/lit/ - Literature

>>12090369
Please read this story I've been working on:

https://lizardperson.blogspot.com/2018/08/chapter-1_43.html

I'm desperate for criticism! Will stick around and respond to anyone else below.

>>12090418
>Her eyes momentarily fluttered open, but drowsiness immediately began pulling her back to sleep.
VS.
>Her eyes fluttered open, but drowsiness pulled. her back to sleep.
This right here is the chief problem I'm seeing. Simplify. Write concisely. You can actually use flash in a passage like this, but you're only using it to make something simple more complicated.
Your dialogue tags are fucky as shit too:
>“Nic?” she risked saying aloud.
?
Did she say it, or didn't she? Did she say it, but it came close to being audibly loud?
>“Obviously,” came Nic’s hushed reply.
This is completely unnecessary for a dialogue tag. Say 'Nic whispered'.

These sorts of oddities keep going on and on.

>>12090466
Thank you. Glancing over it, I tend to do that shit a lot (e.g. "began speaking" vs "spoke"). I'll run over it and try making it more concise.

As is, how annoying is that to read?

tfw good writer but unable to construct a plot

i'm thinking of adopting a structure between book of disquiet & valis. i always liked how concise pkd was & the fragmented structure of book of disquiet might suit my looser style of writing & narrative. anyone got any further recs for what im going for?

>>12090503
Very. So much that this isn't even ready for beta reading in this state. Your flare makes some of your diction very confusing to understand because it could be interpreted in multiple ways. You would have a hard time keeping anyone after a few thousand words.

>>12090556
I'm going to also add that this might seem harsh, but I don't think you're a bad writer by any stretch. I wrote a lot of poetry before my first book, so I didn't really grasp the importance of precision in prose. Syntax first (aka make a fucking sentence work), then diction (fancy up work selection as seen fit). Once you edit a large body of work, you will start doing this automatically.

>>12090556
>>12090596

Thank you so much.

This is my first time writing fiction, so it's good to know what I need to work on. I've found it's impossible to judge my own work as I would someone else's.

>>12090617
Yeah, any time.
Good luck.
I recommend doing short pieces first and having those looked at in critique exchanges.

>>12090369
Writing porn on /trash/. I doubt any of you wanna read that shit.

>>12090846
Depends. Link?

Wish Fulfillment

A wish today
is granted before it is even made
and soon, before it is fully formed

Is this why I am so absent from daily living?
A glass appears before me
but I do not know if I have asked
for it to be filled
or for it to have been withheld from me

Everything is known now,
everything apparent,
all things become true
with repetition

What is a wish
that is fulfilled without need
for explanation?

I couldn’t remember the last time I felt the warmth of the sun.

A thick grey blanket hung over the city, waiting to disintegrate and wash it away. Sometimes the storms lasted for weeks, but other times they merely sat in the sky, taunting, biding their time until the next attack. Now was one of those anxious moments. I looked skyward; the thunder threatened me with potential floods, but it was yet to come. Soon, though, it seemed to whisper with its rumble, Soon you will drown. But this notion wasn’t fresh enough to instill any panic or fear. Once, maybe, but not anymore.

Even when it wasn’t pouring, the water never drained. The air was thick with recycled vapor, carrying the ever-present scent of mildew and decay. My waterlogged feet dragged through ankle deep puddles, gnarled and leaking, shriveled, wrinkled sponges. It was difficult to tell if I was trudging through blood or water. No one else roamed the streets, so surely it must be my own; or perhaps the residents were gone forever, leaving nothing but a river of death in their place. No, I thought, I am not alone here. Pairs of marbles glowed at every window, gazing at me the same way the clouds did. Their looks reeked of malice and pity for the outsider. Once, in a worn memory, I had attempted to call on the watchers for aid, desperate for dryness, running into one of the towers seeking shelter from a raging storm. I would not make that mistake again. Better to wander the streets and sink than to plunge into the depths of those corridors. Eventually the imprint of their eyes were as hollow as the raindrops.

From the corner of my eye, an immense shadow disappeared behind a tower. I didn’t see its monstrous caster, but I heard its scream as it passed.

What is this place? How long has it been now?

There was always a reason, always a time, always a genesis. But not here. I may as well have been walking for a year, I would never reach the boundaries of the urban sprawl, Cabeza de Vaca in a jungle of rock and steel, no cities of gold, only pyrite. And as there was no ends of the earth, neither was there ends to the heavens. The horizon, great maw of sky and land, was lost behind towering spires, bridges to the mocking clouds. One couldn’t help but feel like maybe it was possible to climb them, ascend to divinity by means of an expedition up a gigantic beanstalk. But the fool who tried would climb forever, the castle always just a few hundred feet above Jack.

(Didn't get much helpful feedback in the last one)

Still have some work to do on this, but it is part of a cyberpunk-y thing I am working on. Any feedback you have is appreciated.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/13A70rpllSdEZVW0uvZFK4zo6LzEuxLHuSRMas_akP70/edit?usp=sharing

>>12092461
Overall, not bad. I really liked the imagery and it made me think of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpAwrkmzmp0 in terms of tone and feel, which is always nice.
Some of the sentences are a little odd or clunky like, "Soon, though, it seemed to whisper with its rumble, Soon you will drown". Make that something like, "Soon, it whispered, Soon you will drown in the rumble." I tripped over that a few time trying to read it like it is.
Also, "Cabeza de Vaca in a jungle of rock and steel, no cities of gold, only pyrite." I thought this was a cleaver turn of phrase.
Overall, not bad and I would certainly keep reading. You have something there, keep going for it.

>>12092541
You absolutely made my day by comparing it to Godspeed You! Black Emperor. I love that kind of atmosphere. Thanks for the feedback, I'll keep at it

https://pastebin.com/XcX8zD4E

>>12090418
I couldn't be more proud about you actually writing and sharing your creation.
That being said, there is too much effort spent trying to describe through adjective what should be expressed by the actions of the characters themselves.
Like >>12090466 said, write more concisely at times. It's seems like you have the imagination though.

Good job on putting it out there to the world my friend

>>12090369
Fucking suicide though...

>>12090369
Anyone know a good service to post text with basic formatting anonymously?
It seems that pastebin recognizes markup language, but it doesn't actually show up in the paste so really, I'm not even sure why you'd need to bother with those options.

>>12091218
it's aight

>>12094030
pastebin has markdown, but only for pro members

>>12092461
What are you trying to convey? A fancy weahter forecast? What is my useful information about something important here?

Seems over described rhetoric and no substance, otherwise alright writing.

>>12093292
thank you dad

I'll try to do better

Wrote this. Had fun. Thought it was alright while writing. Too scared to read it now days later incase it's shit. I just need a couple people to say if it's alright or shit. It's an opening to a fantasy adventure thing.

>>12094855
My idea was to try and make it almost dreamlike, trying to convey the same sense of cluelessness and dread to the audience. But I suppose it is vague. I'll have to dig into the narrative more as I go from here

I don't know if I'm clever enough to caption videos according to the style guide. How hard could it be, you say. Too hard for me. I've never read the book "The great change". Or whatever it is called. The Chinese one. But I'm sure that a parallel could be drawn between divining decisions from that book and from decided decisions from this style guide. It really is hard work. And, then, once you've finally reached a conclusion, you can't be sure about it at all.

>>12095071
Dont worry. Its shit.

>>12090369
From a novel I'm working on.

The canvas depicted a party, but not a contemporary one. This was a party occurring in some unnamed American city with the fashion suggesting the 1920s, the aesthetic was planted firmly in the Jazz Age, complete with flappers and, of course, copious amounts of illegal alcohol. It was not mirth conveyed upon the faces of the men and women in the painting. Although they smiled and laughed, their eyes sat in inimical mockery of their joy, instead relaying a discordance of countenance emblematic of their gnawing need to escape the fatuous excess of the scene. All irises were black, not the beatific darkness of Russian women which so felicitously reflects one’s own visage, but the umbra of emptiness which absorbs all light. In Richard’s view such darkness represented the swallowing and corruption of man’s soul, which he assumed to be a perfect whiteness. He could picture so clearly that perfection, with its glowing tendrils and sublimity of the sun, being subsumed into abyssal night.

There was more than technical mastery present in this work, there was a perennial ache, a yearning married to a swirling darkness as if Richard had swallowed the deadly concoction of humanity’s sorrow and vice: its sin. And possessing him like a demon and ultimately finding him to be an unsuitable host, it excised itself onto the canvas. As the Nazarene had taken the burden of mankind’s sin upon himself, so too, did Richard imbibe its despair. Then, in that moment, Richard thought with utmost vanity, that perhaps all artists are martyrs; martyrs who yield their souls to the divine spark of creation which unalterably transmutes their beings, their minds and their hearts so the world might know and so the world might learn.

>>12095472
You wrote 3 readable sentences and then went off the deep thesaurus end.

>>12095472
It's pretty good. Some sentences have a few too many adjectives to the point where the words sound more decorative than descriptive, but that might be the point in a piece describing a painting. In a way it almost sounds like Patrick Bateman reviewing a film.

>>12095341
Unsalvageably bad?

Down near the coast in Southern California, about seventy-five miles from the border, there is a sleepy little town called San Clemente, among the last of its kind. This town hosts the last remnants of the old coast highway, the now all-but extinct route 101; what’s left runs from an old abandoned nuclear power plant through town where it is known as El Camino Real before it meets the ocean and becomes the California State Route 1, the Pacific Coast Highway. The wilderness of Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton lies directly east and south and the grand glimmering Pacific Ocean west; the town had not changed much in its eighty years save for the Interstate 5 that in the sixties separated what became the “old town” from what would in the coming decades become the “new town”, at the time just hills barren and unpopulous except for wild cattle, coyotes, and children that would come up everyday to play war and harass the cattle and explore the valleys.
One such child was Juan Alfredo Barrio, whose grandfather and namesake settled not far from the town, near the old Mission San Juan Capistrano in the year 1913.
---

First thing I've written that I feel like I have a well-defined and clear direction in. "Write what you know." This is just an excerpt of the beginning, but the beginning is as good an area as any to get a critique of. Thanks, I'll critique some of the above posts in the next post (I'm no author and my critique probably isn't worth a damn).

>>12095543
Afraid so. It's hard to tell. If you were going for Pratchett vibes in a pedestrian side of fantasy, you failed. The first two lines are disposable garbage. All I know about Percy so far is that he's a grocer, has boots and waistcoat, and possibly Down syndrome. The whole thing about him not being great all should come as a pay off after you set him up as a likeable character the reader can still root for.

>>12095760
This is good. The only thing I would perhaps remove is "in the sixties" since it made me momentarily confused over whether the road still divides the town. Otherwise, no complaints.

> my shit

After a fidgety spell at home in which her coffee agitations refused to fade Connie set off by foot for The Tricky. Alone with the pot-bellied owner, cradling a fruit tea, she stared out of the window at the orangey night-time street. Connie ordered her second drink using the last of the banknotes she'd withdrawn last weekend and went back to her desultory scanning of stories on her mobile phone's screen. There was nothing much to distract her so instead she thought through scenarios for everything she could, should and shouldn't do once inside the building. She knew how she'd deal with a sudden intruder, or if an alarm went off – everything. By twelve o'clock she had finished her second tea and her contact had still not arrived.

The Tricky's owner showed no impatience at all, apparently quite happy to forego sleep for the chance to charge Connie four bucks per half hour for warmth and a view of lamplit tarmac. Perhaps he was going to stay open all night, trusting that he'd be able to pick up some loafing barflies or nightbus clientele who didn't fancy the late-October chill. Despite that Connie felt that it was time for her to go. Making a little wave to the man at his cash desk, she walked a short way East down the street before recrossing the road and doubling back in the office's direction, head tucked into high lapels so as to lower the chance of the cafe owner happening to look out and see her. When she reached the office door it was already unlocked.

>>12095760

This is good enough that I stopped to critique it. You're not wrong. I've got my own writing group and I publish so /lit/ critiquing tends to be below my level.

>sleepy little town

This is a cliche. Remove it. Make the sentence blandly factual and then add few more where there's some fresh detail. "The pace of life in San Clemente is slower than it is in the rest of California. The people don't seem to mind waiting in line for coffee." It's clumsy, but hat kind of thing.

>The town hosts

The town can't host a road. Nonsense metaphor.

>what’s left runs from an old abandoned nuclear power plant through town where it is known as El Camino Real before it meets the ocean and becomes the California State Route 1, the Pacific Coast Highway. The wilderness of Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton lies directly east and south and the grand glimmering Pacific Ocean west;

Cut this up into separate sentences and expand the descriptions or reduce them to a single clear phrase. Each should be a crisp, scene setting detail, or series of details. You're trying to be too impressive syntactically here.

The next comma should be a sentence.

In general you are using too many complex sentences. The sentences need to be varied more to make the piece more crisp and give it more rhythm.

If this were cleaned up a bit I would read it.

>>12095760
>>12095877

Just so you get an idea.

Down near the coast in Southern California, about seventy-five miles from the border, there is San Clemente, among the last of its kind. [Some remark about the nature of the town.] This town has in it the last remnants of the old coast highway, part of route 101.What’s left runs from an old abandoned nuclear power plant through town where it is known as El Camino Real. [Some remark about the plant and the road as it is in surronding area.] It meets the ocean and becomes the the Pacific Coast Highway, which on maps is California State Route 1. The wilderness of Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton lies directly east and south. [Some remark about what the wilderness around Pendleton is like.] The grand glimmering Pacific Ocean is west. The town had not changed much in its eighty years except for the Interstate 5, which in the sixties separated what became the “old town” from what would in the coming decades become the “new town." At the time, the "New Town" was just hills barren and unpopulous except for wild cattle, coyotes, and sometimes the children that would come up to play war and harass the cattle and explore the valleys.

One such child was Juan Alfredo Barrio, whose grandfather and namesake settled not far from the town, near the old Mission San Juan Capistrano in the year 1913.
Now go and write more of this. If you leave an email I'll hit you up and happily critique your work again when you're at 5k words or so.

>>12095472
I like this a lot. You have a lot of great little phrases and characterizations in here. But is the whole novel so packed? I feel like the effect could become grating after so many pages, and I don't think it would hurt to cut out some of weaker characterizations.

Perhaps in the first couple sentences you could show rather than tell a little more: 'This was a party occurring in some unnamed American city with the fashion suggesting the 1920s' and 'complete with flappers and, of course, copious amounts of illegal alcohol' come off a little unwieldy compared to the rest of the passage in my opinion.

Also, is Richard himself an artist? If not, wouldn't describing the thought as vain sort of take the wind out of the sails of the succeeding insight?

>>12095071
You have a good start, and everyone is their own hardest critic. Assuming you are planning on keeping the same tone throughout the piece I don't think it's bad at all (it's the type of tone that is very easy to enjoy), but it could definitely use some revision to flow more smoothly.

>>12093211
I imagine this is not the beginning of the work, right? The first paragraph is a little cumbersome and might benefit from formatting for dialogue. I didn't read it all but the following paragraphs feel much more cohesive. One small thing:
>"couldn’t resist copying western decadence sometimes."
I feel you could easily turn this into something with more effect: "copying" is sort of weak in my opinion.

>>12095877
This is extremely helpful for me, thanks for putting the effort into the response. I can definitely see that it'd be much stronger with these revisions. I've always had a predilection for long complex sentences even in technical/academic writing; it's a habit I gotta break or at least become better in revising.

