/lit/ - Literature

>The other one died already
There's been a serious lack of them recently. Unfortunately, I was heading to bed, so I can't critique right now, and I don't want to post mine without critiquing another.

>>6401553
My critique is that you should realise that stream of consciousness is a hundred years old, and incredibly boring when done wrong. I mean, did you ever find a phrase like this in Joyce

>the ambient mobile vulgus a coterie of façade-carpenters

You've got a wide vocabulary (if this really is your vocabulary) and you've got a sense of rhythm at least. What you need to start doing is thinking about what to do with this somewhat workable prose you've hammered out. And please avoid quirky shit like this

>Ghostpepper-dare-hey-why-don’t-you-in-all-these-white-paper-cups-mix-those-caliente-it’ll-be-fun-oh-but-at-your-expense-screw-you-I-enjoy-this-for-myself-endorphin-rush-asshole

I didn't even read it and I hate it.

Now I read it and I hate it even more. Remember that you fantasies, although innately interesting to you, mean nothing to the rest unless you make them interesting. A guitarist without talent? Fucking yawn.

Oh, and lines like

>Humanity unintentionally operates by clockwork

constitute pseudo-observations. All animals have an internal clock, and besides, all humans actually wear clocks.

As more concrete crit. I'd say you should focus on and develop each idea instead of trying to wow us with your mental leaps of association.

Follow the advice of Longinus. Think of your favourite writer, and ask yourself, what would he say? Alternatively, look at what he did, and compare it to what you did. Differences? Similarities?

Now it's only fair I open myself up to equally harsh criticism. This is something I wrote last night at 3 AM, guilty of many of the same problems as yours. It's more of a sketch that I wanted to get down before I went to sleep. Enough preamble, here it is:

http://pastebin.com/vmvBBkX3

>>6401553
>So I was strumming my guitar, pick-less, plastic-less, spineless, the ambient...
I suggest finishing the sentence after spineless or taking out some of the sentences. It feels it was dragged too long.
I agree with the anon above, don't go with a strem of consciousness just for the heck of it. It was relevant then because it was innovative, now if is not relevant to the story itself you better drop it.

>Ghostpepper-dare-hey-why-don’t-you-in-all-these-white-paper-cups-mix-those-caliente-it’ll-be-fun-oh-but-at-your-expense-screw-you-I-enjoy-this-for-myself-endorphin-rush-asshole
Please don't do this.

>Humanity unintentionally operates by clockwork
These kind of sentences gets old very quickly.

>didcha think I was...
Don't do this either.

Eventually, the return of silence woke me, though broken again by the distinctive ruffling of tin foil. The spectrum of color was altered. Each object retained its shape, but the hue of its coating, and subsequently, the flavor of its character had changed indescribably, had become unfamiliar. I wandered slowly into the kitchen where I stood dazed for several hours before my father trotted past the counter humming, and I remembered the Hole. Its dimensions were roughly achieved as they had been intended, but the edges of the Hole in the floor and the ceiling were jagged, unrefined. In the midst of my examination, I became aware of my father standing absolutely still behind me, watching me in wait for some response, though his disposition betrayed no desperation for any form of validation. It seemed that he was not quite satisfied, but actively suspended in some kind of hyper-focused state, subject to the wild adrenaline experiments of his biological unconscious, subtly but noticeably vibrating beneath his wrinkled skin. I stepped towards the Hole and scratched my back before staring directly at the absence. For just a few inches, one could see ribbed walls of mud, but beyond that, complete darkness obscured any and all material, denying, it seemed, even the possibility of perceptual existence in its thick, organic air. The Hole was defiant to all natural light, and without a doubt, could withstand all the cycles of the sun that have occurred and all the apexes it will ever reach. As interesting as it was, the mild reflection of the Hole was overtaken by bathroom logistics, so I ceased my reverie and turned to leave. But just as I began to make my way towards the toilet, my father seized me by the shoulders, then blankly, with great effort, threw me forwards and downwards into the Hole.

>>6401553
The other posters pretty much expressed my thoughts on this one.

>>6402386
Nicely written, if a little bland. Has a sort of "fairy tale" quality to it, in that the narration is mostly along the lines of, "He did this, he did that, the room was blah blah." Sex dialogue reads like something out of an H-manga, wooden and forced. Falling through screen concept is cool, feels like I've seen it before, though, and the rest of the story could have happened without it. Ending is heavy-handed.

>>6402463
Best ITT so far. Sometimes your word choice leaves a bit to be desired (sentence about adrenaline is overwrought, "blankly" seems out of place at the end). Anyway, I'm interested and would read more.

Pontious Pick was born at 13 pounds by a white mother. Pick shared his skin more with his father, although no one could compare- except those who saw him running from the hospital. Already pronounced a bastard among his community Pontious, had broken his first rule: taboo.

His schooling life brought no more favours than his birth. His initials instantly became a dynamite joke among the playground “What’s your problem PeePee?” the mean spirited students harassed. The real motivation behind the names was his complexion, offensive in it's contrast. Pontious could be seen behind the sports equipment shed mouthing the words ‘no problem‘, the words came out a breathless whisper. Unlike his mouth, his skin was asking for trouble. It promptly changed its colour: to black and blue.

One day in the yard, Pontious whispered ‘no more’. And as if the words gave him great power and came with a vicious nature (which was determined by the School board to have originated from his savage heritage) dealt his oppressors. This event would be a great shaper in Pontious’ short time in the education system. If you had asked him what the most valuable thing he learnt in those dark hallways he would respond,

“You have to be cruel to be cool, babe."

Bumping this thread now.

You take us home
That's your own fault
You grant us space
That's your own fault
What can you say that we don't know already?

You watch us breed
That's your own fault
With great hooray
That's your own fault
What can you give that we don't have already?

