/lit/ - Literature

>>4899463

It's from a young adult novel I am hoping to sell. Basically this cult knows that the world is ending so they prepare these kids from birth donated by the government from orphanage shelters to train to be the best survivalists but only a few of them can win their place of surviving the apocalypse and living in the future to carry on mankind.

Turning, turning, endless turning. Once more, yes, once more, into the breach, blundered once more, I
I write from under a mountain of books, books so old that it was unclear on first spying its title which war "Life After The War" was concerned with. The shop is locked from the inside, I do not know where the clerk has gone. It was summer then. There is one floor, an open doorway ante-room connecting front- and back-, books shelved by category in the back-room including History, Poetry, Literature, General Fiction, Sciences, Philosophy, and Erotic Fiction by the toilet.

>>4899498
it's shit

>>4899498
Not bad. Pacing is good and you fit a good amount of information in without it being a dump, but the prose let it down. You need to work on the fluency of your writing, make sure you don't repeat some words in a close space and work on your grammar.

>>4899517
I like the voice and prose but would want some more information on plot, character or setting next.

I jump off the top of a telephone pole.
I will be half-Gorrister—as this representative, my pink face will change to a stand-still blue and hang by the neck. The black wire sends no signal and turns brown the farther I descend. The lighthouse—upside down and above me, on the cloud-beaches of an amber sea-sky—shines down, but not bright enough to blind me. Lighthouses create light. The falling motion provides a visual effect comparable to a rubber band—the lantern room threatens to impact my crown. I want to see how pale my skin is.

The most beautiful body lay still on the bathroom floor; sprawled out, prostrated before the bottle of bleach, which rolled away across the bathroom floor. The dissonance, in this morning that had so far run easy, got the better of Dolly, and she, too, lay down on the cool bathroom tiles by the side of that fatal shore. Seeing her baby of only eighteen, and eighteen now to remain forever, Dolly got the idea this wasn’t really happening at all: it was herself alone in this room, herself eighteen and alone, and everything else was some vague construct of a life, coming to her at the end, on loan. The thought was soothing, and she was in most need of soothing: collateral brewed somewhere in the distant future, and the faces of husband downstairs and daughter late for school came as the resignation of some woman never to actually be: here she was, dead and time cruising. The relief, oh sweet relief: it was over and pain removed: take her from this world of grief. The rhythm of it swept her along, and she was caught up for a while, but it came crashing down and here she was: she, the body, this scene, all continued to exist, and divinity remained inert.

>>4899518
>>4899527

Thanks, I will work on those that you suggested, I just wrote this up in a rush since i'm tired and going to bed now. I wonder how marketable I could make this.

i got about 130 pages so far for my novel. Havent wrote the opening yet though. I always thought that would be one of the last things i write.

I was never good at writing openings though, even for essays and such.

>>4899542
The prose is too thick for me, would have stopped reading.

>>4899562
A little unclear to me. At first i thought it was the mother who had stumbled on her suicided daughter, then i thought it was the daughter in an outabody experience, now i think it's the mum again.But i'm tired so it's probably just that.

I like the style, it runs smoothly and good description. I'm invested, even though this isn't my genre.

>>4899562

It's alright....i think you're trying to hard though. A lot of amateur writers get into this mindset where they want to blow people away with their writing, when in reality most readers really dont appreciate pretentiousness like that. That was the biggest problem my writing had when i was younger, and it's no surprise that i didnt produce anything i was happy with until i was in my 30s. At some point you need to stop trying to show everyone that you're smarter, better than they are, and just fucking write a story.

>>4899565
I have the opposite problem, i've been stuck on my opening for months. Learnt a lot and finally think i've come close to nailing it in terms of pacing.

>>4899563
I'd highly recommend these lectures for a novice writer:
http://www.writeaboutdragons.com/brandon_w2012/

>>4899570
>The prose is too thick for me, would have stopped reading.

Do you mind elaborating on that?

>>4899590
It took me several re-reads to establish what was going on.

"my pink face will change to a stand-still blue and hang by the neck" it took my a while to figure this meant he would be hung - but i'm still not sure given that i think he's falling head first.

"The black wire sends no signal and turns brown the farther I descend" I don't know what this is saying.

"The falling motion provides a visual effect comparable to a rubber band" So he springs back up?

"the lantern room threatens to impact my crown." Something threatens to hit him in the crown of his head?

"I want to see how pale my skin is." What?

I don't know what's going on, i don't know anything about the character or plot and only a little about the setting.

"I beat a bitch down if my name is Kevin," rapped Kevin.
Kevin was pretty shit at that but whatever it makes him happy oh bloo bloo #yolo hedonism indulgence but not the catholic kind lolelekekol; seriously though being aware of your affectation does not negate your insincerity ur still a fucking dick and I still use typos to seem like a person-person and not some kind of other. They said being unrestrained is shit cause even if it's all subjectively the same if you're not noodling with others you're noodling yourself. If we have to oscillate let's do parametrics so I can keep going up :^) lol if you didn't get that one it's okay I don't either okay no uniting under affected ignorance is pointless fuck it I'm smarter than you.
"Started fucking bitches in grade eleven," continued Kevin.

>>4899590
>>4899579
>plotfags
go write your young adult science fiction fantasy somewhere else. your bleating about "pander to me, sound less smart, i don't want to re-read and i don't want artistry i want to immediately get the point" could just as easily be directed towards some of the best authors this world has known.

>>4899616
I like the voice but the "bloo bloo yolo" and text language and smilies put me off because they don't communicate anything to me - they're just filler letters.

>>4899628
Well the problem is what are you trying to do? Are you trying to tell a story, or are you trying to show everyone that you're an amazing writer. For one, he wasnt that amazing, but he's definitely trying to be. There's not much book publishers hate more than that combo.

>>4899628
>Would rather read descriptions than plot
>Thinks the reverse is wrong/cheap

Halt thine subjectivity.

>>4899636
>book publishers
Who cares? Writing to be published is a whole different aim than writing for the art of it.

>>4899628
>implying the word order is the only part that's "art".

>>4899616
you're trying to write carrying our generation on your shoulders and ushering in a new prose style or whatever- internet-age Joycean.

it's not bad, i dig it. dunno if i could make it through a whole novel. it probably needs to be published for significance's sake. But I will murder you if it becomes a movement.

>>4899643
Alright, fine. The general consensus is writers write so that other people will read it, but if you dont care that nobody ever does. Cool by me.

The other problem i have with it is yeah it's pretty good, not amazing, and trying too hard i think. But are you going to keep up that level of description and prose over the length of an entire book? A book's a marathon, not a sprint. There's tons of shitty books out there that have a great few pages in them.

>>4899542
Really cool and disorienting. I'm not a fan of present tense narration, but you handled it well.

I'm not sure how you can jump off a telephone pole and see a lighthouse below you though, unless the telephone pole is taller than the lighthouse I guess

>>4899632
Yeah I just had some ideas about going HAM on the whole Tao Lin theme and just riffed on it in the post box. I guess this will be a first draft. The "ur still a fucking dick" was pretty alright in my opinion though because I acknowledge it with "and I still use typos to seem like a person-person." I'm really interested in the idea of taking the idea of "alright if Taipei is The Sun Also Rises let me try to make Ulysses" but I obviously have a long way to go.

>>4899656
I'm not the guy who posted that

>>4899628
yeah, but you're not exactly Henry James

this could easily pass for the intro to a very dull bestseller
learn to write

>>4899656
That guy isn't me, by the way. I wouldn't get mad at someone for offering criticism.

>But are you going to keep up that level of description and prose over the length of an entire book?

So far I've managed to do that, in my humble opinion.

>>4899657
I'd feel like a dick if I explained it in depth. Thank you for the kind words though (personally I write to disorient the reader and make him/her uncomfortable).

>Light filled the alley as Captain Lennart Steiger of the Schutzstaffel struck the match and lit his cigarette. His hands were trembling. The nicotine would help. He took a deep breath, savoring the warmth in his chest. It steadied his breath, the rhythmic in and out of smoke. Like a heartbeat. He needed to be calm. Focused. A few more drags.
>Every time, he could see the man kneeling in the snow in front of him by the light of the embers. He could see fear in his face. He couldn’t really blame him. He was sobbing, like a lamb before the slaughter. Steiger could barely stand to look at him. It probably would have been worse if he could see his eyes.

>>4899673
Well do you think a reader will appreciate it though? I got a little tired just reading that little excerpt, i probably would only get a few pages in before i threw the book away. It gets to the point where it's just exhausting to try to make sense of that.

>>4899701
Self-indulgence is a fine line to walk on, and to be fair I don't think the reader will like it as is. Editing should do the trick whenever I get to that point.

But do you think that exposition and clarity can sometimes compromise the integrity of what you're doing? It's like explaining a joke almost. It feels wrong.

>>4899579
>>4899570
Thanks for the crit guys. Just to make things clear, >>4899628 isn't me, nor is he this guy >>4899673.

I appreciate what you're saying about how the style and story must be balanced and the writing should be clear - this is just a small bluesy number before the main narrative begins. Music and film are recurring elements in the story; I just wanted to give the feel of a musical. If it sounds tryhard, it'll be cut.

Also, >>4899673, if you were going for disorientating the reader/ making them uncomfortable, I'd say you hit it perfectly. On the one hand, in the way you describe it, the situation sounds rather beautiful, while retaining the sense that something awful is happening/going on. Stylistically, its very impressive, but the thing keeping me reading, as other people have said, would be the promise of coming to something comprehensible.

>>4899698
Nicely written, nice climax to the intro, but i wouldn't read because i assume it's some gritty, present/past war novel and i despise modern warfare with a malice and read fantasy to escape from this world. But for the right target audience, it's good.

>>4899739
I'd fall into the school of thought to avoid self-indulgence, unless used sparingly, in a secret weapon kind of fashion. Just when you need that punch.

Yeah, explaining too much can ruin a story, for sure. Lots of writers will tell you that mystery is a key ingredient to any good art. But thats really not what i'm talking about, just from that excerpt i got the feeling that this guy is focusing way more on trying to prove he's a good writer, and he's losing focus on his actual story.

>>4899745
Its an alternate history/drama about the Nazi's winning WW2 and this one SS officer deciding to rebel. I only posted around 100 words as per the OP, but the climax of this chapter (around 350 words) would show that he killed another Nazi to prove himself to the resistance.

>>4899771
Ah, not bad then. I love the rebellion theme, but am wary of how soldiers of the nazi regime are stripped of their humanity in mainstream media - but assume you don't follow this shitty trend given the empathy your MC has in the beginning.
How much have you written?

>>4899771
>the Nazi's winning WW2 and this one SS officer deciding to rebel
you do realize how ridiculously cliched this is right
what on earth makes you think the world needs another voice harping on about a brave dissenter from a meanypants evil totalitarian regime

>>4899785
Thats exactly why im writing it. I never heard of a story that shows things from their perspective, and they were humans after all. They must have had feelings.

Im about 5000 words into it. Got a long way to go.

