/lit/ - Literature

>>4975685
There is a girl
who is laughing so damn hard
her rapist just quits

I'm going to post a snippet from my novel in a few different parts (word limit and all that). Basic background you need to know is that the narrator is this guy who suffers from depression, but he doesn't think he does, reckoning it's all just basic teenage angst, you know? This is one of the pivotal moments in the story when he realises something may be wrong with him.

One of the most curious things about social norms as generally agreed upon by the human race is a deep, innate fear of discussing anything that is to do with what it is to be a human being; how we all seem to have a gift for ignoring most aspects of life which are permanent fixtures of everyday waking consciousness. And I don’t just mean the pivotal moments of you when you confess to an intimate group how isolated and alienated you’ve felt for as long as you can remember, and that you cannot sleep at night because you worry that no one will ever truly be able to understand or connect with how you perceive the world to be in relation to your place in it, only to find (and have your facial expressions contort into something communicating incredulity), looking around the room populated by your closest friends and John’s plus one from the University of Limerick, they are all nodding in agreement, and know exactly how you feel, and you suddenly realise we are all a lot more alike than we like to think we are, and this is what those types of people who are immeasurably smarter than you mean when they talk for an excruciating amount of time about the so-called ‘human condition’. I also mean, like, when you’re curled up in bed after a long, extraordinarily exhausting day, during which you’ve had two separate servings of Berocca Boost, one in the morning and once in the evening, purely for its vitamin B5 qualities, and for breakfast you had porridge, which you added soy milk to because you suspect you’re lactose intolerant, and you’ve been mindful to drink as much water as you possibly could, but somewhere along the line, as the sun went down and down again, you found yourself worn out, and your willpower utterly eroded, and your efforts to keep maximum acne breakouts at bay are waning, and now you’re gorging on a packet of McVitie’s Digestives, rationalising that it’s the limited milk chocolate and orange edition, and you don’t know how long they’ll be in stores because, after all, why would you?

(cont.)

>>4975741

after all, why would you? – you don’t eat that sort of good anyway, and before you know it, the entirety of the delicious biscuit collection is gone, and you feel guilty and remorseful, and this shame becomes doubly so when you realise you’ve just consumed both dairy and excess sugars, effectively hitting two birds with one stone; and so now, as mentioned previously, you’re curled up in bed, arms around your knees, hot chocolate on your bedside table, the best of Hans Zimmer blaring through your earphones, and you just can’t bring yourself to face the fact that you weren’t strong enough to be consistent with your own personal goals of self-improvement, and you find yourself wishing girls didn’t care about hormonal acne, but of course that isn’t particularly fair because in your time you’ve rejected females for reasons just as, if not even more, shallow, and your thoughts wander onto other things (nobody likes to be constantly thinking of how astoundingly hypocritical they are on a second-by-second basis), as they always do when you’re too tired to regulate them, and you think of Ava, and you’re imagining a fantastical situation of uncanny detail in which she’s upset and you draw here into a hug, saying words to her you would never say to anyone else, and you wipe her left eyelid as she starts to tear up, and you say something with such perfect delivery that you’re rewarded with the purest, most lovely sound you’ve ever heard; that of a female, deeply, madly in love; trying to laugh but being unintentionally stifled by ever-intensifying sobs, and just as the violin swoops in for that perfect part of At Wit’s End – you know, that really emotive and beautiful piece of the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack – you see her Sinatra blue mascara begin to run, and you return to reality; the whole comforting feel of your escapism turning into something violating and wholly deprecating, because you know Ava has left you for someone else. And suddenly you feel much lonelier than you did before. And now you think you’re going to start crying.
This is the type of human experience that is so contradictory in nature – how could it not be; it is so bizarre, and personal, and secret, and only you, that surely no one would ever feel those ways or do those things; or, to be more exact, feel ways like these, or do things like these. You would be surprised. The truth of the matter is that if these types of moments are your most frequent in your waking-but-also-completely-conscious-life, and you would never speak of them, ever, because they are too weird and out there and desperately lonely, chances are everyone else has their own personal variants of such experiences.

>>4975746

3/3

The truth of the matter is that if these types of moments are your most frequent in your waking-but-also-completely-conscious-life, and you would never speak of them, ever, because they are too weird and out there and desperately lonely, chances are everyone else has their own personal variants of such experiences.

But there are some things you go through in life where probably not everyone can relate, even if you’d like to think they can, like the time I got really drunk in the clubhouse, and was walking home from university and it was raining so bad you could have called it ‘incessant’, and I just didn’t want to do it anymore, and I saw a truck coming down the road in the distance and I made my way to the edge of the footpath, and I made the decision that it was finally time to kill myself.

Does he know who you are?
Does he laugh, just to know
What he has?

Does he know not to talk
About your dad?
Does he know when you're sad?


Does he know where your lips begin?

Do you know who you are?
Do you laugh, just to think
What I lack?

Do you know your lip shakes
When you're mad?
And do you notice when you're sad?

You don't like to be touched,
Let alone kissed.

Does his love make your head spin?

>>4975767

Conor pls

She said,

"Poetry is easy
you just have to
write a normal
paragraph
and then fragment
it and maybe give
it a purposely stag

nant ending."

I nodded, but I
didn't really
care.

>>4975776
Huh?

>>4975782

This is for original content.

I have two things I'd like critiqued.


The Tale of the Battle of Kren's Reach tells that as the men lines up in the field to face the Orc foe a huge roar was heard from the mountains and the men's swords and halberds took on a silver sheen, and a light rain began to fall, eventually turning into a huge torrent which saturated the land before the Men of Alalia. As the Orcs and Goblins came at the men, an etherial mist came up from the ground and surrounded the evil beings. Although the men's vision was hampered, the legend tells that not one swing of a blade did not cut greenskin flesh that day, and as the last orc was slain, the fog lifted and not a man had been killed.

AND

My chest hurt earlier, and I took some aspirin and now I feel better. Science.

Thanks for your help guys.

>>4975827
Who's Conor tho?

>>4975847

Conor Oberst, the guy behind Bright Eyes? Unless I'm thinking of the wrong song?

>>4975879

Oh wait I am thinking of the wrong song. Who is it that does that song again? His name begins with K doesn't it?

>>4975741
>>4975746
>>4975750

Seriously can someone just tells me if this writing style reminds you of an author or if it is distinctive? I can't help but worry that I'm subconsciously emulating the styles of people I'm reading.

Last time I post this on /lit/, I swear

>>4976028

avatofacid.com

>>4975977
I'm not particularly well-read, but I wouldn't say I think you're emulating anyone's style. The final passage did remind the tiniest bit of Lemony Snicket's style of writing.

>But there are some things you go through in life where probably not everyone can relate, even if you’d like to think they can, like the time I got really drunk in the clubhouse, and was walking home from university and it was raining so bad you could have called it ‘incessant’, and I just didn’t want to do it anymore, and I saw a truck coming down the road in the distance and I made my way to the edge of the footpath, and I made the decision that it was finally time to kill myself.

That one. Something about the "But there are some things you go through in life where probably not everyone can relate, even if you’d like to think they can," bit echoes his writing.

Shit, you've probably never read him. I wouldn't be concerned anyways - as long as you're not attempting to emulate someone's style consciously, or you don't veer wildly into unconscious emulation then you're good to go as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, how are you writing this if you're dead - my presumably fellow Irishman?

Etched in wood stare deep
words beside the flame.
Weeds rise in time as the flame is doused.

What once was precious is lost
and the path is found again.
More cautious steps to be took.

>>4976055

Would firstly like to sincerely extended my appreciation for your feedback.

Haha, I've actually read all the books from A Series of Unfortunate Events. This might sound weird but I think I'm gonna take that remark as a compliment. You're right though, now that I'm considering it; that passage is actually very much like - hang on, I think the exact quote is on goodreads - yeah, I got it:

>“Everyone, at some point in their lives, wakes up in the middle of the night with the feeling that they are all alone in the world, and that nobody loves them now and that nobody will ever love them, and that they will never have a decent night's sleep again and will spend their lives wandering blearily around a loveless landscape, hoping desperately that their circumstances will improve, but suspecting, in their heart of hearts, that they will remain unloved forever. The best thing to do in these circumstances is to wake somebody else up, so that they can feel this way, too."

Not necessarily the same at all really, but that was what came to mind. At any rate, what I wrote does sound a bit snicketesque indeed.

Yeah, that's fair enough. I definitely wasn't trying to channel his writing style when I wrote it anyway (it was one of those rare black rook in rainy weather moments of inspiration when I woke up at four in the morning with the perfect idea of how to finally write the monologue that had been rolling within the back of my mind for the best part of half year, and I just wrote like three pages without stopping).

Yes, I am also Irish, very astute of you. Whereabouts are you from? The story in real life went something like - I stepped out in front of the lorry, when it was about twenty feet away, and as it came closer and closer (I'm not sure why it didn't slow down a little bit, probably couldn't see me for the rain) I just sauntered back out of the way, watched the vehicle rush past and then I just stood there in the pouring rain for about two minutes, just contemplating the complexities of life. Eventually I looked up at the sky and - even though I'm an atheist - I asked it to stop raining. It didn't.

I was considering putting that part in the novel too, but I think it would be better to just end the chapter abruptly with the whole deciding to kill myself thing because, while the character has certainly been very erratic in his behaviour up to this point, he couldn't have been described as suicidal per se, so this would be a considerable shock factor. That and the whole looking up at the clouds thing is a bit melodramatic, even if it did happen in real life. It's very difficult to construct this perfect vision I have in my head, where on one hand he is quite clearly suffering from clinical depression, and on the other it's like, you know, maybe it's just teenage angst; and all the while the character is not even thinking about it. This is all normal too him, if you get what I mean?

>>4976130

Ran out of space there with the last message.

Like it's a self-diagnosis that becomes more and more apparent to the reader as the novel progresses but the character sort of knows from the start but is in denial about it but also doesn't know and figures it out as his story goes on etc etc etc. I want it as true to real life as possible, so the whole abrupt chapter ending would work well because that was the moment I knew for sure.

I wrote this last night for no real reason. I don't really know where I'm going with it or if I'll even finish it, but I'd definitely like some feedback.
http://txs.io/NxS

"This is my partner, Curtis."
"Oh, you're gay?"
"No, I'm a cop."
"Oh so there are no gay cops?"
"My police partner."
"Okay, buddy," I chuckled.
The ubiquity of heteronormativism is quite problematic.

>>4975882
Keaton Henson u muppet

>>4976358
Break up the paragraphs and condense the run-on sentences.

I write short stories that sci fi mags and publishers love to reject. Make of that what you will; here's one of my MANY unpublished shorts:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GAiSxk3kneGdEcFnQ9leP7HS7ye5t3AEguGabi4jdxM/edit?usp=sharing

>>4976428
Alright, I'll work on that thanks.
How'd you feel about the writing as a whole? Did it draw you in? Was it boring?

>>4976453
It's fine once it gets to the actual narrative. I didn't have any issue with the prose itself other than the fact that it needs to be trimmed, which is something to be done in later drafts.

The dialogue was well-written, but you need to tone down on exposition. It's better to scatter it throughout the story than to put it in all at once.

The reason a lot of writers don't get published is because they cram a fuckton of infodumping into the beginning and since that's what the publisher is seeing first, it'll get canned before the actual narrative takes place. It's also good to excise things leading up to the story. Try to start as late into the action as you can where things will still make sense to the reader. You can cover exposition later.

Basically, you want to the reader to think "WTF is going on?" and then give them information bit by bit, and lead them through the story like bread crumbs.

>>4976494
I hadn't thought of that but it does feel like all of the information's being forced on at once. Thanks for the insight, it really helped. I'll revise it as soon as possible.

>>4975741
>>4975977

With all due respect, I'm getting a real heavy DFW vibe from this. I think it's because David was known for his "eye for the scene", which is why his non-fiction is so excellent - his degree of perspicacity is incredible, and I would say yours does, too.

>>4976452
aaaaand another, shorter one, for people who want to critique but don't like to read:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yXOhea6ZfWIL9mv6Fzb7F9bd2Bk6D450zEh3181SlMI/edit?usp=sharing

Here is a 1/4 of my first chapter.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nwkUFq8mP74K0Q0EFJrABlAQAAfyNiEqvNCG7xTZCjw/edit

>>4976522
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nwkUFq8mP74K0Q0EFJrABlAQAAfyNiEqvNCG7xTZCjw/edit?usp=sharing

Wrong link

I only really spent one afternoon in the place. It's all collapsed into some blur. Time was dead and evidence of the murder lay everywhere. The satisfied leaned back, the joyous took a dip in the pool, the mortified died all the same, and most of them died sooner. You might think it a waste I spent so many sunny days indoors, or that a kid should live like an old man, especially in those summers so many are left dreaming of. But out there was fleeting, and I was worried that if I should step out, the light-speed beaches and romances and bonfires might end in September with my return, to find all my friends dead, the place empty, and leave me with the thought I’d blown it all up. I say friends: they were better than that. Those who left me with a lasting impression I’ve come to remember as eighteen aunts and about six uncles, though not a single one of them ever met the complete convocation that gathered in my mind over the years, and not a single one of them ever really considered, I think, their ramblings at all influenced the little kid wandering around the place. For the sake of brevity I’ll list the key players who came and went, who flitted in and out, who spanned years or months, days or weeks, by and by.

>>4976130
>>4976143
Heavy stuff dude. I think you've got a pretty cool outline of where you want to take the plot, how it's presented, etc. Also, I agree that the final sentence is a good way to end the chapter.

Anyway, I think that it's all ultimately up to what you think fits best. Art is the expression of self after all, and value is subjective.

>>4976513

This feedback actually made my night. Thank you so much. I actually only got into DFW recently (a long time after I first wrote what I posted earlier) but the edit you were presented with was written a few weeks after Infinite Jest, so I'd say he rubbed off on me in some way. Either way, it's very reassuring to know that my, um, observations about day-to-day human life - if you could call it that, I mean - aren't coming off as overly try-hard or pretentious, which is obviously territory one can stray into very easily when dealing with things like that. I'll go into more detail on that in a second.

>>4976681

Haha, my apologies. I realised as I was writing my original reply to you that it had become less of a reply and more of me going way over the top on detail you probably didn't care too much about. Your remarks are taken on board though, I'm quite warming to the idea of ending the chapter like so.

Anyway, would just like to thank

>>4976513
>>4976681

For responding with positive feedback. It's not that I'm insecure about my writing, it's more to do with the fact that since secondary school I've upped the type of literary standard I'm consuming, while at the same time hanging out on, like, reddit.com/r/writing and seeing some stuff people write and put out into the public eye saying they think it's the next best thing, and it's fucking awful, and I'm relatively young for this sort of thing so I've been reading these top tier novels and seeing this not-so-great-quality original content being posted online, and you know, you start to think, like, 'oh fuck, I'm one of them, those guys who think their work is good but doesn't have any idea what they're doing.' and at the same time I know that's not true because of the reception my writing has received all my life, but it still made it difficult to post online. I'm aware this is all making me sound very insecure, but the point I'm trying to make goes back to what I was saying originally, where, like, I know I'm good with insights into the human condition, but after reading classic after classic and one online disaster after another, I was quite worried that I wouldn't have enough life experience to put it together without sounding like I was trying to be something I wasn't, which is obviously made even more difficult when you're playing it teenage angst versus depression.

I have no idea if any of you even remotely care about this, haha, I just felt obliged to write back what I was thinking when I read your comments.

>>4976777
I care about what you're saying, I read all of your posts. I didn't intend "heavy stuff dude" to sound like "woah son, that's some wall of text".

Are you from the countryside, or one of the cities? I don't expect you to get too specific in your answer - Ireland is a small-ass place and the threat of "creepy stalker-cum-murderer" is maybe a little more real than it is in, say, America.

>>4976840

Oh, okay. I misinterpreted your post so.

Haha, it's alright. I'm from Dublin. Can I ask why you wanted to know?

>>4976452
They reject it cause it's bad, friend

Held in mind, and contained ire, he wondered whether or not the roadside laughs stretching through the unnatural air were directed toward his person. This was a fault he held through primary school. There was a comfort in his paranoia, that he felt was a result of his own construction, an invented perception.
As he rounded the edge of the path he couldn’t help but shout out to answer the laughter, a quiet and breathless; “What’s the joke?”
Chuckling, giggling, roaring, a crashing of internal waves answered.
“Show us your hands.”
“What?”
“Show us those clean hands, you deaf palmwhite,” one squeezed out.
He extended his pair of soft hands.
There was a wave of sound, a sort of, sonar tsunami roaring miles above him, it eclipsed the sun bleached sky and soared above observable waves, flirting with reality and finality. But before the storm, before the roar, he could remember a sensitivity, a sinking into drowsy lucidity, a return to the time before the incitation. It was a remembrance of normality. It was something everyone there kept and held, inside some fogged out jar, but this was drowned by the roar. The roar reached to the heights, it shook the sensitivity, slightly, quickly, and then “Boom!” It came, the guttural under chuckles laying foundation for the high pitch, staccato laughter, contrasted with warm mids and sharp toothbite highs. The warm, heartland mids, oh, you could hear them with the highest definition, the crewcut mids with 5’11’’ ascension, holding position in the service industry, they were the unknown lukewarm and untouched indigenous mid-landers seeking nothing but stability. God have mercy on their souls.
The workers, held erect against the force of ecstasy's numbing effects, were recovering from the laughter. The poor protagonist was stone and hollow. At this moment, in all its dark doomed grasp, he felt nothing. It was a momentary pass of hot air through his head. He felt an empty stoneness. He did have one appeal to pain, it was the warmth of the heart, the heat of the sky and the smile and flame of the eye. And then, he realized the stoneness, the lack of articulation was only a momentary glimpse of lucidity. The swelling and reverberation of the wave came. His body slouched a bit, his figure wilted and he felt the biting and choking of his throat.
“Well,” he stopped.
“What?”
He was choking.
“What, were you going to say?”
He choked.
“I don’t really…”
He was gaunt
“What are you trying to say?”
He wanted to shriek.
“I can’t really, well I don’t…”
He suppressed himself for his sake.
“That’s it, that’s the end of the show.”

>>4976900
Just wondering - the use of the phrase clubhouse made me think of the countryside

(Cue Fr.Ted-esque scene of a load of aul lads getting wankered to the sound of Joe Dolan in some backwater in Donegal)

>>4976961

Ah I see I see. Over here we sometimes refer to bars situated in GAA clubs as clubhouses.

>>4975750
Definitely DFW esque, but in a very good way. I think you have a future ahead of you; my only real complaint is in regards to not having more of it to read. I don't know if I could read a novel of it though– that level of density can start to grind away at my patience.

