/lit/ - Literature

The bar's name was "Silver Bullet". It flashed a neon sign in the middle of a dirty dark street. This place opened three years ago and immediately became the abode of outcasts, broken and bored men, and some especially immodest women. Blue-collar pilgrims came to the Bullet every evening for a portion of liquid oblivion. The bartender named Chuck served amazingly bad swill, and the working slaves crushed by the tombstone of the day swallowed it, wincing, and asked for more with husky dead voices. Cigarette smoke veiled the room, mixed with a thick hum of voices and the strumming music on the radio. Good place, just dirty enough to be cozy.

GET THIS SHIT OUT OF HERE.
GO TO THE BOTTOM RIGHT OF YOUR SCREEN. CHECK THE DELETE IMAGE ONLY. AND DELETE THIS. I want this out of my sight, bub.

>>12237423
who is this funny looking gentleman?

Breathe — immortility —
crepuscular movement of dog parts —
geeking squid —
fastidious loquator —
bombast — rhetoritrix —
quiet — mental sphere

>>12237504
>immortility

>exasperated frog

>>12237603
What's wrong with my neologism?

>>12237490
A proto-overman.

peni
ss

>>12237490
Gabriele D’Annunzio.

>>12237425
damn this is good
it's eloquent and manages to say a lot

localised, localised like time
in clocks
and she comes and he comes
drip drip dripping like
spiders’ legs
surely, a substance spilled
across the page
crumpled in a ball and emerging;
a beast.

come to me like silk
floating over the face of a dream
wherein sands shift and i
wake like thunder
ice cold aflame/to atone.

murmur with me, under the ground
which warps, alive.
of course, as we all know
there was no turning our back
on those who suffer.

>>12237425
sounds like it’s leading to a fun story, it’s enjoyably written, if a little cliched. only real issue with it is the portrayal of the women of the bar, it’s a little like tired and dated no?

>>12237425
geniunely good. congrats for landing on a non-obnoxious style. I'd read more... but you're gonna have to start introducing some characters soon, mac. I don't read this for my health!

>>12237957
When you do something unusual like the "/" you should repeat it so it becomes.es reinforced to the reader, otherwise it feels pointless

>>12237423
not mine i just want you all to suffer
>https://pastebin.com/EdeaWwTa
this is why my flat mates fear me

All worlds are forged from the infinite empty beyond thought. Dreams are a place in-between.

Those touched by the sea of worlds gaze into its iridescent waters in their dreams. In its depths some see despair, others hope. The brave dive into the blinding abyss. Some awaken changed, greater. Others never do.

Those who are touched by it live in perpetual ignorance, for to comprehend the secrets of the universe is to be burned away by the great empty.

https://pastebin.com/Kiv2zyRd

>>12239648
oh

>>12239691
"steps... are in" sounds kind of awkward. steps aren't just in a manner, they are taken in a manner. Also, that's passive voice...

>They aren't in...

again, there should be a "taken" between that "aren't" and that "in"

>prides himself as if he were someone else hoisted up onto the shoulders of his power.

what... he has the pride of someone else riding a metaphorical object which itself symbolizes his own power? simplify this, or make it mean something

>He lies within himself and apart from himself, but also too, within.
uh, yeah, the first one was 'within'.. this is like saying "A & B... but also A."

> pellets
>that stab

is this water?

>the whore the self with the self his
?

>and gets that water where nothing else goes, in his ass, under the balls, the armpits.

stopped reading here... guy takes a shower in the most unbearable prose. give us more action with less pretention

>>12239651
the infinite empty what... this is just a bunch of meaningless... mystical... MUMBO JUMBO!!!

"Don't you want to sleep?" she said.

"I always want to sleep -" I replied. "I want to sleep so often that sleeping gets tiresome."

"Well that doesn't seem like any way to get things done."

"Its not. Did I say it was? Its not and it isn't meant to be."

The conversation grew stale with this fat-bellied woman nagging me about my habits. So what if I can't sleep - I pay the rent, the bills, I'm quiet enough, I don't smell...It makes a man wonder how much he has to do to be left alone in this world.

"Well," she started up again, "I just think that a more responsible way of life would behoove a grown man."

The fuck-you I wished to deliver amounted in a smile. "Lady," I said, "the most responsible thing I could do is to go to bed forever."

r8 my dialogue

>>12237425
this is great but something about the term "liquid oblivion" irks me
its probably just some personal dislike bullshit though

Here's some dumb shit I wrote recently:

He's got one thousand four hundred and eighty two pages
Written about a life nobody's lead for a while;
And the only people out there
He thinks could dig what he says
Hardly remember when they were a child.
If anybody ever reads it, he knows what they''ll say:
"It's some throwback revivalist junk"
About men of the Civil War
Wearing Phrygian caps
It's a little old hat
Does anybody still listen to funk?
Are there still Men of Honor
And Revolutionary Daughters
Are the cowboys still groovin' to jazz?
And is Zapruder still out there snapping pics
Of the 1970 Knicks
At Iwo Jima raising the grand ol' Union Jack?
But he only knows what's gone
And not what goes.
He's only got what's been grown
But he can't make it grow.
And the only things hes got to show
Are what his heroes shown
A long, long time ago.
He wants the whole damn world to watch him do it
All on his own...
He's Childe Harold, drop the e and then some,
Cuz he's Lord Byron born 1991.
He knows he's Seeger and Guthrie
Just a little less hungry
And he doesn't know how to play the guitar.
Yeah he's Salinger and Updike
Photocopied 300 times
Lower middle class in 2012
And he thinks "I'm just like John Yeats
and WB Keats"
If they went to an American high school in 2003
And maybe time is pouring out, we got a tear in the hull
The cargo ship Time is no longer full
We lose a little each day
Do we lose the fruit when it falls from the tree?
To him it seems.

>>12240651
banal by line 3, but good til then

>>12237425
It feels overly dramatic in certain spots.

>>12237504
employ verbs

>>12239651
super gay. come back when you figure out what you're saying

>>12240701
don't start off with a pronoun. don't play coy with the identity of your lead character.

>>12240765
what should i name him

>>12237425
>dirty
>dark
>bad
These words are not as bad as "special" for failing to convey any real information - but they do rival it. If this is an important piece for you then I would not use these descriptors, but instead show the nature of the scene that causes you to view it from those perspectives.

>>12240651
>cont

She steamed off, making no headway in the direction of my feeling judged. I went back to my room for a bit, pulled the whiskey out that I'd stashed away and drank a swig. I almost retched; I couldn't buy good whiskey. Rather than stay in that room, I decided to go out. On a walk, on an errand, whatever - just out. Stretching my legs could do me good, anyhow. I locked the door, walked down the thin hallway with just enough space for your shoulders, and came to the stairs. Living in the lower floors was cheap, but it was a pain in the ass to climb up every day. Two flights straight to the knees - I was lucky to still be spry.
It was grey outside. I thrust my coat to be closer around my body. It wasn't raining, but there were premonitions. Figured I should get this out of my system beforehand, plus the time is better spent without some neighbor in your ear. I took a right out of the entrance, walked a bit, took a left on Boulder, then a right on Main. Main had all sorts of stuff on it, like most streets called "Main" do. Now I just had to decide on where to find myself for the next fifteen minutes or so.

>>12240701
A bit schizophrenic if you ask me

I like it though

>>12240651
yeah line 3 is where it starts to suck

>>12239651
The other two posters are right. You rely on the reader making the same assumptions that you would - so if the reader makes different assumptions then you intended to convey then they get lost.
>Others never do.
Never do what? Never dive? Never wake? Never change? Are the "others" the brave that perish or are they the cowards that never dive? It's a mess. Work on disallowing permutations.

>>12240660
>"liquid oblivion"
"Oblivion" got massively overused back in the 80s-90s, so it's use needs to be better done for me or it just looks pretentious.

>>12237423
Alright lads, I have something I churned out this evening, I'll post and then go to sleep. Tell me what you think, I'll respond in the morning.

Give me a pen and paper. She walked into the kitchen and leaned over the counter to grab a legal pad and a pen. He stares at the space she had recently occupied, not tracking her movement. She turned around and dropped the pad in front of him. The pen rolled over the yellow legal pad, before coming to a stop, a cheap plastic pen she picked up from a bank a week ago.

He makes a dot on the page.

“What is that?”
“A dot”
“How many dimensions does it occupy?”
“One, it’s a dot”

Three inches below the dot, he draws a square. It is about two inches across and two inches tall.

“What is that?”
“A square”
“How many dimensions does it have?”
“Two”

He moves another three inches down the page, and draws a cube. It is a wobbly, but very definitely a cube.

“What is that?”
“A cube”
“Are you sure?”
“Fine… A drawing of a cube”
“How many dimensions does it have?”
“Three”
“No, it has two dimensions”
“But it represents three”
“No, it is a two-dimensional object that your mind, accustomed to a world of three-dimensional objects, perceives as three-dimensional”

He stands up, and begins to pace around the tiny kitchenette, taking two steps forward, executing a sharp about-face, then making the same two-steps back.

“Human minds are designed to process a range of stimuli, primarily in the third dimension. You are actually capable of observing and interacting with extra dimensional objects, but your mind is incapable of perceiving them. Your mind, hampered by three-dimensional cognition, does not want to see them. It has specially designed defense mechanisms to prevent you from experiencing phenomena that do not fall in the three dimensions.”

She snorts at this last line
“We were designed?”
“You were designed, and bred, in tremendous numbers to be harvested.”
“Oh”
“Quite”
“What is this defense mechanism?”

>>12240883
He has stopped walking, and is standing still, staring quite intently at her. His eyes are like magnets, she finds that she can only break eye contact with him when he looks away.

“What is a fuse? A fuse is a part of a circuit that, when it detects too much current, breaks the circuit to protect the rest of the machine.” As he talks, he is moving his hands, pointing, twirling his fingers. Idly, she realizes he is hypnotizing her. She finds she doesn’t mind. “The fuse in your water kettle will trip automatically to protect the delicate circuitry. Your mind is no different. The beings that designed your brain knew that there were certain things you were not supposed to observe, and you will suffer what is essentially a minor stroke if you see these things.”

He begins to draw another shape on the paper, but as soon as he is finished he covers it with his hand. Curiously, he did not look at what he was drawing while putting it to paper. She supposes this is some sort of trick, like with cards.

“What I am going to show you will trigger those circuits if you observe it too frequently or for too long. You can look at the image for five seconds, then I am going to cover the image again.”

“I hope you haven’t drawn a penis there”
“Please be serious”

There is a commanding note in his tone that makes her stop smirking.
He lifts his hand off the drawing, and continues to stare at her, but she is entirely preoccupied.

When he lifted his hand, she half-expected to see some sort of strange shape, maybe an occult symbol, but nothing like what she was seeing now. The shape on the paper was made with ink, it was very obviously not alive, but the lines in the shape were somehow writhing, crossing each other in ways she could only describe as loathsome and arousing.

>>12237957
There is no connective thread between all the sensory language. I can appreciate trying to color your work, but if it loses message to the attempt then it ain't worth it

>>12237504
I'd say its bad

>>12237431
You tried bro

>>12240889
She felt blood pounding in her ears, and her vision narrowed, but it was moving, impossible to look away from, but equally impossible to bring into focus. She looked at the image and felt completely meaningless, totally alone, like she was drifting away from her own body. She wants to take the drawing and rub it against her clit, masturbate with it until she bleeds, make the sign in the street outside with her blood, with anyone else’s blood. She wants to set the drawing on fire and go in the bathtub and slit her wrists so she doesn’t have to exist in the same world as it. Her head was aching, she had never felt pain like this before, this was worse than any period cramps she had ever had, it was worse than when she was nine and had an infected molar, her entire world was pain, but she could not look - SNAP. His hand was suddenly the only thing in her field of view.

She makes a loud groaning noise, and her eyes, which had been bulging out of their sockets, now returned to their normal positions. She made as if to stand up, but the strength had deserted her limbs, and she flopped back into her seat. Suddenly she felt her stomach give a mighty heave, and she stumbled towards the sink, embarrassed he would see her vomit. She had eaten an ham sandwich with two hard-boiled eggs for lunch, and she saw all three for a second time as she purged into her kitchen sink. He stood several feet away, next to the table, with his left hand in his coat, his right hand still covering that horrible image - the thought of the image brought forth another round of vomit. There was nothing more to vomit up after that first explosive volley, but she leaned over the sink for another minute anyway, hacking up watery bile and phlegm.