>>4899796
Well that was an oversimplified summary. Its all about how my Nazi is not brave, how it might actually be more evil to betray his country than continue being a Nazi. He is very indecisive about what side to choose, and the "good" resistance are just as sadistic to the Nazi's as the nazi's are to them

This is the first 115 of a short story I'm working on:
There ‘cross the old rye field lay an old shed, rotted and depraved nowadays. I ain’t laid eyes on that thang since…well since I’s a boy ‘bout yer age. Y’might say: “Well how d’ya know it’s still standin’ if y’ain’t caught a glimpse in all’v sixty years?” An’ I say that ain’t the point. Truth is, there ain’t a damn soul in all Cimmaron who don’t know ‘bout Luke Hill and … well lemme start good ‘n’ proper here. Y’see it was the shed belong to a ol’ boy named Luke Hill, who came from God Knows Where. Y’fathers would recognize the name if you’d ask, but they sure won’t tell you much better’n that.

>>4899799
There's been a lot of books written by their perspective. The book thief is the most recent one.

Also the nazi's winning has to be a hugely overdone plot. I remember in the late 90s i went into a book store and they had an entire shelf dedicated to nazis winning books.

I remember i got one where hitler won, then joined forces with stalin and the usa to fight an alien invasion. It was terrible.

>>4899809
Sounds good, however I'd recommend creating your own world and doing fantasy to make it more interesting. You can add a lot to the plot and characters if you have a different era of technology and societal structure etc.

Readers will bring with them a TONE of presumptions regarding nazis and the ear this is set in that will get in the way of your storytelling.

>>4899771
>all those sexy uniforms
>none of the meany evil stuff.
>having your cake this hard.

>>4899818
I havent read it but I thought that was about a young kid, not a full Nazi, like The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas.

>>4899828
I wanted to incorporate some aspects of nazi occultism and their rumored secret technology, but i wanted to ground it in reality to give a new perspective on the actual men of the war. Though since it is an alt history, the world has a bit of fantasy already

>>4899836
I am very much fasinated by Nazi culture and history, maybe a little bit of romanticizing, but I don't shy from showing the cruelty of both sides of the war.

>>4899815
If there's one tip all aspiring writers should go by, it's to never try adopt the vernacular in anything that could be considered your juvenilia. That being said, you pull it off pretty damn well here, and I'd certainly be inclined to read on, even if it's a little distracting.

>>4899815

>>4899815
Having the story start with a grizzled old man with an accent, recounting a story, has to be one of the most overused plot devices.

"Mrr....mmrrrRRREEOOOOOOOW!"

The cat mewed with an oddly pleasant mixture of sensuality and surprise as Ezekiel withdrew himself from it's hindquarters, ashamed, but on the whole, satisfied.

He glanced away from what he was doing and stole a look at an ornate clock on the wall. Seven-thirty. Mable would be home soon.

Moving with a calm deliberation, Ezekiel gently raked his long fingers through the cat's fur coat, soothing it after it's ordeal. The glint from the dim lamp reflected off of his glistening skin and onto the doorway.

Mable was coming home soon, and she could never know what he'd done.


There's that for you guys ;) You know you'd read on. Ratings in a minute.

The horses marched at a slow pace. At the head of the formation sat the Queen and King, each on black stallions leading the brown, grey, and spotted steeds behind. The pulse of the walk sent shivers into the staves carrying the flags and banners above. Although the city was quiet, the eyes of the observers were not. Some faces mournful, others cold. None could perceive the thoughts of the Queen, whose glance never left the white embalming of a child against the black of her dress. The King's glance however never left the stones of the street.

>>4899940
so you're opening up with cat fucking? whats your closer?

"BOOM" the spaceship exploded with a loud sound and I winced audibly. "I thought sound wasn't supposed to travel in space?" I asked my co-pilot as he lifted his finger from the button marked 'Fire Proton Torpedoes'. He turned to me and smirked. "Naw, brother" he said in his thick Detroit accent "that's just what the Illuminati tell people to stop them from asking questions." That certainly explains a lot, I thought to myself.

>>4899463
I would definitely read on, because you open up with a sense of urgency and I can't resist knowing what the fuck the main chr. is talking about. But that said, I don't think it's a super strong opening paragraph. Contradictory, I know. But what are lower defensive wards?

>>4899498
I wouldn't read on. There are grammatical errors in there you should check for, first of all. Plus the sentences are kind of long and tedious and don't pull me into the story. You're opening it up with this person running through the woods, and then cooking beans and meditating about what the leader said, but you do it un-artfully and I think you should spend more time narrating the action in the sequence.

On the other hand, premise sounds interesting so you have a lot to work with.

>>4899517
I'd keep reading this. I'm curious what your novel is about?

>>4899542
It's artfully written, I'd keep reading but wtf is a Gorrister?

>>4899562
Written pretty well, but I wouldn't keep reading for the only reason that it just doesn't sound like me cup of tea. The phrase at the end 'divinity remained inert' seems kind of weak and unnecessary to me. And like another OP said, it's not 100% clear whether it's an out of body thing or a mother observing her dead daughter, but I'm sure you clear that up in the next paragraph.

>>4899616
It's a little Finnegan's Wakey but I like it, it's playful and I've been wondering when someone was going to start incorporating emotes into lit. I'm piqued, I'd read on just to be amused by that prose and if you can actually make a compelling story of it, even better.

>>4899815
I like it XD Writing in dialect is hard, but charming in a way if you can pull it off.

Two exhausted young women staggered out of the woods onto the wagon-worn road they had been searching for. The smaller of the two grinned wildly. “Finally.” Joy glowed through a layer of grimy sweat that she had ignored—or celebrated—for two days.

The tall one, with a dry, plain face and a damp, dirty sleeve, shook her head. “We aren’t even close.”

“Aw. Don’t ruin the moment.” She closed her eyes, basking in hot autumn sun. “It’ll be easier from here. We have the road, now.”

And all the dangers that come with it, the second mused. They trudged onward.

>>4900000
would read, pic unrelated

>>4900007
Thanks. This is my fourth real attempt at an opener.

Sé do bheatha abhaile is what my main man Pearse would have told me if there was a heaven for me to go to. I’m rather cross in fact that I’ve been left to look over my life. Right now I can see today’s obituary with my handsome name Críocha Crúnach bolded above the rest. Mother must have spent a good while finding a photo that nice of me to give to those zeitung-scammers. My little paper-boy cap looks nice printed though, I’ll give them them that.

>>4900000

sweet zeroes

"There are at least four ways to be struck by shotgun fire that do not involve actually getting shot."

>>4900060
those being...?

>>4899951
haven't gotten that far yet, the opening's all I have so far. Worth continuing?

I really hope this letter finds its way to you. It'd be a shame to put forth this much effort and the product of it not reaching you.
I wanted to tell you that I'm leaving Chickamauga. Despite my affinity for this place, its humble charm is lacking any real tolerable bits of interest without you here.
Nana has been feeling better. Despite the liquid diet and the machine that assures her breathing throughout the night, she's been active enough lately that I'm convinced she can afford my absence. At least for however long it takes to find you.

>>4900087
No it's not worth continuing you dipshit. You have one stupid sentence that you didnt even think through enough to create another sentence from.

>>4900090
It's cute, but the opening has no real impact but it's full of potential.

>>4900090
bad style

>>4900113
Oh man
That's reassuring.
Any suggestion for adding that impact?
It's kind of a tame story, guy following an absent lover, so short of adding some tone of hurt at an implied betrayal, I'm not sure how I would make the opening more forceful.

>>4900128
Oh. Bummer. How do you mean?

>>4900143
Incorrect grammar in the first sentence. Unnecessary "I wanted to tell you". "real tolerable" Incorrect usage of "assures". Repetition of "despite".

>>4900147
See I would make the argument that the introduction is a very informal letter, but now that you've pointed it out, I find the same sort of errors within the wrest of what I have written.
So thanks for that, guy.

>>4900166
You're welcome. Sometimes as writers it's hard to see our own stylistic failings. After all, WE know what we meant to say.
You might want to spend more time looking at your writing very critically. You can become your own best critic if you practice enough.

Here I lay resting in my bed; the light coming from my bathroom vanity shines upon my silken sheets of black, while the gradient light fades from a faint yellow orange to black on my wall. The light of my LCD display shines in my face, images of morally-corrupt humor and pleasure enter my eyes and mind as I take another gulp of milk with pieces of soft, soaked cereal in it. Classical music plays in the background, as if I like to pretend I'm not all that bad; at least I like something traditional in a sense. There I lay in my degenerate youth, acting as if I were invincible to death or any sort of judgement. Just as I think I am safe for the night and start to pull down my trousers to treat a fit of lust, my door opens unexpectingly. When I looked up that night, I could tell that my life was never going to be same ever again.

The selection committee appointed you to behead me. You usually dread seeing me, but today your gray hair popped in early after smokin’ a joint and using the company gym to get the adrenaline pumpin’, surely.
Burly men get me hot, and I got memories of the times you’d lick my tangy clit. At least I know I’ll go down with a bang and a nice slit - ‘cross my throat that is.

Parallel to me sat a young man of considerable stature and modest build. His right arm hung limp around the backrest of the chair, and with his left hand he held a non-descript brown book from which he read. The book's spine bore an inscription of lank, bold letters; I could only discern three: "JOY".

No, he's not reading anything written by James Joyce.

>>4900136
With adding impact, think of a sentence to open the novel that is genuinely different from the rest. Your opening feels like the opening of an average paragraph, not a story.
I'm not sure if I could give advice with HOW to do it, but it feels as if it would benefit from it.

The grammar feels natural, even if it's incorrect though, but don't dismiss the other guy just because I think it sounds okay.

>>4900189
Your prose is as purple as your sheets are silken and black.

>>4900197
What? This is confusing.

>>4900203
Dull.

>>4900220
Harsh.

>>4899463
anyone else lurkin'?

“The doors don’t open from the outside,” came a voice from within the club. "Could I ask who — "
“It’s Samuel Burke. You were supposed to be expecting me. I’m friends with Adam. He arrived last week, I believe.”
A brief silence from the man behind the doors. Samuel exhaled.
“Just a moment, Mr. Burke.”
Samuel’s gaze never averted from the mahogany double doors to the Gentlemen’s Club. He was was absorbed in the deep red, in the promise of whatever it harboured. The gold fixtures strayed into the obscurity of his peripheral. Just as he thought that he could fall in, the lock clicked and the doors swung open.

>>4899542
Stop. STOP. STOPPPPP>Too much fucking dash

>>4900227
I like it.

>>4900236
Thank you.

>>4900220
how is it confusing?

Grass's acute odor is reminiscent of my failures. Just as rivers always reach the sea, personal failure fittingly flounders it's way to an ocean of grass. Grass's villainous stench reminds me of wild dreams tamed, sweet loves soured, smooth personal relationships train wrecked , and various Academy Award worthy Judas impersonations. Like a termite choking on a splinter, Grass's fragrance strangles away my last ounce of hope from my half empty cup of optimism. Grass's aroma ruthlessly transports my memory bank and trades it in for a deluxe boxed set of internal strife and spirals me into despair. I think I prefer weeds.

Some poetic prose for ye lads. go ahead and comment on it.

>>4900257
>Like a termite choking on a splinter
>my half empty cup of optimism
>deluxe boxed set of internal strife
>spirals..into despair

>>4900259

>>4900108

You wound me, but please expand on that. I have one sentence that I didn't think through enough to create another sentence from? What does that even mean?