>>4977009
and here is my shitty writing

For a single three mile stretch of the Penulbras Desert, that Jorge regretfully now called home, it was night. He was sitting cross legged beneath the penumbra of smoke undulating across the face of the sun. The light of which, irregularly piercing the veil of ash, gave this night an aura of a storm about to blow.

Jorge's campsite was awash in the bitter sweet smell of charred pork, alas he was not cooking it– at least not directly, nor presently. The smell grew stronger as the wind began shift easterly,blowing the scent across the flat sand, and into Jorge's over-eager olfactory system. Not that he cared. Since the plagues the scent had grown to be a comfort of civilization. He remembered working the pits.

A moving mirror gazes back at Jorge across the sea of fire that a thousand corpses, and a few hundred unlucky are presently being fed into systematically– they had tried dumping, but a few carriers had crawled across the corpse pile and onto a latticed maintenance catwalk; where the intense heat had caused their flesh to char and stick like unstirred stew onto the bottom of a pot. The screams– however terse– had long since stopped bothering him. This was god's work, savior's work.

The mirror spoke, “German, you got a breather on four.” He gestured quickly with a silvery hand towards a large green container marked four. A lone, and withered hand pushed up from beneath the mass of flesh, and was clutching for a nonexistent point of grip– the edges had been coated in Teflon to decrease SECTRANS' security budget. It was considered inhumane to allow one so determined, such as the owner of the hand, to die in the pits. The commandments dictated those who made a conscientious, and conspicuous attempt to escape would be granted a single bullet before purification. This was Jorge's job.

The Flying Saucer

Fuzzy cotton-candy, sweet pop-corn, and Skee Ball. I love the carnival, and I think it loves me too. I want to stay but my father wants to go. A quarter for soda refills. I really must stay. Creepy music, and the fun kind, plays. Weee! We go on the carousel. Lights shining, colors in the sky, pink, orange, purple, red. After buying our tickets we played games at the arcade. My favorite was the Water Gun competition. Second, we ate hot-dogs and pop-corn at the stands. Then we watched acrobatics. Men and women in glittery masks jumped through hoops, swung on brown ropes, and a man fought with a lion!
“Where did you see it?”
“At the first door.”
“Then?”
“It zapped me with its device.”
“What device?”
“The small, black, crystal, rectangular bar we had been testing.”
“What happened to you when it hit you? Hit you with the device.”
“I was paralyzed and it took my keys. The little alien took my keys.”
“Little?”
“It was a youngling. I saw it, it left the first room to the second.”
At the front of the gates of the entertainment ground, we wait in a long line to go in. There are two lines: one line going out, and a longer line going in. When we get to the ticket counter, father pays for us three; my brother, my sister, and our cousin. Taking our tickets, together, we head to the arcade. We’ve only been to an arcade once in our whole lives. That was when we went to the beach. It was a sunny day. “I want to go on the motorcycle, I want to go on the motorcycle, I want to go on the motorcycle!” yells my brother. “Sure, bud, you can go on the motorcycle, just let me get the coins” replies our father.

>>4977009

Why thank you, that is certainly a highly-esteemed thing to tell someone on an anonymous image board. Material wise, I have a sort of peculiar way of doing things. I tend to write first drafts by hand and then transpose them over to my laptop and the begin editing them (which explains the typos in what I posted earlier, I didn't bother proofing it at all). So I have nearly my entire novel handwritten - I've spent the summer so far transposing it over in various different pieces, so I could post more but it would be quite non-linear and might throw some people off. I dunno, that's the first time since I started writing again last October that I looked up and said 'I need to know what people think of that', as opposed to just being like 'I can't wait to show people the finished prouduct.' I can understand the density criticism. Luckily my prose sort of weaves in between high-brow and low-brow (I think) so I don't think that snippet is entirely representative of the sum of the parts if you get what I mean.

Re: what you posted, I'll do a proper review of it if this thread is still up in the morning.

>>4977077
Please review.

>>4977077
>Weee!
Sorry, but too much

Affront-the front of a plane,
jittering, scratching my toe.
I yank up, go down,
the crowd yelps with a wet frown.
Despondency, leave me alone:
leaves, Fall, up then down.
The urge sinks, I droop.
Rolling carts continue, I'll
do so too I guess, lest-

Now the trees petrify
and the whooping cranes hear a crash.
The coroner coughs,
but then falls back
asleep.
The ruffed sheets ruffle a bit more,
and a bit more.

>>4976948

You really shouldn't post pictures of Pynchon along with your work. It begs the comparison, and the subsequent paling.

>>4975691

Please articulate this more eloquently if you want it to be taken seriously.

>>4975767

Well does it? The answer is barely.

>>4975777

Trips confirms validity. Oh wait. No it doesn't.

>>4976393

Just come out already.

>>4976534

>>4977077
Others, review.

>>4975741
>lactose intolerant
>eats milk chocolate digestives
also i ended up liking that more than i thought i did
the style you're going for is hard to pull off well and you do a decent job of it, though if you don't put in a couple of shorter sentences soon the reader's really gonna burn out

>>4977172

I don't know if you're success rate for acquiring reviews is going to increase if you demand reviews. This is a slow board, give people time.

>>4975777
smiled

>>4977191

Haha, thank you. I really liked writing that part because I had literally eaten a pack of digestives that night and they were lying in a guilt-tripping fashion on my bedside table and I looked over and was like 'perfect!' It really was though, so fucking stupid and so fucking human.

The burn readers out thing is concerning, considering you're not the first to mention it in this very thread. I'll be wary of that.

When I first saw you, you were wearing some kind of headband and a black leather jacket. It looked like you'd gone to a party as Axl Rose and it made me smile. When I made a joke about a photo on the board in the canteen, I noticed how you came so quickly when I beckoned to point it out, as if you'd been waiting to be called. I started to think about you after work. And then we sat beside each other one day and in between calls we talked and wow, your dad was this producer and wow, you wanted to work in film too, maybe act, you were doing that course and hey, Mike was doing that course and did you know Mike? And wow, you were in Mike's year and wow, you'd heard of the film we'd made together and you must have been so impressed with how it was in the paper and you complimented the title. And I knew then it was more than just some puzzlingly strong attraction. I knew also that you weren't especially pretty, that an unkind person might have used the word 'butterface' or said something more long-winded to express the same idea, but it was like you'd hacked into my brain and replaced my reference image for 'Beautiful Girl' with a picture of you and I was just hotpalms heartpounding horny every time I so much as thought about your eyes.

You went to England for some rowing event and I swore I'd make a move when you came back and you came back with a boyfriend and I doubted everything, I thought I must have been mad, there would never be anything I could ever hope to be certain of with women if I'd been this wrong. But you dropped all the hints and dumped him two weeks later and joked in the pub about how you had both agreed it had been such a mistake and that it was the easiest and most stressless break-up ever, this, of course, to dispel any notion in my mind that any delay was required and I did nothing even though I knew.

>>4977282
So we went about the initial process of forming a company with Keith as our chaperone at our meetings. You wouldn't lend me the DVDs because of some bullshit contrived to get me to stay at your place after the meeting so we could be alone together and I didn't realise this and felt insulted. When you were editing my scripts and knew I was out for the night, you rang looking for help so that I would call over to you and we could be alone together and I didn't realise that and stayed out drinking to go home alone. As it neared Christmas, you told me about your new boyfriend, how he was so much older and your mother didn't approve and you weren't sure about him and did I think you should go over to him tonight? And I told you, in that measured tone that let you know straightaway that I was not confused about what you were asking me, that you should do whatever you wanted to do. As though you would then throw your arms around me and tell me that you loved me, that you couldn't stop thinking about me and that we had to be together. Because that was the secret: I knew. I knew that you loved me as I loved you - it wasn't possible to conceive of doubt. I knew it like I know my name, I recognised it as I do my reflection and I couldn't stand the thought of seeing the expression on your face change, my ineptitude forcing you to accept a truth far worse than whatever you'd so gamely prepared yourself for. I knew and I couldn't bear to act on my knowledge. So we wished each other happy Christmas, as the kind of snow that doesn't stick fell around us and I went home.

A week - ten days? - later and I dreamt of you: I dreamt you'd died. I dreamt your one working kidney had failed and we stood with our arms around each other. I felt the swollen mass of this kidney. I mumbled in your ear "I always knew you'd die young" and we said goodbye.

And it was just one of those strange dreams when I woke up and went to the shop for cigarettes, until I saw the headlines, producer's two daughters killed in car crash, and the icy horror, the checking-though-certain, buying the paper, the cashier knowing something was wrong with me, the shame and guilt over not forgetting the cigarettes. Having to ring Keith. Having to sit and wonder how a person has a dream like that and stays sane. Reasoning, pleading for sanity - I never knew you'd die young, I never knew! Coincidence! Having to sit and wonder if it was even worth living. How it seemed like you were punished for my cowardice. They should have taken my life instead, I'm not really using it.

I Was a Lonely Estate

The rest of my body leans against my pack carrying my earthly reminders: books I won't read, clothes I'll take off for boys I won't like, protection gifts of knives and stones. I have one hundred and fifty dollars in credit from when I missed the train to go see my husband months before. I'm living a life ditching the husband across the county. I don't remember him any longer. The train trip doesn't exist. The stories of the people around me have been erased. I'm high the entire time and dreaming of a new life of substance abuse and requited love for everyone I meet. I listen to longingsongs about the best coast as I travel thirty three hours to get there.
Pythic fumes float from my lipspace as I breath in holy smoke I keep in my coat. I lay down in my seats, feet flat against the cold window and knees bent.
As the sun begins to rise, the train goes through mountain passes, and I miss the green grasses that are covered in snow and ice. Grow me some grapes in this cold terrain so that I can have some wine and quit pining for you. I cry, surrounded by faces, as we enter Seattle together. I know you must be alive somewhere in this world, and once I find you, I will gather you up in my arms and make a love so warm that there would never be winter again.

>>4975685
A short excerpt near the beginning of my current project:
The doctor looked delightful with all of that horsepower beneath the sole of his shoe and in his masculine clutch. The kiss of the moon dancing highlights over his brow and cheek and chin. His skin as rich as freshly tanned leather and his hair like a mane of sable bristles. I was delighted that he let me tag along to dinner with him. I love that little diner, a little mirage of hope out in the desolate desert.
His friend seemed nice too. A jolly weird man with a curious taste in both paisley and facial hair.
I’m still struggling to grasp that the doctor was once so literary. I would never have picked him to be the type. Always so uptight and conscientious. Always so overwhelmingly engaged in the project. Fascinated by physics and mathematics. And if it’s not that it’s the star gazing.
Well, I suppose he is very well spoken. Very intelligent.
Oh, he was so well dressed tonight. White shirt; stiff collar. Black velvet trou. What a man… what a man.

>>4977316
very jaunty.

http://pastebin.com/ySuQ6Bck

Opening paragraph of a short story I'm working on. What say you? Also, keep in mind my protagonist is a 14 year old girl.

Killian Archibald did not wear ties. She generally frowned upon them. However, she was also highly prone to changing her mind, so one dim morning with the sun still sleeping she rummaged through the chest of drawers in her bedroom at St. Catherine of Sienna's School for Girls. Cornelia had already left for her morning jog, leaving Killian alone to puzzle through her limited selection of neckties. She was going to wear one today. She didn't know why, but that was not important. For Heaven's sake, it was a necktie. Whys were inconsequential.

I've been thinking about this novel for awhile now. Even posted bits of it in critique threads last year, which would have looked very different from its current form. Actually writing it now and about 15 pages in. Basically a post-industrial America thing where a younger guy loses his well-paying union job and tries to figure out what to do in a post-industrial America where options are thinning for the middle and working class. Opening bit (havent settled on a name for the main yet):


-- lost his job on Tuesday. Leaving the manager's office where he got the news, he couldn't help but think back to his first real day on the job. Paul, his supervisor, showed him around where he'd be working and explained how things were done, gave his some advice -- and mentioned in passing that it had been thirty years since he himself had started working there. --- tried to understand "thirty years:" thirty years of driving that same road to get to work, stopping at that same convenience store for coffee; walking through the same doors and seeing the same things, the same people. His own nineteen years were insufficient for the task and he quickly tried to forget about it. But walking out of that office, seven years later, he struggled again to think of doing anything else.

It couldn't have come as a surprise, and it hadn't. For over a year there had been talks about mass lay-offs, even rumors that the whole plant would close. The month before, --- had seen the few people who'd been hired within the last three years lose their jobs, after having their hours cut over the prior several months. ---- was lucky enough to be insulated from that: he was one of the last employees signed to an older contract, before yet another employment tier was added beneath him company-wide, just a year after he'd started.

He'd still be working until the end of the week. He tried to play it off with his sympathetic coworkers: he'd find another job in no time, especially with these seven years of experience; it's not like he had a family to take care of; a little vacation between jobs wouldn't be so bad, would it? Pettily emboldened, he slacked more than usual, took an extra long break and lunch talking to some of the guys he was friendly with, and the day passed pleasantly fast. The reality sunk in a little more as he walked through the door to his apartment, but only vaguely now, and only in the back of his head. The future still stretched out with something like but not quite possibility. He drank a beer and watched TV; not much else, and went to sleep.


I suppose it's a rather dry introduction but I wanted the very beginning to have a sort of feel of realism.

>>4977445
I like it overall.

>gave his some advice
him*

Also find more words to use for "job," it gets a little tiresome to hear, especially in those first few lines. I'm normally good at this but I'm braindead at the moment and can't think of any suggestions.

Here's something I started while warming up for an essay a few months ago and completely forgot about:

http://pastebin.com/sLLnyePT

I should really write an outline for it

>>4976907
that's fine, but I sure would like some constructive criticism, if you're able.

>>4977473
job. work. occupation. toil. effort. a 9 to 5.

>>4977759
>>4977473

Don't do the thesaurus bit. Find ways to say what you're saying without using 'job' or any noun synonym of it. That's even more irritating than saying 'job' a few times too many.

>>4977773
I'm not that guy; I was just helping him with the synonyms that were evading him. I agree that just using synonyms isn't generally a good strategy.

>>4977784
It's a good place to start though until you pick up your writing style and get that "flow" going that makes it come out naturally.

>>4977794
you seem like a nice guy, could you give some kind of meaningful criticism on the short stories i posted here? the other guy who did so just said they were "bad, friend"

>>4976452
Bad, bad characters.
Everything felt so fake, including the writing.
Maybe it's just the flow, and the word choice.

>>4977833
what's wrong with the characters? I've had other people tell me they are bad, but I'd be interested to know what you think is wrong.

Still there, OP??

I got a short story series for ya....

>>4977818
Eh, I'm pretty new myself at writing and haven't even posted my own work yet. I guess I can give it a shot though, which story did you want critique on?

>>4977847
how about the one with the giant robot pic in its post; the one the other guy was telling me has bad characters, and felt fake all over. I'm not sure I know what that means, but maybe you can help him explain himself

One evening in 1979 I did too much coke and I had the greatest idea for a novel ever, so I ran to my room and took my notebook and started writing it down but this is as far as I got.

“Would you like to go ahead and try?” she said, still fixated on him. “No thanks”. I just couldn’t, I was too intrigued in what they were doing. Sure, I was wasted, which blurred my thoughts and attention spans, but it didn’t completely obliterate my sense of wonder. That’s the one thing I like about drugs, they bring you back to a child-like state of comfortable numbness, mixed with either tremendous horror, or bliss, regardless of what substance you’ve ingested. Anyway, that’s not the point. Point is what they were doing. It didn’t seem normal, however, it did seem natural. It is a hard thing to explain, specially when there’s motion lag and you feel nausiated beyond Dramamine. I’m pretty sure I’m not making the slightest bit of sense, specially ‘cus I’m still sorta trying to process what happened, so I’ll go pass out and tell you once I bounce back.

(cont.)?

>>4977833

The problem with this is that you're basically just listing things off instead of having the actions flow naturally. There's a lot of unnecessary exposition weighing down the flow of the narrative. We don't need to know what Wayne saw or did on his trip to the woods unless it's relevant to the plot.

Another thing to do when you describe things is to show them as the characters are doing things which are plot relevant. The reader will have a more vivid image because they'll recognize that it's important.

I recommend taking a look at the book, "How Not To Write A Novel" it details and gives examples of several amateur mistakes and says how to avoid them. It's very useful in improving the quality of your work.

>>4977904
As to your first paragraph, this is really depressing, because I thought that what was happening along the route was actually very important to the symbolic level of the story. It's true that it has nothing to do with the plot though.

As to your second paragraph, I totally agree, I need to work on this. Thanks for the reminder.

I'm not going to take a look at that book; I kind of hate the self-help genre, but I do very much appreciate your personal editorial!

Thanks again.

>>4977851
There's a lot of "X did Y thing. Then X did Z thing." You should try to be a bit more creative and descriptive with that, for example here's how I would edit a random piece of it:

>He parked the pickup outside his middeclass suburban home. The lady of the house was on her cell ordering some Chinese for dinner. Wayne gave her a wink as he set the beers in the fridge and sat down on the couch where his old laptop was sitting, plugged in with an old Ethernet cord and juiced off a monstrous power strip only half-hidden between the couch and the book case. The otherwise old fashioned English buff hated all the cords, but the connection was less wonky than wireless.

You'll note how it's more descriptive this way instead of just "X did Y." You need to have more flavor to the way you narrate things. I don't have time to read the whole thing right now though, I mainly just read the first bit. If the thread is still alive later I'll read the rest.

>>4977928
thanks, I'll take a look at where I can add that kind of description in. You can't please everyone it seems; I've had lots of people tell me to omit details like that - actually the other guy to read it just now in this thread said so, lol!

I look forward to hearing more; I'll check back much later.

>>4977015
Any thoughts on this?

http://www.wattpad.com/story/13173420-no-cheat-codes-in-love-round-1

http://www.wattpad.com/story/13173420-no-cheat-codes-in-love-round-2

http://www.wattpad.com/story/13310875-no-cheat-codes-in-love-final-round

A user-written short story series

>>4977938
>>4977015

Change the following:
Change every instance of a "was x-ing" verb to a simple past tense "-ed" . It's subtle but it makes a large difference.

Make the verb tense uniform, you switch from past to present in the third paragraph.

There's a lot of instances of passive voice. Put the subject of the sentence first unless using passive voice serves some function to the narrative. In the second paragraph, the smell of pork is important to everything else, so it should be mentioned first.

He had witnessed countless Summers, seen the streets dwindle as Winter drew near and swell, buzzing with people when the cold had passed.

