/lit/ - Literature

Working as a back alley nurse is well paid but dangerous, it keeps her remarkably well and fuels her many vices. Elise holds a syringe filled with blue liquid while the patient tries his very best to relax, she knows how he feels from experience. Her uniform is white cotton-poly blend and sometimes overly warm, it sits snugly over dilapidated fishnets and is topped off nicely with a little squareish white hat resting on her blood red dreadlocks. Her crimson patent leather heels make her feet ache terribly but they look fantastic.

>cyber-queens
>cyber-queens
>cyber-queens
>cyber-queens
>cyber-queens

I confuse. Where you get picture?

The patient- A Mr. Joseph Olin- Is short and stocky. It’s probably not his real name but they need to call him something. Because licensed Techsurgeons are prohibitively expensive Mr. Olin, like most, has turned to an unlicensed back-alley doctor for his modifications. It is not without danger for both client and staff, because unlicensed Technosurgery is both highly illegal and potentially dangerous.

“Will it hurt much?” He is shaky and grasps Elise’s hand, she pulls it away hastily.
“We have already been through this Mr. Olin,” she sighs. “The surgery process is really very simple. Mr. Sanderson will remove your original leg, he will graft the new bionic loosely to your left femur and inject a syringe full of microscopic nano-bots into the flesh surrounding your new bionic.” He didn’t really seem any more relaxed by this information but she continued; “Over a few days, the nano-bots will work ceaselessly, grafting your nerve endings to your new receptor cables, and in a matter of weeks the prosthetic will be ready for use. You have two check-up appointments booked for the seventh and the twentieth with myself. Have you got any more queries before I put you into sedation?
Mr. Olin reluctantly agrees that he has no further questions but squirms as she injects him with the azure substance. Very soon he’s out for the count, she places a cigarette between her full, black lips, lights it and waits for the surgeon to finish up in the toilet.

She remembered her first day at the company, meeting the lanky Surfaceman Jae Sanderson, with his short brown hair and immaculate lab coat. The interview room was small and crammed with books. He shook her hand and Introduced himself, first name only.
“So you’ve come for the position of staff nurse?” he asked, pouring over her paperwork. “I see you were a medical student.” she got a little nervous at this point, having left the university after the first term.
“So when can you start?” he asked her.
“I’m sorry?” she asked, confused, she clearly couldn’t have gotten the job already.
“About what?”
“Well you haven’t really asked me any questions.”
“Would you like me to? Would that put you at ease? I knew you were the right woman for the job when you sent in your application.”
“But, I didn’t finish medical school…how did you know you wanted me?”

>>1498978
made it

“Medical training isn’t essential to this position and your having it really is just a bonus. I knew you were the right candidate for the job for two reasons; firstly you have an excellent manner about you and came highly recommended from you last job as a…”
“As a road sweeper“
“Yes that, and secondly you were one of only two people to apply for the job. The other candidate simply wasn’t compatible.”
“May I ask why?”
“He died this morning. Have you got any further questions before I show you around?”
“Not really”
“Well let’s begin then. As you know the company’s name is ‘Pimp My Hide’ and we work in bionics. Strictly off the radar if you get my drift.”
“Yes Mr. Sanderson.”
“Jae if you please, Mr. Sanderson is my mother’s name. My personal skill is in reconstructive bionics and we do a lot of work with amputees and burn victims. Our real money however, comes from our transgender patients, who often have whole-body transformations. We work a lot with ‘real-feel’ prosthetics you see, and this works well for them. Am I going too fast?”
“No, just taking everything in.”
“Good, so when can you start?”

Jae snaps her back to the present with his booming baritone.
“Elise, can you give Mr. Barber in curtain five a shot of morphine please, he’s starting to come around” He shouts through the open door of the makeshift operating room.
“Sorry Jae, on break.” she replies, “Get Emile to do it” she adds, snatching a handful of pills and diving for the exit. She hurtles down Lenin Plaza, dry-swallowing three of the Ritalin as she races to catch the 2:15 to the ‘Opal Lake‘ district.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

The orange train is grotty, crowded and smells of wet dog. Elise pushes an ugly old man out of the way and sits down. The windows go black as they pass into the tunnel and the yellow ceiling lights of the train flicker from overuse. They stop at ‘Pearl Station’ and swarms of people exchange through the sliding doors. The ugly old man shoots her a filthy look and hobbles slowly from the grotty train.

‘Opal Lake Terminus’ is dank and cold, the people look miserable as they alight from filthy carriage to filthy station. Elise powers through them as she heads for ‘Pavilion Lane’.