>>12240779
Not him, but if that piece is not an opener then the pronoun is OK - just never open with a pronoun. It is a little jumpy like the other anon said, but I find no fault in that. I did find the references a little shallow - like the writer himself had not mastered them well enough to go any deeper with them.

>>12240896
She continued to lean over the sink, taking deep, ragged breaths. She could not depend on her legs to support her body weight, and put her weight on her forearms, which she now noticed were being dug into cruelly by the edge of the sink. When she no longer felt like she would vomit, she turned on the tap and rinsed out her mouth and tried to rinse off her face. When she washed her face, she looked at her hand and saw they were dripping with watery blood. Alarmed, she looked up and inspected her face in the reflection of the clock-face hanging above the sink, and saw she had been weeping blood. This did not faze her in the slightest, and she bent down again to finish rinsing her face. She felt like she had aged ten years in the time since she had seen whatever it was he had shown her.

“Your reaction was perfectly normal, there is nothing to be alarmed by.”
“What the fuck did you just show me” She is surprised at the harshness of her own voice. She even sounds like she has grown older.
“I showed you something you were not meant to see. Forbidden knowledge, I suppose.” The ghost of a smile accompanies these words, but she is not reassured.

“Why did you show me that”
“So you would take me seriously. This is a serious business we are about to embark on, and I cannot have you deluding yourself about what is really going on here.”
“Where is that thing, I want to set it on fire”
“It’s gone, I took care of it” To emphasize his point, he lifts his hand from the page, she cringes back involuntarily, but when she looks the entire page is blank.

He twirls his fingers in front of his breast as if he is rolling a quarter between his knuckles and states without preamble, “You smell like vomit and insanity, you need to bathe. I will need to observe you to ensure you do not injure yourself.”
“Alright, a shower sounds like a good idea right now”
“Lead on”

>>12237425
>Good place, just dirty enough to be cozy.

This made me chuckle out loud. Good job.

>>12240901
Five minutes later, she is standing, naked under the showerhead. The water, as hot as she could stand, is blasting her skin raw with nearly scalding water, but she does not care. She is surprised to find she cares about very little in the world any more. She feels peculiar sense of tilting, like she is on a rocking boat.

“It will pass, you know”
“What?”
“Not caring about anything. You will find many things to care about, in this and other worlds.”
“How did you know what I was thinking?”
“You were thinking quite loudly, I must give you some pointers as we travel on how to center yourself. The things that seek us out will listen for those outbursts”

She contemplates these nuggets of knowledge in silence. The water continues pour over her. She finds herself going through her daily shower routine, without any fuss from the fact there is a complete stranger watching her bathe. She has never known a man, never mind allowed one to observe her in so intimate a setting, but she finds she is perfectly calm and at ease, like taking novocaine at the dentist.

>Alright, that's it for now, I have to wake up at 5:00 for work, so I'm out for tonight. I'll see you all tomorrow

>>12240813
Rewrite it using all of the grammar rules for proper use of prepositions. A lot of people balk at this, but take a look at what it does to the flavor of the piece when you rewrite it. You will find that you have a lot more words from which to choose as you close your phrases.

>>12240883
>>12240889
The tension is adequately built, but there are hiccups in the spaces where it was obvious that you just wanted to break from the scene (ex: the boring stuff about the pen, drawing a penis)

Also, these lines
>He makes a dot on the page.
>He moves another three inches down the page
show a counter-productive effect on the pace. Wouldn't it give more movement to say "he MOVED" or "he MADE" or "he STOOD up"?

>>12237425
"Amazingly bad" is a line that describes itself. It sounds like the set up of a good story but "amazingly bad" is terrible dude.
Protip:
Avoid words ending with "ly"

Don't use words like "bad" when describing something that tastes rotten or bitter or whatever, describe it more vividly instead, same goes for example saying he/she/it "looked good" when describing someone or something that is particularly beautiful. "Beautiful" is sort of a non-description copout too but you know what i mean.

Sounds like the set up for a dostoyevsky esque story otherwise OP, would def wanna keep reading, but the mistakes i pointed out are like essential rules that have been echoed a million times by great authors

>>12240919
I do it intentionally to give it a rude brevity. Am I just a dope? Is it awkward to read?

In a very well-known big modern city with a vast and uneven scenery, with an unfathomable amount of streets, apartments and windows, populated by over two million people; in one of its many apartment buildings; anguish was oppressing the soul of a man, a man who was looking down to the street below, standing by the window of his closed french balcony on the fifth storey. Gareth was his name. His pained face, looking like a ghost in the window with his pale face and eyes as dark as pitch, was spotted by a number of the people outside, but the only one who really paid any real attention on him was a man who lived in the same building who had just returned from an errand. When Gareth noticed the man, who was already looking up at him, the two men awkwardly waved to each other and kept stable eye contact for a short time until the other man nodded and turned his attention to his car.

The fellow tenant was a “D, Noah”, Gareth knew, from seeing the man enter the door marked with that name on it on more than three occasions. Gareth followed Noah’s movements: locking the car door and making for the building, then returning to the car, unlocking it again and taking out a big package and finally heading for the building once more. Gareth slumped down on nearby a chair, stared at the floor and sighed.

His job had completely stopped being stimulating and the company was in the midst of taking a turn for the worse. He wanted out, but had plenty of other personal problems that concerned him more, and the knowledge that he shouldn’t be concerned more by those things dimmed his judgement and made him angry at what he should and shouldn’t take more seriously. This state had been steadily growing within him for a few days, he realized, and he decided to try to put it out of his mind by cleaning up his apartment. He hid his head in his hands, sighed a long sigh, fell down on the floor and crawled into his kitchen, up to the sink, underneath which, hidden by a door very similar to all the other cupboard doors, a trash bag filled to the brim was concealed. He pushed himself up, opened, tied the bag ears to a knot and headed out.

>>12240970
Part 2/2 of post


Having thrown down the bag into the dark cold mouth of the hatch and slapping his palms together as to note that his task had been appropriately dealt with, his ears picked up the sound of a man groaning, coming from the stairwell below. He looked over the beam and saw Noah P painstakingly lifting the big package step by step, balancing it between with his chin and his right thigh, holding it awkwardly with his hands. He groaned again, taking another step. Gareth leaned on the beam and called out “Keep it up!” and immediately got an red hot angry stare in return. The face was bright red and fuming with hate. Gareth rested his chin on his hand and kept looking at Noah, who was groaning, slowly making it up the stairs at a pathetic pace. Gareth was vexed at how rude his neighbor was, especially after having waved to each other a few minutes before. Noah suddenly stopped midway up the stairs.

He seemed frozen for a moment, before starting to tilt backwards. He panicked and started yelling “HELP! HELP! HELP HELP!”

Gareth launched himself along the corridor and down the staircase with the help of the beam and in the nick of time arrived at Noah just before he fell. Grabbing the box, Gareth realised instantly how heavy it was.

>>12240934
>I do it intentionally to give it a rude brevity.
So does everyone else.
>Is it awkward to read?
Probably only pedants such as myself will notice it and find fault - but it is likely that everyone would appreciate the piece better once it was rewritten. I tend to follow strict grammar rules as best as I am able during narration - then do what I please with dialogue. If you do not do so then the voice of the dialogue can get cluttered amongst the narration. Keeping the narrator on the straight and narrow path gives some contrast against roughshod characters. I might go with the inverse of this if my character were a stodgy old fart like myself.

>>12240908
I had a good time with this scene. Your dialogue lends itself to humor, especially the "harvested" part. The masturbation vision seemed out of left field. I enjoy the man's aloof, almost demigodly voice and mannerisms, which ramp up in sync with the development of the scene. Glad you ended on a kind of cliffhanger. I'm not sure how essential the female-body stuff (and/or visceral stuff as a whole) is to the piece at large, because it's not as interesting as the weird perceptual otherworldliness going on under the surface. More dialogue please. I want to see the whole story. Btw if you care to share, send it to my burner email

bobloblaw7673 @ gmail dot com

>>12240901
horrible dialogue, also the thing of the spooky otherworldly smug G-man type figure is overplayed to me, as is the silly concept of the lovecrafting horror (dude just looking at this will drive you insane). I would give you kudos for pivoting it from horror to sexiness, if it wasn't so vulgar...

maybe that's all personal taste, but you definitely do have to work on the dialogue

The dispersal of a shiver's scintillations
is a moment to reflect
inflections,
a moment

the rain's overspray under the eaves
drops
touching my skin
reflects
dissipation,
sibilant, dis-
similarity, yet —

Sitting outside —
of the MFA
boombox held high, this
gesture a mock sonority
stale, then soaked
dis-
persed
solute

>>12240973
Lots of sloppy language (number, not amount, of streets; misnaming Noah, or unconscionably giving two people almost the same names without calling attention to it; "had been appropriately dealt with," dangling modifiers etc.) Knowing someone by the name on their apartment alone is kind of funny though.

>>12241161
Yeah i saw when i posted the second part that i forgot to change it to Noah D and sighed, my bad. Gareth and Noah are similar? Agree that the appropristely dealt with line is bad and i will def take note of the number/amount thing, thank you

>>12241182
>>12241182

Oh nvm about the name thing

>>12241182
Not him, but I agree that much of your work was written too casually. Too many writers have taken this path. I found pic related to be a good value when found second-hand.

>>12241205
Thanks man

niggers tongue
m y

a
n
u
s

My anus is
tongued by

niggers

niggers
they
(lick) (taste) (touch with their tongues) (ride the tips of their tongues across the track of)
my anus

these tongues
many tongues
like the
descent of the
Holy Spirit

this anus
one anus

>>12241253
I e.e came

thanks to anyone who bothers to read all of this

the image was kinda big so i deleted it and resized it. again thanks to anyone who bothers to read this

"Brave Em"

Pea looked at the empty Victorian iron lamp that stood next to the lakeshore and against the sunset. Letting out a sigh, she released the lawn she had gathered up into her toes. Pea was a thoughtful, cheerful girl. A hot-blooded, brave, whole milk drinker with wispy hair and strong legs. Once, she had a cup of tea with a giant beetle in the woodpile. That’s the sort of girl Pea was.

Pea walked over to the shore and reflected in her cool surroundings. The wind teased her hair.

Then, from the far pathway she saw the figure of Em. Em was a blonde man with dense hair and solid chest. Pea gulped. She was not prepared for Em.

Hesitantly, Pea walked towards him across the lawn. They met in the middle and Em said in a hushed tone "I love you."

Pea didn’t acknowledge Em’s words. "Em, what do we need to be happy?"

They looked at each other with damp feelings. Somewhere is a memory of two grieving swans who sit at a piercing goodbye; where two serious uncles talk over New Order.

“Okay,” Pea regarded Em's loose hair and worn loafers. "You’re Goldilocks."
“What?”
“Nothing. Take me inside already.”

Then Pea came inside for a nice drink of whole milk.

Mr Bevis was a simple man,
who blew his game.
Our tenor of wife and wilt
taught not,
but cherished the briefcase:
"O her loins so full of veal!
The rind tussles my middle finger!
No cuckold would spare the guilt
spilt so cloudishly in her
sphincter!"
We,
smug aged,
deny,
slam our heads back and roar,
as Mr Bevis shall tonight -
Handling THAT Bedroom door.


Too crude? Clever clever? Do the rhythms come clear?

>>12237425
Legit good nice

>>12240624
>>12240752

Cool, that means I got it right.

>>12241561
This is a joke, right?

Man, this first "next to and against" doesn't work, gathering into your toes is impossible, I have no idea if she ate the beetle or chilled with it. Were the surroundings reflected or was she reflecting? Your comma usage makes it sound like she teleports to the pathway. Damp feelings! Sit a piercing goodbye! Oh God.

Morning wrung the ghoul lipped dawn into a boasting daylight. Prim sunbeams tossed frisbees to Paul’s head still damp with sleep. Knocked awake he lay without a jerk; a taut corn stalk. Scents of wilted incense rested on sweat and red meat. Marvin had not been home in sixteen days, the fact announced itself as a shoe to a roach, Paul inhaled, expectantly. And deeply, but upon release, it had just been a breath.

>>12241343
why do you insist on a pic instead of text. it's annoying

>>12242213
purple prose

>>12242403

I suspected this, how do you reduce it?