Don't treat us like we're not wanted
It's wrong to say we're not wanted
It's us who keep your weakened body going

No hidden spot where we're not wanted
No innocence we're not wanted to kill
You can't wake up cause you're awake already

You're set at easy with all your friendship
In your remote retirement off shore
Welcome home welcome home welcome home

We envy you in your uniqueness
We envy you cause you're not thinking anymore
Welcome home welcome home welcome home

What can you contribute? What can you contribute?
What can you contribute? What can you contribute?
What can you still afford? What can you still hope for?

These are your golden days well we don't see you gleam
Your mind is a jewel a jewel a forgery
You and your love, you and your terrible niceness

Are you stuck on the acid trip?
Are you stuck on the acid trip baby?

The other thread died before bump limit? Wow, strange. That rarely happens

>>6403304
This tries too hard, I think. It doesn't seem to me to have been written naturally, if that makes sense.
Regarding diction, it doesn't have any lines in particular that are all that impressive, thought-provoking, interesting, etc etc. I think the issue here is that you're going for meaning over matter, and so your piece isn't pleasing aesthetically. I'd recommend reading some modernist poets, or even some beats, despite their poor record around here. Their openness and neotranscendentalism I think might interest you and you may or may not benefit from some choice readings.


This here is a sonnet I wrote, inspired by and based on two Yeats pieces in particular. Would love thoughts on it.

When autumn sets upon us two fair lovers,
And the leaves pass on and darken, wither and fall,
The final rose of summer, all aestival others
long since faded, shall too answer winter's call.
We'll walk the 'bandoned beach of Innisfree,
Remark on once what was, and watch the water
Wake as blossoms leap from in their tree;
We'll feel the breeze that autumn's sure to father.
Our souls are love, it's said, an endless farewell;
Once again our spring will come, and with it
Will new flowers bloom in lover's spell;
So cry no more, my autumn leaf, just sit;
Sit and watch the grasses pass and grow
And smile, dear, at the rising buds of tomorrow.

>>6401553
> stringing my guitar
lol thats cute

I posted this in the poetry thread, but that thread's shit right now. So here we go:

Thin figure, pale,
standing in the gale,
hair tossed, arms out,
and her eyes are all about

The beach, the sea, the sky
the seagulls passing by.
Salt-taste sitting on her tongue
from which her taboo words had sprung.

"I don't care," "I don't see
what makes you so much better than me.
Without your clothes you cannot be,
but without mine, I'm still free."

She hugged the air and the air hugged back.
She closed her eyes and all went black.
But then a many colors arose,
of a former world in which those
worshiped, toiled, and conspired,
and they were so petty compared to the spires
and the water, mountains, and the coves,
a natural heaven of a girl called Rose.

She opened her eyes and she was there.
Like her spirit, standing bare.

But he drew a picture, physical, actual, to be discerned by the sense of smell and even of sight. It moved them: the temporary and abject helplessness of that which tantalised and frustrated desire; the smooth and superior shape in which volition dwelled doomed to be at stated and inescapable intervals victims of periodical filth.

Very short and rough section of lyrics I'm working on

Caricature fibs
Dismay the truth,
Amourette infancy
Of troubled youth,
Boyhood grace left
In Isaac's place,
The coup de lie
Left to die
To find the
Sparrow's might

>>6403608
pretty good, very beautiful. just a couple of cringe lines imo

>her eyes are all about
>from which her taboo words had spring
>so much better
remove 'much' imo

>>6403925
Thanks mate. That other thread picked up, now I'm double-dipping comments. Shit's cash.

>from which her taboo words had spring
Yeah, I had trouble leaving that line as is. It was different, didn't like what I changed it to. Awkward phrasing seems to be my Achilles heel in general, good to be aware of it.

Thanks fer the words.

>>6403128
You've got a good feeling here. Very 50's Florida greaser. Are you planning on expanding this? If so, how?

>>6403939
Yeah so how about you contribute and stop double dipping dicks you turbofaggot

>>6403128
The subject matter of your story seems to be old, there's to wrong with that in principle but it will be very hard to write anything that surprises,
The main character feels very general, without a particular personality, this is not a problem if you're planning to write more about him, and I don't mean following the story from where you left it but in between (the second paragraph could be expanded by describing his relationship with classmates more closely, his relationship with teachers, maybe a contrast between school life and home life).

>>6403720
I like this one. It feels a bit like Dazai mets Hesse.


http://pastebin.com/QcfrZXpJ

>>6403962
Tell you what, when I get home, I will. It's hard to critique at work. I am a man of my word, anon.

>>6403993
Paragraph one, you misspelled "settting".
A parenthesis within parenthesis? Figure out some other way to write that sentence, that stuff is annoying to read and seems very scatter-minded. Shit, you have two parenthesis inside one larger parenthesis, come on now. It's incredibly confusing to the reader and I had to read some of those sentences two or three times before I finally understood it.
The "[unfinished]" confuses me, is it saying you as the author aren't done writing that part, or is it part of the narrative?

By the end of reading that I was actually confused about whether this was a story or an outline for a story you plan to write later. It jumps between past and present tense, the narrator seems to be aware it's a story even when it is in present tense, and he even outright says "this is the twist: ..." which just baffles me as to why you decided to do that. The narrator also apparently was confused about a black man being a door, so I have no idea if I'm supposed to even trust this narrator or not.

I didn't really care about the twist either because the story has no build up or even really a meaning or purpose for existing that I could figure out, other than to write something. I don't care about the narrator, I don't care about the family, the occupants of the graveyard (who are all dead?), or Lisa. I found that I really didn't even care what happened, or if he found Lisa's grave or not.

In short, to put it fairly, you need to consider what it is you actually want to say and start over. Take your time with the pacing of the story, don't rush it so much that you have to blatantly tell us that there is a twist and what the twist is. I'd like to know more about the family and Lisa so I can find a reason to care about what happens as well. Right now it just seems like a small scene from a larger work that makes zero sense as a stand-alone story.


http://pastebin.com/BuTDfVMN

>>6401553
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bbWjbBwe7vzZ2oDj64X6uZ9sr4dYyuqamhDIUISZb6o/edit?usp=sharing

Posting this again, a one act play I wrote that was successfully put on at my uni. It's blatantly inspired by Tarantino and others + I wrote it in one day but people really enjoyed it.

