/lit/ - Literature

"This world is poisoning us, & forcing us to carry out useless noxious activity; it imposes the need for money on us & deprives us of impassioned relationships. We are growing old among men and women without dreams, strangers in a reality which leaves no room for outbursts of generosity. We are not partisans of abnegation. It's just that the *best* this society can offer us (a career, fame, a sudden win, 'love') simply doesn't interest us. Giving orders disgusts us just as much as obedience. We are exploited like everyone else & want to put an end to exploitation right away. For us, revolt needs no other justification."
- anonymous
(Taken from a pamphlet entitled "At Dagger's Drawn)

>on the motorway with brother
>"This way to the Museum of Childhood"
>wow it sounds like something from a fairy tale or something
>I should write it, a la Angela Carter's fairy tales in The Bloody Chamber

Old man, a widower, wakes up in the morning to find a travelling carnival has encroached on his village. He is at first apprehensive and, as will be shown later, rightly so. But the racket and the tumult coax him out of his cottage, which is filled with objects of personal importance, grounded in the past - photographs, a piano he used to play with his wife/dead or absent child etc.

Showman fella invites him into tent, promising that he has an attraction that will appeal to him. "I will show you -" swish of cape, "the Museum of Childhood!"

So he goes in, and it's a Mirror of Erised-type affair. He gets to relive the good moments, but begins to waste away his final years there. Eventually (and this is the bit I need help developing+changing) the consequences prove negative. The carnival moves away perhaps, and he returns to find his home in disrepair, overrun with rats, and all his important objects desecrated.

I'd like it to somehow bring about his own personal ruin as well. With a touch of magical realism maybe, a supernatural touch.

"Politics: that's the religion of today, that's the cancer that annihilates every possibility of community & puts an end to every period of ferment. This deformity divides & multiplies precisely during periods of ferment. Because it's unnatural it outruns our natural development of capacities. It plants itself at all intersections long before we reach them. Political militants are its missionaries. Committed intellectuals are its priests. The state is its church. Like all religions it transforms the human community into a herd. It's agents, the organizers & pedagogues, are the spiritual leaders of flocks of animals. It grows, like its biological analogue, inside the very body it attacks. It reproduces itself within the living members of the human community, extinguishing them as living beings, annihilating the very possibility of community. Its instruments are the entire armory of life-destroying gadgets devised by technology, everything that can serve to police a herd, from bombs to walkie-talkies, including the newspapers that proliferate the words & the loudspeakers that magnify the voices of the high priests." - Fredy Perlman "Letters of Insurgents" (1976)

"We do not assume that our world is inevitably heading towards a liberatory transformation of social relations. Misery, work, starvation, slavery, war & ecological degradation are present on a scale never before seen. Why would we think we could have any effect upon this state of affairs? How could we believe that we can change the ever-accelerating rush towards a bleak future of greater social control & ecological collapse?
Because we are unwilling to lie down & eat shit while we are around."
- first paragraph in "A Murder of Crows #1"

Novel about the development of a play in which the reader sees the playwright begin, restart, edit, correspond with an editor, etc. The correspondences and acts in fragmented sections. We learn about the anxiety of influence and the character's artistic direction through his drafts and merging of h/ own life with the fiction of the play. Most of the real in-the-present 'action' takes place with the playwright at his desk

"Revolt is permanent, irreducible. It is a spring of perversity that does not run dry. If it has been duped today, it is renewed tomorrow. It has no memory, it has no history, no value, no allegiance, it goes uncalculated and is unpredictable. Revolt persists on the other side of every fence that could be built to include it." - Frere Dupont

"You can't view the class struggle through the stained-glass windows of a cathedral, or through the eyes of capitalist-made laws." - Bill Haywood

"The good thing about the American Dream is that you can just... go to sleep. And try it all again the next night." - Micheal Scott

"The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it." -George Carlin

"The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime." - Max Stirner

"The search for joy is therefore an act of will, a firm refusal of the fixed conditions of capital and it's values" - Alfredo M. Bonanno

>retard posting quotes out the ass
Fuck you.

"If I find in myself a desire which nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." -C.S. Lewis

>>2010171
Are these not ideas? Am I wrong to post them here?

>>2010179
story/oc ideas

ya new?

I think there should be public transportation to get everywhere and cars shouldn't exist.

>>2010182

>>>/n/

>>2010179
Original ideas, not fucktarded unoriginal quotes.

Here's an idea: stop using quotes for a framework and use your imagination for once.

I've been mulling over an idea very loosely, pretty much a capitalist alien empire visit earth in hopes of using it as a trade post, members of the alien work force discover the principals of communism and lead a revolt against there empire..... not real original and I'm leaving a lot of my ideas out but I should have fun writing it

since op says everybod should critique the ideas ill' begin.
>>2010129
decadent and boring
>>2010141
it's a little melodramatic. still has fine potential though.
>>2010142
> implying politics fuck everything up anyhow.
i get his point though.
>>2010147
sounds like a demagogue who wants to seem badass.
>>2010149
i'm not attracted. anyhow this idea has fine potential if you have style and something to write about, which means, you can actually put some lived life into your art. (same as 2010141).
>>2010158
whatever
>>2010161
yes you can. deal with it.
>>2010163
witty.
>>2010165
actually, he isn't.
>>2010169
no. too fixed on capital.
>>2010176
begins good, but then ... "most propable explanation" my ass.

