/lit/ - Literature

>>5151151
>http://pastebin.com/SMYBp9uA
It's alright, but you could do with longer sentences the flow of the text is pretty broken at parts.
Also?
>This was a 360-degree complete
opposite of it

I've missed critique threads. BRB gathering up fragmented poems

>>5151151
You here?

>>5151177
Yes I'm here :D

>>5151181
le respond to criticism xD

>>5151167
>>5151186

sorry xD didn't notice this was you
so the general idea behind this is pretty good? It's mostly what I'm wondering. I know my vocab can become better over time but I'm wondering if my imagination is interesting for someone to continue reading :c

I could use a broad critique of the short story I've written.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pvyJPH-f0h7CjDSCyaYfjlUGg4LsML6jjeLXOU-YXUs/edit

>>5151340
It start's out way too precise man. Why do I care about this princess or that war? What is the Rai dynasty (generic as fuck name btw). If you want to write about royalty you should start out at a more grounded level so a reader can better connect with the characters.

>>5151151

>I'd like your opinion...

Okay

>on this short story...

No. Grow some balls and write a novel.

>>5151392
actually it's more of an idea of a peripeteia for my future novel. those are future plans though but i'm gathering up ideas for it.

Here is a very short excerpt from my ongoing project simply known as: Untitled Night Babies Project

On the eve of fertility, each female Night Baby selected a male to mate with. The fucking was done in piles, scattered around the campsite, about 6 pairs in each. Their tiny hairless white bodies lumped together like mounds of cottage cheese.

Stay tuned.

>>5151151
>I remember, this one time, when I was extremely paranoid.
A strong start and good hook. But then...

>I was playing this game…
I don’t know if this is an exclusive American thing, but I’m pretty familiar with hacky-sack despite it never being termed that in the UK.

>That wasn't what made me paranoid though
Then why tell us?

>That I imagined that I shat my pants
Sounds clumsy. You can remove both "thats", but its imperative you remove the second.

>Brown fecal matter...
Yes, we can safely reason what's involved in shitting your pants.

> I felt horrified.
Well, gee, thanks for letting us know.

>360 degree opposite of it
Uh...

>But they were high though...
I rolled my eyes, but that's just me.

It almost reads as if you're trying (and failing) to be DFW. The padding, the forced humor, the extraneous details and digressions, and, at times, the outright telling (I felt horrified) just don't make for an interesting read. "The look on his face" and such other cliches are a very cheap way of expressing emotion. I'll admit I didn't finish it, but then, it's not more kind of thing. Best of luck on the redrafting.

>>5151374
Did you read more than the first sentence?

Did you even finish the first sentence?

>>5151151

is English your native language?

I'm aware this sounds like a very loaded question and it is, but I sensed awkward wording and clause handling at times.

>>5151518
:D
im was a bit high when i wrote it and wrote it as thoughts flew my mind :x

Start of my 5th restart. How's my prose?

Feel free to paste into your preferred word processing software for ease of reading, it's 1500 words:

(chapter one)

Thomas passed his hand through the space where his cousin Jim's badly rotten right foot once was. It was amputated last night, and he was trying to feel for its ghost. He felt nothing. He imagined living his life without a foot. What would it feel like to try and wiggle a toe that didn't exist? Or to rest his weight on the stump? Would it be too painful to walk on? Would Jim have to lean on a stick for the rest of his life? And how helpless would he be without it? His heart sunk beneath the weight of worry for his cousin.

Jim was watching Thomas's face in profile as they sat perpendicular to one another on the dirt floor of their family cottage. "Well?"

"Oh," Thomas said, and wet his linen rag. "Sorry." The new terminal of Jim's body was an ugly, cauterized nub. Thomas knew how to handle burn scars, being that his own mouth, chin and throat were covered in them; It was the bone that interested him. "I'm sorry I wasn't able to save your foot."

"Don't be sorry. You prayed harder than anyone else." Jim said. He sighed and slumped back. "So what? Life goes on."

It gave Thomas a dizzy thrill to feel up his cousin's deformity. Jim's tibia flared, broad and round beneath the scars, like a cup. Thomas tried to probe the innermost surfaces of the bone with the pad of his thumb, but Jim hissed in pain.

"What the hell are you doing?" Jim said. "Just clean it, you little creep. You'll be late for school."

The bony stump wept clear fluid, which Thomas stroked at so carefully it was as if he was removing it by layers. He looked at the grizzled, dark skin and frowned as he remembered his own affliction. It was hard for him to say where he would rather wear his burns, since a one-footed farmer would have a difficult time finding a wife, too. Clean linens had been provided by aunt Mary, and Thomas tore them into bandages to wrap around Jim's dry ankle, as a temporary barrier against the filth they kept on the floor. They said their goodbyes and parted.

>>5151572


Outside the cottage was a perversely desolate landscape. The horizon lay flat in every direction. No hills rose above, nor valleys rolled beneath. No water reflected the sun, no trees swayed in the strong autumn wind, no choruses of rustling leaves or grass sang. Cousin Jim's family lived in the heart of North Taunton, on a plot twenty-five plow furrows wide, and seven-hundred of King Henry's feet deep. They were peasants, held in everlasting bondage to the land upon which they toiled away their short, miserable lives. Generation after generation, risen with whatever sun and rain God provided, ground down beneath life's millwheel, and finally returned to the dirt. Even their memory would die; Uncle David mentioned papa David only once or twice, and grandpapa David never. Only God and the Heavens above could save a soul from utter annihilation, and that's why everyone loved Him so, and capitalized his name whenever they wrote it in manuscripts. It soothed Thomas to think of God.

A road made of two deep cartwheel ruts led to Taunton. Taunton was both the biggest and the smallest town Thomas had ever known, and he hated it. It was a place of wonderous things, and the terrible people that made them. Farmer boys were not allowed in Taunton, as a rule, for they had nothing to trade and no business besides the handling of cereal and livestock. Farmer boys with burnt faces and mismatched eyes were even less welcome.

He left the north country behind him, and at last the ground started to roll, downward, and trees appeared. The grass in this gentle valley leading to Taunton was long and wild, and the trees sparse and well behaved. Birds hovered around a pond. Thomas was now afraid of the pond, since it was here that his cousin Jim sustained the cut that took his foot. They were walking on warm summer rocks, and Jim fell sharply forward onto the sole of his right foot. They had washed the cut in pond water, but it did no good, and within a day it was purple and swollen. The cut opened wider with the passage of time, like a portal into the bones of his feet. The rot ate voraciously, like a starved man at a feast, and no amount of burning could stop it from getting into his ankle. Thomas hoped the purple demon had gotten its fill.

He took the long way around Taunton, following the treeline, and stayed completely out of sight from the massed collection of homes and workshops. Not one roof or board glimpsed, nor one cap or bonnet of a villager. Part of him was curious about the progress of the church construction, but he decided it didn't matter whether he got a peak at it now, or when he came back later. At night.

I have never written fiction before, but after reading BotNS and lurking /lit/ I was inspired to try my hand at it, so I started to write a short story. I'm a STEM major and I haven't taken an English class since high school, so I have no idea if this is good or bad or somewhere in between, and in fact I haven't actually tried to write anything non-scientific for two years or so.

Please do not be gentle. I am very interested in improving!

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10369745/sotry.txt

>>5151529
well... looks like writing while being high isn't your thing.

first off, the awkward wording, the clauses, the this >>5151463 (and more, although the 'brown faecal matter' isn't necessarily a bad redundancy)and repeating constructs like 'laugh it off' do not help the flow of your writing.

also, you called it paranoia. you started off by saying you remembered a time when you were paranoid. the ending is kind of.. anti-climactic, considering you've indirectly informed us from the start that you didn't actually shit your pants. so your writing should be about inducing the state more than describing events. also, as far as weed-induced paranoia goes, the actual form of this one was pretty... trivial, event-wise. even more reason to accentuate the feeling rather than the event. the event-feeling discrepancy could be exploited with humour, absurdity, anger, frustration even sadness....

keep writing doe. that's how you get better at it.

>>5151593

>I have remained here, reclined against the damp, mossy, but comfortable trunk of some ancient tree, with my pen poised in one hand and journal in the other, for the better part of an hour. For this entire hour,

Superfluous info.

>I have found myself at a loss for words.

Start here.

>It is always like this for me, in writing and in other endeavors as well; the most difficult part is putting pen to paper, dreading that I cannot complete the work which I have set out for myself, fearing that I begin some ill-fated journey from which I shall not return. Yet, always, when I calm my hesitant hand and the first drop of ink meets paper, the cacophony of thoughts within me coalesce into coherence, and in time I bring completion to all that I begin.

Never mind, this is all boring. How many hundred words for your narrator to tell us he's suffering from his own unique brand of writer's block? I understand if you're trying to imbue your narrator with a kind of neurotic quality, but you need to do that in a more entertaining way than this.

>In my haste to leave,

It's okay to drop little hooks like these. "Why was he in a haste to leave?", the reader asks. But you never answer why in the same paragraph, and it's just a cock tease. People don't remember tiny hooks like these than longer for a few sentences, if even two.

>>5151572
It's a clunky start. You tell us far too many things in the opening sentence. We don't immediately need to know their relation to one another, nor do we immediately need to know the foot was rotten. Simply "Thomas reached for a foot and found only a bloodied stump" or something along those lines would run slightly better, but it's up to you. The immediate backstory prematurely relieves the tension you established in your opening line (why is his foot missing?), and you could probably let us squirm for a while and make it more of an interesting read. Erase the "he felt nothing": you elaborate on it later on, and it's generally superfluous. "His heart sunk" is a cliche, and is in desperate need of a rewrite. I would reverse the syntax of your second paragraph i.e. "They sat perpendicular to one another on the floor. The dirt was caked in their hair and festered in Jim's stump and Thomas watched his face in profile as he breathed." or something like that. You suffer from a lot of telling rather than showing.

The dialogue is really very good. You could always just say shin rather than "tibia", which seems almost deliberately obfuscatory, but other than that you're just fine afterward. A little clean up early on, but you'll do just fine.

>>5151627
ok i just removed the entire first paragraph. it is better now, i think, for having done so. i think i mostly wrote it just because i was feeling precisely what it described

>>5151639
...Did you actually shit your pants in front of your friends while high?

>>5151630

Thanks for the critique.

>>5151593

>it was only last night, though, that Father asked why it was that he had not seen me writing as I usually do, and, consequently (and very much against my will), demanded paper and ink from some member of the expedition.

Your narrator's father encourages his writing. Find a briefer way to get this across.

>Ferdinand, I believe his name was—I must remember to thank him later.

This is not the right way to introduce a character. Only if you're going to be talking about him throughout. Otherwise it's another cock tease. "Who the fuck is Ferdinand? Oh well, on with the story."

> I am not as entirely unaware of my circumstances and of myself as most of my family would think, and I cannot imagine that he was at all reluctant to surrender his possessions once he learned of their destination, but I think that my very acknowledgement of that fact would render the stain upon my conscience even blacker were I to forego an apology to him for the inconvenience.

I honestly don't even know what the fuck you're trying to get across here.

>>5151721
>This is not the right way to introduce a character. Only if you're going to be talking about him throughout. Otherwise it's another cock tease. "Who the fuck is Ferdinand? Oh well, on with the story."
I think he will play a greater role later on, yes.

>I honestly don't even know what the fuck you're trying to get across here.
The narrator is supposed to be a young girl, the beautiful daughter of a high-ranking officer/aristocrat, which is why Ferdinand would be very eager to gain her favor.

just reminiscing upon my high school years

Easter(n) steak and socialism

'What a crowd-pleasing faggot,' Tom thought to himself while cutting away the fatty parts of his steak with surgical precision. He was watching his cousin Matt, who was stuffing his pimple-ridden face with rubbery bits of pork. 'He's clearly eating this cartilaginous filth just to suck up to my dad'.

Tom's father, Marcus, wasn't an exceptional cook, but his chaotic, yet successful handling of spices made for a more-than-edible Easter lunch. Marcus had a low tolerance for people who fucked around with their food. In his house, meat was to be respected, not defiled by the whims of self-indulgent adolescence. Tom's pedantic taste buds attracted disapproving looks from the table, but this only fuelled the surgical handling of his food. He dissected and detached those slimy fragments of dead pig like they were cancer - as if they were the rules and doctrines of a social class that was trying to control him. His pride conflated his posture into a Guevaraesque figure. He was a brave man, a true fucking iconoclast, and he knew it.

Matt noticed that Tom was bubbling up like a faggot and smirked with superiority at his juvenile behaviour. He was above this. His smirk didn't last for long though, as the fatty bit of pork that he had just ingested transfigured his grin into a grimace of vomit inducing nausea which made him feel like a hypocrite. The two cousins' glances met with wrath. Their thinking was similar in many ways and this built an unspoken code in which even the most trivial shit could gain comedic qualities. Their competing looks then gently discharged into chuckles, as they became aware of the giant faggots these power-plays made them.

Their little non-verbal inside-jokes seemed to be the only things that punctuated the echoless silence that sat upon these faggots during Easter lunch. Sound only came from the continuous channel zapping that Marcus was controlling with the remote in search for something worthy of his aristocratic TV tastes. But this had been going on for so long that it became white noise for everyone. Their suburban trance was abruptly interrupted by sheepy 'baaaah's' and 'boooo's' coming from a crowd of Occupy Wall Street protesters. This exacerbated Matt's nauseous state. 'Fucking hipsters,' he thought. 'It's all fashion statements'. Matt's fork was shaking angrily against the porcelain plate. A Guardian reporter was commenting on the protests and blowing smoke up the ass of what he believed to be the enlightened energy of youths.

>>5151807 contd.

'Communists!' Marcus exclaimed with ignorant authority.

'B-b-but they're not necessarily communists,' Matt replied.

Matt's mother and Marcus's girlfriend frowned at what they thought to be childish gullibility. After all, they've had their firsthand experience with communism so they must know its gimmicks better than this pubescent dabbler.

'Hah! What are they then?' asked Marcus.

'W-w-well, I'm not sure. But there seems to be a confusion with what Eastern Europeans think of communism. Y-you see, during the Cold War, both the Soviets and the West found it advantageous to equate Stalinism with socialism and Marxism. America was...'