>>12242509
Use adjectives to create emphasis but not whenever you can.

>>12242515

Thank you, that makes sense. I'm often indulgent with adjective use because it's fun but I see what you mean.

"He who is changed by the sea of worlds draws on and changes its waters to create and destroy as he sees fit, his own mind a riverbed, a conduit, a shape for the mindless force to adopt."

"The world beyond thought manifests at first as primal, unrefined outbursts of energy, formless in nature and singular in purpose. As the adept advances and gains confidence, makes the unworldly light his own, his strength will take on a more concrete form, become a reflection of how it is used."

"A protective field of force might become a crystalline wall, or a conjured suit of armour. Much to the opposite, a destructive outburst may take on the shape of a ravenous flock of ethereal ravens, a hurtling spear, a beam of light."

- An excerpt from The Kraken and the Serpent, vol. 1

>>12242202
It is supposed to be kind of fun and whimsical, but I don't agree with your critique in full. I think you could be a better reader and give me more leeway.

Why doesn't next to and against work? Why couldn't I be standing against a wall next to my mother?

Have you never gathered the lawn into your toes? Go try it, I promise it'll be fun.

How about reflected in the lakeshore? Use your imagination a bit. Maybe she is reflected in some other ways too?

I don't see the problem with not detailing their walk to the middle of the lawn. That wasn't interesting to me. I've seen much more happen from much less.

Have you ever listened to New Order? They're deadly dramatic about the mundane.

>>12240617
I think I you would read it to the end you would be pleaseantly surprised

He sat down and reached to the book case. Without looking, he grabbed a book at random. Siddhartha. Next to it, Nabokov fell and filled in the small hole.

Is this cheesy? Do you hate it /lit/?

>>12237957
This is uncomfortable and makes me dislike the concept of orgasm. I do not see any redeeming positive concepts in it, and it seems poetically edgy.

>>12239651
Yeah it doesn't mean anything, but cut out half the words, and it could be a nice ride.

>Forged from infinite empty thought. Dreams in between. Gazing in irridescent waters. Depths, despair, and hope. Brave encompassed by the abyss. They awaken unchanged. Burned by ignorance. Empty.

>>12243346
Expand the Nabokov sentence (a volume of, a work by, or anything along those lines)
Reached into might work better, as might condensing the first two sentences.
At random might pose some problems with careful readers but not enough to change it/remove it.

It's good, but needs polish. If you've not written the rest, write the rest before editing. Read aloud and pause where you punctuate to see if you're actually getting the cadence you want.

>>12243373
>it doesn't mean anything

Not without context it doesn't, and that's the point. The intention is for it to be nonsensical mysticism to anyone who doesn't have the appropriate knowledge, which it seems I've achieved successfully.

>>12243346
I unironically love it anon, just don't do anymore of that stuff, referencing and name dropping until atleast two chapters later. Not cheesy at all, i'd say it displays in the character's mind a love of books that he sees it as "Nabokov" when an unspecified nabby book falls over. Dont change it, dont overdo it and don't do too much more of it, books that for example constantly namedrop bands and shit are lame as fuck

>>12237957
Last three lines should go. The last two add nothing, but you could argue for the third last if you want.
Put a space between aflame and to, not a line break, if that isn't a typo.

>>12241343

>>12241561 is me. If you hate my writing then ignore my feedback haha.

In the beginning, I felt like the narrator spoke with too much ambiguity about something that is being explained for the first time. We are never given a job title or much of a way to think about what this person does as a job. Maybe I'm a moron and should've understood all this better.

"...and the more expressions I saw flicker with irritation." Maybe move "with irritation" to the beginning of this phrase, so it's "...and with irritation, the more expressions I saw flicker."

At the end of this, I am left curious and wishing it is a little more clear what is going on. I enjoyed most of the writing, but I found the narrator unrelatable/unlikable when he spoke in so many absolutes.

Thank you for sharing, I hope to see more from you!

>>12242509
>>12242213
You reduce it by thinking.

>wrung ... boasting daylight
Have you ever wrung something out? Did the product look like daylight, or more like a grim dawn? You have the process backwards here. You could wring a ghoul lipped dawn from the night, like you can wring dark water from jeans, but wringing daylight out of something sounds like you are torturing a child's plush toy of the sun. Wringing it into daylight is even more strange because if you go wring out a T-shirt now, I want you to see if that wrinkled and damp thing, even flattened out after wringing, looks boastful or like daylight at all.

>Prim sunbeams tossed frisbees to Paul's head
So sunbeams remind you of hackysack playing jocks throwing things at you in preppy uniforms? It can't even be a hangover, though one would suspect it was, because they're tossing them to you not throwing them at you. It's bizarre for something prim.

I get what you're trying to do with these sentences but they have the normal processes of these words' meanings reverse. Which means you don't know what the words mean well enough to use them. Think of what you mean to say and say that, rather than thinking of what words you want to use. Did the sunlight really look like it had been wrung? No? Then don't tell the reader it did.

>>12243457
>reverse
Reversed

>>12241141
Okay lines:
>the rain's overspray under the eaves
>drops
This is better if you move to a new line for
>under the eaves


>gesture a mock sonority
>stale, then soaked
>dis-
>persed
>solute


Ditch the rest and work on and around those.

>>12241343
Pick a tense and stick with it. If you don't want to do it over the whole piece, at least do it within sentences.

>>12240701
End it at all his own. The second half is too different to actually be a contrast and just seems like some amateur rapper is trying to grief you. The first half is far stronger and you're leaving yourself down

>>12240651
>>12240813
i think you could throw in more explanation for the reader. the dialogue in the beginning is a bit clunky.
>Its not and it isn't meant to be.
who says this? what time period does this take place in where people say behoove? but then you say "the fuck-you" later, so it seems like this is a diary written by a guy from the 21st century. it's confusing to read.
>>12240970
this isn't awful but also not very interesting to read. is this the opening of a gay porn scene?
>>12241561
i think if you read your writing out loud before editing, it will help eliminate the awkward sentences. another poster pointed it out but there's some word usage which doesn't make sense.

>>12241561
This will only sell to oblivious upper middle class chicks named Pea or other Gwenyth Paltrow school of children's names. If you're looking to tap that market, contact one of those presses that does deckled edges and other extra cost and profit margins shit.
If you thought this was actually a story of brave girls/women or independent ones, no. It's a story of basic bitches with no need for a higher purpose who think they're great. Paris Hilton is potentially more brave and less likely to describe the Hamptons to you.

>>12243564
Rework the ladle and buoyancy lines. The last line needs to be better too. Other than that the first one is very workable.
The second one is maudlin crap, and you're expecting the reader to feel the same thing from hallmark tier lines. It feels like a cheap emotional pull and that's definitely not how you want to convey those emotions. Unless you're selling it to hallmark and really don't know any babies.

>>12243586
should i switch buoancy and steam lines? should i delete final "but"
---------------
The child is Christ, if that wasn't clear

>>12243565
Hahahahaha thanks for the laugh. It's not really a story yet! It's a small image I wrote in a funny style. I just wanted to know what people thought of it.

Also, Em is a man.

>>12243564
>MOMMA LOOK I PRESSED SPACE BAR A BUNCHA TIMES!

>>12243638
>the absolute STATE of /lit/s comprehension of poetry

>>12243648
Holy fuck balls this retard actually replied out of outbutthurt ahahha Jesus on a fuckstick nobody cares about your experimental poetic free verse garbage you dysfunctional toilet brain half-ape. Get the fuck away from me and never reply again you smelly nigger fuccboi idiot.

>>12243614
No the steam line is perfect where it is. The ladle and buoyancy jobs need work because ladles rarely push down (especially by themselves and without it being the ladle, it seems to extrapolate to all, when they are more known for lifting) and the buoyancy pulls them up line after it makes it more confusing because a buoyant thing is more likely to push up, and a ladle is more likely to pull up. It needs more than just deleting the but in the last line, as it was too spicy falls flat on its own too. Jiggle around those lines a bit to get a clearer image and a stronger end.

The hallmark one does sound Christian but that just makes it being hallmark even worse. At least if it were a human child, being over sentimental might be excused by your relationship. But being over sentimental about God makes it seem like it's from the women's quilting prayer and poetry group at the Church. You don't want to give God old lady verse.

Poetry is mental masturbation, change my mind.

Pro tip: You can't.

>>12243629
I think it's leaning towards you being female like your female, anon. Sell it to that high end press. (Or more get your dad to pay them)

I'm trying to write a character with a superiority complex and very little personal accountability. He gets roped into illegal arms dealing and accidentally kills someone. This bit is him reflecting on the events of the story:

Perhaps I should view this entire experience as a simple waste of time. A relatively small drop of nonsense in my overall clean and admirable life. I certainly didn’t intend for things to go the way they did. I was really an innocent player in the whole ordeal. Like a meek college freshman unwittingly strung into a violent drug addiction by some predatory individuals. How can a victim be blamed? This backwards world only cares for the cleverly constructed media deities. These evening-news angels who purportedly lived a stain-free life. The heartfelt interviews will show that no person connected to the “victim” could identify a single fault in them. “They didn’t do anything wrong, yet some horrible snake stole their life” is what the imperfectly informed masses will recite. And this apocryphal tale is all that is needed for another victim, like me, to have his life dismantled. To be unjustly thrown into the same pile as the true criminals and degenerates.

>>12243673
Man! What if he isn't making poetry to be famous, but instead he wants to express himself? I don't think anything you've said to him has been constructive, so why say anything at all?

>>12243692
I am a man.

>>12243714
You need a female pseudonym to sell that.

>>12243724
Thank you for all the help.

>>12243689
Curved mammaries of love
smash into my face
pale aroma of skin
pheremones like flower
her bowsette horns fall off
but more has just begun

piece i wrote just now. salvage or scrap?

>>12240883
this thing starts off good. first two posts are good, falls apart almost immediately after. " She felt blood pounding in her ears, and her vision narrowed, but it was moving, impossible to look away from, but equally impossible to bring into focus. " etc is just lovercraftian cliches. " this was worse than any period cramps she had ever had,"???

the whole thing is a bit SCP cognitohazardy, and is only held up because the dialogue in posts 1 and 2. also their characters dynamic is quite effectively expressed there.

>>12243697
a lot of this is fluff. eg " I was really an innocent player in the whole ordeal." can be deleted. also lots of small words eg "A meek freshman strung into violence and addiction by predatory criminals" is better. "backwards world" is a bit We Lie in a Society. try something like the following, see if it works better or not. if so, apply to rest of the work

>Maybe this whole ordeal has just been waste of time. A small drop of nonsense in an otherwise clean and admirable life. I was just a meek freshman - a child, really - strung into a violence and addiction by predatory criminals. Of course, everyone else only cares about evening-news angels who lived a stain-free life; about the heartfelt interviews with the neighbours and family. “They didn’t do anything wrong, yet some monster stole their life,” they whimper. And this tale is all that is needed for the real victims, like me, to have his life dismantled. To be unjustly thrown into the same pile as the true criminals and degenerates.

>>12243871
I also have to agree with the complaint another anon had about New Order. Right now it's not clearly a satire of upper middle class girls for such an oblivious reference. You're either saying the uncles have done a shitload of xtc in the 1990s and the MCs haven't the awareness to pick up on it, thinking them to be serious like dying swans, or that you as an author think that New Order were sombre sober fellows during Madchester. It's good for satire but not for seriousness.

writing a girls' school story

>>12244002
Nobody else has said anything about New Order except for me, the author.

This isn't a story about girls. This is a story about two characters named Em and Pea. Em is a man, Pea is a girl. The story plainly says as much.

>>12243957
Thank you for your critique

>>12244031
This is nice because it has the most showing in all the pieces here. I like words as a film, something where I can see what is happening. The bit sounds a little pretentious or out of your voice, but I can easily overlook it.

>>12237425
reads inauthentically tbqh

>>12240701
enjoy some of the imagery quite a bit. maybe i'd cut or rework one of the dates near the end, seems to me to be an unnecessary redundancy (lines end in 1991, 2012, 2003)

>>12240701
>>12240765

i think the pronoun is more than appropriate. don't change it

>>12244076
oh which bit?