>>4900257

I didn't like:
>failure fittingly flounders
>Academy Award
>>4900259

I liked:
>Just as rivers always reach the sea
>I think I prefer weeds

Chapter 1:

hi every1 im new!!!!!!! holds up spork my name is katy but u can call me t3h PeNgU1N oF d00m!!!!!!!! lol…as u can see im very random!!!! thats why i came here, 2 meet random ppl like me _… im 13 years old (im mature 4 my age tho!!) i like 2 watch invader zim w/ my girlfreind (im bi if u dont like it deal w/it) its our favorite tv show!!! bcuz its SOOOO random!!!! shes random 2 of course but i want 2 meet more random ppl =) like they say the more the merrier!!!! lol…neways i hope 2 make alot of freinds here so give me lots of commentses!!!!
DOOOOOMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! <--- me bein random again _^ hehe…toodles!!!!!

love and waffles,

t3h PeNgU1N oF d00m

>>4900275
Forced falliteration ferhaps?

My main concern: does it make sense?

>>4900268
they're banal or bad metaphors

>>4900284
it's obviously alliteration, yeah, but it's pointless- it doesn't give the line any interesting rhythm, it's just stringing the words together like an afterthought, it's dead-weight and cutesy

>>4899463
An elderly lady in her 180s died yesterday at around noon after her daily snooze. It was as uneventful as watching paint dry. In fact, watching paint dry would have been much more entertaining than watching the elderly lady wither away. The cause of her death was natural causes; she medically expired. However, sources close to the situation described her as dying of regret. Oddly enough it was what had kept her alive for 180 years that turned into her Achilles Heel faster than a sprinkling water droplet from her leaky bathtub. She lived in a small city named Regretville where big dreams were euthanized. The city was dubbed “Land of the Hopeless Crybabies” by the folks down in Phuckit. Shortly after her earthly death, she was transferred to the Divine Court of Appeals where she would argue with one of God’s deputies over her placement in heaven hell or purgatory. Improbably enough, the Divine Court of Appeals was a carbon copy of the elderly lady’s former city. This did not sit well with her and almost instantaneously regretted dying. As she indifferently waited for her turn to be judged an obnoxious voice via intercom barked BZZZT BZZ! “Mrs. Kendra Moore, please make your way to aisle number oneonethirtytwofiftynine section six subsect-- ” “yeah sure” she lazily interrupted. Upon her arrival to the aisle she was greeted by two cashiers, a midget with wavy hair and a pair of wings and a pigheaded centaur wielding a pitchfork. Angels and demons is what they’re called; I think. “What’s that smell?” Kendra exasperated in disgust. “Your mother!” cackled the pigheaded centaur. Before a puzzled Kendra could respond, a flock of doves appeared, seemingly swiping away the unidentifiable stench with them. The doves then swiftly extracted Kendra’s memory and life experiences and placed it for examination on the checkout aisle.
“Mrs. Kendra Moore, after careful consideration and deliberation the Divine Court of Appeals has decided to banish you to a hand-to-hand combat with The Lion of Regret. This combat will be located at the Lion’s Lair of Despair. Enjoy.” The Angel and Devil had staunchly disagreed on what her eternal fate should be and promptly exiled her away. The Lion’s Lair of Despair reeked of human flesh and bloody remains of the various castrated souls. This however, did not rattle Kendra, for she once had to sit through a six hour driving course in its entirety. The Lion appeared from his cave and did his customary roar of intimidation. He spoke exclusively in Old English; rumor has it he was a big Shakespeare fan. “What hast thou donest? Thine deity hath beseeched my services. Explicate thine self.” The lion grumbled.
Moar? it's from a short story i wrote.

>>4900284
My reading is that the narrator is frustrated with the quintessential, and yet elusive, nature of success - the grass. As such the smell of the grass reminds the narrator of his own shortcomings. He prefers the unassuming nature of weeds.

After my mother died I felt like the bottom of the world had fallen out and everything that I once knew about life was slowly but surely falling away down an unseen drain that was swallowing up my past. I remember that when I went to her apartment to clean out her belongings I had a hard time keeping myself together. I was trying not to cry constantly and I had to be businesslike about it so we could get it all done in the three days of bereavement time my work allowed me before I had to fly back home 3,000 miles away. I was going through old boxes of photographs and personal mementos and all the little things that made this woman my mother. All the little intangibles that made her mom, little things that didn’t really have significance unless you had the same sad little memories as I did.

The old deck of cards she taught me how to play kings with. The little dominos that her mother had from Europe that were made of real ivory, that we used to play with when I was a child. The bottom drawer of her bedroom that was used for storing her candy stash, in it I found a stack of kit-kat bars. More memories flooding back up to the surface of the woman I used to call mom. After the people at the Salvation Army came and took her bed I found a strange little hope chest under her bed. I decided to open it alone. Most of my childhood I don’t remember much about my father other than he was never around, and when he left mom just remained single for years. I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me. Inside the hope chest was a human skull. Under it was a stack to Polaroid photographs.

My father, and a woman who wasn’t my mother in varying stages of undress. In a mason jar filled hair was a single Tarot card, the death card. I found a pentagram sigil and a ritual dagger, chalice, and a goat’s head mask. A black robe, and a medallion of the pentagram with a goat’s head in the middle and a few Hebrew characters surrounding it. A red stole, and a purple stole. And a few books about high magic. I remember looking down on this strange collection of bizarre items, and I told myself that it was just like having a magic tricks box in your closet. Only mom’s magic tricks were a lot stranger than other people’s. I remember seeing a notebook, and when I picked it up it was filled with names, some of the names were crossed out. And of the people I knew in that book, all the ones who were crossed out were dead. On the last page was my mother’s name. Someone had crossed it out too.

Phuc Stevenson was a postman in Mansfield, a suburb of Dallas. Understand now that postman is a joke, a play on "post-man," implying either that our hero Phuc somehow transcends humanity or that he's the quintessence of postmodernity. Whatever it means, he definitely has nothing to do with the mail [commentary on privatization of postal service in America and neoconservatism because such commentaries are too unabashedly earnest for someone too young to remember 9/11 to make] or stamps. Phuc decided last month while snapchatting underage girls dick pics under the alias Dylan (he thought to use Phil because of his name or Fred because of phonetics but those are some pedo as fuck names (I guess 16 isn't even pedo it's more ephebo and half of Europe is cool with it (not that non-Euro countries can't be good examples of reasonable sex policies, not being ethnocentric (no fuck that Thailand has no business being like that (reverse privilege Phuc is Asian (no shit, his name is Phuc) so I can say that (though I myself (the defictionalized author) am only half) so I/he can say/think that))))) that the whole affectation/sincerity thing dominating the arts is stupid since the opposite of affectation would more accurately be isolation, as affectation is inherent to socialization, or perhaps even suicide, as it's sort of inherent to existence (unless you're retarded or senile or David Foster Wallace (scratch that last one he killed himself (as you know :^) hehelololkekekeakguaholmjrgimt); I think I'm/he's on to something)).

>ignore the tripcode I'm not gonna go around being a personality I just use it to not confuse people in the thread if I respond to feedback because sometimes people respond to the wrong stuff and in an original critique thread temporary identity is sort of useful

>>4900366
Oh and I'm the same guy as >>4899616 but these will probably be separate

leuca set a pot upon the range and upped the neat heat. forgetting to beat the timer to the kitchen, she began false negotiations with the pan and to throw up wallowing olive oil words. the poultry set on fire and burnt rubber and smoke began withering around. that stew would’a been dank, but instead we’re left to roll around in the cashed ashes. leuca danced about as they beep beep beeped their fire alarm songs, then she chewed on last week’s dine-out dinner but doesn’t get full up. cosmos snake slithers around her ankles and asks to crawl inside her. together they glowed off and licked each other’s spine. they have sandpaper tongues now; they need a bit of friction in order to heal the world. i always said she was the holy mother. “hi cosmos!” she would say back to me, “do you want to hear a story?”:

It started with a typo. Bob Wise could never have imagined the journey of sexual discovery that lay before him when he entered in nutflix.com

>>4900000
Could I get another opinion on this one?

>>4900386
It's so contemporary that it feels like a gimmick but the name and the cooking stuff is all really oldie so it's in an interesting place. The prose is meh by itself, not particularly engaging or playful but sonically sound. Can't discern anything thematic but it's only a paragraph so what you have now is good. If you're going to be so absurd contextually add some jokes maybe.
8/10 better than a lot of stuff.

>>4900402
reads like the boring part of a romance novel.

>>4900402
It's not a tumor brah

>>4900402

I dont really see anything special. Dialog is pretty cliche, situation isnt very clear so i dont know what you were aiming for.

the saddest thing in these kinds of threads are the really well written ones that go completely ignored.

>>4900407
thanks, that's a excerpt from a longer piece. not sure if it's ever going to be put anywhere, though. i have so much work that could all be used to begin the story i want to write but none of it seems to be able to lead anywhere because it's all very self-contained. but also so wrapped up in my overall lore that it's one big piece.

lots of vignettes that don't quite vibe together unfortunately.

thanks again though!

>>4900418
Such as?

>>4900366
Namefags are terrible, awful people, so I'm glad you don't intend to go around being a personality. That's bullshit.

Anyway I like your opening, it's definitely got a distinctive voice and it makes me want to read more. To be honest, I can't fathom how you're going to make a good story out of it but it would be interesting to see what you come up with. Reading through the parentheses constantly can be a little annoying, but I understand it's an useful technique to offer meta and meta meta perspectives on the story and the main character.

I have more of that chapter

>>4900422
Such as >>4899943
>>4899961
>>4900043
>>4900366

>>4900444
I am one of those people and I just tried to write the shittiest opening sentences I could in a minute. Don't feel bad on my account.

>>4900409
Sure.

>>4900413
I was trying for some subtlety. I'm a hamfisted, melodramatic writer by nature. Did I make it too bland?

>>4900434
Yeah I'd probably use those superscript note things that reference the bottom of the page or maybe write sections of it in tiered structure resembling code. I've got a bunch of narrative and thematic ideas to incorporate but the challenge is integrating it all and keeping it semi-coherent because I don't want to be unreadable. If I'm being practical I'll probably just use multiple narrators and do about a third of the book like this, a little in stream of consciousness like >>4899616 and then the rest in more standard prose.

Rainbow-colored plastic crinkles. Crunchy potato chips snap. Discolored dressing oozes from the slices. Grease pools and grows a grip of drips. America.

>>4900492
Thom Yorke?

>>4900502
I just wrote it. I have no idea who he is

>>4900504
>I have no idea who he is
>bait.png

>>4900506
I'm being genuine mate

>>4900510
Title of Tao Lin's upcoming magnum opus.

>>4900513
Oh lol. Does Tao Lin write like I did? The only postmodern I've read is Pynchon

It was a dark and stormy night, and my dick was in her ass.

The Condoleeza Rice Story

>>4900516
Not at all, but "I'm being genuine mate" as a futile cry for help basically sums up Tao Lin.

The window is splayed with a thick white paint. A broken alternated current electrical outlet hangs broken, half open, exposing its wires to the warm, damp air of the house. Located in the south central urban Detroit area, the house slowly decays, surrounded by other houses, home to the homeless and typical social degenerates.

>>4900521
Yeah but you helped. Which is a pretty good outcome as far as human interactions in the Internet go

>>4900366
This is too good for a /lit/ post.