'That Guardian reporter is clearly a communist though...'

The conversation was brought to a halt by a violent clash between protesters and the police. This angered Matt, as he was ready to make an inspiring case for anarcho-syndicalism by iterating his freshly read Wikipedia summaries on Foucault's and Chomsky's analyses of power relations within capitalism. Tom felt where this was going and was right behind him, ready to gang up on Marcus.

The dialogue was never going to happen. The spectacle of violence provided better entertainment and the conversation was replaced by affected ohhhs and awwws coming from the female side of the table. The onomatopoeic sighs called for a change of scenery and Marcus flicked the remote upon a tennis match, the perfect background noise. Steaks were gulped and Easter eggshells were snapped, as is customary to Eastern European traditions.

'Christ has resurrected!'

'Indeed he has resurrected!'

>>5151151
My only recommendation is to keep things simple. Here is something I just threw together.

The Dorky Kid in Austin
The heat of the sun is pounding down on his forehead as he walks down the city street in Austin, Texas. His slightly overgrown hair bounces ever so gracefully and falls slightly to one side and then the other with each step. When you see him, you think nothing of it. Mostly because he is nobody special, just some other college aged kid who is wearing a sweatshirt even though it is eighty degrees outside. What you do not realize about this kid that just walked by you is that on a different realm he is a god. A simple two block walk to an Internet café and you could experience the true potential and creation of that same kid whom you didn’t think a thing of when he walked by you in the street. The same kid continues to walk about a quarter of a mile farther down the same road until he reaches a small burger joint at the corner of Lake and State- you know the place. Now this burger joint like the kid isn’t all that important, just some shabby worn down old diner that opened its’ doors for the first time in the year 1953. But yet like the kid there is a secret about this place, and that secret is that for a mere two dollars of legal United States tender it will take your taste buds on a journey that would give The Beatles’ LSD trips a run for their money. You have to always be aware of the fact things are never as they appear. A run down diner can be the restaurant to present you with the best cuisine you have ever had, and some dorky looking college kid could have a cult following on some Japanese image board. If it is all the same in your eyes, be sure to pay more attention to the world around you.
-Linguinni

has there been anything more from the guy who wrote this? I saved it and I'm still really impressed with it:
Phuc Stevenson was a postman in Mansfield, a suburb of Dallas. Understand now that postman is a joke, a play on "post-man," implying either that Phuc somehow transcends humanity or that he's the quintessence of postmodernity. Whatever it means, he definitely has nothing to do with the mail [commentary on privatization of postal service in America and neoconservatism because such commentaries are too unabashedly earnest for someone too young to remember 9/11 to make] or stamps or Thomas Pynchon. Phuc decided last month while snapchatting underage girls dick pics under the alias Dylan (he thought to use Phil because of his name or Fred because of phonetics but those are some pedo as fuck names (I guess 16 isn't even pedo it's more ephebo and half of Europe is cool with it (not that non-Euro countries can't be good examples of reasonable sex policies, not being ethnocentric (no fuck that Thailand has no business being like that (reverse privilege Phuc is Asian (no shit, his name is Phuc) so I can say that (though I myself (the defictionalized author) am only half so I/he can write/think that))))) that the whole affectation/sincerity thing dominating the arts is stupid since the opposite of affectation would more accurately be isolation, as affectation is inherent to socialization, or perhaps even suicide, as it's sort of inherent to existence (unless you're retarded or senile or David Foster Wallace (scratch that last one he killed himself (as you know :^) hehelololkekekeakguaholmjrgimt); I think I'm/he's on to something)). As problematic (this is only half-ironic because on the one hand fuck university liberals (university being a modifier (the non-tenured variety are fine (privilege check: of course I think that I am one))) but foregoing fitting diction to avoid tumblr liberal (there are so many varieties) connotations is insincere as hell (irony of using affected po-mo down-to-earth colloquialisms ("...as hell") when chastising insincerity noted)) as affectation as a concept is, sincerity is even more so, as Phuc realized fourteen pages into his Sonic the Hedgehog fanfic he jokingly wrote, because with intention (fuck you determinists I'm not going eight parentheticals deep to temper that term) comes an inherent sincerity.

I forgot to save that dope poem he wrote though

I wrote this a while ago as a pastiche of The Instructions


DOORWAY DOORWAY
WALL WALL WALL WALL WALLW
A DESKS DESKS DESKS DESKS DESKS DESKS DESKS DA
L CENTER EL
L DESK A S L
W KW
A SA
L D CENTER DL
L E DESK B E L
WS SW
A K KA
L SDESKS DESKS DESKS DESKS DESKS DESKS DESKS DESKS DESKS DESKS L
LWALL WALL WALL WALL WALL WALL L
The writing lab was a room with walls made of white faux-bricks and white and green floor tiles. There were thirty computers lining the walls of the room, each bearing a number written on a yellow post-it note. Each computer had an ostensibly partnered chair bearing the same yellow number, but in practice they rarely lined up; the computer labeled “15” was paired with the chair numbered “6,” and so on. The chairs were what seemed to be deliberately uncomfortable metal-and-ceramic monstrosities. When scooted across the floor, they would usually make a dull scrape that sounded like “shgrrkrkrkrkgk.” The computers rested on cheap wood desks topped with a plastic white-and-grey fake marble pattern. I was sitting at my assigned computer, number 17, which, scholars will note, ran Windows Vista despite the fact that it was 2014.
“Hey, Leemkuil, there’s an ambiguous sentence in your paper here,” said Mr. Zilding, the creative writing teacher, from the front of the writing lab.
I responded by saying “Tch,” = “I don’t write ambiguous sentences.”
He looked down and shrugged = “There is an ambiguous sentence in this paper” = “You write ambiguous sentences and are a liar.”
I do not take kindly to being called a liar, scholars, however implicitly it may be, so I scooted my chair backwards with a “shgrrkrkrkrkgk” and headed to the front of the lab to investigate my allegedly ambiguous sentence. Mr. Zilding proffered the paper to me without looking up, and said “Hnh,” = “I am right about this.” I took the paper and looked at the underlined segment. The segment read: “The lady hit the man with an umbrella.” The note spiralling off of it read: SENTENCE AMBIGUOUS

This bothered me, scholars. I had written an ambiguous sentence. If I was the sort of person who wrote ambiguous sentences, how could I be an effective writer of scripture? Worse, I was now a liar, and Mr. Zilding had proven it to himself. If he knew that I was a liar, which I never intended to be, how was he supposed to take anything I had written seriously? How, to him, would it not appear to be the possibly deranged ramblings of a simple liar? Scholars, I was trapped. Irrevocably trapped. How does a liar prove his sincerity? Hashem himself decreed that we shall not bear false witness, and yet I had done so.

Quinn-Skillings sat on the bench, balancing his luggage uncomfortably on his lap. The train station was full of people, but nobody noticed him, their gazes sliding from one end of the bench to the other without ever landing upon the man in the middle. For him, there was nothing unusual about this; in fact, it was the status quo. Quinn-Skillings was, to all appearances, a timid man not worthy of any attention; he wore threadbare suits as his only attire and an expression of perpetual bemusement on his pallid, almost transparent face. He gave the impression of hardly being there at all.
It would be quite a surprise to most people, considering this, to discover that Quinn-Skillings was a fervent revolutionary anarchist.
Yes, Quinn-Skillings thrilled at the writings of Kropotkin, burst into tears over Emma Goldman’s Anarchism and Other Essays, fell in love with Bakunin through his Selected Writings. He was among the most devoted in the world to any political philosophy. In fact, Quinn-Skillings was a key member of a large group of anarcho-syndicalists who were resolved to overthrow the government. His unobtrusive and almost invisible air ironically made him perfect for his job: espionage. At this very moment, Quinn-Skillings was poised to make a clean getaway from the largest theft of classified documents in the history of the United States, elaborately concealed inside his disproportionately large steamer trunk. But Quinn-Skillings did not mind the danger. Under his mild exterior beat the heart of a true revolutionary, ready to overthrow anyone and everyone who was a force of oppression.
Quinn-Skillings smiled before boarding the train.

>>5151807

>'What a crowd-pleasing faggot,' Tom thought to himself while cutting away the fatty parts of his steak with surgical precision. He was watching his cousin Matt, who was stuffing his pimple-ridden face with rubbery bits of pork. 'He's clearly eating this cartilaginous filth just to suck up to my dad'.

But his dad doesn't count as a crowd...

>Tom's pedantic taste buds attracted disapproving looks from the table,

How the hell can a taste bud be pedantic?

Also, fwiw, I'm a little bored by the end of this paragraph. We're going through so much multi-syllbic words for a story about a kid with a shitty dad eating a pork chop. I don't think it's a situation rich enough to support this kind of writing.

>as they became aware of the giant faggots these power-plays made them.

I don't know if I buy this. They seem a little too intelligent and sensitive to care what adults think of them. Isn't it the nature of youth to rebel against parents, instead of suck up? It could work, but you have to explain it to us a little better. As it is, it seems a little phony.

I'm getting the feeling this is a short story so I'm gonna stop. Maybe short stories aren't supposed to be fleshed out at all, I don't know, I don't fucking read them, lol. Nobody does.

Is being obfuscatory the only thing that causes /lit/ to enjoy something?

>write dumb shit in stupid structure
>use thesaurus to use words that kind of don't fit but are more obscure
>/lit/ fuckin eats it up

>>5151886

Nobody's eating anything up...

>>5151340
>GRRM/10

>>5151854

I saw all that shit at the start and didn't read it.

Leyland Kirby, types Max Pythagoras, A.K.A. the Caretaker, A.K.A. the Stranger, A.K.A V/Vm, is arguably the most respected experimental musician in the game right now. Some people will say “Oneohtrix Point Never”, some people will say “Four Tet”, some people will even argue that it’s only a matter of time until “Aphex Twin” releases another album, but nobody can really seriously argue with you if you contend Leyland Kirby’s superiority as the most important currently operative experimental musician. Furthermore, continues Max, pushing the wire-framed glasses up the bridge of his nose, Kirby, without a doubt, outstrips all of the competition in terms of range -- his stuff can be ghostly jazz music; emotional ambient music; pulsing, post-apocalyptic industrial music; appropriated pop music. Max pauses and considers. Although it’s unlikely Kirby will ever attain a wider audience, it would definitely be for the best if he did. Max briefly reads through his essay, exhales in
satisfaction, and clicks “publish.”
______________________________________________________________________________
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.”

>>5151895
He's a better stylist than Gurm.

>>5151905
it's supposed to be a text diagram like this but I forgot about 4chan and formatting

>>5151907
Later at work, Max is eating lunch with his coworker Brian, who has terrible taste in music. Typically Max overlooks this because Brian is an alright guy. Today, Brian is going on and on about some album, not unlike he does every few weeks.
“...and it’s really really long and alienating. I like it a lot - it’s probably the best thing I’ve heard since The Blueprint 3 by Jay-Z.”
Long and alienating catches Max’s attention.
“What’s this album called?” asks Max.
“Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia, by this dude called Leyland Kirby.”
Max stops. Leyland Kirby again. And this time it’s Brian who’s talking about him, Brian who only listens to terrible rap albums and cheesy 80s rock. Where would Brian hear about Leyland Kirby?
“Where’d you hear about him?”
Brian shakes his head. “Don’t remember, I think somebody was talking about him or something so I looked him up.”
When Max gets home, he checks his blog hits: 59. Nobody’s been reading it. Is it just some incredibly strange coincidence that he happens to have written about Leyland Kirby the day before Leyland Kirby becomes the least accessible pop star of all time? Max decides to begin an experiment. He sits down and begins typing.


the only problem is I can't figure out where to go from here

>>5151879
the crowd gets bigger and taste buds can be pedantic (fussy) in the eyes of people who eat the shit that the kid throws out. the other points are well taken. it's not a short story, I wouldn't waste time on this. just something I wrote for this thread. thought building on a childhood snippet would be good practise.

thanks for the crit

My brother is seven years older than me. For the majority of my childhood he was seven years larger and smarter than me as well. As you can imagine, this meant that he won almost every conflict between us when we were kids, usually through Machiavellian manipulation, brute force, or both; a common relationship between brothers. One particular example sticks out in my mind: the apple tree.
In the front of my house, there is an apple tree. Every year, in the late summer and through autumn, the tree drops what seem to be billions of rotting or insect-infested apples across the front lawn. My parents would send my brother out to pick up these apples and put them in the compost heap. On this particular occasion, my brother offered me five dollars to pick up the apples in his place. I was six at the time; he was thirteen. I accepted his offer and dutifully toiled in the hot late-summer sun picking up apples. After I had finished, I returned to the house and asked for my five dollars.
“No,” said my brother. Being much younger and weaker than him, I had no power in this situation; I was forced to accept that he wouldn’t pay me. At least, that’s what I thought until he asked me to pick up the apples on another day.
“This time I’ll pay you ten dollars,” he said. Of course, I didn’t trust him at all, but I did see an opportunity to get even. I concealed the tape recorder I owned behind my back and pressed record before walking back into the room.
“You promise you’ll give me ten dollars if I pick up the apples?”
“I promise,” he responded without looking up. I left the room.
I then removed the cassette, put it in my pocket, put the tape recorder back, and continued with my task of picking up the apples with the fire of justice flowing through my veins. After finishing my task, I returned to the house and asked my brother to pay me.
“No,” said my brother without looking up. Elated, I handed him the tape, telling him that this was hard evidence that he owed me five dollars, and that there was nothing he could do about it. I left the room triumphantly.
About five minutes later, my brother appeared in my room and handed me the tape.
“Play it,” he said with a malicious smile.
I put the tape in the recorder, rewound, and pressed play, expecting to hear damning evidence.
“Michael sucks Michael sucks Michael sucks Michael sucks Michael sucks,” taunted my brother’s voice from the tape. He had recorded over my evidence. I felt like Steve McQueen at the end of The Great Escape, leaping my motorcycle over one barbed wire fence and tangling myself in another. It was completely unfair; I had been on the cusp of my first victory over my brother ever, and it was snatched away from me.
However, I still resolved to tell my parents, despite being completely confident that without evidence my case was useless.