I walked to the pharmacy a bit down from the coffee shop. Maybe the fat hag was right, maybe I did need more sleep. A little bell jingled as I pushed the door open enough to slide in. I looked around. Rows of supplements made the place - general goods, this-and-thats, and pocket-sized products. There had to be sleep aids somewhere in this place. I walked up to the pharmacy counter to the face of someone who was obviously a fresh hire.

“Where can I find sleep aids?”

“They'll be over on isle six, sir.”

I nodded a thanks and meandered over a couple of isles. Slowly the odd sting of being called “sir” left me. There were so many options. Sleep is one thing, but how to get it was a whole market. Melatonin, SleepRite, SnoozeSupport (TM), and I couldn't tell which would best suit me. I figured any would do. Some box said “Xtra-Strength”; I took that one. “Now I'll start doing something with myself,” I spoke sarcastically to myself, “that bitch would be so proud.” I went up to pay for the pills.

Walking back out, it had begun to drizzle lightly and I was without an umbrella. The jacket was fine enough, with the pills in my pocket and not minding too-much a wet face. I hurried my paces back to the apartment. Down Main, left on Boulder, right on Closky, home again home again. Walking through the door and into the foyer, I was greeted by the weekly shouting match between the couple in 13C. Taking the downward stairs the air got mustier to the degree which I'd become accustomed. 2B's little mutt gave his expected three-barks-and-a-growl at the sign of my foot-shadows swaying across the underslit of the apartment door. And finally I was home, 6B, welcomed by that finicky lock and the door that creaks at every angle.

>>12244044
Sorry I thought you were responding to anon about New Order. They aren't really known for songs about the mundane. Well, maybe if you find statutory rape and ecstasy and death mundane. Uncles discussing it as though it were not linked at all with the E is for England scandal when the British government narrowly avoided letting New Order decide their theme song makes it seem like it'd be news to the MCs (or the author) that it was mostly pillheads at their gigs.

I'm using girls and women because she's not a woman, she's a stereotype. It could be a satire about Instagram girls, but a story about her as a character would require her to not be a copy of any random basic bitch off insta, as per my earlier comments. She a womyns, not actually a female character. Paris is a character who sometimes becomes a stereotype of herself, but Pea is basically every girl with steamed milk coffees books she's never read and comfy jumpers and burning man or harry potter on her Instagram. What you're writing is a demographic of women, rather than a specific one. And there are plenty of women who fill that stereotype: the problem is that you could change her name to Zoe and actual insta girls would sue you, as you could change it to about a hundred other names of popular insta stars and get the fans convinced it's a rip off of their "brand". The only ones who probably wouldn't sue for seeing similarities to the demographic they model are lactose intolerant. The vegan stars would sue you for claiming they drank milk if you renamed her after them, it's so close to basic bitch women in aspirational demographics.

Update of >>12242213


Morning wrung the ghoul lipped dawn into boasting daylight. Its firm beam was like a frisbee tossed to Paul’s head, still damp with sleep. Knocked awake he lay without a jerk; a taut corn stalk. Scents of wilted incense rested on sweat and red meat. Marvin had not been home in sixteen days, the fact announced itself as a shoe to a roach. Paul inhaled, expectantly. And deeply, but upon release, it had just been a breath. But that wouldn't bully him today, he was a stoic. He could run his course careless of fever, or ten rats gnawing his big toe. He was determined to believe this.

He would take his coffee black, and eat seaweed in the park. His lip would not tremor at the sound of barking, he would not under cook beef or eat it raw, he would not pity himself.

>>12243457

I don't agree with what you said about wrung but I did with prim and changed it here >>12244283
if you care to see. Thank you though.

>>12244126
The whole thing I mean.

>>12244283
Second sentence is better but the first sentence is awful. How do you knock something without it jerking at all?

>>12244188
Are you sure you aren't thinking about Joy Division? New Order's early material is dark, but later on they're melodramatic to the point of comedy. Listen to Bernard's feeling on the issue: https://youtu.be/PAviBlIt4D0?t=16

Another example is Your Silent Face:
>We asked you what you'd seen
>You said you didn't care

>You've caught me at a bad time
>So, why don't you piss off?

These lyrics, coupled with the feeling of the music, gives a strong feeling of melodrama.

Much of their songs aren't about much of anything special, instead, they commonly wrote on the extraordinary emotions of normal things. Their songs are explicit in feeling and vague in actual events.
I have no idea how you know so much about Pea. I don't even know as much as you do about this character. What is so wrong with feeling emotional and being in the yard?

>>12237757
>>12237981
>>12239240
>>12240660
>>12240734
>>12240804
>>12240906
>>12240930
>>12241768
>>12244085

I posted this before I took a little writing break, and am pleased to see it's took some notice.
I'm still relatively new, so please don't be afraid to tear me apart with this

I'm pleased with the (mostly) positive reception.

>>12244031
I love this.

One thing: palpable in what way? It seems like there actually is stillness. It's not that it isn't "almost there," as the word palpable implies.

>>12243957
requesting a (you)

>>12244300
hmm

>>12244326
so still you can almost touch and feel it

>>12243957
i like they're looking at cottages in gloucestershire

>>12243957
I vomited.

>>12244310
Joy Division used have more melodrama, which is why they named themselves after the Nazis and war-torn Europe. A lot of the comedy goes out of their work as do personal stories after Joy Division, and if anything they get more likely to tackle social issues after Curtis dies. I mean, Kraft's 2005 and explicitly about why mundane melodrama is bad for you. Age of Consent might be 83, but Vicious Streak revisits much of the same themes nearly 30 years later.
There's little chance of you finding a New Order fan who was alive at the height of their fame who does not link them with the ecstasy craze of the era. If the uncles are a generation above, they probably were there for drugs. It's like dropping in uncles from the 60s who listen to The Grateful Dead and expecting nobody to think acid and weed freaks.

I'm saying there isn't much to know about her besides she's a copy of thousands of insta captions with a similar theme
> empty Victorian iron lamp that stood next to the lakeshore and against the sunset.
Insta post
>sigh
Insta post
>lawn she had gathered up into her toes.
Insta post
>thoughtful, cheerful girl.
Insta post
>hot-blooded, brave, whole milk drinker with wispy hair and strong legs
ZOmg insta post and profile blurb +10 Hermione points
>cup of tea with a giant beetle in the woodpile.
Insta post #tea #vegan #nature
> That’s the sort of girl Pea was.
That's the sort of thing every basic bitch uses for social media. Short of declaring her to be in Hufflepuff that is.

What you're choosing to define her is how women with no sense of self and far too much disposable income "define" themselves through social media. Which leads to them all having the same jumper, same fad diets, same cute pictures of nature and how they're totally not the kind of girl who would tag that #ew #beetle unlike all those other girls (who then say the same thing)

Her being a stereotype is a strength if you push it to satire, as is the obliviousness to New Order 's core demographic. But if you want to write a female character who is not as empty and fungible as one vapid insta user is with another, you need to stop using the stereotype. The kind of girl that is Pea is obvious because there's thousands of them you could drop in in her place and they would all gulp and sigh and drink tea in the forest and take pictures of all the scenes you describe. But they aren't developed characters, they're a demographic of middle class women who replace developing their own sense of self and character with insta posts of shit.

It's not that there's anything wrong with describing that, but doing it without realising how vapid and social media moulded she comes across is going to make it unintentional satire. You either need to stop describing her character in insta style and making her an empty stereotype, or accept she's an insta stereotype who probably knows her Hogwarts house.

>>12244478
Krafty*

>>12244478
I greatly appreciate all your analysis and interpretation, so thank you! My mind is not exactly on social media, but I did imagine her as a comically emotional girl. Keep in mind that there are different ways to interpret the images you are analyzing.

>empty Victorian iron lamp that stood next to the lakeshore and against the sunset.
Old wealth, just a setting really.

>sigh
I can see how this would fit the instagram theme. Alternately, people sigh in lots of contexts.

>lawn she had gathered up into her toes.
I think this is a pretty childlike thing to do. To have your mind on the grass, to almost be distracting yourself with sensation. Releasing it might symbolize letting go of some tension.

>thoughtful, cheerful girl.
I probably could've picked better words here or omitted them entirely.

>hot-blooded, brave, whole milk drinker with wispy hair and strong legs
I don't really see a lot of girls talking about whole milk. Wispy hair is kind of the opposite of what most of them go for.

>cup of tea with a giant beetle in the woodpile.
Or she is exceptionally strange, lonely? Maybe an only child, or the youngest? Or actually can talk to beetles? Who the hell knows, there isn't enough detail.

> That’s the sort of girl Pea was.
I do have to agree with you about this one. It's kind of a funny, frivolous phrase.

>>12244478
Also, isn't it possible the two uncles have actually become uncles, aged and calmed down from their ecstasy consumption? Could they not be serious after all their tomfoolery?

>>12244439
>>12244448
thanks

>>12244434
But my issue is: are you actually touching and feeling it while also almost touching and feeling it?

>>12244478
I don't think Joy Division was melodrama, I think their LPs were genuine and grave. They were actually gothic and sublime.

>>12244615
well you can't touch and feel stillness really can you

>>12244581
>Old wealth, just a setting really
You realise this is why there are so many girls who can live off insta? The demo is wealthy that does this, because if they needed to work, they might build a character that isn't based on tea and sweaters and pictures of mist.
>Child-like
It's what the insta girls are going for too when they do the grass and toe curling pictures. Foot fetish models don't make as many of those pictures as upper middle class girls will.
>whole milk
A lot of hipster Instagram will read this as whole organic maybe even unpasteurised farmers market bought milk. You've already given them the feet and lamppost pictures they love and you're about to give them the picture of the time they stayed in a cabin/at an electricity free resort/WOOFing (going to help an organic farmer a few hours a day for room and board which is usually vegan hipster stuff)
>Exceptionally strange, lonely
In 1980, she would be. Now she's on Instagram and probably willing to insist her bf move the beetle to keep it in shot, and just as exceptional and lonely as the other millions of users.

You can sell it back to that demographic, but you'll need a female name and might get called the next Rupi if it takes off, because they like those things a lot and vocally and with a lot of money to spend on it. But avoiding the stereotype that exists while keeping these things won't work. People won't forget the stereotype and it's not really an appealing one outside the women who post these things.
>>12244622
Curtis loved melodrama and their lives were more melodramatic at the time. There is still a darkness to them, but I can't imagine they'd have a song about turning off your tv with Curtis alive.
>>12244586
They could, but the info you've given makes the main thing we know about them
>Probably did drugs in the 80s-90s
Sure there were straight edge punks and people who couldn't do drugs back then, but you're loading them towards being standard New Order fans. Most of them have aged out of drugs (or died) but it's another beware of your unintentional references thing.

>>12244657
Depends on what you think stillness really is.

The Harlot stood low over Manhattan.

It was raining. The moon fell on the street, but not too hard. If you looked hard enough, you would’ve seen a few suits and ties turning from the sidestreets. If you’d have walked any further, you may have found yourself in a little brick building.
Or so it was for me.

It was out of habit.
“Come in, sweetheart.”
I folded my coat and threw it on the coat rack. The room smelled of perfume. In the corner, a lamplight cast a few shadows against the walls. I couldn’t tell if I was cold or if the room was. She handed me a cigarette and I lit it at the door. I saw my muddled reflection looking out her front door glass window. I could tell I’d been drinking too much. My eyes sagged following the rain.

>>12244581
Also, in case you doubt that Instagram is like that
https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/feetingrass/
Complete with Harry Potter in the tag pic. That's one tag ( the fetish fags fuck up the most popular on all foot tags so the top ones are always labeled as fetish since they search the two tags) but you can see many more below those and there's a lot more tags around just that one image.

>>12244031

>>12243934
I hate the term "fall off". I want to see something more specific - some how and why the horns have detached and are falling. Your snippet leaves me wanting too much to take any interest in what little is present.

tried a new style. does it read like shit?

<That you choose to be, under your own conditions, living as an e-emergent businessperson, with your own pressure sets, areas of concern/improvement, that you choose to be a mobile lung, skulking at organized parties and sampling coworkers’ breakfast crüllers, in a walking, semiconscious horror that your truest weaknesses might show/be discovered, that you choose to wake in the morning, preparing slices toast and brushing your teeth so naïvely, afterward gargling a saline solution and practicing meditative yogas nearly an hour of your day, an hour that could have been spent on the tangibles, like studying policy or networking, getting out your name, showing your face in the right places, self-promoting on socials, and that you choose to lay and die only tells them that you’re ready for the buzzards to come and undress you, to come and relieve you of the very final scratch of meat that was sticking on your bones, that they are allowed, in their own way, to unburden and convenience you, maybe for their vision of the afterlife.