>>12095873
Tao Lin vibes in the first paragraph.
>There was nothing much to distract her so instead she thought through scenarios for everything she could, should and shouldn't do once inside the building.
The beginning of this could be worded better, and a more explicit transition would be helpful for sake of clarity.
>Despite that Connie felt that it was time for her to go.
Meh sentence, despite what exactly? Stating explicitly in another Tao Lin-esque could be nice. And felt is a weak verb for the situation.

>>12095964
Thanks again, and though I can't promise I'll have the courage to send you more once I have it, you can reach me at jaredduffy21@gmail.com (it's a burner)

>>12096047
Thanks for the feedback. I... have never read Tao Lin, but I agree on both the points you raise. My intention was for it to be despite the lack of pressure from the cafe owner, but the intervening sentence muffled it. Edited.

>>12096076

Your style is very close to publishable so keep at it. That's more than can be said than most people here.

bump

>>12096851
Is there a Nic Cage analog in literature?

https://pastebin.com/F1f6LVjK
Excerpt from my NaNo novel, any feedback would be appreciated

>>12096921
Dean Koontz

>>12090369
leave a comment on my story pls? you dont need an account to comment.

https://thinfiction.com/drafts/1012/murder-mysteries-happen-in-fantasy-worlds-too

>>12098293
I'm not commenting on your meme site.
Your prose and dialogue needs a lot of work, especially the paragraphs after the killer was revealed. "?!" and "!?" are fine, but never use more than one exclamation or question mark at a time (ie don't do "!?!".)
Don't use the word "insane" to describe laughter, it's very cliche and the rest of your story isn't cliche enough to pull it off. Either ham the whole thing up or don't ham at all.
The first sentence doesn't make sense. It's referring to the noise of the rain ("pounding", "drowning out"), then refers to the visuals of the scene. You're mixing senses.
Diagnosis: read more, and read better authors. It's not the worst thing I've ever read but is very amateur. Keep at it, though.

>>12098293
>site links to facebook page
christ almighty
I take back anything positive I said in my previous reply.

>>12092506
Very "we live in a society", I audibly groaned when I realised. Prose is ok, nothing amazing. Dialogue feels a little robotic, even given the context. Reporters don't really talk like that anymore, it would be worth watching some live reporting. Some sentences run on too long.
All in all your writing isn't that bad but please, please come up with better ideas

bump

Anyone interested in a philosophical thesis in the form of a narrative? It's been uploaded to this site for like half a year and haven't gotten shit for feedback.

https://www.wattpad.com/story/150909234-the-schisma

Another quick one and done; been moving around a lot, have little time to parse back thru threads. Am finally heading home, will drop some reverse crits when I get home

Wrote this a while back, weird little scrap I don't know what to do with, based partially on an actual dream I had.

---

His head turns to look at me, he has not moved. Face to the painting, mask to me. Searing black behind the eyes. We stand in front of a painting, alone in the gallery, distant chatter filters in from the hall. A white canvas. No. Something is there, oozing into view. Subtle structure begins to take shape- hair thin lines- red and ochre intricate.

The mask cracks a smile, loudly. How did I ever think the canvas was blank? That caustic darkness seeps out from the broken porcelain. I keep watch on the painting- lines assembling, no intention or intelligence, but assembling all the same as in my peripheral the darkness shimmers like air over a chimney.

“From the illusion of control we derive control.”

The words shock back the ink and the air is clear again but for a thin keening. The man spoke those words, the walls shouted them. I feel the first bite of a cold- that dreary weight, that heat in your gut.

One hand clasps my shoulder. Avuncular, familiar, wrapped over steel cords. He has not moved. Mask to painting, face to me. Why would he smile? He has no need to comfort me and no desire to gloat. One rock in the riverbed has resisted the water’s wear and will forever. The water flows over it in the same way it always has. He nods and smiles and is not moving. If I could one day learn that trick: to walk while staying perfectly still.

The air fills with music and the hand on my shoulder pushes me sideways, lying down. With a touch I stop the soft bedside chiming.

Today I am going to the museum.

>>12099173
The read the first three chapters/sections and it was boring, senpai. The sci-fi stuff wasn't interesting enough to keep me reading, and I got no impression of what the philosophy of the story would be from the first two chapters. It felt like your ideas weren't very clear

>>12095986
>I feel you could easily turn this into something with more effect: "copying" is sort of weak in my opinion.
Thanks for the crits. Yeah, this is actually for nanowrimo so it is a bit rough, but I will take what you say in mind when I edit. Thanks

>>12099371
Yeah, I love this if I’m honest. One thing that jumps out at First is you’re mixing your tenses. Are you going to do more with it?

Okay so there's a publishing opportunity for two of the people who did this writing course at my uni. This is one of the short stories from a selection of 5 or 6 I'm hoping to submit. This is still an early draft but i would really appreciate feedback, what works, what doesn't, where could I elaborate etc. Tear it up. Thanks a lot. 1/2

Patrons

Dev worked behind his bar with a passion. He didn’t own it, but he’d worked there long enough to feel like he did after a few drinks of his quadruple vodka passionfruit petroleum with no ice he’d keep tucked in the corner under the bar counter, not hidden but obscured from sight by a cup containing bar equipment, spoons, a knife, and some other shit he didn’t use. He liked his job, leaning there on the dark lacquered wood and the locals and the constant booze. He liked it best late at night, when he was pissed and the manager, who he’d always fancied, would succumb to a few shots and a double gin, half soda, half ginger ale with a splash of lime (cordial) which he’d always make just right and she’d put her hand on his arm sometimes and he’d let her keep it there as long as she wanted before he’d spin away to orders with a boner beneath his khaki work pants, and the locals would be nice and fucked up and talk all sorts of shit and he’d look into their eyes, through their pupils into the transitive drunk expanse of stuttering images, and they’d see him differently, larger, engorged in the yellow buzz of the bar and with a respect they didn’t have when they were sober, and he’d know it, and he’d feel fucking great.

It was still early and empty when a man Dev had never seen walked in and sat at his bar and didn’t look at him, looked at the bottles at the back and not at him, so he leaned over into his view and asked what he could get him. The man’s eyes flicked at him then back to the bottles.

“Whiskey.”

“Double? On the rocks?” Dev smiled.

The man looked at Dev and Dev felt himself shrinking.

“Double. On the rocks.”

“Sure.”

Dev gulped and fetched the glass and got ice and poured the drink but his hands felt funny and weak and he felt ugly. He served the stranger and the money was on the counter. He took it, gave change and the man didn’t look at the change and he hesitated and took it and didn’t tap it because he felt ashamed. It was still quiet and this one customer dominated his bar. He wanted more of his passionfruit petroleum but he would have to cross the man’s gaze and he thought the man would know, so he waited, and eyed him for a bit.

The man had a tanned grizzled face and his skin was a dark, tanned red with colourless stubble. Hair in his nostrils. Skin around his mouth lifting in a snarl as he drank. Dark eyes. Dev didn’t like him. He walked across and took a discreet sip of his passionfruit petroleum.

He leaned to him again. “I haven’t seen you around here before?”

>>12099940
2/3

“Ya.” The man said, looking ahead.

“New in town?”

“What’s it to you.”

“Oh no nothing. I’m just curious.”

The man said nothing and Dev walked away thinking Okay then…, but the man had hurt him.

Then the man glanced at the staircase and Dev like following an order followed his gaze and saw a black bag and a pair of legs in workman jeans and boots ascending to the second floor of the bar. He didn’t recognise the gait, a quiet, smooth and almost sharp step and the man’s body obscured by the ceiling since he had already nearly reached the second floor, and he wanted to crane his neck to appease his bland barman curiosity when he turned and the man at the bar was staring at him. The shock was like he had been struck and he looked down and swallowed, kicking his toes into the ground. He looked up and to his horror the man still looked at him with his dark eyes and the red leather folds of snarls around his mouth. Dev approached like an admonished child. He saw the man’s glass was empty and asked, “Another, Sir?” and the man nodded, and there was a weak sort of relief as he took the man’s glass and turned away to fill it. When he served the drink, the man was studying his watch so he slipped away to his passionfruit vodka and slucked it all down and filled it and drank more. He topped it up and putting it down he felt the warm blurring where meaningless feels warm and his vision stuttering in the lacquered wooden bar holding in its dark lacquer the faded yellow lights.

The door opened and Dev smiled as the manager stepped in through the grey relief of early evening light closing behind her to the bars buzzing staleness. The man had turned in his stool face her and watched her with an erect alertness as she approached the bar.

“The usual?” Dev said, loudly.

“Thanks Dev.” She smiled.

Dev before turning away looked at the man to gauge his reaction, and the man was peering down at his manager, down his red nose and the snarled folds of his mouth, and asking in his deep and dead voice, inflected now with an amused but faintly urgent tone that sounded like charm, “The usual?” and Dev was about to rattle off the ingredients when the manager, giggling, began to answer and the man looking right at her with the dark eyes of a man who takes. Dev made the drink and she didn’t notice when he served it because she was laughing at something the man had said.

>>12099940
3/3
Dev watched them talk from the back corner of the bar. His eyes had reddened and sunken. He drank blatantly now. He didn’t care that it was still early. The man’s arm was across the counter and his body was angled to hers, the anonymous eyes peering at her, the creases in his neck shifting as he glanced up the stairs again and again. He didn’t even care about the manager, Dev could see, not really, but he dwarfed Dev all the same. He watched with the detached drunken stare of a dream. The air had a graininess, a buzzing of grey and yellow like the flakes of passionfruit cordial running and sticking at the base of his glass, and he could hear only their voices; there was no squeaking of footsteps on the wooden floor above. Silence and the isolated, thick and almost urgent charm of the man, and the manager giggling, charmed. She was saying she had to leave, that she had a few things to attend to upstairs in her office and that she’d be back shortly. She turned to leave and the man grabbed her arm and she smiled and tried to free it but the man still held it and his face had stiffened and she was suddenly very afraid, and almost frozen in the man’s sudden cruel and grasping gaze. “Let go…” She stammered, and looked at Dev, who stood at the back counter frozen like in a helpless dream like he knew this would happen and he couldn’t do anything.

“Dev!”

He grabbed the knife from the cup of bar equipment he never used and began to move, slowly, without intention, when the familiar boots and jeans of a thin and vicious man holding a black bag in one hand and pocketing a gun with the other descended the stairs and walked hastily out the bar. The other man stood up from his stool and struck the manager down and she tumbled down over the barstool and lay there whimpering. The man looked at Dev and Dev looked down and closed his eyes and stood there as small and as dark as the pupils in the man’s cruel comprehending eyes.

>>12090369
Lamur:
Four foot high on a greenhouse wall,
Our initials inscribed, standing tall.
E.A.S. and [S.D.]
Shall lie there for an eternity.

Covered up by a viscous shield
That protects our sakes and shall never yield.
Naught but the endless barrage of time
Could fail to destroy my love sublime.

And even if I fail to court
And all my fruits of love yield to naught,
At least I’ll have this forlorn wall
Upon which together we are forever scrawled.

>>12090506
I have the very opposite problem

>>12100232
>wall
>tall

>shield
>yield
MOMMA LOOK I RHYME

>>12098421
thanks anon!

>>12100850
and instead I should have put what?

>>12099434
I'm really not sure where to go with it, but if anything strikes me I'll definitely write more on it.

>>12100675
>>12090506
Ideas Guy and Writer's Block. Together, they fight crime

jim john joe was a real hard done by dude
every time he got a leg up a leg’d go tumbling too
but now jim john joe was a little guy
and he never let life get him down
so he kept on getting that next leg up
and that next leg tumbling down

jim john joe was a real hard done by dude
every time he got a leg up a leg’d go tumbling too
but now jim john joe was a tough little dude
and never stayed down on the ground
so he kept on getting that next leg up
and that next leg tumbling down

bump

>>12099371
Tense is fucked up, but the concise rhythmic beats are actually good. You could improve this with simplification and removal of redundancies:
>That caustic darkness seeps out from the broken porcelain.
vs
>Caustic darkness seeped from the broken porcelain.
Watch the 'has', 'begins', 'starts', adverbs, determiners, etc. Good stuff otherwise.

>>12099940
>He didn’t own it, but he’d worked there long enough to feel like he did after a few drinks of his quadruple vodka passionfruit petroleum with no ice he’d keep tucked in the corner under the bar counter, not hidden but obscured from sight by a cup containing bar equipment, spoons, a knife, and some other shit he didn’t use.
Okay, this sentence is fucked up and demonstrates problems throughout.
first off, it's so long and hits so many beats it's actually a pretty messy sentence to read. Second, tenses are fucked up. Third, the 'shit' is out of place at the end.
>The man looked at Dev and Dev felt himself shrinking.
vs.
>Dev shrunk as the man looked at him.

>Dev gulped and fetched the glass and got ice and poured the drink but his hands felt funny and weak and he felt ugly.
'Dev gulped and fetched the glass' is weird because the verbs almost seem to interact due to syntax, basically it almost seems like he swallowed the glass. These are syntax issues.Here's a better working example:
>Dev gulped. He fetched the glass, the ice, and poured the drink. His hands felt funny and weak. Dev felt ugly.
I would probably modify it further because you don't need words like 'felt' in there, especially not twice in two sentences, or I would delete the article altogether.

>>12103554
I was trying to be a bit off-kilter with the tense, to better convey how dreams never feel like you're perfectly "in the moment," but it seems that I'm not good enough at that yet to make it come across as intentional.

>>12099173
Probably one of the best I've read on here

>>12099173
someone needs to clobber a few iq points offa yew polacks, I tell ya what

Nah but I disagree with some fundamental philosophical ideas right off the bat so I petulantly refuse to read further. Other smarties will probably like it, though

>>12090506
>>12100675
seriously, why don't you two talk to each other? Set aside your vanity and exchange tips

>>12097071
>It was early evening, the sun’s rays glowing over the western horizon.

this should be two sentences.

also women don't fetishize little pixel images like sweat dripping down. not as far as I know. Idk maybe they do. The word is "outstretched," btw. Also many of your sentences just read awkwardly.

>Mech flicked her head towards her door and heading in.

headed

>Bot stammered out

cut out

dam dude this is some futa shit. freaky nigga

>soaking up the subtle expressions

like what. what subtle expressions.

I hate sex, it doesn't belong in literature. especially not weird futa sex. Also why are there names mech and bot. If they're robots, why are they fuckin. I guess it's kind of interesting to imagine two sex bots fucking, in a zizekian kind of way. There is something interesting thematically in that you could say that our modern conception of human beings is just animate sexbots. Very blade runner 2049. We're saddled with these humiliating functions for the purpose of faceless higher beings, either God or reality/biology, and we gotta deal with it. Who knew that robots were the most... human? etc.

But it's not interesting to actually imagine them having sex. that's just disgusting. all sex is disgusting in literature. Have some discretion.

Fuck dude rereading this the prose isn't that bad. It's pretty bad in some places, namely the actual sex scene itself. If you're trying to titilate, go all out. But that's not the purpose of literature. Art is different from pornography. Much more subtle.

So my qualms are probably matters of taste. Consequently, you can set them all aside.

