/lit/ - Literature

bump?

I'm still trying to work out how to start it.

>In the middle of a conversation between two minor characters
>Backstory on the world (it's a rather bizarre Sci-fi)
>Start with a fluent description of the protag's appearance and personality

>>3904808
I'd go with the conversation. My story is also a really bizarre sci fi, but I start it off in this dull little office, and eventually describe the characters in the office, the company itself, and how its role in the sci-fi world. This way, the reveal of the strange sci fi world is slowly shown.

The face was hideous. Everything about it was wide, wider than it was tall, as if crushed by its own weight. Yet, while under this weight, the eyes remained open, and the lips were curved upward in a massive, toothy smile, which glimmered in the scorching hot desert sun. It was hard to tell where the skull ended and where the rolls began, but that was much easier to deduce than the rest of the person. The head flowed down into the rest of the body, as if it did not even have a neck. The girth of the figure was immense, at least twice the width of an average human being, and that's from shoulder to shoulder. Three people standing abreast would come about even with the distance between the back and the horizon of the belly. The person would be incapable of seeing their feet, no matter the circumstances. Thankfully, the thing was clothed; although scarcely. The woman had to have plenty of money and power to spare if she had a figure like that, and she didn't go cheap in this area of her appearance. Fine, unwrinkled, perfect silk wrapped around her bosom and underneath, leaving the belly exposed. The belly was supported by a golden accessory, gripping her natural waistline, from which rich cloth went underneath her. In her hand, a massive golden staff, topped with two prongs holding an orb. Her golden tone was absolute; if she were tossed to the golden sands, she would shimmer and gleam as a beacon by her bright, reflective smirk as it shone in the sun.

>>3904765
>slow spinning
>glean
>spotless glow
>dust resting on the air vent
>expect a condition
>on both sides of.. the room? the desk?
>color white
>only color were 4 other colors
hmmm

>>3904864
I thought it was clear that I meant both sides of the desk, since that was the last thing mentioned.
Good catch on the singular color, I meant colors. Every other criticism, I don't really get.

His name was Philip. Philip Marsupial. He was a match-head. At any moment he was going to be struck against the box. Then there would be fire. They'd like that. It would light up their rooms with his blood.

>>3904819
>scorching hot

>>3904872
Hot damn. Very nice.

>>3904872
>Philip Marsupial
Sounds like the name of a Pynchon character.

What's with all the references to temperature in this thread

I fucking loved waking life. +1

>>3904888
We all think we're hot shit.

>>3904890
The movie gets a bad rep for being nothing but entry level philosophy bullshit, but it actually has a really nice aesthetic and a really nice soundtrack, giving the whole thing a sweet atmosphere.

>>3904819
this is really dense, so much so that the little clever comparisons get smothered a little. Also didnt feel ANY awe with regard to that last line

>>3904765
"Terribly simple" doesnt tell me anything. Same with a few other descriptors here.

>>3904872
fucking love this

>>3904864
Fuck, I meant glare.

>>3904941
I can see what you mean with the last paragraph. I wanted to make it hit harder, but really the only thing I can think of to make it powerful would be to replace "bright reflective smirk" with "monstrous shit-eating grin" and I'm not a fan of foul language. Also, when you say "dense," do you mean as in, I change from topic to topic too quickly, or the paragraph is large?

>>3905007
im not that guy but your prose is thick, overly verbose, and uninteresting.

>>3904941
I thought that the explanations after "terribly simple" described what was so simple about the room...

>>3905007
>... the last paragraph
Dammit I meant sentence.

>>3905012
I wanted to describe a disgusting person in an appropriately disgusting amount of detail, but shit, uninteresting? Thanks for bringing that up.

“Charlie eat your supper!” my mom screamed. “Just a sec mum I'm on my iPod”. All of a sudden, I heard an explosion outside my window. I looked outside and saw a huge mushroom cloud covering the sky. It was an atomic bomb. “MUM!” I screamed. “THERE'S BEEN A NUCLEAR BOMB”. “HURRY DOWN HERE, CHARLIE” my mum screamed. I ran down the stairs. “into the bomb cellar” said my mum. I unlocked the lock I raced down into the metal room. My mum ran behind me. “Cover your ears it will be loud when the blast comes. “BOOOOOOMMMMMM” I covered my ears, but it still hurt. But then the heat wave came, and I could see the metal of the room melting. I knew that everything outside was gone and only the metal room was left. It was very hot, and I was sweating all over the place. My mum started crying and I hugged her. “It will be OK mum” I said to her, and patted her arm. She sniffled then said “Thanks, Charlie.” I guess you didn't need that supper after all. I smiled and laughed, and for one brief moment, we were the best friends in the world.