>>12237425
>>12237981
Echoing this guy, the almost euphemistic ‘especially immodest’ does jar with how satisfyingly blunt the rest of the description is. My question would be why the narrator feels the need to skirt around the women rather than deal with them rather plainly as with the rest of the scene - I get it’s comic understatement but it could probably do with changing or being moved to a place where that comic/deliberately roundabout tone is eased into a bit more. (Nitpicky because the rest of the passage shows you can write quite readably).

>>12245008
Master the use of the em dash to separate a series from the next clause to increase flow and intelligibility.

>>12245062
I did not assume that he was not going to circle back to them, which I believe would nullify this complaint. Sometimes, viewing only a snippet hamstrings us from solid critique. If there were to be no follow-up then I would agree with you (but I see no need for the introductions to all be linear).

>>12243638
>>12243564
To be fair, the spacing does seem kinda impulsive and not super meaningful. You could get rid of it and have roughly the same effect I think

>>12237957
reads like off milk

>>12239581
simile doesn’t even make sense

>>12245008
I like it. Somewhere between BEE and Palahniuk, so yes shit, but competent and marketable shut.

>>12242104
Cringe

>>12245202
k

>>12245202
Unironically cringing is the most cringeworthy response on any of the chans.

>>12243564
Number 2 is beautiful and I really liked it, I liked number 1 too to be honest, the others are just cynical bastards

>>12245206
>>12245215
You replied twice?! You must be really fucking retarded!

>>12245226

>>12245226

>>12241110
Alright, dialogue needs work, but the smug g-man and Lovecraftian horror stays.

>>12245237
>>12245241
Okay, I know I said ‘cringe’ before, but now, genuinely, CRINGE (and YIKES)!

>>12245269
>over uses commas
>cannot even into prepositions
>comes to critique thread to cringepost

C. Darwin

If C. saw Providence
contrive to doom a trait
that wouldn't do,
then how'd Improvidence survive
When no one knew what Noah knew?

>>12245284
>thinks ‘overuses’ is two words
>can’t even say ‘can’t even use prepositions correctly’ correctly
>gets offended when people cringe at his cringiness

Take the L nigga

>>12245707
>I cannot even into chanese

>>12237425
>punctuation errors in the first two lines
>choppy sentence flow

/lit/ has no fucking "standers"

>>12245953
What are these errors then?
How could he improve?

You’re not doing him any better than anyone else

The first day she was certain
was her last
O the poor gal made her brain
a bullet mast
Maybe the saints could've offered a sin,
or two -
maybe she mightn've made pledge to
flush hers blue?

>>12245992
Not him, but "dirty dark" needs a comma unless something is "dirty dark", which to my knowledge is not a condition that exists. Also (condensing):
>the bar flashed a neon sign
This is pretty shitty. If this is an opener then he can take some time with it to bring it to life - which it needs if he is going to explore well covered ground.

>>12237423
This is the second time I've written poetry and I don't read many poems so feel free to just fuck me here.

She shimmers iridescent
From scarlet to amethyst
To anger and romance
And back again
Whenever I look upon her

Tricks of light
Show me a lover and a monster
Taking the form of one or the other
The moment she appears

Perhaps once she looked at me
And thought the same

But now she has dulled herself to me
Her hair a matte red
Her jewelry simple stone
And the light only cast shadows upon her

The sparkle I see in her eyes
Twinkles out when she lays them upon me
Turning the color of apathy
And disdain

If only she would hate me now
And say it aloud so I could know
So I might end these tricks of sight
And know for certain that her shimmer
Is lost to me and me alone

>>12246121
I have one of these critters in the next room so I lack the objectivity for a proper critique. Good luck.

>>12246146
Yeah me too man

>>12246121
Anyways, though I give you no critique, I am saving this one for later so - title, please.

>>12246176
Iridescent

At the edge of the camp, young Jed remained wide awake. Still, he thumbed his rosary. He scanned the sky as if counting the stars with it. He shook in the cold, but it did not bother him. His stomach was empty but still he felt sure. His lips moved in the patterns of prayers, quietly, so as to not wake his older brother, or Pig, lying corpselike by him. He searched among the lights of the sky one by one and one by one again as if waiting for a message to be revealed. The wind howled and the stars twinkled. He scanned the sky, always praying, until his eyelids became heavy, and he continued.

I'm currently writing a letter for my gf for her Christmas present, but I'm not sure how to phrase this particular sentence.

It currently reads "As our relationship grows, fertilized with equal parts time, love, and energy, I hope this living capsule might document our time together, from this Christmas to prayerfully many more in the future."

What I'm having most trouble with is how to really demonstrate the dedication necessary in a relationship. Any other points to critique are welcome as well cause I do feel the sentence could definitely be broken up if it makes the structure a bit more manageable.

>>12246240
Are you a fucking alien?
You sound like a fucking alien

>>12246211
Would read this story.
t. desertfag

>>12246252
What's "alien" about it?

>>12246240
This text is low mass - a classic case of telling instead of showing. Restart from scratch.

The Drunken Driver Has the Right Of Way

The loudest have the final say,
The wanton win, the rash hold sway,
The realist's rules of order say
The drunken driver has the right of way.

The Kubla Khan can butt in line;
The biggest brute can take what's mine;
When heavyweights break wind, that's fine;
No matter what a judge might say
The drunken driver has the right of way.

The guiltiest feel free of guilt;
Who care not bloom; who worry, wilt;
Plans laid better are rarely built
For forethought seldom rules the day;
The drunken driver has the right of way.

The most attentive and unfailing
Attentiveness if unavailing
Wheresoever fools are flailing;
Wisdom there is held at bay;
The drunken driver has the right of way.

De jure is de facto's slave;
The most foolhardy beat the brave;
Brass routs restraint; low lies high's grave;
When conscience leads you, it's astray;
The drunken driver has the right of way.

It's only the naivest who'll
Deny this, that the reckless rule;
When facing an oncoming fool,
The practiced and sagacious say
Watch out - one side - look sharp - gang way.

However much you plan and pray,
Alas, alack, tant pis, oy vey,
Now - heretofore - til Judgment Day,
The drunken driver has the right of way.

>>12246343
As I read, I kept hoping that I would see some of this:
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._O%27Brien_(bishop)
in there. Alas, I was disappointed at the lack of presence of a drunk driving, hit and run manslaughterer, pedophile harboring bishop.

>>12246343
pumping bladee and this just flew right in 10/10 surreal as fuck

“… worshipping God… the highest of us… being compared with the highest of them all… showing that the highest is indeed highest… simply showing him to me… I should believe my eyes… they tell what you all tell… you’s keep your statements all to yourselves… all your potential statements… all the claims you would make… having the trust I give to you… me mentally projecting at you… making you into this thing, in my head… instead of all of the things… this is all of that, combined into less… without something else… it’s something else… and this is different.”
https://christianjaroschdialogues.com/page/1/

Is there a problem in using the word "nigger" in writing?

>>12247481
Someone post it pls. Otherwise I'll try and find it

>>12247481
Niggeranon, is it really you?

We put red jam in the glass. Smashed on the rocks below. Jerime said never to talk about it again. Permitted my Aunt never asked, I swore never to speak on this topic. My aunt makes me tell her everything. She says any good Jewish boy could tell their aunt anything. If I wanted to stay a good Jewish boy I had to tell her. If I wanted my freedom to be secure I had to keep my mouth shut. Either stay a Jewish boy and regret it, or stray from the good path and regret it, too. I decided the best way to maintain the path and myself was to do neither. I told my Aunt there was a jar with something red in it, that it was smashed on the rocks. The Eisenberg brothers were up there with me on the rock face. I even said I could face consequences if she knew. She knew that something was up. I had to atleast reveal one card on the blackjack table. She looked at me with elephant eyes, and right then I was about to open the dam and let it all out, but the oven dinged. Matzah was ready! Jerime! Solomon! David! Downstairs! Matzah! Ah yes the music played and we danced and ate Matzah. The livelihood was common for a Sabbath day. Around and around we danced while we sang the Sabbath Song. We sent a prayer for Israel, and curse upon her enemies. We brought the dead gerbil little Anneke left under a blanket and burned it as a sacrifice to Yahweh. The lungs of Israel on the Sabbath breathed in the fumes of Anneke's PetCo Gerbil, and the Eisenberg twins motioned at me to keep my lips sealed across the bonfire. I made eyes with my aunt and she smiled the way you do at any good Jewish boy who was as good as I. And I realized sadly, then, there was no freedom in all this lying.

>>12237425
Frankly, it's vague. You're describing things metaphorically, but the metaphor doesn't actually inform anything about the objects or people; instead, you are using the place of description to give emotional conclusions. If you're doing your job right, the reader should walk away with these emotions on their own. If you still want to keep in lines like "portion of liquid oblivion," substantiate it with more description so the reader can see what you mean, and nor just take your word for it. Also, this passage is very passive. I'm not as against that as you'll find in style books or online resources, but it makes for poor introduction "bartender named chuck" really distances us from this person. Essentially, what I feel from all this is not the bar. My only impression is of you own feelings of despair that you are trying to transform into acclaim.

>>12247481

3rd update of this story, made lots of edits:


Morning wrung the dawn to boastful day without restraint. Its firm beam was like a frisbee at Paul’s head, still damp with sleep. Knocked awake he lay without a jerk; a taut corn stalk. Scents of wilted incense rested on sweat and red meat. Marvin had not been home in sixteen days, the fact announced itself as a shoe to a roach. Paul inhaled, expectantly. And deeply, but come release, it had just been a breath. No difference felt, but that wouldn't bully him today, he was a stoic. He could run his course careless of fever, or ten rats gnawing his big toe. He was fixed to this idea lately, he would become a calloused man. He would take his coffee black, and eat seaweed in the park. His lip wouldn't quake at the sound of barking, he wouldn't eat beef raw (or undercooked), he would not pity himself.

The day was set with strict intent, first for diligent work at “smile cafe”, later, to call mom. Marvin was probably dead. And a man to his work must be as a spider to webbing, necessary and mechanic. Without protest, especially not over a runaway. Rejecting bed he let this stubbornness pilot his mood. He fell into a large wool sweater, pink scarf and took a half-jam bagel. Leaving the apartment felt like sevearance from a womb.

Autumn is a brittle tent for lost drafts to ease under, and Paul was floated on like a dead louse. The full wool seemed to pose as slow rolling fog along his walk, and his scarf a garland of uakari faces.

>>12247481
Three responses - and no answer. The absolute state of this board. "Nigger" is an artificially offensive word. There is external pressure for it to be found offensive, and there is a heightened state of awareness amongst many people to see it and to find fault with it. For this reason, I am careful with it's use - though it truly be no more offensive at its core than any other slur directed at any other group. I recommend that it only be used in works that you intend to be taken seriously if a true need arises for it. Consider your context and consider your audience. If you are legitimately using it as a literary tool then feel free to do with it as you please. If you are just being edgy with it then take your bullshit elsewhere. Pic somewhat related.
tldr: it is perfectly acceptable to use the word "nigger" - just don't be a nigger about it.

>>12248076

cringe

>>12248071
Use conjunctions properly. Periods are a near full stop. The reader expects to see a new subject after a period. If you are still working with the same subject then your sentence is likely not done. You may need to review the rules for punctuation to see what commas, em dashes, and semicolons can do for you in this regard. Review the rules for prepositions, also. I mentioned this previously with someone else. Especially in narration, I find it useful to maintain proper grammar as best as I am able. Feel free to do what you please with the dialogue. You may not be able to maintain the separate voices though, in which case you can write your shitty narration along with your dialogue - and then improve it in a subsequent draft. A lot of people fell for the "living language" meme. Though I agree with the underlying foundation of the premise of a language's need to be able to evolve in order to survive, our language is not improving from its current state of evolution. Humor me and rewrite your text following the grammar rules. It will likely be work for you and you will likely see your descriptions going a different direction. Many opportunities within the language will present themselves to you that may not do so if you hamstring yourself with degenerated vernacular.
>morning come
>Paul not morning person
>Paul have shitty day

>>12248071
So much passive voice, so many jerky overwrought sentences...why?

>>12247838
The Matzah transition is like the transition in Frank Ocean's Nights.