The thing about strippers is you can’t look them in the eye. Maybe once a long time ago these girls had it, but after so many years of slowing dying inside they lost that thing, the thing that gives girls eyes that sparkle. Now they don’t feel. Maybe they started working for college money to become a nurse or to get away from a home where daddy swung big hands with cigarette-yellowed nails or maybe Prince Charming packed up his gold-plated grill and spun his rims out of their life leaving them with two bastard kids with crooked teeth and growing feet. Whatever their reasons were before, now they mainly do it for a fix, a little something to make the passing of time across their skin feel less like sandpaper. And whatever that thing was that dances behind girls’ eyes is gone now. Now they only stare with eyes like the dead.

But not Jewel.

Jewel walked with a brick wall around her. Jewel breathed smoke and talked shit. And even with all the fucked up shit that happened in her life, nothing could ever touch her. Sure, for a handful of dollars she’d shake her ass and grind a pole for your enjoyment. And for a five she’ll grab your head and rub her tits in your face until you can see a greasy blotch of your face on her cleavage. And for a twenty she’d even grind on you until you were within an inch of cumming in your pants and then go a few inches more. But even with all the wonderful things money could buy you, you still couldn’t touch her. Not in any way that mattered anyway. Not in any way that lasted.

The shattering screams were nearly masked by the grasp of the dull and endless forest. The sky dotted through the canopy, creating a cascading glimmer of what could be up there. Those who have entered this place would never know. It could be a guessing game, one would think, but leaving any thought to it was a crime all in its own. An ethical crime, like one you just wouldn’t dare to commit. Yes, murder and rape are crimes, ones that test the boundaries of human thought and action. Ones that make you inquire, “What kind of monster would think, let alone commit, such an atrocity?” Well that’s just what it was. Free-thought was a type of idea that just wasn’t created. You didn’t think for what didn’t have a direct impact on you. Because that meant death.

So maybe the dead would kill you. Maybe a gang of misfits would. But what would be left of you after all this murder. All this gore and cruel, morbid reality. One must adjust, I suppose. But you can’t just be thrown into the end of the world and expect to walk through it unscathed. How do you cope and adjust when there is nothing to fix? There isn’t a single thing in this decaying world that you could use at your disposal to make your life for the better.

You couldn’t even scream to hear your voice. The words that came out were not yours. The thought put into making those words were none the same. They were fantasies, lies planted into your being the outbreak of the Decay. They grew and grew, every time you passed a rotting carcass, every time you saw your friend be torn in two. Every waking second spent in the nightmare of a jungle. You can’t break free. The vines have locked your wrists and ankles, slowing you down to a meager trudge. Halting your stride and increasing its hold. What could you do?

You could scream.

"Never again!" the fat Jew cried. His skin was lubed with sweat against porcelain. The toilet seat wasn't there. "Plublblplublplbubl," the Jew's ass said as stinky brown liquid slapped the water at maximum velocity. Corn and chili dust were the most egregious odors. "Oy vey!" he cried.

Just then a pair of black boots stepped up to the front of the Jew's stall. "Knock, knock, who's there? A dirty hook-nosed kike!" came from whatever body moved the shoes, but it was clearly a white skinhead saying it because only white skinheads call people "kike".

"I am not a Jew," the Jew replied defiantly. "I am a snownigger."

The two men fell in love, and lived their lives to create paper mâché replicas of the palace in Aladdin so they could reenact the scenes together. They were in one of those love/hate pervert relationships then.

>>4900549
>The thing about strippers is you can’t look them in the eye
Really that's all I do, it gets boring looking at their body

>>4900330
this is beautiful

>>4900330

Your first two paragraphs are quite good, you really adeptly create the atmosphere of realistic grief and the quiet sadness that comes with performing the mundane tasks associated with a death in the family. The memories tied to personal effects and objects, etc.

The sudden occult stuff is not resonating with me so much, it seems to come off as dangerously close to "tryhard edginess" but you could probably pull it off with a more artful transition in tone.

I would keep reading though.

I think you could have something if you work it more. The first bit shows that you have actually been close to death before, and that is the part that shines, you speak about it eloquently.

>>4900401

I chuckled.

>>4900619
Thank you kind anon, I'll start working on editing that intro.

Intro to a fantasy novel im writing. main characters sister is sick, getting much worse over the last day-and-a-bit while he was away, prompting him to do some really stupid shit to pay for someone to treat her. Jared is tMC best friend.

Wanted to introduce the characters and a predicament before i start introducing the rest of the world.

>>4900563
I know right, it's good to look them in the eye so you can pretend they love you.

"A life unexamined isn't a life worth living," were famous words by Socrates. I've thought about this many times and I have examined my life because of it and I have come to a conclusion. Sometimes there isn't a life worth living. Through the years I have wandered through life's paths without accomplishing anything. This is why I sit here on my bed, staring down a pistol where the bullet that will kill me lurks. It feels impersonal to say the least. The gun feels cold and rigid, completely devoid of any type of sympathy or compassion. I guess it's a bit like me in that regard.
There are many factors to enjoying life and sometimes I feel as if they all have passed me, but that's being too kind. I passed up on all of them and caused myself to become isolated to the point where I doubt my corpse will be discovered within the next 3 days. If they find me it'll just be because I'm making the entire apartment smell.
Oh to hell with it I'm just procrastinating the inevitable. The gun is in my hand and my finger is on the trigger, all I need to do is just pull and I'll be free of my despair and guilt, but there is something stopping me. Am I weak enough to not do one admirable thing in my life? Or is it just that I want to examine the years of my existence just one last time to see if there truly is a point in me living to see another day.

This took half an hour to come up with and it's shit

Rufus left the other day. He left town without saying a word, but somehow I know he won’t be coming back. Or was it the other week? I can’t be sure. I am sure, though, that I am not the same person I was before meeting him – he has marked me in some indelible way, as the seashore is imperceptibly altered once the tide has gone out, and then in again…

Bah. There is no need for sentiments. It is late at night, and I am hunched over my desk with laptop at hand; my lamp emitting a soft orange glow. I can see the white of the full moon through a crack in my curtains. A good a time as any to write about my friend – I have put this off for too long.

>>4901045

Oleg (21) and Olga (21½) live together in a little bronzeburnished cottage 6 Postmeridiem Street only an alleyway away from Eventide Ave where the eaves sway in the wintry breeze as the long summer days draw out into breezy autumn. Their cat Suki shoots from under the marketplace awnings down the sidestreets through the flap to the firesidyll where the two lie, Oleg's feet by Olga's head and Olga's by Oleg's, their dreams synchronised to within a half-second, their souls singing the body Chagallian in oblivious bliss as they kiss lips and drift above the embers' glow. Outside, in the snowy lamplit street, Taxman Tarassopher knocks.

>>4900366
next DFW everyone

‘Balsam doesn't grow in the Indian hills.’ Daddy always said to a younger me when I asked him about the orange flowers in the hills behind our thatch. He sent me away with a quick nod and grabbed the bottle from the three-legged stool, then laid back down on the easy chair that squeaked when he did. Mamma ushered Pappu back into the only bedroom with a story book in her hand and peeked out to check for Daddy’s langourous form on the porch.

The sun was still behind us, coming over the hills
(no tulips there)
casting a black face on the mud in front of our thatch. The backdoor allowed light and became the wide open yellow mouth. The straw roof was its unkempt hair, standing out in clumps at odd angles.

The black face kept Daddy away, on the porch. Burps and sniffs between swigs along with the distensions in his sagging belly were the only signs of life in his body. The black face on the mud kept Daddy busy with his bottle but the sun came over the hills
(with no tulips)
and the black face moved slowly under the thatch. The sun arched over our house burning Daddy on his face so Daddy got off his chair, empty bottle in hand and went to work on us. First on Mamma, then on me
(then then)
but not anymore. Daddy’s dead, dust under the hill
(with no tulips)

The black face still cowered away under the house, away from the sun, but after that the only work was in the canteen of City College that I went to.

>>4900366
I haven't read DFW. Maybe I will enjoy this if I'd read him.

>>4901299
The style intends to confuse and make things unclear, right?

>>4901261
Got too meta in the end.

>>4901066
The third line is too soon to ask for the reader's sympathy for a character that is three-lines-old.

Too pedagogical and too firm about it.

Also, too cliche with the character and the descriptions.

>>4900556
You hit "emo" button too soon.

you think we could Storm the Place?
we have 1000 Skilled Men.
Skilled Men on Drugs.
we still have 1000 Men.
let's give it a Try.
we'll Send in a few Hundred to Begin.
formation_B
alright.
dearest Quarvitz.
we are here to Lecture your Death under the Name of the Neo Harlequins previously of the Bosnian Empire.
Schwester! die Untermenschen sind da!
Sister will be here shortly.
i don't have Time for that.
then let's Dance.

>>4901910
I didn't intend for it to be too DFW-like. I just referenced him because New Sincerity.

Grey, then darker, then deeper inwards an inky black. Fear on the edge of the moment, he's feet planted feeling sunk in the faded light over the pebbles strewn all along the shore at the mouth of the tunnel and into the darkness, dead ahead. Pucker up! He is awaiting, so said the voice.Wind blows through. A thought of her legs on the sheets and his hand in his pocket rubbing his scrotum. Vand stared down at the floor at the little stones and grains of sand, a universe, stuck in a daydream of sediment and the woman's words; the way she described masturbation on a pale morning in the cold, how that kind of vulnerability she experienced at the centre of the city teeming with life and how He's hand on her mind reduced the feeling to a soft breeze. An impression garnered by a beggars face on his way here made him shiver more than the wind could, he imagined her legs protruding out of his filthy eaten rags, torn. He's skin crawled as he walked into the tunnel where a smell of dead fish and chemicals prevailed pungent.

>>4902740
I get what you're going for, but I can't stand your prose style. Feels really not self-aware. Like shit it's hard to read through because it's like Dickens without the playfulness or every French genre novelist in the 1800s not good enough to be remembered. Fuck your alliteration and fuck your commas.

>>4902740
Awful.

>>4902749
>>4902859
Yes yes but would you read more?

>>4903023
Not really. It's just really boring. Not compelling or thematically interesting or playful.

>>4903033
I think I should have continued the daydream bit for a while and at the end of it brought it back to"Him". Edited with more concise punctuation too. I think too it wouldn't work as an intro to a book, maybe a later chapter or later in the first.

>>4899542
>>4899616
>>4900281
>>4900366
>>4900386
>>4901299
gems

On the day he boarded the plane for Moscow (he dismissed her quite coldly, without any apparent affection at the gates, and it took her until the spinning doors to understand everything), the bus bombings began; so, once she got home, made herself a cup of herbal tea which always served her well under circumstances not too pleasant, and sat down at her laptop to skim through her Facebook feed, her eyes fixated on an article and the number 74 in the headline, and, with cold sweat coating her half undressed body, she didn’t know what to feel.

>>4903188
fuck litotes you're a man

>>4899463

>present tense

Dropped.

Stop doing that, it does nothing and should be restricted to screen-writing.

Using present tense is cheap because it doesn't accomplish anything, your reader still imagines things happening now, even in past tense, so you just draw attention to how you tell a story rather than to the story itself.

Don't.

>>4900060
I remember you.

How's the book coming along?

>>4900227
I'd definitely keep reading.

>>4903355
I'm not that guy, but I don't really follow. I hardly find myself paying much mind to whether or not the story is in past or present tense, and I'm distracted by neither.