>>3905128
Needs more chocolate factory

Is this just for English or what?

Off the coast of the Atlantic Ocean once stood a humble village filled with humble people. It was named “Braith” after the late wife of a relatively successful general named Rhys Eifion, who was declared Lord of the tiny scrap of land after successful wartime service, and who drank himself to death on all fours with his head facing the speckled green sea and his back facing the oppressive, vapory wilderness of the place he came to despise the more he tried to not to.

definitely tentative, but whatever. It's what I got right now

>>3904874
>scorching hot

>>3904918
It's entry level philosophy for sure, but it's still makes a lot of valid points. It definitely got me interested in a lot of new ideas back when i first watched it in high school. And yeah, the visuals and soundtrack are fucking amazing

>>3904819
>face hideous
>crushed weight
>eyes open
>toothy smile
>hot desert sun
>where the... ended and ... began
>girth immense
>average human
>standing abreast
>no matter...circumstances
>clothed scarcely
>money power
>figure like that
>perfect silk
>belly exposed
>massive staff
>tone absolute
>shimmer gleam
>shone sun

>>3905227
I liked it though, just joking with you lol

everyone does those

Orange guts burst forth from the frog's chest, skin a tight winter coat and the scalpel an eager zipper. Little Manilla adjusted the blade in her hand and completed the cut from his permanent frown to long-gone tail. She could still see traces of adventurousness and animal instict in his glazed eyes. The quaint masculinity of his buff legs was not betrayed even by his death. Two more incisions perpendicular to the original and his abdomen lay open, a kitchen cabinet full of miniature organs.

What a shame, she thought.

A man sat in an office chair eating a mildewy sandwich from home. He chewed listlessly as he looked at an email from his wife, contemplating how he would extricate the eggshells clogging the insinkerator back home, and also how he might go about extricating his esophagus from his throat. He chewed it over, scrolling.

Chapter One: Recovered Memories
“I never intended it to end this way, honestly. I always wanted to be the one to end me, not some enemy on the battlefield, and definitely not some disease in old age. I wanted to see as much of this world as I possibly could, and I damn well succeeded, not to mention I met a hell of a lot of interesting people on the way. But, to at one point, find yourself invincible compared to all others, especially when you literally are, you take on an air of overconfidence that, at one point, will kill you. And while there are exceptions to every rule, the one to this one is still death, but of bad luck. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and after doing so much, and altering the world in so many ways, well, before I finish that, I've got a better analogy. If a king accompanies his soldiers onto the battlefield, even for only one fight, it is very possible that the king will die. In the chess game that is survival, I was in fact, the king, and went on into almost every battle and was fine for a long time. Then I fell out of it, and when I finally jumped back in, well, yeah. So here I am, in what should be the arctic circle, in the middle of a sandstorm rather than a blizzard, laying on my back as my soul literally ebbs away through the gaping hole in my chest. Blood means nothing, at least not for me in my condition. I sigh once, seeing my time is done here. Even though I said I didn't want it to end this way, I'm almost glad it did. I expected myself to end me, I expected myself to be the only one good enough to end my life. And I'd be right, too, if my actions over time proved anything. Almost entirely because I impacted this world so much before my end, I'll continue, on sheer willpower, influencing it, even if it's through other people. People that didn't know me. But, I'm getting ahead of myself, and while I like to think of myself as bold, I will take the stance of humility, being that I finally have been bested. So now, with these words, written with my own blood left drying on this page, and a dagger through my heart, I bid thee farewell my fellow traveler. Every event, every action, every thought and movement are all synchronously connected in ways that we can't even begin to foresee. And, no matter how well we may know the lands, isn't that just what we all are? Travelers?”