>>12244031
>>12244835
This is really good

>>12243957
it's a bit too CCRU-ish in the middle

Pale like the moon with yellow flatcakes rimmed round the girth of the ass. My engorged bulbus set her down on the sweat-dampened egg white sheets. All the colors of the rainbow shown on her flag.
“I can’t decide if I wanna fuck Billie Eilish or be her.”
“She’s sixteen. Imagine the reaction if I said something like that.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re a heterosexual man. You have no idea what it’s like to be attacked for your desires.”
“I want to fuck the kid from Stranger Things.”
“That’s not a leap. Plenty of straight guys go with tomboyish girls and don’t get mocked.”
“No. I want the fat kid. I can’t decide if I want to fuck a child or be one.”
I slipped the knob in her romper. A little dollop of grease from the slibs of her ass crack was absorbed by my dry paper cut dick so that the unbearable hole of my sexual desire’s engine was once again restarted and frustrated by the repetition of the previous days friction so that increasingly and remorselessly I groaned with rumbles of anticipation and spent hope. Love is just a polite thank you for pleasure.

>>12237490
Mahatma Gandhi before the hunger strike

>>12248083
You make a compelling argument. I will take your suggestions into account the next time this issue arises.

I was best friends with this girl in fourth grade. We were both the most gifted in our class, and always competed for every answer. She switched school in fifth grade but I never saw her until high school. We didn't talk at all in High School. We remained distant. She committed suicide in Sophomore year. I didn't think about it a lot until recently. I watched My Brilliant friend on HBO and it all just came back to me. This poem is an ode to her.
We know now,
that when we were children
our romance was only competition.
We thought then
when we were little adults,
that competitors didn’t need to talk.
But you are dead now,
and I know, now,
there is no competition,
and that I am shattered beyond writing to write.

>>12246424
this is good but I think your website is gay and doesn't make sense

Draped in a cover of darkness, the heavens pour forth an endless torrent of unnaturally dense rain, almost oily in texture. Howling winds whip the mountain's peaks and ravines alike, stripping away any warmth that might be found. On a forgotten peak, a pair of obelisks cut from black stone stand, runes unlike any found on this world carved into their surface.

A flash of orange light. A scar in the world reopens, almost octopus-like tendrils of energy arcing between the obelisks, burning new scars into their surfaces.

A dull thud.

The world settles down, somehow more real than before. The winds quiet, the rainwater runs as it should. She stands, greater than before. Changed. Her Great Work, her Magnum Opus, now a step closer to completion.

The blade is forged, the runes are in place, the rite is ready. She wraps her fingers around the exquisite weapon, it thrums in her grasp. Still nothing more than an object, yet already longing for the spark of infinity. Her heart races, though there is none within her chest. She feels a shortness of breath, though she breathes no longer. Primal instincts awake in the transhuman's mind, despite having been excised decades prior.

She raises the blade up to the heavens, and the twin obelisks awake once more. The belt upon her waist whirrs to life, sparks, crackles, and snaps open. Its crystalline core exposed, a gateway to the un-place beyond existence. Twisted tendrils of crystal sprout from the stone, many in number yet singular in purpose.

Two each snake their way down her thighs, penetrating the skin and plugging into her body. Four more make their way up her torso and connect into her back. Lines of baleful yellow glow across her naked body, betraying the false nature of her skin. Yet eight more stretch between her body and the obelisks, wrapping around the polished stone like a squid's tentacles.

The runes etched into their surface glow, set ablaze by the un-worldly power forced on them by the touch of their maker. She speaks, her synthesized voice ringing out with the strength of the great empty, shaking the very stone beneath her metal feet.

>>12248482
Do not issue the context for a poem. If something outside of the text of a poem needs to be included for the poem to be understood properly then the poem itself is incomplete. Rewrite the poem until you feel it ready to stand on its own, without introductions or disclaimers.

>>12248663
I like your prose. It is descriptive and vivid. Sometimes you can have too much of good thing. Especially in a story. I don't feel anything for your main subject. I don't even know who she is or what she wants, all I know is that she is doing some spooky ritual on a mountain, and would want to watch a marvel movie and drink dr. pepper if I wanted that not read a story.

>>12248690
I think the poem stands on its own without the context, out of all my poems they chose this one for the journal and they had no idea what the context was. I don't think the context is necessary but it adds to the work.

>>12248699
Spooky ritual on a mountain is pretty much the exact feel I am going for.

Also could not post the whole thing in one post, here is part 2/3.

>split


”Unbroken one, I stand alone, by eyes of flame and skin of stone,”

The very rainfall on her body begins to evaporate. Soon enough, its droplets are no more before they can even touch her. Arcs of orange jump across her skin, searing away the thin coating of false humanity, giving way to the true, matte-black, exoskeletal visage. A single tear of ichorous black crowns the corner of her eye, runs down her cheek, and drops to the ground.

”by the scar in my chest I call on the sea of worlds,”

A thick crystalline tendril sprouts from her back. Another, and another, one after the other six of these arm-thick tentacles grow forth from the blackness of her self, extending, enveloping the piece of destructive art held within her hand.

They lift it up, and she falls to all fours, her fingers digging into the nearly-molten stone. Power now rages across the surface of her body, superheating the air and ground all around her. Black tears pool beneath her, grains of equally black sand dropping to the superheated stone from her body. The very nanite cells that make up her immortal coil now burn out one by one, faced with the cosmic infinity contained within her, as if tiny circuit breakers.

Her lips no longer move, yet somehow she still speaks. The horns crowning her head crust over with vermilion gemstone, the outer casement of her body now visibly decayed, exposing the braided, radiant yellow conduits underneath.

>>12248715
>>12248699
>>12248663

And 3/3:

”by the primordial unreal which cripples the fools who would dare to claim divinity,”

A scar in the world reopens once more, the iridescent waters of the un-world inbetween glimmering past its precipice. The blade's core sings in resonant, metallic tones, loud enough to deafen any man. Hues of bright orange and deep red crystal emerge all around the rift, coloring and disfiguring the winter landscape.

She looks up, and her mind floods with half-remembered visions, esoteric untruths, alternate histories. She tries not to understand, for to understand the great empty is to be burned away by its radiance. The final words to claim dominion over an infinitesmally tiny fragment of the cosmic ocean. They must be spoken as the blade is thrust into the rift, or all her work had been for naught.

A hunched-over step forward. Another one, this time more upright. A reaching out of the hand, her pinkie and ring fingers nearly gone. One of her tendrils plugs into the weapon's casement. It hisses, and the handle slides out.

She grasps it, and plunges the half-crystalline edge into the rift.

”I now command forth into this material coil a shred of the Void.”

The rift closes abruptly. The monument dies, extinguished.

The blade's edge now rages with unworldly power, its metal sings with even the slightest movement. She sheathes it with a half-intact hand, its casement locking as if the cage of a savage beast.

Azoth Lives.

>>12248715
>>12248727
I was expecting tentacle porn but instead I get this nerd shit

What a load of crap. Brilliant.
It was his latest step towards his goal of discovering the blandest pulp fiction possible. He had skimmed over the pages from within his multilayered bubbles of irony, and was satisfied by its extreme mediocrity. A smile inched across his face, as far as his detachment would allow him to, as he saw the bullet points of his review forming in his head, a lamentation of the popularity that he was to bring to this book and the death of art that it would probably trigger. Swathes of puns streamed across his mind as he wondered what witty subtitle to give his article this time. His personal favourite was his review of a turgid, pseudo intellectual doorstopper whose popularity he sorely envied because it was not his turgid, pseudo intellectual doorstopper, which he simply described as: ‘Pinchin’ other people’s ideas’.

>>12248706
>it adds to the work.
My opinion is unimportant but, as long as you feel the need to equivocate, you are not done. It is your poem. You should feel no need to introduce it. It should speak for you. Any time you speak on its behalf, you are telling me what it is missing.

>>12248777
This reads like ready player one

>>12237423

The only thing I inherited from my grandmother was her drinking problem

It’s simple. Numbness to all that is good, and sensitivity to all that is bad. That is the sentence written on all of our tombstones, those born 1996 and onwards. Nothing I can do right now to solve this issue. I can post this online, but I won’t. I know the dopamine hits are a trap. I can’t feel them too good anyways. Go fuck yourself, dear reader, because I am going to be masturbating by the time you finish this line.
I have to shit. Shit. Shit. Shit on the toilet as i Write this. One hand on my laptop base, the other traveling across the keys to tap, at once and second, again and again, this mad rhythm of meaning and release. Please let the sun rise so I can feel normal again, so I know what to do with my time, because this is the best idea I have at hand (or on-hand, which is it?)

>>12237423
I've posted a version of this, an alliterative longline poem, in an earlier crit. thread. Now I've finished a first draft of approximately ~260 lines.

“To drag on a dragon’s draughtful digression
To swallow a swallow’s high swooping suggestion,”
These words were to wake me in winter.
My cover kicked high, I cold and seizing
From fever slow fading and fresh in my coelum
I sat silent in high silver from my window.
Were those words at all worthy of wonder? No,
Although from my nose to my naval a niggling was nourished
That I could nurse a notable nut of words, I knew that
These were naught but nostalgias with nonsense filled in,
Fragments I flayed but found empty.

the rest continues: https://pastebin.com/sxB8Bn5K

>>12244031
>>12244835
feels like I'm eating a thesaurus. I like complicated writing (I mean, my poem above is full of thesaurus-writing) but some of the sentences are empty ("Shadows...palpable." especially. these don't give much setting information I don't already have—the opening shot is the sun setting, so I already know it's dark, and 'stillness...palpable' is a cliché idea even if the words aren't exactly identical). add that to the malapropism in the second snippet (course for coarse) and I as a reader am not all that confident in your writing
>>12247838
very snappy and somewhat surreal but if it's a kid's perspective then I've got some doubt about some of his comparisons

>>12249306
Its a 22 year old but it's an orthodox jewish community so he thinks about things that a 9 year old would think about like being a "good Jewish boy"

>>12248953
I want to modify my earlier statements about keeping close to grammar during narration. Internal narration such as this should also be allowed free reign because it is the character's voice. Anyways, I generally sympathize with this character - though the subject matter has already been well covered. The overall text will need to contain at least one significant original point of philosophy or the whole of it becomes tripe.

>>12249306
The alliteration is great. What is a coelum? I find the alliteration grating. It's like I know all the words have no meaning and are just there for sonic effect. Lines 3-6 give me a situation a scene, but the rest is just masturbatory slush.

>>12249326
Thanks. It's nice to know I broke a rule right.

>>12249306
>how do you like my poem?
I don't care much for the content but I like the style. Go find some good subject matter and I think you will make a gem.

Pane of glass, formed and square
Slivered crystal held as one by time
Points of growth and a crash
It spreads like the veins of a leaf

Tree branches end at nothing
Beyond the tips air and new
Old oak will rot and fall
Are the pieces my responsibility?

>>12249422
The shattered glass/tree branch metaphor is good. A decaying mush of wood is a good contrast to the sharp lethality of broken glass, but it's not enough to carry a poem. I feel like there is a feeling that you keep orbiting but never come into direct contact with.

>>12249334
>The alliteration is great. I find the alliteration grating.
u wot m8 which is it
Anyway a coelum is the body cavity where organs are stored. Except apparently I misspelled it, it should be coelom.
The eternal dilemma. I know why I picked all those words, I feel like they're not just sonic effect, but obviously it's not obvious/clear to anyone else.

There are a million desires that flash across the film of my mind on a given day. Heat and yearning, the pornographic website is up 24/7, so is the music platform, and the warm glow of the computer monitor is a fire that won't die. I want it to dissipate at the end of my days, when the sun is low in the sky. I wish the national anthem would play and Youtube would go black. I wish the internet had more advertisements.
As I was clicking one day, I found I had a match on a dating app. Her name was Kristine. I had no interest in her. She claimed she used to be a soldier in the Isreali army. That made my eyes light up. Among all the dry surface level candy magnetism of video thumbnails I found something real and human. Not only was it human, it was noble. It was not long before my indifference to this undying fire became an obsession. The addiction to the internet and to technology became an addiction to this woman. We had those conversations that run hours ahead of all of your wildest expectations, getting closer and closer to the warm gooey parts that all human have. I felt as though I was connecting with someone instead of trading thoughts and mimetic desire like baseball cards. Every webpage was enlivened by her presence. Every last scroll felt heavenly and without artifice or forced anticipation. I felt whole again. I was high up above the clouds and so was she. We were both contented to look at the world from above, as if our love could bring us out of circumstances and into a life more wholesome and loving. Then we came back down to Earth. After a few dates the chemistry we synthesized in the petri dish of instant messages quickly perished under the brutal heat of real-life. The webpages lost their luster and I scrolled faster than I used to. The world can truly become a better place, but only temporarily.