As for writing, I actually find it kind of difficult to not write in present tense. It's just kind of what I naturally default to.

>>4900549
I like it.

>>4900060
>>4903369

Oh, shit. Yeah, I remember this guy too.

>>4903380
Thank you very much.

>>4899498
No. First sentence was poorly composed, suggesting you are a beginning writer and I ain't got time for that.

>>4899463
No. You don't know how to use basic punctuation. Reading a novel of your writing would be torture.

>>4899517
No. Overwrought. A story about being a writer who lives in a post-apocolyptic book store? Pass.

>>4899542
No. Beginners trap of trying to achieve sophistication with over-description.

>>4899562
No. Opening with a super-dramatic scene and no cleverness is a turn-off. Your attempt at FEELS OVERLOADS fails.

>>4899616
No. Does not merit explanation.

>>4899698
No, but, sadly, this is the best of a sad lot so far. Problems. "Every time." Every time what? "He was sobbing, like a lamb before the slaughter." Lambs do not sob; they don't know they're being killed. "Probably." Cut these qualifiers. You're the writer, either it would have been worse or it wouldn't; it's your fucking imagination, don't qualify it.

>>4899815
No. Dialect overload. There are better ways to establish atmosphere. Use dialect lightly with rare exception. It really slows down the reading when you use it otherwise.

>>4899940
No, but only because I know you're trolling. This is the best written opening so far. I'm going to kill myself now.

>>4899943
No. Needs editing. Not too awful. "The King's glance however never left the stones of the street" - cut 'however.' "The pulse of the walk" - ugh, awkward. How can you not see that's awkward? Being a decent writer requires a certain self-awareness and I don't know where you get that.

>>4900000
Nice QUINTS. And no. "that she had ignored—or celebrated—for two days." That blips out at me. I also dislike 'wildly.' Cut them both. However, this is not all too bad.

>>4900043
No. Presumptuous openings annoy me, so do a whole lot of insider words that I now need to memorize. Ugh.

>>4900090
No. " its humble charm is lacking any real tolerable bits of interest" is clunky and painful to see as a grandmother falling down a flight of stairs.

>>4900189
No. Not clever. Again, the beginner trap of over-description.

>>4900197
Hmm, okay. I might read another few paragraphs. I detect competence, but that is often enough a false positive.

>>4900203
No. "Parallel."

>>4900227
No. The dialogue opening was okay, but then it became badly overwrought.

>>4900257
No. It reads like "Intro to poetry" rather than "Intro to creative writing." But thanks for mixing it up.

>>4900281
No. Explanation not merited.

>>4900322
No. Wall of text + cliche in second sentence. Stopped there.


>>4900330
No. But this isn't ghastly and what you really need is some good editing. Learn how to use commas. I'd say this is among the best posted so far.

>>4900366
No. Don't waste my time on something you just wrote for this thread. I'll return the same attention you gave your work with the amount of attention I give your explanation of why it's bad.

>>4900386
No. Learn grammar, then write.

>>4900442
No. Stopped at first sentence because it's missing a comma. Where did you come from where you thought you could write? What gave you that idea?

>>4904119
Assume my preface is insincere and tell me what specifically is wrong with it. Who cares if I wrote it just for the thread? Obviously the ideas predate it.

>>4900549
No. Confused. So strippers are really emotionally dead inside, and that contrasts with Jewel, who is different because she can't be touched. See how that doesn't really have any kind of parallelism? It would make sense if JEwel's eyes WERE alive. But your description makes her seem no different from the strippers in the first paragraph.

>>4900556
No. What's a shattering scream? First sentence overwrought.

>>4900561
Okay, hahah.

>>4900984
Okay, this isn't awful. You avoid many of the mistakes of your peers.

>>4901066
No. Boring angst shit. But you already knew that. Why'd you post it? Jeez.

>>4901261
No. Your narrator is confused and so are we. And why would he say "bah." Is he a sheep?

>>4901299
No. Pretty confusing, but it might be okay for a genre person.

>>4901883
No. The first period should be a comma. " when he did" cut. Oh, and now it's poetry. No, thanks.

>>4902740
No. Overwrought.

And even after a year in the cold fogs of Milan I felt no joy in being back to Pisa. There was no pleasure in recognizing the familiar station where the students lined up in wait along the rails and the dark flocks of birds hung above them. The liveliness of the crowds bustling around, rushing on their trips, only added to my irritation. And while traversing Ponte Nuovo, sad as a dog, I felt indifferent to the sun shining above or to the waters of the Arno flowing below. All I could think of, then, was that I got stuck with a job. I even majored in philosophy just to avoid having one, taking all the pleasure I could in replying “Nothing” whenever someone asked, “So, what are you going to do after that?” And then I really had nothing to do and I didn’t like my parents’ pressure so I ran away to Milan. There I was broke, lonely and most of what happened was the kind of thing that, once you are forced back home, you say you really don't want to talk about.

I had witnessed the passing of over fifteen generations of man, falling into obscurity with each. I still remember the day my father’s freedom had been taken from him, his fate conscripted like a peasant by a king at war. Over three hundred years before today I was the last follower of Drevsiruk, a god banished from the divine echelons of existence, cast into our mortal plane as punishment for his intervention.

>>4904119
Quintsfag here. Thanks for the style critique. That "wildly" IS way out of line.
As for the dashes, that's my style. I use such constructions sparingly, but often enough that I can understand someone not liking them.

>>4904119
>Does not merit explanation
they said the same about joyce r-right g-guys?
;_;

>>4904146
Because you aren't really writing a story, you're just telling us what you, the author, think, in a very direct way and in a way that's difficult to read and unoriginal.

While I get most of the commentary or references, I didn't enjoy reading them. They didn't seem clever or original. It's as if I was on a train and overheard some freshman whose parents are paying $50k for his education at a second tier school was trying to sound smart to his friend. I'd curse myself for forgetting my headphones.

Happy, pappy?

>>4904170
I'm in high school so I guess that makes me advanced loljk false optimism
Thanks for the thorough critique, though.

>>4899542
this seems so euphoric- dreamlike, and surreal- A memory that can only be seen- communicated. in the heart and mind, rather than the eyes

really though, i liked it.

>>4900281
Brilliant! would buy the first edition hardcover.

>>4904162
I don't think I critiqued the em dashes but they are another sign of beginner writers (I need to make a list). They are for really rare and severe interruptions. If a comma works, use a comma. But in this case, I don't understand how you can go from ignored to celebrated, forget about the em dash issue.

There's also redundancy in the narrator's adjectives.

Try:

Two young women staggered out of the woods onto the wagon-worn road. The smaller of the two grinned. “Finally,” she said. Joy escaped from under two days of sweat, dirt, and feculence.

(Okay, cut feculence if that's too much.)

>>4904177
Keep writing, but especially keep reading. That's especially important.

>>4904189
I don't ascribe to prescriptive punctuation guidelines. But thank you for the other suggestions.

>>4904198
Oh and I know I'm being a bit obnoxiously incessant with my feedback-feedback but those aren't authorial thoughts they're of a character named Duane but he doesn't come in until later. I appreciate negative feedback greatly because I want desperately to be the maximalist Tao Lin when I grow up. Thank you, again.

>>4904198
I wonder what you'd think of this

>>4904160

Thanks

“Do you know what you are?”

The question hangs in the air for a few seconds, its bluntness more emphatic with each passing moment. The camera pans sharply to the boy's father as if to apologise, but he seems at a loss. He does not look into the lens. The view returns to the boy, who seems neither shocked nor insulted, but only to be considering his response. After some brief thought, he looks up and tells the unseen questioner “Yes.”

The Sun brightened without clouds to steal sky; it is a warm day in the spring of the Oultrejourdain, beyond Galilee. The swallows sang the peaceful song, sounds hallelujah by a tiny shofar. Wildflowers of reds and yellows played fire in the fern grass, and tall purple bear breeches tickled the rocky soil. The Master squinted at the brilliance of the Sun brushing His eyes for the first time in a day. His hand rested on the doorpost of the home He was teaching in. His arm and His wrist are thin and meagered to atrophy. Even though the women of the house and of the village by the river offered Him bread and fruit and fish, He declined, and the Twelve along with Him followed in His example. He was malnourished; everywhere He walked and fasted. His face narrowed. Sometimes the Twelve surrounded Him only to help Him walk.

Be prepared for shit:

Across the rickety table an enormous man flipped through a sheet of papers, licking his finger to pull apart the numerous arrest warrants, constabulary reports, ignored invoices, and secretly taken lewd photographs that made up the extensive file of Ned Pallon II. His brow furrowed upon finding one of the polaroids, depicting a rather attractive women removing a garter. The picture itself had been taken while hanging upside down from the peach tree outside her window, and the set would be complete if it was not for one of the gardeners deciding that just after rain seemed an opportune time to trim the dead leaves.

It makes you deaf. They don't tell you that, but it wouldn't matter; there's no way they could teach someone about the sea inside through training. They find out any way: within a few weeks they are deaf and can hear nothing but the internal rhythms of the ocean in themselves and they fall over, lost in the tidal flow of their bloodstream. You can tell people, I guess, but it wouldn't make a difference, it's too late to gain your sea legs until the last of follicles vibrates the dying hair loose and you are deaf to that frequency forever. They don't know the sea inside themselves or to cherish the last piercing ringing as noises fall from your eardrum never to be heard again; they reel in pain and nausea as the last time they heard that note is drowned out by the same screams they'll use for silence in the night, the seasickness of their heartbeat driving them mad and aft in search of railings as the swell and suction of their breathing and guts carries them adrift from the shores of themselves. It wouldn't matter if you told them they'd go deaf.

>>4904154
>>4904119
>No to every opening posted in the thread
What do you consider a good opening from an actual piece of published literature?

I'm not saying this to be a defensive dickhead, I haven't actually posted anything in this thread. You seem like a very blunt critic who knows what he does and doesn't like, so I'm just genuinely curious to learn what "good writing" is to you and what elements of whatever example you choose add to the quality of it.

It was going on a month that Lilly had been
staying with her parents, Bill and Caroline, at
their lake house in Vermont. Although Bill had
been a full-bird colonel in the United States Army, there was only one commander in that family, and every time I called I could hear her evil whispers poisoning his ear. “Again?” Caroline would ask. Ten the sliding door would whoosh open, slam shut—a retreat to the deck—and Bill would say, “Just take it easy” or “You get to a meeting today?” I could see him out there in the snow, looking in at the women, hand raised in a situation-under-control-type gesture.

>>4904301
There is only one good opening in the history of literature
>riverrun, past Eve and Adam's...

>>4904334

>>4904334
Incorrect, the only good opening in existence is:

>I am Sam

>>4904334
Nice troll, friend.
Everyone knows the single best opening line is "Call me Ishmael."

>>4904334
That actually is a pretty GOAT intro

>>4904334
>Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.

>>4904370
I actually do like that opening a shitload.

>>4904370
I always felt a tremble when I read lolita, like the entire time I knew I was reading something that was truly great.

A little brown bat fluttered through the midday sky after a mosquito. It was far in the distance, but the bat knew it was there. It's wings beat at a solid eighteen beats a second. This was fast for its size, but the beast was hungry.
A little brown bat flies at an average of about fifteen miles per hour. A particularly mighty mosquito can just breach two. The bat slowed its wings and began a dive towards the mosquito whose might was about to become irrelevant.