>>3905378
way later on in Chapter 16:

The three of them stopped. They all felt something ahead, and he had a feeling that he knew what it was.
From within the nihilic ebon of the shadows before them came the sound of slow, rhythmic footsteps, a light echo of boot on stone. A perpetual tingle created by electricity in the air.
Death.
The God emerged into the light where they could better discern his features.
At first he looked strikingly similar to Oculus in many regards. He wore all black, and a black trench coat very similar to the one Hikari usually sported.
Slicked back black hair, almost greasy looking, but not quite.
Light facial hair on his jaw and chin, a mustache.
The cold, piercing eyes of an ancient entity.
He held his arms out to his sides with a smile in greeting.
His vibrantly white aura from before was now a deep black. It was neither menacing nor friendly. Just like Hikari's.
The realization then struck him that many of the features that could be psychically discerned from him were strikingly similar to those of Hikari.
A breeze drifted through the hall. A permanent shift in consciousness. A change.
The soft wind hit his skin like a cold kiss of death, and bore the same magnitudes as thunder, and perhaps even the calm before the storm.
The storm.
What was the nature of the storm that was about to unleash its wrath? Would it pour a gentle rain? Or would it loose its might through hail and lightning?
The storm dropped its arms to its sides and proceeded to move closer to him.
The God's voice was hearty and strong.
“Travis. Tell your mistress that I've begun to awaken from Her Sleep.” He moved closer yet. Neither he, Maya, nor Alexandria moved. The God put his hand on his shoulder and leaned in close, putting his mouth close to his ear. His whisper struck him as thunder would: “And tell her that she will be mine again.”
The God passed him, and the tingle resided.
He looked over his shoulder. He had dissapeared.
The storm had passed as but a gentle rain.

Feedback is appreciated.

Sarah? Is that you? Yes it's me Josh. It was always me.

It felt as if a hole in the shape of a person was punched out of my reality. And I had stepped into it. All that I did was encompassed by this vacancy. My actions meant nothing. It was all thin. Grimly flat, there was no depth to anything. My world sank to absolutes. There was that which I could see, and there was the future. My fear of the unseen was my only true feeling then. I tried to hide it underneath all the garbage. But as much as blowing soap bubbles does little to wash a car, this did little to conceal my fear.

>Looks the current history
>Since it's about an android, the first paragraph is a single line.
Fuck that, i will put the first non-computer paragraph.
>-
¿Donde esta?
Pero quizas mas importante.
¿Quien es?
¿Que es?(
Soy tuyo
)Recuerda de forma vaga haber estado en un espacio sin ningun tipo de sensacion por mucho tiempo, luego de eso un fragmento vacio y entonces el despertar, pero aparte de eso nada, negrura resistiendose a ser iluminada.Sin embargo posee algunos pocos conocimientos que se acercan mas a algo instintivo que a conocimientos tangibles.
Sabe que es el modelo final xr8, aunque no de que.Sabe que es un androide pero no conoce la definicion completa de "androide", sabe como utilizar sus miembros y que tiene que alimentarse.
Esta en una capsula de cristal, con una niebla suave que se diluye rapidamente, luego de un par de minutos esta se divide en dos y el cae a una sustancia esponjosa que lo absorve completamente antes de disolverse, limpiandolo y evitando que se haga daño contra el suelo.Suspirando, se equilibra y prueba sus miembros.
>-
Also sorry for no translation, my english level isn't enough to translate it.

>>3905416
>It felt as if a hole in the shape of a person was punched out of my reality.

>>3905425
do you not like this? i don't understand.
is it bad?

>>3905429
>And I had stepped into it.
At least make it one sentence, if you have to write that shit at all.

>>3905416
I think you were heading in the right direction on the wrong track with that first line. Starting the next line with an article is rather unforgivable unless i'ts stylistic and consistent. After that you made me visualize a 3-dimensional plane. Totally abstract.

Try describing how you feel in terms of your body, not some spacey representation of body or being.

The closing line was a bit punchier but it just seems silly astride all that grandiose postulation.

>>3905432
okay.
but what do you think of it as a whole. like aside from that weird choice in sentence structure?

>>3905445
I don't know because I stopped reading after those horrible lines.