Invent the lost versions of the Odyssey. An Elsewrolds for classical lit

>>2010215
in response to your little critique here
>i'm not attracted. anyhow this idea has fine potential if you have style and something to write about,

Were there drawing invisible circles on your knee, looking down as you did so, listening.
⁄
10:03A There is an off-white ceramic mug on a wooden dining table. The table is ash, stained yellow, enamel worn to its original wooden surface. Legs of the table are white and geometric— inverted obelisk, cylinder bead blocks, rectangular joint blocks, all seeming to be cut from one piece of wood. Chairs of similar fashion as table. Sunlight from east facing window in epileptic spasm, plays on the lengthwise third of the table. There are then, three values of light or color which compose the table's surface: Yellow pine-stain; Ash, grey— the original material, substance; unfiltered (seemingly) white light. There are six permutations. The epileptic spasms for the reason: a sap-bleeding and knotted aspen tree on the opposite side of the window which, in any moderate wind, trembles and with its leaves, plays the sunlight onto the table in electronic-bulb flashes of carnival lights.
10:19A Sits at said table, makes note of the time. Onto a yellow paged and unlined notebook:
"Act I, Scene I

God is a writer, the world is his story, we are all his characters. In this context, Lucifer, the angel, is the one that aknowledged the world to be like that and rebels against it, thus falling. He is the original metalinguistic character and he doesn't accept being part of this cage of destiny. He tries to evoke that in others, doing bad things to wake people up, but fails overall. God is omniscient, but Satan is the one conscient of himself, God is omnipresent, but Satan is the one that searches people, God is omnipotent, but Satan is the one who act.

I want to work this up in a story, not by saying it like I did, but using it as a guideline for a human story. I'm still brainstorming this.

>>2010239

okay, paradise lost

>>2010222
i don't understand what's happening there. i get slightly interested by the way you describe the colours and so on though. could be good, if something more happens than just a description of ones wholehearted (? my english is not good, I just looked this up) mood. the mood itself is promising though. it seems i'm not a very good art critique ...

>>2010276
i'm going to use the light as a representation of an illuminating character in both my writer's fiction and the overarching narrative. the table's two shades— the real wood and the glossed and dyed also represent the writer and his foil character. i'm glad you liked what you got of it.

What I like to call a psy-fi novel about values, the individual's role in and against society, the realization of death, and the pretty much banning of power in a liberal society.

Please tell me what you think. And yes I know "psy-fi" sounds funny if not gay.

A novel about one of those spices they use on italian sausage going through a Vietnamese man's digestive system.

>>2010308
Its been done.

A novel about /lit/ and how it becomes so deep it collapses in on itself and turns into a pack of star trek fanatics.

a convicted pedophile returns as an old man to a secluded village where he committed his heinous crimes, and has to face his past through the angry mob

the pedo is a mute

>>2010529
PUBLISH IT

>>2010241
Yet modern, with buddhist and scientific undertones and some humor.

A secret society of women. They hold register of all unkown bastard childs in the world, from famous kings to the real father of Jesus Christ. Powerful women hiding as naive superficial ladies and dedicated wives of important men.

Stuff happends, yadda yadda, feminist things and I'm the new Dan Brown

Sci-fi/ horror: A magician (stage magic, not real magic) is performing at an immaculate theater. When he performs his final trick (being shoved into a box and disappearing from it before 6 decorative swords are thrust through it) the audience is addled to find that he really has disappeared. For years the magician is not seen or heard from again; even his agent, family, and close friends are baffled as to his whereabouts. The theater where the magician disappeared, meanwhile, has lost business and is forcibly closed. A young repo man is cleaning out the main stage when he stumbles upon an old trunk skewered by swords well hidden in the back room. When he opens it, he is surprised to see a man inside, completely unscathed. The magician has returned from a blank purgatory where he was sent years ago. While he was spinning around in an empty void for an eternity, the magician unlocked previously sealed sections of his mind and now has real magic powers. However, he also went quite mad during his stay and won’t allow the repo man to leave until he puts on a grotesque and elaborate repeat performance.

A treatise on ball fetching by a labrador.

>>2010620

Sounds interesting, but horror should be scary. What would make it scary?

>>2010623
What's the betting that asshole Dave Eggers already beat you to it

>>2010660
One free internet and you're on

>>2010643
Well I guess it doesn’t sound too horrifying right now, but some of the "tricks" that the mad magician performs for the repo man would be increasingly elaborate and horrifying. While he was “disappeared” his views on beauty get twisted and warped, and some of his tricks that he believes to be things of beauty will seem to the repo man to be abominations. For example, the magician conjures a pair of “lovely assistants” with clammy gray skin whose eyes and ears are scattered about their bodies and who shamble and scream when they walk

>>2010660
Oh how I lol.
Odds are likely 1:3 at least.

>>2010676

Oh, ok... Beings from a netherworld or other dimensions ala HPL aren't scary per se (to me), but I think it might work in a way.

Certainly, when a sensitive girl read my latest novella that had a couple icky parts like that, she was visibly affected by it, and said that (grotesque / dark) imagery like that evokes haunting mental pictures. And I wrote those parts as a an allegory for anxiety, and nothing more, really.