To him they were all drones, faceless masses he would never meet, who would die while his youth persisted through the decades,centuries. He bore witness to greater forces fall before his Advanced Technology, proud, powerful nations brought to their knees and forced to beg for their right to exist as a Sovereign nation. But that was ancient history now and the records of these massive wars and horrifyingly powerful technology had faded away as the years past. He was all that remained, an artifact, who time and Death himself could not touch. Through Science his race had achieved immortality, a dangerous gift that defied the very nature of what it meant to be human.

Surely something so substantial couldn't be released to the public, for there would be secret wars and espionage, Assassinations, all to claim what he had taken without force and with much patience. He had bided his time, out lived and undone many Secret Societies, his wealth and influence growing steadily with each day that passed. The days turned into months, the months never stopped coming. So he remained vigilant, his sense of time becoming heightened, his eyes sharp and hawk like and he found himself much faster then other humans.

He had a achieved a state above humanity.

>>4977990

My other excerpt is in another thread won't let me copy/paste it. It's about the devil:

>>4977979

>>4977969
This is why I don't write at 3am anymore.

eep within the deceptively small limits of the pasta aisle at Joe's, George Decanter was lost in a self-contained argument as to whether one could actually get drunk off the vodka cream sauce. It had been nearly six, maybe seven, years since he had even thought about picking up a bottle, cream or marinara. The prospect of getting drunk whilst eating pasta intrigued him in a way pasta had not since his coworker had directed his attention to that TED Talk about Moskowitz– he couldn't remember the exact details, but he did feel a sudden craving for extra-chunky, also something about a bliss point; though that could have been that thing about three scotches for creativity, four for sleep .
Over in aisle six (Mexican vegetables, proudly not grown in Mexico) Jane Smith pushed her cart with the passive aggressive fury unique to sexually repressed suburban women with a taste for jumpsuits only matched by fictional Russian immigrants. Her hair was done up in an unintentional tribute to the worst of 80's mullets, while her knuckles were white with grip onto her cart full of non-gmo grains, and sixteen gallons of apple cider vinegar– homeopathic intestinal lubricant. She was turning onto five when she noticed a rather heavyset man gazing intently at a bottle of Prego vodka cream sauce. His hunched stance, coupled with his long suit jacket, took up around two feet of the three and a half foot aisle. Jane was in a hurry, so she recalled her basic math, and figured she could fit her cart through with a politely enunciated excuse, and still get by only grazing the back of the man's suit jacket.

Still deep in thought, but now over the suspicious origins of vodka cream sauce– drunk Russian, or adventurous drunk Italian, and don't even get him started on the Polish variable, let alone those wily Ukrainians. George failed to notice the blonde train wreck of a mother hurtling towards him with the blind intent of a CN train slamming into a drunk. He did, however notice her– as the drunk usually explodes– when the cart's prow sent him to the tile. His head bounced, and he faded into dark.
Waking up, he felt a gooey mess under his head, fearing the worst, and believing the women was going to get away with this fucking excuse of a manslaughter, George removed his newly polished Glock forty five, and ensured her lungs were as perforated as her brain surely was. Turning his head to look at his success, his own blood seeped over his tongue,hmm, he thought, vodka.

>>4976358
Here, I revised it a bit and wrote on some more. Still not how I'm going to keep it going or if I'll even keep it going, but I have a general idea for some plot points in the future.
http://txs.io/FyS

I'll post the first page, tell me what you guys think. It's finished, 11 pages, but I think it needs improvement still.

“I think we should just be friends.” Jessica couldn’t look him in the eyes, discomfort, borderline pain scrawled across her face. Jason felt as if each syllable had struck his face. Yet, the words made no sense. He knew they were bad, but he couldn’t comprehend them.
“What? But? What do you mean?” His usually charismatic voice was soft, broken and weak, something even a kitten would have found unimposing. “I don’t understand.” The words were finally starting to sink in, but he still could not accept them.
“I just don’t see you as anymore then a friend anymore. I’m sorry. I just, I can’t keep pretending.” The emotion on her face was clearly pain now.
“What do you mean, pretend? How long have you felt this way?” He knew his voice should be growing, but he felt smaller and smaller with each word. That he was a rabbit facing his hunter, instead of some silly high school relationship facing its obvious conclusion. Jessica said nothing. “What did I do? I can change, I can fix this!”
“Nothing, you didn’t do anything wrong. I just can’t feel anything for you. I wish I could. I really do, but I need to be happy to. Jason, I’m sorry.” Her voice had a taste of something; Jason thought it was condescension, though the on lookers had heard pity.
“I... I, please.” The only words Jason could mutter seemed to breakup in the air before they even reached her ears, the weakness of a boy Jessica could see had shattered. She hung her head, still unable to look Jason in the eye.
Jessica turned to enter the building behind her as a bell rang. She turned for a minute and said “I’m sorry,” before heading inside and disappearing from Jason’s sight.
Class seemed to drag on for Jason. In every class, it seemed a few would look at him and whisper to one-another as soon as he entered. He knew they must have been talking about how his girlfriend had broken up with him. He sat in the back, pretending not to feel like everything was wrong. Walking through the halls was endless, the looks and stares of his classmates all around him. When school finally ended, and football practice began, Jason felt the weight of everyone’s eyes on him lift.
On his way to the locker room, he noticed Jessica. She was standing with a guy he didn’t recognize, laughing. She’s flirting with him. She cheated on you. Jason heard his own thoughts, and shook his head. “No, she wouldn't have cheated. That’s not who she is,” He told himself, trying to convince himself more than anything. But he continued to watch.

>>4978107

She hugged the guy, and then turned to walk off. Jason hurried off to practice. Play after play, Jason couldn’t get focused. He missed the hike three plays in a row, and the coach sent him to run laps around the field. “Where is your head, Jason? I ask for THREE HOURS. THAT’S IT. Get it together, or we will find someone else. You are replaceable. Plenty of guys want to be starting center.”
Your game has been slipping. Jason knew it was true. He ran around the field with little energy, his mind completely back on earlier that day. She wouldn’t look you in the eyes. Jason kept remembering it. She was cheating on you. She cheated on you, and felt bad. So she left you to make it okay.
Practice drew down, and the players were dismissed. Each day that week, Jason found he was slipping more and more at what he had once been great at. Tuesday, he failed a German test.
His teacher just looked at him and said, in German, “What have you been doing. You are practically fluent. This should have been a breeze.”
Everywhere he went, people followed him with their eyes, watching for him to fall again. They don’t respect you. They know you can’t do anything right. On Wednesday, Jason struck out with a pretty red-head cheerleader. “I’m sorry, but you’re just not my type.” What would she want with you, when she could have anyone she wants? Jason could feel himself sinking further and further into depression. Time moved more slowly, and as each day passed, he saw himself doing worse and worse in practice and in school. By Friday night, he dreaded the big game.
His coach pulled him aside before they went out onto the field. “Listen, I don’t know what has been going on with you lately. Maybe someone spit in your fruit loops, or maybe you are having trouble at home. But I need you to do something for me. We can beat these guys, but you have to focus. Do you get it?” Jason nodded. “Nothing else matters right now. On that field, you don’t have a past or present. Just play like you did before.”
“Yes sir.” Jason slammed his helmet on and ran out the door. Loud crowds cheered as both sides warmed up on opposite sides of the field. They lined up across from each other, sprinted 45 yards and stared each other down. A line of blue and gold stood across from a line of green and silver. Jason looked across at a number 62, a tall, angry looking man with dark eyes and a nose broken some time long ago. Jason could hear what he was thinking.
Look at this shrimp. He can’t even look me in the eye. I’m gonna crush him. Jason stepped forward for the coin flip. “Call it in the air.” said the ref. 62 stepped forward.

>>4978107
>>4978111
I liked what I read, but it might just be my cup of tea. I'd love it if you posted the rest.

>>4978130
Alright.

“Tails.” His voice had a deep, dumb quality. As the coin flipped up and landed back in the refs hand, heads was up. Jason and his team took the ball. After a 35 yard return, Jason was on the field. He lined up, staring eye to eye with 62. You’re going to make a mistake. It’s going to be too high. He’s going to put you on your ass. Jason lost his concentration, barely hearing his quarterback yell.
“Hike.” Jason sent the ball back, too high. Almost a foot high and half a foot to the left, the quarterback couldn’t catch it. Jason had less than a second to realize how he had screwed up, and a rhino slammed into him, knocking him back. The quarterback just reclaimed the ball when 62 blew him up. Ball still in hand, the quarterback laid for a moment, trying to catch his breath.
In the huddle, everyone looked at Jason. “What the hell!” 53 yelled in Jason’s face.
“Jason, where are you? Get focused, damn.” The quarterback returned to the huddle.
“32 Cross Buck” As they broke the huddle, the quarterback grabbed Jason’s facemask. “I don’t know what the hell is going through your head, but get focused man. We can still win. But I need you kicking his ass. You got that?” The words sunk in. All Jason could think about was how bad he wanted to hit 62. He lined up across from 62, this time thinking of nothing but the contact.
“Hike.” The ball hit its target. And so did Jason. Jason’s pads nailed 62, and he fell back, landing with Jason on top. He saw nothing of the game that went on around him. All he knew was that he had done his job. This monster was on his back, looking at the lights. And Jason would do it again. 25 yards further down the field, Jason lined up across from 62 again. The quarterback hollered hike again, and Jason and the ball hit their marks. Play after play, Jason hit found his rhythm. And the score board showed it. At half time, it was 28-14.
An interception and two touchdowns tied it in the last quarter. Jason and his team drove down the field. And finally the goal was in sight. With only 15 seconds left, Jason lined up across from 62. You’re getting tired, and he is ready for you. You’ll mess up. Jason couldn’t get focused. The pressure was huge, the crowed silent. The only sound was the breathless panting of 22 players staring each other down. This is all on you. They all know you will screw up. Everyone knows. All of them. Jason knew it was true. It was going to be his fault.
“Hike” Jason snapped the ball, but it fell short. Half-way between them, and it wasn’t going to get any better. 62 hit Jason with so much force he went flying like a toy. He scooped up the ball, brushed off the quarterback and raced down the field, scoring a touchdown that would win them the game. A kickoff that led to a 50 yard run ended the game. No score. No win. Jason hung his head, unable to look up as the teams shook hands.

>>4978140
In the locker room, everyone was silent. No one looked each other in the eye, no one talked to each other. Jason just stared at his helmet. One by one, the players took off their pads and left. They must have thought they were hiding it, but Jason knew each of them gave him a dirty look as they exited the locker room.
By the end, it was just him and the quarterback. “I’m sorry.” Jason muttered. The quarterback turned his head. “It’s not your fault. If they hadn’t intercepted the ball, none of this would have been an issue.” The quarterback walked out, his voice still echoing in Jason’s head. But Jason knew better. He didn’t believe it, and he knew no one else did either.

That next Monday, Jason stumbled into class, tired, frustrated and angry. He could feel their eyes on his back. They know it’s your fault. They all hate you. “Class, put up your things, it’s time for your test,” The teacher walked from desk row to row, handing out the papers and checking to make sure students weren’t cheating. And you didn’t even study. How are you going to pass this test? Jason started at the paper, the numbers and letters assembled themselves into another language in front of him. You’re terrible at chemistry already. Jason flipped through it, looking for something he knew. Anything. Finally, on page four, question 44, he found a reaction he knew. Then 46 and 47. You got those wrong, you know that, right? He ignored it, plowing through the test. He quickly reached the end, and then returned to the ones he had skipped. An hour in, he had finished the test before anyone else.
The teacher picked up the paper, scanned it for a second, and then turned to him, touching his shoulder, “Very good. You can go early.” He stood and hurried out of the room. Walking down the hall, he felt like he was free. No one was looking at him or whispering about him.
Nothing could stop him. Football practice went great. He made every snap. No one got past him. Practice ended, and his coached called him in. “Jason, where was that last week? I need you to be more consistent. You are a good player. You work hard when you can. But something gets in your head, and you’re gone.”
“Sorry sir. I just… had a bad week. It won’t happen again.”
“Good. Now, keep up the good work.”
“Yes sir.” Jason turned and left the room. His mood had been killed a bit, but he still felt good.

>>4978145
The next day, he went into his classes smiling. Until chemistry. Jason had known he wouldn’t get the A he felt he had, but he felt a B was reasonable. He was wrong. A big red F sat on the cover of his test. Jason sunk in his seat. Nothing was going right. I told you. You can’t even pass a simple test. You can’t do anything right. Why do you keep trying? What are you actually worth? Nothing. Just give up. Jason couldn’t hear anything but the voice. Your girlfriend cheated on you. You can’t play football. You can’t pass a test. What are you going to do? You’re just a burden.
When class ended, he just sat there, staring at the F. People filed past him, laughing at him and staring at him. He knew what they were thinking, how useless he was. He couldn’t face another class. He couldn’t imagine failing another test, missing another snap. But he stood and headed out anyway. Sitting across the hall from his next class was Jessica. She was laughing at some joke the guy next to her had told. The same guy from outside the locker room. When the bell rang, she touched his arm and went into the room. She cheated on you. No, she wouldn’t do that. Not after 2 years. She cheated on you, and you know it. Jason kept arguing with himself. I can’t accept that. Jason just wanted to disappear, and so he slipped into the classroom.
Jason didn’t feel better during class. He had forgotten his assignment and couldn’t focus for a quiz. What are you doing? Why do you keep going to class? Why go to practice? What are you going to do? You’re worthless, tiring and boring. Just give up. Jason couldn’t argue anymore. The voice was right. But he had football still.
Pads on, the grass under his feet, Jason was ready for practice. But his head wasn’t. He couldn’t focus. Play after play, he missed the snap. He snapped too late. He was sent flying by the defense. Didn’t hear the play. “Jason.” The coach couldn’t even must enough anger to yell. “Jason, just go home.”
“But, coach, just one…”
“Just go home. You’re done today.”
“Coach.”
“Get you head straight. I don’t care what it takes, or how long, but don’t come back until it is.”
“Sir?”

>>4978148
“Go” The coach turned, no anger in his voice. Just disappointment. Before Jason turned back to the locker room, he looked one last time at his coach’s face. It only reinforced the disappointment Jason had heard. When he arrived home early, his mother wasn’t home. It was just him. Jason sat on the couch, fighting what he could hear in his head. It’s over. You have nothing. Your team doesn’t need you. Your girlfriend doesn’t need you. Your school doesn’t need you. No one needs you. You know what you have to do. Just do it. It isn’t that hard. Just a glass of waters and a few pills. No one will ever miss you. Jason couldn’t argue. He couldn’t think. Just do it. Everything will be so much easier. You mother can’t raise three of you. She can’t afford it alone. Make it easier for her. Jason couldn’t imagine hurting his mother like that. She’ll be relieved. Think about it. No football, no school, you aren’t going to college. You’re just going to be a burden on her for the rest of your life. “But, how bad is she going to feel when I’m gone?” Don’t you get it? She won’t, no one will. They don’t need you. The team doesn’t need you. No one does. Just do it. Jason had tears streaming down his face now. As he stood up, shuffling slowly to the bathroom, nothing felt real. The hall way felt too long, and his eyes were to blurry to see the photos on the wall. One of him and his mother, the love in her eyes as she carried him when he was 2 and they were at the zoo. One of him when he was 5, his younger brother just born, and the way they played together. One of him when was 12, his younger brother looking up to him as he stood in his muddy, grimy pads after his team won their first football game. When he was 14, holding his youngest brother only weeks after he was born, and when he was 17, driving his younger brother to school in his new car.
But he didn’t see any of these. When he entered his bathroom, he stared at himself in the mirror. Where others saw a smart, handsome young man, he saw a mess. Look at yourself. Look at what you’ve become. Weak. Crying. Stupid. You don’t deserve to be here. You don’t deserve what you have. Your family deserves better. Your school, your team, they all deserve better. Jason opened the cabinet and pulled out the bottle. He sat on the floor in the hall, crying. You’re weak. But you can be strong one last time. Just do it. End it. Make it so much better for everyone. He opened the bottle and stared at it. Just do it.

>>4978150
Did he dead?

>>4978157
It's up to the reader to decide. I wrote this at a very dark period in my life, so for me, he's always killed himself. But some people read it and assume he pulls himself out of it somehow.

>>4978160
Well that's a pretty shitty way to end it.

>>4978165
I expected most people to feel that way. Honestly, I think more than anything it was a copout, as I've never been able to write endings to anything.

So, I thought I would let the reader write the ending for themself, based on who they are and how they see other people.

>>4978170
I think you should try to end it and have more faith in yourself.
Don't worry about how it will be received as long as your content with the easy it ends then it's good.

>>4978175
With the way* it ends
Damn auto correct

>>4977328
Thank you. I wanted it to feel quite casual and inviting. It's a short diary excerpt from one of the narrators foils. I've tried to create a blatant contrast between dialogue and introspection throughout.

>>4977844

Yup, just woke up. Hit us with them?

Hi everyone, OP and the guy who posted that three-part story at the beginning of the thread here. Just got my university exam results and I'm pretty pleased, so to celebrate I'm gonna spend some of today reviewing some of the writing you all posted yesterday.

>>4978576
Fantastic and well done to you sir.

>>4978576
Well done, man. What's your major?

>>4977282
>>4977290

Anyone any thoughts on this at all?

http://samomatic.tumblr.com/post/87978438778/penguino-royale

>>4978666
Narrators recount from start to finish of his relationship with this girl seems prosaic. I feel as if you're trying to mash too much plot supporting detail into such a short passage and, assuming this is from the beginning of the work, it's a little to much to take in.

>>4978740
Too*

>>4978740

Fair enough.

Hi it's >>4978576 here, been called into work unexpectedly, I'll get to reviewing when I'm back home.

trying to expand my vocabulary here, writing is shit but still would like some critique, thanks.

She had decided to take the plunge. Her days waiting for it to be over were finished. She knew it wasn’t going to be plain sailing, but down the line she was convinced taking that low-pay high-demand job offer was an endeavor worth pursuing. It was time to leave that soporific desk office employment and stand her ground regarding her principles. She wasn’t seeking on lining her pockets though, as her last boss did… This idea of renewal and self-worth had percolated in the new young and underground circles she frequented, in reunions which too often took place in dark pubs lasting more than a soon to be middle aged woman could afford staying. As she was more than decided to go in and ace her interview the sudden buzz of her mobile phone came as a jar of cold water. The sumptuous walls stared at her as they did every afternoon whilst she stayed watching neverending and riddled with plot twist soap operas. It transpired to her that she had fallen asleep when Julio de la Vega kissed Rita, and now the show was over, the 9 o’clock news were on and there was no interview to attend, no goal to achieve and no sense of self-accomplishment to pursue anymore.