The sounds of our footsteps, however soft, will echo across time and space. When they reach the end, they will fade into nothing, into a whirlwind of chaos: the absence of not only light and life but anything else that could possibly constitute something, any conventional recurring pattern with which we understand one another (one two three four five a b c d e and so on etc. ad intfinitum) or anything of an opposing profile, of the kind of chaos which is organized chaos: the anarchy of creation or the ascension of entropy: the onward march of (un)natural forces (as long as they are forces at all), which is to say, anything at all which is anything at all. There will not be black or white or anything of the sort because not only is color absent but also absent is the idea of color, and of anything else which could describe in any way shape or form. This will be known as the purging of adjectives, succeeded, of course, by the purging of nouns (verbs will have, at this point, been nonexistent for quite some time, leading to a latent passivity of every conscious entity at the end of all things, which in turn will lead to the prevention of the prevention of the end of all things itself, even though the end of all things will be, in fact, the beginning of all things and activity and description and such, the end and the beginning not only being in a cyclical srtucture but also, as far as parts of speech go, a sort of Matryoshka doll construction: the verbs go first then the adjectives and finally the nouns and they will return [not in the since that they will ever really be gone] in the reverse order) which will be the end of all things entirely. And yet, there was never nothing, and there never will be. So we must conclude, in light of the irrefutable evidence that the various parts of speech will meet their ends and beginnings in quick Matryoshkan succession, that nouns never have nor ever will cease to exist at all because their descruction and creation will occur in the same instant of time, or two instants so close in proximity to one another as to be indistinguishable, and the infinitestimal (and yet infinite) space between them will be filled not by nothing, as we might presume, but a single noun which will have escaped its own purging and exists simply as a constant on all levels and will continue to do so during the instant between endings and beginnings for all of time, a noun the identity of which will always be a mystery and the face of which will forever be shrouded in mist and shadow so that only its nose protrudes, obtusely and inanely for all of time, leading, of course, to the widespread belief that this noun is, in fact, a nose in its entirety: that not only is the nose the sacredest of protrusions but that smell is the sacredest of senses and can invoke in one emotions unmatched by those brought on by the pathos of sight or sound or touch.

>>3905450
Not only this, but that said nose will rise up alone and grow and rule us as our king while Ralph Fiennes looks on in envy. But today, we do not belong to any nose. Noses do, in fact, belong to us, and we would do well to remember it. We would do well to remember as well that our footsteps, however soft, can crush a whole family of bugs (not that we’d think about it) and their screams will echo across space and time just the same as the sounds of said steps. And that screams are screams, no matter what they come from, no matter in ecstasy or agony, in sickness or in health, yada yada yada.

I love my grandmother. I did until the moment she dropped dead. It was inevitable, really. I should have seen it coming. Not the manner in which she died – falling down the stairs. No, her death in general troubled me. She was old as grandmothers tend to be. I was not ignorant to death in all its forms. I’d had pets that had passed on, a cat and a fish both. My father’s father died in my lifetime too. But those were different. I was too young when my grandfather bit the dust. And I liked my cat despite never loving him. The fish was ultimately of no consequence to anyone but my father upon whom the task to dispose of it fell the very evening I won it at a carnival ring-toss. My grandmother’s dying was a complete shock to me. She was in admirable health for someone so advanced in age. And I loved her. That was the part that hurt. In our lives, we needed each other. My mother had died in childbirth with me and so both of us were at a loss. Fortunately, she became my mother for me and I played the role of child for her. She missed my mother of course, but I felt fine because I never really felt like I missed anything.

After the conversation with the investigators of the “Marin Velkov” case, I left the building and headed home. I was carrying the heavy bag and thinking about what I had just heard.
It was a quiet and cold November day. I couldn’t see any creatures on the streets. Only the houses’ chimneys erupting smoke kept reminding me that time hadn’t stopped and had not forgotten in which direction to go. I lived in a house at the other end of the town, which converted in a time unit is about 20 minutes away. A small town, indeed.
Dead. Flesh and blood turn into memories like boiling water into steam. Dead. If I lose these memories, Marin would be erased. He would appear as ink on some useless papers. Ink is all that is left from the living creature.
Home. The bag was full of clothes, which I left on the bed beside me. On the bottom of the large sack I spotted a few objects: a flashlight, a shaving kit, a toothpaste and a toothbrush, a wallet, two pens and a ragged book. The book made a big impression on me, because of its condition. A relic, that had dwelled in some dark basement for decades.
I was quite disappointed when I opened the book, because it lacked any text on the first few pages. The disappointment turned into curiosity when I first saw the ink steps, left by somebody’s pen. It looked like Marin took notes.


I had to translate it into English.