>>12095760
personally, I find this kinda stuff boring. the other guys are right in that it would fit right in. But... I dunno man. We writers have endless horizons. Don't have to worry about budget or anything. Why do something as boring as realism. Anyway, feel free to disregard

>>12095760
There are a few changes that could be made that have already been pointed out, but this is ready for actual editing.

>>12094823
>>12094030
Okay, but is there a way to do it without having to pay fucking $20 to $40 considering I'm poor as fuck, but my writing is dependent on stylized text?

Am I really gonna have to screencap my entire work work and make multiple posts just to do this?

>>12105325
Thanks for the feedback

I probably should have left some notes, considering this scene is halfway through the book. Bot is a robot, Mech is a human mechanic, both names are temporary. She's a very realistic robot, which is why she can get drunk. That she's futanari and they're having sex both play into the themes of the book, it's not just mindless banging for the sake of it.
I will disagree with you saying that sex shouldn't be in literature. Books like American Psycho or Lolita would be completely destroyed by the removal of eroticism. Not that I'm saying my writing is anywhere near that level
But thanks, I really appreciate your feedback.

>>12099173
>reads Brief History of Time and Starmaker once

>>12106395
You could just put it on google drive or something

https://ivanthestoryteller.tumblr.com/post/179639584175/dancing-with-the-devil-in-the-moonlight-by

I'm looking for some feedback since I wrote this in first person and I don't really like doing so (I just feel extreme discomfort). Plus I don't make a habit of writing short stories.

>>12108526
Dialogue isn't quite right, but it's not bad. Weird Tales is a great genre and you're pretty close to emulating the style well. Plot-wise the payoff was a little uninteresting but the setup was alright. Honestly wouldn't mind reading more of your work to see if it's better, because based on that story you have potential

Specific criticisms:
>I seated us before the fire I had built in the place such a thing should be built and made sure the flames were of sufficient height
Very awkward sentence. "...in the place such a thing should be built", maybe wrap that in commas

>Though it was late evening and the sun dipped.
You shouldn't start a sentence with a capital "Though"

> From here,
Where? Should this be "there"?

>moving about in ways I can’t replicate
The fact that you can't replicate them isn't very strange

I don't know who to review.

I'd like an answer as to, on a scale from 1/10, how autistic this piece is, and how I could engage the reader in the opening more.

https://pastebin.com/gqhR02vw

>>12106395
You could Mega.nz some rtf files I guess.

>>12106880
>futa sex robot
Quality Cyberpunk worldbuilding my nigga. I approve

>>12109384
It's less cyberpunk and more post-post-apocalypse. Set in small town australia a century or so after a total social, economic, and digital collapse

>>12109384
Fairly autistic, at least a 5-6
Starting in the middle of the action then taking a step back is usually a good way to hook people
Prose and dialogue are alright, a little awkward at times but overall it's passable, especially for fanfiction. Build up was nice, but you're right about the opening being a little slow. Consider splicing in simpler paragraphs without lots of lingo in between the description heavy ones.
Being someone who doesn't even know what Ace Combat is, I'm probably not your target audience and got a bit lost during the opening few paragraphs and the plane/pilot descriptions. Military hardware doesn't lend itself well to succinct description, I suppose

>>12109428
It wasn't supposed to be fanfiction, how do I make it seem less like it?

Ideas on how to tone down the 'tism in this piece, and link me to yours so I can return the favor pls?

So these pieces over the last few months have in a way helped keep me sane. It’s worked as both a diary and an effort to maintain a writing routine to improve my technique as well as to reform the habit.
I’ve been sobers few days in the last time. Broken it just this minute. Nonetheless, thanks for putting up with me.
It’s fucking pissing down in Melbourne right now.

Will work back with crit shortly.

Is this just for fiction or in non-fiction acceptable also?

>>12109637
It's mostly fiction. Kind of hard to have a non-fiction novel.

Still, they won't slap you for trying other things.

Speaking of which...


FUCK YEAH
Seven years running baby!

>>12109667
Cheers for the response.

>Kind of hard to have a non-fiction novel.

If it's good enough for Alex Hayley or Truman Capote though right?

>>12097071
>https://pastebin.com/F1f6LVjK
Romance scenes aren't my thing either, but it was written with more consistent and less chaotic paragraph structure than I'm used to.

I found the descriptions well made and suggestive enough within the third person perspective. The characterization seems australian enough.

>>12109691
>roastie
No thanks

>>12109428
How is the autism most pronounced?

I never write, but I found this poem in an old notebook and I liked it. So here it is, would appreciate some critique.

You glide
And from the delicate tide
Water lilies would blossom
I would come to collect
If had but the assent
Of the stream that carries them way too hastily
For me to savour their perfume
So I abide
Eternity again
Until the next fleeting spring

>>12110409
It's supposed to be like this:

You glide
And from the delicate tide
Water lilies would blossom

I would come to collect
If had but the assent
Of the stream that carries them way too hastily
For me to savour their perfume

So I abide
Eternity again
Until the next fleeting spring

>>12101812
not bad my dude
>>12100232
it's aight dude.
Shall lie there for an eternity. -> Shall lie there for eternity.
Upon which together we are forever scrawled. -> upon which together we did scrawl

>>12109667
>finished already
Impressive, good work

Literally everything ITT is fucking terrible. Jesus I've seen better structured shitposts on /b/. Stop trying so hard, morons, you're impressing nobody and second-hand embarrassing everyone.

>>12109712
>How is the autism most pronounced?
Mostly in the early descriptive paragraphs when you're talking about the planes. All the acronyms and letter names started to wear on me really quickly

>>12099173
>Wattpad
I think I found your problem

>>12110635
yeah, but I've been published and they haven't

>>12110635
You have to suck shit a bunch before you get good. What I don't understand is that people haven't seemed to seek out even basic writing instruction on syntax with the tenses, adverbs, and extra determiners.

I just posted my horror on TF. It's as finished as I can get it...always room for more criticism.

https://thinfiction.com/stories/1074/the-charlatan

>>12111267
I'll get into this when I get home, but from a glance it needs structure work.

>>12111267
>With her eyes shut, she fumbled her hand around until she found her phone and grabbed it.
Jesus yiked, edit your shit before attempting murder on my sense of aesthetic

Want to get good at writing quick? Listen to this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7DTU6Xvie4

I just have a general question about syntax. Which one of these is better?
1. He scooped up his Mossberg and pumped it once, forcing a shell to flip from the chamber.

2. He scooped up his Mossberg and pumped it once, which forced a shell to flip from the chamber.

Should I ever use past participle in sentence like this (like the difference between 'forcing' and 'forced')? I think the 'ing' ending makes the sentence flow better but I don't know if the past participle. Should I fragment further? Do you have a better idea for a sentence like this? These sentences are good for describing multiple things quickly, but I'm worried the syntax is poor.

>>12111615
He scooped up his Mossberg and forced a shell from the chamber with a single pump

>>12111666
I just made up the sentence on the fly, I don't know how shotguns work, but this sort of sentence formation happens a lot.

>>12111666
I'm fucking retarded.
Yes, this'll work, but the flow is sort of shitty. I'll figure it out from here though, thank you.

I wrote a poem yesterday that is basically a throw-away I wrote real quick to get some shit off my chest.

I grew up with people that dreamt
Of finer things,
Of mansions, furs, and diamond rings,
With cliche dreams
That would say things like I wish
I could
I should
But leave
This place it seems impossible,
This space is a monster,
A constant dull,
A Pool with a waterfall that drools,
I’ve cooled myself before
And leaned upon selfless dreams
Of giving to my family,
At least it seems,
But the voice it says to me,
“You’ll never leave
And you’ll never be”

>>12111615
He pumped his Mossberg. A shell flipped from the chamber.

>>12111815
You live in the midwest don't you anon.

When writing poetry, when is a verse too long? Some of my poems have verses as long as 15 syllables and I can't break them down without sounding weird.

>>12111825
This works too, but I'm tempted to dress up the diction. What would you do?

>>12112038
Depends on a lot of things anon. Post an example?

>>12111615
>He scooped his Mossberg and gave it a pump. The shell flipped from its chamber.
>He scooped up the Mossberg, pumping the weapon once to flip the shell from the chamber
>He scooped up his Mossberg. A pump was all it took to flip the shell from the chamber. (ok this one is fucking terrible)

>>12112038
This is why meter exists.
Abandon the free verse meme and write like a white person.

>>12112219
My Grandad dropped out of high school because his teacher was trying to make him write English sonnets. That's the true white man's tradition.

>>12112219
My Grandad dropped out of high school because his teacher was trying to make him write sonnets in iambic pentameter. That's the true white man's tradition.

>>12112208
I don't write in English so I doubt you could make much of it. I don't think what I write is particularly hard to follow or convoluted but some people I asked told me I should writer shorter verses.
>>12112219
I try keeping things consistent because I dislike meme free-verse instagram poetry but sometimes things get out of hand.

>>12112252
And 10-13 syllables isn't a big leap, r-right?

.

>>12111815
It was alright, it made me feel.
Is that picture Lindybeige?

>>12111873
Believe it or not I live in a rich Pennsylvania suburb full of clones. Hate it here because I simply cannot fit in.

>>12109712

Roastie is an evocative term

>>12098293
leave a comment on mine pls! site is easy to use.

https://thinfiction.com/drafts/1013/the-travel-button

>>12090369
I'm having trouble with my novel. I got everything down, however, what I am having trouble is how to write it, since it's beige prose, due to the main character being bleak and cynical, as well as the world in general. At the same time, I sorta want to thrust the readers into the main characters shoes, with no exposition or world in general. Is it doable?

>>12115287
read some Murakami

Please tell me why, specifically, this is shit. It's my first attempt at creative writing, and it's only the introductory paragraph. I spent a good amount of time editing it, because I knew it was shit, but even after I couldn't find any shit to undo or transmogrify, it still looked like shit to me. Can you give me some honest critique? It starts on the next line, after the colon at the end of this sentence:

An awkwardly-postured, fat twenty-something stood, head cocked upward, admiring a flock of birds careening over the makeshift roof of the flea market book store that stood before him. Their flight pattern wasn’t atypical or outstanding in any way, but for some reason he gawked in awe of its inexplicable beauty. This particular flea market was only open on Fridays and Saturdays, and he’d made a habit of visiting every Sunday morning to peruse the classics section of its sole bookstore, Bookworm. He’d never been a fan of the phrase bookworm. Who’d want to be compared to some dirt-toiler just for enjoying a good novel. Why not a bookeagle! Or at least a book robin. Upon finishing these thoughts, he realized that the once populated sky was now barren, save some clouds, and his fixed gaze was focused, very-much-so, on nothing. He looked like an idiot. No longer lost in though, he stepped closer to the bookstore’s entrance. The owner, Erin, was busy tending to a customer’s purchase (this was a cash-only operation; the credit card fees proved too unprofitable), so there was no need for the customary exchange of “hello”s. The classics. Forward two intersections of bookcase lanes, and then a right. A modestly-stocked bookcase was now before him. The Eustace Diamonds, The Portable Faulkner, literally dozens of books by Dickens because nobody fucking wants to read Dickens. He was eyeing The Mill On The Floss, because he'd heard good things about George Eliot from a friend of his. (I suppose more stuff would go here if I continued writing, but this is such total shit it feels like a waste. At least I got started)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14nNfXgSO-TUZrlgfKghf8fkb2lvXRZjaSbRe8OMjjrA

Here’s a story I wrote about a guy trapped in a cab with an insane (?) driver

New writer so appreciate any critique, impressions,mistakes anything at all

O hills befall this fated life to run
Upon, Among, Between, Into
Yet never in your passing pastures--
Ten thousand skies you swallow through
Spilled blackness thawed in morning too--
Beyond relentless ringing to permit
There is no ending of your dome

There is no place with days enough--
Though days too many are and will to come
For steps to take this body home

O fling your moon in moving, whirl your stars,
Make mockery of my mood with perverse sun
With glory vained and rain subside
Tell my heart not what to feel
Which heart your rising endless stops in falls

O take this dirt your gold is of
Your faulty swaying vegetation
How close inspection fistfulls flay to dust
Your might is broken in my hands
Yet renders in its heaping all my labor
Heaps of broken nothingness

Why has your heaven holding
Aspiration sought in bloodied dirt to see?
When of these fields unceased horizon
Backward bend to earth force me?

Take me up from you, let me make my way
Upon, Among, Between, Into
Your fields are balmy, bitter bread
The morning dark and dewed is dead,
The lighty food of soul bequeath
Then lastly take me Underneath.

>>12115423
Its probably bad form but I stopped reading at the first sentence. That is a lot of different props and attributes listed for just one sentence, let alone an opening one

I just submitted this flash fiction under a pseudonym. What do you guys think?

https://pastebin.com/kC26PfD5

>>12115664
Its alright, albeit banal and flaccid (blabla depression blabla bad end). But its readable, which is more than could be said about almost everything ITT. You should probably dump the first two paragraphs, they're disgusting. Third of your story is wasted on meaningless details reinforced by bracketed clarifications to unwarranted observations. The rest of it could some trimming, too many sentences just go on forever like a laundry list of I did, then I made, then I felt, then I remembed, something, and that, and this.

>got a good first half of a sentence.
>Completely botch it in the second half.
Is it just me? or is this common?

>>12115948
If I’m feeling creative enough that I’m writing a good first half then the second half comes easily

>>12115423
First line was fine. You could have pulled it off. Second line though...

>>12115555
>>12116094
I think I need to read a lot more lol

>>12116334
What do ya mean. I read the whole thing, and I read a lot of books.

>>12116353
I just mean based on the criticism its just blandly shit, and not shit in any particular way, so I think I just need to study how good authors construct their sentences and describe events and how to flow between them.

>>12110778
What would you recommend?

>>12116353
Or if you don't mind, could you spend some time and thoroughly pick apart my post? It'd be nice to have some concrete do-nots so I can focus my self-editing in the future. Or if you can reopmmend some books that would serve me the same purpse, id appreciate it just as well. I don't mean to be overbearing; just a polite request

>>12116573
Too much description, too little purpose and if there is a deliberate reason its not clear. Also no one thinks or tells stories like this, and it doesnt have an observational tone.
The uncanny valley of prose. It feels like your an alien who learned his style from a "how to write like a real human being" magazine

for gabsy bee: sunnybright romps through rainfalling-rain feed vinespreads

goes to smith then calls moz “cuck/”—while i’m feeding my guts with music:
coughing it up into untouchable aggrandizations of folk: your honesty
inquires . . . like what it’s like to always be mice at pictures . . .

wispy angely surface! engrossing betweens . . . trusting
gravity’s lonesome rasp about your sleeping struggle . . .
a woman wrestling a grand-circus of papers!/onyx-stone hairs:
aqua-marinestone sighting-stones! whispery-wisp sass unplacid as european
thrill . . . hydroplanar child, mirrory & story-child, child of the glancing
magazine, your lousing ways magnetizing every child of the gardening
sun, lively life-child pouting like storming grainy-jupiter . . . placetime
longs like fog for your criminal face-child! lapsing in pools
with ledged gibraltars!/founder of silkishly tempers)—juggler
of intentional anothers . . . “& if you come & see me you
will upset the order . . .” fencing a directional intention—
‘fraidened me belonging to every noun in our play louder
than muscles can make, & child of oceans in enduring
song . . .


just don't tell her i wrote this, okay?