>>4904251
So, no opinions? Even telling me it's shit would be nice. Why it's shit would be nicer, but I'll take what I can get.

>>4904251
Why II? Why not Jr?

>>4904446
Jr. is when you're named after your father, the father would then add Sr. II is for when you are named after a family member who is not your father. In this case he is named after his Grandfather. His father was also named Ned, but with a different middle name.

>>4904465
It's not exactly written poorly but what does it say that I don't give a shit about finding out anything more?

The Belgians had always been a lazy people. Pseudo-French bastards that they were. However, even their notorious sloth could not hold measure to the glorious Swedes, who spent their frigid, dark, miserable days eating condiments from tubes bought on their government's dollar. A wretched collection of the lowliest sorts of humans all gathered into bricked together apartment slums, forming a nation of impoverished little recluses no more than a few feet from one another while still maintaining utter isolation amongst themselves. A self-imposed subsistence which they clung to as a right of birth. At least they could console themselves on the fact that they would one day die comfortably in a free hospital bed, having waited their entire lives to die, the world no different than had they never existed, the sum of their lives being zero.

These were the thoughts that ran through Billy's head as he gazed out the window of his first grade math class. The droning of Mrs. Ellis about the complexities of addition and subtraction set a relaxing aural backdrop for his internal musings. Beside him, Sarah picked at an eraser, then threw little bits of it into the hair of the boy in front of her. Recess could not come soon enough. Billy gazed at the clock, and then back out the window, no more enlightened as he hadn't the faintest idea how to read time yet. Surely it must be recess soon.

>>4904479
That you don't like the character? Not sure how to change it into something that will make you care about his character without changing the character. Any suggestions on how to make it more grabbing.

>>4904489
Maybe open with a joke?

>>4904488
The fact that those are the thoughts of a first grader really ruined it for me. I don't think it was badly written, but I didn't like it. I'd probably read to the end of the chapter, at least, and see how I felt then.

>>4904491
I'm not really sure how that would help, and that's really against the tone of the work. It's court politics between two countries going through the throws of the industrial revolution, and a con man forced to be half ambassador half spy with the price of his freedom.

"YOLO no time for schlomo get up get going ya homo. Johnny if you don't get your swinging masterpiece out of my lay area my SO is gonna walk in and our King Tut's treasure will curse my realtionship." Goddamn I love my wife but having an authentic mandingo treat me like a rare rhino and chucking his spear of love at me is worth extinction. "Johnny, please don't cause an exodus and leave." Johnny said, "Can I rest a little bit longer? Chasing your excitement is reminiscent of my inner instinct to run the savannah's. Do let me rest for I'm something of a Cheetah and there are three more hunts today where I must explode." I hated it when her talked of his other tribal hearings. Damn him.

>>4904488
I really like this anon. Not sure if you just made that up or not but I would definitely read anything. that you wrote

>>4904488
This is absolute gold.

>>4904497
Needs more puns

>>4904497
Actually, that's not a very good description. This more full explains it.

There are two countries on either side of the mouth of a bay, their capital cities across from one another. The bay is seventy miles wide. The southern country Mell is fertile, and it's people prosperous. The city that is it's capital a trade center of the Green Sea countries. North of the bay is Seawall, the capital of Kiltgan. Their land is much harsher, their people producing less resources, and the northern part of their territory has been in open revolt for decades. Now this disparity been going on for more than a century, however this changed seven years ago. A new shipyard was built in Seawall, goods began to flow from their ports, the land bloomed, and the north tribes quieted.

This generally means one thing, the Southern Nation's market share is being threatened, and they would really like to know why and if possibly stop it. Enter Ned, the hero of the hour chosen to be the one who is sent up north to attend court and expose what has caused their country's economy to make such a rapid turn. He is recruited by the Secretary of Coinage, one of the noblemen of Mel, with the offer of working for them or execution.

>>4904509
I'll... I'll think about it.

>>4904496
The fact that they're the thoughts of a first grader made it for me. It's supposed to be a funny twist.

>>4904245
Competently written, a order of magnitude beyond the other stuff posted here, so I'll up the ante on the level of my critique. You don't really get any benefit from complements, so I'll spare you.

Maybe it's just me, but I'm burned out on fresh out of school ennui with a liberal arts degree stories. I suspect lit agents / journal editors are, too, since they get so much of it.

In a micro scale, something 'adds to my irritation.' But irritation is not what is being exuded in the previous nor the following sentences. Sadness, morose, maybe, but not irritation. So 'irritation' blipped out at me and I started to lose trust in the writer. Rather than replace it, that sentence could go. It reads better without it, anyway

>>4904518
You need humorously absurd acronyms and and a ridiculously complex subplot that ends on a pun.

>>4904526
Are you making Pratchett references or something?

>>4904530
No I just think that big hammy government plot novels should either be compellingly dramatic or campy. And this ain't Hamlet.

It was a dark and stormy night. Hanako Ikezawa approached 2013

"U-um... 2013-kun... IVEGOTTODOSOMETHING"

2013 Hanabro was taken quite by surprise as the suddenly bold young lass pulled down his cargo shorts, revealing his jelq-enhanced package.

"I-i-i-i-it.....S-so...B-b-b-b-b-b-i-big..." crooned Hanako, nearly inscrutable thanks to her stammering and the five-inch cock in her mouth

"Oh yeah baby like that. Like that baby like that. Awhhhh. Like that. Yeah" started 2013 Hanabro, grabbing Hanako by the back off her skull and repeatedly slamming her charred face against his emaciated pelvic bone.

Hanako's pussy got so wet they had to send people in to put yellow sandwich signs all over the KSG.

But instead of pleasuring her 2013 hanabro lifted her up by the stomach and started fucking her arseways, using her own spit as lube. Hanako screamed and screamed but nobody paid heed as the rest of KSG were too busy praising 2013hanabro's contributions and the Emperor's new clothes.

In the end Hanako broke and could no longer take the pain. She died while still impaled on 2013hanabro's New Age cock.

"Look at me everyone!" I am the paragon of a perfect KSG poster" said 2013hanabro, to much applause. A dead burnt Katawa lay next to him with cum dripping out of her ass, but nobody seemed to pay any heed as /ksg/ does not care about Katawa Shoujo anymore.

"All hail 2013hanabro!" yelled the Anons.

>>4904522
Eh, I just can't see it. It isn't funny to me. The first paragraph is a bunch of thoughts that seem like they would only be strung together by a misanthropic twenty-something. Sure, it COULD be thought by a six year old, but then I immediately dislike that six year old intensely, think he was probably abused or something, and lose all interest in reading further. I would probably like a misanthropic twenty-something even less, though.

I think the writing is good. I just probably wouldn't want to read much further. I'd still give it a chance, though.

Anyway if you like it, that's cool. I'm not trying to be asshole about it or anything. A writer can't please everyone, and that's fine.

Our story begins with a man from Nantucket
Whose dick was so long he could suck it.
And he said with a grin
As he wiped off his chin,
"If my ear were a cunt, I would fuck it."

>>4904538
Teach me.

>>4904533
I can understand that kind of preference. Though the government isn't exactly hammy, at least not in the way it has played out so far. I mean it isn't like "Oh no, evil" kind of deal.

I was more looking for comments on the writing style itself. I have done a bit of abandoning of this book in favor of a science fiction work that is taking up my current time.

>>4904535
Best thing posted ITT yet

Herbivores eat herbs and carnivores eat carnies. Two facts which made Herbert a very unfortunate man when he was hired to run the skee ball stand at the county fair.

>>4904301

There is a subtle quality in good writing that, often from the first sentence, lets your subconscious know that you're in the hands of a master. It's a comforting feeling and it arises from a sparkling of originality, a smooth flow of prose, an inventive use of language. It allows you to trust the author, and only if and when the author has your trust can he create truly good art.

Among published, I like pretty much anything that makes the cut in the more popular journals (though I read them regardless because, well, that's what I write). Missouri Review, NYer, Paris, Tin House, One Story, Zeotrope, etc.

If I had to point you to a single work off the top of my head that I can direct you to, I'd say "Roy Spivey" by Miranda July. You can listen to Davis Sedaris read it aloud here: http://www.newyorker.. com/online/blogs/books/2012/11/fiction-podcast-david-sedaris-reads-miranda-july.html

I will say that 4904160 was really competent. And the cat fucking opening, I admit, was well done and made me want to read more.

>>4904543
I'll admit, I laughed.

The window is splayed with a thick white paint. A broken alternated current electrical outlet hangs broken, half open, exposing its wires to the warm, damp air of the house. Located in the south central urban Detroit area, the house slowly decays, surrounded by other houses, home to the homeless and typical social degenerates.In the man’s hands is a black leather briefcase, which is currently clutched tightly against his hot, rapidly expanding and contracting chest. From the outside, one may think he is out of breath, looking out the window for someone whose intended purpose isn’t in his best interest, but this is not true.
The body of his soul is desperately trying to maintain the correct amount of blood flow to the brain that it has kept in balance these past thirty-six years. A deep, circular hole in the upper portion of his bodies’ chest cavity is the cause of this action. Within this hole is a severed Subclavian artery, which was caused by a 9 mm bullet, fired from a Smith & Wesson semiautomatic pistol. The gun model itself is out of production, and has been for seventeen years. Due to negligent factory assembly and inspection techniques, none but two of these models survive today. One belongs to a recluse, who lives and has lived in the lower reaches of the Canadian tundra, 25 miles south of the tree line, for fifteen years. The other is located in Smith & Wesson headquarters in Saint Louis Missouri, which sits there, reminding them of the atrocious product quality of the Smith & Wesson Company in the mid to late nineties.

>>4904419
Remove "solid," change "size, but the" to "size. The "

"was about to" to "was to"

>>4904551
Hi please critique my opening, it's from a novella set in 4chan itself specifically the /v/ and /vg/ boards
>>4904535

>>4904444
No, but not too bad. Could use some editing. Remove "rather." Also, I think you need it to be a series of poloriods and then you describe only the last one; otherwise saying there is a "set" of them kind of jumps out at us.

>>4904503
Brilliance

The problem all text-based deistopes are beauty, beaty? beauty -- Cornelia's symmetry uglies and to the shells of strombus mollusk medium seasnails spires don't go double sideways, but both ways like bisexuals and bivalves and biangulars; bipeds walk/run slow or fly. Bitch! you bitch the it saw sea green fulcrums young for his age, young for his age? and yes even Even tones mean infantilism to those without other isms: naked gills ni-care for airpaint.
"What are you up to on there?"
"Looking for women"
"On the internet? You'd have better luck looking for a power saw at a coffee shop"
Wynn did that thing. His ripostes had neither the zest of improvs nor the eloquence of composeds, giving him the almost impressive ability to simultaneously affect both wit and inastucity. He stood stiff: if his posture existed in a vacuum one would extrapolate that he wore oversized button shirts and jeans that ran perfectly vertically without any of the eighty dollar crease marks. But he wore a birdhouse on his head and feather fur as sleeve lint. An awful[ly] contradictory guy, in lots of ways.

Let's stop for an eighth. I don't like to do that and it's not for my own accord. Getting explicit like that is bad form in some schools, but I don't have Jake Barnes' narrative restraint. I'll hold back on the moralism and stick to deflection, but be generous and eat this up as meta. Onward?