>>4979254

Why don´t you just read Hemingway´s books and see that you don´t have to have an extensive vocabulary to write shit?

He demonstrated that pretty clearly and received a nobel prize for it.

>>4979276
lel

Thanks, Hemingway is one of my english have-to for this or next summer. First I want to explore some britbong fags though (Shake, Blake, Wordsworth, Byron..)

Seriously though: "The limits of my world are the limits of my language"

>>4979297
I don't think Witty thought that one could extend the limits of his language by accruing more words. It is the case, however, that your prose will be better if you use le mot juste rather than a cliched word.

>>4979356
Yeah, I was thinking along the lines of specific description of reality. The bigger the range of choice, the most one can profit from an experience and the easier it could translated into paper form. (Though, I believe if language is used to describe ethereal concepts and/or feelings it is not necesary to have a great vocab., just a sensitive heart and a bright mind).

For the record, I'm guilty of having not read Witt yet, though damn does it seem like a good read. Should I go right to "Tractatus Logico..." or whatever his published book was?

Can someone rate mine please

He had witnessed countless Summers, seen the streets dwindle as Winter drew near and swell, buzzing with people when the cold had passed.

To him they were all drones, faceless masses he would never meet, who would die while his youth persisted through the decades,centuries. He bore witness to greater forces fall before his Advanced Technology, proud, powerful nations brought to their knees and forced to beg for their right to exist as a Sovereign nation. But that was ancient history now and the records of these massive wars and horrifyingly powerful technology had faded away as the years past. He was all that remained, an artifact, who time and Death himself could not touch. Through Science his race had achieved immortality, a dangerous gift that defied the very nature of what it meant to be human.

Surely something so substantial couldn't be released to the public, for there would be secret wars and espionage, Assassinations, all to claim what he had taken without force and with much patience. He had bided his time, out lived and undone many Secret Societies, his wealth and influence growing steadily with each day that passed. The days turned into months, the months never stopped coming. So he remained vigilant, his sense of time becoming heightened, his eyes sharp and hawk like and he found himself much faster then other humans.

He had a achieved a state above humanity.

For all the writers on this board, why don't we have people dumping their manuscript on here in a text file?

>>4979579

Supposedly because they're shipping it off to agents/publishers and don't want it stolen?

>>4975977

This is really good. Walks the right side of the line between angsty bullshit and actual profundity.

By that I mean I'm sitting here nodding my head, smiling and empathising instead of being turned off by someone wallowing in self pity.

I agree with what the other guy said though, it's too dense to stretch. Need to fill it up with some basic character/plot development, can't be going so hard all of the time.

>>4975741
Damn dude, write a novel or a collection of short stories or something, this is really powerful and good.

>>4976143

I would really like to read more of this, the premise really interests me. Is there any way i can? Do you have a blog or something?

the symbolism is off here definitely, but I wrote it in like 5 minutes for a creative writing class and I feel like there's the germ of something good in it

A blur: I jump across the chalk lines
with my brother standing off to the sides. (he’s ten.)
(I’m three or perhaps four.)
We are in Los Angeles, California,
and I am jumping across the chalk lines, with mixed success,
of a hopscotch court.
(court?) (stadium?) (field?)
It is a hot day,
and I jump across the chalk lines,
and my brother stands beside me, laughing like a madman.
It is a hot day, and my green turtle sandbox (shared with my brother [more realistically, shared with me by him] by myself) is on the lawn next to both of us
and the shell is on. It is a hot day, and
I am wearing shorts. We are in Los Angeles, California,
and I trip, and I fall,
and I am no longer jumping across the chalk lines,
and my brother laughs and the sun shines down
and the turtle’s two blue eyes stare into mine as pain,
hot, red pain,
rushes into my knee.
The sun shines down on a hopscotch court
in Los Angeles, California.

>>4977089
Post more! I really like your stuff.

Max Pythagoras, age 27, hair dark, apartment messy. Insignificant pencil-pusher by day. Insignificant music critic by night.
It is morning. Max Pythagoras is preparing for the day, having just taken a shower and put on his vaguely formal work clothes. He waits for the coffee to stew patiently while he checks the number of hits on last night’s blog post on experimental music:
58. Six of those himself.
Max pours his coffee into a pale green thermos and sets out for the bus, realizing too late that his Zune is out of batteries and that he doesn’t have enough time to grab his backup; he will be subjected to the caprices of the bus driver’s radio station.
“Good morning, New York! This is Stan from 101. 1 WCBS, Golden Oldies all the time. Our next cut is one you might remember from a few years back, not technically an Oldie yet, but we’ll help it on it’s way ahahaha, this one’s called The Lady In Red by V/Vm, better known today as Leyland Kirby. Kirby’s also recorded material as the Stranger and the Caretaker, but in one man’s humble opinion he’s never topped this. The Lady In Red by V/Vm.”
Max stares up at the bus’s speaker as it begins to emit a fuzzed out and bitcrushed version of a pop song from the late 1980s.
“Huh,” he says. “I just blogged about him.”

>>4977425

I like it. Has a nice tone.

abloo bloo bloo

And the man who carried her in his arms all those years ago when she was pink and soft and warm wept. Like Ba’al of the Many Rains had burrowed into the cracks of his eyes and stayed there, chanting and whispering to himself, calling up all the waters of the earth to bring this conquering deluge that stung his cheeks and cracked his lips. The sight of the droplets spattering against the metal table on which Schlessinger had clanged down the telephone receiver pricked fractured, splintered memories of a sparkling white river in the East that crackled and fizzed and rolled and weaved and babbled through the folds of his brain, deep from the springs and wells and seeds within, scattered and shattered as they were along the fault lines of his psyche in impact waves, out from one point, like broken glass buried deep in a leg pulled blackened from an explosion in a greenhouse.
But there were no tears at first. Because, at first, the idea, the concept, that this crystal goddess, this chalice to the good faith that he had held to his breast and guarded from the ungual hands of Teutons and Muscovites and Marxists and crippled black creatures alike, could be gone. That, in an instant, one single pinpoint of being, of consciousness, one thread being drawn through all the interlaced and married lines and knots of humanity, could just stop. Could be drawn up and out and cut, without even being frayed. That idea bewildered him. It sent him reeling and whirling and scattering into the void of insanity, the gathering dark that began to creep in at the edge of his anima, making it stale and crumbling with its shadow. As he pulled himself back, he considered where this thread had gone. And that was when the throbbing blood siphoned its way into his eyes and inflated them and the hot salt water came like rainfall on the beach.
How.
That was the question. There was no why, because he knew why. There was no who, because he knew that too. There was no what, no when, not really any where. And the how itself didn’t ask for graphic detail - it was an entreatment, a spit-riddled beseechment to those who looked down on him. How could this happen to me. After everything.
Perhaps there was a why. A ‘why me?’. But it was swift and fleeting because sufferance of a malediction rarely allowed for such a question.
So it was the how. Which became a howl. A screech, gurgled with blood and tar.
Like a wounded animal calling up into the wide, wide sky.

tah be cuntin-ewe-d

>>4980116

How. How can someone exist and then just not. How can the order of conveniences and social links and impressions and impacts they have left on the world and the people around them just go on without any root source. They’d end up disintegrating, with her life being forgotten and her ancestral line ending and her sorely futile father falling weakly no doubt into ruin and drink and death himself by rope or dagger or tall tall building. How can it just go on, like the end of a feather - the translucent keratinous sheath, with no fluff or white tissue inside, just a window into empty air and hollow promises.
I promise I will keep you safe forever. I promise no one will ever touch you. I promise you wont end your days in a demolished wet red scrunched-up heap in the grey concrete mud of an alien city, your bones broken and your face falling to pieces and your eyes cracked down the centre, perfectly ruined.
I promise you I will always be there, and you will always be able to come to me for safety, and I will always hold you against me in the warmth until the palpitations of our hearts synchronise and our breath is as one and I promise I will always be there to stand between them and you. Whoever they are. I will be there and they will not get at you. Never. Because I am your father and that is my job.

I promise.


(btw it's not an actual alien city it's just east berlin and she's lived her whole life in a village in thuringia)

>>4980116
>>4980119

dis is 2 sad :(((((

>>4980119

This is good. Rough around the edges, sometimes overly verbose (I know it's kinda what you're going for but for example in this sentence: 'But it was swift and fleeting because sufferance of a malediction rarely allowed for such a question.' The actual meaning of the sentence is obscured by the word choice.)

Also, this may be a personal thing, but I can't stand it when people use the word 'like.' don't tell me he's LIKE a wounded animal, tell me he IS a wounded animal. Or better yet show me.

You faggots need to stop Samefagging, you're not that good.

>>4980166

Yeah I know but it was for a creative writing contest and I wanted to sound as fucking wordy and pretentious as possible.
Oh man when I wrote that malediction sentence I thought I was real hot shit.

Yeah similes can be kinda irritating, I do it way too much. I suppose the simple way would be to change it to IS. But because it's a metaphor/analogy, it's difficult to show you. The setting he's sitting in an East German police interrogation room, which kind of constricts literalism.
I just thought 'wounded animal calling up to the wide, wide sky' was nice

>>4980103
hah, I like this.

I just have a short summary of something I'm working on atm:

An audio-technician is fired from his job and decides to take up field recording as a way of coping with boredom. His vision has been declining slowly and his crazy doctor tells him he will be blind in 6 months time.
While recording ambient sounds in a book club for deaf people, he meets a girl. To pay the bills, he tries selling some of his recordings to film studios and weird Art collectives. While slowly losing his sight, he, together with his deaf girlfriend, his landlord (who is hunted by the police for God-knows-what) and his best friend (a junkie-turned-conspiraracy-nut) try to survive in a city that is falling apart to riots, sinkholes and ridiculous self-destructive building projects.

>>4980184

Is there more to the story? I'd like to read it if there is. I live a stone's throw from the wall.

>>4980013
Being stolen is the biggest cop out of every want to be writer. You know when you write the fucker you own the copyright. You don't file a fucking thing, it was written by you so you should have the original file which you own at the time of producing said work.

>>4980229

There's the execution of his daughter (I know they didn't really get as violent as this, but it's been ordered that she be killed because he's ex-waffen-ss)
The overarching plot's pretty complique, I can try and explain it maybe
(also i dont know if i got the german ready-aim-fire routine right, correct me if it's wrong)

Oberbaum Bridge, Friedrichshain, East Berlin, German Democratic Republic, a satellite state of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
11:23 AM Central European Time, Sunday 16th November, 1958

Claudia looks at the sun. Except there is no sun. The sky is slate grey, and grey rain cascades out of it and falls to the ashen, bemired earth of the Mühlenstraße. She is passing through the valley of the shadow of death, and she is alone. The soldiers of the Nationale Volksarmee are grey as well, in their uniforms and in their faces. They skid and scatter around the red brick corner, churning up the ground as they go. They stop and arrange themselves when they see her, standing alone against the clouded air, under the sunless tarnished silver sky.
'Fertig!' a man's voice screams and echoes, with only the smallest of indecisive tremors.
'Richten Sie!' The soldiers aim, and the cock of Karabiner S semi-automatic carbines rinhs out across the waters of the River Spree as they slide by, dappled with rainwater ripples.
'Feuer!'
The cracking of the rifles fills the air, with flashes and bangs and white smoke and the burnt smell of cordite gunpowder following.
The bullets whistle and warble and smashe and rip gaping holes of scarlet and vermilion through Claudia and bury themselves deep in the concrete wall of the warehouse, taking red carnal chunks of her with them.
She collapsed - a building being torn down.
Blood mixed with mud, dark crimson and leaden clay.
The rain falls.
Claudia's cheeks have drained to white by the time the men with guns lower them.
There is no sound.
Slowly, shafts of light dance lazily over the crippled, twisted, broken and lonely form of a 16 year old Thuringian-Byelorussian girl tangled in a tattered, bloodsoaked canvas greatcoat, holes in places on her body that there should never have been holes, parts of her insides the world was never meant to see carved out and plastered across the earth in russet swirls.
The sun has come out.

But Claudia Gruenewald's eyes are too dead to know.

>>4980266

I can see Oberbaumbrücke from my front door. Do you live in Berlin? I'm not german, but I speak it and as far as I can tell you got the orders right, sounds genuine anyway.

Thanks for posting, I like your style.

>>4980315

Nah man I don't live there any more, I'm UK, but I lived there ages 13-16 (went to an English-speaking school so I didn't get to learn much German). It's just a nice city.

Thanks for the helpful comments:)

>>4980329

yeah I love it here, got to leave in a couple of months back to the UK which sucks but hopefully I'll make it back here.

No problem, I like reading, if you want to post anything else I'm more than happy to let you know what I think.

>>4980203
I'd read it, it sounds heavily influenced by either TCOL49 or the Broom of the System. Either way it sounds very entertaining.

>>4980348

Yeah I hope I'll revisit some time soon.

Well...what does /lit/ think of plays?

The National Theatre in London did a New Views playwriting competition, and my play got on the long list (so down from 430 applicants to like 89 plays, which will get narrowed down to one that gets performed)

It's saturated in foul language, because of the characters, and it kind of varies from my other stuff, but y'know why not right?
Although I say it varies, but I do reuse some lines I like cos I'm a fuckin piece of shit

http://www.docdroid.net/d2jq/anathema-lane.doc.html

It's pretty long, but I'll hang around if you're willing to read it

>>4980463
The end is an allusion to Akira?

>>4980624

N-n-no...

The Mountain Radio [1/2]

Start of transmissions, transmissions beginning, the beginning of transmissions.
News borrowed from the weather, snow-loaded clouds. Signals start swinging,
followed by gusts of wind that slam the antennas on the corrugated steel roof.
Our listeners' radios are already turned on, illuminating the shady living rooms,
giving shape to frames on shelves, with they indistinguishable paintings. Despite
the scratchy sound, someone has to listen us. They will.
The cliffs that divide us from you, or loved ones, will not prevent you to hear
us. We put on some music, choosed carefully, in the hope that everyone, but especially
the youngsters, is satisfied. there's a particular order, even though the disks they
choose theirselves. We can warm up our voice without producing noise. Wait a little longer.
Snow sticks to our window glasses twice as thick than yours. It covers us as if we were
one of his nocturnal laments, exasperated by the idea that it could wake up.
the temperature of our facility is unreal, snow's sweating during its sleep.
it's too hot; our lukewarm reality, which wraps its bare feet between the sheets
it could lose it. our wintery god can be temperamental at times.
.........................................................................................
.........................................................................................
................A child still has to turn on his radio...................................
.........................................................................................
We could record our voices and play them indefinitely, perhaps we are already doing it.
No. You could hear the tape runs. There's no deception. Don't listen to us anymore,
wait forever. We are procastinating. (you may wonder why do we speaking in plural.
Too boring you say? You're right, we are not the TV).
Jets flying over the Mountain Radio, or Wired Mountain, or simply over the mountain
since the mountain was there way before the radio. They cross the speed of sound, The
Mach 1, entering the supersonic regime. At the exact moment of penetration of the sound
barrier, the Jet is in the transonic regime, since the point of maximum speed is outside
of the mass. The result is a sudden cloud that disappears immediately. The sonic booms are
3 and they're broadcasted live since our microphones work great. Loud noises are quite similar
from a distance, and you can get confused. Maybe they weren't aircrafts.
The idea of the radio is to talk without being interrupted. There's no phone, no green lines,
a space for calls, nothing. Arguing is harsh. If you're not satisfied, just turn it off.
Talks are being built day by day, but it's sometimes difficult to remember yesterday's topics.
They are stoked in piles similar to a disturbance, such as AM frequencies that let express
spirits talking through oriental quarter tones, evil sitars that badly melt with whistles and
pillow cryings.

>>4980642

[2/2]

Words are slow and still not coming: someone has placed the microphone near the window, curious
to know the effect on our listeners, but he will never know since we don't have a phone.
Tempers swing on the same tones of sleepy impatience.

"why do we have an editing office if no one writes anything?!?"
(this comment was fortunately not heard).

No one write because nothing has even been written, they're all focused on something else,
they watch their hands, pour water from bottles to the jug, from the jug to the glasses,
and from the glasses back to the jug: it seems that anyone ever drinks this water: the color,
or the lack of it, looks faded from the friction.
A disc gets rid of tension and comes forward, requested from the other side of the antennas.
The repeaters catched this wish casually.

"In dreams I walk with you
In dreams I talk to you
In dreams you're mine all of the time
We're together in dreams,
in dreams "

Not just the religious love of the requester unravels in a dreamlike dimension; the entire
station, with a burst of imagination, spiralizes in a dream. Fireflies describe circuits with
their own light inside the station's eyelids, exactly like human ones but made of steel.
A profusion of blankes comes down from the top of the mountain, with small earthenwares
star-spangled with coldness.

The broadcasts will be suspended indefinitely.

>>4980463

fuck i love this. made me laugh out loud and wince in pain. ogt the perfect amount of wit and gravitas.

do you by any chance like the plays of Martin McDonagh?

>>4980365
>eavily influenced by either TCOL49 or the Broom of the System.
I'm going to take that as a huge compliment, as those are both among my favourite books. Thank you.

>>4980745
>>4980463

me again, I just finished it. not sure what to make of the end. They are the parents?

Anyway, great play, good luck with the competition, I can honestly say any play that tops this would have to be really fucking good. but I have a preference for these kind of twisting darkly humourous plays so maybe I'm not the best judge.

>>4980463
Perhaps it's part of the way you wanted to construct the characters, but none of them seems to have a consistent voice within the story. In the way you are probing questions of identity and memory, some of the strength of delivery is lost. For example, in one instance a Godfrey might wax poetic or philosophical while in the next have hardly a word at his disposal other than fucks and various other profanity, even when the situation hardly merits it. Another aspect of this is that, and this might be a cultural thing as I'm not from the UK or Europe, each character has a command of vocabulary that is inconsistent with their general knowledge as displayed in other areas.

Some of the exposition, especially in Annie's monologue, is a little verbose. It could be more concise. Its placement within the frame of the work is great however.

I can understand the point of using so much vulgarity within the scope of the material, but relying on it as you have to carry the dialogue really detracts from the content. If it weren't there, the piece would have probably been much more tepid and boring, pointing to a problem with the balance of style and substance.

Lastly, naming a primary character something like anathema is puke-tier level of angst. I'm also not sure if this was intentional, but anathema does not mean "hate."

>>4975685
http://pastebin.com/uhTavGZh

>>4980841 Link isnt working m8

>>4980841
>>4980880
http://pastebin.com/MzYWZx25
sorry m8

Hi everyone, OP and >>4978576 here!!!