>>12115423
i believe you've got it, kid

>>12116596
Well I am on the spectrum, so that might be a more plaaudible explanation for your last criticism. Thanks for the advice overall. I'll try to keep it in mind when I do my daily writings. Hey, maybe next time I post an anonymous piece yoI'll even like it!

>>12116676
If by "it" you mean autism and an fumblesomeness with words, I agree

>>12115531
I don't know about this one.
Doesn't feel like it has a purpose, just a the idea of a crazy taxi driver and a random guy in it. You describe certain aspects, setting the character but with no payoff. The background of the character resulted meaningless, just an excuse to "look busy".
The part when he describes how the sound was like makes no sense since he is reminiscing on his events, he should know how the sound is, or if you are going to describe it, use metaphors instead of the REEE meme.
Also, suffers from the "who was phone?" ending / plot twist.

>>12116872
Most people are shit the first attempt. Even the first 20 attempts. Don't give up, and bad luck that you didn't come from a based family.

>>12116895
What do you mean by to come from a based family? You just mean one that gives me Joyce and Woolf instead of fucking Artemis Fowl? I am bitter about that; but I don't blame my family.

I forgot to ask earlier, was I really too descriptive, or did I just not balance the descriptiveness with other elements of a story. The best literature I've read has had prose that makes images come alive; think the short stories of Kafka. Obviously I'm a dog compared to writers like him, but don't you need to be descriptive to achieve that effect? Do I just need to work on evoking the same images through terser phrases? Sorry for the rambling. I'm toiletposting at work

>>12116916
Based parents are parents that are in touch with your country's culture.

It's important to remember that readers are generally clever. I felt like I could skim read your description and not lose much. Like you were describing things that could easily have been infered or that otherwise didn't need to be said. That's boring.

I can't write dialogues for shit. I'm not below average; just shit. I need to be able to present a draft to someone to overhaul and edit from the marrow out. Which are some good resources to achieve this? From idiot to "presentable".

>>12116916
If you really are just autistic then I think your going to want to try and focus more on studying good writings and trying to comprehend people socializing. Listen to podcasts and find the patterns in what they say when theyre conveying a certain tone, read and try to focus more on the words and flow of thought rather than the broad strokes of story or technique.
Most people can write pretty easily because theyre socialized. It comes naturally to write because you just write what makes you think. An average person has many experiences of having a thought or feeling evoked because of writing, conversation or other social medium.

What is the mood of a scene and how can you make the reader feel it? What line of questioning do you want to lead the reader through? You can't really answer any question like these without understanding how people feel and think. Since your autistic you probably weren't socialized very well so you've gotta figure it out with active effort.

>>12118456
Thanks for the advice. It's kind of depressing to admit, but I'm so badly socialized that I probably will need to do what you described. On a slightly related note, do you think studying these kinds of things to improve writing will make me more socialized? Or am I doomed to be an autist observer. I'm not full-blown autist by the way, only slightly.

>>12118392
There are some Fiverr gigs for this, as well as beta reading in general.
If you post an excerpt and review mine I'll review and help you with yours.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Od7d-ts2_KcOYWVeSNDoSKp0eZlzfcmIJhFQnWUuSiE/edit?usp=sharing

Bump

>>12116873
Thank you anon, I really really appreciate it. For now, I will work on including things which really matter in the end since that’s an apparent problem

Can you elaborate a bit on “setting the character with no payoff”. What payoff were you expecting, I just describe characters for describing’s sake

48 videos
In a Jackson Hole
Winter rate motel
22 words
In a four day period
Job search from hell

>>12119181
>beta reading in general.
You mean like just reading books with lots of dialogue or movie/shows scripts?
I'm so bad that I would rather improve a bit first before handing anything for your correction.

I was hoping someone could help me with the pay off to a script i'm writing for an animation.

It takes place on a asteroid city/ship in the power section. Protagonist is awoken to sounds of what he thinks is demolition (albeit checking schedule they find no apparent schedule for it). The character is an engineer of sorts sent down there to work on something.

Looking out of their room they find that everyone else there appears to be faceless. The character scans through the cameras on his pc to confirm their suspicion, and while cycling through the power room finds the source of the explosion noise (the power core is overheating), and another character there who appears to have their face. There appear to be no alarms or any evacuation signs that normally should be in place in such event.

The protagonist contacts that character and offers them aid in preventing the explosion, while the other character tells them that they are handling it. Our protagonist states that is far too dangerous an event and that they must get over there to help, while the other character tells them if they try they will die on the way there because the faceless creatures are aggressive and will kill anything that's not them, and that our protagonist will be safe in their room and everything will be fine after help arrives. As they continue to talk the signal is cut off, and protagonist makes up their mind to get to the power room regardless, and using the map finds a way through the ventilation shaft which should make it so they dont interact with the faceless characters.

After taking their gear and cutting a hole in their room they make their way through the ventilation shaft and head for the power room. However while in the shaft they come across the faceless characters, who begin to give chase to our protagonist, and it ends with our protagonist cornered (with them kicking out a vent bellow them and falling to the floor). After the fall they look up and around, and find themselves surrounded by said faceless creatures, who approach them and the protagonist thinks this is the end. Instead the faceless characters just kinda poke him and stretch his face, and it quickly becomes clear that they are harmless and are just stumbling around to the various sounds that they hear. Our protagonist uses a marker and draws a face on one them (two dots and as miley), and that seems to make that character feel better and they stop poking his face.

This revelation surprises our character, and they realize that they were being lied to by the character in the power room and quickly head over there. Once there our protagonist heads to the controls and attempts to stop the reactor from overloading, but they realize at that point that it'slate and that the reaction is run away. As they hit a few more keys they are shot, and fall onto the console as the character they talked to in the beginning enters (without waiting to tell them their plan or anything but insta shooting).

>>12120583
As they approach our protagonist they say that it would have been a lot less painless for them if they just stayed in their room and died from the vaporization of the core. In that moment our character hits a button (whatever they were working on until the antagonist arrived) and this causes the top ceiling to eject with the core purging all the contents of the room (to save the station). Our character alongside the antagonist are sucked out in space (with the antagonist being saved by having a space suit/armor). However their plan is foiled as the core ejected to space becomes inert and doesn't destroy the meteor station.

Our protagonist is awoken in the cloning field with fractured memories, being told that their body was salvaged and that they were brought back with whatever fragments of their backup they had (with little memory of the events that occurred and nothing about the antagonist). The revive team hoped that there was more memories saved.

The question is this: is it a problem that the faceless creatures do not have any interaction with the protagonist after being discovered to be harmless? Or should I somehow work in a way for them to have something occur with them in the event between the protagonist and the antagonist. Also I forgot the reason everyone is faceless is that the antagonist hooked up some kind of alien artifact to the power room causing the entire section to get warped save for the protagonist who was asleep at the time.

Would the core also exploding in space instead of becoming inert be more visually interesting?

>The First half of the Opening sentence is somewhat decent, the second half is awful.
Just Kill me, please.

The light that lives inside is dull and drab
But bright it shines upon the wispy black.
And there is nought but waste and ugly slabs
Except that black and sweet perfume of lilac.

I sit six feet from you three times a week
And dream about the life we might have had,
But you were born so far from where I speak;
Your eyes betray your thoughts, you think me mad.

Until that fateful day that may not come
My thoughts remain on you that time then, I'll
Recall the time the black dissolved and there
Your face, your cheeks, your eyes, your perfect smile.

Bump

>>12120658
I didnt get it so let us ramble of technicalities.
Black and lilac do not rhyme, it's fucking jarring actually. The first stanza is not evocative at all, mostly because you used so many generic, vague terms (waste, drab, slabs). The second stanza has confusing tenses, unless that was the intention change 'sit' to 'sat'. The one random enjambment in the third stanza comes out of nowhere and breaks the flow completely.

https://syg.ma/@matvey-klimov/module
first attempt at writing something to show to others, super short

bump

>>12109691
prose is way overdone.. it's a slog

>>12111615
He picked up his shotgun and pumped it, flipping a shell from its chamber.

biiiiitch

>>12115948
Your problem is workflow. Syntax first, diction second. If you're sitting on a sentence, leave it. It doesn't matter if you're trying to write a real novel.

>>12090369
¿Alguien que hable español? Debe haber algo mejor que el maldito Wattpad para publicar historias online.

>>12124384
Mi actividad favorita es editar textos, no se de sitios pero puedo comentar si querés postear algo.

>>12124672
Coño, quieres postear tu Discord o Telegram? Ahorita no tengo mucho pero agradecería que más adelante me ayudases.

Bitter winds swept through side streets and alleyways leaving me hollow and shivering on the bare clean pavement. I pulled my phone out of my pocket. My pink hands tapped through notifications. A message from a girl I had once known made me feel giddy and lighthearted in the middle of that brutal November.
Life had been lonely to me. Our friendship was point of confidence for me. I did the right thing. Instead of pushing for sex, I instead explored other aspects of her, her emotional vulnerabilities. The same way a 17 year old in 1977’s main outlet for sexual frustration was a stratocaster, mine was a smartphone late at night tapping away beautiful messages and reassurances. It made me feel above myself.
“Do you think next month can work?”
“I’ll take off work. Is your boyfriend on board with all of this?”
“No. But I don’t care. He thinks I’m staying with Holly.”
“Okay.”
I tried not to broach the topic. It was too painful. I just pretended I was going to ride the wave of her frustrations with him all the way through to old age. Instead I was putting my head in the sand and forgetting the central problem of my life. I had never been laid. Yes. Not once. I had received blow jobs and hand jobs and all the other jobs you could think of. I had fallen in love with a Jew the Summer before and the fruits of my emotional labor were backseat makeouts and violent arguments. She broke up with me because I was late to her play. Whatever. I had Aiofe on my phone now. Yes, that was her name. Pronounced EE-fa. It means radiance or beauty in Gaelic. Though there was nothing radiant about her pale skin, about the eczema that formed on her arm during hot summer days. There was beauty. Red hair middle part, this was the apparatus of her grip on me. Her voice tore me asunder with its flagrant emotionality, squeezing every syllable out, deliberate like a machine assembly of feather pillows.
The few days before her arrival were frantic and busy. My daily schedule was School-work-party-sleep. I did this two days in a row. It took a toll. Sunday afternoon I got the message that she was four hours away.
When she finally did arrive I was in a half sleep that I voluntarily chose to keep me from disappointing myself. I often disappoint myself. Life for me had been movement from failure to failure, catastrophe to catastrophe. But all of that had changed now that she was here. She was all mine.

I’m working on my show don’t tell because readers tell me that it’s a big weakness. It sounds off and worse than before. What am I doing wrong

>>12095071
Is Percy going fishing an allegory for this being deliberately bad bait?

The quiet mass of your wasted hours, weightlessly arching over your head. The initial promise of a character and how it has unfolded only in a series of perfected defeats. Our hollowness leaning together. Death's dominion and our victory over the instant, refusing celebration.

Consider the sacred and the profane, and your distance from both. A blow against your rubbery surface to leave you intact.

The soul exceeds its circumstance, and the circumstance is null

Is the author successful in making you desire to dwell in Yonia?

I had a dream about this.

>>12125005
"Stench of smoke violated my nostrils" just sounds stupid, smoke is not that bad of a smell, unless you expressly explain that it is to the protagonist ("nauseating stench of smoke laid heavy in the hallway.."). Also, doesn't ash smell of, you know, smoke?

Would this be the right thread to share a story idea or premise?

>>12125437
Is this bait?

Not a piece I need critique on per se, but a bit of advice. So let's assume I start off my story with a moment of suspense without climax, arbitrary example, imagine someone hiding from a killer and noticing the door was left unlocked, and the knob turns. Boom freeze frame, flashback to how it came to this for all of the first and half of the second act. So when the time rolls around for that above suspense moment again, chronologically, should I just paste the first part I mentioned for jejs and go on from there with the climax, or write it differently so the reader doesn't think I'm that cheap?

>>12125521
This isn't a fucking movie, nobody is going to remember your "freeze frame"

>>12125595
it's a short story of <10000 words so they will, because it has only happened like 6 and a half typeset pages ago lol. so are you saying I can reuse it for continuity because they won't care anyway, or just giving me shit for the approach in general?

>>12125655
No, you don't get the appeal of flashforwards in movies. It's incredibly satisfying when an hour of lead-up perfectly aligns with what you saw at the beginning. It's like seeing the last puzzle piece fit neatly and complete the picture. Books work differently because everyone's imagination works differently.

>>12124957
Eh, youre a potentially good writer. Write about something other than yourself. Nobody cares to read hyper confession. Take your guilt and your guile and work it into something more subtle and clever.

>>12125662
I get what you're saying, and I wouldn't use it if I were to write a novel or novella. but this is literally just a quick story meant to be read in a single sitting, with the suspense from that first scary blurb fresh in the reader's mind by the time shit hits the fan for real. killer and door was a bad example desu, it's more of a psychological flaw/delusion of MC that will only make sense after the lead-up has all fallen into place and make them go OH YOU JUST DIDN'T, just like in a movie as you mentioned, but basically just foreshadowing coming true in a different way than the reader anticipated. hard to explain without outright posting half of it, which I'm not yet ready to do.

so if we were to just hypothetically assume that I'll do it no matter what: better to reuse the first part as is, to get the reader back into the same suspense but with the info of the story inbetween in mind, or write it out differently because otherwise it'll seem like a trope?

It’s okay. It’s all okay.
It barely matters anyway.
You have a whole life ahead of you.
A whole life ahead.
What is a single wasted day
In the face of that great expanse?

But the weight is unbearable
The consciousness of it
Unbearable.
The awareness of causes
Followed by effects
Of thoughts turning to behaviors
Of behaviors changing thoughts
Of difficulty of returning once sent
It’s crushing.
I cannot survive.

Look at the statistics.
All these many people, all these many things.
Not even close to scale, mind you -
All of them, in similar boats,
In similar seas.
It is selfish to think yourself alone.
It is selfish to give yourself up so easily.
Your consciousness,
Your awareness -
How can you be crushed by something so terribly minute?

I do not know them. I do not care for them.
I do not care to enter their shadows into my thoughts.
These many people, in their many similar boats,
In their many similar seas -
What do they have to do with me?
Am I meant to take solace in the thought?
The thought that we all suffer the same?
The very idea makes me sick to the heart.

You misconstrue - intentionally.
They all get along.
What makes you exceptional?
Are you so far gone as to think that you are unique?
That you, above all others, feel the most pain?
That you, above all others, are just in self termination?

I’m done with this.

Please criticize.

>>12125699
I want to go home.

>>12125722
I'm not completely sure what you mean, but that would be a good title for the poem. I'll be stealing it. Thank you.

>>12125699
CRAWWWWWWWWWWWWWLING
IN
MY
SKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN

>>12124801
Mi telegram es @Martincoon.

>>12090418
>https://lizardperson.blogspot.com/2018/08/chapter-1_43.html
I have stopped literature reading 25 years ago. Now i'm providing the language conversion of myself as a part of long-term experiment. Your "2018/chapter-1_43" is a real FIRST thing that I was wanted to read until end as a whole part of literature enjoy. The motivation aspect of your writing obviously inspires imagination to build your fancy world in small practical details. I would prefer to say "world's", because I sure you can. Thank you...

something in spic

Little man, so caught up with words,
Can’t control his pedantic urge.

He takes it easy, hiding in his womb,
Telling the whole world that it's doomed.