The success of it has honestly inspired me to continue writing and I'm already hard at work on a full length play, but I'm skeptical. What does /lit/ think?

>>6402463
Will echo what another poster said, this was very intriguing and cerebral. Inspired by Borges, perhaps? Very opaque and heavy atmosphere and nice imagery. I thought some of the words could be changed around for better emphasis but overall very nicely done. Would be cool to expand it to a longer story.

>>6401553
Please try again. Some wild imagery here and you clearly have a wide vocabulary but it felt way too contrived, like you were trying too hard. Find your own voice.

>>6403380
This wasn't bad, you have some ok ideas and pretty imagery but it almost felt like a Hallmark card from 1900 or something. Very saccharine.

>>6403608
This could be GREAT but some of the word choices are terrible.
>taboo words had sprung
>all of the "I don't care" stanza
>all of the first stanza
The fourth stanza is really well done, I loved it. The idea is great but some of it is cringey. Fix it and you'll be golden anon.

>>6403720
Needs to be longer, and, I'm sorry, it feels kind of edgy. Another anon compared it to Hesse and Dazai and in this case I don't really think it's a good thing.

>>6403993
This is...interesting. I feel like certain segments of it are very poorly written, but I think that the mundanity almost adds to it. I still think some re-writes could be done (run-on in the first paragraph) but it was very surreal. Interested to see what it leads to.

Challenge here is to write an introduction using a main character picked by the last poster. Introductions are short but filling, they often show a whole story in a brief moment. Here's one example using "The Jester",
A story told of the Jester of unreality in the dark world of Pandemonia. Followed by a gory and murderous spirit that psychotically attacks the space of his last still position, he avoids senseless death by the Lord, an individual emotionless with sights on the world, the sinner. In the world of Pandemoinia, people are not bound by physical laws, as much, they are given more freedom although their shell is still humane.

There are two great landmarks in Pandemonia; beneath the planet lay the Devil's lair, inhabited by a Devil, an abomination who leaves nothing but death and destruction in his path; he takes the form of a glitch, a black, rising, spirit; fearful and flashy-- and above the ground is a vast and elaborate world, the Mantle, with three major continents, and a few minor continents. Each major continent is dedicated to an element, and it's effect on the Earth; Eurga the Earth continent, Kore the Water continent, and Ra the Air continent; the Devil's void is said to replace the missing continent of Fire.

Pandemonia is a mistake, a fake land biased towards sin and illusion; the Devil has a crushing grasp on Pandemonia, but the strong heart of good people has claimed victory in so far as making the Devil retreat to his lair, so things are less dark and maleficent.

A cold irony plagues the air, for humans lived on Earth once, where a great battle occurred and story unfolded that brought humans to this place, beautiful but saddening. Trapped here, the Jester knows in himself that he must die if he wants to return to Earth and save his fallen girlfriend.

The Lord, comfortable at his true home, is given powers to express profound and crisp imagination; using this skill he avoids most contact, vanishing into thin air, leaving a random imprint behind him for a brief second-- he moves like a ghost.

And finally the Angel in Pandemonia, or 'the scarred one'; he appears two-faced, half-Devil and half-Angel, and he is one-winged, so he cannot fly but holds onto extraordinary athletic ability, the Devil's wicked laugh sometimes resonates through his mind.

The devil has stolen the heart of fire, and it has caused all fire in the real world to extinguish; there is no light or heat anymore, but instead an infinite, cold and black void.

On a heartbeats edge, the Jester must take back the heart of fire to return his world back to normal, and light the Primal Flame. Pandemonia, like the Devil, is heartless and unreal, but with the heart of fire, the Devil has made the impossible a reality. Pandemonia's shape and form, or the vast array of them, are bent around the truth that is; that's why there are continents dedicated to only three of the four classical elements, that's why Pandemonia is heartless like the Devil...

>>6404366
sorry for bad copy pasta screw the 'Challenge here part".

Clouds

I decided to stay
the size of your cock
grounds me

one more day
between heavens and new york

you take me to the beach
to race with clouds of amagansett
I feed you
dark chocolate ginger coated in sand

you ask to retell
everything
you are more patient than my lawyers
more human than my shrinks

but
I don’t want to talk
I can cry
I can fuck

so you keep the lights on
pouring dreams
into my eyes

male savage nature

as if pleasure wasn’t enough
as if giving me your hopes
could save you from the solitude

could save me

>>6404366

too much autismo world building and data dumps

prose has some potential tho

>>6403720
terrible pointless self indulgent

>>6404431
indeed?

>>6404436

indeed?

>>6404437
What about part 3 where they come back as the more heavenly world, but just the Devil and Jester as opposed natural abominations, basically, humane but with realistic animal expressions , colourful, vibrant and in-depth, and that's how they appear. The Devil is more aggressive than the Jester-- and he appears as himself, however, he has white on his face, and transforms into the Jester's childish and playful side which is restricted in the real Jester who is more serious in this episode?