Jaysus, it's been an eventful day; after work I went for celebratory drinks with a few friends and now I'm here, quite drunk, but ready to respond to everyone who wrote to me in the meantime and ready to finally deliver those promised reviews (the content of which may or may not be rather lacking due to my inebriated state).

>>4978605

Thanks, pal.

>>4978620

Cheers, bro. Economics.

>>4980068

Thank you, it's really important to me that you got that impression because that was exactly what I was going for. You are correct to a certain extent; I understand that from the extract I posted, it might seem like it is an extremely exhausting, concentrated read the whole way through but trust me, that is one of the rare times when it gets as, um, deep(?) as it does. I mean, this is like 4/5 through the nove so there's been plenty of time for plot/character development by then, if you get me. Thanks for your words!

>>4980074

Thank you, I once again cannot reiterate how much all of this means to me (like I know that sounds cliché but I've been going through an existential, somewhat-writing-related crisis and you guys have really made a difference in the last few days, as pathetic as that sounds). It started off as a collection of short stories and turned into a novel, don't worry.

>>4980077

Ummm. I don't have a blog, and to be honest with you I would only ever post my stuff when I'm trying a new style and I want feedback, or if I get one of those mad moments of inspiration where everything comes together and I just NEED to know what people think of it. That said... maybe I could add you on facebook and let you know if I ever put anything up? Or perhaps gmail? Or something? Updates would be really fucking irregular though.

Thank you so much for the kind words though!

>>4980087

Haha, thanks, I'm going to get round to reviewing your post soon as I finish this one. Don't think anything I'm currently working on is related to my previous post (I mean they're all part of the same novel but it wouldn't be coherent).

Do you guys think I should maybe adopt a trip for future /lit/ postings? Would that be a way around this?

>>4980259

Oh I know no one would ever steal anyone's writing, that's ludicrous, but some people think others would.

>>4981002
>Do you guys think I should maybe adopt a trip for future /lit/ postings? Would that be a way around this?
I think just adopting a trip for these threads would be fine, people tend to be pretty hostile towards trips unless you're doing it for a specific purpose

>>4981046

That sounds fair. I'm wondering if that would defeat the purpose though -like would my writing samples become synonymous with my writing samples or would I better just be like 'I'm the guy who made the critique thread with Arcade Fire's Funeral as the image holder and write about chicolate digestives'?

Either way, I'll settle on this trip for the rest of the thread (at least) to avoid confusion.

>>4981078

*would my writing samples become synonymous with my tripcode

Good lord autocorrect.

>>4975777

When I first read this, I smiled. Clever, if not simple.

>>4976534

I like it and I don't like it. It reminds me of Camus' The Stranger. There's some lovely writing (see: the third sentence) but the character sounds like a sociopath in the way he recounts the deaths of loved ones. This may be a compliment or a criticism depending on what your approach was originally?

>>4977015

I spent fucking ages trying to articulate my thoughts on this last night. Firstly, it reminded me of a Blood Meridian, but that might be because it takes place in the desert and I'm midway through reading that book now. Your choice of vocabulary is great; all of those sensuous sorts of descriptions are really good... but there's something off about the pacing, like you have an idea of where you want to go but you're trying to get there too fast? Or it's coming off as like a fairytale-narrator voice; I don't think you were going for that. Obviously those are my criticisms and mine are usually quite peculiar but I think you should read more. And more challenging books at that. Your grasp of the English language seems promising but you need to find your voice, which only occurs when you read and write and so on and so forth.

There is a certain comfort that comes just before you fall asleep, and just before you wake up. The only problem with it is that it is very difficult to enjoy, as when one discovers that he has entered this particular state of mind, he either wakes up or falls asleep. This feeling has always had a large following, who experimented with different ways to achieve and enhance it, whether that be by basking under a warm noontime sun or complimenting it with the sweet smells and sounds of nature.
Stitch was an expert in snoozing. He had found a way to prolong this doze, using several methods he had pieced together from his long travels. That and a lot of bourbon with lemonade. Stitch was enjoying one of these alcoholic solutions when there was a knock at his door. Stitch started, knocked out of his slumber.
For a second, he was confused as to where he was. He thought maybe he had a little too much bourbon and had fallen asleep. But then there was a second knock, three in rapid succession.
I’m awake. How long has it been since I was awake? Stitch thought to himself. He twisted, trying to sit up in his cot, but he got tangled up in his beard, which had grown down to his knees and was as thick as his torso. His hair had also grown down about half as far as his beard, and the two were braided and weaved together into a blanket, which Stitch had apparently woven together in his sleep.
As he stood up his robe folded down from his waist, where it had balled up. He flinched when his bare feet touched the cold concrete floor, and then again when he leaned on a similarly cold wall. Sighing, he forced himself out of his bed and began hobbling to the door, leaning on the wall for support. After so much time spent laying down he was weak, but he could feel himself getting stronger with every step.

>>4981407
He reached the door, a flimsy wooden thing that barely fit in the doorframe. Stitch had fastened several locks to it, though most were only partially attached. Just then whoever was on the other side knocked again, and Stitch tried to shout out at him.
“Ahhhm cooeeng.” Stitch’s throat was so dry he couldn’t speak. Stitch hoped he hadn’t had his mouth open the whole time he was asleep, who knows what could’ve crawled in while he was vulnerable. “Whozzere?” There was silence on the other side of the door for a while, before someone spoke. Their voice sounded like a man’s, deep and smooth. And very confused.
“…What? Whose air? I don’t suppose the air belongs to anyone, really. Why do you ask?”
Stitch was almost as dumbfounded as the stranger now. He tried to clear his throat as much as he could and then spoke again. “No, no, who are you?”
The stranger seemed almost offended. “Well I hardly see what that has to do with the complex topic of atmospheric domain. I refuse to answer; it’s just not pertinent to the conversation at hand!” The man scoffed. “Show me some hard evidence linking my identity to this particular discussion and I will gladly reveal myself, otherwise please do not digress.”
“I’ll show you some hard evidence.” Stitch said, growing irritated. “You came all the way down here, woke me up when I was having a nice nap, just to nag me about who does and does not own the air, and then refusing to tell me who you are just beca-“
“Actually, you were the one that brought up the air bit.” The stranger interrupted. “Though it does pose a good question, whose air am I breathing, and how does one separate his or her own air from another’s? Perhaps there’s some way to “brand” the air, per se, or maybe a-“
Stitch had heard enough. His mind was groggy and he didn’t have the patience to deal with idiots like these. “I don’t give a damn about your rotten enigmas; go ponder somewhere else you twit!”
The stranger was quiet once more. Stitch stood there for a while, and after sometime, he thought that either he had struck the poor sap too hard or he had taken his advice and found some quiet corner to ruminate. Then he heard a small voice mumble something like “You started it.”

As the cia agent was standing in front of the plane the vehicle containing the expected prisoners came.
"oh man i cant beleive i hate to interrogate all three prisoners" the cia agent thought to himself. the first person to come out was the doctor whom he was expecting too.

TO BE CONTINUED END OF CHAPTER 1

The house stood firm at the end of the street, waiting and deserving to be conquered. It was the perfect level of historical musky, the perfect gloom and the perfect pitch of hauntedness to attract bored moths like us looking for a hit of light and glow. The history of the house was like any other haunted house, with its fair share of deaths, backstabs and nasty go-abouts to give credence to the idea that spooks existed in that place.

Commonplace to ghost stories are the initial omens before the entry of the adventurers, warnings against continuation of searching for paranormal activity; the first omen was the light on the porch which flickered on and off despite the fact that there was no power, the second was the vase on the table in the living room which suddenly fell and made Lin howl. Rather than send us hurtling straight for the front door and into the streets though the omens merely piqued our interest to continue on. Now we had the unshakeable faith that the supernatural did exist in the house.

On the second floor bedroom I looked out of the window into the front-yard. I thought I saw a glimpse of a ghost standing directly in the intersection of the shadows, between the two tall trees. In the meantime Lin was opening drawers and cupboards but finding most of them empty.

Suddenly I was defenestrated; I hurtled through the window and fell into the front-yard. My bones were broken. Lin stared from the window in shock, not noticing the figure rising up from behind her. She disappeared from the window. Unable to move my legs, I decided to go against the common-sense notion of escape. I dragged myself with my arms to the front porch. As I pushed the door open I looked up the stairwell and saw Lin sitting at the top with her arms cradling her legs. The shadows blocked away the expression on her face.

Slowly she walked down the steps, her back hunched forward and her long hair drooping down like a vengeful ghost. Or was she already one? Each step she took radiated a feeling of a sort. The same kind of feeling that washes over you when you stand in the street and stare and everything seems to be far away from you.

>>4981459
What determines language is a continuation. When one after another symbols register inside your head only then can communication be made. When continuation is severed inside an object and when it dissipates into flux it cannot speak the same words as before. The hurricane does not talk like the tree. Fire does not talk like the running downwards of water.

But by chance a series separate of moments could align out of flux to create continuity. Nothing proves that Time is not one of these probabilistic occurrences. If such is so then maybe we all are merely forces of communication.

To them, the forces of communication. To us, the forces of miscommunication. Their continuity more in alignment, ours out of sync. Our language consists of the pure raw dissection. Theirs of the constant bountiful reproduction. But language being language, divergent in its symbols but convergent in chance connections of what it serves to represent, who is to say that the action of spreading fear cannot be a language of love? The bouquet is no less romantic than the mantis that rips off the head of its lover in the violence of copulation.

The song of joy was the breaking of the lights, the toppling of the vase. They find their own tunes of discordancy. Yet they exist to us because of discordancy, because their conception of discordancy is directly opposed, and thus related, to our conception of continuity. Hand in hand the society and the Anti-society still flow down the same overall stream. They are only half dead, with the final stage into the realm of Thanatos occurring when the discordancy cannot be defined on ordinary terms anymore, when they miscommunicate to the extent that they become non-sequitural in nature.

I should not Other them anymore because as it turns out I have become of their ilk, transmogrified into a fluctuating entity due to the ritual of haunting and vengeance. She has become a form of flux too. Like how disparate random floating electrons congregate around atomic centers, we have become attached to geography. I inhabit the cupboard, she the stairwell. The young heiress whom was stabbed by her lover occupies the basement. The unfortunate family whom was one-by-one offed by said heiress resides in the living room. The luscious lovers (what I wished before she and I could once have been) stick to the attic where both of them were defenestrated, much like myself, through the small round window, this time at a fatal range.

In my continuous discontinuity I continue to shout, to scream, to howl at her. Likewise she seems to be mouthing out attempts at linkage and stream. We, who have only been given the language of terror and harm, can only try to reach the other through those very methods of speech. Yet our flux is continually not in sync except in a few moments of chance where I can feel some distinct faint aura. The aura falls away as transiently as it came.

Few things are as prevalent in human nature as the fear of the dark. A deep and primal instinct to avoid the shadows is very much imprinted in our psyche, specially in our early years.

It's very common for this particular fear to be one, if not the first of the fears we learn to overcome. As we grow, we no longer run to a light when we turn another one off, we slowly, but almost surely stop needing a lamp to be on to sleep, and the fear fades away into nothingness as we reach maturity

That is the way it is supposed to be, isn’t it?

Not quite.

The fear never fades, it lingers, it wanes, it can even be suppressed, but it always remains there.

Once the lights are off, there is a split second of uncertainty where the mind needs to remind itself that being scared of the dark is "silly" and "immature", that the shadows dancing on the curtains are just from the trees outside, that the swirling forms in the darkest part of the room are just optical illusions as we acclimate to the shadows, that it is safe

But it doesn't feel safe

The light is gone, there is nothing to be seen, an aura of dread permeates the room, of something lurking just beyond reach. Tendrils flicker in the darkness, and the senses become uncannily acute. The faint sound of the air moving, and the floor being scratched by the lightest of steps. The tingling sensation on the skin, the inexplicable grazes and the breath that really isn’t there.

And everything fades once the light shines again.

And the mind kids itself into ignoring its instinctual reaction.

But the question remains, whether the shadows we see in the dark, these "figments of imagination" are kept there by disbelief.

But disbelief isn't absolute, so we see these images, these shapes, their insidious attempts for us to doubt, and in so becoming ever closer. To undermine the only barrier standing between us.

Many shadows walk in the image of the mind, and the question becomes, will they stay there?

>>4981461
All like us conjecture similarly. That if we continue our parallel speeches eventually the line may shift diagonally, a convergence may be possible. Eventually we may find a concrete and continuous way of discourse. Some even claim that beyond just mere connection we may rejoin the present continuum, or even become as discontinuous as to find another distinct continuity, create one of our own in a different language: a world of Ghosts and some kind of a true afterlife. If such and such were true, if we ourselves had such abilities to do so and were not in actuality subject to forces above us that ensured our infinite division, cursed to an eternity of parallel life; I want to make our own tower far away from the rest of them. An existence of only two, both of us a Demiurge with an infinite language open to us. I want to speak the clouds and she speaks the air, a world out of our pure will and a continuity involving only us.

And now for something different.

I'm translating a book from spanish to english.

Could you guys skim this chapter and tell me how it reads?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MFf9e93fkbzTJkcPHdFZlfN7EyfvHcaVsdrlmUzpB3I/edit?usp=sharing

>>4980203
This sounds cool.

Is there a lot of conflict from the fact that he won't be able to communicate with his girlfriend once he goes blind?

CIA agent choked on the sight of the bug guy the big prisoner in the middle but he tried to act cool.
"you're can't bring your friends" cia said
"no they are not my firends" dr pavol said
"it's free" another voice added. It was the other prisoner.
CIA then asked "and why would i want them?"
"they were trying to grab your prize, they worka for the mursenarey the masketta mane" the prisoner replied.

Hannah

I have a hidden thought, it's one
Which even I thought to traverse.
But passion has since overcome,
And silence is now more obverse.

In fear to speak or otherwise
Express true feelings to my love,
I hide behind aloof disguise
Pretending not to think thereof.

This silence leaves me lonely, but
I'll not remand what I have wrought,
Instead I'll find a hermit hut
And live with her in happy thoughts.

With every passing day I lie
In wait for pleasure. When in Rome,
I waste the days until I die
Alone, here in my empty home.

>>4981500
Impressive.
Very nice.

Not sure what to think of this one, it's supposed to be an introduction/ framing device for my story, with a very cinematic/flightful feeling. If some of you can tell me your impressions and offer advice I'd be glad, this is one project I really want to be proud of.

http://pastebin.com/1pKv6Yu7

[1/2]
PART I: RECRUIT
Chapter 1
Springtime in Westphalia
Elmo Lenne cantered his horse through a forest alive with greens and blues. He was out hunting, cigarette hanging loosely in his mouth, but had decided that he would be content with the day even if he bagged nothing, so long as he could enjoy the sunshine and spring's fragrances. He needn't have worried, as Nature happily provided him with an animal to chase, a deer lapping up water at a distant creek. Elmo raised his rifle, peering through the scope at the unsuspecting animal. It was a long shot, but he was sure he could make it. He clenched his cigarette in concentration and pulled the trigger. The deer jumped at the report, but fell dead to the ground. Nobody else Elmo knew could have scored such a mark.
He urged his horse his horse toward the game, then dismounted to examine it. Its coat was glossy, and its sides and thighs were plump and meaty. His brother would surely cook a fine supper from this deer. He remarked that the eyes still shone as though alive. He had seen this countless times before, but still felt that it was significant, for reasons he could not explain. It seemed to clarify something important, that a deer's face looked the same whether it was dead or not. He wiped the blood from the wound, then slung the deer over his horse's back and headed toward town, all the while listening to the birds' folk tunes. By the time he arrived at the butcher's, blue had turned to pink. Elmo lugged the deer into the shop on one shoulder – he had not even finished puberty yet, but already possessed the strength of a grown man. Koppen, the butcher, raised an eyebrow at the handsome deer being brought into his shop. "Well, Herr Lenne, how many paces didja score this one from?" he asked.
"Paces?" said Elmo, "You're talking like it was a duel, Walter. This beauty never even suspected I was watching her. Have her ready by tomorrow noon, and remember to trim the fat."
"Right, Herr Franz doesn't like to trim it himself," said Koppen, remembering how picky Elmo's brother could be. "I think it should be doable."
Elmo watered his horse and ate his packed supper, then rode to his family's estate, modestly-sized by the standards of their equals in Society, but nonetheless well-kept and attractive, dominated by a cheerfully white house. In the parlour, his mother and brother were animatedly discussing an art exhibition they had attended earlier that day, as his father gave his utmost to appear interested and their maid, Augusta, cleared the dinner dishes. His father's face snapped out of its grey lethargy upon seeing Elmo. "Back from the hunt, eh?" he said, with an air of manly congratulation. "You're back so late; I take it this is a good sign?"

[2/2]

Elmo explained that it was indeed a good sign, and that Franz should have ample material to work with in preparing a sumptuous dinner tomorrow. "Perhaps we ought to invite the von Bergs to join us in polishing it off; the meat may be too much for four people," Elmo said. Karl von Berg had served extensively in the Great War, at whose tail end the Lenne boys had been born, and was always full of exciting dinner conversation. But what really intrigued Elmo was the after-dinner conversations he would have with him, when he had indulged in a bit too much wine. Elmo had extracted all kinds of wondrous scenes from an intoxicated Herr von Berg: the sound and appearance of an eyeball being pierced by a bayonet, the awesome light and heat of an exploding house.

>>4981528
>And live with her in happy thoughts
Since this poem is (I think) meant to adhere to a rigid meter, this line should have stress in the same place as its rhyme. The stress in "I'll not reMAND what I have wrought" doesn't match with "And live with her in HAPpy thoughts". That's how I read it at least.

>When in Rome, I waste the days until I die alone

What's with the "when in Rome" part?

>>4981561
>>4981570

The prose in this flows extremely well. I would like to read more.

>>4981615
Aw thanks. Sorry, but this is all I got (I just wrote this down tonight).

>>4981609
If I'm not misunderstanding the idiom, "when in rome, do as the Romans do." Is supposed to mean be flexible/conform to your surroundings.
In short I was trying to say everyone is wasting their days and regret remorse and loneliness are inevitable

>>4981637
Ah, I see. It's a confusing idiom to use though, since the rest of the poem emphasizes feelings of isolation (the hermit hut, dying alone, etc.); there's no mention of social pressures or expectations, which makes "when in Rome, do as the Romans do" seem like an out-of-place idiom.