"New York City is in ruin!
Consumed by the ocean soon."

Shallow love in the evening
Murder across the year
He’s seen it all, that bard in the garden
He wept without any tears.

there, the children are alive dancing in the sun
“i don’t like your poems. they’re not any fun"

oh poetry has holes in it, like a ragged tarp.
These are faded blankets
which provide no warmth,
give no shelter,
and deal no relief from the rain.

I'm trying something new, and I'm not sure if it's working, or even a good idea. This is a short excerpt just after the main character has been seduced, and then captured by, a hulder. I'd love some feedback.

>>12126781
don't be self hating dude. how will you conquer the centuries if you can't love yourself

>>12125234
>mentioning penises at all, even once

this is your crucial error. women have no interest in that sort of thing. I almost believed you too

>>12127761
>>12125234
it's a good fake though, pretty much. Except dumb bitches who are that given over to pleasure don't even give a fuck about words anymore. at that point incapable of anything but gurgles hidden behind patchworks of slogans.

I love all women alright. but that's the truth.

>>12124957
I hate that I kind of relate to this... only a little bit though.

https://pastebin.com/raw/4i6Hw9nU

First couple "chapters" of a story about a guy and a catgirl. It's not LCD weeb stuff, honestly. I'm trying to write real literature here.

Anyway could you tell me what the biggest flaws are right off the bat? Be honest without being cruel, you know? Thanks

>>12127802
Also I have more chapters, this isn't just a tiny fragment with no direction. Thanks

>>12126056
Is it too edgy? I was trying to avoid that. The idea was actually to have the first voice come off as more reasonable, and the second as more pedantic and morose, but I'm not sure I made that clear. I think it needs to be a little longer.

>>12127802
Generally, the first chapter is a little disjointed (no direction, as you've already said). It feels like you're trying to establish your world right off the bat and sacrificing a well-flowing story in that purpose. If you want to keep the exposition I would start the story with the catfolks murdering people. A memory of the main character, a dream, something he's watching on TV - it would give you a bit of a hook, maybe some emotional investment. The sudden snap to an astrally projected flashback, with no explanation or particular surprise from the characters, is jarring and more than a little confusing. Is this something that happens often? A particular power of the MC, or catgirls in general, or this particular catgirl? Even if you explain this later, it still feels a bit odd to me.

I think between the first and second chapters we should learn a little more about the MC, and his relationship with this catgirl. I'm a sucker for reluctant, depressed protagonists being harassed by attractive ladies (wish fulfillment, I'm sure), but I'd like to know a little more about the fellow. Maybe take us through an average day of his life, have him reflect on the events of the previous night, his history with the catgirl, etc.

Some specific (and very subjective) gripes:

>2XXX.
This is a personal thing, but I really dislike this cliche. You're writing a novel(la), not Megaman. I wouldn't mention the date at all. If you need your readers to understand that it's the future, show them futuristic things and let them reach a conclusion themselves.

>I’ll eat you up like a potato chip
This just sounds a little silly. I don't think anyone would ever say such a thing. I would go for something more playfully sultry, but maybe a little disturbing, to highlight that the catgirl is not human.

Some things I liked:

I like the protagonist's little sayings. Throwing in one from AA is a personal favorite - gives you a lot to assume about the character without having to extensively detail it. I like that he's always drinking coffee from a paper cup as well.

I didn't notice any glaring grammatical or spelling errors, which seems like a little thing, but you see it a lot in these threads. Stylistically, the writing flows pretty well sentence-to-sentence. Having the fundamentals down like that is very hard for most people; it seems like your style is relatively set.

Final thoughts:

I feel like you're trying to write a Japanese LN. There's nothing wrong with that, but be aware that there's a stigma around such things. I would consider making the catgirls more bestial - and perhaps adding catmen, to make it seem less fetishistic. More Khajiit, less Nekomimi. Finally, no offense, but I feel like the protagonist is a self-insert. Again, not a bad thing, but be careful with it. Identifying too much with your main protagonist can make your story seem masturbatory - something you're already at risk of, considering you're writing a catgirl love story.

>>12128425
Thank you so much for the in-depth feedback! I agree that the first chapter is too jarring, and the first few lines of dialogue are REALLY jarring. It was the first stuff I wrote, so it makes sense I’m numb to how 'off' both the chapter and that dialogue is.

I’ll take out 2XXX, good suggestion.

I don't mind it being a light novel or whatever

I will try to steer the protagonist away from being myself and make him into an actual character. I'm always falling into that bad habit, so thanks for the reminder!

Do you think you could stand me making it clear in chapter 1 that the event isn't new to either of them if I explain everything right off the bat in chapter 3? I'm trying to reshuffle the chapters in a way that doesn't make the whole house of cards collapse.

Thanks again for reading!

It's called being a decent human being. Not everything can be kept in your book, understand, there's just some things you have to see and feel. I worked my whole life to get to this point and my daddy's daddy worked his tail end off to get to that point and the man before him surely did the same so much as there was time to and put down his stock and raise it while he did so. But there weren't a novel to do that for him or tell him how to he had to live it firsthand and you can tell the meat in an academic type isnt tough enough to do by those sorts of ways, he has to carouse and expend and take up so much air so's his thoughts are like scripture and he's enlightened by the writing he did after the fact and in the eminence of. But it's all the same to me and them, the words follow back to us the same, only in jokes we crack at slant times when the beer has been drunk up and there ain't nothing left to say about the tiller or thresher or the sockets but the words so puffed up and big like that they are that of foreign import come from out the bazaar who try to sell his ware and ilk hanging around in the back all the same, pushing one way or the other to cut up a pound of flesh for the boys here in town square. I tell him the same as you, we dont need the flesh, jip.

How would you improve this?

>Chinese politicians embezzle funds into crypto markets to launder money stolen from millions of aborted Chinese daughters
>China imprisons pious Christians & Muslims in concentration camps, assures world its only Islamic terrorists
>China hacks OPM, compromising security of all US government employees and correspondents
>China hacks Joint Strike Fighter designs
>China hacks US Navy
>China hacks [redacted]
>China crashes planes (MH370 & Indonesian 8501) carrying traitors escaping Chinese authorities
>China discovers weakly performing female Navy captains are sailing in Chinese waters, spoofs GPS & kills US sailors by ship collisions
>China manufactures rice-sized component to serve as stealthy backdoor on motherboards used by defense contractors and all large US companies
>China coerces Facebook and Google to build new technocratic software for a new generation of police state administration (e.g. "social credit" system)
>China manufactures millions of cheap rubber boats to help Africans cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe & distributes them via Chinese diaspora & exploitable western NGOs
>China manufactures and ships fentanyl & other addictive poisons that evade US customs easily when distributed at state-sponsored scale & sophistication
>China creates counterfeit cannabis cartridges filled with poison & uses the same fentanyl rat lines to send them into the US
>China forges global warming, coerces and seduces thirsty scientists into helping cripple American business
>Chinese manufacturers compromise SmartTVs and other electronics to help create attack vectors for Chinese carders and clients of their espionage malware
>Chinese Navy sending carrier group into American hemisphere to challenge status quo
>Chinese diplomacy seeking a Silk-road oriented economic development region to better exploit and leverage its non-Chinese neighboring vassal states
>Chinese students flood American universities with state-sponsored fully-paid tuition or American-paid scholarships, stealing seats from American students
>Chinese students universally participate in culturally appropriate cheating rings, performed in the open, unencrypted but in their native language, hosted on their own .CN duplicates of Facebook.
>Chinese students exfiltrate technology via dumb professors who have little idea they're being exploited
>China rolls up CIA network from American-born spies to local contacts, killing more than twenty operatives (public numbers)
>Chinese military forces regularly, several times every year, antagonize India, Vietnam, Japan in addition to the United States
>Chinese "investors" flood Hollywood with their capital, gaining control over American cultural communication
>Chinese state-sponsored construction of artificial islands continue to ruin access to fisheries and energy resources used by non-Chinese nations

>>12127550
Nothing blatantly wrong with it, and I quite like the general tone and choice of vocabulary. The syntax of longer sentences seems a bit forced, but that's probably just me being traumatized by reading a gorillion victorian age texts in my youth lel

I am excited to finally get better at the purely technical and structural aspects of writing, to the point where they can become a subconscious instinct and not something that I have to consciously agonize over for ages. Without a doubt the thing that trips me up the most is moving from scene to scene. I am so terrible at it that I end out writing at a snail's pace while figuring it out and it feels like dragging my dick through barbed wire.

Because it's like, in the Soviet Union they couldn't say the things they wanted to say, they had to fake allegiance and so on, we can tell SJWs today "Hey, not with your pronouns, bucko"

Clean up your bloody room, and penis (and penis)
Clean up your bloody room, and penis (and penis)
Clean up your bloody room, and penis (and penis, and penis)
You're postmodern Marxists, like grow up (up! ooh, ooh, ooh!)

It's like sort yourself out (out!)
Journey down and slay the dragon (slay the dragon)
Then save your father
like Pinnochio become a real boy (uh-uh-woo)
And my ego getting reborn
Like St. George upon that virgin
All this mythos on the deck
Look like I got that divine vision
All these upvotes on Quora
Ooh-wee it's my time
Me and Joe Rogan smoke blunts
Ooh-wee I'm online

Clean up your bloody room, and penis (order!) (and penis)
Clean up your bloody room, and penis (and penis)
Clean up your bloody room

When's the first time you asked yourself if you want happiness or fulfillment?
Or are you trying to act like you were reading philosophy before you came out here?
Clean up your bloody --

Sort yourself out, speak only what is true (WHOOP!)
Sort yourself out, speak only what is true (WHOOP!)
Sort yourself out, speak only what is true (WHOOP!)
Sort yourself out, speak only what is true (WHOOP!)
Sort yourself out, speak only what is true
These hierarchies are older than trees
Lobsters know it too, I'm telling you
How you find a mate? Competence and luck
Sort yourself out, find order in chaos
I like Bible stories, I like that old shit
I wanna hear more of it, gimme that hero shit
Gimme Pinnochio shit you trifling ho BITCH (bitch, bitch, bitch)
My language may have slipped up (slipped up)
You really need the context (the context)

Because it's like, in the Soviet Union they couldn't say the things they wanted to say, they had to fake allegiance and so on, we can tell SJWs today "Hey, not with your pronouns, bucko"


some of those lines are bad i know. suggestions welcome

>>12129699
It'll happen faster than you think anon. Keep it up.

>>12122191
read please :(

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oDO5Rvucv_1I1EpnNWhW-KmpH730-EyN6enpjhv76L4/edit?usp=drivesdk
Hmmm...

So because of reasons I gotta come up with a YA horror/ghost/whatever along that line novella (idk 20-30k words) that involves a mirror. I got three ways to go about it, and I can see myself pull each off, but I want anon's input as to which is the least retarded approach. Note: I'm not getting rich off this, but a certain few of my country's publisher bigbrains will skim over it heh

Anyway, main premise:
>plain, possibly ugly girl is fed up with being that, acquires supernatural means to change this
then
>A) gets noticeably more beautiful over time, life improves, but alas, when she tries to speed up things by doing supernatural things again her reflection starts doing some wack things on its own and she's essentially going cuckoo (psychological horror deluxe)
>B) DorianGrayButAlsoNotHaha: same as above but her reflection gets progressively more hideous and she can't take it anymore at some point, thus learning about vanity (true YA approach, horror lies in just how fucking revolting it'll get)
>C) she stays the same but her reflection improves instead, thus gives her the confidence to still improve her life (ghey Disney approach with ghost story only peppered in for keks in terms of how she acquires and uses the magic)

>>12131342
idk man I don't like this theory stuff... I mean stuff written based off of a theory of the world. it's hard enough to write based off of the world itself. also it's spelled 'hundreds.'

Frankly I think it would be more interesting not to give any exposition and just let it bleed in. You probaly have a cool world here, just don't info dump it. idk

>>12131378
says 'access denied'

>>12131480
what is fixed and what is free in this scenario? you can't deviate from "plain, possibly ugly girl is fed up with being that, acquires supernatural means to change this" ?

if i post, will you guys critique?

>>12131530
Only truly fixed thing is the mirror and it being the source of wacky, possibly disturbing antics, and the fact it's PG-13 YA so no brutal splatter gore kek. I was just told that it being relatable to the readers would score me however minor bonus points, and alas, target demographic is literally 4/10 middle school geeks who actually buy YA genre fiction. But that's just my .02, it's not fixed per se.

>>12131530
>>12131575
Addendum: mirror is one of three topics to be chosen from, the others are monsters (zombies, werewolves, vampires), or dreams. And I neither want to copy Stine or god forbid Meyer, nor fulfill the "haha it was all a dream" trope (and going full elm street for the latter is explicitly forbidden). Sooo, yeah. Mirror it is.

>>12131551
If you critique somebody else

I've been writing quips and silly dialogue lately. I don't want to post the best ones but if you want you can critique some of these sappy ones:

A heart that is worm-eaten by the bread of moths. We all want more, but our daily bread eats us. We are consumed by our want, and can do nothing but flutter around the flames of greed.
A ruler conversely wants nothing that isn’t his. The gears of destiny cradle him, drawing ire from onlookers and pestilence.
Killing is blindness. We all know it. And yet here we are, among lanterns that do not give light, among the restful, the restful dreams known as ‘penance’. As a blind person, I know this as the light that gives me happiness: you are mine.

I don't know what to do with this crap. I like writing it, but I'm not sure this sort of thing carries anything. I used to believe it could, and maybe that's true, if really exceptional, but this stuff isn't. It's not carry-worthy lol. I also don't even know where this would fit in a story. What do? basically. Maybe I'll participate next Nanowrimo or something.

here's a stand alone entry in a potential series I've been brainstorming. This piece is finished but the rest of the series is largely just a mess waiting to be scrapped up and refined into something space-opera...y. It's based largely off The Egg.

/r/Hiof/comments/8cwhzw/the_eternity_cube/ sorry for leddit, it's too long to post here. I write every day but lack the motivation to put it all together, just looking for some feedback good or bad.

>>12133216
I like it. Maybe something an unhinged man would scribble on a piece of paper and throw at a female college student.

>>12125274 is mine, along with pic related. Are they okay?

Maybe if I work out Stacy will love me

Maybe if I rap hard Stan will follow me

Maybe if I love myself God will be nice to me

Maybe if I sin enough the devil will reward me

Maybe If I drink enough I'll forget about all these worries

Maybe if I dose high enough I'll lose my mind and all will to fight

Maybe if I suffer enough I'll learn what it means to live and finally be able to die in peace

Maybe if I live long enough I'll find a reason to fear death

Maybe if I stop fearing death I'll find a reason to live

Maybe if I write enough it'll make sense in time

Maybe if I act something will get done

Maybe all that may be is all that needs to be.

>>12131098
yeah I know. I added up all the stuff I've written this year and it's only about 50,000 words which is barely a novel and I'd assume like most hobbies you need to write the equivalent of at least a few novels before you get any good at it so we'll see.

I also think I need to take more time off after I finish the current story to just study more, read more about structure, re-read and analyze some books that I really appreciate and really suck out as much info as I can so I can fly less blind.

>>12099371
Episode two, I guess. More of it came to me.

---

I don’t remember the drive, but this is too sharp, too clear, I don’t feel like I’m dreaming. Rapid footsteps pass the gallery entrance carrying the comment “You never do.” The interruption meets an air of strong disapproval.