>>5151937
Much to my surprise, however, they found my allegations extremely easy to believe and compelled my brother to give me ten dollars. Victory never tasted quite as sweet as it did when I wrested it away from my brother for the first time in my life.

>>5151937

>a common relationship between brothers

Not really. Not in my experience, or for a lot of the people who are gonna read this.

> the tree drops what seem to be billions of rotting or insect-infested apples across the front lawn.

Tree fruit doesn't work this way. They're designed to drop fresh, and to keep insects out. Just have the brother pick fresh fruit.

>“No,” said my brother.

That's it? No laughter? No signs of guilt? Ok, maybe his brother is a total sociopath, but whatever the hell made him that way should be part of the story before, rather than after this part.

>Elated, I handed him the tape, telling him that this was hard evidence that he owed me five dollars, and that there was nothing he could do about it. I left the room triumphantly.

Woah, wait, what? If you say the kid is dumb enough to do this, then is he really smart enough to even spring the trap at all? It seems really implausible unless you change it or explain it way better.

>Much to my surprise, however, they found my allegations extremely easy to believe and compelled my brother to give me ten dollars. Victory never tasted quite as sweet as it did when I wrested it away from my brother for the first time in my life.

zzzz

You didn't make me care about either character, so this isn't much of a payoff.

>>5151911
so like "love that dog"?

>>5151969
I think this is a good, comprehensive criticism

>>5151972
it's a pastiche of the book "the instructions" I wrote for a creative writing class, the book has diagrams like this in it

>>5151978

I've been handing out almost all the critiques in this thread and only one person critiqued mine :(

>>5151969
thanks for the criticism, I think you're pretty much dead on with most of it
was the prose any good

>>5152003
Which one's yours?

>>5152003
so bamp it then?

>>5152003
Which one is yours, man? I'll critique your work if you'll critique mine.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9twL3wOrJkodlcxaVJWNUZHQVE/edit?usp=sharing
do yer wurst

>>5152011
>>5152018
>>5152016

This one: >>5151572
and
>>5151586

>>5152003
Critiqued your criticism or your story?

SENTENCE AMBIGUOUS

This bothered me, fellow posters. I had approved a criticism by a man who wrote an ambiguous sentence. If I was the sort of person who approved criticisms by an ambiguous writer, how could I be an effective gatekeeper of criticisms?

>>5151586
overall very good, some specific stuff below
>Thomas was now afraid of the pond, since it was here that his cousin Jim sustained the cut that took his foot. They were walking on warm summer rocks, and Jim fell sharply forward onto the sole of his right foot. They had washed the cut in pond water, but it did no good, and within a day it was purple and swollen.
First, it's really confusing if you're writing in the past tense and you use the same tense to describe a past event in the story - try "They had been walking on warm summer rocks, and Jim fell sharply onto the sole of his right foot." Rewrite the sentence following that to make it less repetitive.
>Thomas passed his hand through the space where his cousin Jim's badly rotten right foot once was
too confusing - it's more information than we need, and it's kind of difficult to follow (same problem as above, partially - "once had been" would be a better end). The best way to fix this is to break the sentence apart - start with "Thomas passed his hand through the air." or something like that, and establish information in a different sentence.
Sorry if this is too specific.

>>5152008

I thought the prose was good, but different readers expect different things from prose. All I ask is that I can get through 400 pages of it, with maybe the rare oasis of big, pretty words to treat me in between all the plot and dialogue and character work. It won't get you a pulitzer, but who the fuck cares about that?

Prose is at its best when it captures emotion. Maybe try and capture the emotion of being betrayed by family?

>>5151572
>>5151586
You asked about your prose, so I'll start with that, and say that I like it. It reminds me most pointedly of John Steinbeck's writing, though that may in no small part be due to the subject matter you've chosen. Still, the hyperfocus on 'earthy' qualities- the feel of bone, the roll of land, the unceasing grind of time- reminds me very much of "The Grapes of Wrath," and in this respect, I think it is good.

I do echo some of >>5151630 's critiques in that you tell, rather than show, but on the other hand I'm not sure that's avoidable, given the way you describe an event that's happened in the past. Still, you could lean more heavily on the dialogue between the brothers to reveal the taking of Jim's foot in greater detail. Even so, "show, don't tell" is fairly amateurish advice. It's fine to tell, just don't make a list.

As an additional detail, I enjoy the measurements you've invented. They play upon our expectations, and reveal the faint otherness that suffuses your world.

Okay, that's my critique. Mine is here: >>5151340

here's a mediocre poem I wrote in like 2 minutes

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.

>>5152090

Ok, I like your stuff too, and agree with other critiques :>

>>5152094
>here's a mediocre poem I wrote in like 2 minutes

It's a mediocre poem that reads like it was wrote in two minutes.

>>5151969
I wish my creative writing teacher had given me criticism like this instead of shit like "make the apple tree more gross" and trying to get me to do my comma placement wrong
I feel like I'd be a better writer

A romantic short story about /lit/'s queen.

http://pastebin.com/vbGNWRdg

I waited in my solitude for the happiness, the beautiful one that I sped past in my charge to live. As an angel with wings it came in a luminous moment, but I did not have the soberness of soul to bow and receive it with grace. Drunk on its golden misty vapors, I expanded into giddy life. I gathered myself with a cheerful purpose, and made promises to my solitude.

So I went into one of our tall modern cities, for I would discover the saddest man. On his hopeless face I would breath my redemptive breath, for even the froth of that happiness was enough to revive the dead. Wisely I had foreseen that the city would have too great a busyness for this man, whose sadness was too deep to be converted into profit. As I walked beneath the baffling tallness I found many men and many women that were unremarkably sad, until I found the saddest man. When I saw him from far away I smiled for having found him, alone. But when I came close I was impressed by his deep sadness, and yes I paid my respect with tears. He acknowledged the service with an unbearable lifting of his head, his eyes never departed the abyss.

"If my sadness were a little less complete, the sight of your happiness would perhaps complete it". This is what he said, and he said: "but now my sadness is so great, that I can barely see happiness enough to envy it." And next, he spoke this: "And soon I will despair completely, then my mouth will be still as the grave." And, with a sigh that leveled the skyscrapers: "for I will see at last the absence of all hope, and in that moment I will have realized the uselessness of speech."

The last bubbles of my fluttering happiness, popped. I despaired. "At least now, you are not alone". I could speak, but he had realized the uselessness of speech. "At least if we suffer, we suffer together." My soul scoured the Universe for hope, any hope that could save it from suffocation. "If we suffer deeply, we may redeem ourselves if we love still more deeply."
-------------

I just wrote this and it's not finished but I'm very tired and I'm going to bed.

To discover the most beautiful side of the woman she requires that you fall in love with her.
And this is the sacredness of the woman's beauty, that it only reveals itself to those who go through the initiation.
The initiation of love.
The temple is closed off with a seal, and the key is love.
But she is not the goddess of this temple, she is the worshiping devout.
Taking your hand she leads you to the altar, and you kneel as she kneels.
She prays and so you pray, to the god of her and of your temple,
Love.

bump

>>5151151
I turned my keys in the ignition.
My house is a ten minute drive from the laboratory. The road is sprawled down the hillside like a discarded length of bootlace. The road stretches on for a few kilometers and opens onto the highway. Mona, as David, lives left. I live right.
It’s always a thrilling drive home for me - especially on a cloudless night. Best at dusk. The sun daintily retracts behind the horizon to unveil a resplendent cosmicscape of luminescent glitter. The stars roar out like black freckles on a pale face. Your other senses slowly ebb out as your pupils expand in amazement giving way to the heavy tide of visual input which subsequently flows with inexorable force into the nervous tissue of your brain. The sounds of the engine in front of you and the road beneath you fall away unnoticed. You tumble into a different mode of perception. Mesmerized - deeply mesmerized, you sit inside of your skull as you stare intently at the black line ahead. It slices through the sand dunes and cacti citadels, chasing an ever rendering horizon. The desert stretches wide around and the sky unfathomably deep above. At the right speed, and with the adequate level of endorphins trickling through your bloodstream you feel like you’re in a spaceship glissading down some strange face of the cosmos. It’s colossal number of eyes glare at you. You become overwhelmed with intimacy. You feel as if you’re standing at the composer’s podium as the very strings of life chime in gorgeous concerto all around. The still hum of silence gloats over the bass heavy beat of pulsating blood. Over the tidal flow of over breathing. Over the metallic tics of pistons. But you sail back into reality, having no alternative but the incomprehensible unreality, and pull off the accelerator as your turnoff waits up ahead.

Shitty shit I wrote fifteen minutes ago

We're all participating in one
Big giant chess game,
We the pawns
Revere the Knights
Who garrison our Rooks,
Hooray!
The Bishops from movies
Entertain we pawns all night and day,
So the Queen and King maintain our whims
To parlay with those pieces,
Same as we,
Just across the way

They've convinced us its not a game,
By giving their nonobjective of consumption a name,
They call it Freedom and
"They who Giveth,
Taketh away"

>>5152750
It reads like shit you just wrote.

>>5152754

It was shit I just wrote.

>>5152255
pls respond im noobe

>>5151151 This doesn't read like a short-story but rather just like a relatively lengthy internet-post on weed problems.

I actually had the very same stuff happening to me. We're even been playing hacky sack (I just realized it's not called happy sack). I know that feel - also got lower levels of that kinda feeling even when I'm not high at all.

Fellow worker -- why don't you starve no more?

I see you sitting there in your big house, with your nice clothes - and I see how well you're eating, and those two cars in your garage - two of 'em!

But you're still working eight hours a day, even with all these gadgets around -- and I see single mothers selling fast food on their weekends, double shifts!

You haven't done away with bosses, I see they're still around and bossing you same as ever. And I seen them kids get hosed off the streets by the cops - you still got plenty of cops around.

And I've seen your internet, and your nightclubs and your big old concerts, but I don't see people making any music in their leisure time, nobody having a singalong.

And you've got a degree, don't you, and both your kids are studying hard, but I didn't miss that debt letter in the mail eiter, or your big old mortgage weighing on your shoulders, and you're still paying for Granny's pills, and you're working overtime -- eight hours day, for WHO?

And you're not in the union, I see -- I guess everyone got over that when the Russian wall came down. Well, best of luck to you --

Fellow worker, I'd rather starve!

>>5153045
>Fellow child -- why don't you pine for candies no more?

>I see you're stuffing your mouth with candies, but I don't see very many chocolate candies

>I'd rather starve!

>>5152255
Objectively the worst story /lit/ has ever suffered and also a hate crime in multiple european nations.

>>5151151
OP here, re-edited my first draft
http://pastebin.com/uRvcLwzt

>>5153695
I like the voice, if that makes any sense. I know 'voice' is a bit of a buzzword in the literary world, but this has a good one- it reminds me very much of what it was like to be an overly self-conscious teenager. The rising sense of paranoia is palpable.

That said, you need an editor. There are some random tense changes, and generally it feels unpolished. The emotions expressed aren't bad, but I think they need to be stronger.

A story called Zenith that I wrote, too short to do anything with, might just submit it to my college literary magazine.

http://pastebin.com/frSzpfNE

>>5151572
You're using the past progressive tense too much (was -ing) when you should be sticking with simple past (-ed). It improves readability substantially.

There's too much passive voice. (OVS)
You don't need to tag dialogue if it's clear who's speaking.
Sequences you use to describe things makes visualization difficult.
Too many extraneous and redundant details. You're using too many words in proportion to what you're trying to convey.

>>5153695
1/2

> I remember, this one time, when my mind raced as fast as a comet
going through space.
I'm skeptical of opening with a simile, especially when it seems the writer is clutching at straws (i.e. "What goes really really fast?"). That being said, it's not too bad, although cut out "going through space". A comet, by definition, is a meteor falling through the atmosphere; we know it's going/ gone through space.
> It was an uncontrollable feeling. To say the most,
it was an uncomfortable feeling.
Telling isn't bad, as someone said a while back, but I feel it should always come after the showing. One of these statements is superfluous.
> One day, me and my friends were out playing a nice game of hacky sack.
You don't need "nice" - I always see it as a puff word. And, though I'm sure you know, it should be "My friends and I", but I'm fairly certain you intended to take the more casual approach.

>The game consists of hitting the ball with your feet and passing it to whoever is in the circle of the game.
You open and close this sentence with "the game"; remove it from the end.

>It is a rather simple game to play.
You repeat "the game" and it begins to get tedious. Remove this sentence completely, seeing as you've already laid out the rules, and we've already deduced that the game is indeed simple.

>However, it isn't the fact that we played hacky that got my mind into a horrific state, it was what I thought while playing.
I don't feel like this is needed, either. It suggests the last few sentences were a digression when they weren't. Also, there's probably a better word than "horrific".

>After giving a few kicks on the little hacky-sack, I started to feel a certain warm temperature descending the back of my leg all the way down to the openings of my jeans.
This sounds far too formal. "Warm temperature" I would call tautology: warmth is a temperature, so remove it from the sentence. Try something that flows a little better, along the lines of "A warmth pervaded down the back of my leg and down to the hem of my jeans."

>I wondered what it was. I remembered, when I was younger, I once couldn't hold my crap and shat in my pants.
It's a little redundant to say "I wonder what it is" and then find a solution in the following sentence. The narrator must have had some inclination if that were the first memory that came to mind, so cut it out.

>I also remember the shit coming down of my jeans and falling from the openings of them. It was one of my most horrible experiences ever.
This is outright telling again. None of us like to shit ourselves. We know it's horrible. Also, the opening is called the "hem".

>This thought started overflowing my mind and soon before I knew it, I was in this extremely paranoid state.
No. "Overflowing" is fine, I suppose, but "Before I knew it" is a cliche, on the same level as "suddenly". You end the sentence by directly telling us again. Practice some subtlety.

>>5153789
>>5153695

2/2
> I wondered if I had truly shat myself or if it was just in my imagination. I told myself that I should probably just play it off and tell my friends about it, and eventually, try to laugh it off.
Rephrase your first sentence here as a question and it'll be much more interesting. Also, don't tell us what the narrator was thinking. Actually show us, through dialogue, his chosen course of action to deal with this situation.