>>4981661
hmm, I never thought of it like that. I'll give it a few more revisions

>>4981560
I really like this, it's an interesting piece on its own that sets the stage well for the proper story to expand on the setting and mythos it suggests to exist. I do find it kind of strange to hear words like nay and betwixt coming from some kind of barefoot ancestor/earth worshipper, but right now I am curious to see if this is explained in the main story line, so if that was intentional then good job. It also really puts me in mind of a movie trailer, to the extent that I could pretty much point to the spots were dramatic music and an In Theaters... title card could be inserted. Again, if that's good or bad I'm not sure, but I can tell you based on that I'd give whatever followed a try.

http://pastebin.com/4M0DUsAY

So, besides the scores of things wrong with this piece, I'd like to get it out of the crappy first-person present tense it's in right now. It's in present tense because *THE MC DIES AT THE END* and first person because I can't seem to make the story as effective outside of the main character's head. Any suggestions, or do I just need to become a good enough writer to make this work in third-person?

>>4981733
Thanks alot, man. I hear what you're saying about words like "nay" and "betixt". I figured I should go for less archaic terms and still maintain the "essence" of what he's saying. And I intend for just about everything mentioned in that piece to appear and be relevant in the main plot one way or another.

Lets talk about what is happening. Katherine, the brown-haired, twenty-something woman, who, still descending, is probably bug-eyed as she watches herself—every nanoangstrom closer—come to a neck-snapping end, has been the subject of the biggest, most convoluted, most time consuming prank ever played in the history of humanity: that suicide is not real. That once the loathing and the suffering of a chemically-caused depression comes to the point where there is no where left to keep your balance, the only way out is a prompt end via S. That the lifetime's worth of suffering Katherine experienced—this Katherine, bless her heart, who gobbled up every SSRI available, every Electroconvulsive and Cognitive behavioral therapy treatment she could with her limited parental allowance, every bar of benzodiazepine split into twos so that on the really off off-days she could go above the recommended daily dose—does not even occupy the same universe as the apparent success of this monstrously egregious feat of teamwork. And that she stands entirely alone, her own emotions the only ones she knows, against the combined emotional effort of the collective Other whose deception she took for benevolence.

>>4981768
It'll take a lot of reworking to get it all into third person, but here's some examples of translations I whacked up:

>I shove these anxieties out of my mind
There is no time/need for these anxieties.

>The sound of my grandfather's oxygen machine follows me through the hallways.
The sound of Grandfather's oxygen machine permeates the hallways.

>>4976519
I think you overdo the jargon. I felt that there were too many acronyms, not enough plot.
>ninja chick
No. Just no.
I do love the opening though, it shows potential. Then you just lasp into a story that makes little to no sense and has virtually no ending.
I like the concepts, but the execution needs more.
I'd also say that the characters are bad because they're so one dimensional. No motives, nothing beyond *Insert action movie cliche here*
Don't worry, you'll have a chance to insult me too.
>>4977990
I kinda like the ideas here, but I think it's too much of a run on.
>>4978107
I like this, ending included. Not a buig fan of high school stuff, but hey, it's good. Really pulls out how everything falls apart after a breakup.
>>4978669
>http://samomatic.tumblr.com/post/87978438778/penguino-royale
I like it. I hate the ending and this opinion of morality, but I like the story. Why penguins though?
>>4980116
Does blood really throb? Maybe check on that wording, but I liked this too. And the second part.
>>4980642
Shit son, I likey
>>4981407Good shit.

>>4981561
plz write more. I love this. I think that the "didja" is out of place, assuming they're German. My only complaint.

>>4982045
>>4982040
>this be me

http://pastebin.com/4GNeXxkB
i do the stupid fantasy language shit. I know.

>>4981477
Yes, but not directly. He only goes blind by the last few chapters. It's more like an impending doom on their relationship. They know that one day they will not be able to communicate anymore.

>>4981848

Holy fuck why hasn't this received any feedback? This is really, really well written, to the point where I was wondering if it was DFW copy paste work (Kate Gombert comes to mind). Do you have anything else you could post? That sort of depression/suicide topic is relevant to my interests.

First chapter of a novel. I am editing the Alpha draft, trying to turn it into a Beta for friends to read.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/189iZpa7NSBu9LsuQBAqN4wdRVyybiSSYBXVyTPF3zJQ/edit?usp=sharing

>>4984498
Yeah, I've got a lot of work that's like this. I should avoid clogging up the thread with my work, though. Thank you for the feedback.

>>4984620

Is there any way I could read more of it? Like do you have a blog or something?

>>4984636
Come to #/lit/writers on rizon.

>>4984653
/lit/ Has an IRC? Is anyone on it?

>>4984655
A couple of writers. We usually have conversation daily, at random times.

>>4984653

Is rizon an irc client or a channel?

>>4984636

how do I do this?

>>4984725

Presumably you make a blog and post your writing on it... but that's just me thinking off the top of my head, I could be wrong???

>>4981002

only just saw this, hopefully you'll see this comment, I'm >>4980077 and would be up for any correspondance. you can reach me at 662076jones@gmail.com.

I don't use that account so much though, so replies might be slow.

>>4984741
>Doalty

I don't actually write and don't have a blog, I love to read though.

I would also love to write though, I feel that literature is a conversation and I would love to try to add to it, but (and this is going to sound stupid) my brother is an aspiring writer and I don't want to infringe upon 'his' thing, if you knowe what I mean. And to be honest he's pretty good at it too so it doesn't bother me too much, I can get on and do something else. He pretty much writes how I would want to anyway lol

I've had a few beers and am not thinking very fast . . .completely misunderstood what you were trying to say.

>>4975685
Shes a chemical mistress, wrapping her hands around my limbic system and force fucking my amygdala into submission. She enters through the vein, after a while you barely feel her come in. She just does, always uninvited, but that cant be helped. One minute your somebody and the next your a nobody on the street without a friend in the world besides her. Shes almost sweet enough to you that you can forget for a minute which state of existence you prefer. Morning has to ruin the love affair, no one escapes junk sickness. Its the like a pregnancy after a long night of lovemaking. My lover lets go and lets the bitch of a morning take over, junk sickness almost makes the whole ordeal not worth it. But then the following night she comes again, puts her hands around my arm and takes me away. For a second I forget Im a nobody and the city streets light up with a chemical madness, then the morning brings me back. Shes a real cruel bitch sometimes, but shes all I got.

>>4984751

Hello there, yes I read your comment. Your email has been noted and I'll send you something when the time is right - as I said before, however, it'll more than likely be beta extracts I'm not sure about, but it could be news regarding my writings if I get anywhere publishing them, etc etc..

>>4984775

That doesn't sound stupid, but it does sound irrational. If you enjoy reading and sometimes want to write then you should do that. You might be better than you think, especially if you grew up with your brother writing all the time around you.

>>4984796

That's okay.

>>4975741
>>4975746
>and and and and and and and and and and and and and and

>>4985002

The plethora of ands was intentional and directly contributed to the style I was going for.

>>4984979

I look forward to hearing from you.

By the way, all three of those comments were from me. I came to 4chan because I was feeling lonely. . . then ended up just talking to myself. . .

>>4985021

I'll email you tomorrow probably.

That's okay, it happens to the best of us.

>>4984850
Pure unadulterated shit

>>4984850
I actually really like, it has a William Burroughs vibe. Still you obviously dont have much experience in writing. Work on it

>>4984850
I like it, but I dont think you should have included words like amygdala and limbic system in you short story as most people wont understand what that means.

>>4984850
My personal opinion is that this guy (>>4985406) is right. but wrong about the biology vocab. I think that's more up to you. I think you should keep them, gives it a nice voice.

>>4975685
Is anyone willing to take a look at my novel I'm working on? It's about 40 pages, single-spaced right now. I'm losing interest, and I feel bad because I think it's a book that deserves to be written. I just feel like it's starting to fizzle out. I want someone to confirm deny this. Email me and I'll send you the rough draft.

Here's the opening from an alternate history story I wrote a while back. Will be divided into two parts because of length.

[1/2]

It was another one of those days but Richard Nixon scarcely seemed to notice. He was tired and already he could tell that it was going to rain through the grey early morning haze. It was October 28, 1967 and Richard Nixon felt like he was coming down with a flu.
“This is ridiculous.” He muttered, behind him his wife stirred, still shrouded in blankets.
“Hmm?” She asked, muffled by the pillow over her head. Nixon shook his head and looked out the window again, there was a cardinal pecking for something in the front yard but aside from that the ground was bare.
“I think I’m coming down with something. For Christ’s sake...I haven’t even been sick in seven years...” He blinked heavily, the last time he had been sick was right before the debates in 1960, and that had cost him the election.
Everything that came after that seemed to be a blur of failure. First had come the sinking feeling as he had watched Kennedy slip past him, first in electoral votes, then in popular. A part of him had been expecting it since the debates but it still felt like a punch in the gut anyways.
He had existed in a haze for several days afterwards, meeting with donors and supporters, expressing his deepest apologies and ensuring them that he would be back in the game as soon as he was able, but behind the smile and the firm handshake he gave the public he just felt numb. He had been slapped out of the sky like Icarus and now he was on his way to earth, flaming feathers and all.
He had tried to slog his way out from the wilderness, challenging Pat Brown to be the governor of California in 1962, but as he watched the results pour in he felt a very similar sinking feeling, and the image of Icarus plunging to earth came to his mind again, the flames larger, the ground closer.
He had made a concession speech, he had railed against the media for shamelessly supporting his opponent over him, in a country that was supposed to have freedom of press too, but instead all he got was mockery and in his mind, Icarus ended his descent with a final sickening smack.
He had continued to exist after that, but it was clear that few believed him capable of the political steps he had taken with ease in better days. Instead of running for president he had helped send another man off, Barry Goldwater, that funny Arizonan senator with his natural charisma and fierce dislike for social conservatism.
But that venture had ended poorly as well, with Goldwater shattered in the election by Kennedy’s tough talking, shamelessly brash vice president Lyndon Johnson. But despite the disaster of 1964, he had walked through the entire thing without a scratch and even as many of his colleagues foundered in the aftermath, Nixon found himself still standing, and even in a position to repair his battered credentials.

>>4985806

[2/2]

1966 was better still, and as the midterm results came in and the Republican party made gains against the Democrats for the first time in years, Nixon felt a little ball of success begin to burn through the clot of stress that had seemed to gather at the bottom of his gut. Icarus had found new wings.
But now he was sick, and whenever that was the case bad things never seemed too far behind.
“I think I’m going to go for a walk.” He said, rising from bed and stretching. But even as he got his blood flowing, the odd stuffy feeling in his head just wouldn’t abate. Yup, he was definitely sick.
“Without breakfast?” Pat was sitting up now, her hair tousled. Nixon nodded, he didn’t feel hungry.
“Maybe later, I’ll be back soon.” Pat offered no objections and Nixon quickly dressed and stepped outside into the crisp October air. It felt good to be outside and as he walked across his lawn an often thought of dilemma entered his mind. When was he going to tell Pat, and practically everyone else, that he was planning on running for President again? She wouldn’t like it, he knew that much, and seeing her unhappy did little but make him unhappy as well, but deep within himself he knew that this time around he had what it would take to wrest the presidency from any opponent that he would have to face.
Nixon was so deep in thought that as he rounded the corner of a street and stepped into the road he did not pause to check the street ahead of him. In later years historians would wonder that perhaps if he had not been ill he would have heard the car approaching, but whatever the case, Richard Nixon stepped out into the road and was struck a glancing blow by the bumper of a 1949 Plymouth, shattering his hip and throwing him fifteen feet down the road.
The driver screeched to a halt and for a moment merely stared in open mouthed horror before rushing from his car to aid the downed man lying crumpled in the gutter. But even as he approached he could see that it was too late. Richard Nixon, just a moment ago planning for greater things, had departed from this world.

>>4985814
>>4985806
What do you know about the '60's? Just...desist.

>>4985406
>>4985522
The reader can do their own research.
I don't think less of literature when I encounter words and concepts I'm unfamiliar with.

I found a picture yesterday of a cat in pajamas, the caption being 'this is my business suit'.

I thought it clever, though not overly so, but who knows, maybe it'll brighten your day.

It wasn't until much later, I believe around my thirdcup of off-brand coffee,that realization struck.For half an hour had come and gone, in
pointless pursuit of what would never amount to any satisfaction, other than the desire for another 'like'. It seemed cruel, then, that that half an hour was wasted reguritating the trivial, and I had not once inquired how you were feeling, if Alexandria had gotten over her ex, or if the tulips in your garden had yet to bloom.

>>4981848
There's a lot of filler words in this that can be cut.

>every SSRI available, every Electroconvulsive
Take out the availabe, every and replace it with a comma.

Posted this yesterday via pastebin, but it didn't get read and the link expired so here we go again:

[1/3]
As the quiet month of September drew to a close, Lynnette Lillee grew increasingly morose. Her coworkers, certified practitioners in the art of the Operative Sciences, felt it keen to constantly remind her of what she had been trying to forget: her summoning before The Infallibles and everything that entailed.

After the initial news, their dialog would go something like this:
“Impressive, Lynne! You definitely worked hard for this opportunity, didn’t you?” they would say.
“Thank you so much! I’m really excited about this!” she would respond.
She remained chipper and enthusiastic for the first week after she was notified and would bounce through her workdays with a permanent smile. She had prepared several speeches to praise The Infallibles for all they had done for the sake of the great nation of Thants. After all, only very special people would ever receive this privilege. Still, there were a select few details on which she remained ignorant.
The reason for her summoning was chief among those.

>>4986081
[2/3]
Eventually Lynnette’s coworkers dispensed with the formalities and began to tell her what they actually thought:

They would say, “We may be lower level gig-runners but those guys need to know we deserve some respect. Make sure you tell them that, yeah?”

Or “None of us can really discredit what you’ve done around here, but an audience with them might be a bit rough to handle, Lynne.”

Or even “Lynne, you’re a sweet girl and a joy to have around, but I think you should consider having me go in your stead. I’ve been here for 15 years and you’ve barely made it two.”

Lynnette made an effort to avoid the topic in all conversations. When someone would hail her, she would duck into her office and pretend as if she hadn’t noticed. The pace of her work became markedly slower as the pressure continued to mount. She would often find herself absentmindedly drawing nervous loops on paperwork with her inker. At night, she had recurring dreams that when appearing before The Infallibles she would have nothing to say and would often awake to find her teeth digging into her lower lip.

On the eve of the big day, she came across a message from her boss. She was to see him before she went home. She knew what it was about.

>>4986087
[3/3]

Lynnette reluctantly left the comfort of her office and stepped out into the common area. The atmosphere was thick with hostility and she did her best to dodge the oncoming glares from her coworkers. She quickly entered her supervisor’s office without bothering to knock, and breathed a sigh of relief once she closed to door.

“Good evening,” said her boss. He spoke from behind a massive leather chair with all sorts of ornate embroidery.

“Lynnette Lillee. Age: 20. Genetic rating: Tier 5. Qualifications: Living, useful to society. Reproductive status: Fertility match not yet processed.”

“Yes, that would be me. Can I ask what this is about?” Lynnette leaned to the side to attempt to address her boss directly, but he kept swiveling the chair to obscure his face. She could see puffs rising up from the vapo-stick he was huffing.

“Your national database file,” he said. “It was flagged a month ago.”

Lynette tilted her head, “Flagged for what?”

And that's all I had before I stopped writing and forgot about it

The Endeavor of the other man

"I've never liked the smell of the beach" a fallen angel of a man declared. Then he returned a golden pocket watch, engraved with a depiction of a woman and a heart, to the front breast pocket of the deep blue coat that he wore. The old withered man in antique regal military dress stood there on that tropical beach,facing the ocean, the cold salty wind kissing his long abandoned lips, he was unable to forget. After he'd taken in his fill of the vast churning blue, he walked, shoulders slumped, slowly through the sand. The deep blue coat he wore was framed by the dark gray storm clouds and his slender figure stood much farther above the sand than any other mans would. then he stopped a moment and seemed pensive, "let's go now." he commanded of the other man. The other man obeyed and the other man followed dutifully.

When they arrived where they did, a small concrete shack supplied, unnaturally, with a thatch roof, the first man removed the gold watch from his pocket, something he never did, and gave it to the other man. "I'm not leaving you" he told the other man. The first man proceeded to lie upon the rooms only furnishing, a king size mattress with no box springs, covers, or sheets. "look where we are. Some can only wish to be where i am...as once did I. And now" he sighed "I can only wish to be away." The other man stood there listening politely, as he always did when addressed by the first man. Then the first man closed his eyes, "but it is the fate I chose". Those words would be his last and they both knew it. As he lay upon the bed with closed eyes, the chill of death entering the room, he gave it sanctuary within him and drifted off calmly and willingly into his punishment. The other man, who had lived his life for this newly deceased, was unphased as he looked at his masters body. All that this once great man ever was had been reduced to a limp piece of meat, he had commanded the obedience of nations and now commands nothing. The other man stood there as if waiting for his next command and he stood like that for the next three hours. Then something extraordinary, he decided his first decision he had made on his own in his life, it was time to go back. He returned to the beach and hopped into a little skipper boat and rowed back to a steamship waiting for him off the coast of the little island. When he was secured to the deck the word was given to leave the place the other man watched as the island he spent his entire life on, an island that was to remain unnamed due to the inhabitant of its gravesite, sank into the turbulent blue. And on the deck of that navy ship the other man shed his first tear.

When the still sea conspires an armor
And her sullen and aborted
Currents breed tiny monsters
True sailing is dead
Awkward instant
And the first animal is jettisoned
Legs furiously pumping
Their stiff green gallop
And heads bob up
Poise
Delicate
Pause
Consent
In mute nostril agony
Carefully refined
And sealed over

I do a lot of poetry, mostly haikus

I feel the soft air
And the bumping of pavement
Motion tucks me in.

I hear wooden chimes
The fan has woken them up
Including me, too.

The water gets hot
I turn the knob a little
Warmth almost takes me.

I see four digits
And I pull the covers back
See you tomorrow.

>>4985787
pls respond

>>4986119
What's it about?

>>4986119

Mind providing a summary? I usually don't edit or critique longer works if I feel they aren't worth my time reading.

>>4986125
>>4986130

Uh, it's hard to describe without giving away the whole book.

Basically there are these two scientists. One of them is a 16-year-old prodigy who works in a lab studying light/optics. The other is a German astrophysicist working on a separate quantum chemistry problem. They realize that they can help each other by combining their knowledge. Then some not so good shit happens.

Also there's a space ship floating in outer space and the entire crew has disappeared, and no one knows why. They're related, but you don't find out why until the end of the book.

>>4986193

Curiousity piqued. If you put up a link to it, I'll give it a read later tonight.

>>4987093
http://pastebin.com/60GNU9F3

>>4987188

Thanks. Only in now; I'll read it in a bit.