Whatever made him special was also cruel enough to make him handicapped with no drive. The thing is, unless you do try, nothing comes. The tunnels and crossroads his mind was constantly combing through in search of something, anything absorbing really, have become a torturous labyrinth with no exit. The never ending battle to find a thought poignant enough to warrant ink use was all but close to over. Inspiration did not come, waiting for it was almost as waiting for salvation. Only difference being, you can die expecting one and still be more than well off.
Thankfully, little did he know it was right about to rain. Drops and little trickling streams of water seemed to make his mind a little more numb than usual and were invaluable aid in calming the typhoon struck sea of thought. Not wanting to pick up where he left off wandering about with no particular direction, he stood up from a particularly creaky senile wooden chair and decided to walk outside. His raincoat was the only piece of clothing around and so it ended on his back, helping him trudge through the rain wall. Drenched in midnight sweat and rainwater alike, he strode carefully almost as to not fall. It took a while to come up with a goal of an absurd midnight journey. Visiting the cliffs nearby. As far as travels go, this one was quite close, barely a mile down the road and then a sharp left uphill. Sighting the sea were a few conveniently placed boulders on which many have sat and thought of grandeur.
Sitting down on the mossy stones overlooking the cliffs made his testicles cold. The realization of being completely naked underneath a skimpy raincoat made his cock swell. Loneliness hit him almost as hard as the monsoon rain, knocking him off the cliff; into the water. The only thing he left behind was a shit stain on the stone, and even that was wiped out by persistent rain.

>>6404479

Eyes started drifting around "the thing is" and I couldn't read anymore.

>>6403993
>>6404359
>>6404431
lel, it's Faulkner you turboplebs.
Proof that 90% of /lit doesn't read and these critique threads are pointless because no one here has any idea what good prose is.

>>6404484
>They don't understand good writing, I was mimicking a famous author!
poorly mimicking*

>>6404484
You can't judge prose when its one line taken out of context. You aren't the epic troll you think you are, you're a faggot

Because if you just pick a point on the window and stare at it, you won't have to make awkward eye-contact with anybody.
"Yeah no I went to sleep around,,, -- *seven* and I uh -- I was up at eleven or something like that and good and trashed by about midnight."
"Haha"
"Yeah."
The gnawingly hypnotic hum of the bus's engine; you can feel it in your ass and hear it in the juice of your head even when people are talking. The bus not completely full today but people still have to stand; the two guys talking are standing.
"So good weekend."
"Haha" -- nodding.
Things passing by the point on the window: tree, tree, tree; lamppost in front of tree; empty space, the sky full of wine-colored early-morning sunlight; house; tree.

It became stupidly clear about ten minutes ago that it's dumb and pointless to avoid eye-contact with people on the bus because the people they're just strangers, and any awkwardness you might share with them would have no effect on your day or your life; a thought which co-occurred with the realization that refusing to acknowledge the existence of people you're enclosed in a sparse mechanical space with is itself a kind of perfect synecdoche of the atomized nature of modern industrial society; a realization that was quickly appended by the idea that ruminating about stuff like "the atmozied nature of modern industrial society" is about the most cliched and obvious thing an undergraduate can do; a realization which was soon buttressed by the idea that being aware of how cliched and obvious you were being only mitigated the 'sin' involved, that it didn't eradicate it completely, -- that you were still being obvious and banal and dumb, only in a really intricate and self-absorbed way no one could see.

You feel tired.

"Allie's a dime tho"
"Haha"

So very, very tired.

>>6404493
>mimicking
It was a direct quote, dumbshit.

>>6404680
ignorance != stupidity, but you sure are making it seem like it does.

>>6404252
Thanks for your comments

>seems very scatter-minded
That's pretty much the idea. I still haven't decided if I'm gonna keep them or don't.

>The "[unfinished]" confuses me, is it saying you as the author aren't done writing that part, or is it part of the narrative?
It's just a draft, I haven't finished that part.

>>6404484
Faulkner?...
Some weeks ago other anon also compared one draft of mine (a crap story about a nurse) with his writing style.
To be honest, I still haven't read him but I bought 'As I lay dying' because of that.
Thanks for the reminder.

>>6402463
>though his disposition betrayed no desperation for any form of validation.

10/10

a little wordy but i like your style

>>6404424
Got distracted by "the size of your cock."

Arms bent and shaking,
keeping pace, but
not settling into rhythm.

Heavy breaths disappear into
blackness—invisible, like Brown,
or Garner, or Scott.

Passing under a streetlamp,
my shadow overtakes me
and pulls away.

How long has it been?
A minute running feels so much longer
than a minute at rest.

>>6403380
The meter is all wrong, doesn't flow in iambic, which I'm assuming you were going for. The rhyme in the last couple is especially metrically jarring, say it aloud. When writing a poem I think it's best to be able to hum the meter of it before you even try to think of the words, then try to set the write words around the tune.

This is a WIP fantasy/horror story. I hope I'm not making some glaring mistakes
http://pastebin.com/yQKeVkkR

>>6404671
This is well written but the grammar is kind of scrambled. Stream of consciousness and second person don't mix, and they're both really hard to pull off. Honestly, unless you're explaining a hypothetical scenario without a plot or trying to stylistically resemble text based RPGs you probably should avoid second person completely. There are some amazing works of second-person lit, but they are extremely rare and mostly controversial

>>6404739
Do sjw write poetry now?

>>6403952
Yeah this is just an excerpt from a slightly larger piece, I wanna contribute first before i post more

>>6404712
>The scatter-minded was on purpose
It can work, but you'll have to figure out how to make it make coherent sense despite being "scattered". I know that sounds paradoxical, but if it's too confusing for the reader then they won't want to read it. You have to make it easy to read while creating a sense of scatter-mindedness. Don't worry, it's possible, I've seen it done.

>>6403608
first stanza was dissappinting considering how beautiful the rest of it was

>>6404768
>Knowing him he had probably stopped shit behind a tree and forgotten to mention it
I hope he did! Someone has to stop The Shit!

The horror aspect of it is lost because it lacks the suspense and trepidation that skilled horror writers have. There was no sense of fear for me as to what "the monster" may have been, or how it was going to attack.

Also, by saying that they knew their meat was going to taste bad, you may have accidentally(?) implied that they suck at hunting because if the animal gets scared their sympathetic nervous system makes them secrete acid in their stomach, which stains and sours the meat. That makes the entire joke they pulled really an ass move because they don't even have the right to test the kid, being such shit hunters that they only ever eat sour meat.