Sorry, I've not really got the time to go through the rest of it, but you get the general idea. As it stands, it's quite poor. I'd like to say the subject matter is interesting, and perhaps with the right phrasing it could be, but I'm just not feeling it. SHOWING should always be paramount to telling. Let us work things out for ourselves. An interior monologue is great, but there comes a point where it becomes tedious, and you've crossed well into that territory. Is English your first language? In any case, I'd certainly recommend you develop your writing skill further, and maybe extend your vocabulary if only to become slightly more succinct.

I usually try to type up something that has happen to me throughout the week as a warm up, so here is today's.

http://pastebin.com/x3fLGY9p

SO WHAT DOES /LIT/ THINK OF MY PROSE
>>5152378

BUMP

http://pastebin.com/9ePGk9XA

I haven't tried to do much more than just detailed character descriptions. It ends up working out when making backstories, but coming up with bigger pictures is hard. Thoughts?

>>5155035
>The old knight trudged forward, simultaneously inexorable and ready to crumple at an evil look.

Stopped reading. Quit trying so hard. Say what you mean, don't layer it with fancy garbage

>>5151529
> :D

Fucking stop this emotive shit ,also , your book is shit

>>5154770

It's a bit prosaic

>>5155035

It may be helpful for a beginning writer to have a story planned out from the beginning to end.

Write out a time-line and then refer to it as you write to keep your story straight.

My second draft.Currently 600 words, down from 1,000. Overall goal is to get to get as close as possible to 500 words.

I know a have a few grammatical mistakes but I'll looking for general structural and content-wise critique. Have at it c/lit/s and thank you for your (di)service ahead of time!

http://pastebin.com/4sk1EDC

P.S. I'm not religious

>>5157186
>P.S. I'm not religious
thats cool man

>>5157786

I'm referring to the relation to the story....if you bother read it

>>5157186
It says the paste has been removed, try again pls

>>5157186
>>5158165
try http://pastebin.com/t1deH4pJ

>>5158189
So cliche, and there's nothing interesting about the way it's written. I don't know what your goal in writing is, but you must have some unique voice and ideas that you are passionate about. Write about that instead of this hardly-fit-to-be-an-episode-of-Veggietales trite.

Also it's unfinished, were those 400 words you edited out the last 400 words, because as is, the story makes no sense.

http://pastebin.com/fe6ZUUkg

critique mine please, someone?

Dumping some poems I wrote a while back that I just found on my laptop:


BLAME THE EDITORS

Someone writes a poem
It sucks to a lot of people
Someone publishes the poem and a lot of other people
Like it

Someone says that the 'state of poetry' is bad
Someone blames someone else for writing bad poetry
And uses their poetry as an example of bad poetry

Other people write similar poems
Other people publish those poems
Other people say these poems suck

Some money is made
And a guy who's researched Virgil for a century feels like killing everyone he knows
But mostly things just carry on

1/?

YOU'RE UNFULFILLED, WHICH IS NOT THE SAME AS UNHAPPY

You're reading this and you're already
bored

You want to get this stupid poem over with
already and feel 'better' than before

You're life feels as though someone's pressed SHUT DOWN
But the computer is slow
So you load a bunch of whatever into your brain in
the meantime
Loading
Loading
Loading
What now?

Your computer is a much faster learner than you are
You're loading this poem but you're computer has already loaded it

Real life is an outdated version of the internet
Most people who go outside a lot are using outdated technology

They should be indoors like you,
feeling unfulfilled.


2/?

I WANT TO KILL MYSELF FOR ATTENTION

I like walking alone sometimes
But when I try and walk alone with the intention of liking it
I just feel sad and angry

I doubt I'll ever feel valueable until a lot of people value me
I want to be an unhappy person that everyone likes
I want be young and not understand how young I am

Busses are always filled with unhappy people
People people are usually in it for the money
I don't understand

3/?

PUT ME IN A MOVIE

I want my life to be a succession of Hollywood cliches
I want to star in a coming-of-age movie
And then kill myself
But not really

I want video cameras to film me wherever I go
So you can all watch
And think I'm a good person
At least this way
I'll have purpose
And at least know, although subconciously
That I'm being observed

I just thought about looking at girls' feet
in flats on the tube
Is it relevant?
I don't know

Is anything relevant?
I'm the poet, right?
Fuck you.

UNTITLED

The poet wrote a rhyme or two
And made do with the third
Checked his writer’s almanac
To check it was real poetry
And not just the thoughts
On life, or love, or sex
Or any other subject
People feel they can inform others about

Rain was falling this evening and I decided-Hey you know what? I'm gonna get off my ass and write something for that /lit/ critique thread.
-:

There is a current downpour from zealous clouds, adorning the absence of the sun's dry nature.
Their brooding presence stretches across the vast land to the surrounding seas .The sun is being
blocked by the ever looming dark vapours, but they ensure the allowance of small passages for light emitting from
the middle-top section of the sun. This is not an act of mercy from the clouds for they are not kind hearted folk.
The purpose of the sun's retained light is so they can make their glorious reign a spectacle, a display.
An exiled emperor looks on as his once beautiful territory diminishes into a wasteland. Horrified observances, the
helpless sun sees his once gloriously warm and bright kingdom be reduced to watery blackness. A never ending
rain and tremendous flooding. A foreboding sun that is never coming.

>>5159819
>>5159826
>>5159834

These read like honest, caricatured parodies of the angst, irony, and cynicism common (internet) people feel today but are uncomfortable expressing. They're garish and obnoxious, but feel honest. I don't know if you were trying to be funny or were going for what I described, but I think you could make a book of these and be successful. Good job.

>>5161202
http://pastebin.com/fe6ZUUkg

Read mine, please.

>>5161202

I will also add that if you have anymore I'd like to read them. They remind me of Bukowski's poetry--not in style or substance but in manner. They're not reaching for anything elusive or grand, but are firmly on the ground, content to muck about in the dirty earth. I hope you've written more of these.

>>5161216

I've read this story. In the New Yorker. In a short story collection. Somewhere. I read this like a week ago.

Who is this?

>>5161231
This is me. Hand on the Bible. First piece of fiction I've ever written. Cranked it out yesterday after daydreaming it in the shower. In case you can't tell I'm a big Raymond Carver fan.

I guess I'll post one of my poems. I don't write them often because I don't know much about the form, but occasionally I feel the itch and give it a shot. Here's one. Any takers?

Elder Wood

O damaged woods left lone to weep
In wake of fiery storms
Scorched soil more than Man doth speak
Of pain through nature’s borne
Remnants here and thither afar
Feint traces under brush
Of death, decay, tempests despaired
Flesh burnt to stone, to dust
O beauty therein doth linger—too!
Thou wicked flame hath passed
In wake of whom springs life anew
O’er all the dead turned past

>>5161250

Have you posted it before? Am I a time traveler?

I read a lot. I mean a fucking LOT. I've read this opening segment and I know I was holding a magazine when I read it. Or I wasn't. Maybe I was. I don't know. I've lost control of my life.

It's good, whoever it is, you or someone else.

I guess I can ask it here. How do I write without feeling silly? I mean, every time I open my text editor and I write a sentence I delete it instantly and close the program ashamed. I'm scared of someone read what I write, even if I know I'm not using a shared computer or anything like that.

>>5161267
Thanks! that actually means alot to me. I posted it last night but the thread mostly fizzled. The only person who responded was some autist who said nothing except my pronouns were confusing in the first sentance. It really is 100% mine, ill give anyone $100 paypal if they can find it somewhere (I know you won't find it, but now I'm curious if there's something mindblowingly coincidentally similar to it). Thanks though, like I said, first fiction I've ever written. I came here a few months ago for book recs and have been hanging out and I guess finally got the balls to try something.

>>5161256

Here's one more, then I'll cut off. Any feedback's appreciated.

Storm's Approach


What can I tell you, that you have not heard all before?
I did not like the way he treated us, and she believed
He had not treated us poorly at all—but I sensed in his voice
A demeaning and unabashed mockery of our appearance and youth,
So closely mirrored to his, that hearing it
I said nothing, and did not know what to say or do…

I would have said nothing, would have paid my bill and left
Without further word or complaint
Had she not laughed and quoted a line she found pleasant,
And which angered me further, that I cast my judgment
Angering her against me, and I against her, while behind us
The closed doors laughed with happy couples…

We left without speaking and she trailed away from me, though
We walked toward the same home, while in the distance
The storms that our part of town would never meet
Raged severely, silently, within the clouds

I pressed through the trees to overtake her, and cutting ahead of her path
Evoked her rage, she yelling, I firm and viciously silent,
Until I lifted my hand to make a point, which she slapped away
Hissing into my ear, each of us at a precipice, lightened only by
Vodka—for her—and Whiskey—for me

We came home together, then left to separate doors
She took to the outside at back, and I
Suddenly hungry for vice, took to the front,
Where I lit my cigarette, and sat to watch the storms

To my left pulsed great rippling of light;
Explosions popped off one before the next;
To the east a yellow tempest raged
And I had to laugh: I was cornered on all sides

When I came inside she was at the futon, and I apologized
And she apologized, and I took to the seat beside her, where
Once the reasons were spoken, and the angers mended,
Her flesh fell gently into mine, and my hand carried soft across her scalp
Where both the wind of the open window and my hands carried through

The distant thunder roared and rumbled from across the concrete savannah
Then fell to silence, and returned to its shadowy pride, whose pack travels
Always across cloud-lit plains, stopping only as it desires to make known its strength
And to remind all who hear it the futilities of their own…

And like a storm that has passed—

And which leaves but rain and ruin behind it, we said no more of what had befallen us
Or the alien forces which had brought it about; and instead chose to remain still,
Tired and nourished from both the same source, of each other and of others else,
And fell asleep, eventually, while the last small rains carried off

>>5161292

Whoever critiqued it was intimidated and jealous. It's publishable, smooth to read, and well constructed. I'm jealous of it myself, if only because my own writing has become increasingly ambitious and, with that ambition, very obtuse. The story is agile while still having a thickness about it; that's hard to pull off, but you've done it. If it's your first piece of writing you're immensely gifted and should continue to write.

I still think you're duping me, but yes, I've read that somewhere before. Maybe it was last night. Like I've said, I'm totally lost--regardless, great job.

>>5161312
Thanks! Constructive feedback here is actually really encouraging.

>>5161286

You're bound to feel silly if you're putting some effort into it. Writing is a naked act; the voice, the construction, the prose, every small element will inevitably be drawn back to YOU, the writer; you're never as invisible as the artist behind his painting or the director behind his film. Every small triumph and failure is your personal one. It's enough to make you a depressed alcoholic.

Write until you're happy with what you've written. Set a standard for yourself.

>THIS is the kind of writing I'd like to see.

Then do your best to write it. There is always going to be the line here or plot element there that embarrasses you. Me? I write a lot. I like to write, and I like to bend the words, and I like to build up paragraphs like cathedrals from the ground up... but all the while I know it's silly and doesn't make for engaging writing. I love to create the mood and atmosphere and texture more often than I do the character. And I know that won't win me any accolades, so when I look over something I've written, even though I like it, I'm embarrassed by what it is--because it's obviously me. I'd be called pretentious for it, or an idiot, or what have you. Writing leaves you naked. It's scary.

Keep writing, keep enjoying yourself, and post some things in these kind of boards for feedback. It's anonymous, it can't be traced back to you.

>>5151456

I hope to god this is a thing.

>>5151874

Notes from underground mom's house. Sorry, it's okay, but I can't help but to think that this is a very indirectly accurate depiction of yourself.

>>5151907
>>5151914

I enjoyed it. It's funny and you write well.

>>5152456

This reads like it was written by someone who has never seen MTV.

>>5152710

There's no flow. You state things as if they were in bullet points. Try writing less like a saw wave and more like a sine wave.

>>5159819

This one's pretty great. Charming in an odd way.

>>5161154

Too much describing; too little happening.

>>5152456

Clear, breezy, enjoyable read. Well done.

Here's the beginning bit of something I'm working on. I'm not sure how it's going to turn out, but any feedback would be much appreciated:

1/2

Jerry said six but that effectively means seven, so I'll be there at eight. It's the third this month--some call it the cruelest month, full of showers, prefaced with a joke (a bit like most lives, but who am I to say), and whatnot. Good thing only the weather varies--and the one a Friday ago was a gas, full of gaseous, sudsy beers and cheers and billowing beats amidst a lovely, frequently fluctuating, crowd. Despite the abundant contact, I'd like to think it was a disease-free affair; sans assault too.
Mid soirée, while enjoying a chilled Manhattan in a styrofoam 'JJ' monogrammed cup, I shot the shit with Ricardo Nixon (my nick-name for his Mexican-Republican culo) about how the newest Star Wars trilogy will be the final installation in the trilogy of trilogies that will most accurately represent the last-leg of pre-harvest garden preparation. The first represented seeds; you want to believe they'll grow into something beautiful, fruitful, something you'd show-off to grandma. Yet, and you forget this, garden tending is a feral bitch that demands tedious attention, and so George Lucas became the pound that pays not to give her the deserved attention, which brings me to the second: manure. Sweet, tangy cow excrement. It looks full of nutrition that will garner beautiful stock, but eventually you notice that with such little watering all you seem to attract are filthy flies who believe they've hit the jackpot--we all witnessed the atrocity. And so soon you realize you (yes George Lucas, you) don't want heirloom tomatoes, beets, pineapples, cabbage, or even (to abandon the metaphor) a half decent feature; so now the manure is just shit, and now you want to sell the plot (of land). A new owner comes along and, under my suspicion, will do nothing but plant flowers made of tinsel and plasticine gleam. Yet people are still going to sit through another five-plus hours of smell-O-visionless shit. And, for the most part, they won't even register the whole fecal matter-less extravaganza because why would they in such a shit saturated world? Sure I could be a tad wrong. "Fuck right you're wrong," Ricardo couldn't help assuring me. But anything Disney peddles off is something peddled: a product, a drug, sugar at the movies. (And I don't even really like Star Wars).