>>2010701
Thanks for the honesty (HPL was what came to my mind first too). I'm going to really try to be creative about this, like it won't all be dimensional shamblers and icky-looking baddies going "oogy boogy boo"

>>2010717
No problem.

If the work hasn't yet reached the outlining phase, then hopefully honest critique can improve the work beforehand.
I'm not trying to influence your work, but if I speak for myself--a pretty jaded individual (The Exorcist or The Shining never scared me at all)--what I find most scary in horror literature is when a character I can relate to is in serious danger.

Although I don't have any emotions towards vapid cheerleaders in slasher films, (let the antagonist stab them for all I care), I might get scared if the repo man was relatable, i.e., having dreams and fears, past and future etc.

So I guess what I'm drying to say (drunkenly btw), is that characterization is doubly important in the horror genre. In my opinion, anyways.

A modern day around the world in 80 days. Where to lay abouts, living off their parents money, try to complete the challange.

They fail because they get stuck in a third world country where civil war delays all the planes.

>>2010736
trying*

A story about a person who quiits job at Disney land (where they dressed up as Mickey) to become an exterminator (in the family buisness) and pursue dreams of becoming a transvestite.

Getts balls chopped off, to become a woman.
Roots alot as a woman, forgets that used to be a man, and wants to become a man.... and on and on and on.... until I don't know... any ideas for a conclusion?

>>2010745

Sounds horrible.

>>2010736
I agree, I consider myself a horror fan and it takes something truly unique to actually frighten me (especially in writing). I will definitely keep this in mind when the planning goes more in-depth

A day in the life of a coffee table. The novel.

Where a coffee table, (not able to see) is trying to work out what the fuck is going on by the feel of things that are placed on it.

>>2010761
Without using any hyperbole, this is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard of in my entire life.

>>2010761
We make a coffee table book....about coffee tables.

>>2010780
>>2010782
You guys can thank me when you steal the idea and become millionairs.

>>2010782
it's like... so ironic.

A warrior with a sword defeats evil!

>>2010791
But there is a problem.... dun dun dummmm.
The Sword is made of the last meal the warrior ate.

>>2010117
story of a racist basketball. Who contemplates committing suicide because it is sick of being molested by black guys.

YA (young adult) sci-fi:

A girl is born surrounded by scientists of different nationalities. She is the Plant, an upgrade in the software (we call reality [The Matrix hurr durr]) that will activate when she's 16. This will not only "upgrade" our collective consciousness--it will also overwrite the old code.

The girl becomes aware of the stuff when she's 11, due to her thoughts having an uncanny tendency to become reality, and will fall in love with a boy when she's 13. Since the boy would die in 3 years, she has no other choice than to find a way of preventing the disaster.
She will fall in love with a boy who would die with the rest of humanity.

YA (young adult) sci-fi:

A girl is born surrounded by scientists of different nationalities. She is the Plant, an upgrade in the software (we call reality [The Matrix hurr durr]) that will activate when she's 16. This will not only "upgrade" our collective consciousness--it will also overwrite the old code by killing everyone.

The girl becomes aware of the stuff when she's 11, due to her thoughts having an uncanny tendency to become reality, and will fall in love with a boy when she's 13. Since the boy would die in 3 years, she has no other choice than to find a way of preventing the disaster.

A man who is starving to death in a post-fallout wasteland is picked up by a band of raiders. Believeing he is going to die, the man finds a guitar that the raiders scavenged and begins to play it. The raiders find out about his talent and accept him into their group because nobody else has musical talent. The musician is cared for in the camp and is happy with his new life until he begins to see the crueler side of his hosts. He discovers that they are selfish looters and pillagers who take what they need and destroy all else. He then becomes torn: will he go out into the wasteland and die scavenging in the dirt, or will he stay amongts the band of butchers and live, relinquishing his humaniy in the process?

A narrative of a mass murderer. The story itself isn't that out there, really basic story. However, the story is told in different time orders, rather than chronologically, and from various character's vantages.

A Post-modernist view on a 2nd American Civil War and the effects of American collapse worldwide.

>>2010848
>13 year old relationship
>lasting more than a few months
>2011

>>2010985
that's creative but the protagonist sounds very "goody-good", which might feel off in the setting...
Like hasn't his experiences hardened him at all?

>>2011007

She wouldn't necessarily have to resemble the average 13 year old girl. If the relationship would last 3 years, then it would seem like "true love" (whatever that is, but you get the point).

>>2011009
I'm having a tough time deciding where to go with this one. The musician can't survive on his own and doesn't have any practical talent aside from music; I want him to be anchored to the raiders and to be content with what they do for fear of opposing them and being cast out (he is cowardly, in other words). When (or if) he decides to leave them, it will be a sign of couage grown. You make a very good point though; i really hadn't considered how commonplace such things as murder and the like would become in a wasteland. I guess i was reminded of that bit in The Road when the father and son come across the cannibals' meat farm in the cellar and how repulsed they were

Detective series about a fetus that solves crimes

An ancient but handsome vampire tries to make up for his cannibalistic nature by becoming a storm chaser and trying to stop tornado systems from destroying Midwestern farm communities. It's basically Twilight meets Twister.

>>2011035
I dunno.