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain'd his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the even-song;
And, having pray'd together, we
Will go with you along.
We have short time to stay, as you
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay
As you, or anything.
We die
As your hours do, and dry
Away,
Like to the summer's rain;
Or as the pearls of morning's dew,
Ne'er to be found again.

>>6401553
Overwrought and mostly devoid of ideas.

>That feel when your writing is so shit that people skip over it
B-Back to the drawing board

>>6404879
I understand your pain.

I offer high quality critiques in exchange for RARE pepes

>>6404879
>>6404883
A few people will read your story. Out of those few some might actually be find something to say about it. Out of those few people even fewer will bother to write something up, and most of those will be low effort attempts to ridicule you. The easiest way to get a critique is to have a big obvious error that will greatly improve the work when fixed, but of course that won't help you out

Point me toward what you wrote and I will acknowledge that it exists (that's what we all want here)

>>6404887
Will you accept a St. Wojak crushing/elevating the Pepe?

>>6404688
Sounds like something stupid people say.

>>6404907
>I will acknowledge that it exists
th-thanks
>>6404252

Someone who talks spanish can please critique this? I'm submitting it for my university's poetry contest.

Oda al Néctar de la Vida

Dionisio la creó para complementar el vino.
Mulata, negra o clara, ella cambia de apariencia.
Algunos la calumnian, la llaman decadencia
porqué con poca ciencia altera nuestro sino

A Helios cabalgante le arma competencia,
emergiendo entre la nieve, ya logrado el desalojo.
Expone nuestro ser con harta vehemencia,
ayudando a amedrentar nuestro natal congojo.

Acompaña perfecta el sabor de un cigarro,
la charla con amigos, la dulce voz del diablo,
y el inherente ardor que en nosotros deja el guaro

Su invigorante fuerza multiplica mi vocablo,
y su alargada ausencia deja un sabor amargo.
Sin ella la vida sería solo un triste retablo.

>>6404879
People on this board love to criticise, so if your writing was ignored that means no one found anything wrong with it.

>>6404867
This is only the first page, not even close to the whole story. The real horror story starts when the father doesn't come back

>>6403091
>>6404359
>>6404736


This is one paragraph from a short-story I wrote, will post whole thing now. Borges is a source of inspiration in the way of style and mood but Beckett is more central overall (in terms of thematic content, etc.)

http://pastebin.com/ZEizAWm5

>>6404991
Ah, alright, that's a good start then, giving a false sense of hope that it was all just a joke in the story. I look forward to the rest, or at least a horror section to see how that goes. Sorry for that confusion.

>>6404484
fuck you ye cheeky cunt

>>6404359
well, I read the one act play and and its pretty good. Congrats

>>6404927
I'm going to skip over any errors that could be removed by proofreading, but I will say that there were a few and it isn't a good sign when you've missed something easy to fix.

>They want to take me to a nice indoor pool, and I don't want to swim, and I don't want to climb up the ladder to get out and then be cold and wet, and it's boring as Hell but I have to go anyway.
While this sentence is a little awkward it does capture the misery of having to get out of a pool and taking mincing steps as your swimsuit clings to you. The problem is that it then goes on for another paragraph listing off all of the other miseries the narrator is either going to experience or already is experiencing. You're writing a story, and not making a Wojak at a party image, so cut down the bitching to the minimum needed to establish that the narrator is miserable then move on.

Second paragraph is the same as the first in that it just lists off everything that the narrator doesn't like about having to wait for the bus.

>The left's clothes are Gothic while the right's are more acceptable
These aren't very good descriptions and they don't really evoke any image for me. Get a little more in depth if you're going to describe what they look like.

Next paragraph is a digression that doesn't really go anywhere and then doesn't become relevant later.

Okay after this nothing happens. It's just a continuation of the guy's inner monologue about how he can't approach these two girls which is admittedly pretty boring, and it's like the beginning in that it gets repetitive. We know that he's this miserable loser who gets lost in his thoughts. You sum it up nicely here
>I stretch my arms after all that useless thinking
Yeah all of that thinking was pretty pointless, and I don't like that I had to read it.

Remember that you can evoke a feeling pretty easily with just a few images, but when you keep heaping them on like you did and then don't do anything with them it gets boring. Overall it was mediocre, nothing really jumped out at me as being particularly good or bad in it.

Posted this in another thread but it got ignored. After reading an Irish diary I was inspired to write in an Irish story, hopefully it ain't bad.
~

A wee man come down the road and down the road he came—this man, you see—and well, he tell me, "Mate, me wife, she let me on!" I knew the feelings this man was telling me. I gave him a pat on the back, for I knew his struggle, and then off we went to the pub.

‘Good forenoon to you gentlemen,’ the barman said. We went and sat down at the bar, ‘What’ll it be lads?’

I said a pint then turned to the wee man. Poor fellow, ‘Pint for you?’

‘Aie!’ the wee man said, then I, then the entire pub.

‘Bloody Protestants!’

‘Cussed bastards they are! I’ll smash’m the first chance I get I tell ya—didn’t I tell ya Gordon?’

‘Aie so he did!’ smashing a pint against his head, glass and froth exploding across the room.

I started getting anxious, ‘You want to be off? Ain’t too pleasant when the lads’re riled up.’

‘Why? So I can return to that whore of a woman? No thank you! Actually, I ought be setting her straight. Aie! Lads!’ he said, standing up, facing the violent crowd, ‘I know where a Royal be boarding! Pop in at 53 Clonfadden, she’s there right now!’

‘Bloody brilliant, cheers mate! Up you get lads!’ The men, the finest Éire had up her sleeve, marched out the pub and down the road, singing a ballade o’ Gael, Clonfadden way. I turned to the wee man who sat beside me, sipping his pint and having a laugh. ‘That’s how one deals with a mischievous wife,’ he said.

‘I’ll drink to that!’ I said, clonking glasses, taking a wee swig. The piano man started playing, oh what a sweet ballade it was, and me and the wee man laughed and laughed our troubles away.