She fumbles in the pocket of her uniform for a small silver key and opens the large metal door. Inside the house reeks of stale piss and vomit. Pia, her emaciated form lying prostrate under damp sheets. Babbling, incomprehensibly fast, eyes open staring blankly at the ceiling.
“Formation,” she yells “Crippled flames, cucumber trademark Betty gloom five.”
“I know sweetie.” Elise is stroking Pia’s sweating forehead as she screams “Lights! Half creature!”
Elise peels off the stinking, sodden sheets and picks Pia up in her arms and places her on the sofa before turning back to the bed. Pia’s condition is clearly worsening, no eye contact, even the trembling has stopped.

>Dancing cyber-queens in sequined dresses and massive heels leading throngs of ecstatic people fuelled by cheap Absinthe into the trance of mindless gyration and brief, animalistic encounters.

Fucking god dammit, can anybody on /lit/ write a PARAGRAPH of a "novel" without sounding like garbage?

>after the face

Five years ago Pia was a bright and vibrant woman, the life and soul of any party, she was Elise’s best friend. Together they had grown from precocious adolescents, through the tumultuous teenage years into the bizarre adults they were now. Pia had never been happy with her appearance an relished the chance to change even the most inconsequential of things, so when nanos came on the scene as an appearance enhancing drug, Pia leapt at the opportunity.
The worst thing a teenager can ever find out is that they are entirely normal. This factor led Pia to the nanos, led her on a path to self destruction.

The first changes had been purely superficial; her nose straightened out, her pores less visible. But under the surface the nanos were working hard, corrupting her neural pathways, re-routing her senses. The nanos connected, first her sense of smell, then her taste to the Ether. All her inputs were linked up and, gradually, Pia stopped being Pia. She became a conduit for the Ether.

Her nose itches from two lines and her eyes are red and bleary from lack of sleep. The coke will see to that anyway. Bright red lights careen in circles, a dance floor attacked by Mysterons. A man dances up to her. He has steel cables jutting from his bald head, making long chrome dreadlocks, each ends with a different jack. His dance is strange and certainly not in time with the rhythm, but he seems to be having a good time. From his uncoordinated jerkiness he’s probably off his tits on Afterparty. He dances closer, smells good, pheromones waft about him like flies on food. He leans in, as if to kiss her, she doesn’t resist. With his left hand he smoothes her hair up from her neck and caresses the tender skin around her cerebral port. Feels good. He moves his left hand to his dreads and fumbles for the jack that fits.

Endorphins flood her body/rushes of new memory/the vicarious shock of his Afterparty filling her CPU.

They kiss passionately, he probes deeper into her consciousness, forming her thoughts for her, making new memories. Her firewall is no match, he was so strong he could take her very mind and leave her a vegetable if he wanted, or cripple her if he carried F.U.V., but she doesn’t care, she craves the rapture.

bump

not my style, partyboy

the night clinging thing is overused.

other than that,
I don't like it.

You "writers" who post your garbage on /lit/ always write about the stupidest shit.

>Jae if you please, Mr. Sanderson is my mother’s name.
That is funny (although Jae should have a comma after it, but whatevs.) Everything else is abysmal. Derivative, lame, poorly constructed, not engaging. Sorry. Abort.

>>1499366
OHDOHOHOHHOHOHO

Commas, commas everywhere! And it even looks like a few times you realized there were too many, but then you promptly forgot anyway.

>>1498954

Too many commas for my taste.

I'd read it. I might even pay for it, should you get that far.

bump

bump

>>1499505
but now that you've put it on lit it shall remain tainted...

bump

bump

>>1499510
yes, tainted

>>1499771
What's wrong with that elbow? Why are they doing that?

>>1499783
you'll understand when you're older

>>1499793
I'm 37, how much older?

Too many commas for me to read past the first paragraph. You should very seriously revise your work before you present it to anyone else.

Ehh... As a lover of all things leatherbound, cyber, scifi-inspired, and sweaty lycra, this composition grabbed my attention. In complete honesty, though the language isn't utterly dank, it just doesn't speak to me. No matter how much I may attempt to 'get into the mood', the language simply does not provide the proper visual incentive to truly immerse myself within the atmosphere you attempt to portray.

My first piece of advice would be to drag your scenes out. This does not mean to cram your writing full of pointless visual cues and shitty metaphors, but instead to give your readers a bit more time to digest what you've fed them. You've over-saturated the opening paragraph with unnecessary imagery and overextended yourself by stringing it together with an unnecessary length of individual sentences. Breathe, woman/man! I am speaking from experience, as I tend to assume readers will have such a vivid imagination as mine; whereas your standard reader usually says 'holy shit that's a lot of detail' when facing any of my literary work.