I'm not a fan of post-apocalyptic stories myself. I guess I have a hard time suspending belief on such a scenario, where mankind has been so devastated that there are only roaming gangs etc. There has always been some kind of organized society, and I have no doubt that it would continue to be so. The musician would probably work somehow; maybe he would be a medic or some such. Is it really possible that everyone will devolve into roaming gypsies?

Anyway, if one doesn't think about that stuff, then I like the story and I think that it leaves enough room for the character to evolve, like you already alluded, when you said that "When (or if) he decides to leave them, it will be a sign of courage grown."

>>2011066
*disbelief

>>2011066
Thanks the input!

>>2011004
I got a better idea. How about the South wins the civil war with the help of skinhead Afrikaner time travelers and it turns out that the Union was secretly run by Reptilian aliens and then halfway through the story CSA controlled Washington DC gets transported through time and space to 1500's era Poland.
I think I have the next great American novel on my hands.

>>2011109
sorry Harry Turtledove already did that exact plot, it was published by Baen Books, on the cover there's a picture of a guy wearing the Confederate Flag as a cape stabbing an alien with a longsword while a statuesque redhead is standing behind him and then in the sky two flying pickup trucks duel with an airship piloted by Nazi Teddy Roosevelt.

Post-semi-apocalyptic novel. Takes place after a catastrophic collapse of economy and government, and a very limited nuclear weapons exchange. The protagonist is a young man who was just released from the military due to an injury in Afghanistan. His only remaining relative is his disabled grandfather, who has alzheimers. Their community is pretty much abandoned and the countryside has pretty much devolved into a dangerous place.

The story would focus on the man literally carrying his grandfather on his back to Nevada, while fending off bandits, cannibals, and the elements. He resolves to get his grandfather to permanent safety, despite people along the trail telling him to give up and despite the fact that his grandfather may not even remember who he is.

The man and his grandfather would make it to Nevada, but the grandfather would sacrifice himself so that the man could escape when they are attacked by bandits. The man would return later and bury his grandfather.

Much later, the man returns with his son, now part of a group of rangers similar to the Fallout series NCR Rangers. Mediation on commitment to family and the nature of sacrifice.

Does this sun too much like The Road?

>>2011151
More too much New Vegas in my opinion.

>>2011147
Baen makes the best fucking books. I'm not even joking.
Pic related.

A man goes to cuba in 1953, hired to protect a visting US congressman. Along the way he punches Hemingway in the face and gets hired by the CIA to kill castro, says nah fuck that shit then caps some dudes who messed with his ho, then he goes back to Arkansas.

>>2011159
Yeah.
>South West desert
>save dad
It's the two modern Fallouts.

fish attack a nuclear submarine

A girl who was kidnapped when she was 12 and forced into prostitution escapes his captor, a sadistic pimp with a streetwise bordering on sixth sense, by running into a church located in the middle of a nameless, and rather dark and sinful city.

A young priest grants her a hiding place. It starts like your run-off-the-mill herp derp opposites fall in love story, but then the priest's evil side begins to show... The girl, posing as a nun, will have to fulfill all kinds of perverse tasks (not necessarily sexual in nature) if she wants his new master to keep his secret.

>>2011615
That sounds absolutely awful. 0/10

>>2011630
Not that I disagree, but anything can be good if written well. It could work as a visual novel or a hentai manga.

>>2011631

Ok, what if a 16 year old girl experiments with marijuana, and starts questioning things like the Iraq War and even starts developing romantic feelings towards her best friend. Then, just when her mom and teacher have almost given up hope, she bumps into this young priest who tells her about Jesus, and she is saved.

When little Betty McDree says that she has been molested, her mother at first laughs. It is only something the kiddy has picked up off the television. But when, on sorting through the laundry, Mrs McDree discovers that a new pair of Betty's knickers are missing, she thinks again. Her mother takes little Betty to the police station and, to everyone's surprise, the little girl identifies Police Sergeant Brenda Coolidge as her attacker. A search is made of the Women's Police Barracks. What is found there is a seven-inch phallus and a pair of knickers of the kind used by Betty. All looks black for kindly Sergeant Coolidge. What can she do?

A subhuman species is discovered one day in the depths of the rainforest. The humans try to co-exist with these subhumans, but to no avail. The subhumans are extremely aggressive for apparently no reason. Nonetheless, the humans try to allow these human-like things into society. What follows is years of devastation and the working man having to always deal with the results of something these animals do. The name of these animals? Niggers.

>>2011661
10/10

Would read

>>2011680

The late Joe Orton thanks you kindly for giving him a 10/10

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093776/quotes

A matador runs after an escaped, harmed and angry as fuck bull through the streets of a Spanish village in 14th century Spain.

The bull manages to leave the town, but can't run fast due to bleeding and exhaustion. The matador keeps tracking it through a nearby forest, and is finally lead into an alternate reality where animals play twisted games using lost humans.