My stomach grumbles at a stop light, a fart followed by a grin. A busted relic from the past butts its dilapidated head into my windshield from the block up left between North and Hargrove street: Blockbuster. Dung comes to mind again; Mayan ruins too. A second set of stars grabs my attention from atop: dusk, Alpha Centauri; I can see Mars through the smog. I wonder if Serena'll be there. The song transits to "How Long Baby" by Them and my fingers undulate to the sapphire tune like they're paid. Five more minutes across this newly paved pavement; the middle road lines swoop under my car fast and quick like Speedy Gonzalez, deceiving me of their length using foreshortening, a medieval technique.
TGIF.
My turn signal sets itself left, anticipating an approaching right. The streets are long and linear in Dallas (insert dick(joke)) like taut clotheslines strung up with undergarments from the 50's. The turn of the century: all is right angles, even this one to the left. Hanover street: bingo. 1134, there she blows. A panoply of cars sits astride the right curb and people parking, opening, walking, all exude perfume or cologne. I can't smell them, but I can see them.
The front door swallows me, gluttonous, revealing gurgling innards that course with flashes of left-handed drinks and chattering vocal chords. The hardly austere decor complements the mosaic of generally attractive faces that remain cloaked by anonymity; namelessness rings it's name out like a wet towel in a silent movie. Shapely tits and a surplus of lascivious lips; lucky lawyer bastard's house could not be better stocked, boozy and floozy wise. I slice through the simmering crowd at a slight slant to the left towards the kitchen so to help myself to a little beer, hopefully Shiner. About a dozen babes, banging broads, salacious Cinderellas, or (if you'd like to satiate hunger of respect) lovely ladies stand in my purview, which is happily limited to the lively and open living room lightly pulsating to the rhythm of a suspected seventies soul song whose name I can't recall, if I've known it at all. I offer a few "excuse me's." Cool, Jerry does have Shiner--buck goes the bock on a rock--fuck, I can't find the bottle opener. I see an evidently Hispanic guy sporting a Parliament between his shaved head and left ear gesticulating at a tight, inviting redhead with a cartilage piercing and the air of expensive sour candy around her; I ask him for a lighter.
"Yeah I got one," as he reaches into his left pocket with his beer-less right hand and looks at met with a "there you go."
"Thanks buddy," as I nod and promptly wedge the plastic white lighter between my finger fulcrum and the aluminum cap, pushing down on my finger as I yank away at the relatively malleable, yet unforgiving barrier to my brown beer. I greet bubbles with satisfaction and a bulbed memory of MacGyver jokes from the Simpsons.

>>5161449
1.5/2 >>5161453

2/2

"I've never seen that before," comes out of the interested redhead's lipstick-less mouth, causing my right eyebrow to microscopically and momentarily lift.
"Really?"
"Yeah I mean I've seen people pop tops off on tables and other things, but I've never anyone do it with a lighter." A lit smile pleasantly combusts upon her pale face. "Oh and I've also seen some idiot chip a tooth trying to open a beer with his teeth. That was funny." Her unexpectedly casual demeanor struck me like a subtle summer breeze; now as I look at her in this snug, little window of time I can't help but to fantasize fucking her and lapping her wet cunt with my eager tongue to see what it tastes like and how she reacts. She carries herself like a expensive hand-me-down purse.

>>5161449

I'm not sure I'd read a whole book of this, but there's certainly a type of reader who would, and with pleasure, and you show the linguistic talent to handle writing it. Not for me, but easily proof that you're in the right field. Keep writing.

"Accident"

And here I am
Torn pride
Burned soul
Heaviest chest in the world
White of the eyes converted in black
Black that makes me unable to see anything
Darkness
Darkness that I desire only in my dying breath
Why are you present so early in my life, darkness?
I'm not worth of a live?
Maybe the "end" came before the "mean"?

Maybe I didn't born to achieve anything.

Great work is a beautiful sponge soaked in blissful booze,
maybe a dash of sweat from yodeling on the ranch.
While supple flesh turnt to cowhide under a sweltering sun
makes me wish for a pot of champagne fondue,
I praise the gas soaked rag around my neck that keeps the skeeters away,
because they're just so persistent this time of year.

And I thank so kindly the lasso that pulled me towards where you live,
a land caked with naked cacti and lullaby buzzards,
'cause now I can swing in a hammock and watch the breeze and saddle Slopes,
all while you brew a sweating pitcher of lemonade on the porch,
with a smile gleaming over the swaying fields
and a hand on the dog.

The man sat in his boat and stared at the ocean that he knew so well. His eyes looked with a manic-like desperation, searching for that which gave him hope.

The breeze danced over him, carressing his face, slipping through his clothes. The man stood, quickly growing annoyed. How could it not be here? Had he been lied to?

That's when he saw it. It first appeared as a soft splash, and most would disregard this as just a fish, but the man had been searching for so long that any sign of life in these empty, crystal blue waters would give him hope.

Again, a splash. The man gripped the edge of his boat, his nails nearly digging into the dark brown wood. "Please God."

Then, the unbelievable happened. A small, feminine face appeared out of the water. Its face was green, its nose small. The eyes were an endless white, as if the man was looking deep into the nothingness he so often felt.

Just as soon as the face appeared, it disappeared. But the man didn't care. He had his proof, and he knew his eyes wouldn't lie to him. He sunk down, falling down on the hard wood of his boat. He ran his hands through his hair, and laughed in relief.

He hadn't been lied to. But something caught his ear. It was a soft sound at first, a slight hum in his ear. As the sound went on, however, it developed into something more. A song of sorts, the melody of which was oddly disturbing. However, the man could not stop listening. He was truly intrigued.

And then the song grew louder, and the man stood. It had become beautiful, and he longed to discover the source of such perfection.

He jumped into the water in full bliss, surrounding himself with the song.

Surrounding himself with death.

My descendants'll sport ingrown toenails
and the low blood pressure of a runner.
They might grow to die or live to grow-
actively waiting for something to come
not knowing that some things aren't coming.
They're great-grand-pappy won't sing in his grave,
nor will he welcome any visitors bearing flowers.
He might just rot, all while you might just not.
For the time being, never forget that time is
constantly dwindling down to a nub at the bottom
of the stand holding your life and even Atlas'.
For no size of any man can fend off the ranks
of Hades and his silent army of new beginnings.

>>5161532

eh

>>5161521
I liked it

Two words
in X letters:
have five words this sentence.

Cesar would despise his own salad
tossed aside the meatiness of a French dip,
tobacco-less cud curdled in Napoleons mouth
never existed except in this poem. So-

hold on to whatever it is that you think you need to hold on to and-

it'll all be OK (turned 90º clockwise)

The whited mountain ridge danced stilly
against the shine of a nearby ocean.
Flocks of sea-faring folk filled the sky
dipping their rods into the liquid landscape.
A grumble from the belly of the beast
caused an avalanche to charge downwards
towards a tiny town made of reeds.

Children might've cried in the viscous valley;
mothers might've weeped in the viscous valley.
But, immersed in impenetrable draperies forever,
the blanketed town has never been seen.

The switch had been flipped
grilling beef-less meat well done
and nobody cried.

"Look down!" I yelled,
Only before I came to the cliff,
Ogling a herd of lemmings.
"Kill yourselves later! With katanas!"

Doubtably they heard me, because
Only a second after a (gut drops)
Waterfall begins flowing over Styx,
Never to end this blistering drought.

Here's a very-short story I wrote:

The Competition

And so Derrick shot the last of his five rounds; the ear-cuffed crowd tightened in anticipation for the results of the competition's last round. The pulley-system brought the target close enough to see: three in the ten, two in the nine, one short of victory. An extra round would decide it; McCleary would go first. So with eyes focused, he stood a few paces in front of Derrick with a firm gait and fingers fringes from firing. A shot rang out, and McCleary dropped his gun, five rounds full. The tournament ended, and almost everyone went home.

>>5162000
>fingers fringes from firing.
lose this alliteration.
It's kinda confusing and a ripoff of the lottery. People don't need make every story edgy and Keyser Soze-ish.
But, you do seem like you can string a sentence together, and describe a scene. I'd bet you could write some really good realistic, slice of life stories.

The Miserable Lot

The miserable lot at Luby's: home to decaying napkins with names and numbers scrawled on them, the last abandoned plastic straw, a corrupt murder of crows squawking at crumby bread. How is it that the asphalt never tires? I wonder how it doesn't lose its black lacquer that so tentatively welcomes rubbers soles no matter the heat, all while the white lines neglect a certain convention and witness wearily the triumph of a deranged: the curator of lifeless debts and doubts and other conjunctions. He simply can not. Can't what? I don't know, nor will I ever. No. Not ever. Never, I mutter in the miserable lot, just as the Sunday bells save silence from bored ears across the shadowed blocks behind barely anything beyond knowing. So I leave.

>>5162021

I've heard of The Lottery, though I've never read it. Will do though for the sake of comparison. Anyway, thank you for the tips (both helpful and of the hat).

>>5162037

*of a deranged man

http://pastebin.com/vbGNWRdg

It's a trans-semiotic critique of capitalist hermeneutics. I was inspired to contribute this masterpiece after accidentally impregnating Laurie Penny. (We aborted and keep it in a jar.)

So just post whatever?

http://pastebin.com/f7vjfzCU

First part of a book I wrote. I was interviewed for a podcast about loser unknown writers for this. I'd make a half-assed attempt to peddle shit but I imagine that's frowned upon. Also, anonymous and shit.

Now I guess I'll read through some of what y'all are posting and not leave any critiques.

>>5162214

It's frowned upon because the chance of your success would be another driving nail into the coffin of our collective and mounting failures. So fuck that, and fuck you. I liked your post. Name of book?

>>5162236
I've come to terms with the fact that I'll never be successful. It doesn't bother me. I only make things. The selling is uninteresting. I also suspect I'll never create anything I deem to be beautiful, and I let that tear at me constantly. Anger keeps me productive.

So fuck you too, man.

It's called There Was Once.

>>5162270

You sound like a good guy. Your writing shows that you're a good writer.

Anyways, the title is giving me some fucking documentary on Google. Your name?

>>5162284
Nah. I'm a real asshole.
Searching "there was once ankur" should get you there.

>>5162292

That worked. Thanks, asshole. I'm gonna buy this shit once I get a hand on my e-reader tomorrow and enjoy reading it. Because fuck you, that kid was adorable and what you created through him was magical. Good luck in whatever else you're writing.

>>5162300
I'll warn you that it's not all consistently good. The first isn't the best part of the book, but it's close. There are some parts that I think are terrible, to be frank.

It's also on Nook. Dunno if that's somehow more convenient. If you give me a throwaway email or something, I can just send you the pdf. Save a dollar and I'll only lose out on 35 or 40 cents.

>>5162307

>It's also on Nook

That's why I was gonna wait until tomorrow. My girlfriend bought me one for Christmas and I thought, O shit how the fuck am I ever going to use this? I mostly go to it for buying 99 cent classics, like Moby Dick and War and Peace, then jump between that and the physical book.

I'll contribute 35 or 40 cents to your wallet. Even if it's inconsistent, your style, and what you chose to do with it, is indication enough for me that you're worthy to watch. So I'll read it, I'll like some of it, hate other parts, and recommend you to people I talk to, then try and hype you up the way I hyped up David Mitchell and Junot Diaz before they Went Big, and left me behind like a coked out groupie. Mitchell is still cool but Diaz has become an obnoxious faggot. Like the Lupe Fiasco of literature. Fuck.

Anyways. Good shit. Keep writing and try to get published in magazines. Don't say that shit about not being successful. You might not become an icon, but who fucking cares, you show enough to warrant some widespread interest. Keep writing. Keep striving. Anger and self-loathing is the best fuel, but I saw only magic in that little kid. You did good.

>>5162316
Word. When I become a millionaire through hard work and winning the lottery, I'll send you a dollar and a confusing note.

And now I'm going to bed because I've already stayed up too late.

>>5151151
I'm linking OP because I don't want to find the pastebin link I was actually looking at. Does it bother anyone else when a character really obviously thinks/talks like the narrator? Or when the narrator is a child who talks like Shakespeare? Murakami does that shit so hard and it's fucking dildos, man. Dildos.

>>5162337

I don't mind the character blatantly being the author. Bukowski and Hemingway were fun as fuck. Levin was Tolstoy and the only interesting character in Anna Kills Herself. I do hate the precocious child, though. Everything Is Illuminated pissed me off to no end with its protagonist.

The chair sits occupied
The door not ajar,
The fan's whirr codified,
By a listener of demar.
A clicking sound heard,
A tapping sound too;
Both sounds demurred,
By wasted time's adieu.
A familar sound, the occupant detects
"Finally, they are here."
Forsooth, not as hot as I'd expect,
But I suppose it shall do.


I tried to be funny. How'd I do?

>>5162413
*dinar, not demar

bump

>>5161221
>>5161202
Thanks man. I wrote all of those in like 10 minutesd years ago, I may have others I'll look around.

Can anyone give me advice on the thesis for my paper?

Topic: Prediction of Aggression

>Aggression can be assessed and furthermore predicted in individuals through the analysis of one’s genetic composition, social behavior, and emotional development.

Hello anons.

I am majoring in communications/journalism, but decided a while back to mess with maybe writing some fiction. Pretty self conscious about it, because I think it sucks (which it probably does, you can tell me.)

Here is something that I have so far. The very beginning of a story, so there is no real anything within it yet. Just trying to work on getting better at plot progression and dialog, as well as descriptions. Any feedback would be great, good or bad. Taking to a writing group with a couple of bros, and want to see what anon thinks first.

http://pastebin.com/FAGVnFD2

Yes, I realize that the link has fag in it.

>>5163540
>The very beginning of a story, so there is no real anything within it yet. Just trying to work on getting better at plot progression and dialog, as well as descriptions. Any feedback would be great, good or bad. Taking to a writing group with a couple of bros, and want to see what anon thinks first.

You really shouldn't be looking for feedback at this state of composition, especially as a beginner. Try to finish your short stories first. The problem with this kind of thing is that the parts of a short story are evaluated using the whole. I understand you are working on small scale technical problems because you are a new writer, but you should get on story structure as soon as you can, because it'll break your story worst and quicker than your prose style will.