The mask crouches closer to the painting, ravenous, its churning limbs lurching from his body. He was here when I arrived, looking at where I’m standing now. Only now do I see him. Only now do I see that the painting is not the same. Now it shows me an abyss, and I am transfixed as amber traceries conspire upon it.

I see that the mask holds that same abyss behind its eyes and in its fingers. Face to the painting, mask to me. There is a familiar wonderment at something I’ve seen before but forgotten, and it wordlessly promises to show me how, some day soon. Ashen clouds fill the air from behind its perfect gloss white, and I hear a dinner plate breaking as its eyes widen. The rushing in my ears is louder than thought.

“You will be offered a seat at the table.”

His words are a commanding silence. The other presence is diminished and there are no sounds from the hall. Sickness claws at my bones.

We are seated on the gallery bench. His posture is relaxed, his other mask. My understanding is met with approval. The one standing on the stone bears witness for it, but when they are gone it will remain, so it will always be. Tortured cries echo from a cave in distant mountains. Pilgrims kneel at the cave but do not enter, fools venture forth to lend their aid. What help can be offered is refused.

I think that I see sadness in his eyes before my ceiling comes into view.

>>12133540
>I added up all the stuff I've written this year and it's only about 50,000 words

man bro, that's fuckin' relatable. A while ago I added up a little less than a year's output, and it was 65K. That means I was writing 1k a day (my modest goal) for 17% of the year. And they were all different stories too, so all I have to show for a year's effort is a bunch of fragments which don't go anywhere.

I mean, it's often pleasurable just to write stuff, but I want to end up making something out of it. I just feel sad man.

I've been enjoying deeply moving art, and I don't see how the stuff I make could ever compare with it, even in theory. I don't know what to do.

>>12133931
I didn't particularly want to get into writing I just fell into it this year and people seemed to like my stuff. If it was even my #2 hobby instead of like 4 or 5 I'd probably have managed to write more but the troubles outlined in the previous posts is what slows me down the most.

I'm in that chasm where your own expectations of quality for your work have risen due to experience, but you haven't yet attained the skill to meet your raised expectations yet. I guess not having very lofty goals doesn't help there, I'm not trying to make moving masterpieces or even full length novels here.

>>12132376
idk i see a lot of anons get no responses. not worth sharing if that's the case. shame bc i'm pretty good.

>>12133216
have u heard of vince posting on /tv/ ????

Can someone read this snippet of a short story I'm writing and tell me if it's at least alright? I started it only a day ago. It's inspired by Hunger and a few other stories of that ilk. Thank you.

Two pleading hands of fire fell from the sky, floated lifelessly to the pavement to be trampled by a passing boot. A gust fanned the flames, a crowd ahead wrapped in the conflagration. The bodies seemed to flicker in and out of existence as the sweep of leaves picked up then died down again. Suddenly his voice broke in like a wave, timed exactly to that point when the winds lost all power.

One ought to care about these things, he implored—care because it’s the right thing to do. Life was in the signing of one’s name, the folding of an envelope, the race to absorb the fleeting facts of the every day. Strolling coolly along the path, one hand in his pocket, he indicated a newsstand with his cigarette. Why couldn’t his dear friend take an interest? It was after all the natural way of things. We passed through the gate and entered the park.

“Suppose you’re on a train; that’s life going, going on. Kids are glued to the windows because they like the speed, find something funny in the way the trees whizz past and the mountains stay the same. Everything is new, there’s excitement and thrill. Dad’s reading that day’s paper or finishing important work while mum casts her sentinel gaze over her chicks or gloats with other mums. Seniors find rapture in crosswords because, damn it, the mind needs it. Their stop’s first, life’s over. Where are you?”

The ash of the cigarette he’d pinged away lay heaped like a mountain crumbled. I delivered it to the bin mere feet away and caught up. “I don’t know, where am I?”

“One of the kids grazes you and you’re none the wiser: you’re asleep in the middle row.’

Hands of fire fell from the sky, floated lifelessly to the ground to be trampled by a passing boot or wheel. A gust fanned the flames, the crowd ahead wrapped in the conflagration. The bodies seemed to flicker in and out of existence as the sweep of leaves picked up then died down again. Suddenly his voice broke in, timed exactly to that point when the winds lost all power.

One ought to care about these things, he implored—care because it’s the right thing to do. Life was in the signing of one’s name, the folding of an envelope, the race to absorb the fleeting facts of the every day. Strolling coolly along the path, one hand in his pocket, he indicated a newsstand with his cigarette. Why couldn’t his dear friend take an interest? It was after all the natural way of things. We passed through the gate and entered the park.

“Suppose you’re on a train; that’s life going, going on. Kids are glued to the windows because they like the speed, find something funny in the way the trees whizz past and the mountains stay the same. Everything is new, there’s excitement and thrill. Dad’s reading that day’s paper or finishing important work while mum casts her sentinel gaze over her chicks or gloats with other mums. Seniors find rapture in crosswords because, damn it, the mind needs it. Their stop’s first, life’s over. Where are you?”

The ash of the cigarette he’d pinged away lay heaped like a mountain crumbled to dust. I delivered it to the bin mere feet away and caught up. “I don’t know, where am I?”

“One of the kids grazes you and you’re none the wiser: you’re asleep in the middle row.’

His smile told me he didn’t mean for me to take offence and we laughed. It was fine, he’d said this and many similar things before and knew, like every other time, I wouldn’t grumble. But I’d wanted to respond with something other than that idiotic laugh. As we came up the hill and took our usual position at the start of the trail—we had half an hour before heading back to the office—I saw the lake.
A boy controlled a boat from the bank. It sent up a blinding spray as it sped across the expanse. Exultations followed as it effortlessly cut the wind, skimmed the surface and lifted itself into the air to land safely on its hull. It surged with ever increasing speed as the clouds parted and made the waters shimmer. Mesmerised by the drone of the little motor I became aware of a sudden expansion in my sight and all that it encompassed. Looking as if from on high the lake on whose surface the toy vessel enjoyed such freedom had shrunk to a pond. In seconds the boat completed several laps around the margins. Round and round it went until, sight broadening once again, the pond dried up and gravel scraped the belly of the boat. Stranded, toppled, the hopeless craft lay motionless. The last drop seep through the cracks.

I'll do C4C

>https://pastebin.com/ztCR6Fqf
It's the prologue and chapter one of a novel I'm spending way too long writing.

>>12133973
If you don't mind me asking, what's your number one hobby?

>>12136278
Music.and sound design. I like to score movies/games etc. (instrumentally though I don't do lyrics).

1/2

The beginning of a short story I'm working on:

My acquaintance and I met on the first snowy night of the season at a dinner party hosted by our mutual friends, the esteemed Governor and his wife. 'I wish he'd shut up soon,' had been my thought for some time, as I politely sat sipping my schnapps. He was raving on and on about his dearest Anna, and I was finding it increasingly difficult not to throttle him from across our little table. I kept composed though, nodded along, and smiled endearingly at his every remark, but inside I was beginning to boil. Who was this scoundrel to brag of his dearest before a lonely bachelor sipping schnapps at a dinner party? And with such a scoundrel's nose, indeed!
It began like this:
Picture I, quietly indulging in the cocktail shrimp at my solitary office in the corner of the dining hall. A waltz is being played on the piano, the gentlemen are smoking their pipes, and their wives are all in a flock near the hostess. With her frilly, red dress and puckered lips, she stands out amongst the ladies, and looks more like a dream consort than the wife of that burly old man, the Governor. A jovial air of chatter and laughter hangs over the party, and beholding the high stacks of pastries and sweets that had just been laid out on the table in the center of the room, I am perfectly content in my own company.
Presently enters our devil in question, who, after surveying the party from the entryway, catches my wandering gaze. At first he acts as if caught offguard, his shifty eyes darting left to right in a clear mockery of suspicion, but I must have been of peculiar interest to him, for he very quickly begins slithering towards me through the crowd. Judging by the devious grin he now bares across his face, one which looks to suggest a secret intrigue, or an inside joke, I realize this will not be an encounter I can easily avoid.
"Imagine us!" Was his grand introduction. "Two handsome young gentlemen of the highest standard health and grooming, with the whitest of teeth, and a full head of hair, here alone at a society party with neither of us a date by our side! What's your excuse?"
He sat down promptly across from me, plucked a shrimp from my glass, and popped it into his mouth. He wore a long, elegant frock-coat, fine, leather boots, and donned on his bird's nest of curly hair, a black top hat, which he was evidently very proud of by the way he delicately caressed the brim between two spindly fingers. I had reason to believe he wasn't actually on his own here, but it was of no consequence to me.
"I'm just here on invitation," was my response. (A lie.)
"What's your relation to the Governor?" He asked.
"A distant nephew." (Another lie.)

>>12136535
2/2


He leaned back in his chair and scrutinized me like a hawk on a mouse. "Ah well, myself... Just out to enjoy the evening. I really know nobody here." With that he gave a wink. "Oh, but look! The snow's already beginning to fall!" He turned towards the window across the room, and indeed outside, thickets of white snow were falling gently from the darkening sky. "It's sure to be a wonderful night! One might fancy a stroll through the streets if one doesn't find oneself bogged down here with this unruly bunch for too long..."
"A little chilly for me," I said.

>>12135127
>i'm pretty good

>>12136604
?

I heard you guys like Patrician Fantasy writing so please furnish your mind with this beauty...


He had never expected Fullrow to flee. He was the bravest man in the company, the man they called leader, but all of the speeches and all of the titles fell away in the face of the giant and his army. He had never seen a man so big, none of them had. He looked like something in the stories of their childhoods and the image of him returned them to the vulnerability of youth where monsters and demons roamed their nightmares and there were no Knights to slay them.

They had sworn allegiance to King Coldmurner, their newly crowned monarch who had resolved to finally face the heathen army head on. But now King Coldmurner wore his crown on a spiked pole overlooking the land he had sworn to protect and the army that had sworn to protect him. It was a miscalculation caused by inexperienced vigor which had so often cranked history's wheel of change.

The deserter pressed his hand against his thigh, feeling the bandages beneath his torn leggings which had saved his life. He knew the land well enough to know that he would not survive without a coat and boots, and that although freezing to death in the cold winds he was raised in was a better fate than what would happen to him if found, he was committed to surviving this catastrophe as any man was when faced with their own mortality.

He was not however spurred on by his own self-preservation instinct. He had to tell people about what happened at Dormis Cawe. About the giant with his horns and his painted face of dried blood. About what happened to King Coldmurner and how they ripped through him like some dead animal in the slaughter houses of downtown and nobody could help him, that although they destroyed everything and had driven them to ruin they couldn't destroy him and he would live on in testament to their failure to butcher at least one of them.

He also had a Daughter which he had kept quiet, but then the filthy debt collectors with their absence of morality had found out about her and that's why he had come to Dormis Cawe with an Army that would pay them off, lest the bounty hunters arrive with revenge on the tips of their tongue and do things to her that made him cry just to think about.

He could feel himself slipping away into a comforting sleep against the hard surface of the rock. The sky was turning dark and the cruel wind made him feel sorry for himself but he had to keep moving or he had to die. He looked at the landscape around him and resolved to keep heading beside the path, knowing that it would eventually lead to somewhere because men did not build paths to nowhere.

Critique on my latest work? I know I have a choppy writing style, I'm working on it and will improve in later drafts.

https://pastebin.com/BfVET9qz

Thanks in advance friends.

>>12136604
asshole

>>12137105
Overconfidence is unappealing
https://youtu.be/-v4R2ZcxPlA

I'll just critique others and tag my piece at the very end here:

"Dawn broke on the Ohio as the barge anchored near the river bank. A man waded through the water until he came upon dry land. Trampled reeds and matted grass lay in the path connecting the water to the dirt road running parallel to the river. A car waited for the man, he approached the driver’s side. The window drew down and a large hand with a thick wrist extended an envelope. Without a word the man accepted and tucked it away inside his jacket. He then slung a sack off his shoulder and handed it to the driver. The two exchanged nods and moved opposite in the directions from which they came. Their meeting existing only an instant in the vast time of the universe’s being."

It feels too stretched out and disconnected and all broken up. It's like each line is cut from each one, as opposed to a big streaming delicious froth that I can chew. I don't know really, but if I could rewrite it to something I like, which, may be in fact the complete opposite of what you like, but I guess you'll have to see it to see it.

Broken dawn on the Ohio, barge pushing a man into soon-trampled reeds and soon-matted grass, but first into the welcoming short bank that so watered-down the riches of the dawn before. Up, by-the-by, of road so visually close yet quite far from a measurement of wet brown leather shoe-steps, a car, placed not by chance, but by a living, likely breathing, glob of gray matter. Out of said gray-matters hand, as matter of fact, was envelope enveloped now in our brown-shoed, wet man. Thick-wristed, our gray-matter, quite. Nodding, the gray-matter, in response to the man's nod, instinctually an up-nod, rather than a down-nod, or at least likely, unless they knew each-other. Off they went! Quick as some punch spiked into the mouth.

I don't know, it just seems more fun, more colorful this way. I'm not even sure myself.

Anyways here's mine, I'm going to be scrolling up and replying a bit more. It's dialogue.

"One thing that I’ve always found hard about writing is the plotting part of it. It’s why I think I would be awful at writing any planned narrative. I would lose the mystery, the covered nakedness of the word and thought that I want to convey. I can’t wipe my mind and recover that mystery after its been written down. The only thing I can really write is this, this melody of madness, the spoken mind spreading itself in weak metaphors that can’t really reach the animation or meaning I want to convey. I don’t want to edit, or even go back on this, rewrite and re-see, because it just wipes away that appeal, that fresh and roughed feel. The first choice of word is always the best, and pushing extra is bad. Rewriting unless it’s finished, that’s death. I’d get so caught up if I had to think through every sentence, choosing each word carefully, like some planned masterpiece I wanted to show to the literary world. I know I’ll never be great."

>>12129070
Have a gay love plot in the USN. But have it be toxic-yet-romantic so people will think its cute and slowly escalate it to them bashing each-others heads in with literal jackboots on pavement. It doesn't even need to relate to the plot. The reader can pseud their way into relating it in some "deep" way. Bam, great story.

>>12127550
>with hate, especially of late.
this made me pontificate

>>12125521
The reader with think you are cheap regardless of what you do. Or they won't. Really it doesn't matter.

>>12125274
I like it. I can't explain why.

>>12120433
hahaha

>>12112072
Mossberg, he pumped, flippant shell exposed for the dreadful scamp it is. Egad!

Talked to a guy after a lecture yesterday. Cute with nice clothes. I said to him:
"Hey, what do you think the lecturer meant when he said X?"
And he replied:
"No idea."
And then, continuing, said:
"He might have meant that X was meant to draw a parallel with Y"
Thus showing that he did have an idea, and thereby immediately contradicting his previous statement.

Then, he said:
"Hey, I don't mean to be rude, but I need to go to the bathroom. You can walk with me if you want to keep talking."
I found it difficult to interpret the strange expression on his face as he said this. Walking together toward the bathroom we didn't say anything at first. I realized I was walking too close to him and made a move to put some distance between us. But, seeming to sense this, he put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me even closer to him. My heart began to race. He was talking again but at this point my mind was becoming clouded.