Wynn left for groceries and I drank mandarin oranges in a spoonstraw. The canned peaches/oranges/mango complemented the glows of the room's blue screens (television, laptop, phone) to create an iridescent effect like those late 2000s superhero movie posters. The wall noises turned to sea foam and I blinked for twelve hours.

>I've posted this in like 5 previous threads but whatever it's still the opening even if I've written more. Please don't comment on that opening joke because its inanity is sort of the point and that's all anyone ever notices.

In and out. In and out. Walls balloon, textures warping like elastic. In and out. In and out. The cold winds make their pass as the room contracts and with its expansion they escape. This house is a brick and mortar lung. Around me it breathes. Within me it breathes.

It has been like this for so long. All my memories, dulled by gray light, lay dormant in this bed, between four walls indecisive of their size or shape. I am stripped to the bone and in my nakedness I see the flow of my flesh interrupted by so many little holes. My probing fingers disappear into them, dark as pitch. There is nothing to touch inside but the rushing air weaving within and without. I am the flute of the house. My body begins to sing a melody in tune to the room.

It is an ugly song. A ghostly moaning that balls itself up at the top of my throat. I clutch the sheets and writhe. The breath of this place, a feather tickling my blood. The breath of this place, a nail scraping the underside of my skin. I feel my teeth grit and grind, turning to dust in my mouth. My fingers draw blood from my palms.

Be honest

>>4904554
I don't get it; I take it as a string of insider jokes? To me, it's like fan fiction; if you aren't familiar with the source material, it's not really of any value to you.

Generally, he didn't like drinking.

Slumped forward in a puddle of his own saliva, Marcus starred vacantly at an arrangement of bottles. Brightly colored liquors cast shafts of hazy illumination, backlit by a neon sign. Beside him a vaguely human shaped figure, made out of clumps of vegetation and bark, threw back glass after glass into a round hole that would have been somewhere around the neck of a human. Thick grey worms, like nightcrawlers, squirmed from between breaks in the foliage at the stump of its hand, encircling the shot glass.

"Another," warbled a voice from the neck hold, distorted by the pool of liquid now occupying its chest cavity. The bar tender nodded and poured him a dink.

"Marcus, come on then, you've only had six and you're keeled over already? That's not the human I know, what with your livers and shit. Come on, filter quicker before I finish the whole bottle." Laughter, or at least the closest thing something without lungs could make, echoed from inside its body. Blinking, Marcus picked himself up off the counter and starred at the clock. Numerous hands, colored coded, designated half a dozen species time cycles, 3am for him. Maybe it was time to go home.

>>4904561
>Please don't comment on that opening joke because its inanity is sort of the point and that's all anyone ever notices.

Maybe you should take the hint.

>>4904566
I could say the same for Portrait of the Artist if I haven't read the bible half that shit doesn't mean anything.

>>4904572
Then you know how I feel

However, if you're trying to be a serious writer, you need to be a serious reader, and reading the Bible is as important as any work in understanding literature.

>>4904561
I didn't bother reading after that bullshit opening, Jesus, that's awful.

>>4904571
I like dumb jokes better than "good writing." I'd rather be 2Chainz than Nabokov. Could you tell me what you think of the non-dialogue parts?

>>4904564
Change pitch, it's a thick and sticky darkness, hard to reduce to nothingness. Drop writhe. Good but green.

>>4904306
pls crit

>>4904561
This is awful. Are you trying to be "postmodern"? No sane person can get through this without cringing. Goddamn I've seen better writing on those helvetica-on-white-paper tumblr images. Good lord.

>>4904575
Nah, I meant hypothetically. I've read the Bible. I just meant that content can transcend context.

>>4904569
I wrote this right now off the top of my head. Opinions on it's absolutely shittyness Well I'll be damned, shittiness isn't a word. I mean I guess I wasn't expecting it to be, but still, sometimes life finds little ways to disappoint you?

>>4904579
The seams show. Badly. I suspect you're trying to imitate the style of something else you've read and were impressed with.

To really break rules, you first have to know them. So I would suggest you try writing a simple, straight story in an accessible style first.

Because if you can't do that, you have no hope of doing what you're trying to do. Follow?

>>4904561
This is like reading Finnegan's Wake without the assurance from people smarter than me that it actually makes any fucking sense.

>>4904569
You use just the wrong word sometimes. Like it's close enough that I know what you mean but kind of funny. It isn't perfect enough to seem insincere. This is charming at worst.

>>4904598
>To break the rules, you have to know them
I'm not even that guy but this is the biggest load of shit your teacher tells you so you shut up with your stream of consciousness and pass the goddamn state writing exam. There are no rules.

>>4904589
Yes, that's what art is, but it can do that only if it isn't completely dependent upon context. And in this case, it is.

>>4904605
Alt lit, everyone.

>>4904608
>implying Tao Lin isn't just as good of a read as James Joyce

>>4904601
Yeah, that's what I get for not thinking/checking what I write. 30 seconds of editing would have fixed that, but fuck that! I have places to go and people to see Who the fuck am I kidding, I'm going to see here shit posting on /lit/ for another two hours before sleeping

>>4904605
I've never heard a teacher say this, and I've had many. It occurred to me after reading too many bad stories from beginner, unpublished writers in workshops.

Anyway, good luck getting published.

>>4904612
I hope you're just tricking me

>>4904561
What I get from this is that you have a good deal of fun writing. And for much of this I had a good deal of fun reading it. I don't know that it means anything or that it could be called well-written but it's joy in written form.

>>4904601
Holy shit I am so bad at editing, oh well:

Generally, he didn't like drinking.

Slumped forward in a puddle of his own saliva, Marcus starred vacantly at an arrangement of bottles. Brightly colored liquors cast shafts of hazy illumination, backlit by a neon sign. Beside him a vaguely human shaped figure, made out of clumps of vegetation and bark, threw back glass after glass into a round hole that would have been somewhere around the neck of a human. Thick grey worms, like nightcrawlers, squirmed from between breaks in the foliage at the stump of its hand, encircling the shot glass.

"Another," warbled a voice from the neck hold, distorted by the pool of liquid now occupying its chest cavity. The bar tender nodded and poured him a dink.

"Marcus, come on then, you've only had six and you're keeled over already? That's not the human I know, what with your livers and shit. Come on, filter quicker before I finish the whole bottle." Laughter, or at least the closest thing something without lungs could make, echoed from inside its body. Blinking, Marcus picked himself up off the counter and starred at the clock. Numerous hands, colored coded, designated half a dozen species time cycles, 3am for him. Maybe it was time to go home.

>>4904615
Oh, that was an original thought, huh? You've never heard any teacher say that you have to know the rules before you can break them? Never heard of Strunk and White?

>>4904561
>>4904619
samefag

>>4904625
Goddamn it I hit catalog and came back and now it doesn't have the little (you) thing next to it but low-key that wasn't me.

>>4904627
Holy shit you are bad at lying, trying to justify yourself only makes you look more suspicious you monumental faggot.

>>4904629
I guess that's what they call post-sincerity

>>4904627
As long as it's in the same tab you can always come back to the same thread and it will always display the (You) next to posts addressing you.

Fun fact. So hitting catalog and then coming back will have been no problem.

>>4904154
hi. Why do you say >>4901883 'it's poetry'? Is lyrical verse a bad thing? Also, the text inside parentheses was supposed to be stream of consciousness.

>>4904642
Shhhh.... shhh.... shut the fuck up you piece of shit.

>>4904624
It was original to me, but it doesn't surprise me at all that it's common; that was my point. It's universally apparent.

When light is slowly vanishing, my boyfriend is driving me. The edge of the road harbors a man in purple-striped wifebeater, riding a motor scooter, wearing a helmet. His body is sculpted with care, endowed with dedication to its own image, accompanied by his peerless chin. Ancient nobility. My eyes fondle it until I detect the gaze of my boyfriend and I begin to observe the dashboard. Once I am free, I resume my admiration. I am again interrupted. Crawling over my boyfriend's face, irritation. I shelter my left face and excruciate myself with looking. He is in front of us now, and my boyfriend drives more. The speed startles me and I am close to the scream when the distance fleets to--

The man looks behind him and smiles. Tapping his helmet twice, then pointing at the passing lane. He shakes his head and shrugs. Proud, fearless, courageous. Mine disappears behind a turn but is in my dripping thoughts that evening.

>>4904645
Your disdain for postmodern art and your lack of awareness of your intertextual relationship with the originators of your unoriginal thoughts go hand in hand.

>>4904638
Parentheses do not belong in the narrator's voice because they are already an "aside."

And yeah, I dislike the lyrical verse/formatting because that's a cheat. It's creative in the same way that changing font colors or size would be.

>>4904656
>not reading books with multiple font sizes and colors

>>4904651
And you sound like a child attempting to sound intelligent. You're incorrect, face it.

>>4904661
The only "big word" I used was intertextual chill

>>4904651
Oh, I get it. You're uneducated, lazy, and unoriginal, but you can cover all of that up by describing it as "postmodern."

Cool trick, bro. How's that intro to creative writing class going? Think you're going to take intermediate in the fall?

>>4904662
>equating big words with intellectual
Confirmed for 15.

>>4904664
16, actually. A for effort.

>>4904659
Okay, Fifty Year Sword.

But I was just making a joke; but are you seriously saying there are others out there that I've missed? What are they?

>>4904659
I have been reading House of Leaves exclusively for 14 years.

>>4904668
Nigga, you underageb&. Get the fuck outta here.

>>4904668
I can't take it, just kill yourself already.

>>4904672
>what is irony

Well this thread was nice while it lasted.

>>4904669
House of Leaves and Only Revolutions. Unsurprisingly both are also books by Mark Z. Danielewski, who is incapable of just fucking letting go of that gimmick already.

>>4904676
It just takes one underaged postmondernist fucktard to ruin any thread.

>>4904674
A social construct.

>>4904677
Yeah, I read HoL in the late ninetees. Holy hell, that was eye-opening.

That format doesn't work so well on my Kindle, though :(

>>4904676
Nigga just tryna post his shit then the whole thread derailed into one guy being a dick and the other guy being a stupid faggot and replying too much

>>4904681
>I read HoL in the late ninetees
House of Leaves was released in 2000

>>4904160
No comments?

>>4904688
Okay, please forgive my oldfaggyness. I remember reading it when I lived in a certain apartment and was a senior in college which was mostly in the 90s, but I graduated in 2000.

>>4899815
I would definitely read on. Even if it's just a boring old shed, I like the way it's written.

>>4904561
The first part is actually great. The rest is meh. First paragraph is canon-tier.

>>4904698
I did comment, but I commented in your reply to me.

>>4904688
Oh, I also associate that work with the music of his sister, which I also associate with the late 90s.

>>4904708
Thank you, I think that your comment is excellent and I'll actually remove the irritation part. It was one of those sentences that you don't really like and you struggle to find an alternative without realizing that the solution was just to elide it.

can someone critique this?

The people on vacation sprawled everywhere, spread out and rollicked. It was one of the feast days on which, long in advance, clowns mountebanks, animal trainers and peddlers rely to make up for the bad seasons of the year.
On those days it seems to me the people forget everything, suffering and work, and behave like children. For the young it is a holiday, the horror of school dismissed for twenty-four hours. For adults it is an armistice signed with the malevolent powers of life, a respite in universal disputes and struggles.
Even the man of the world and the man occupied with spiritual labors do not easily escape the influence of this popular festivity. Without wishing to, they absorb their part of the carefree atmosphere. As for me, in my role of true masculinity, I never fail to inspect all the booths which are proudly displayed at these solemn times.