>>5163512

That's a book length thesis, and that unqualified it's either going to be a revolution or you're overstepping the evidence. You need to move into a particular assessment/predictive method. If it's a complex of all three, then you need to state, how can I put this clearly, exactly how you do it, the algorithm, the condensed theory, not just the broad areas the theory falls under. You could also do a good job picking one of those and very clearly showing that it influences aggression in a significant way, instead of trying to prove a nigh deterministic indication.

>>5163619
I intended on expanding on each of my three examples in the following sentences.
Thank you very much though.

>>5163574

I have a small, very basic structure laid out in my head, but have yet to write it down (which I should, I know.)

I am really looking for feedback on how it seems to flow, rather than the bit of the story that I have. I want to know that I am not putting too much emphasis on detail, or if I am not putting enough. But yeah I appreciate the advice, definitely. Thanks.

>>5163702
>>5163574

Also, dialog seeming organic between characters, or does it seem forced. This is more about me working on the technical aspects as you mentioned, rather than the story (not to say that it isn't an important part, though.)

>>5163686

Then the thesis you posted is redundant. State the most specific version of it you can as an overview. You're just wasting people's times identifying canons of inquiry (genetic, behaviorist, qualitative) already implied well enough, I'm sure, by your particular methods, gene xyz, behavior index a & b, and emotional text 1, 2, etc, etc.

You should also include degrees of prediction and assessment and prediction rather than the generic assessment and prediction as it implies a level of omniscient knowledge we don't get out of any of those fields yet. If you want to make a bold claim for predictive and assessing power, save it for the conclusion, it'll be much more rhetorically powerful because the weight of your argumentation and citation will be lingering in the mind. It's like saying, I just heard the funniest joke of my life, then telling the joke. Also the generalized shit is useless practically for people who have to read fuckloads of material and who want to get down to tacks right away and see if you're worth reading.

>>5163751
*test not text

>>5163702
You should really work on finishing stuff and not become an obsessed technician. As far as advice:

Why are you opening with a disembodied essay on the state of the world? This would be much better handled through some excuse for exposition, like a debate on television, between characters, etc, which would also let you get the story started. A lot of it seems like it would come out naturally over the course of the story, so just cut all of it and see where that leaves you.

As far as a sampling of your dialogue goes, you have a lot of gesturing words like "look" that don't really happen in speech as much as you use them. The way your characters talk is also really similar grammatically, and in their word choice. There's also a sense of them talking in order to explain things to the reader that's a little too pronounced. For instance, the wife saying "why do they have to bring you in..." would probably not be something an army wife says. She'd launch straight into particular arguments about why he's being fucked over, maybe even clipped versions of arguments she's made before.

It's clear you're a new writer: read more. That'll help more than any workshopping will because it'll show you ways to do things.

>>5163782
What are your credentials?

Don't mean to sound asshole-ish. Purely out of curiosity, because it appears as if you're extremely knowledgeable in this area of /lit/

>>5161871

Brilliant use of acrostics. Well done anon.

>Poetry is above my head
>Found this while digging through some old shit

I wrote ahead to Nature,
measured the postage,
kissed it off.
I told her,

"Dear Mother,

I'm coming your way.
Running,
but likely walking.
I beg your hospitality.
Please have a bed ready
in grass or treetops,
for love or pity,
for as long as you'd like,
as you'd like it.
Keep your eyes open, I beg you.
Look for the loneliest person.

With Love."

And then I forgot
for so long.
So long.
I stared out windows,
dreaming of journeys to never be,
dreaming of someone else,
someone I was supposed to be.

All in a moment,
I remembered
and left.
Suddenly.
So long.

My feet fell upon earth,
upon withered fields,
upon waters,
upon miles, upon miles.

I arrived to nothing.

There were trees,
and singing birds in them,
and gentle breezes that whispered to leaves.
But Nature had left.
It was all...
cultivated.
Not grown.
She was gone.

I looked and looked
and, finally,
I found a note,
hidden in a glen,
left for me,
care of the wind.
It was written in the grasses
and the prose was florid.

"Where have you been, my darling child?
I received your correspondence.
All that time ago. What has detained you?
Where have you been?
She came.
The loneliest person.
She came and lingered with me and,
though it was not your weary head I cradled at night,
this is what you asked of me.
I'm sorry, dear.
I waited.
She departed
and I intend to leave too.

You would have loved her.

With Love, Always."

With Love, Mother.
Always.

dead thread

>>5161216
I REALLY want to read this.

>>5164928

>cat gets lost
>girl asks maid about cat
>maid supposedly rolls eyes
>girl tells bf about eye roll
>bf says ok
>bf fires maid
>later girl sees cat

>>5161256

Predominantly iambic meter, with a shifting syllable count. You're decent at substitutions and alliteration.

The word choice is archaic, biblically elevated, though the address is, ostensibly, some forest unhistoric except for its age, not the site of any battles, special trees, witness to anything... the dis-junction between the topic and the manner makes it pretentious because there's nothing here to support the formal form of address.

There's a few emotional words slipped - "weeps" in here, and some personifications -"the dead, speak, etc" - which attempt to charge this with something human, gesture vague towards the allegorical; the renewal of life, perhaps, despite calamity. It feels a little disingenuous because as an allegory there's nothing in the poem to deal with the horrors we all know about (world wars, hiroshima, concentration camps) on the scale of the "natural" that don't generate life as part of their cycle, as part of the natural order of fire and sprout, and instead have life despite, if at all.

There's also a sentimentalism in constant crying out of the speaker at what is essentially a plain scene, as I've said, in nature. O, O -- too!

>>5164041
>>Poetry is above my head

You don't need a critique, you've figured it out already.

>>5162413
It's not funny. It's just doggerel, Try triple syllable rhymes, or strained rhymes, for comic effect. The high "demar," "forsooth" "demurred" just sounds pretentious unless it's given grounding in some character. Calling "clicking..tapping..." sounds is idiotic because they're not only sounds by virtue of their meaning but onomatopoeia.
"The chair sits occupied" is meaningless filler. You could cut it and the poem'd be the same.
"Codified" into what? Curious lack of detail except for some sounds.

>>5162159
we ABORTed and KEPT it IN a JAR

best iamb in this thread.

>>5162000
Lose the comma, it broadcasts the slight turn in "almost." Lose the "so." Lose the semi colon between "an extra round would decide it" and the next sentance. It's not in the same kind of sequence as the others, cause and effect. There's a moment of suspense between who's going next and the tie. Also let there be a quiet after the tie. Quiet of a period.
The alliteration is silly. Do you know what "gait" means? Gait is walking. You've already described walking with "paces." Cut "rang out," to "A shot, and Mcleary" - nice little confusion in the right place.

>>5166753
P.S your short story is good with those cuts.

>>5166604
If you're the original author then fuk u.

I don't suppose one of you could practice your writing skills and give me inspiration by writing this as an 800 word short story?
"A cramped and degenerating society living within the bounds of a great wall. People are warned never to leave, and everyone fears what lays beyond. Every day, the populace is paralyzed by fear, and most people are terrified of even discussing what may be outside. The protagonist, growing increasingly furious with the oppressive atmosphere, finally slips outside. The landscape is littered with nothing but mirrors."

>>5166970
I don't suppose you could do your own homework?

>>5166970
This is painfully retarded and high school 2deep4u for anyone outside of /lit/, sorry.

Make the outer world even worse by our standards yet seemingly better for them.

Please critique, I'm not well.

"Chasing the dragon" is not only the analogy of an addict, but spans to the totality of our species. Humans consistently attempt to reattain the pinnacles of experience that they've known before. The adrenaline junkies adopt new methods of demise, The academics invent new adventures to covet, The elderly and their youth regurgitate fragmented ideals. It's not chemical dependence, it's an evolutionary miscalibration. Memory is the drug, Nostalgia is the withdrawal.

>>5166970
It writes itself.

makes me wonder

should I write in foreign language or write things in my mother tongue and translate it later? which one is better?

The Seven Koans of Scaldbrother

Belonging to a forgotten order the screeds of Scaldbrother have been uncovered in a flurry of subharmonic murmuring. On the 3rd of August 2012 two men were reported to have vanished down a manhole beneath the twisted laneways of the Smithfield Market. Clutched tightly to the torso of the first gnawed corpse were tattered scraps of pallid vellum. During the long summer of 2013 the dronelords of Dublin Castle declared these were the writings of the fabled master Scaldbrother. A whispering mummy speaking through interlacing sub-koans Scaldbrother acts as a guide to the cosmic abyss. The ambiguity of his adventures leads to anxiety but from there authentic freedom.
Critics have claimed the koans of poisoned Scaldbrother represent not the paradoxical ways onto Enlightenment but the ravings of a half educated mind. To these wormtongues we say the demon himself is inseparable from a processes of demonization, an empty placeholder, a destination signifying the outsider. Mysticism is always for the human being.
The march of time and a serious fungal infection has eroded many of these anecdotes. Please forgive any scribal errors.

>>5167696
Scaldbrother wrote two hundred postcards on the last day of his life, and asked an attendant to deliver them. Then he passed away. These cards read. ‘Why greedily thou bendst more on me. With stones a multitude in fury shout 'destroy, destroy'. Thou and the filthy ones depth deprived orbs perceiving I had life, that seem’d things dead and dead again.’ This was his last announcement and all who heard were sorry indeed that his suffering was not greater.

Fucking 4chan and its lack of indentation
I know it's shit, but you have to write like shit to become a good writer, right?

The moon sits in the sky which is filled with the specks of light that has traveled millions upon millions of miles to reach here. On the ground there stood a
man, who just stood simply doing nothing, but looking to the sky's moon. A full moon has, for generations been shown to bring the worse of the night's wrath out. Once
people stand outside under a full moon's light though, Few people could stand under it and feel like something bad could happen to them. The moon's gleam blankets the
Earth in its warm grasp, calming the air and the life that it covers. The trees and grass reflected its brilliance in a way that just made them seem more alive than
when the sun comes back to reveal its radiant form to the world once again.

The man stood by a fire, which created its smoke to float into the trees. The fumes then sailed pass the trees and into the illuminated sky to be devoured by
the light of a thousand stars. To the naked eye he appeared to be just staring, but his mind is aflame with ideas. The ideas are empty, glazing over many important
details of what he should of thought about, but to him, they were all great and just need a little more evolving to be the solution to his problem.

>>5167699
In the early commentaries of Scaldbrother he already had become obsessed with remaking himself into his ideal form. Too much shade, partly due to the forest, which by the way of foreign suspicion lead to the inferno, all else now shun the village where he stayed. Given to subtle and vindictive inhabitants alone above the gate lied The Order of the Entered, perpetuating ancestral crimes. The dark heart of a nation. Dressed in the discarded attire of women the idiot child echoes ' …shall be free, and now already in the destruction…’ Ill-lit as he was Scaldbrother began to be filled with hallucinations and the joy of being white-hot. Their time become useless excesses were annually committed. A people made savage demanding the filthy things of a merchant ship, the bodies of decayed mariners were strung along the seashore. To accept records of them, the consumption of deep puncheons is required. But this vision also approached the third week of a little spooky bag, with skin of rotted velvet, a parcel of degeneracy speared upon a bleached acacia tree. In the clotted darkness, I Scaldbrother, did see the ghostly occupants now grown animated gather beneath the clothed stump, grabbing at its seams with atrocious fingernails. Dead flesh waiting to be eaten, fractured as a ship with foul cargo hath been shed upon the earth, that is yellow substance, foaming at the crack and already within the iron soul.

>>5167700
Soon though, he thought about it. All of the ideas are meaningless. None of them coudl help him, he's just hoping blindly a simple solution can clear
everything. Waves of gloom set over him, knowing that for all the thinking he does, nothing can fix what he has done. A life that has been wasted away is what his is,
he thought. The man stopped gazing at the moon and instead opts to look at the fire. Fire. The reason for almost all civilizations across the world. Without fire many
races of people wouldn't exist and all humans would be stuck in Africa, left to fend off against the burning sun, not being able to leave to colder climates. Without
fire, jobs, marriage, and governments wouldn't exist. Suddenly though the man tore his eyes away from the reason for most people's suffering today and focused back on
the moon. The light just seemed so pure and carefree.

A thought came into the man's head though. Why should his past be who he is? What was keeping him from being a different person than before? There is always
a second chance to make yourself happy. Peering into the moon that was bursting with light, he decided this. Changes is what has made everything. Without there being
change nothing could exist. Whether small or large, there is an effect. It's time for a change that can bring joy to me and make this life a good one.

With that thought, he broke off a small branch, seperated the wood, and watched the fire slowly die out, with the embers still burning with all the intesity
of when the fire still shone its light upon the trees. He watched the moon slowly descend into the shadows of the trees, taking away the clear glow, and replacing it
with the radiance of the sun. Before the sun fully rose above the trees though, the man decided to head back and begin anew, just like the day.

>>5167701
Siegried's Bier. Sucking on their vegetable opiates the locals believe Siegried's Brewery suffered an inevitable decline following the company's barrels use in the construction of the red gallows. Its faculty diminished skilled Anglo-Norman artisans slew the Broheims of the city and yea a time of temperance was imposed. ‘Go forth rozzers’ he said in tones of command. "Dubbelin am I, a man. These things bogmen I am the citizen of no mean city, which is a town of law and order. Empty handed I go, behold the spade of my father in my hand.’ And on the eve of the Nativity of the Lord in the same year he, Scaldbrother, went out with Mad Fighting Fitzgerald who had testified and in men, as it were the standard, and they cried out, ‘Keep thyself pure from the sky's fuckin secretion. Intact as a body to be ministered onto. Alcohol fulfils, satisfying all desire and energy. Limiting greater destruction of the imbalances between the yellow biles and phlegm. All compulsion and the supposed reconciliation blaming imagined curses of the greatest vigour.’ When the impediments of consciousness are annihilated he becomes free from all fear and is gone beyond the reach of all change.

Unspeakable Things is a brave post-modern work where we gradually come to understand we're reading a manifesto written by a disturbed prepubescent girl, presumably before going on a shooting spree or something. And it falls completely and utterly flat. The entitlement, the narcissism, the empty rage of the anti-hero protagonist is taken to extreme levels but not at all explored. The book could have been a good read had the author applied a few of the conventions of storytelling. The protagonist must have somewhat understandable motivations and the whole thing should lead somewhere any way.