We arrived at the bathroom. I was unsure as to whether or not I was meant to follow him in but when we got there he still had his arm around me and he walked me right in. We arrived at a stall, and since I was ahead of him I sort of stumbled to get out of the way. But he still had control of me, and he pushed me in. I fell back onto the toilet seat. He requested:
"Open your mouth for me." My mind was still clouded at this point, and I opened my mouth without thinking. He pulled his cock out. He was bigger than me, which I found surprising, seeing as I was taller than him. But it was fitting, the thought came across my mind, given his dominant character. I mean, damn. You guys would be jealous if you saw it. It was impressive both girthwise and lenthwise. Honestly, my mouth was beginning to water at this stage and I opened my mouth wide in anticipation. He put himself in me. It tasted weird. He thrust it in, not waiting for me to get used to his considerable size. He thrust it in and out at a steady pace. I began to shake as he went in and out. His taste was sweat. I looked up into his eyes and let out an oink. I was his pig now. His greedy little pig. Hungering for his sweet sweet cum. Saliva came dripping out of my mouth as I began to take control. I placed my hands upon the base of his big hard cock and began my offensive. He started to moan. Loudly. I heard someone come in, and my lecturemate made to remove his member from my mouth. But I gripped harder and made a tool of my tongue, causing him to let out the loudest moan yet. Shocked laughter rang out the bathroom as a confused student quickly left. My body and my lecturemate's were totally in tune. He moaned:
"I'm losing control."
He commanded:
"Swallow me!"
And he came. And it was plentiful.
I sucked in staggering breathes.
Finally the feeling of unison began to fade.
He said:
"Did you actually want that?"
I said, with laughter:
"I don't remember."
Tiredness overcame me and I passed out. When I woke up he was gone.

I stare at the brush fire and it spreads. Was it my fault? A phone sits beside my rocking chair, and as I watch the fire grow I realize the city is fifty miles away and I have tap water. But the crackling is beautiful. I can't do anything to stop it, and I don't want it to stop.

Smoke rises from the forest; yet nothing seems to leave it, as if it too understands the necessity of its end. "What of the birds?" I think, but the fire is alone and whole in itself. And I do nothing. Though nothing I could do would have an effect, I still don't try.

The wind picks up. The cabin grows warm, and I know I should leave, but the crackling soothes me once again into inaction. I perceive nothing but the campfire. More smoke and it's warmer.

The walls are on fire and I don't want to cry out. The phone line is burnt and I hear crows in the distance. I stay low to keep the smoke above me. I feel nothing but the fire again for a moment, and then the fear. It's midnight, the crows have gone, I'm on the floor, and finally I want to laugh but have no air in my lungs. I realize the birds were the last to leave.

>>12137499
Yes, this is the exact type of literature I look forward to and reminds me of my time in the service, with its oddity. Honestly. The bullshit that to the public would seem bullshit is just normal to us in the service.

>>12137517
"what of the birds?" hahaha cracking good stuff jolly good belly of laughs

>>12137305
i don't even give a shit anymore bc you were so rude initially.

>>12137710
dude you're not a hot girl, nobody gives a fuck. just post whatever you have, no one will even know its you. jesus

Here’s my first sonnet.

>>12137710
Learn humility, Mr. Ego

I was walking through the rain-moistened streets of a model city suburb. No wildlife to be found amid this tarmac, the steam emanating from the volcanic glass-smooth road reminding us all of its dangerous freshness. The cracks and sinkholes would soon follow. I smelled among the catalytic purified air a forest fire. Or a barbecue. We kid ourselves with a paradigm of civilisation separating our sterile cooking to the pagan barbarism of bygone days, yet we’re all holding hands on the spit-roast of time. I saw beneath me the sensual striptease of birch bark kindling, curling its arched back into ephemeral proletarian cigarillos. Go on, reach into the fire for a drag. We soon mirrored the bark. Snap, Crackle, Pop. Drop dead from chopped trees mutilated with rock and ore pounding and penetrating on both ends, the bitter saltpetre firepower retaliating (or initiating, only the trees know) against tobacco smoke and dire pow-wows. The wood wheezing just as the beaver did when it starved to death, its two buckteeth planted in ashy soil tilled by corpse ditches, only to be reborn decades later as a twin-towered Phoenix. I pictured the flames. Family trees severed and grafted, hopefully sending embryonic embers into the night sky to join the ranks of our stellar cousins. We spoke of Heaven, but they had the heavens. Some will say that within every shooting star is a brave lost soul scanning the planet in search for a welcome invitation. I guess we’ll never see the day. After all, we lost the forest.

>>12137805
this is about braps, isn't it ('s good tho)

https://pastebin.com/a9uwmVhe
Some you may recognize this
I Posted this a while back

>>12138100
sorry man I'm too fixated on real sex.. I do remember you posting here before. idk what to say

>>12137867
I think it's kinda purple

>>12138188
Did you enjoy it?

>>12137805
I don't know much about poetry but it looks pretty good to me

>>12137867
>rain-moistened
Just "wet" is fine famalam

>>12137499
gay

>>12137075
>A car waited for the man, he approached the driver’s side.

splice

>The two exchanged nods and moved opposite in the directions from which they came.

rewrite

>Their meeting existing only an instant in the vast time of the universe’s being.

maybe omit

>Ken Burrs

sounds too much like Ken Burns

Stopped here. Really try to simplify and cut the fat. For me it's just like... not my kinda story. Sorry, personal preference. I'm sure if you tighten up the prose other people will like it more

>>12136535
>the esteemed Governor and his wife.

it's already fake. nobody says that

this is like some dumb american, which we all are, you and I, pretending to be classy and using the classy voice he thinks he can do to his advantage. But he can't! Abominable conceit!!

Just be more honest... this reminds me of like what a comedy scene in Dishonored 2 might look like, and that's not a good thing. Level up and meet reality or just write about real life. I'm sorry

>>12136510
How did you find that you liked to do that?

>>12138227
I started out trying to make movie sound effects then got into music after that so the relation to media was there from the start of attempting to write music.

Shadows chant the solemn noise
of lonely drops of water.
A dark cave with little light,
dewy and soulless it appears;
Mysterious are its enclosed walls,
as they whisper of insect trails,
and a soft brush nightly paints
demonic monsters that ceremoniously growl.

Masks hide bursts of anger,
while silence is eternally kept.
Dark and red they seem,
lit by the glittering black waters.
Not a soul colors the atmosphere,
although ancient breathless lungs
woefully breath.

This isn't technically creative but there's no syntax help thread so I'll post here.
I'm trying to write this sentence describing the surroundings of a house:

Surrounding this area were fields: across the road, oranges, and to all other sides, empty dirt.

I'm not sure if this sentence should just be split up, or if I should delete the first clause altogether. The original sentence I wrote was:

Surrounding this area were fields, across the road, oranges; to all other sides, empty dirt.

I'm sure both look atrocious to someone who can actually write so please forgive my shitty English (haven't written in years and was never particularly good at it) and help me configure it properly.

>>12138308
It's pretty clunky but I get the picture. The phrases after fields have the commas replacing verbs. I'd probably break it up. If you've already been talking about the house, I don't think you need "this area".

Dressed up trucker jacket
Driving in a stormy winter
Sleep starved afternoon

Where the mountains are
And the family was
And the wind stops its croon

And when there comes a honk
Soon there comes a tree

Like tongue licked snow
The bell it tolls for you and me

>>12135159

No one critiqued mine. Hm.

This is my first attempt at writing from a female perspective.
https://pastebin.com/6wtBdpiM

>>12135159
Comfy.

>>12139010
>This is my first attempt at writing from a female perspective
It shows. You shouldn't worried about how to write a woman's angle, that's clearly not what's wrong in here.

>>12090369
Ring the horns before the crash of the drums,
Reign forever the promise,
only as long as does not perturbe the ageless splendor of it's denial.
The angry man is vain in his resentment of luxury as he toils,
and so he proceeds in vain of his resentment.
The happy man is foolish in his love of life, forgotten to that horrible heaping part of himself,
sprawled with constricting joints and bleeding that blood,
Pay he luck not to remember.
Always eager was accepted by the Earth.

Always downward impress the power and cascading mountains of the horizon.
Ever so that the dwindling height impresses the speck at the edge of it's microscopic lense.
From what pestle were ground these grains of what the body shivers to behold?
From what tree was made sacrifice and ripped the shreds of this beautiful scenery?
From what point does the needle steer it's compass,
Pulsates the ebb of the magma of power.

The excretions of raw turmoil brews,
Below the vats of anamorphic hell was raised,
And up was risen high and low,
and behold that it was seen.
The slumber had encroached upon itself,
Flitting it's tail at the flies and leftovers of the night.
The spoils of day at hand make clear the path of the arm.
I am stretched about it's expanse and yearn the pangs of inward loss.
The melting hot aftermath boils my blood dark and red,
I am ready to sanctify these old bones with new fire.
I lurch my eyes upon the stocks and bundles,
I am in love.

Flesh loathes the indulgence of the mind,
masked in the light by its submission.
I have made acquaintance with the tonic of breath upon the bellows of breast,
I met the waves that mirror this and thine.
Well met are they, and I said that it was good!
To the heavens which impress me impress myself!
Know my mind you manifold of high towers!
Know me that lightning had stricken the chapels of your Kingdom, my name in blazing stars.
Know my name to the inextricable folds of your searching rebuttal.
And behold my pride,
erected there with bricks I would bet against mountains.
Was my blood so bold to creep back whence it came?
If not so, then was made slave to my own boldness.
So there it was,
and so wept the Earth for a thousand years.

Tears falter to the sun, and my cheek is dry.
You know me, but what are you hiding?
Amongst the flags of nation's the sweat of day unfurled,
There in the depths must be hidden.
Feed me or be refused the exhilaration of my tongue.
Set loose the fruit into my view,
I will do the rest.
Having filled my bucket of what belongs to me, harken to my plea for more,
To the adoption of my whimsy,
flicking fast the worm of yesterday.
I had worms in my thin stomach.
Aside it, the froth of snails had savored,
molding the lowest of all my opinion.
Better is the least of my gripes,
entrust me this day or all days hence I will mock you.
The threat twas modest now cast into hard metal for the shackles of a generation of tender feet.
What had inspired now falters,
I can weep no more.

Get got

You make a poem and read it aloud
You tremble quite nervously,
in front of a crowd.
You might think I'm listening but I'm really not.
I'm actually thinking 'bout how my dog's got.

How she's been got by the worms
Who ate up all her ashes.

Consumed by the germs,
Who excrete her as gases.


But worst of all is
How she's been got by me.
Her face is all gone
from my brain's memory.

Were her eyes black or brown?
I just can't recall.
Feels like
I never knew
that old dog at all.

The sad fact of life
is this happens to you,
I'll forget all your names though I wish it weren't true.
We'll all die someday,
and pay up life's taxes
Get got by some worms
Who'll eat up all our ashes.


>>12090369
Is poetry allowed? I really don't like poetry because I feel like prose as an alternative can convey the same if not more emotion, especially because modernistic literature has pushed the boundaries of what may be expressed through prose. But I have to write a poem and recite it in from of my class so plz rip it apart

Big Jimmy Ritter sits upright, cross-legged at the chair, waiting to die. I watch him, sitting the same, doing nothing. Sam Larsen works around us, careful, machine quiet. I only see her when she moves past me, and no longer, though I trust her enough to look her in the eyes. She still keeps her diploma up on the wall, just like a real doctor would, and she always says that she is still a real doctor. BOSTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, and graduated in half the usual time, too. I am dying of the same disease as everyone else, only it seems to be taking longer for me.
Jimmy only moves to smoke, and he smokes constantly, a pack and a half a day. I love him like I love myself (poorly). He's still corpse-handsome, glassy-eyed and greying.
We're waiting for Billy Bruin to come home, which she nearly always does. Sam sent her out to find something, probably antibiotics, and she has been gone three days. I don't miss her. Everyone's getting nervous, she (only Billy) has to move out further and further to find anything useful. But Sam stays optimistic, says we can make it through if we're careful (through what?).
Upstairs pretty Dagmar Holm is dying of pneumonia. Really dying, not like Jimmy and me. Even coughing up blood she still looks twice as healthy as I ever have. I can hear her singing through my wall at night, next to my room, and she calls out for Billy Bruin (her eternal and only love). Some nights she mistakes me for Billy, only in shadow.
Billy still calls me Dr. Wozniak (and I am not a physician, though I could fairly claim the title). It feels so cruel out here, like denying any familiarity. We could be sisters (even if I would hardly call myself a woman anymore). And I had six sisters just like her: big, strong, healthy, and dead. Or most likely, anyway.

>>12138224
>it's already fake. nobody says that

Yeah, no shit. What if that's part of the point? What if it's intentionally stylized that way? What's wrong with that?

>just write about real life

Why does everything have to be written about real life?

>>12137796
you're fucking retarded if you think i'm just going to let that go. also, why the fuck would i think i'm a hot girl? where the FUCK does that enter this at all.

>>12137815
i got more humility than you have days without sex fuckwad

christ, i'm so fucking mad i can't even post anymore

Everybody just be nice to each other

pastebin.com/zYaf8dkA

>>12142482
The descriptions are very nice but all you've explained is a sunrise, maybe with context this could be more interesting but as a stand alone piece, even with the honestly good descriptions (though I personally think that sometimes simple is better or more effective than heavy description and metaphor), its has no meaning and is therefor boring. This kind of writing, when given no context, feels like it wastes the readers time when in two paragraphs all you've learned is that "The sun rose over someones study."
I hope I don't come off as mean, I only mean to offer critic.

>>12142422
Nice but could do with some more interesting imagery. And you need to work on your grammar.

In 1998 I got so high that I never came down. I didn’t touch a drug after, but I’ve been high ever since. It took about ten years to get used to being permanently high, but it got easier when I did. Still never normal enough to where I didn’t feel high – but easier. When you’re high, you can’t do anything automatically, naturally, not anymore. It’s been a blessing in a way, cause’ I can see things now that I couldn’t see when I wasn’t high, things about my life, my work, other people, their work, their lives, and now I can’t unsee them. Used to be the case – I’d get high and see things at the moment but forget half of it by the next day. Then you start getting high all the time – and it takes years – but you start to remember, you remember the things you see, they get inside you, live in you, and then one day you don’t need the drugs anymore. So in 1998 I decided I’d never buy a tab again, didn’t need to, because I knew that I was never coming down.

>>12142651
yeah, it does have context but i won't post it because i need it for something else.

>>12141129
would unironically read more of (and not just cause I generally have a soft spot for the ramblings of the soon to be dead)

>>12142716
no critique on the writing itself but fuck you this hits too close to home

>>12142482
avoid adverbs

>the grey cloth began to swell with thick strokes moving, one after the other, tumbling and chasing and pursuing like dolphins.
awkward

it's just purple man. you have some talent, so use it to tell a story

>>12141129
stylish and noirish or whatever, in its own way. I don't like this kind of thing, but that's just a matter of taste. really good for what you're trying to do

>>12141271
That is a good point, and I hate realism as much as you do, but writing has to begin and end with something real. Even if you depict it in a fantastic, dreamlike form, it has to be about the things we see in real life. Even fantasy stories are ultimately about real life, they just create symbols of things which don't exist in reality. Sorry to be insulting!