Tom has anal sex for the first time and accidentally gets a prolapse. Turns out though, that he is actually in a relationship with the presidents daughter! How could he possibly explain his protruding organs without fessing up that he cheated on her? Tom proceeds to devise a plan to get him to the hospital without attracting any attention. He is practically a celebrity, everyone would know who he was if he didn't have a plan. Finally, after minutes of thinking, Tom comes up with a brilliant idea. If he builds a time machine using his microwave and cell phone and text messages his past self, he would be able to avoid all the trouble his intestines are currently causing him. Tom needs finishes his time machine, and sends the text message back to his past self, BUT SOMETHING GOES TERRIBLE WRONG!! Tom didn't change the future, he accidentally traveled "to" the future. How will Tom ever manage to get back to his own time? To top all of his troubles off, he has a shape-shifting master of darkness, who is currently the ruler of the world, constantly trying to prevent him from going back. What did Tom do with that time machine, what did Tom text? How did he not only change his pink sock problem, but the entire future of the world itself. I guess you'll just have to purchase a copy to find out!

>>2011713
Reads like a blurb from a Palahniuk book.

>>2011713
>tom needs finishes
Damn you needs!!! I was typing in steam....

>>2011713
oh they made a movie just like this already

>>2011713

He's just summarizing the plot of "Trunk Butt" by Dorothy L. Sayers.

People knew he was a superstar from the time he was a fetus. The LED's took notice around the time of shooting "Pregger Fucks from Outer Space," a retro fitted best selling blu ray following the sexual escapades of a group of punk rock pregnant teens through the intergalactic cum dust of the greater andromeda galaxy. The director, Nies Van-Fist (a rodeo clown turned art house aficionado) had been experimenting with some nu-new-wave French Verite style improvisation. Madison (or as we now know her, Mother Mady) had just been directed the motivation of looking extremely constipated whilst thigh squeezing the last breath out of a 15 inch red dwarf mustard cock. It was mid this profound moment of Stanslavskian inspiration that our merciful protein sack burst forth.
The black ink umbilical chord sprung out like a vicious bi-curious anaconda, the pregnant belly of our grateful Mother imploded from the quantum light queef transfer of gravity (even the fastest high speed cameras couldn't pinpoint the exact moment at which the melon sack became a singular photon). At the end of our holy hundred foot hydra coil was the six pack body of a bearded toddler, quickly aged, it was pounding it's chest and reciting the 'Forty-Two Ad Commandments" (at this time merely slogans) of finer dining in the greater mid west.

[continued....]

[continued...]

As is told in the fifth of thirteen 'Great Books" ('A List of Recipes on Ontology and Jamaican Jerk Chicken'), Saint Van-Fist (in recalling the reflexive nature of his rodeo days) expressed with a single glare of recognition three of the 'Top Ten Thoughts for Acting Natural' (the other seven were simultaneously brewing in the new found timeless twelfth dimension cosmos of The Holy Fetus Mind). In an instant the fetus generated the most compelling quasi erotic kabuki dance of all time. Embracing the newly freed monster cock, the fetus enacted a semi tango fox trot that lasted for 23 hours. In the second hour footage of the ritual hit live and in the third hour 98 percent of the known (valuable) population assumed mesmerized at the momentous spiritual occasion.
Three hundred million lives were lost that day. It is written that the metaphysical nature of those most improvised grooves caused the weakest souls to erupt into paradoxical bliss. The souls left behind had naturally assumed a neo-non-pagan-monotheism for The Great Fetus, but, in his great and Gandhi-esque stoicism, he declared that all worship should cease. Naturally this only made us love him more.

I call it, "The Adventures of Pluto Nash".

The only scene is a kitchen in a 1950's, suburban home's kitchen. A misogynistic husband is unaware that his wife's child's father is actually their mailman.

I don't know, it was a loose idea I had.

>>2011755

You could really capture the feeling of the 1950s and their epoch-making civil rights struggles if you made the mailman black.

>>2011760
hi

After the recent surge of deadly baby asphyxiations in America the famous telepathic rock has been removed from the high security glass case again.

By addressing the rock Pentagon finds out that al-Qaida has been programming lullabies sung by honest tax-payers. CIA reverse played one lullaby, and indeed they found the Arabic words "strangle baby" (خنق الطفل).

What will the president do? Will it let the non-white mockers of freedom keep their mind-altering technologies (MATs) *and* their الوقود الأحفوري (fossil fuels)?

Little idea for a short story:

A man who works in a dull post office job struggles for the recognition of his family and colleagues. During paranoid-schizofrenic episodes, he secretly fantasizes about killing however crosses his path at the moment. He expresses his disturbing thoughts by talking to himself.

One of his colleagues overhears his ramblings and strikes a mocking pose. He snaps and acts on his fantasy by following her home after work and murdering her.

The main character has learned from all this that he should write his fantasies on paper instead of saying them out loud.

It's a self-referencing story since it is focalised through the main-character who wrote it. It is thus ambiguous if he in fact committed the murder or simply made up the whole story on paper.

Forgive my English, it is not my native tongue.

Pic related, character is slightly based on this book

A man lost in the wilderness eats his own hands and then starves to death.

A bored small town soccer mom gives a blowjob to her husband to relax him after he complains about stress. Then, after a miraculous healing of stress she gets a great idea: blowjob therapy.

She starts a little clinic with a couple girlfriends and soon her clinic is more popular than the local massage parlor.

Not everyone is happy, however, and therefrom springs conflict and boring but obligatory drama.

>>2011938
Maybe you could fashion it like Chekov, so the man thinks his hands are trying to rob and murder him.

>>2011951

Sounds like the plot for a best-seller if you appeal to the right audience.

Acquire money, disregard intellectualism.

If Frodo wanted to hide from Sauron, why didn't he just use the ring to turn invisible?