This "female Eliot Rodger meets The View" idea is interesting but I wonder if the author traveled too far into the meta-post-modern wonderland because s/he promptly took the whole concept out back and shot it. It's not symbolic or clever if intentional. Adding to the flaws is the complete lack of voice or style. The ideas sloshing around in our protagonist's brain are downright banal rather than bizarre and fascinating and that just gets tiresome. Most of the readers, I suppose, are adults.

I can understand that the author's vision might have been hard to pull off in this polemic form, but the result in any case is Unreadable Things. Put in some basic effort next time and you'll deserve two stars even if you fail again.

The library door slides open for Sarah so she does not have to slow down at all, as if it is configured to her step, and she strides through it and out onto the brilliantly sunny courtyard on a clear and brilliantly sunny day in the middle of summer! She goes on without stopping up the hill that peaks at the center of the courtyard, made entirely of AstroTurf. It crunches beneath the heels of her new Burberry boots as she pivots there, looking down at and over the student body, a thick concentration of people her age, she guesses, who are not as well dressed, as they criss-cross from classroom to classroom as the hour – the school bell chimes – becomes the next. For the second time on her first day as an undergraduate, standing up there on what is in fact the very center of the entire campus, she is filled up and heightened by the familiar feeling that she is exactly where she deserves to be.
‘Hey you up there! Why don’t you come down and join the rest of us? Ha-ha!’
The voice, booming from at least fifty meters away, deep and from an entirely uninhibited, almost supernatural confidence, is her favourite voice in the world! She can hardly believe she only heard it for the first time today. Destiny, anyone?

>>5167743

‘Oh my god, Tyler!’ She squeals with pure delight. Piercingly, so that the many dozen less well dressed and less confident people between her and the hottest boy every! cower, audibly perturbed – ‘jesus,’ she hears, ‘ow! What was that?’ – as some of them, the really badly dressed and not at all confident and awkward ones, scamper away in fear. Tyler’s huge, shirtless, seven foot figure – pants-less too, she sees, a little perturbed herself – pushes through the disorientated mass like an unstoppable force, sending them diving and tumbling down to the bottom of the hill into the buildings that square the courtyard.
‘Ha-ha!’
She manages to recompose herself just before he joins her at the peak. The boys have come up with him in their collared shirts and jackets and sunglasses and beards but not pants and undying grins. Tyler’s almost total nakedness – he is wearing a g-string – imposes itself on his surroundings; the world seems to revolve around him in total subservience. ‘Where are your pants?’ She laughs.
‘Ha-HA! Pants are for FAGGOTS!’ He and his friends explode into laughter and she manufactures the correct laugh to join theirs. Tyler penetrates her with his robotically confident face until she is on the ground, getting fucked in every hole by the boys, while all the losers can only watch.

http://beruda.deviantart.com/art/Find-me-in-the-smoke-467827118

Tell me what you think. I've posted my short story too, if anyone's interested (it has a flying mountain in it).

Please critique my latest short story:

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

I caught a young relative once and had sex with her but I doubt anyone wants to hear what happened... Okay, since you insist, I will tell my story... It began one evening about a year ago... I jerked off into my hand... and then grabbed a microscope and some tweezers... those motherfuckers are not getting away this time! With one swift movement, I grabbed a sperm by its tail and exclaimed 'Oh yeah baby, come to Daddy!'. My cock firmly gripped in one hand, I lowered the sperm onto the head and began fucking it gently... 'Ohh, you like that, little embryo, don't you?! Yeah, you dirty little whore.'

"This is so much better than fucking that other bitch, Martha" - I thought to myself while my hips continued thrusting back and forth with the little sperm balanced on the tip of my cock.

A thought suddenly hit me... "Martha?!" - I jolted around and looked at the lower book shelf... There she was... in the sperm jar from last week... looking at me longingly.

"Oh, fuck... I'm sorry, Martha, this isn't what it looks like, I promise, baby..."

I tried covering my cock so that she wouldn't see what I was doing...

"I'm sorry, Martha, baby... Daddy will make it up to you, he promises..."

I smeared the remainder of the sperm in my hand around my chest hairs, and then blew a kiss to Martha's bottle. I took a few steps forwards... "Come to Daddy..."

Taking her bottle off the shelf, I was gripped with sensual spasms, vividly remembering our last lovemaking...

She was now mostly crust, so I spit into the bottle to loosen her up, "Yeah, you like Daddy's spit, don't you, Martha?"

She nodded... Or at least, I think I saw her smile.

"Alright, baby... Let's do this."

I was standing straight up with my fully erect cock pointing to the sky, and turned the jar upside down...

Slowly but surely, Martha dripped down onto my cock.

"There we go, baby, there we go... Daddy's going to be really gentle this time."

I gripped my cock and started undulating my hips again.

The room was painfully quiet, filled only with the noisy silence of my penis skin slapping against the palm of my hand.

After a moment, I became very self-conscious... "Wait, Martha, this moment needs some erotic music... Oh, I know... let's sing together, you and I, Martha!"

I began humming... "Hmmm mmmm na nananaaa twinkle twinkle liiitlle staaar... mmm mmm naaa naaa how I wonder... HNNGh... where you are..."

(End of part 1/2)

(Finale, part 2/2)

>>5170425


The music was soothing my weary mind.... and I closed my eyes and began to picture myself in a beautiful cathedral instead; surrounded by pictures of Jesus Christ in all directions - but instead of nails through his hands, they were cocks... Cocks everywhere.

I loved it here. I often visited this place with my lovers... and now I stood there in my mind's cathedral, fucking Martha's little embryo vagina. "Mmm... naaa naaanaaaaaaaaaaa ... mmm... Daddy likes you the most of all his babies, Martha, did you know that?..."

Before Martha had a chance to reply, I continued - "You know, Martha... Daddy has been thinking..."

"Mmmhmm?" I imagined her response, vocalizing her words with my own mouth.

"I've been thinking that we should try some anal, you and I. I mean, you're a week old now and..." - I heard what I thought was a tiny gasp coming from the embryo - "Now, now... don't worry, Martha. I promise to be gentle."

She seemed to loosen up a little, and turned around, lifting her little embryo asshole with a worried look on her little spermface.

"Aww, you should see yourself, Martha, you look so cute right now," I told her as I grabbed my thick, fat, juicy cock and aimed... With a single thrust, I jammed it hard right into her tight little embryo asshole.

"HnNNNGH" - I let out a moan.

Jesus watched us from the walls.

Synopsis:
Emerald is a 60 year old male who lives in a dystopian reality that is run by the Patrols. He explains his past to his little daughter, Katie, whom he loves dearly and is the only reason that he even lives. After winning the scientist affair ticket, Emerald was put through a series of tests by scientists who have a way to trigger emotions in the brain. As Emerald is injected with the chemical, his mind starts imagining sceneries related to that particular feeling. He explains what it was like living in complete Paranoia, Anger, and so forth. Emerald ends up waking up to the sounds of the scientists congratulating him. He looks at the test results and see’s that the last test was related to Love.

Spoiler: His whole life with Katie was only an imagination.

>>5170806
Sounds pretty cool, but I hope it has more to it so it's not seen as a "it was all just a dream" gimmick.

>>5168563
>deviantart
Dropped.

>>5166728

Thank you for the feedback. I have to admit my only intention in writing it, at the time, was that I enjoyed putting it down. It's my main fault that I enjoy this sort of language, not for any allusions made or because I think it makes my work elevated, but because I genuinely love the sound of it--'whilst,' 'thou,' 'hark,' and so forth, pretentious unless smartly used, I dispense in my writing without hesitation.

Once I've written a story I often go back through it and trim them out, just because I know they'll be targeted. I don't mean anything by them. Writing's joy, for me, and reading's too, is the music within the individual sentence. When it can be carried on for pages at a time (in Moby Dick, or Paradise Lost, or passages of Ulysses) I'm entranced. It's music, to me. I love the words. But I know I'm not as sharp as those guys, and in place of their foundations I just have a small mound on which I like to pitch my attempts.

I remember the 'too!' was meant as an embarrassment of admission--the voice being ashamed of taking pleasure in the sight of a destroyed environment. As for the rest, as I say, I wrote it because I liked the language I used to write it.

Thanks again.

>>5171021
If you like elevated language that muck, there's no reason you shouldn't prepare yourself, and then attempt, elevated subjects. Follow your pleasure. Big subjects. History. Science. Religion. You don't necessarily need to contribute, just apprehend things well, add emotional depth and development, and the music.

My whole point here is your materials aren't matching up with your means and the result is a comic dysfunction. The people who wrote like this, the Romantics, were only really successful when they grappled with big topics (the Grecian Urn and Beauty) instead of some forest, somewhere. Let's see, I just read something almost sufficient for that kind of thing....

http://www.online-literature.com/wordsworth/550/

Study this.

>>5171021
Also there's a well reviewed contemporary poet who writes in the high style named Geoffrey Hill. I'm not familiar with anything more than a few poems, but you might want to check him out for approach.

I'm really more of a Frost kind of guy, so.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/geoffrey-hill#about

>>5171051

>Study this

I will. Thank you. I've been trying, for the last two years, to find a reason to justify my writing. As it is I write stories of animals murdered, maimed, or absences of feelings between families, or children at odds with their parents, and so forth; mundane, middle-class, common stories I'm involved in or exposed to. I like them, and think they're justifiably good stories in their own right, but I know that the means by which I want to show them aren't aligned with the nature of the stories themselves. I'm at odds with my chosen subjects.

I know you don't care, but it's an anxiety that's been gnawing at me. I have faith in my writing, but not in what I write about. It causes me to put blood and sweat into something, only to abandon it because I realize that I've created exactly what you said--a comic dysfunction. It makes me embarrassed of myself.

I'll keep searching, though. I've been trying to improve my education recently and find something within any of the literature that might help me alight upon some worthy target.

Thank you again. Your writing style is distinctive and you seem to have written responses to a few others in the thread. Everything you've written has been worthwhile, I believe, to the writer. Thank you.

>>5170425
>>5170431

Please critique.

>>5166769

No I just read and summarized it for you.

>girl has dream about boy who is myserious
>boy who is mystery comes to school
>chapter 2 is about he looked at her then a dream about it, the dream is mysterious
that's as far as I got I'm trying to be better.

>>5162000
>>5166753

Grazie

>>5161449
>>5161453
>>5161462

Would really appreciate another opinion on this set. I think they're entertaining but I'm not sure, so I'd love some confirmation.

Is anyone active right now if I start cracking down on some writing I need to do?

It's been like four months since I've worked on my novel and it's gnawing at me.

>>5171254
Sure.

>>5171278
This is where I'm starting on my work tonight, page 36, but everything should be more or less contained. Which makes me wonder whether the previous thirty five pages were necessary, but I think they were, so whatever.

Dom was standing in the alley behind Kyoki with his head against the hand rail. What few people that passed him by would assume he was just a drunk trying to get his senses back, but he wasn’t even aware of the city. His mind was in the Net. He could still feel his knees as they slowly got sore, but if he could possess a system somewhere, he’d stop noticing his body.
The wireless connection was a bit weak, making everything he could detect move slowly around him as if he were underwater, but he was only in Delta. He ripped through the security feeds of the hospital and started looking around in the cameras. It felt like opening a third eye, but with the way the programming worked, he couldn’t expand his field of view and had to overlay it with his actual eyes.
The security was tight though and they immediately tried to lock him out, momentarily blinding him by disabling all of the cameras, but that did nothing to protect their cyber walls. He was just getting around to tracking down Chase when someone tapped on his shoulder.

I'm cranking out more right now.

>>5161449
trying too hard, it feels forced. "prefaced with a joke and whatnot"?

things don't fluctuate frequently

couldn't make it past the first paragraph

1/10 would not read. i'm sure some would though

>>5171292
Cool I'm guessing this is cyberpunk?

>>5171327
quite

I was accused of going to heavy on drugs and murder last draft, so I'm trying to tone that down.

>>5171331
Let me read a page when you get a chance.

I'll be back in half an hour.

>>5171292
The security was tight though and they immediately tried to lock him out, momentarily blinding him by disabling all of the cameras, but that did nothing to protect their cyber walls. He was just getting around to tracking down Chase when someone tapped on his shoulder. His search stumbled and he tried to pull out partially. The blood rushed from his head when he stood up, reminding him of just how drunk he actually was. A moment’s hesitation later and he severed his connection to the hospital, rather than spying on his friend.
Next to him were two kids. Their hair was glued back and their jackets had more zippers than pockets. “Hey man, so uh, I hear you’re a Player?” the one on the left asked. He had his hands stuffed in his pockets holding something, but was looking up at Dom expectantly rather than threateningly.
“No, not really. Who said that? One of the guys from Kyoki?” he asked as he turned around and slouched onto the railing. Dom glanced around the alley, there were people above and below them, but nobody on their level of the tower. Nice secluded spot to do some hacking, or get mugged by drug addicts. But the kids were on the fat side of healthy.
“No no no, nah man. Not that kind of player, I mean that game shit. Terra Novum. You’re the one registered as Player Three, aren’t you? Says so on the website,” the kid asks. Dom rocked his head back to scratch the stubble on his neck. “So, can you do us a favor and transfer us some access keys?” Both of the kids stepped closer as he thought.
“You said website? Not a Sim?”
“‘Course, you need an access key to get to the sim and register yourself. You’ll help us out, right? We’d be getting a Gen Two key from you, so we’re willing to pay. Rather pay for a Gen Two than the Gen Fives the Pushers are trying to move.”
Dom sighed as a train blew by behind him. “Sind me a link to the site, just ping it to my implant. I need to take a look at this.”
The kids groaned and stepped back from him. “Come on man, we said we’d pay you,” the other one complained as Dom got the coordinate.
“Didn’t say how much,” he responded as he pulled up the info page. The header for the website was just a generic game pitch for some fantasy game. But below that was the entire list of registered players, not hidden or encrypted at all. And third from the top was him. Full military ID, official mug shot, the works.
“Just give up kids,” someone said. Dom opened an eye to see the man walking up to him. The guy was in a trench coat and had clearly scraped through the skin on the side of his neck. He was grinning, but grinding his teeth as hard as he could.
“Shit, is that Player Four?”