>>12246343
This is really good. Reads a bit like Kipling or Henley for contemporary life. Too bad it's not yours.

>>12249452
It's great alone by itself but as a whole it makes the poem homogenous and sickly like an incest prince

>>12245860
>being this new

>>12246343
https://www.amazon.com/Drunken-Driver-Has-Right-Way/dp/0307462692
why would you do this? There's no point

Please give any criticism no matter how harsh as I’m looking to improve

As I Lay Rotting

Some bestial god lays above
and I below - by thronging beams this primordial being persecutes me

Under whipping tongues of fire
my flesh festers. By vengeful drought,
I am consumed from without

Melting sand encases me
In my mortal tomb. I cease
as I am cleansed of my disease.

My carcass dissolves. Fragments of flesh
Disintegrate. I transcend
By Apollo’s glare I am condemned

as I lay rotting

>>12237431
>Fighting D'Annunzio
You already dead, bro. He's writing romance novels to fuck your wife rn

>>12249437
Nice. Thanks.

>>12248076
Memes aside this is good advice. Thanks anon

>>12244031
>>12244835
the last line

A
spider crawled down the drain.
I couldn't get her out, but
you needed to shower!
We hoped she was aquatic, although
I knew she wasn’t. So,
when I turned on the water
it was a reluctant spider slaughter.

>>12245237
>>12245241
This is the most blatant samefagging I've seen in a long time

>>12250479
try again.

>>12250479
>>12250487
same person?

>>12250500
No.

These
>>12245237
>>12245241
>>12250487
are the same person

>>12250508

>>12250512
Yeah right fag.

>>12250508
>>12250519

Well, if you guys are actually arguing over something so dumb you should stop and spend your time better.

>>12245206
>>12245215
>>12245226
>>12245237
>>12245241
>>12245269
>>12250479
>>12250487
>>12250500
>>12250508
>>12250512
>>12250519
>>12250524
All of these posts were written by me.

>>12250537
no me

>>12250512
if you tilt yr screen back you can see where he's edited it

>>12250549
>being this retarded
if you want to fake samefag screenshots you use inspect element you absolute brainlet

He walked up to the park bench that laid in the middle of the abandoned park. The shouts and yells of scrambling people in the distance were soft now, slowly drowned out by the songs of the cicadas. Their tempo had always captured his heart. He knew not if it was simply nostalgia or whether the noise was truly as beautiful as he heard, but regardless he drowned himself in it, taking each noise as it slowly trailed into a dull nothingness before another raised its voice. The sun was shining brightly, its rays centering on his face and eyes like a soft blanket. It rinsed over his body, seeping into his clothes and warming him to the core as he slowly brought his arms in, hugging himself. He smiled and closed his eyes, his head still lying back in a position that he could only explain as pure comfort. A sweet perfume filled the air, of cut grass and tree sap, and as each of his senses had filled he drifted from reality. His mind slowly left him, and waves of happy thoughts of the ones he had truly loved filled the always increasing empty spaces he had felt. As they ran around on this play ground or sat on the swings and contemplated life. Soft tears ran down his face, softly caressing him in a way that was not unpleasant, and he let out a soft sigh. The interrupting sound of footsteps approached him. He could feel it coming for him, but the cynic in him told him it was not who he thought it was, that there was no way. He opened in eyes; half blinded by the sun, he saw the faint outline of a slender woman. He smiled as she approached and sat beside him, about a foot away. He leaned back again and closed his eyes, still sticky with tears. They spread across his eyelashes, and soon evaporated away, leaving only a chilly feeling where they had once been. He reached out his hands and brought the woman in, softly pulling her to his side as she met him along the way. He felt her long, silky hair. It must have been beautiful, but he could not force himself to open his eyes. She buried herself more into his side. He could feel her chest rising and falling erratically as she silently sobbed into him.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he said bluntly as he opened his eyes once again, his gaze fixed on the sun as a smile spread across his face.
The moment seemed to drag as the warmth he had once felt drained from him. The cicada’s song had stopped a while ago, how long he could not say. The smell of cut grass was long gone, and he realized that there was not long left.

>>12250605
“Me too,” she softly let out, her voice breaking as she unburied her face and leaned into his arms.
The world grew cold, dark, and silent around him. It pushed in at every possible angle burying him in a feeling of misery and loneliness that had always nipped at his heels, his head filled with all cynicism and self-loathing he had hoped to have forgotten. But then felt a soft stirring next to him. He wasn’t alone. Not this time. And as everything became nothing, swallowed up by the inevitable something, he knew that if he could have, he would have come to love these times.

George hoisted me up by the back of my head, every tendril searing at my scalp. Pulled to my feet, I looked my captor in his face, the old man now appearing enlivened by rage. In his fury his age reversed; color restored to the grey man and his grey hair; his creased and spotted skin washed a pure rose pigment, every machination of his mind alive. I stood cold and unresponsive as the man stepped closer, his face an inch from mine, close enough to feel the warmth of the blood pooling behind the surface. At the breaking point, the man lunged at my throat and grabbed it with both hands, squeezing every feature of his face toward its center. As I struggled for breath, I studied the man who, after all these years, finally held a license to erupt and let everything about him out in one heroic burst. The braided passions of the boy, the man, and the father all together in a single outpouring of madness; a last stand against the jealousy of time.

>>12250549
It's even more obvious if you look at it from behind. You can see all of the stitches where he sewed it together.

>>12249554
>not being able to see my master plan

>>12251359
I see what appear to be a lot of examples of triteness - the kind you find in a bad Hollywood movie.
>I stood cold and unresponsive as the man stepped closer, his face an inch from mine, close enough to feel the warmth of the blood pooling behind the surface.
Who does this? I have yet to see a personal conflict whereby someone got that close and then just lingered without any reaction from the other party.
>At the breaking point
What breaking point? What in this scene is driving it?
>As I struggled for breath
Is this character really going to surrender his mortal coil without at least flailing like a girl? Sure he's "struggling for breath" - but what are his hands and feet doing? This is Stephen King tier. The underlying story seems decent - the delivery just paints such an unrealistic scene that it lacks believability. Watch some non-fiction violence footage to see how people really react to violence.

>>12250479

A butterfly lost underground
Has made its way in freezing cold
With ice-laced wings and fear abound
Into a place of words untold

Chaos unfolds to the poor moth
As man bursts through and wrath there is
While voices raise in ringing froth
And screams occlude a chrysalis

A world of steel its eyes behold
On train-tracks lie its hopes
And trains do not their wheels witthold
Through endless death-paved rows

Perplexed, it wants to run away
Its wing snaps float in fear
For insects have been led astray
And they're not welcome here.

>>12250429
Good syntax and flow, but the meaning of the metaphor is pretty veiled, I can't really extract any value from this personally.

>hope this is enjoyable. Theres more if anyone wants to read it.

Near a lake in the northwest, there is a hermit who dwells in a one room cabin. The shore to the west, and elsewhere a clearing of one or two hundred feet which break the ring of wild forest around it. Mountains may be seen in all directions. From the long end of the lake, they rise fjord-like at unwalkable angles, gaunt near-overhang the round stone banks. Near-shadows grade on the heaping rock, where pounding snows have bled the mantle's offerings to crags. Gathered in the gash, the blue eye colored water, darkened at the middle's setting clay. Ferns wither in the peeling stone. Small spruce shrink in the soon blank snow. Ridges emanate from iris.

A single path leads north. From the cabin door, to the State Road, it can be made out among the brush and pine, still overgrown in the years since he last walked it.

The old hermit remembers the moment he finally resolved to come down it, and resigned himself to the vague hope that certain mysteries might be revealed in staying where it ends. All hope is vague, as he then knew, scarcely formed in words which the mind will dare announce as emissary of the upturned, anguished, silent heart. So resolution and resignation are mingled kin, born of life and death. In resolution, the old man seeks to explore the infinite catacombs of dark possibility with a candle of daylight. In resignation he makes a bed of bones to lay on. He came here to know-- who was she, the girl? It has been a long life. What was it for?

His wife is dead. His son is gone, as his mother, without letter of loving or trace of explanation in years gone by. His father is buried in the clearing of this very cabin. He came here throughout his life, when such passings overtook him, for repose and retreat. But now he shall stay. Laughter lingers like smoke stuck in the wood, of summer vacations whence this place was bought and built, and since when it has been inherited and remade. And with this laughter, a sadness soaked into the reaches of joists. He who laughed and cried enough has but woods to venture, where resolved and resigned there is only one thing left to do; to go a-ways into the forest when the sun rises, to drop earthward and refuse to get up.

>>12249705
Has your flesh ever rotted? Have you ever been condemned by Apollo's glare? Don't blow your suffering out of proportion. Also, read more contemporary poetry.

>>12246121
pretty gud.

>>12243957
I'm going to be nicer here and say I like the beginning and ending, it's got a charm too it. But you can't be casual and charming and then careen into abstractions of data-orgasms and shit. I think it'd be neater if you described them as dating and the inevitable "consumation" of gaia and machine in a more grounded way that keeps the lighthearted and cute tone, talking about shit like "Cyberwoman gives Gaia's children a toy calculator, and their relationship starts to get serious."
Salvage 1 and 3, scrap 2.

>>12252212
Thanks.

>>12250429
lemme fix this shit:

Title: Get out of the shower, daddy!

Daddy-long-legs went down the drain.
I tried to get him out -- in vain!

I hoped he was aquatic, although
I knew he wasn't, so...

When I turned on the water
it was a reluctant spider slaughter.

https://pastebin.com/5hg011js

>>12252409
>I hoped he was aquatic, although
I knew he wasn't, so...
The flow kinda breaks there. I think something like
>I hoped he was aquatic, though
>I knew that it wasn't so
would sound a little better.

>>12252292
Maybe i'll add a section before the sex scene? a description of the ""punk"" that Technocapital Machine would play to woo her.
thanks v much for advice

>>12252691
Yeah, some dating in general to bridge the gap so it doesn't feel so out of nowhere when they just start fucking - talking about all the "punk" and gaia being pleasantly suprised by Machine's style (maybe mention that her "older sisters" or something warned her about "these types of girls") wouldn't be a bad place to start.

>>12251951

>>12252816
great way to avoid getting your gf angery

>>12252816
>>12252834
>inspiring

I
I miss
I miss you
since
I
I missed
I missed the right whole

>>12252843
did you mean hole?

Apologies, I'm not posting my work but I do have a question. I thought it'd be more appropriate here, and less self-indulgent, than making my own thread. In my writing I like to tackle subjects which aren't every action oriented. I've gotten some nice feedback about my prose, however my story and drive isn't too great. I want to write more short stories, but I can't figure out how to make my introspective Hunger-esque ideas interesting. I understand that short stories are supposed to get right to the action, but I don't generally write stories that capitalise on this. Any help? What can I do to make my writing more engaging for the general reader? For example, my last short story was about a man strolling around a lake whilst thinking of the ephemeral nature of time (coming out of a recent serious accident). I have a new idea in which the protagonist becomes obsessed with scenes of degradation and decay. I think I could make this more action oriented if I have him seek out dangerous scenes, e.g. buildings on fire, but I don't want the entire story to be like this. In short, can one write stories like these whilst keeping them entertaining? Thank you.

>>12252851
broken but whole

My heart throbs
My arms tighten
My lips press
All against you, to still you with me
In a stream of Time that hurtles both of us forward.
And against steel will,
It still will.
I adore you.
As long as I could, I have.
As long as we have, I will.