Started to post an outline of the novel I have been writing, realized it was too damn long, so I will keep it brief this time:

>revisionist historical fiction
>christianization of Scandinavia during Olaf II reign, mainly in Ogvaldsnes and Gudbrandsdal
>combined with a coming-of-age story
>village outcast, daughter of a seidrmann turned headsman
>father commits suicide, daughter gets banished from the village
>joins a band of outlaws
>gets captured, becomes a slave, poisons her christian owner, joins the pagan rebellion
>falls in the battle for Gudbrandsdal

>>2010590
I do hope you are not serious with the 'new Dan Brown' aspirations, but please do tell me, how can the knowledge of illegitimacy become dangerous in this day and age? Not judging, just genuinely curious.

>>2010620
I like it, but it has potential for loads of humour... will you use it? After all, horrors do not have to be entirely serious.

>>2011951

Reminds me of fight club for some reason, heh. If you made it absurd - not as in funny, but totally damn absurd, say, Vonnegut square power - it might fall into the 'so fucked up it's awesome' category.

(caption: rivelove niggers)

>>2011985
>>2011959
Thanks :)

>>expect feedback
>>be dissapointed

Well, back to study Spanish Linguistics!

>>2012016
Aww! Point me to your post, you persistent Anon, and I will try to be constrictive.

>>2012016
which one is yours?

>>2012022
constructive*. Sorry folks, typo.

damn how am i suppose to read and cretique all of this

>>2012016
>>2012023
samefag

>>2012022
>>2012023

Here's mine:
>>2011936

>>2011936
It might be interesting, I adore unreliable and self-justifying narrators. Would read that, gladly. Of course, we should not doubt the solidity of your research concerning psychology/psychiatry?

>>2012029
nope

>>2010141
Write it, definitely. I like how this idea continues the tradition of medieval 'fairy lands' where the time flows slower than in the outside world.

>>2012040

Research and preparation is always an important part of writing for me.

I'm trying to figure out how to get info on boring post office jobs and how the whole post system works here in Belgium.

It is not easy. Did anyone here have any idea were to find sources other than Google and actual employees?

American Psycho, except it takes place under the sea.

>>2012049
Not from there, but maybe try to get into a vocational training in one of those places? Then you would know anything first-hand.

>>2012056

Believe it or not, it is not that easy getting a job there as a 19 year old linguistics and literature student.

Fucking Belgium, man.

>>2012060
Whoa damn! You could get a part-time job there even here in Poland, where everyone complains about the unemployment rate! Damn, just damn.

>>2011980
It's more about the fall of that society to this modern liberal world, exactly because these things don't matter anymore. They are trying to get the power back and that's what is going to drive the story, mainly.

Ah who gives a fuck, I don't even like this idea all that much, I posted here afterall. Take it if you will.

The story of a man who goes fishing and accidentally hooks the plugs holding in reality. He pulls the plug and himself out through his own ear. Looking up from the palm of his own hand he talk to himself, thinking that God has taken the image of SUPER HIM so that he wouldn't be scared.

The larger him after cleaning out his ears, wonders if this thing that came out is any reason to go see the doctor.

>>2012078

Sounds lovely, go for it!

Have you thought about what he will say to himself.

Will you take the philosophical, existential route or keep it light-hearted and absurd?

Would be nice if you managed to put in theme's of existential absurdism and keep your style humorous, like Beckett.

>>2012096
You see I am now confused.... I think you are making jest of me...

but. Absurd, has to be.

Don't know if they can talk with each other, decibel levels and all...

>>2012078

That's actually pretty fucking good. Sure, it'd be easy to get wrong in the details, and the details are what would matter (I'm thinking about the conversation they would have in particular), but as a general idea, its actually interesting...which is something I very rarely say in good faith on /lit/.

>>2012100

You see I figured if a character has a conversation with it's bigger self, it might as well be a existential one. That is almost to be expected from such strange situations.

I am not making fun of you at all. Just trying to be supportive. (The decibel levels require the least suspension of disbelief here. So I don't think that should bother you that much.)

>>2012111
You are probably right, it would be more interesting if they had a conversation with each other.

Even still needs (in my view) to be absurd.

WAs thinking decibel levels, because th miniture would sound like a mosquito, and the giant a volcano/earthquake. I liked the idea of them having to try and find a way to communicate.

>>2012107
Thank you for the compliment.

In all honesty I thought of this idea on the spot seeing the thread. Hence the reason for my apprihension towards compliments.

>>2012111

I suppose if the character believed his bigger self to be God, then the general theme would likely be existential - I know they are the sort of questions that I would ask should I meet God.

What I find interesting is the other possibilities the idea engenders. For instance, the fact that the character is really talking to himself has all sorts of interesting philosophical implications - after all, an atheist would claim that all spiritual communions are really conversations with the self; so it functions as a sort of extended metaphor for religiosity as viewed from a secular perspective... there are probably better ways to go then that, but the more plurality you allow, the better...

I sort of imagined, instead of a conversation, the small guy could have a lengthy speech, saying all the things to 'God' he always wanted to say, asking all the things he wanted to ask. But the bigger him doesn't hear him, or even recognize that he is more than a bit of dirt or earwax; the situation invites satire: the audacity of expecting a personal God to hear one's petitions, while at the very same time, being that God, one cannot even realize there is a supplicant in one's presence. I don't know how I'd play it, but there are certainly possibilities to be literary with it.

