a bizarre feeling. I couldn’t stop kissing back, and deep in my stomach something felt uncomfortable, and a little lower there was an hot and breathless sensation.
She yanked at my pants and dropped her own, and raised her thin fleshy leg against my side. I would’ve thought oh fuck at this point, but what non-thought was running through my head wasn’t really verbally comprehensible; it was more like an atmosphere, a developing but temporary state of being? Maybe it was just a feeling. The word chemicals might’ve popped up in the back of my mind, as we writhed against each other, tongues and hands and legs and chests and more…
My arms moved on their own, hoisting her up onto me. I say this because my mind wasn’t really paying attention; a part of it which couldn’t have been my brain thought it next appropriate step for the situation, in a mechanical way. She clung close and forced her tongue further into my mouth.

>>10859440
Seems this is meant to make poetic a bathroom make-out scene. It’s okay, nothing special. There’s no defining sentence or feeling to it, I think. What is the mood supposed to be?

>>10859078
Fuckin' nice man, I like the bizarre edge you give certain bits like "teasing finger of a rapist" "phallic tubesteaks" etc. I like the mystic language you use in relation to certain things like "water troll" and "wizard in cashiers clothing".

>>10859461
I probably should've written a bit further before posting, like you said, as it is there's not much to it until I add more.
The mood would be uncomfortable, spaced out confusion, with a overtones of reckless desire and a tinge of anxiety. The girl is 14 and the younger sister of a friend whose house he's staying at and he's a 17 year old virgin - so typical teen nervousness about sex mixed with a worse feeling about her young age and the potential wrongness of what's going on.
Probably should've written that instead of explaining it afterwards.

Don't really know where to go with this one but here it is anyhow:

"The woses awe in bwoom!"

She'd always say that when mom let her put all the roses in bunches.

"The woses awe in bwoom!"

Melts my heart everytime I hear her say that. Even cuter when you realize her name is Rose. I love my little sister, with her cute chubby cheeks, her cute little marble eyes, her cute little blonde pigtails, and her cute little lisp. She could tell you about any flower you asked about and it was no coincidence her favourite flower was a rose. She could tell you how most roses today bloom in the growing season, how asiatic lilies need 1 inch of water each week, and how the tallest sunflower ever recorded grew over 30 feet. She remembered a lot at the flower shop

Standing at the counter, I felt a tiny tug on my sleeve. I looked down and saw Rose's round little face looking up at me. She was wearing her dark blue raincoat, despite the fact it wasn't raining. She liked wearing her raincoat, it was dad's last parting gift to her before he left. He knew how much Rose loved to play in the rain.

>>10859485
Cool enough concept. You could pull off something worthwhile, no doubt. Just tap into the melancholy and awkwardness is my advice.

>>10851345
I agree, it is strange. I started playing with the rhythmic style that characterizes the first paragraph one day, and I'm not sure how I like it, or how to work dialogue into it.

Some of the confusion you have just comes from it being an except from a story. John is the protagonist, and he kidnaps the guy abusing his sister. So Steven wakes up drugged and thinks John is a ghost cause of the lighting.

The other problem I'm running into is that I have some characters who speak like normal people, and then interspersed are characters who have a fatalistic, apocalyptic (and prideful) view of themselves and the world (John for example). This results in their conversations being torn between "one of us dies tonight" and "fucking sock." I'm not sure if stylistically it actually works.

Anyways, thanks.

>>10859560
Thanks anon, I'll keep that in mind

>>10855565

Appreciate the response. Yeah the style is obviously specific, something I'm into at the moment. Aping ferrante, but trying to keep the narrative structure a bit tighter.

And we do get back to the lights eventually. That first sentence gives you the outline for the whole novel. Or so I imagine while drafting.

>>10856967
Thanks. What do you think about the prose?

>>10859462
haha thanks. my favorite experiences in life have always been the mundane warped into the surreal. i hope to write a collection of short fiction in this vein, maybe not as perverted but just as "odd"

"Ay-ay-ay! I do not care how much he knows. Why do you think I sent those other men away?" Akine leaned in close and rubbed two fingers together. "Treasure is sweeter when shared between fewer."

Ojrana finally saw the true source of the Scrapper’s objections. "I will split my share with Jaekol,” he said as he gestured to the old man behind him.

Akine stepped back, letting out a thoughtful rumble as he glanced between the two other men. Then, he took a deep breath in and straightened himself proudly.

"Thirty percent.”

Ojrana wasn’t sure what that meant, but he was no stranger to negotiation. It was a time-honored tradition back on Bigtop, though done for fun more than anything. There was never anything rare enough for others to covet.

"Thirty per sent?" he exclaimed, throwing his arms out wide. "You insult every one of my ancestors!"

Akine motioned for him to lower his voice, and re-approached. "Twenty-five percent, but only because we are friends. If you were not my friend, I would never do this."