Secondly, you can vastly improve the professionalism of your writing and the impact of your message/imagery simply by researching alternatives for the words/ideas that you use. Scent rather than smell, synthesis rather than creation, minuscule/insignificant rather than tiny, etc. Sentences such as "Now, stumbling, half-cut through the dank streets, coloured lights still strobing in her dilated pupils she trips, falling on her cheap Iranian-made metal arm" would be better-received if sectioned and refined. "Stumbling blindly through the dank avenue as coloured spheres yet pulse before her dilated pupils, a slight misstep topples her to the ground; damaging her second-rate Iranian-mate synthetic arm." <--- Just an example.

Also worthy of inclusion is the prospect of refining your grammar. A sentence such as "Working as a back alley nurse is well paid but dangerous, it keeps her remarkably well and fuels her many vices." Would be viewed by many as an incomplete sentence due to the misuse of the comma. There are many literary tricks one may use in such a situation which would give the reader less fractured gaze into the fantasy world you've constructed. With slight modifications here and there, you can render your writing nearly poetic; chaotic as the style may be.

I just love when I give constructive reviews and the writer falls unceremoniously from the face of the internet. :P

>>1499835
Thank you so much for providing genuinely constructive criticism. I will take these Ideas on board and revise the work. It is as it stands, a rough draft so far and really I do need to revise it. thanks so much

bump

>>1499921

My pleasure :) I pride myself in my reviews, and would only wish that others review my work in return. I've got a blog and a DevART where I post my work, but I'm hesitant to dole them out on such a caustic and chaotic board of anonymous insanity. :P

NeuralSynthesis@hotmail.com

My email for random 4chan people, send me a msg and state who you are and I'll link you, if you wish :)

Let there be bamp!

>>1498954
>The night still clung heavily to her like sweaty lycra...
Seriously? I mean really, seriously?

This is a pain to read; not in a House of Leaves kind of way but a I'm 12 what is this kind of way, the bad way, with all, those, commas. It needs a better structure. Fewer slashes, fewer dots. Fewer fucking commas. Less boring exposition and time spent on details that don't serve to further your story (no one gives a shit about your cyberwankery). It's this weird juxtaposition where we're jumping all over the place from scene to scene, only to screech to a halt and fumble over minutiae. As a stylistic choice I sure it can be made to work, and if that's intentional then kudos on trying it. It's not working though.

It also needs to make me give a shit. I read your first post and I: have no fucking idea where I am or where Elise is, who she is, why I should care

>>1499970
Could you suggest ways of bettering the piece, rather than just slagging it off?

>>1500033
How about
>cut out the over important word choice and imagery
>a better structure
>reign in your fucking punctuation
>less (boring) exposition
>spend more page progressing your story by spending less of it on unimportant details
>fix the pace: either make all the cuts work better, or stop doing it.
>rewrites, man, rewrites
>give me something to care about asap, because I'm not going to read 500 words to become interested when I can read 75 and write it off

So basically, see my previous post.

>>1500048
Thank you for your advice, although bits of it were still slag-offish. like I say this is only my first draft and I was looking for constructive criticism. any more (civil) criticism would be greatly appreciated.

>>1500060
Sure why not. Since this is a chapter from a book and all, describe your book to me in a couple brief sentances. Posting your storyboard or outline would be helpful as well.

>>1500060

He makes a true point though. You must MAKE the reader care; they're not going to just read your book because they chose it randomly from a bookshelf. Give them REASON to plunge headfirst into the reality of your world, give them SUBSTANCE with which to immerse themselves in, ensure that your words echo the proper feeling and stylistic atmosphere but no not expect a random random reader to have the patience of rooting through your eccentric outcries!

You must, in order to be a successful writer, sacrifice your 'spark of genius', cut corners, edit the fuck out of it, and basically simplify to the point where an average reader would actually give two shits about reading your story.

If you, like me, write for the joy of writing and free expression, keep doing what you're doing.

>>1500060

If you actually want people to read and enjoy your work though, you must realize that there are pretty well-defined methods of publishing a book, and somewhat-defined lines of what the average reader wants and needs from a book.

THAT is why there is so much wondrous unpublished content, while literary feces such as Twilight are so well-received. Unfortunately it is a fact of life in the literary world.