>>12142274
listen mac don't get mad, I'm sorry for being so rude. But it's unrealistic to think that everyone here is hanging on to what you're gonna post. You, me, and everyone around is totally anonymous, so you have nothing to lose but a bit of pride. God knows I know how tense it can be to post something here and offer it up to the criticism of everybody... you're forced to look at all your own most painful blindspots. Anyway just do it...

>>12139010
>I loved these little moments. One minute, I’m snug in the calm grip of sleep, the other up and ready.

think there's a tense issue here. I mean, technically, there isn't one, but it still throws an error flag in the computer of my mind.

I saw you post this before...

>gets me off
sorry to be sexist but the one thing I think that divides women, in general, from men, is that they don't say vulgar stuff like this... maybe I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem to fit the delicacy of the character

>I guess you could say my will has been tested, though I don’t think about it that way.
I think I said this last time, but I don't understand the connection here lol. You can write me off as that same guy who keeps failing to understand, but... I don't understand how this connects to the last sentence.

>I go on 6 A.M. runs and I don’t feel the same grogginess of Sunday morning.
Again, I don't understand. I thought she didn't feel the grogginess of a sunday morning, cause she liked getting up early.

>After that it’s been a constant barrage of John’s.
Maybe find some better way to put this. Even if it's just enclosing John in quotation marks. Everything between the last thing I quoted and this one is good, btw.

>“The trees are shedding all the way now,”
Again... and I know I mentioned this last time... but I think you gotta make this more snappy. Make it something that it makes sense for the family to laugh at.

>Less and less have been migrating to our little town.
Think there might be a tense error here (say "had" instead, maybe?)

>The conservation experiment failed.
Like I said last time, you gotta make the internal logic of this more clear to the reader.

>I would rather be laying in bed, not wearing this dress. I wish I was laying down eating food, instead of being starved on this hard backed pew.
I thought she liked getting up early, though... also she JUST said she got pleasure from being in church.

>My life feels good. Everything is at peace. it’s all in order, but today I feel none of this.
does her feel good, or doesn't it?

>The gut.
guts!

>“Do tell.”
only gay dads talk like that lol

>In my mind, if I had a son, I wish he were just like him.
"In my mind" is redundant. Just say: If I had a son, I would want him to be like John. Or something.

>I don’t want that dream to sour.
Don't know what dream he's referring to here. Also feels like telling, instead of showing. Also, it's BIZARRE that he's saying this when he already has a son.

>He was a gentle and charismatic man. He had a deep booming voice.
Maybe (desu getting pretty drunk at this point) shorten this to: "He was a gentle, charismatic man, with a deep booming voice." Or even: "He was a gentle man with a deep voice." I don't want you to get too hemingway and anemic on me...

>you must submit to God a sacrifice.
Even though he's a preacher, I think it would be better if he just said "you must submit a sacrifice to God" or really "you must offer a sacrifice to God." (cont.)

>>12139010
>>12142869
... because people usually submit before God, don't they? They don't submit things to him, they don't even submit themselves. They just ... submit.

Everything after that is great btw. Again, you totally mystify me... I hate to say it, but you're super uneven. Just the same, I still feel like you really do have something to say here, maybe even a ton of things...

One last complaint:

>“Stop doing that. It’s gross,”

doesn't sound very Dad-like. Maybe this is one of those nu-Dads who have no patriarchal authority whatsoever... but even for the kind of Dad like that, you should really make it clear that he's a weird man-boy-Dad. Otherwise, keep going. I know you hate to hear it, but I think you gotta dig this out more. Or practice more. That's the last thing anyone wants to hear. But I think it's true.

>>12135159
>Hands of fire fell from the sky, floated lifelessly to the ground to be trampled by a passing boot or wheel.

what are hands of fire. Also should be floating.

>A gust fanned the flames, the crowd ahead wrapped in the conflagration.

no idea what's going on here. Oh god is it just some pretentious thing about autumn leaves? please don't do that.

> Suddenly his voice broke in, timed exactly to that point when the winds lost all power.

too much detail we don't need to know.

I feel like you're just trying to hard to appear deep and profound, and that comes across (to me, at least) as inauthentic.

You can say deep things (I mean that you yourself are capable of doing that, clearly), just stop getting in your own way and let it emerge naturally. The muse is the one who says it, not you

>>12138308
It doesn't make logical sense... what was surrounding the house, fields or dirt? I get that there are oranges across the street, but the rest is ambiguous to me.

>>12127550
really bad. please stop trying to write like they wrote in the olden days

https://pastebin.com/ztCR6Fqf

I'm still doing C4C. Please, someone tell me what I can do better. It's about 5k words.

>>12142884
Cheers for that. Really good crit. Yes, I'm rather guilty of letting recent reads distort my own attempts at writing. Reading Time Passes, the second section of To the Lighthouse, has made me think I'm better than I am.

>>12143345
I should explain that this little excerpt might not make much sense, especially that paragraph about the boat. It's a story about someone who sees ephemerality in everything and constantly imagines everything as being smaller than they are. To him a lake is a drop of water; he finds it hard to care about current events due to his understanding of the wider universe. It's a sort of "anti-humanocentric" story. Something like that, anyway. I recently wrote a section where he's talking to two people and imagines they're flickering and fading. I quite like the idea, but I'm not sure I can make it without it being pretentious. Note to self: just write clearly. No purple, please! Thanks again.

>>12143345
Damn. I forgot to actually respond with explanations. The hands of fire was my attempt at imagining bright red maple leaves... Bah.

https://pastebin.com/VWtjANdV
An intro to something I've been working on for a while. I think I get across what I want to, and there are a lot of purposely subtle things I introduce for later here, but i'd like criticism on my actual writing style as i feel thats where I'm weakest.

>>12143743
Sorry, but I couldn't even make it through your second sentence.
>The sun was low on the horizon and the day was finally beginning to cool off after the heat of the afternoon. The valley town of _______ had finally gotten some nice weather
That's probably one of the least interesting opening lines every created. And "nice weather"? Are you even trying?

>>12143756
I'm bad at openings, I wont deny it. I'd appreciate actual advice if you have some. Not that its an excuse but its still a work in progress hence the town being unnamed and such.

>>12143767
>The sun was low on the horizon and the day was finally beginning to cool off after the heat of the afternoon.
Bad opening line, almost nothing of interest
>The valley town of _______ had finally gotten some nice weather after the storm that had raged for the last two days ended, the night before having been particularly bad with winds causing a tree to come down on the road over.
Nice weather. Oh, a tree came down... How interesting.
> Today though, had been sunny,
Incorrect grammar
>and the forecast was predicting warm weather and sunshine for the next week, a welcome break from the traditional coolness of the fall.
Yawn. Also, repetition of cool/coolness.
> It seemed an even more lovely day to officer Greg Harrison, who was preparing for a short vacation.
Passive voice. Meh.

Honestly, it'd take hours to go through your entire pastebin and I'm just not enthused from the start.

>>12143781
Again, not denying its not great as is, but it was meant to be kind generic to contrast with the last sentence where its revealed that someone was killed. The weather and the storm from the previous nights are import plot wise as this is a flash forward, and when the events happen in the story they'd be a signal of a change in the state of the story, and they would have some idea of what to anticipate. Is there a better way to introduce the contrast between a nice day and a murder that isn't uninteresting until the murder is reveal? I suppose I could open with the statement that it was too nice of a day for a murder or something of its like, but when i wrote that (this was my original) it felt like I was blowing my load to early and the description of the weather felt worse because it felt like it was interupting the flow, being: murder > weather > murder, rather than how I have it now, were it starts with weather and moves to the murder an then stays there. Don't take this as me saying im right, I'm just not sure how best to proceed.

>>12092461
as one of the other anons said, your prose is definitely fine enough. You manage to be a bit flowery and allusive without sounding forced or painful to read, so that's good.

On its own, it's a bit rough to tell what I should take from this. It's vague in this clip (who knows, maybe within a much larger piece it would be fine), dreamlike as you intended, but with little payoff for the reader.

A thousand darts of doubt
Shot through my feverous mind
As I lay there in a trance
Awaiting her reply.

At last she broke her silence
And rested all my fears
Of other suitors calling
At my Ithaca’s hallowed halls.

But at what cost? The truth
It hurt to hear, for death
Had reared his cursèd face
And spoilt her familial bliss.

Oh narcissisitc self! You petty soul!
To believe she’d dismiss your affinity
Over some newfound member, like a lowly whore
And not the royalty you desire.
So learn from this endeavour; don’t let your mind
Race to such spiteful and self-depracating ends.
Take this chance to act the sturdy post she requires,
And who knows what passionate thanks she may bestow.

Someone tell me where the fuck the hyphen goes, if anywhere. I fucking hate two-word modifiers. I want to guess it goes within the modifier given the confusion which could occur otherwise, i.e. "I hate two word modifiers" being interpreted as "the quantity of modifiers I hate is two" rather than "I hate those fucking ones with the space in the middle."

>>12144774
just dont use them. those types of phrases debase writing.

Found myself thinking, or rather the thought brought itself to me: "Am I losing my desire for Frances?" These adulterous thoughts didn't, as we all in a certain way hope for, make me surprised or ashamed. The thought came on slowly, without any of the excitement and thrilling of the chase one expects to be thrown into when losing loving. The imaginary case: I am losing desire because it has been taken, stolen, bestowed, transplanted, displaced, or destroyed in any by some other. The love is expected to be replaced by seduction or the seducing. This is not the occasion. No. Instead I'm bored, which is to say that I've become boring. I'm boring Frances and I'm boring myself. I don't look at Frances with the look of a man who is ready, willing, although never able to fulfill and tend to her; she doesn't tend to me with the same attitude. Caresses are now caressed casually and without thought---no longer with the same hesitancy of fear, the same as desire. The irony, of course, which is so simple that it's embarrassing, is that the closer someone gets to another the more distance is yearned. This distance, needing an outlet, becomes psychological, cruel, in small gestures and glances that only hurt and build up to the eventual last fight that acknowledges everything but lacks the will and want to resolve anything. The whole breaks like an untended machine. We two have become completely familiar with one another, and one can't desire for something he already has, or, rather, can no longer have. A person can only desire for "things," which is why relations decompose when you finally realize a lover as a person. From here Frances and I can only grow only as friends, true and intimate friends, but never again as lovers. Adultery, physically, is only an afterthought of the actual crime of the thinking.

>>12125158
maafak you blazin this shit 10/10

Bump

Seems like this thread might be dead, but I'm desperate as shit for someone to read my short story. Any comments would be welcome - I just really want feedback.

Here it is: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rtvbo0ZRWW-BtblCKL3K-UJAS_KzqF3BJR6VJKAu0-s/edit?usp=drivesdk

>>12146305
youll hear from me

>>12146450
Thank you very much!

>>12146305
Hey how did you create that shareable link like that? I want to publicly share too without my gmail attached and shit

>>12144276
unironically...

>>12146517
Wrote it up in Word (though it doesn't really matter where you type it originally)

Copy/Pasted into a google doc

Uploaded to Google Drive (I used a drive from a back-up/secondary account anyway, cause even though its somewhat anonymous, I try and not fuck around with ya'll - I don't need my identity leaked and shit)

Turned Link-sharing on, so that anyone that has the link can view it.

I wrote a story about DRUMPFY BLUMFY POO. It was partially insipired by this image.

http://www.writerscafe.org/writing/G_T_Kiss/2076206/

>>12146613
Sorry anon, I was going to read it but not only was I already hesitant based on the topic, but after the shitty website wanted me to create an account to read it... yeahhhhh no.

>>12146676
That's okay, I didn't realize you needed an account for the site that's gay. I compiled my story into an image. Give it a shot pls

>>12146705
Not a bad read, but not great either

There was nothing particularly stand out about it. Or to put it differently, there was no element of surprise or real originality.

The moment you went from describing Maria and her mother, to describing Blumpf, the whole joke was basically done in a moment.

Many of the great pieces of parodic writing from the likes of National Lampoon, MAD, Old-school Cracked, etc. worked because they had a real style about them. The world, often absurd as it was, felt believable... perhaps possible would be a better word.

This piece also didn't really seem to have a point? I'm perfectly fine with a piece of entertainment not choosing a side. That's not the issue at all here. IMO some of the best comedies that center around politics are the ones that shit on ALL sides, and point out the retardation that exists across the board. But with this piece, I have no idea of the author really feels that way about Trump, or if the intent is to make fun of how the media portrays him.

I was going kamikaze on this broad. Down to the second knuckle and a clown’s handkerchief deep. This was before the AIDS. Blonde bimbo. I remember watching the election on the TV while I was getting my cannoli dressed. This was Reagan’s America now. I liked the greasy bastard. He could bang my daughter any day of the week. The broad nudged me on the chest. I had drifted off in thought about Reagan and forgot to keep thrusting.
“What’s wrong?”
“No ‘hello?’ No ‘how are you?’ You’re treatin’ me like a fucken dildo!”
“That’s the second time you’ve cursed in front of me this week. You know how I am about this.”
“How can you be offended when my fucken bowls and my fucken cack are slidin’ and slippin’ and slappin’ all over your fucken greasy box.” I grabbed my balls and my cock and cartoonishly slapped them around her pussy.
“You are such a pig. And a racist.”
“Racist? Whoah. Italians have been discriminated against for ages. Besides. What racial slurs have I used around you?”
“You said the N-word last Monday at the art gallery.”
“That’s not an offensive word.”
“A lot of people would disagree.”
“It’s Spanish.”
And Reagan kept saying “Pray for me, send me your prayers,” among all that rising of poll numbers and hope. The confetti blasted and up and up and up I came blasted on the faces of all of those young Republicans with tears in their eyes for a perfection that never came.

“Our father who art in heaven, hallow be thy name. Thy kingdom come…”. I stopped trying to recollect what followed.

I can’t remember the last time I had prayed. I remember, however, the last time I went to mass. I was twelve years old, my mother had insisted. I remember the silence of the congregation as the priest preformed the holy rituals. The volume of emptiness in the church dwarfed me. I could clearly make out the intimate prayer the priest orated as he lifted the Eucharist into the void. As I stretched my neck, staring into the ceiling, I contemplated my existence. I stared into the universe, feeling the vast emptiness staring back. If I ever felt the presence of God in my life, it was at that moment.

“… that will be done…” insinuated the priest as he motioned his hand to continue with the prayer. “On earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily bread, and… and,” I felt slightly embarrassed despite knowing I was one of the few people who still remembered that prayer, and one of the very few who still requested a priest to give them their last rite.

“ Forgive us our trespasses,” I continued. “ As we forgive those who trespass against us, and deliver us from evil.” He was staring straight into my eyes, as if he could see my most intimate thoughts and fears. “ Amen,” he said finishing the prayer, “ Amen,” I responded.

I zoned out as he continued to recite prayers and continue with the sacrament. When I told the doctor I would like to receive religious counsel, I was told that the hospital no longer offered religious counsel along with any other type of therapeutic care. Alas, one of the great accomplishments of the modern world, had been to eradicate the fear of death from society. I don’t believe in a God, at least I think I don’t. I guess that makes me a hypocrite as an atheist, and a sinner under the eyes of God. Whether it is my upbringing or cowardice to stand by my true ideas, I have never stopped capitalizing the “g” in God, I have never stopped acting christian. I don’t think I am faithful just in case He exists, rather because of an inward, primal, desire for this to be all true.

>>12146957
more pls