>>4977425 here. Story's done.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xN68D0afJxFf6UaeLJ0WilTs5gonXLT-zXt3cwc2xVA/edit

>>4985814
>“I think I’m going to go for a walk.”
For my money, this is the lead, but the reason is that I already know all the backstory about the debates, and Goldwater, and etc. I kept scanning for the 'alternate' part, and this is where it begins, along with the window and cardinal, above.

I hope there is more to this than just a Umberto Eco-ish fantasy about killing off Nixon.

Raddis-Blough massaged his moist belly with a sticky hands, a pleasant smile on his round face. “You want to know more about the connection, little boy? Well, it’s right here.”
He plucked the pair away from his drooping breasts with a soft ‘popping’ sound, as if coaxing off two suckling babes. Diluted white fluid spurted from his nipples, cascading a thin film of milk across his stomach. “Ah, there it is. There’s your answer”, he croaked, mid-laughter. “My juice, my sweet, sweet juice.” Ivis attempted to bite back his disgust, but the sickly scent of syrup and fermenting fruit in the concentrated sunlight hit his nostrils with a force that made him wince.
As if sensing Ivis’ discomfort, Raddis-Bough pushed out another chuckle: “Ah, we have more produce in this grove than you’d believe. A realm of abundance.” He leaned forward, cradling a large gourd-shaped fruit that drooped in his arms from the heat, seeping juice. There was a splatter of mush across his chest as he took a slurped away the purple skin without bothering to use teeth. He flung the remnants aside and grinned, seeds stuck to his thick lips. Ivis noticed the teeth, and how they were dazzling white, despite their heavy dousing of sugar. “Want to know about my breasts? Every boy should.”
Scout spoke for him with stern boredom. “I believe you’ve always had breasts, Raddis. Hairy ones at that.”
The entourage burst into a brief exclamation of laughter then hushed for Raddis-Bough’s excitable reply. “Oh, Scout, you are a funny one. And honest too: a much needed trait in a man. But I’ll warrant you never saw milk spurting out of them.”
“That seems to be a new addition.”

>>4988933
“I’m so happy you noticed”, he chuckled, yet again. Each motion of laughter delivered a ‘fresh’ spurt of milk to the tips of his nipples. “You see, I’ve always had tits but I never had a use for them. It didn’t seem fair that a woman could fill her jugs with life while I could not. I used to watch the women here, feeding their cubs, with a little mouth clamped on their nipples. How I’d love to have a mouth suckling on mine, I thought.” He shook his head, “Adults too. All the grown-ups taking a round on my dugs. Who’s the mother of the tribe now?”

>>4977938
Reminds me of Harlan Ellison

>>4987188

Ughhh bumping this because something came up earlier and I'm too far gone to read anything now tonight. If anyone sees this thread would you mind bumping it in around 6 hours if no one else replies? I don't want it to be thrown off yet.

>Nobody ever comments on my stuff.

Well fuck you too guys.

>>4989980

What writing was yours?

>>4989529

Bumping again because I will read that piece tonight.

>>4987188

The dialogue comes off as wooden and unrealistic sometimes, and certainly the first few pages (and definitely the opening) suffer from an overuse of ellipses, and the narrator's voice at the beginning is annoying as fuck (though for some reason gets more tolerable as it goes on).

It's better than I'm making it out to be. Your grasp on vocabulary is pretty good and it's obvious that your ideas and imagination are excellent. I just think you need to read more books to get better at the whole.

I'm writing in my second language. Sorry for if the grammar is incorrect. I'm not very good at this.


Rain surges from the ceiling
in ennui-filled streams.

We’d try to bandage the littered house
with our ageless, wilting hands
as a fissure emits the shadowy water,
whispered last words—

The soaked flower drapery, the endless
bookshelves.

At a distance, a fountain overflowing.

Just the opening to a personal essay about death and shit:

My great-grandfather Norman died in 2012. The last time I saw him he was lying in a hospital bed that had been carried into his and my great-grandmother’s apartment on the 12thfloor of Wilshire Terrace—now empty except for my dad, but then stuffed with my dad, his mom, her brother and his wife, their mom, the housekeeper, 3 dogs, and a revolving cast of family members—unclothed except for his tighty-whities, but more importantly un-toupeed. I had never seen him without a toupee. If I was callous, I’d say he affected a big, wizened baby pretty well at 92. He was asking me about women. I deflected. 20 minutes earlier he had been shoving fistfuls of dollar bills down his underwear, ostensibly planning an escape. 10 years before that he rebuffed my childish attempts to connect with his newspaper reading habit, showing him an ad for a game or a toy, practically yelling, “I’m only interested in the business section!” I guess he died like he lived.

Here are some very short stories I've written

http://nowaygetreal.wordpress.com

>>4991974

This reminds me of something I'd hear in a Fleet Foxes song.

>>4991998

Boring shit that no one cares about - next?

>>4992044

Yeah man you didn't leave us with very much to formulate opinions on.

>>4992032

Was just thinking that. Also; I think it's lovely.

>>4976358

I liked it, but if I were to say one thing, be careful with your parenthesis. Try not to use too many in one section of a passage.

Also, if someone pulled that holier-than-thou don't-bother-me-peasant shit with me, I'd knock their princess teeth out.

>>4992095
I've never listened to Fleet Foxes, so I'm unsure.
>>4992032
Thank you.

>>4992145

Hit them up man, I think you'll like Robin Pecknold a lot.

Dear sirs,

Please help a pleb out with this poem I wrote for >mfwgf

The Eye of the Beholder

At dusk, we walk the shoreline hand in hand.
You smirk at my remark (You’re just so sweet!).
Mock-wounded, I look down and watch the sand
Succumb beneath your superhuman feet.
“I think you only love me for my toes,”
You stop and say. I slowly lift my head
To see your scrunched-up lips and rumpled nose.
You laugh hysterically at what you said.
The sun sets in a cotton-candy sky;
I turn to look. With saccharine you say,
Behind a taunting frown, “You gonna cry?”
But something in your face gives you away.
We kiss and, looking in your eyes, I see
That handsome Teddie looking back at me.

>>4992213
It's boring because you think you're clever. If you choose the simplest word possible for what you're trying to do, and pay close attention to nuance and sound, you'll be far better off. Also inconsistent meter.

>>4992219

Thanks, anon. Back to the drawing board. >mfwgf isn't very bright so I was just hoping to talk over her head and have her assume it was good.

>>4981615
>>4982045

Here's some more. Thanks again for the encouragement.

"It would be wonderful if the von Bergs were to join us," said Elmo's mother, Ute, "as long as Herr von Berg does not try again to hog the spotlight. There's a word for that, you know: Histrionic. I've read that usually only women have it." This was not the first time she or her husband had taken jabs at von Berg, as they had been struck heavily by vicarious waves of the hellishness of war. Elmo found it strange that they could claim to be so deeply affected by the war when neither they nor any of their relatives had experienced it first-hand, while Franz chided his elder brother that "just the idea of war" was awful to consider, let alone its reality. Simply knowing it had really taken place, and that real people had died, gave license to some emotional response, which Elmo could understand, but still thought foolish to give any meaningful reign to. He felt they were insincere, or even worse, genuinely weak.
The next evening, the von Bergs were at the Lenne table, detailing the academic achievements of their own son at the University of Vienna. Apparently, he was quite the rising star, having been encouraged by his professors to pursue advanced degrees. Karl von Berg then addressed his host, Heinrich Lenne. "So, Herr Lenne," he said, "what plans have these two bright lads got?" As he said this, his gaze darted briefly toward Elmo, but missed Franz entirely. This was an uncomfortable topic for Heinrich Lenne; such topics seemed to be a specialty of von Berg's. When Heinrich Lenne first laid eyes on the infant Elmo, paternal vanity had implanted in his heart the notion that his child should grow up to take his place overseeing the family ceramics business, but to his dismay, young Elmo showed no interest in enterprise whatever, instead preferring sport and exercise. He had been even more sorely disappointed in Franz, who by now was the only teenaged boy he had ever known who actually enjoyed cooking. Franz's love of art and literature was entirely alien to his father, who had at least been a casual athlete in his youth, and viewed them with a vague suspicion. "One's a brute and the other's a fop," he would tell his friends at the club, "it's like being the father of Jacob and Esau!" They would joke that Franz had better not cook up a stew anytime soon, lest something terrible happen. One particularly morose gentleman commented that with the way the world was headed, something as mundane as a stew could trigger another Great War. This remark served to almost instantly divide the club members into optimistic and pessimistic factions; Heinrich belonged to the former group.

>>4992475
Heinrich gave a nebulous answer affirming that the boys were capable enough to decide their own paths, but he failed to properly conceal the despair in his voice, which weighed down the conversation more than he could have guessed. The attempts of Fraus Lenne and von Berg were both insufficient to restore the table to levity. Herr von Berg thanked the boys for the excellent venison, and the rest ate in silence.
The Lenne boys were both well aware of their father's disappointment in them, and the dinnertime reminder of it prompted them both to seek isolation after their guests had left, Franz in his room and Elmo in the dusky streets. Elmo took a draw on his cigarette. He had not yet been smoking long enough that he could do so without an involuntary hiccough. The buildings of this small-town nocturne were black against the murky, Stellar-jay sky; largest of all was his family's pottery factory. The stars' whiteness was startlingly pure, which calmed him and gave him a feeling of hope. In his roaming, he recalled how his HJ leader had once said that man was born free to choose his own actions, which was a comforting reminder that he need not be overly concerned with his father's approval. Besides, he had the approval of many other people, his HJ comrades and schoolmates, whom he held in higher esteem than his father anyway. The praise of one man was a bronze medal; the admiration of a race, a golden trophy and a fresh-cut laurel.

>>4992486
The venison dinner occurred on a Sunday. Monday brought with it the promise of the weekly HJ meeting. Unlike his brother, Franz was enrolled in the Hitlerjugend involuntarily by his parents, entirely to keep up appearances, and he was miserable. This misery came largely at the hands of a certain Albert Grüsch, the largest boy in their chapter. One of the more learned boys had commented that Grüsch must have been as thick around as Yggdrasil, which became his occasional nickname. He relentlessly tormented Franz: here a twist of the wrist during First Aid training, there a kick in the shin during a football game. He spread wholly unsubstantiated rumours that Franz was a half-Jew and a homosexual (the purity of Elmo's heritage and sexuality was never questioned), which were eagerly absorbed by his comrades, who were long acquainted with the usefulness of scapegoats and whipping boys. The leaders did nothing to discourage young Albert – it was Franz's own fault if he didn't man up and stand up for himself, even if his torturer appeared more Minotaur than human. During a wrestling match rigged to teach the small and weak the value of "manning up", Albert had pinned the prone Franz, digging a knee between his shoulder blades, twisting his arms backward. Franz pleaded for mercy; Albert replied, "Sorry, but you haven't tapped out," with another yank on his victim's arms. Franz suddenly found his agony relieved: Albert had been shoved off of his much smaller opponent by a furious Elmo Lenne, and the two were fast engaged in a most unsportsmanlike brawl. A leader blew his whistle, breaking up the impromptu match. As the boys were pulled apart, breaking the magnetic pull of combat, Elmo kept a fixed glare of fire on Albert. The head of the chapter, a man named Nickel, took this as an opportunity to have a discussion with the boys on the nature of brotherhood. "What our Elmo did today was a fine display of comradeship and bravery," he began, "and his action would have been wholly admirable in battle. But this is not battle. This is training for battle, against the threats beyond and within, and Franz must be made strong enough to fight on his own, should he ever need to." Franz wanted to ask why he should receive combat training when he was so clearly unfit for the part, but refrained, as his reputation had suffered enough that day. Hermann Kuchmaier, one of Elmo's friends, raised his hand and asked whether Albert was not also in need of a lesson for treating a comrade so cruelly.

The moon was down on Broadway, though no one could see it through the black smoke undulating towards the clear sky from the burning marquees set aflame by the rampaging Browncoats– well aware of the irony in burning these postmodernist churches of the people. No one was quite sure of just how America's inauspicious fall came to be. Spengler would say that it was just winter turning to fall, but it was as if the springtime of the east had passed on into summer before the branches had thawed. The west, ever seeking smaller units of time in which to do business, had become lost among the nanoseconds of the present, ignoring what may have come beyond the next ten until it was far too late. Sure enough, the money– really, the concept of money; no one really had money once people began to adopt currency as a religion instead of a replacement– had kept flowing right to the end. Jim Corrigan had helped it along. Jim was currently in the second floor bathroom of the NYSE clutching a shot gun holding a max of 8 shells, 2 of which were embedded in the skulls of two Browncoats.

The moon was down on Broadway, though no one could see it through the black smoke undulating towards the clear sky from the burning marquees set aflame by the rampaging Browncoats– well aware of the irony in burning these postmodernist churches of the people. No one was quite sure of just how America's inauspicious fall came to be. Spengler would say that it was just winter turning to fall, but it was as if the springtime of the east had passed on into summer before the branches had thawed. The west, ever seeking smaller units of time in which to do business, had become lost among the nanoseconds of the present, ignoring what may have come beyond the next ten until it was far too late. Sure enough, the money– really, the concept of money; no one really had money once people began to adopt currency as a religion instead of a replacement– had kept flowing right to the end. Jim Corrigan had helped it along. Jim was currently in the second floor bathroom of the NYSE clutching a shot gun holding a max of 8 shells, 2 of which were embedded in the skulls of two Browncoats. Another was scattered among the shattered remnants of a porcelain toilet whose brown water was crossing over the blue and white tile to mix and swirl together with Corrigan's blood into a brown homogenous mass, ineffectually being pulled pulled down the drain only to cling to the sides, like mud to a lonely corpse among the desecrated poppy fields of Ypres.

>>4992513
Good work. Tiny nitpick is that "the West" should be capitalized. I like the idea presented that society has worn itself out like an overused fanbelt. I haven't read too much post-apocalyptic stuff, but it seems like an interesting take. The simile at the end is very apt for a dark, hopeless(?) mood you're clearly going for.

>>4975685
a poem I wrote

What once was here
Is now no more
A testament
To time before
That had once come
And now has passed
Impermanent
Nothing will last
Or so they say
And so it goes
And as for where
Nobody knows
But that was then
And this is now
The moment lives
Don't ask me how
Just ask me what
You want to do
Because today
I'll stay with you
But if today
Goes by too fast
And time cannot
Let feelings last
I'll think fondly
To what was then
And remember
Us two again
And in that way
You are still here
Kept in my thoughts
Holding you near
So time may pass
And feelings fade
But I won't have
To be afraid
What once was here
Never has gone
A memory
That still lives on

There is, within it, nothing. And that is not even the most disappointing part. That there is a hollow glow of century’s air rising higher to the marshmallow plains. And we are walking hand and hand, her and I, in the heat of a June dust . The dancing lilies on each side, yellow and bright on the edges of our sight. So that we are breathing as one and walking feet in synchronicity across a beat-dirt path toward the barn across the field. And that is not what I seem to desire. I don’t know. If I desire something like this type of love that they call it. And I want to almost separate and stop her there under the low white belly of the horizon and tell her that no this is not going to end well and to flee to the woodline and get back to the city now. I can’t do it though, and we are walking at a pace that makes me sweat under the brim of my hat. A pace that scares me and in each step I contemplate breaking and turning and running back away but she is grabbing me tight in the hand and I can feel her intent on reaching it with me. And that is the only way that this can end. I know. She has not been away from me nor I from her in maybe three months. And In those months we have become a type of One, a type of entity, that goes toward the barn and has different minds but the same intentions, wary of our end, accepting of it, taking in the air that graces us moving through eternity, and we go, and and we go to our inevitable end.

>>4992571
The first couple lines of this sound like the narrator's on LSD. Maybe that's good, maybe it's bad, I dunno.

>>4992513
Hopeless, dark, and wrung out are all things I hoped to evoke.
You're story was quite good, I'm envious of the prose. Please don't take this the wrong way, but it reminded me of Franzen at points. I do think it drags a little towards the end, but it's still good,

>>4992858
This was meant for
>>4992532

This is the beginning of a collection of science fiction short stories that all revolve around the goings-on of a trans-galactic transport station.

(1/3)
The Station never slept. Low booms reverberated in the cathedral ceilings of the Atrium, blue light bouncing off the white metal eaves. Masses of beings slithered, walked, lumbered, glided, and shifted in an amalgam, each going about their individual business. As a center of all galactic traffic, time fluctuated between progress and stagnation. Time of day was irrelevant, everyone always traveled, always moved. She moved unnoticed between the throngs of things, clutching a large mass of fabric to her chest.
Eyes darting to and fro, she latched on to every holographic sign that hovered above the crowd, searching for familiar directions as the walkway beneath her feet moved forward. Primitive neural implants barely kept up with the pace of the conveyor belts, translations of the “common” text popping up as she whisked on by them. So far, she knew she was on the correct level, but other than that she was lost.
Disgruntled passengers shoved past her, one of them trailing a foul-smelling orange substance on her forearm as it brushed by. The odor accompanying it was a horrid mix of iron and walnuts, a plain expression of impatient offense from the species.Thankful for the jacket she left on, she shook off what gunk she could and resumed walking, trying to find one sign that showed either C-206 or the key word Employee(s).
She really did not want to interact with the Virtual Intelligence Common Kiosk—VICK—again. Annoyed with her ignorance and language the interface had been uncooperative, only giving out terse, one-word English responses. It ceased all communication with her once she threw the remnants of her beverage at the console, an action she now regretted. At that point she would have welcomed interference from any authority figures that showed to scold her for littering and vandalism, but none came forward. No one visible wore the loud green and blue of Station employee uniform standard she held in a wrinkled bundle.

>>4993780
Paragraphs are off, sorry for the wall of text
(2/3)
The walkway jerked to a halt, throwing her forward into a mass of hair that warbled as it in turn fell into the large quill-filled back of another being. In response, it bit the laced wing of the unlucky individual in front of it, who was trying in vain to pull its companion's leaf-filled vine out of the jammed conveyor belt.

Those who could fly or float did so, continuing to their destinations. Varying visceral manifestations of beings squeezed by, determined to not be hindered by the mishap. Maybe if she lingered some sort of security or maintenance would arrive to guide her in the right direction.

Minutes passed and the situation escalated far beyond what she predicted would happen. The lumpy tentacled person from before that left slime near her elbow now expelled the same substance on the poor trapped plant's trunk. In retaliation it snared a free vine around the central mass of its aggressor, leaves rustling in agitation. Only a few onlookers lingered, most travelers too busy for the commotion. Not a single staff member, maintenance bot, or VICK console in sight.