“Make me weep… me know that myself… dumbing that down so that I am made to… being as inclined as I am to notice something when seeing it… having an eye for that which is distinctive… for some discernment of what is around us… which is somewhat that discerned… somewhat, perfectly seen… with this somewhat damaged vision… with less than the 100%-level of this vision… it held somewhat back… in my specific action… where I exclude every one but it… every type but it… meaning your fixating onto it…
… as it abides in being so… contrarian among us, those enemies… that are hostile towards a contrarian over an opinion we share… the contrarians to the opinion… offering it a contrary opinion… changing the one it has… for another of those same ones… same effort is made… for the same reason yours is, too… an undertaking… of its… own effects upon its source… before it comes… and while I wait for its coming… wait for the thing now coming… the thing we are missing… should also complete us… anything upon its more universal levels… it stripped back to these consistencies… to that basic presence… a universal level… a single one of various levels… defining one space of various space definers… taking back the variousness from the implicated space definers… letting them keep those implications… up these forethoughts of theirs… these outlooks of theirs… without factoring these into them… their end result still will be it… on account of always being them… always at the max degree of their self-embodiment… without doing the embodiment of anything… you fill your space… comprising of your spatial limitations… the frame you are boxed with… for its holding of all of you… for meeting up to the requirements of its very own job… it meets-up to these requirements… it is adequate for functioning as it… standing-in for it throughout its absence… representing the place of it still inside of what it left… did remain its place of it. After leaving it behind… to engage itself with its real thing… its baby-felt suffering… the access to it, from babyhood, onwards… the babyhood experiencing… had by whoever who also is having babyhood…
… which is something other than their non-babyhood…”

https://christianjaroschdialogues.com/page/1/

aside from reading poetry voraciously, are there any good exercises in writing poetry? i want to give it a shot. are there any good books on how to write poetry maybe?
this may sound really gay but i don't care

>>12253296
not really: just need to read and write. at most, try to imitate a poet for a few poems.

>>12253296
first you find a spot, the sanctity of which has been divinely revealed by the falling of a thunder bolt, the decision of a wandering cow to lie down, or some oracular direction, and make it the centre of your universe. you divide this spot from the surrounding chaos by the constructive act of measuring out a precinct in accordance with astronomical observation, and building a temple to the god who chose it for you. the temple is designed as a symbolic meeting place of heaven, earth and the underworld; as well a of the four quarters of the world.

>>12252880
Bumpity bump

>>12253296
It’s a lighthearted way to get started, tons of practical exercises to keep you going and a basic explanation of metre etc.

>>12253368
kek. thanks buddo. a spot it is.

>>12252880
Just make sure your characters actually have something to do. That needn’t be adrenaline-driven ‘action’ scenes. But find things that are physically happening that can carry meaning, and if the reader can follow it, it’ll interest them a lot more than an interior monologue. Show don’t tell.

>>12253407
That's pretty sound advice, I think. I'll try and keep that in mind. Thanks.

>>12253407
I agree with all of this but he seemed to have a problem getting his characters actually involved in the action. For this I recommend that rather than have his character go to the mountain, that he have the mountain go to the character. In doing this he can avoid building his character into a hero and just let it happen. Pic somewhat related.

>>12253380
A shitpost is worth a dozen bumps.

>>12253380
Instead of bumping, critique someone else's work posted here, you dumb fuck. Put in the work that you want others to put in for you. Since you can't answer your question with effort, you have to provide the effort to complete someone else can't do themselves.

>>12249705
>bestial god
>primordial being
>whipping tongues of fire
>vengeful drought
>mortal tomb
>cleansed of my disease
>all the stuff about disintegrating flesh
>Apollo's glare

Look at all those cliches.

Just ask yourself - does your poem contribute something new to the entire corpus of poetry created thus far? How many Greeks or Christians or whatever do you think have used the exact same conceits here that you have used, such as associating god with fire and vengeance, or talking about the disintegration of the flesh? Do you attack the idea from a new angle?

What distinguishes good poetry from bad poetry is having an eye for detail and nuance. Your poem is trying to capture a feeling with well-worn symbols and a generalized sentiment. Just look at how Keats describes a bird descending on a water surface and notice how much more concrete and focused the language is.

The freaks, and dartings of the black-wing’d swallow,
Delighting much, to see it half at rest,
Dip so refreshingly its wings, and breast
’Gainst the smooth surface, and to mark anon,
The widening circles into nothing gone.

>>12253296
http://www.cosmoetica.com/top.htm

Read everything here

>>12254596
christ no

>>12254596
>http://www.cosmoetica.com/top.htm
the crackpot who literally thinks he's the best poet in the world by a factor of 100
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJrj7WvTt8Y

>>12253418
A bunch of creative writing cliches strung together is not "sound advice". Notice how he doesn't actually give you anything to work with other than the most generalized tips. It essentially boils down to "get characters to do stuff in a comprehensible manner" and the silly "show don't tell" adage.

Interiorized monologues can work in certain contexts, and description can work in certain contexts - but it depends on the whole as to whether it works or not. Some short stories can be relentlessly 'explanatory' and others can be minimal, and some can combine both methods, but whether they work or not depends on the type of ideas conveyed through the form of the prose. E.g. Bartleby by Melville is extremely focused on narration, but the narration itself is so fresh and the connections made within are so interesting compared to a thousand other "show not tell" drivel stories created by contemporary writers.

"a man strolling around a lake whilst thinking of the ephemeral nature of time" - could work depending on the way you characterize the man and how he perceives the lake (just as Melville made a story about a bunch of clerks in an office somehow work). A good writer can bend the scene to his will and shape it into whatever form he wants. It's all in the words, and the shape of them, and nothing else. The only way you can improve is to show the story itself so that we can critique the specifics and see whether it coheres into something, rather than relying on vagaries and other bits of "sound advice".

>>12254627
Prove that he isn't

>>12254698
Stop beginning the question.

>>12254725
You mean begging the question.

>>12254698
stop bringing the question

>>12254746
An interrogative statement is different from an imperative one.

>>12254730
No, I ended it.

>>12254781
The only thing you ended here is 5 billion brain cells worth of critical thought

>>12237490
Rasputin

>>12254691
>dude does not even submit work
>dude gets minimalist advice
>dude is satisfied with advice indicating that he is at the level for the advice to help him
>only one not satisfied is you.
Anon could have given better advice but it would likely have been wasted. This is a case of pearls before swine. When he needs further advice after having tried what he was given, he can ask again. Frankly, I think that we did a decent job this round. Even the shitposters did their part to keep the discussion moving.

>>12251618

Very true. Thanks for the read.

Some context though - this is an old man (the MCs father in law) who's lashing out against the MC. He's old and weak, and the narrator does not feel threatened by the violence. He's offering the minimal necessary resistance, and is even contemplating what the violence means for the old man as an affirmation of his character. In the next paragraph, the MC quits playing around and throws the aggressor to the ground.

>>12254983
>In the next paragraph, the MC quits playing around and throws the aggressor to the ground
Here is an exercise for you. Take one finger and gently press it into your throat - slowly increasing pressure. You will find that the tolerance for this is very thin and that you will cease significant pressure very quickly. The throat is one of the most vulnerable positions on the body. Your MC would potentially have serious problems after even a single second of purposeful throat crushing. Only a moment is needed for permanent damage. Once again, this is nothing like the movies. If you need to illustrate violence then you need to know violence. A good primer is the shitty Ghetto Fights and Backyard Brawls videos that you can get for next to nothing. They do a decent job of capturing the real thing.

>>12243689
Poetry ceases to be mental masturbation when it gets you laid.

Dumped in a ditch
Needle stuck in her arm
Dead from a potion she swore did no harm
Abandoned like trash
To be easily found
Now over her gravestone the laughter resounds

Try how I might,
I know not what to do -
To keep the thread running,
To abate the eschew.

I shitpost,
Contribute,
On occasion critique,
But straight to the eye -
My efforts show weak.

Alas, our dusk falls,
Only one thing to do -
Summon /pol/fagness,
Quick lad, name the Jew.

>>12255286
Has poetry ever gotten you laid.
If yes I need to write more poems.

>>12255672
Technically, they were associated with music - hence they were songs and not poems. They did, however, get me laid. Anyways, here's to opie and his faggoty image. I hope he has a tasty dick for dinner tonight. Here, also, I salute all those that shitposted, had the courage to submit their work for critique, or that lent their hand at the critique itself. I personally benefited from someone else's critique of some else's work. It looks like the steam has escaped the seams so I'll probably just ride it to bump limit with more inane poetry. Farewell, frens.

>>12255732
Nigger don't be so melodramatic there's going to be more critique threads.

>>12255763
Agreed, could we make one right now?

>>12255763
>there's going to be more
No shit, scro - just lamenting that this one ran out of steam a hair prematurely.

>>12255768
Personally, though I like to see them go to limit, I also like to see them evaporate for a while so the people that do contribute the most don't get spent and bored. /lit/ probably is not good for a constantly running critique thread. They get thin and valueless without solid support. There is a critical mass to it where people contribute more solidly when they see that there is external momentum. That is my observation - but I am unimportant.

>>12255801
Well, there at least three of us left. I'm gonna keep posting.

>>12255840
>Where's My Shit?

Trying to find peace...
Perhaps even brotherhood.
The contents of your tent scattered about the ground,
Having been tightly combed for any value it once contained.

No one will remember
Who did it
Or where your things went.

Little peace, or solace, or philadelphia will be found
Within the demarcations of a hobo village.

>Courtship Amongst Junkies
>
>*asks for cigarette*
>I don't smoke
>somebody told me that you did
>somebody was lying to you

Wire Truck

Wire truck...
Sitting there every night.
Taunting.
I know your worth.
The stillness of the night
Is the air that sustains me.
Dollar Store sneakers
Silently carry me to you.
A pop...
And a click...
And a whir...
I hope that modern medicine can re-attach my thumb.

Curveball

Though it had a name,
He rejected the notion
That I call it what it was.

"It doesn't work like that."
"That is not what it means."

And yet, it did -
Cutting its leftward arc,
And disappearing around a corner,
And smashing into the back of his head.

i am absolute dogshit at poetry. so i'm gonna try and write a poem every day for the next week or so. starting with....

>bath late at night

thick, hot, it bubbles about the tub
not my first shiver felt on evenings
as this one: night after night, when
the whirring sound starts, here:
countless sits; swayings, wrapping
arms around myself-it is a gesture
of surrender, still. for i cannot be
shutting out the sounds of
some place else; so, drowing in its
wash of sweating heat, i conspire
to meet the sound again. it is like a
drug or a good meal.

>>12255961
I like this one. It's very simple and I love that it is named Curveball because that's exactly what it is about.

i am trying to sleep tonight but i got honey in my bed sheets
sticky sappy honey
pure amber honey

i am trying to sleep tonight with honey in my bed sheets
but got sticky
but got sappy

there’s yellow sunny before I close my eyes

>>12255840
>I'm gonna keep posting
Promises Made

Promises made
To someone unknown
At the end of this tangled mass of wires

Mosquitoes erratically darting at my feet
Inside my warm abode,
The outside air so cold
It carries death for such little ones.

I type these lines without meaning.
All purpose has left me.
Yet the keys continue to fall beneath my fingers.

I call it killing time -
Though time remains dauntless
And I am the one that withers.
A shitpost,
A critique,
Or a submission.
I wonder what it will be - that which was promised to me.

>>12256005
>I'm gonna keep posting

sometimes I lay a pillow on my window sill
and get flat on my back

with head out the window I am very still
I look up at the night and the whole world feels very still
and of course it does, because the night sky is always very still.

___________

I am flat on my back
and I am smoking out of my ears


I watch it rise to the roof
gathering to black in corners and shadows.

>>12255985
Keep writing! I like what you have so far but you should work on your end-stopping. Think about what is special, why are you showing this to the reader? Who/what is the significance of the speaker?

A lot of us have the same problem - taking all of this too seriously. This stifles the pen. Write, have a good time, make a mockery of yourself. Insult everyone and find beauty in every dreg you are forced to endure. Toss the heap of it in the fire if you must. If one percent of what you write is of any value then the exercise was likely worth it.

When I was about four, I had a dream where I had to work in a bar for skeletons. As an innocent joke, I approached some of the skeleton clientele and said; "Boo."
This offended every skeleton in the bar, and they all abruptly got up and walked out until I was alone.

>>12255286
>>12255672
I've written three poems for girls:
The first was understood but unsuccessful.
The second - she liked being the-receiver of-a-poem but didn't understand a word. Started sucking me off before I finished, which annoyed me a lot.
The third was appreciated but I'd already shagged this girl. But did cause it to be more than a one night thing.

I think poems that get one laid aren't "good poems". They need to be cliche transparent sonnets

Too many words.