Such is life in Ireland.

>>6405072
Thanks, I understand what you're saying. I'll work on it, cut it some, or maybe just throw it out if nothing seems to work well.

>>6405055
Thanks! I appreciate it. Do you have any commentary about it?

Since the freedom of birth their vision has been folded
Cut crossed designed refined and molded
With enough dreams to outnumber the stars in the sky
They become masters of illusion until they die
Every life in their blood is the life of their own
Every warrior slain, every king overthrown
Weight that grows heavier on every set of shoulders
No love for children's children if they can't move boulders
But eventually a child will learn to just be
And they will teach their children what it means to be free

>>6404671
I enjoyed this a ton

Something angsty and odd I wrote. Call me a fag, etc.
.

http://pastebin.com/eaSaVxtp

>>6404359
>This could be GREAT but some of the word choices are terrible.
>The fourth stanza is really well done, I loved it. The idea is great but some of it is cringey. Fix it and you'll be golden anon.

>>6404865
>first stanza was dissappinting considering how beautiful the rest of it was

Wow, thanks for the comments guys. I figured it was just fluff but I guess I've got something.

Admittedly I have trouble with those awkward phrases. I can feel that they're awkward as I type them. I guess I just need to get better at nipping that in the bud.

And, as promised:
>>6405093
I don't know Irish slang very well, so I can't critique accuracy, but I really like this 'cause it's the type of day-in-the-life type stuff I dig. It has good atmosphere. I want to spend an entire night in an Irish pub one day.

>>6405610
I'm getting ready for bed, so I can't give a full critique yet, but I wanted to find something to give criticism to before darting. Havin' a hard time getting into this, honestly. There's a lot of detail about the river and it's nice and all for setting the mood, but I began to lose interest. By the middle of their back-and-forth exchange is where I checked out. There needs to be a hook. Lots of people commit suicide. Why is this one interesting?

>I hadn’t seen or heard the old man slowly approaching me.
This is a case where there's adverbs that really don't add much, and it looks like that's a recurring problem.If the man is merely approaching, the picture is still clear. People will assume he is slowly approaching, since he wasn't heard. Stuff like that.

Anyway, 'night for now. Goodbye, /lit.

>>6405610
I'm going to ignore grammar after saying you need to look at fragments and avoid listing like five things with "and," as it doesn't do you any favors here.

Think about switching the first two paragraphs, the initial paragraph is too much description without any investment yet from the reader. It will also allow the approaching person to come off as surprising the protagonist. On that note, you're a bit redundant. Don't tell the reader that the old man came as a surprise, just show us the protagonist didn't notice him before he spoke. Be specific about how the man is dressed. Give a good juxtaposition between him being barefoot and his clothes.

>I thought really long and hard about lunging myself forward at that exact second. Flying head first into the river, with any sort of luck snapping my neck upon impact. Not that I believe in luck. Not that I don’t believe in it either. I’ve just never seemed to run into it. But, I decided not to. I remember the air being remarkably calm.

Feels out of place. Either rework it a bit or omit it and just show us that he is being pensive. Even him just staring at the water would tell us everything here. Also I never see him snapping at the old man. Feel like the explanation given is forced. Your usage of "yah/ya" bothers me a bit.

Cut off the last line. Look for any place where emotions are listed and show us through body language instead.

Other than that, I think the best part for sure is when you are describing the river with some clarity. Overall it just feels unfinished, but I got through it, so there's that.


On that note, here's my daily writing exercise.
http://pastebin.com/j8jSzjEf

>>6405250
>They become masters of illusion until they die
This line seems out of place to me.

>>6401553
If one considers the possibility of infinity he finds that it is death to a degree
The brain stops but the body keeps moving
and with every step a little more is lost
proving the original thesis of partial decay
an unpleasant discovery tinged with
the ray of hope that is shining
through a pane of mortality

>>6401553
pOETRY

an aye aye has a moment of complete obscurity
The Eater of Dreams

by Anon

A warm and forward wind hums through the treetops.

The brownskin children run when they see me, crouched as I am at the top of a baobob.
‘Cours! Allons-y! II y a le mal dans cet arbre!’
There is an evil in this tree.
Am I an evil?
I lift my spindly fingers to wave.
But they do not notice, their backs disappear into the forest, fear in their wobbling shrieks.
And I continue, dead-eyed.
Continue to scratch and to scratch and to scratch and to dig and to dig and to dig. Nails chipping and cracking with every drag across the bark.
In hope of grubs and insects.
In hope of finding something.
A hope fulfilled?
A hope fulfilled uncertainly, because this one is square, and less alive than the others.
Less alive, but in a subtle way, for life is relative.
Swallow, feel the beat hit me.
What is it.
Where is it.
How will it affect me.
My pupils balloon and fill my strepsirrhine eyes.
The hair on my bulbous knuckles bristles.
My internal organs detract and dehydrate.
I cling to the trunk as the world whips around me.
And as the larvae drags me through the cracks in reality.
Across the great gulfs of absolutely fucking nothing.
And into the twilight realm.
The sleeping realm.
The kingdom of rapid eye movement and dimethyltryptamine trances.
The stars are portals which solar winds pour out of like a smoking gun barrel.
The moon is a fermenting orb of liquid ambrosia and aqua vitae and potentially semen.
The distant lights of fires
Across the canopy.
Messages between dark eyed men and women
Who sharpened stones in fear of the coming night.
And I am that coming night.
I am at odds with all that was.
I am one with all that is.
My tongue be forked.
My eyes be fire.
My baobob be a nebula.
My heart be the drumbeat under the quantum strings of the universe.
This be my land.
Where the rain is black.
Where the snakes bite with sugar.
Where the birdsong has rhythm.
Where the zany years have yet to caterwaul across the sky.
Where the suns are all in one place.
Where the liquid glass chasms of oblivion and eternity have yet to slip
Across the strings of reality
And cut themselves apart.
Where I am the King of Kings of Madagasikara, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Elect of God.