>>2012117

Your interest in the actual practical details of their situation remind's me of Swift... I think that's what made me think of satire.

I've an idea for a novelette. It's about a man who's fiance commits suicide. He retreats to his summer home, somewhere on the edge of a great forest. he is slowly drawn in by the power of an ancient pagan god that lives in the heart of the woods. The God promises to bring his wife back in exchange for sacrifices. The man is granted the power to turn into a great beast. In the end we find out that he was simply a mad man. There is no forest God. He didn't even kill anyone. There was no fiance either, it was just some actress he once saw at the theatre. I'll tell it from the man's perspective

>>2012124
>>2012128

Thank you for constructive input. Very helpful, has made me think a lot more.

I agree that the details are going to be a near impossible task to get right. Lots of trial and error seems to be the best way forward.

I thought the same thing about the miniture giving a speach, fits well.
Now..... the impossible part, the conclusion...

>>2012142
how would the reader know it was all an halucination?

>>2012166

Ah right. He'd be found dead of starvation by people that went searching for him. The last part would be statements from his colleagues/friends, given to the local constable.

>>2012166

You could start having the pages be different colors, subtle at first, but then doing like turquoise and like magenta polka-dots, and then when the hallucination gets really weird you could, like, stop using full sentences and instead just write words like GOONEY BIRD in crayon and then draw a really trippy picture of a gooney bird and color it in with really trippy colors.

It worked in "House of Leaves" anyway.

>>2012142

Kinda depressing but I like it.

An upside down world. A humorous setting where good is bad, bad is good, right is left, old is new, funny is serious and serious is funny. Inspired by Groucho Marx, Addams Family, Terry Pratchet, Douglas Adams, brother Coen and cartoons in general.

I feel like this premise can be complete shit or absolutely great, so I have to make it right.

>>2012142
Make it so the fiancee is real, and still alive, and mind-controlling him. Then you have an allegory for marriage that will make the religious types get up in arms, virtually guaranteeing good sales.

Alternate history - SF

Roman empire / Byzantium and Scythia are in a war over uranium deposits in Ukraine. The Romans are making progress and the emperor is coming to visit the front. Main character is a Roman colonel trying to make general but never gets the promotion because of his non Roman ethnicity.

Two people share a prison cell. One is a poet and the other a young man that admires him. They are of different nationalities and the poet offers to teach the young man his language. The young man accepts and learns the language over the years. He also memorizes the poet's new poems, what would be his masterpiece. The poet dies and after many years the other man gets free. He tries to publish the dead poet's work but finds out that the language he learnt does not exist.

>>2010241

Spot on.

>>2012367
serious potential

Novella. The setting is the 1930's, the main character is a detective - very cliche, I know. The story would be about a criminal, a murderer, who is simply beyond the detective's abilities, as well as those of his partner or anyone else. The victims die in horrifying, eerie ways, but each case is very emotional in its own way. The overall tone would be one of deep emotion. The main character, the detective, is old but instead of being the cliche, callous veteran with a drinking problem, he is becoming more and more sensitive and philosophical throughout the story. In the end the criminal is never caught. I don't know what would happen to the main character. The whole thing would be very focused on a certain feel and tone as opposed to being "deep and edgy." Between the bizarre murder scenes and the mood setting, the visuals would be surreal and beautiful.

>>2010141
Me again. I've made a start and I'm doing it as an Angela Carter pastiche. Is my purple prose working?

Bald, broken, bent, the Widower pulled open his curtains to find encroached upon his village an awful carnival. His view had been obscured entirely – the black-and-white wood-beamed houses, the tiny sandstone chapel, and the lighthouse striking out upon the disappearing cliffs had all been replaced by a tumult of lorries and tents. The trucks were laid bare, deploying their rides of strange functions, and the fabric of the tents – red and white as if jousting were about to begin – flapped in a wind implacable as time.

Blast it.

He was old as the cliffs. Age had swallowed him, like a useless road amid the undergrowth. And yet, age was all he had – his home was a collage of it. He saw it in the photographs, his wife's head cocked back in laughter as she sat atop a carousel horse, and in the dark wood piano where he dueted with his daughter. She had long since moved away, and she had done so without even bearing him a grandchild.

You are my dialysis machine. Your branches bear fruit and imprison me.

>>2012473

Really, it would be a fresh take on an extremely old cliche.

>>2012367
Would you portray it as devastating or as an anti-climax? I vote for the former.

>>2012367
That's the best idea I've seen so far. Write it!

I've posted many ideas on this thread but wouldn't actually use any of them after sharing them with the world.

I still need a good idea (not asking for one, just sayan'). I feel restless when I don't have a writing project. Maybe I should watch movies or animu and read moar for inspiration.

>>2012660
I've posted poems here many times and I was sort of plagiarised once. The chance of plagiarism on /lit/ is actually pretty small, I think. I wouldn't worry.

Plu, if you someone could give me their thoughts on my opening, it would be much appreciated. I'm this guy >>2012478

Rewrite the great gatsby in a world where only robots exist as ai programs.