The game became clear. Ojrana needed to get him to bring the number down further.
Deepening his scowl to one of utter disdain, he scoffed and spit on the ground. "My ancestors grab at your ankles from the dirt for even *speaking* a number higher than twenty."

Akine's nostrils flared and he raised his hand as if to speak in great anger, but then threw them down and shook his head. "Fires take you, twenty! But no lower than that."

"Ok," Ojrana said quickly, before the offer could be withdrawn. Jaekol blustered behind him, seemingly stunned by the masterful display of bartering. Ojrana gave him a silent smirk that said this was how true men conduct business.

Before either Ojrana or Jaekol could speak further, Akine pointed between the two men. "Twenty split between both of you!"

"Ok," Ojrana said again, feeling as if he needed to offer some concessions after having manipulated the Scrapper so thoroughly. One cannot work with a man who feels as if one has stolen from him.

Akine grinned and waved both men onto the disc, then hopped onto the back of his white-furred mount. The two passengers pushed aside packed tents and crates of supplies to create little alcoves to sit in, and within a few moments all three were moving from the tent city into the surrounding grassland. Jaekol stared at Ojrana in disappointment, a look of sad disdain which made the latter feel as if he had a father again.

"Do you know what percentages are?" Jaekol said after a few minutes of quiet riding.

"Ah..." Ojrana glanced off towards the moon, not wanting to let him see his face. Lies, as he knew, were most often revealed through small expressions. "Yes, but my village was isolated. Traders brought them only rarely."

It was a good lie - vague enough to be credible - and Jaekol seemed to buy it, as he let the conversation drop there.

>>10828055
Doesn't feel very earnest. Either you're baiting or trying too hard to be depressed.

>>10829453
>would be
Shouldn't that be hyphenated?
>thats
Please check your writing before you submit.
>quotation marks within dialogue which uses quotation marks
When's the last time you read a book? Anyway, your prose isn't even worthy of a subreddit, go work on your craft before you write a 'book' - I'm sure you haven't written enough for a fucking chapter either.
>nocked
fuck me.

I don't write in english and have no one that can provide detailed critique whenever I need it. Are there any tips on how to develop a critical eye for your own work? Especially regarding prose.
How do I honestly judge what I've written?

>>10859078
Great stuff

>>10857934
Besides the first two lines, I like it

>>10860564
Only thing to do is to come back after a month or two. What language do you write in? 4chan isn't exactly a critical eye for this kind of stuff. If you're really wanting to get published, hire an editor. Plenty of writers edit themselves though.

>>10857164
Thank you!

Yeah, I struggle with dialogue sometimes. My natural way of writing has a strange syntax too.

Lovers today and for all time
Preserve the meaning of my rhyme:
Love is not kindly nor yet grim
But does to you as you to him

Whistle, and Love will come to you,
Hiss, and he fades without a word,
Do wrong, and he great wrong will do,
Speak, he retells what he has heard.

Then all you lovers have good head
Vex not young Love in word or dead:
Love never leaves an unpaid debt,
He will not pardon nor forget.

Edmund walked, axe in hand
And looked
Diseased flesh held in a crows beak
A brown fossilized heart
In the hollowed husk of a torso
Maggots writhe a chew through't
Beating
Next to it an old broad sword
rusted with blood
The ground mutated by war
Overtime the battlements had folded over
Scores of men and boys lost under a sludge of bootsteps
Songs of valour ripped in twain
Steel unclenched in bone
Sodden in the clay of mans violence
Shields drowned in pools of the ancient dead
Onward now, to the castle!

The stone reaches
There is blood in the basalisks screams
As she soars through the broken caverns
There is fire in the walkways
Torn bodies in the canyons
The snake had eaten the princess long ago
Edmund hunted her
Not for revenge
He stood down her stare of starved gems
Chaos harkens on deaths arrival
Breaking all life's labours soundly
We reach a new life under soil
Sending hell its time
We enter into eternal nurturing reprise
Life is a parting gift from kindly death
For those on there way to him
Engarde

Bump

>>10858618
I can understand that. I like working with older forms and using those techniques to explore stress and meter, but it's not my normal instinct. And free verse seems to pose more challenges for me, oddly.
>>10857764
I enjoyed writing it and capturing those images and thoughts as they came to me. It's more personal than what I usually write, which I was a little uneasy about (and it reflects that in a few lines). It's nice to confront that for myself, but I also try to consider the reader rolling their eyes or maybe getting lost in cryptic shit. Wasn't sure where it landed in that respect.
>>10857638
Thanks. Good point about the last three lines. They probably wouldn't get past the cutting room if I went back and edited it. Little too caught up in wordplay, and the actual meaning is a bit redundant. I have a bad habit of doing that with endings.

Will try to give some feedback later when I have time to look at stuff.