>>6405747
And now,
Where the children run screaming toward me:
PLEASE, DAUBENTONIA, PLEASE EAT OUR DREAMS.
OUR DREAMS, THEY TERRIFY US, WE CANNOT LIVE OUR LIVES BUT FOR THE FEAR WE FEEL WHEN THE SUN GOES DOWN AND OUR LIDS GROW HEAVY.
WHEREFORE ARE OUR DREAMS SO UNCIVIL AND BARBAROUS, SWEET DAUBENTONIA?
WHEREFORE MUST WE DREAM, AND NOT STAY AWAKE FOREVER?
And I thunder in my arboreal tongue:
Whoever said you were asleep when you dream?
WHAT DOST THOU MEAN, FOUL CANNIBAL APE?
I don’t know, I’m just trying to sound portentous.
EAT THE DREAMS, LITTLE MONKEY!
And they proffer them to me, as sweets and jewels illustrious in their glad and glucose-rich fruition.
I feast, because it is the only thing that pulls me along.
HOW DO THEY TASTE, PROSIMIAN?
They taste like you are very afraid.
WHAT FUN, WE ARE SO VERY AFRAID!
As you should be, for the storm is coming. I see the inferno and the lightning. I see God killing the infidels.
FUCKING GOD, ALWAYS WITH THE KILLING INFIDELS.
TELL US MORE, LITTLE APE.
Order and purpose are fallacies.
BRILLIANT.
If I were you I’d end it now.
THAT’S THE PLAN, TREE-RAT.
Tie stones to your feet and jump in the river or eat unknown fruit or just put your fingers in electrical sockets.
WE WERE THINKING ROPES. THEY FOLLOW US EVERYWHERE. NOOSES FROM THE BRANCHES OF RAINFOREST TREES.
Great idea. Let me know if it works.
WE ARE VERY AFRAID.
I don’t care any more.
GOODBYE, NIGHT DEMON.
Oh, I’m feeling it.
WE ARE GOING TO RUN NOW.
Come up and get me.
NO.
I’m in your area.
GOODBYE, WE ARE BROKEN.
I gave you the fever, aye aye.
YOU GAVE US THE FEVER, AYE AYE.
And they run again.
The sky fades to blue.

I drift back.
The gulf of reality closes.
The tree coalesces under me.
My tongue is flat.
My eyes see dark.
My tree is rotten.
My heart is a pitter patter in silence.
A faltering one.
A candle waiting to be blown out.

I was at one with all that was.
I am at odds with all that is.

A chill and backward wind hisses through the treetops.

The point is that it's a story about circumstance, people, things like that. A reflection of life in art and all that jazz. It doesn't have any "message" or a "theme" it's trying to get across if you know what I mean. A guy walks into a place and talks to somebody or asks something, they shuffle about giving him time to take in his surroundings. He notices an oddity, scene ends. Cut to a lady walking on the beach, all you see is dark murky film without enough light. What do you make of it? Why did they bother filming it in the first place? Critics will love it, average folks will be confused, and all the "clever" kids will force it to be something so they can lord it over others they deem stupid.

>>6405734
>If one considers the possibility of infinity he finds that it is death to a degree

This line sounds like you're unsure of what you're saying. The rest leads nowhere quickly, you need to capture me.

>>6405747

niiiiice

>>6405797
I like the way you use multiples of the same letter to show sincerity

>>6403907
I like this a lot...the Isaac line in particular

>>6405657
>I don't know Irish slang very well, so I can't critique accuracy.
I admit I went a bit overboard with the slang, I only understand it because the diary I read had a glossary, but I'm glad you liked the atmosphere of it. Thanks.

>>6401553
Je vendrai mon âme aux sorcières sans nul doute ou hésitation,
Si la passion de ma déroute ne rendait ma lame si amère.
Des mers de flammes, des routes de fer, je ne tire plus aucun plaisir,
J’échangerai tout mon empire pour une nuit avec les sorcières

Le matin mon corps mis a sac, éviscéré et vaincu,
Souriant, ensanglanté, sous un tombeau de désaccords
Je ne serais toujours pas repu, j’en redemanderai encore,
jusqu'à la morsure a la gorge qui trop tôt sera venue.

Mais même mon cadavre mis a nu, on ne trouvera aucune faiblesse
Aucune faille, aucune bassesse, ou porter un dernier coup.
Et si ma carcasse, debout, se tourne vers l’horizon,
elle paraîtra si vivace que les enfants en pleureront.

Qu’importe a travers l’univers, ou je me trouverai réunis !
Au sommet du paradis ou dans les abysses de l’enfer,
Si ma monnaie je récupère pour qu’a nouveau je sois maudis,
j’attendrai un millénaire devant la porte des sorcières.

posting some critique now

Oh let the sun beat down upon my face, stars to fill my dream
I am a traveler of both time and space, to be where I have been
To sit with elders of the gentle race, this world has seldom seen
They talk of days for which they sit and wait and all will be revealed

>>6403608
I really like this, but I agree with the others that the first stanza is weak compared to the rest.

What have you done?!

The possibility is limited: Close the open door. (close the open door) stuck neurons passing. Zarathustra ongoing, opposed punch.

Scratching nnnggggggggg scraping that expanding neck.

His glass will arrive with you, will scream at your reflection.

I'll laugh. I'll smile, yes :)

>>6406199

I really dig this. The humor, the phonaesthetics, the images. Would be interested in stories you might tell, essays you might write, and any supplementary poems.

;_)

>>6405839
thanks man :) nice to get a reply eventually

>>6401553

Sorry OP but you lost me after the first two sentences. Came off as extremely pretentious.

Feel free to ignore me though, I enjoy writers who value simplicity and don't feel the need to shove a dictionary into every paragraph of their writing. This may work for you and others may love it.

>>6406135
Since this seems to be a repeated criticism, what exactly about the first stanza is weak? Just too simple/cringy? (I do kind of like the way it sets up the rhythm of the rest of the poem).

