/lit/ - Literature

Pages 1 and 2.

Pages 3 and 4.

Page 5, last one.

>>4123303
Consult rule 6. Btw only clowns and acrobats use stilts, get them the fuck out of your writing.

Interesting OP, but first let me ask, what are you looking for? Feedback on the content, or the formatting? It's unclear.

For what it's worth, the first thing that comes to mind is that your paragraphs have a lot of whitespace between them. If you give me a second I'll give you some screenshots of my 5"x8" formatted books for comparison.

>>4123322
Feedback on the content itself would be appreciated, but the formatting does need work.

While you are ripping off of Lovecraft, it's actually less purple and flows better than his writing. I haven't read the whole thing tho, don't got the stamina right now.

>>4123325
You have an interesting cadence with your words and I found it to be an interesting read.

Your formatting is kind of off though. Ragged edges always look odd to me; can you try it with justified font, and also with hyphenation so that things like:

the layout of the city was
>dat huge gap
incomprehensible at best.

Other than that... well, yeah, you can write. It's a little slow to get started; I'd recommend putting a 'hook' right at the beginning, a one-liner just to bring the reader in.

In pic related, for example, in the prologue the first line is "I was born dead." It's a way to immediately grab the reader's attention.

You can also see pic related for an example on how to format (note the uneven margins; it's a print book, and that's where the gutter goes).

I used Scrivener but you can use Word just as easily.

This is really just personal preference but I don't really like when a story begins like that, "I do not wish to recount my memories..." it's too close to some crappy creepypasta saying "What I'm about to tell you is true, and never go to that place!"

I like to start something write in the middle of something else, like in the Shining, the very first sentence grabs you. "Jack Torrance thought, officious little prick."

>>4123344
Aye, I thought the same thing, that the story needed a hook.

>>4123339
Oh yeah when I say hyphenation I don't mean that you should manually do it, your software should be doing that for you.

>>4123351
Got it. I went back and justified everything, and it looks so much better now.

>>4123353
I would also recommend not indenting the first paragraph of a chapter (stylistic but a common choice), and I would strongly recommend putting much less white space between paragraphs, none if you can get away with it. Take a look at the screenshot I linked earlier; it has no extra spacing and it looks like a book.

Extra white space looks unprofessional and "internet published", simply because print books can't have so much paper being wasted on nothing. It sucks because having those extra space is good, but people are used to it. You have to meet reader expectations with these things. The bottom line is... if it looks unprofessional, it probably is.

>>4123353
Also if you're justified remember that you need to watch for rivers in your text, lines where your words look like this.

You fix them by adding a return after the line (it happens on the last line of a paragraph; if it's happening elsewhere your renderer is fucked).

>>4123374
Uhh sorry the formatter stripped it out. Rivers are where your words____get____really____spaced____out.

>>4123303
Stop using the word "place" in every goddam sentence, you noob.

>>4123410
To be honest, it was just a lazy way of not having to come up with a name for that goddamn city.

OP, firstly, never start with "I'm going to tell you a story, but I'm not going to like telling it."
Or really anything of the sort. Just start telling the story.

Unfortunately, ADD is making it too difficult to read anymore. Sorry.

Your writing sounds like the voiceover that comes in every few minutes whenever Family Guy does a cheeky episode in which iconic or historical figures are replaced by characters from the show.

>>4123534
I'm going to assume that's bad.

>>4123303
I liked it. It was interesting. Your formatting's fucked, and the whole "I don't want to tell this story" thing is played out and ought to be dropped, but it was definitely worth a read.

OP here, I was wondering: what genre would you guys say this is? I was shooting for horror, but I think I may have missed.

>>4123595
I was definitely getting a Lovecraftian horror vibe. The whole "unspecified location of unspeakable eldritch horror" practically spelled it out it out as far as I was concerned, and I think you hit the mark there.

I know you're posting looking for feedback, and to be honest, that's the first step towards becoming a better writer. I really encourage you to keep writing: you've got a tight vocabulary and a quite pleasant cadence to the way you write, and I think you can do well at it.

I've been writing full time for over a year now and since I started I've become so much better at what I do. Part of that was because I eagerly sought out feedback and got a lot of criticism which I took on board. I still have a lot to learn, make no mistake, and I'm determined to keep learning, keep getting feedback, keep making mistakes and getting them fixed. That's the journey.

A lot of writers never get past that, are too precious to have their work publicly critiqued, so I really, genuinely celebrate you and wish you the best.

Good luck OP. Let me know when you're done with publishing (you can email me: dave at lacunaverse.com).

>>4123332
agreed.

i guess if you're aiming to ripoff LLovecraft you're doing a damn good job. This isn't something i would read though.

>>4123303
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=OsCmh-LHg0s#t=85