>>4904647
>my boyfriend
>my boyfriend
>my boyfriend

garbage

>>4904656
>>4904638
>Parentheses do not belong in the >narrator's voice because they are >already an "aside."
Faulkner did it. In sound and the fury. Using stream of consciousness in the narrator's voice.

>>4904915
>devoting a sentence to clarify a name is my bf for a two, workably one, paragraph story
I don't think so, anon. Maybe if were part of a book, but it's a brief bit for 4chan

When I was young, I dreamed of ending the world.

What do you think?

Is it a twisted thought to think for a two year old girl?

I don't know.

My parents said it was. My teacher said it was. My friends said it was. But I can't erase it from my mind, this indelible idea. The world, ending. People, vanishing in a blink of an eye. Countries, cities, governments, societies, gone. And there would be nothing left. Not even dust. Just....nothing.

What do you think?

>>4904647
>His body is sculpted
You don't need this. It's a Meyer-worthy cliche.

>Crawling over my boyfriend's face, irritation.
Absolutely not. Messing with the syntax of a cliche to make it sound original does not make it original. Besides, I'm no grammar expert, but that comma sounds more as if it should be a colon.

Aside from that, there's nothing technically wrong, although it does sound painfully over-written, like someone trying to write a "smart" erotica.

>>4904904
I'd definitely read on. I'd try to change "malevolent powers of life", it just doesn't sound right. Your last three sentences are excellent.

>>4904647
I don't understand the last few sentences

>>4904984
They're supposed to be less readily comprehensible than the preceding words. So think about them and find what you look for.

>>4904983
I'm going to be straight with you: my thoughts, my abrupt thoughts, are very cliche. If I wrote a book narrating my regular thoughts through life, it would be rather dull. My writing is best when I'm narrating fictional thoughts

>>4904975
This sounds like it will sell spectacularly.

Short sentences, rather fantastical premise, some notion of inner conflict, basic repetition to keep the flow going, perhaps a new word for some people wanting to think themselves smart for reading a book, apocalyptic imagery.

If you're going with it, at least try to throw in some semi-colons and cut down on the fragments. Here's a sentence from "Angels and Demons", just for a little comparison: “Genius, she thought. My father . . . Dad. Dead.”

Yes, it'll sell well.

>>4899940
Would read.
>>4899943

Repetition of glance

>>4899961
"Exploded with a loud sound" is a shit phrase.

>>4900000
Would read.

>>4904992
So was that excerpt from your diary?

>>4905005
It was just something I wrote extemporaneously about an event of the day. Probably doesn't belong in an opening-for-a-novel thread, but idk. It's nothing like my fictional writing, subject matter wise

>>4905012
I wrote it for this thread, that's it

>>4905016
Eh, it probably won't last much longer anyway. I would say also that if your "dripping thoughts" in the evening are over some guy on a motorcycle (and not your own face - that was a little unclear), you should probably start to reevaluate your relationship.

>>4905025
Well my life lasts longer. I don't know about specific frames.

I want an open relationship, my bf doesn't. I don't have a hard time not having sex with other people tho

I have actually masturbated to my reflection before, partially why I structured the paragraph this. I'm not lusting after a person at the end, I'm lusting after my own creation: he's made in one image, I remade him in mine, which is verging on preposterous; he becomes merely a shell I use to encase my own narcissism in because variation of bodies is more interesting.

>>4905029
Oh, no, I meant the thread won't last much longer. And I would say his disdain for an open relationship and your sexual liberalism could either be the only thing saving your relationship or the thing to destroy it. If he's really that similar to you, such that you're able to project yourself into him, then surely this difference is quite the spanner in the works. The dangerous thing about a relationship like this is that he probably shares your faults, too, whether you can see them or not, and this has the potential to hurt both of you in the long run. I should imagine it'd be pretty tough hating a person you see as a projection of yourself.

>>4904247

Anyone?

>>4904647
for all the shit you pull on this site, your writing is pretty shit.

>>4904961
good luck getting published with that attitude

>>4900000
would read

>>4904247
Is it a metafictional camera or a real one? You should post some more for getting a proper feel of it.

>>4905130

A real one. It's a description of found footage that will be returned to throughout (hence the generally detestable present tense). The next few paragraphs:

They were not household names in the Western Federation. Of course they had briefly made the news – not the dawn raid on the Foyle Laboratories building, or their detention, though. It was when Paul and Sara Ashe disappeared after posting bail that they became a minor news item. Fugitives are always a good draw, and a married couple? That's a nice hook, helps with the human interest angle. But there were no car chases or tense standoffs forthcoming. The Ashes disappeared more thoroughly than most people can manage.

And it wasn't as if they'd actually done anything, or at least anything interesting. The laws banning most forms of genetic research were not widely understood or even known of. And since there was nothing cool about the case – no malformed freaks that shouldn't exist or could start fires with their minds – the blogs and message boards stuck to their usual fare of serial killers, child molestors and celebrity drug addicts.

Officially, the case was open and the investigation ongoing, of course. Justice never tires or sleeps. Their facial features were in the system and if they set foot on any city street, or used an ATM, or drove on a motorway, or did any number of other things they never seemed to do, an alarm would sound somewhere, and the police would converge to arrest them.

But they were not a priority. There were no press conferences about progress in the case, no appeals for information from the public. The trail had gone cold and warming it up was not at the top of any police officer's list.

-------------

It's a YA sci-fi kind of thing.

>>4903369
>>4903430
Fast, then slow. The hardest thing by far is to get the tone right. Too straight, and it's just Sebastian Junger in the Kush. Too purple, and well, we know about that.

I'm taking The Things They Carried apart sentence by sentence. I found out that it is frowned upon to loiter about in Arlington for extended periods, even if involved. Decorum. So I have to move a setting. Research and travel opportunity.

>>4905001
>>4905130
Quints here. Thanks.

>>4904951
I'm sure you can find any famous, successful author who did something. George Saunders is also inventive in that way. But you're not them and I'm telling you why it's a bad idea. I'd also like to ask Faulkner why he felt it necessary when the tone makes it apparent.

Using tricks is not a substitute for precision in expression. You may as well draw a thought bubble around them.

>>4904975
Your prose don't justify your scope. I'm pained to think where this chosen one-first person will go.

>>4904997
>>>4904975
>This sounds like it will sell spectacularly.

Troll.

It's one thing to give an opinion about something's quality, but where did you get the qualifications to even begin to make that assertion?

>>4906080
dude, that's depressing. 'you are shit so don't try too much invention.' You think it's better fiction that sells? I'm pretty sure that's what every YA author thinks.

>>4906617
*better to write fiction that sells

>>4905125
I am published.

Here's a fictional work for 4chan
HIS MANLY FANTASY: A POST-IRONIC LOVE STORY FOR /lit/

Every day I watched her leave the house, her ass cheeks rubbed together, fired my mind. Two weeks ago, Simon invited me to dinner, and I first encountered her. I couldn’t hear a thing.
“Are you alright?” Simon’s voice was a marble bouncing down stairs.
“What?”
“You look faint.”
His wife put her hand on my shoulder and my dick immediately hardened. “Yes, thank you,” I put my hand over it, warmed myself with it--uh, that is to say, her hand. The sincerity of her concern made her more attractive. The line parted her lips so slightly, I had to squint to see it. She finally took her hand off my shoulder and sat down. I pretended to rub my forehead so I could smell my palm: the smell was so delicious that I swear I could jack off to it without any accompanying mental image. After she returned my smile, I licked her throat in my mind’s eye. Her skin was afternoon light.

Now she is home alone, the children are at school. She walks outside in barely pants. I leave my hiding and approach her as she enters the house. She turns around and steps back. I close the door behind me. Her lips and breasts say excuse me in unison. My name. My hands on her tits. My name, quicker and urgent. I pound my lips into hers, inhaling her gasping. Her face whitens, then flushes. “Get the fuck out of here!” she pouts. I smile and grope her between her legs. She hits me and the room dances instantly before I shove her and she falls on the floor. Now she struggling, kicking, flailing. “Get the fuck off of me!” and “I’ll kill you!” Trying to knee me. I hold her wrists down. Her breasts are quivering, her pussy is trembling. I slide my fingers into her pants and yank, yank. Her panties are artistic and I give them a moment of silence after ripping them off. Her pubic hair is trimmed to softness. I free my excited penis.

>>4906945
Now, I truly believe that no man has experienced the truth of manhood until he has raped a bitch. It is the height of instinct to reproduce and will to power, both joining together and satisfying the deepest needs for a man. To have total control over a body like that, power that immediate, intimate and intense, that cannot be willed away by its object, that is manhood.

She’s exposed from hips to knees. I guide my dick into her and begin to fuck in tempo. She groans, then resumes screams and cursing. I hold struggling arms down and kiss her. I can feel the walls of her pussy constricting with anxiety. She finally runs out of breath. I’ve torn away her supergo. She sobs. “It’s okay, baby,” I say. “You’re a brave girl and I’m proud of you. Shoosh, shoosh.” I fuck. She is a thing, such a lovely thing.

Is there a philosophy of rape? Not that I’ve read. Sade wrote a bit about rape, but his philosophy wasn’t exactly centered on that particular experience. In some ways, I see myself as the Althusser of personal philosophy, vertically organizing women for their greatest purpose.

>>4906948

Each thrust churns out more tears from her eyes, oozing all over her face like angelic bird droppings. I use one hand to take a knife from my pocket. She’s terrified. I cut away her shirt, then her bra. “Oh my!” her breasts seem to say. Her nipples are staunch and defiant, I reward them with gentle chewing. I grind into her so hard that her whole body is going bump bump bump. Tits wobble. She asks me to please stop, and the louder she says please, the harder I thrust. Over and over I fuck her, I can’t believe how long I’m going. The sobbing quiets into whimpers. I hear a faint moan. I know I have demolished her ego, leaving behind the id.

Sexual frustration is THE ill of society. I mean, Wilhelm Reich even said it was responsible for fascism. It drives men to go out of their way to do terrible, awful things just to impress women, to get laid, to get laid more. It puts them in a bad moods, it takes away life’s potential. Should I live my life short of its potential happiness, when that is far greater than what I’m allowed? Or should I take? Sex is a fundamental, biological need. So many men are malnourished, and that leaves them vulnerable to diseases. You take away sex from men, they become neurotic and can be engineered to the state of a trim dog begging for a snack. I reject being denied something so dear and essential to my soul, to sacrifice it in worship of a god so trivial as consent.

Her moaning is louder. Our eyes lock. Then hers close and her lips curve into an O. An orchestra. It’s common knowledge that most women can’t vaginally orgasm, but that’s bullshit. Truth is, women have to be tight for it to work, and you have fuck forever. For a woman to be truly tight she has to be scared shitless; if she’s relaxed and happy, she’s loose. If you fuck her long enough while she’s tight as hell, a vaginal orgasm is inevitable. I can feel semen erupting. I stop. We both pant and lock eyes. She slobbers all over my penis for a while.

A year later she is holding our son. Simon is a proud father, two other children are playing. “I’ll take care of him best of all,” she whispers.

“I know.”