'I
Equally
In air
Above your bare
Hill crest, your basalt lair,
Mirage the reflected drink
At the clear pool's brink
With tigers at play
In the glare of day
Blithely I stray,
Under shadow of myrtle
With Phoenix and his Turtle
For all time true,
With Gryphons at grass
Under the Upas,
Sipping warm dew
That falls hourly new,
I, unattainable
Complete, incomprehensible
No mate for you.
In sun's beam
Or star-gleam,
No mate for you
No mate for you,'
Says the White Doe

>>10827919
https://softcartel.com/2018/02/13/oil-by-walker-storz/

I'll just post the link. even tho this was published, I really want feedback to rework it drastically

>>10860473
Best I've seen in any thread. Seriously though, I'm "completely serious". You are a genius—why are you posting this here? Aren't you afraid of it being plagiarized? Such a rare glint of a whirring mind! Thank you for posting this, for real. I'm being "completely serious" and I'm "not joking" and subtly saying it's trash or garbage or restroom runoff. It really truly is transcendent. BONITAS. The power and the glory of the human mind. "I'm serious."

Snow falling, like pure white confetti slowly drifting down from the sky, dancing on the wind doing turns and flips like mini acrobats, and the night sky completely looks flat and homogeneous, almost like looking into an abyss slightly luminescent from the moon’s rays. On the ground the snow starts to pile up as an inch starts to form. Towering apartment complexes on either side of the middle of a four lane street which runs through the heart of the city. Each building is at least four stories tall with the largest being fifty or so, and while some are made of red brick others made of concrete they were all lifeless. Not a single light was on and other than the wind which would howl ever so slightly, like a dog’s whimper. The city was silent except for the movement of a singular man.

my intro paragraph to a short story.

Sitting Sitting
Breathing Breathing
Walking down the street and remembering the young child staring at my deformity
Memory Memory
Just another memory
Sitting Sitting
Breathing Breathing
I sit in the corner of the room to hide my deformities
Just another though
Sitting Sitting
Breathing Breathing
A missed opportunity--intense regret
Thinking Thinking
Sitting Sitting
Breathing Breathing
(Swallowing my saliva)
Sitting Sitting
Breathing Breathing
BARK!
(Startling at the noise)
Startled Startled
Breathing Breathing
Thoughts of anger for having thoughts
Thinking Thinking
Breathing Breathing
Losing the feeling of the concrete floor
Feeling Feeling
Breathing Breathing
The feeling of the ceiling expanding
Feeling Feeling
Breathing Breathing
A great expansion, space expands
Watching Watching
Breathing Breathing
Still expanding
Breathing
Breathing
Breathing
Breathing
A stream of rumination permeating into the mind's eye
(Exerting and choosing to remain with the empty space)
Watching Watching
Dissipating Thought
Breathing Breathing
(losing the feeling of breathing)
Darkness Darkness
Darkness Darkness
--
A song plays in my minds ear

Investigating the Source of Trouble

What's this?
Did it kill the cat?
Would a more passive approach pass the test?
Test givers.
Coming up short, not the best livers are they.
Seemingly atop.
In essence, empty chalk.
My favorite types of people
are these
eye deniers
for several minutes of the day
at most, ten.
Point five percent of every session
flipped upon its head
must be for both the parties
the greatest art of all:
pretend!

Sections

To start us off - not quite the encore
we have curiosity. touch. the letting
and the reactions t these stimuli.
Then identification. no, not you.
it is I. it is I!
mine.
Until we are stabbed
by wrinkle timers
you must, you. you must learn to share.
reluctantly. and most times not at all
the hands open. fine, here.
here's my palm.
Delight at having given, if the partner share as well
giving and erasing state lines.
I see you through this chain link fence.
So cut. Cut away. But first. You have to buy
and save. Share and then save?
How much cents is even here?
Strange orders have been given made.
anyways
save to buy the wire cutters.
This work whose mask is terrible.
but really slide it sits as
the motion is the diligence.
Open fight.
Starry night.
Twinkle with them too.
This all is quite irrelevant.
If dancing fitteth you.

>>10863449
The way you jump between figurative metaphor and literal observations give this a weird rhythm, like a robot trying to write poetically.
Dunno if that's what you were going for but it reads weird.

>>10863449
Way too drawn out and excessively detailed. Like bordering on ridiculous. It's actually better to give the reader room to fill details out. If you get carried away ("Each building is at least four stories tall with the largest being fifty or so" strikes me as particularly useless) you kill momentum and lose focus. And there isn't any momentum, or any thing resembling a plot until the "singular man" appears (bad phrasing, btw).

Some of your details are nice, either decent imagery or metaphorical devices. But if we compare a story to a cake, think of imagery and metaphor like the sprinkles. I expected a cake with some sprinkles, and you just gave me a handful of sprinkles and an uncooked blob of cake batter at the very end.

I want to challenge you with an exercise. Write a short story, going ten sentences at a time where you only allow yourself one sentence of flowery detail, and the other nine are strictly narrative exposition. I'm not saying this is how you "should write," but indulge in this contrast to see how exposition tends to do a better job of pulling a reader in and maintaining their interest, instead of lines of description.

https://pastebin.com/MuEt6igM