More tentacled beings joined their brethren, some placing a restraining arm on one of his while others seeped vibrant yellow pus in silent rage. One expelled some with such violence that she had to duck. It hit the lemur-faced person behind her square in the eyes that framed its brow bone. The stench of it was unlike anything she smelled before, making her gag. The sexocular lemur actually vomited.

Laughter was the only response she could think of, her amusement coupled with relief that no one around her probably knew what her sudden eruption of noise signified. Each moment brought more chaos to the situation. Eventually traffic was at a standstill, save for those who could get through by bodily advantage.

>>4993780
Paragraphs are off, sorry for the wall of text

(2/3)
The walkway jerked to a halt, throwing her forward into a mass of hair that warbled as it in turn fell into the large quill-filled back of another being. In response, it bit the laced wing of the unlucky individual in front of it, who was trying in vain to pull its companion's leaf-filled vine out of the jammed conveyor belt.

Those who could fly or float did so, continuing to their destinations. Varying visceral manifestations of beings squeezed by, determined to not be hindered by the mishap. Maybe if she lingered some sort of security or maintenance would arrive to guide her in the right direction.

Minutes passed and the situation escalated far beyond what she predicted would happen. The lumpy tentacled person from before that left slime near her elbow now expelled the same substance on the poor trapped plant's trunk. In retaliation it snared a free vine around the central mass of its aggressor, leaves rustling in agitation. Only a few onlookers lingered, most travelers too busy for the commotion. Not a single staff member, maintenance bot, or VICK console in sight.

More tentacled beings joined their brethren, some placing a restraining arm on one of his while others seeped vibrant yellow pus in silent rage. One expelled some with such violence that she had to duck. It hit the lemur-faced person behind her square in the eyes that framed its brow bone. The stench of it was unlike anything she smelled before, making her gag. The sexocular lemur actually vomited.

Laughter was the only response she could think of, her amusement coupled with relief that no one around her probably knew what her sudden eruption of noise signified. Each moment brought more chaos to the situation. Eventually traffic was at a standstill, save for those who could get through by bodily advantage.

>>4993783
(3/3)

Tussled by the growing crowd, she pressed to the railing of the walkway, sidestepping the puddle of sick. Craning her neck, she tried to get a glimpse of emerald and cobalt, to no avail. Frustrated, she pulled herself over the smooth metal rail and quickly found out why no one dared to deviate from the conveyor.

As she tried to take a step forward, she found her soles to be locked to the floor. Off balance, her top half flung with her momentum, arms cartwheeling as she pitched forward, feet still stuck, the uniform flying out of her grasp. Bracing the landing with her hands, she then felt her palms press to the ground. Dismayed, she yanked back. No amount of strength freed her appendages; no substance tacked her there, it was as if her hands and feet became part of the ground.

The inappropriate observation that the Station was understaffed sprang into her mind.

She sank into an awkward crouch, aware of onlookers ogling her predicament. More so since the gridlock gave pedestrians nothing to do.

Yes. Quite understaffed.

I wrote these for valentines day and would love some feedback.

http://pastebin.com/2DQugEwX

I also wrote a few spec scripts for the new Sonic the hedgehog television series that i would love feedback on

http://pastebin.com/LfPeiBdC

http://pastebin.com/mjDid0iy

This stream of consciousness thing isn't working out for me that well, due to being daytime but here we go:
Sports were always a social activity, and thinking about it now, its pretty logical why I was bad at sports. Not that I was bad, just lacked coordination that everyone else had at that age. When I was playing all these video games, reading all those books, I was learning the language I would otherwise not be able to present this novel to you in, I didn't have time or the will to start anything new, especially something that would not benefit me. I cannot create something by "hitting ball" or "shooting hoop", and there's people who already professionally do that, because they're genetically predisposed and because they've done that while I was doing this. That's why my 45 minutes of glory would come from any class that required reading, writing, understanding something, it was my forte, my weapon that would give me a certain edge against the competition, because the only way to compete would be by having a higher GPA, and I would have it because most of the subjects require those things - reading, writing, understanding something, not kicking ball.

cont

>>4995052
I wasn't abysmal at sports, but I'd admit it straight out that it wasn't my thing, and in time I've stopped making excuses because people weren't making accusations (because kids mature with age, and then they don't feel the need to make fun of someone, because they learn something about themselves that makes THEM special, and they learn that if they make fun of others for something, they will be made fun of later on, since no one is perfect and all) the more I've advanced in these improvised educational institutions, and it would be just a fun time even if you couldn't play a sport properly, because you would usually be assigned the role of someone who's "static" in the game, not someone who's actively participating in it.

During my 3rd grade of elementary school we got this football field, it was about 15 meters in length and 4 meters in width, it would have these small, somewhat thin wooden blocks, an array of them everywhere, and when the ball was accidentally (or on purpose, part of the game for those that knew how to play football and use the fact it was a closed terrain to their advantage), it would make a very loud, sometimes even funny noise, probably due to the heat we were all playing in. It was layered with fake grass, and some small black rubbery stuff, that would always get in your shoes, God knows how, but it did, and you'd feel it for a week, until you bothered to take your shoes off and get to the bottom of this.

I wouldn't mind some critique for this. I'm curious as to whether the intended open, emphatic and minimalist style works or if it comes across as more vague and airy.

http://avatofacid.com/2014/05/18/one-day-thom-yorke-will-die/

>>4995075

The reason nobody replied is because there isn't a lot to reply to - you just say 'this is what this song is about I think' and that's it. There's no substance. It's dissection of song lyrics that's more simplistic than what you'd find on songmeanings.

>>4995439
or the fact he posted it like an hour ago and this board is slow as balls, but yeah its kind of what you said too

>>4995456

I'm pretty sure he posted it in this thread around four days ago, or it might have been a previous critique thread, and received no replies either.

I'm actually so glad I posted my stuff on here, since getting feedback my writing rate has increased exponentially. I pretty much wrote a new and entire chapter already tonight. Thanks for the confidence boost, /lit/.

>>4988991
In a good way?

>>4988936

fucking amazing. topkek. well done.

A person finds peace with their dog
Not with a different person like themselves
A dog is obeyed in office, and an office is obeyed by god

Larry's head was already throbbing, but the floor was cooling his swollen cheek for the moment he found himself there. He knew he really needed to get up. He almost dreaded the idea of standing more than the idea of a brutal death on the floor. Fighting for your life is in no way fun. Wouldn't you know, this had started like any other day. Hell, this day had even been like most towards the middle, but here...now...the sun going down in an area Larry wasn't familiar with...

Three niggers were doing their best to find Larry. Three niggers had done their best to beat him to death...first in their usual LOUD monkey fashion, loose, filled with machismo, but as soon as Larry had shown he could defend himself (he had only planted his foot firmly into the chest of his most vocal and, coincidentally, slow attacker) they had become almost sociopathic. Their eyes had gone dead, no longer displaying any joy in their actions. Their bodies, once casually thrown about, then only moved in short choppy increments.
Larry had done well enough for a man with an average of three fists per moment attempting to force his jaw from his head, but Larry was...just Larry. He had read what he considered a little more than enough comic books. He wasn't like Batman...hell, most incarnations of Lois Lane would more than give Larry a challenge. If you would ask Larry to describe apply an adverb to his escape from an immediate fight, he would go with something along the lines of "thankfully", or "fortunately", but I'll just tell you that at one point in the barbaric actions I'm describing, one nigger had been knocked over, another was wiping some blood from his eye, and the third had simply been a little fat, and a little stupid...So, Larry saw his chance to put some distance between himself and his "niggailants". He ran in the direction he thought he had come from, but a sore brain can make the best of men a little doofy, and as I said, he was...just Larry. Larry WAS becoming more and more aware that he was getting himself lost, but that wasn't as high on his list of fears as the screams of an again, LOUD posse of niggers chasing him.
If only I didn't have to report just how cliche the moments before our story began were...oh well, facts are facts.(but they don't always make the best reading)
Larry eventually found the alleys he was darting down getting narrower, and MUCH darker. He of course, was doing his very best to not trip, because who wants to do that while being chased...(other reasons as well, but even in his panic Larry was ever worried about looking silly), but I'm not lying when I tell you, it was a cat that put him on that slightly soothing ground we found him in. Not an old cat, or a mean cat, or a dirty cat. Just some little nigger's orange cat, out for a scroll until nap time.
Here we are again...
Larry is just about to become afraid enough of the howling of the monkeys to stand.
There it is...

Larry's head was already throbbing, but the floor was cooling his swollen cheek for the moment he found himself there. He knew he really needed to get up. He almost dreaded the idea of standing more than the idea of a brutal death on the floor. Fighting for your life is in no way fun. Wouldn't you know, this had started like any other day. Hell, this day had even been like most towards the middle, but here...now...the sun going down in an area Larry wasn't familiar with...

Three niggers were doing their best to find Larry. Three niggers had done their best to beat him to death...first in their usual LOUD monkey fashion, loose, filled with machismo, but as soon as Larry had shown he could defend himself (he had only planted his foot firmly into the chest of his most vocal and, coincidentally, slow attacker) they had become almost sociopathic. Their eyes had gone dead, no longer displaying any joy in their actions. Their bodies, once casually thrown about, then only moved in short choppy increments.
Larry had done well enough for a man with an average of three fists per moment attempting to force his jaw from his head, but Larry was...just Larry. He had read what he considered a little more than enough comic books. He wasn't like Batman...Truthfully, most incarnations of Lois Lane would more than give Larry a challenge. If you would ask Larry to apply an adverb to his escape from his beating, he would go with something along the lines of "thankfully", or "fortunately", but I'll just tell you that at one point in the barbaric actions I'm describing, one nigger had been knocked over, another was wiping some blood from his eye, and the third had simply been a little fat, and a little stupid...So, Larry saw his chance to put some distance between himself and his "niggailants". He ran in the direction he thought he had come from, but a sore brain can make the best of men a little doofy, and as I said, he was...just Larry. Larry WAS becoming more and more aware that he was getting himself lost, but that wasn't as high on his list of fears as the screams of a once again, LOUD posse of niggers chasing him.
If only I didn't have to report just how cliche the moments before our story began were...oh well, facts are facts.(but they don't always make the best reading)
Larry eventually found the alleys he was darting down getting narrower, and MUCH darker. He of course, was doing his very best to not trip, because who wants to do that while being chased...(other reasons as well, but even in his panic Larry was ever worried about looking silly), but I'm not lying when I tell you, it was a cat that put him on that slightly soothing ground we found him in. Not an old cat, or a mean cat, or a dirty cat. Just some little nigger's orange cat, out for a scroll until nap time.
Here we are again...
Larry is just about to become afraid enough of the howling of the monkeys to stand.
There it is...

>>4977077

I read this when you posted it the other night. Liked it then, like it now. Makes me think of Bradbury.

>>4988873
There is, I'm just not posting the rest because the whole thing is 900 pages long. I did the backstory because most people don't know shit about history, I'm pleasantly surprised that people here do.

>>4975685
I stared into that reflection of hollow eyes and the red lining supporting eye empty optics swirling inside of Mother’s eye. She’s overweight with grease lining the hairs above her top and bottom lip. They are blond and hard to see unless you intensely study the face. I want to laugh. We spend more time studying each other’s faces than studying our words to each other. Careless dollars tossed to a stripper with the same compassion picked up with the same bitter dejection.

Not many poems in here, oh well:


I said it all in passing
My remarks, long since forgotten
But the One they struck profoundly
Still placed thought upon them

Many hours from that instance
Just as bound to be
Group discussion drew to close,
All but One began to leave

Then he and I, we stood alone
And in a friendly admiring tone
He spoke the words I'd forgot I'd known
And left me there,
To hear them

So I walked off, being quite confused
But none the less I was enthused
With a new found pep in my every move
And I won't forget
To thank him

>>4995439
>>4995456
>>4995671

But it's not just a songmeanings interpretation of lyrics. You would have realised this had you read past the first 5 or so lines. It's about memento moris, the role death plays in life, and the second half is a morbid suggestion of how we might implement a real life, public version of thr 15 step memento mori, I.e by displaying a celebrity's carcass in the middle of a mall, reminding us about where we are and questions whether being there is a good use of our time. It's not simple, it's just short and to the point.

The beating of wings sounded as a ladybug touched down on a frail leaf. He settled just below a cluster of small purple and white flowers, forests of green and brown shoots ahead of him. From his perspective it must have seemed like an entrance to a musty metropolis or any number of things the imagination might conjure up and take in. Obliviously this bug conducted business as usual, crawling away under the foliage.
"Do they ever notice?", a gigantic hazel eye mumbled to itself. Sunlight glinted off a magnifying glass as it moved aside to reveal a young man of as many years as hours in a day. Wearing a look of deep, distressed thought on his face and business casual attire on his person, he stood up and brushed some dirt off his pant leg. Placing the magnifying glass in his pocket and exchanging it for a nametag, "Liam", which he fondled in his hand, he looked out over the area. There was a faux-western restroom with vending machines and Arizona roadmaps inside, next to it a vast expanse of brownish red dirt rising up into wile E. coyote rock formations, nearer to him was a dented rusty road sign, his car, and a row of out of place bushes. Upset by the view but not profoundly effected, he went around to the trunk of his sedan and withdrew sunglasses and a ball cap from a hastily packed suitcase and closed the trunk with a moderate thud. Squeezing into the drivers seat, he still held onto the nametag while reading the rental sticker on the windshield. Suddenly he grew angry, chucking it out the window and driving off. There where he had parked, in the brownish red dirt, lay a nametag, "Liam", a ladybug crushed beneath it.

>>4978051
i enjoyed this

>>4997451

Pynchon detected!

>>4998054
Thanks,even though my hasty editing left some weird sentence fragments.

The past is yet to be made complete.
Unfinished phrases still left
to wade through,
said but not heard,
thought but not said.

Turn inward and fall into it,
feel drowned by sounds and words and scents
to be discovered, to be created.

Washing over, retrenching ever further and farther into now--
waves beat against the shore. Sands break down
that spell out years gone by.

Let your story be that levee
from which we can watch the beat waves.
Let your wounded feet feel the salty breath
that pulses--How it stings!

Become ever present
not as a line bisecting your past
and any future, but as a point from which
all is set-forth silently
and into which
everything retreats thunderously.

>>4998118
Really? I wrote this in my free time during class, what novel do you think it's from? Or were you trying to say that the style is similar?

>>4997353

Write more.

The moment is approaching,
When this era of recycling
Will have spent itself
Of every pretense and justification
That invests its trendsetting domination,
And we will have need again for cycling.

And I am anxious,
Because my parents never
Made it incumbent upon me
To learn how to cycle,
Only to try.

>>4991974
>ennui-filled
Only flaw. Otherwise, good piece. Revise twenty times or so, and then send it out.

>>4999809

I liked reading this but I have no idea what it's about. Protecting the environment? Imploring mankind to realise history is there to be learned from?

>>5000890
More the latter. The cycling/recycling word choice is mostly metaphorical and the theme is more about the cyclical nature of history.

In a more explicit sense, the second stanza also references the degree to which modern parenting and teaching strategies can leave young people unprepared for the real world.

Wrote this up on the fly:

On a boring day in winter, James and I took to terrorizing the servants. Father and Adam went to meet with Imperial officials and Selena was at her lessons, so there was nobody to deter us. We played some minor pranks on the older servants, but the one I remember is the one we played on a little girl servant we had in our employ. I hesitate to call it a "prank" and I think most would classify it as "wanton cruelty", but that's just how children are. We told her that her brother had died, now , her brother was a stable-boy at our country estate and was entirely alive, but as a pair we made a very convincing report of his sudden death. She listened to what we said without a word of reply, and when we had reached the climax of our tale, she fell to her knees and wept, long and loud, and as young boys often do upon making a girl cry, we beat a hasty retreat and left her there for the other servants to find.
Adam arrived earlier then father, and after a short period downstairs, wen't straight to our room. We knew that he knew what we had done the moment he opened the door. He came in teary eyed and trying his best to act stern, he was a lot like father, that way. He told us both to sit on our bed so he could tell us something. I got up to do so, but James stayed fast, his face a mixture of shame and disgust, he only followed me at my urging. He sat us down, and made us swear never to hurt someone like that again, we both did so, some with more gusto than others. To consummate our solemn oath, he took us out to the street and bought four pieces of fried dough. He gave us our two pieces and back home, found Selena putting her books away and gave her the third piece. He wen't into the kitchen and found the little servant that we had "pranked", she was putting away silverware. He walked up to her and handed her the fourth piece. She looked at him, then at us, and finally at the fried dough, she took it and nearly ran back to the servant's room. No "Thank you" or any other acknowledgement of his benevolence. Adam looked back at us, and smiled. God, I wish you could have known him.

>>5000938

Ah okay, I can see it. It's pretty good, do you have any other stuff you can post?

>There was a rain that morning, a pit-pit-pattering rain, the kind that knocks lightly on the window and taps gently on the shoulder. He had never gotten around to purchasing a new umbrella, and so in its place decided upon a loose-fitting nylon coat from some far gone birthday. As he stepped out of doors he was met by the caress of cool air across his face, and he let out a cough. Stopping ever so briefly at the foot of an empty drive, he confirmed the emptiness of the postbox and started down the sidewalk. A few sparse patches of grass on his left, and he wondered if his grass was slowly turning the colour of his house or if it really had been that long since it first was painted.

I'm just starting to write creatively. Writer's block hits hard and heavy.

>>4996038
Thanks. I'm glad you enjoyed.

Spirits Of Radio

PanPan PanPan PanPan Coast Guard Station Calumet Harbor requests that all vessels monitor radios for distress calls from sailing vessel Lake Victress last heard at 10:42am local time in the vicinity of the R.

Securite Securite Securite Coast Guard Station Calumet Harbor requests that all vessels be on the lookout for wreckage in the vicinity of the R which could pose a threat to navigation.

All-hazards radio WXJ95 broadcasting on a frequency of one six two point four zero megahertz and covering the near shore waters of Key West and the Florida Bay.

Spotter activation may be necessary.

SKY KING SKY KING SKY KING DO NOT ANSWER

Mister and Missus America, coast to coast and all the ships at sea.

And all the ships at sea.

Coast to Coast.

East of the Rockies.

West of the Rockies.

United four seven seven confirm company traffic two miles at your 12 oclock. Turn left heading two three zero and climb to angels twenty.

Columbia, Houston you are looking a little hot and all your calls will be a little early. You are looking good going over the hill and we'll see you in Madrid.

CSQ CSQ, Houston. Did he say he has a stuck hand controller?

Negative, Houston, he said he's in an increasing left roll and he can't stop it. Coastal Sentry Quebec for Gemini seven.

Switching to 16 and standing by.

>>4996416
You know, this isn't a joke post...