Stephen King's books are all much longer than the published versions, but anyone who's read the raw versions are simply put off by the random, useless writhing mass of information that contributes nothing to the story but pointless backstory. While it may be vastly important to the writer, the reader doesn't want every little detail. They want to be ENTERTAINED.

(I have a forum where I have hundreds of thousands of words written, notes taken, and all sorts of information on an Epic Fantasy novel series I've been writing since I was 9 years old. TONS of backstory, but not all of it would be a nice read, unless you want to know where the transdimensional gods came from, why they left, the exact mode by which their energy dissipates and they are created and destroyed, and all these little 'significant' details that are too voluminous and abstract to actually imput into my work)

>>1500072
The book is about a young woman who gets caught up in political revolution and terrorism whilst trying to find a purpose to her existence.

>>1500089
So which points should I put to the fore, and which should I tone down?

>>1500088
Your scope is too large. Rework it. Also decide how you want to go about writing it: the terrorist revolution Tom Clancy special is either going to be a vehicle for the self discovery, or it's going to be the majority of the book. No you cannot have both.

>>1500093
The terrorist revolution is the vehicle for the self discovery

>>1500096
So what does she discover?

>>1500098
all along she's fighting idea of terrorism, and she and her lover are searching for the "Utopiate" a drug to cure the world of all ills. the discovery is that her bf is a terrorist and the utopiate is destruction. ie. destruction as a form of creation

>>1500103
Yeah, you're doomed.

>>1500105
oh balls! how?

>>1500108
My personal disgust for special snowflake stories and your answer's lack of existence-defining qualities aside, I just don't have a lot of faith in the direction you're going.

What sort of themes are you dealing with? Do you have an outline? Could you give a scene-by-scene without going blue in the face, because God help you if this is some sort of multi-part epic you continue to write over the next decade. It comes back to scope: tight it up and define it better. Say that this is what I'm doing, this is what I'm dealing with, and here's how I plan on dealing with it. The real meat of writing is in planning and rewrites.

Alright, let me show you an example of something that could have contained much more information but was shortened to produce a specific effect, and from the reviews it received, it was effective in creating its desired effect in people's views and reactions. It was never really edited beyond its original semi-raw form, and could be vastly better, but it still makes its point.

http://maximilian-aurea.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d324di3

Post a reply here with your thoughts and ideas on that composition so that I may see what it is I'm dealing with here, in terms of vision and comprehensibility.

>>1500129
> A weathered television screen slowly comes into view as
That's when I started going all oh shit nigger what are you doing. I never really recovered from it.

In fact I may never read again.
>3/10, best I can do, etc

>>1500138

Lmao! That's not even attempting to get into the storyline. Every good, detailed book has a prologue. Sometimes it sets the hook, and sometimes it lays the groundwork. In this case, it lays the groundwork.

I always give a paragraph, up to a page, of a book to know if its worth shit, considering how you can't feasibly expect a writer to produce literary gold in the first 30 words. There must be something to draw you, yes, I agree that the initial delivery is a bit slow, but then again, its a short story and a continuation, and not a published novel. :P

I tried reading... but it read more like a beatnick and a goth merged into a horrible mutant, and wrote it, trying to pass it off as prose.
I can even imagine you... dressed in black with bandages on your wrists, but with a nice little black berret on the top of your head. Reading this, in a "weird rythm" trying your best to convey some sort of steam punk eerie dark scene.
Also the dialogue is stale, and reeks of sliced up movie quotes.
I get cute nods to the readers but "Pimp my Hide"...

Anyway, it depends who you're writing for. I don't know if you mentioned your target audience, because I tuned out after a while... But if you`re writing for yourself, and for the love of it - awesome. If you're thinking of being published and/or taken seriously... nope.

Also - the idea of the book sounds unoriginal and uninteresting.

>>1500103

Nooo.... noooo....

Out of sheer curiosity what age are you? If you're over 15/16 - quit.
If you're at 16 - don`t worry, it'll pass. The writing phase I mean.

>>1500115
Not the person you replied to, but I disagree that the real meat is the rewriting.
Planning yeah, but that's usually done when you dream up the idea in the first place. It has to have a god damn progression.
But rewriting is basically turning your steaming pile of originality and making it digestable for other people. It's the most work, yeah, but the real meat of it is when you lay it down the first time, even if it's good only for you.

Maybe that's just me.

>>1500158
> A weathered television screen slowly comes into view as a barely audible news report begins its broadcast.
How does a tv slowly come into view due to it being on? and Am I not supposed to hear the tv because it's only coming into view slowly? were the first two questions that popped into my head. The vast majority of simple folk such as myself will struggle to understand your genius and you're probably ok with that; however, if you're writing a book for other people to read, or be publish, this is shit that needs to be addressed. Seriously though: you do realise you're not wheeling around a little camera in your head right?