YOU CAN'T EXPLAIN THAT

>>2012478
Too much description and purple prose for my taste. It's tiring to read... I would begin by introducing the characters by their names, and at least use some kinda short and memorable opening sentence before starting to batter the reader's consciousness with endless adverbs. The closer the prose is to real understandable speech, the more I probably end up savoring it. A lil' bit of flowery description here and there never hurts.

Of course some people love books like Blood Meridian, whether they make sense or not. As long as they're artsy like that.

>>2012660
Don't worry, your ideas probably aren't good enough to steal.

>>2012697
It's not that I'm seriously worried about that; they just weren't good enough in the first place. Otherwise I wouldn't have posted them.

These are mine (I admit that a few were trolls):

>>2011951
>>2011916
>>2011696
>>2011650
>>2011615
>>2010848
>>2010529

My story is about a man who's always on the run, because he's being pursued by a creature that only he can see. He wanders from place to place and moves on whenever the creature gets close. It doesn't seem to be in a real hurry because it always walks, so the guy can evade it by taking the train or a carriage but can never stay too long in one place. He can feel when it's getting closer and lives in constant fear.

His running takes him all around the world and he is witness to mankind's folly. He is witness to wars, bigotry, mass hysteria and all sorts of other lovely things.

In the end, the demon catches up to him. Turns out the man had dropped his hat and the demon was trying to return it. The "moral" would be that the human soul can be very dark and that we must not turn a blind eye to this fact.

Short story collection about all the people in town that you don't notice. The shop workers, the mailmen, the alcoholics, the tramps and the neckbeards.
Each gets their own story.

series of vignettes from different family member's points of view— each scene describing some sort of disfunction. In these scenes characters struggle to physically tie things together— shoelaces, gift bows, &c. Narrative disjointed and nonconfluential

>>2012690
Yeah, I'm trying to imitate Angela Carter who described her own prose as purple. She does it well in my opinion, but I'm not entirely sure how to go about that. It's very easy to do badly. Thanks for your critique by the way.

Here's part of The Erl-King, I think the most beautifully written story from The Bloody Chamber:

There were crisp husks of beechmast and cast acorn cups underfoot in the russet slime of dead bracken where the rains of the equinox had so soaked the earth that the cold oozed up through the soles of the shoes, lancinating cold of the approach of winter that grips hold of your belly and squeezes it tight. Now the stark elders have an anorexic look; there is not much in the autumn wood to make you smile but it is not yet, not quite yet, the saddest time of the year. Only, there is a haunting sense of the imminent cessation of being; the year, in turning, turns in on itself.

>>2012747
That's a beautiful and expertly written excerpt, but I believe that the story in question could still be tiring if it keeps on like that. I haven't read anything by her, so can't say for sure.

I dunno, I guess I'm not the best critique when it comes to this particular style, since I haven't read many works written solely in purple prose (except for the LOTR, but the story and the world more than made up for it).

Ok here i have won. Hitler wins WW2.

From then, glorious national socialism.

>>2012762
critic*

shit

>>2012747

That's a horrible excerpt. I mean, look at it. It sounds terrible, and it's so ridiculously meandering in its descriptions.

Obviously a matter of taste.

>>2012367
>>2010117
These are two very creative ideas that I would like to see come to fruition

A boy walks into a barber his father has taken him to for his first shave. The boy sits down, the father leaves and the barber starts to shave. Without warning he begins to cut and lift at the boys face, but the boy feels no pain. The barber begins to sound off each of the seven sins, making the necessary adjustments to the boys face to display the appropriate expression. Afterwards the boys face is unmarked and he is clean shaven, and the barber cannot meet his eyes. The father returns to pick him up and meets him waiting at the door.

I was thinking of having the barber pause at Envy, as if he didn't want to carry out the task. Envy being the most destructive of all seven, imo.

No, i don't hold to a faith.

>>2012708
I like the part about the demon chasing the dude and trying to return his hat, but the moral and parts about wars and hysteria and shit are preachy and irritating.

>>2012747
That excerpt is too purple. Or maybe, just maybe, it's not purple enough.

>>2012367
This is a really good premise.

>>2012803
Carter gets purpler. As to whether it's better or worse, you be the judge. Check out The Lady of the House of Love:

At last the revenants became so troublesome the peasants abandoned the village and it fell solely into the possession of subtle and vindictive inhabitants who manifest their presences by shadows that fall almost imperceptibly awry, too many shadows, even at midday, shadows that have no source in anything visible; by the sound, sometimes, of sobbing in a derelict bedroom where a cracked mirror suspended from a wall does not reflect a presence; by a sense of unease that will afflict the traveller unwise enough to pause to drink from the fountain in the square that still gushes spring water from a faucet stuck in a stone lion's mouth. A cat prowls in a weedy garden; he grins and spits, arches his back, bounces away from an intangible on four fear-stiffened legs. Now all shun the village below the chateau in which the beautiful somnambulist helplessly perpetuates her ancestral crimes.

An unemployed midget (in his thirties) disguises as a young child and plays with young kids in a sandbox. Since he is suffering from a rare disease that sometimes cause him to black out and do random things, once, during such an episode he this isn't going anywhere.

A little kid has fragile bone disease and will not see double digits. The kid's last wish is to go to Disneyland. But when he get's there, Goofy falls on him and kills him because his feet are too big! The perspective shifts to the teenager in the Goofy suit and how he deals with his guilt.