>>5171409
“Yeah, for now I am. Fenix himself chose me to be one of the first players. This is a big opportunity you know. The order you’re in determines how much of the game you get to own and can cash in on. Guys like him aren’t going to give you anything. He has no reason to. If he gives out no keys, then he keeps his entire share. Greedy bastard,” the man said as he stumbled over to them.
While he rambled, Dom had checked the registry, and the man staggering towards him with a pistol in his pocket was Player Four, Jakobb. “Why don’t you step on the other way,” Dom said as he reached out to the security systems. The best he got were some security cameras though. His hand dropped to his hip for a gun that wasn’t there anymore.
“No no, you see. That would be silly of me. Because of a little something I learned yesterday,” Jakobb said as he pulled the plastic pistol out of his pocket. The two kids swore and pressed themselves up against the back wall of Kyoki. The gun was just a self-defense weapon, Two shots total, no reload, pitiful range. Had to be about as far away from your target as Jakobb was from Dom.
“If you don’t put that down, I’ll fucking kill you,” Dom said as he pushed off the railing and stood off against him.

So I've made some progress...

>>5171409
>>5171413

not the other guy, but i'd read more of this

>>5171413
Jakobb grinned. He flipped the pistol from side to side, taking his time on where to aim. “You’re military, aren’t you? Got the build and the swagger. All that training for target practice and Z Alertness so you can sit and play house while the machines work. Bet you haven’t even killed.” Dom rolled his eyes. “It’s a bit different-“ a screeching siren cut the words from his mouth. The noise was so much that the stereos were breaking themselves in the time it took for Dom to step forward and roundhouse kick him in the temple.
Jakobb crumpled, but the hit wasn’t clean. A 9mm flechette ripped through his right lung before Jakobb hit the railing. A moment later and the safety railing was contracting. “Fuck,” Dom groaned as he fell to his knee, trying to hold in the blood.
“Holy shit man,” the fat kid shouted as he started walking over to help.
“Look the fuck away!” Dom shouted at him as another train curved around the tower. The safety railing was built as an emergency exit for stopped trains, it also served to carry Jakobb’s limp body halfway to the rail. A wet splash accompanied the roaring wind as the shuttle rode past them. The kid vomited right where he stood and Dom groaned. The MP arrived five minutes later

May as well finish up to the end of the scene.

>>5171409
>>5171413
>>5171448
Keep going.

>>5171448
“So, Mr. Jakobb I-don’t-have-a-last-name just walked up to you and tried to shoot you?” the investigator asked.
“I don’t think you can call it tried when he succeeded,” Dom responded as he grabbed the exposed end of the tube shoved up his nose. “Are they going to put pain killers in this oxygen or do I just have to suffer?”
“Oxygen is a pain killer.”
“No it’s not. Hydrocodone is a pain killer. THC is a pain killer. A good hooker is a pain killer. Good air is not a pain killer.”
“You need to think more natural. Your body can take care of itself the way it was meant to.”
“Pretty sure our ape ancestors didn’t have selective pressure from flechette fragmentation, but I’m no anthropologist.”
The inspector closed his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. “Back to the report then,” he said, waking up the tablet in his lap.
“You’re the one who got off topic,” Dom mumbled as he picked at the bandages wrapping around his chest.
“So this Jakobb guy wanted to kill you over Terra Novum you say?” the inspector asked again as he started writing on the tablet. According to the data packets, he was messaging with a friend.
Dom deleted the messaging program before responding. “I think he wanted to kill me because he was a drug addict who was losing his mind. Shouldn’t Eve have been more abreast of that situation?”
The inspector stared at his tablet blankly. “Blood works showed he was clean for the past few weeks. It may have been catching up with him stress-wise, but he should have been relatively clear headed. Did he say anything else of note to you?”
“Apparently I’m a proud owner of like, a quarter of some start-up game I know nothing about. Maybe he thought this game would be the next Myst. I’d have so much money I would literally drown myself in women if I owned a quarter of Myst,” Dom said as he laid down on the cot. The white ceiling was just the right kind of diffuse blur for him to phase out and toy around in the virtual world.
“Why don’t you tell me more about this Terra Novum?”
“Sure thing, I’m accessing the Sim that ripped my info right now,” Dom responded as he worked at detaching his senses from his body.


I got stuff in the morning, so I think I'm going to stop here and be back at it in about twelve hours. Critiques?

>>5171516
It's good. Kind of hard to critique a page 36, though. Do you have the rest on a google doc or pastebin?

>>5171516
scratch that, here's v2

“So, Mr. Jakobb I-don’t-have-a-last-name just walked up to you and tried to shoot you?” the investigator asked. He was sitting across from Dom in the doctor’s stool. He had positioned himself up against the wall and had the tablet tucked up on his legs so that no one else would be able to see the screen, let alone Dom.
“I don’t think you can call it tried when he succeeded,” Dom responded as he grabbed the exposed end of the tube shoved up his nose. “Are they going to put pain killers in this oxygen or do I just have to suffer?”
“Oxygen is a pain killer,” the inspector mumbled, twirling the stylus between his fingers and reading something else.
“No it’s not. Hydrocodone is a pain killer. THC is a pain killer. A good hooker is a pain killer. Good air is not a pain killer.”
“You need to think more natural. Your body can take care of itself the way it was meant to.”
“Pretty sure our ape ancestors didn’t have selective pressure from flechette fragmentation, but I’m no anthropologist,” Dom declared with an exaggerated shrug which quickly reminded him that he had taken a bullet through the chest not an hour ago.
The inspector closed his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. “Back to the report then,” he said, waking up the tablet in his lap.
“You’re the one who got off topic,” Dom mumbled as he picked at the bandages wrapping around his chest.
“So this Jakobb guy wanted to kill you over Terra Novum you say?” the inspector asked again as he started writing on the tablet. According to the data packets, he was messaging with a friend.
Dom deleted the messaging program before responding. “I think he wanted to kill me because he was a drug addict who was losing his mind. Shouldn’t Eve have been more abreast of that situation?”
The inspector stared at his tablet blankly. “Blood works showed he was clean for the past few weeks. It may have been catching up with him stress-wise, but he should have been relatively clear headed. Did he say anything else of note to you?”
“Apparently I’m a proud owner of like, a quarter of some start-up game I know nothing about. Maybe he thought this game would be the next Myst. I’d have so much money I would literally drown myself in women if I owned a quarter of Myst,” Dom said as he laid down on the cot. The white ceiling was just the right kind of diffuse blur for him to phase out and toy around in the virtual world.
“Why don’t you tell me more about this Terra Novum?”
“Sure thing, I’m accessing the Sim that ripped my info right now,” Dom responded as he worked at detaching his senses from his body.

>>5171530
https://docs.google.com/document/d/16yQyqDnTPBC-HrWSpcr9L22I0VfYnMJIIYqzZBbzl2A/edit?usp=sharing

if you want it, but It's 36 pages of uneditted amateur writing.

For the amount that I've written in my life, I'm a pretty shitty writer.

>>5171292
>>5171409
>>5171413
>>5171448
>>5171516
>>5171531

do the opening 35 pages explain what's going on, with this game and whatnot?

cuz i really like getting dropped in the middle of shit like this

>>5171542
Somewhat. You can see for yourself here >>5171538

I kind of spent all 35 pages world building and establishing Dom's situation. This is right when shit gets real.

>>5151151
english is not my native language, and i'm not much of a reader/writer either.
so, it would help me a lot if you could you please point out any errors and incoherences in this small fragment of text.
http://pastebin.com/PdpCn2nr

>>5171582
>http://pastebin.com/PdpCn2nr


a dry scream followed by the sound scattered pieces of machinery and drops of water reaching the floor echoed through the whole apartment.
>A dry scream was followed by the sound, scattering pieces of machinery and drops of water hitting the floor, echoing through the whole apartment

the middle aged man witnessing the scene standed still in atonishment, frozen and speechless.
>The middle aged man witnessing the scene stood still in astonishment, frozen and speechless

a mute tv playing a forengeir movie was the only thing that prevented the atmosphere of room from being completely static.
>A mute tv playing a foreign movie was the only thing that prevented the atmosphere of the room from being completely static

the following sound a wooden door being viciously knocked made his body shiver.
>The following sound, a wooden door being viciously knocked, made his body shiver

he knew that someone was calling him by his name and screaming from the other side, but it all sounded incomprehensible to him, his mind was unable to recieve any external information, his focus was on the sliced object lying on the floor in front of him.
>He knew that someone was calling him by name, and screaming from the other side; but it all sounded incomprehensible to him.
>His mind was unable to receive any external information.
>His focus was on the sliced object laying on the floor in front of him.

pretty sure I fixed that correctly.

>>5171592
thanks

>>5171516
I'm just going to do this section.

Your investigator's dialogue is way too stylized. I understand you're going for effect, but it's too implausible: having him be that antagonistic right-out-the gate is, a) uncharacteristic for a officer, who deals with lippy people all year and b) priming him to give bad answers, answers that lack information, answers that are meant to fuck with him, etc
The "you need to think more natural..." is much more like a hardened detective.

>“So this Jakobb guy wanted to kill you over Terra Novum you say?”
You say isn't necessary. People tend, in my experience, to clip everything but the bare minimum out of their speech in exchanges like this, and most of the time, really. You have to remember how much body language conveys when you're trying to write good dialogue. Usually less is more. You should work on using descriptive keys in the face, the stance, etc, along with sparser dialogue. Look to ye old master, Hemmingway.

The same kind of clipping would happen in,

>I think he wanted to kill me because he was a drug addict who was losing his mind. Shouldn’t Eve have been more abreast of that situation?”

I'm really not sure about the word "abreast." I would revise to

>[H]e was a drug addict who was losing his mind. Shouldn’t Eve have been [on] that situation?”

You seem to like to stuff a lot of stuff into your speech, like, to make it seem natural. Keep an eye on that, it looks tick-y. Work on using punctuation, pacing, as another way to naturalize.

//I'm going for a really specific, kinda satirical style with this shit and I'm not sure it works, like, at all. The idea is to show how reliant we are on technology by showing how much we try to depend on it even when it's taken away from us. Thoughts welcome.

Jonathan Bell, who was twenty years old, lay in a wickerwork cage about two metres by two metres square and at least three tall, with his face half buried in dead leaves and dirt, completely naked and without any of his possessions. He felt cold and exposed. His entire body itched with insect bites. There was a fly perched on the side of his nose. He squinted at it with a single eye and it flew away.

The first though that floated up into his aching consciousness was how strange and unsettling it was to be outside home without his wallet, keys, and phone, three items he went without so rarely that his mind now classified them on a basic level not as independent objects but simply as extensions of his body. He had lost his phone last year and in the two to three working days it took for the replacement to arrive he kept feeling phantom Facebook notifications and Snapchats the same way an amputee might get sensation in an arm that wasn't there.

The second thought to reach the surface was that is was definitely strange and unsettling to wake up naked, caged, in a forest, with a mouth full of leaf litter and a head empty of any memory of how he got there or even of drinking last night. Last night – or the last night he could remember, who knew how long he had been unconscious – he had spent unpacking his suitcases into the small Highland cottage he was renting in anticipation of another week-long attempt to 'get off the grid' and 'find himself' through the summer holiday. When he had said he wanted to get away from society this hadn't been what he'd had in mind.

>>5171606
People must think I'm fucking weird if that isn't natural speech.

And should I add a line in there about how they've been going round and round for a while now? That's why the officer is already snippy.

>>5171626
When he stood up, the scream of a trumpet sounded out of the trees, its source invisible in the darkness. At the edge of the clearing patches of shadow congealed into the forms of people. He was surrounded entirely, the full three-hundred and sixty degrees, by a ring of faceless and naked men and women. Jonathan knew this because he was now spinning on the spot, mouth agape, the panic finally starting to rise up in his stomach like vomit. Fully visible now in the light of the full moon, Jonathan could see that each one of his captors sported an elaborate headdress that covered their face with a black veil and rose upwards into a swaying crown of antlers and branches. Totally overtaken by the panic and now spinning at great speed, Jonathan's fevered mind scrabbled through his memories for any information that might help him out of the situation he found himself. The only thing it could find was a list of the films the situation reminded him of and the years they were released:
Kill List (2011)
You're Next (2013)
The Wicker Man (both versions, 2006 and 1973)
Star Wars Episode VI: The Return of the Jedi (1983, the bit where R2-D2 and C3PO first get caught by the Ewoks)

Jonathan had always prided himself of his knowledge of cult movies and today it all came together to tell him one thing: he was fucked.

>>5171627
I'm no great dialogue stylist, but the exchange seems to be mainly practical and professional, so I don't think annoyance would register in the investigator in anything but a sort of skepticism unless you have unprofessional cops.

I'm not sure about how natural it is. I would have to read a large chunk.

>>5151914
>>5151907
the internet's loneliest music nerd

>>5170968
Oh come on! It's a legit site - there's good stuff there, if you swim through the shit.

someone post something and i'll critique it

>>5171707
pastebin.com/uj5J7Y6G

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?

>>5171707

I wrote this for you and the world:

>>5170425
>>5170431

this thread is dead

>>5172785
Because everyone went to sleep.

>>5171538
>>5171531
>>5171516
I won't be able to post more for a while, but anyone else have anything to say about this stuff?

>>5171278
Man oh man I love me some Hachikuji

>>5172902
I retract this statement

http://pastebin.com/jgHJpqzu

What do you guys have to say about this? First time sharing, so I'm actually quite interested in opinions.

Bumping for more input

>>5173253
I think you already know that you need some damn organization to your writing. That first paragraph especially, what a fucking chore. I like the whole uncessant train-of-thought thing but you need to throw in some breaks or periods in there because having to constantly restart paragraphs and sentences because you don't know where you are isn't enjoyable.

I liked the beginning, I like your voice and style, and the ending seemed nice as well, but fuck me if you didn't lost me partway. I don't know what the fuck went on.

But seriously it's pretty good, just a confusing read due to organization. I think.

PS here's mine
http://pastebin.com/jaNmTJ6m

>>5167290
Someone please....