If you want to write a screenplay, write a fucking screenplay.

>>1500164
I find revisions are where I make the most progress. I'm pretty bad for scrapping and reworking large segements though. But I was mostly trying to explain to OP that it's great to have an idea, but the meat (or manhours, or work) of writing comes from planning and refining your work through rewrites.

>>1500159

Hahaha, you just quoted me from about 4-5 posts above :P

Aye, the 'desired audience' received it very well, and loved it. Again, it depends who you're writing for, in what situation, and for what purpose. Considering how it was a political short story on the horrors of war and the loss of human rights in the face of an ever-changing world where nations are increasingly militarized while liberties and 'god given rights' dwindle to nothingness, and lives are lost for naught but the greed and sovereignty of a select few, written for a number of friends on the eve of some personal and local protest and deaths of significant peoples, and written by an 18 year old goth kid who fancies himself an amateur psychologist, it wasn't much of a wide-audience reach type of project meant to rile up anything besides a sort of anti-fascist sensation of governmental distrust at the sight of heightened federal control in every sector of daily life, the unwonted loss of life in all corners of the world, and needless war. :P

>>1500167
EXACTLY what I was thinking.
Too many people who want to "write" are actually describing a little movie in their heads, that they think we implicitly see.
We don't. It's not a screenplay. Stop confusing the two.

>>1500173
I'm the guy you replied to.
And yeah, I agree with you there.
I actually started "polishing off" one of my books, and I ended up saying "fuck it" and rewrote it. Same skeleton and idea, but a different book.

>>1500167

It is a screenplay. :P Hence the otherwise-ridiculous visual cues of positioning and location, I'd say.

>>1500172
whatthefuckamireading.bin

>>1500172
I was talking about the OP - but hey, whatever floats your boat Mr. Automatically Center Of Atention.

>>1500180

What the fuck are you reading, indeed.

>>1500179
THEN FORMAT IT LIKE A FUCKING SCREENPLAY JACKASS. At least then we'd know what we're looking at.

>>1500181

o_O Quoted/linked to the wrong post, apparently

>>1500159

Hmm, I don't see the steampunk aspect, but I otherwise agree that the dialogue needs a serious re-working. See two original posts.

>>1500186
So I have to ask: why post your screenplay (snickersnicker) for someone who's having format issues with their novel? How is that helpful?

>>1500201
FADE IN.
EXTERIOR - a wide angle shot of a star system in all it's grandeur and beauty.
ZOOM IN ON A SPECIFIC POINT, REVEALING A HUMANOID SILHOUETTE FLOATING IN SPACE.

Ehnd:
Because I make it my purpose to let you know I'm the center of every conversation I enter.

>>1500204
>>1500204
I laughed more than I should have. Needs more CUT TOs and FADEs though. It's the key to good cinema.

I think you watch wayyyyy to much anime or something. This sounds like it was wrote by a pretentious weeabo.

>>1500201

Besides the fact that a) I had already addressed the issues the later posters came up with, b) the 'screenplay' (which is more akin to an overly-visual poem, and not truly meant to be either story nor movie) was not meant to draw contract between the novel at all, but instead to provide a basis on which to address their view of a story's faults, depending on their response to the issues that are apparent within the linked story, and c) The poem had absolutely nothing to do with their novel, that is entirely beside the point.

I just love how people have shitfits over things that were never meant to be function to their desired idea in the first place. :P The only reason that story/poem/whatever-it-is was linked to, is in order to establish a connection between the OP's attention to the poem/whatever's faults and their attention to the faults within their own novel.

Might as well stop the fun, OP went to sleep already, a good 2 hours ago judging by their last email to me. I see the infamously-pissy denizens of 4chan have awoken, haha

Have a nice night/morning, all. If you're going to moan about the subsequent out-of-context posts, please refer to my two original posts where I explain whats actual wrong with the delivery of the story.

Ah yes, screenplays. The lovely,

INT: 4 CHAN - /LIT/ - MORNING

Why is reader a fag?

>>1500212
Now it's a poem huh?

Also, bu-waaah? What the fuck did your post even say Goddamnit man type that shit out plainly! Can't you see I'm mildly retarded?

ehnd did u get the email i sent

>>1500236

Yes, I sent a reply just moments ago

Sorry, you gotta cut back on the adjectives.