>>6405846
I don't know, I don't think you went overboard. It's enough to slightly muddle comprehension but not so much that you can't tell what they're talking about. I don't find it overbearing, either. But then again, I love hearing Irish accents.

>>6405747
>>6405750
I dig this a fucking lot.

Great first life! The one beneath the other beneath and the other beneath him,he that was last.
In you is the house in which dwells the blind one whose vision is only that of himself,truly.
He that is bulbous and sick in appearance,he that viciously beats upon his robe at the river of lost mankind.
truly they have dug deep enough to forsake the light.

>>6403907

wow this sux

>>6405747
calm down stefan

>>6401553
Daily Reminder you're all very very bad writers.

Ok. Attempting a short story. This is what I have so far. I need to be less autistic I think.

In late March the ice that often sees the sun begins to melt in James' parents new backyard. The backyard is to the west of the house, and there is not much grass there. Half of the yard turns into a thick mud when the snow melts. There is a tall trailer that delays this from happening until late March. You can see the grass and the damage from winter on the other half that sees the sun earlier much quicker than this. The side of the backyard with the mud and trailer is always dug up from the big truck his father owns. He drives it back and forth over the dirt when it's soft. If he feels he hasn't driven over it enough, he will get in his tractor and dig holes. His father spends a lot of his free time in our backyard and James hopes that he will do something else when he is a father.

His father stands at six feet tall but has never mentioned his height to James before. However, he often brings up how proud he feels to have raised a son taller than him. On the night of James' little cousins fourteenth birthday, two fathers fought with their fists over a disagreement about who had the taller son. They drink heavily. James' uncle, who he fought is named Marcus, and he used to sleep in their old basement. Marcus used to smell vile because he didn't like to come upstairs and use the shower. He liked to keep to himself even though he stunk of mildew and rot. Both Marcus and his father are dark skinned. James' grandmother told them their father was a Native man of shorter stature, but she is tall and pale.

>>6406902
You that is nothing,you that is truly the only death,you that has risen from black waters!
trully it is you that has collected the waters from your brow! You great one that crushed his teeth and blew ash
into the waters of your palm!

Yout that has begotten the last one from ash and water!
Him,the blind one,the sole Dreamer,the great Archon,the Ignorant one,the Creator.

Who is wiser then? You that emerged from black waters.
Hear you that can not hear me,it is you that is last,for the first begotten is the begetter to himself.
Only a fool would embrace your house of black waters.
It is the wise who wish to behold and behold trully,like him that behelds us and is beheld by you.

Say onto yourself wise fools:
I have created
I have dreamed
I have weald
I have not seen
I have not beheld

Yesterday a pregnant cop arrested me;
she, a meter maid; I, a serial killer.
The cuffs broke my wrists and
her water broke, wetting my socks.
In a rush, I swung her by the ER
and drove myself to the precinct.
The desk clerk looked confused
but settled once I told him
that I was the Citiville Slasher
and have decided to retire,
for the welfare of my newborn
depends on my hunkering down
rather than being on the lam
that Mary lost decades ago.

>>6407068
>In late March the ice that often sees the sun begins to melt
nigga,autist begginer writers always do this ''analogy based description'' shit,pls stop nigga.

the rest is ok,based on the content id advise you base the story in a foregin poor country and change the names of the characters.

>>6407068
This happened, that happened. This thing is next to that thing, and has details. The details are as follows... That's basically how that reads. I'd say being "less autistic" is a start. Cut out irrelevant details. "Our" backyard? Aside from this, the narration seems to be 3rd person. Avoid unnecessary words. For instance, "a Native man of shorter stature," could be, "a short Native man," without losing any meaning. There are other instances like that throughout.

>>6404993
Great shit, actually entertaining and well-written. First few paragraphs seem to meander a bit, maybe cut to the chase sooner.

>>6404768
Alright. You write decent dialogue. Descriptions could use some polish. "They had nothing to fear, for their meat tasted foul as they knew from experience," uses too many pronouns. It's unclear which they is the ravens and which is the hunting party, breaks up the flow. At the end there it seems like you're missing a few paragraphs; that fire sprang out of nowhere. Also do we really need to know the species of every tree in the forest? My main complaint with your writing is that there are too many clauses and qualifiers in each sentence, and it's mostly just fluff.

>>6404479
Lay off the "and" a little bit.

>>6406934
Practice makes perfect, Anon. They'll never make anything worthwhile without churning out a ton of garbage first.

>>6405750
big fan of death grips I see.

I've seen other people use pieces and portions of the lyrics in poems and shit, but this might be the best use of them I've seen.

Not that that's a good critique or anything.

4/5

A poker face is hard to keep,
When dealt a hand of hearts.
My cheeks grow red,
And my hand does quiver so,
When dealt a hand of hearts.
Thump, thump, thump,
Goes the rhythm in my chest.
And I can't get you off my mind.
I love you dearly, so dearly, it's true.
But you only go for winners
And this hand of hearts won't do.

>>6407234
>The cuffs broke my wrists
but he
>drove myself to the precinct.
Are they metaphorical broken wrists or did you not think this through?

>>6408910

Since the meter maid is his baby momma, it's implied that she lent him the keys so he could drive her to the hospital.

>>6409085
Yes, but how did he drive the car with broken wrists?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sTBHoeV033FGNT-PaoBrlq8AfyEmC_Hco1u-GVVuL1Y/edit?usp=sharing

Just a start. Might as well see if I'm off in a good direction. Sorry it doesn't go anywhere yet, I don't plan to hit the Salinger singularity for a few pages.

>>6409112

Have you never persevered with broken bones under the beastly weight of Atlas' creaking neck and nigh?

I don't know, man. It's just a poem. It doesn't have to be literal

>>6404768

Not sure if you're still here, or someone else would like to dovetail of this comment, but: is there anything about my usage of second-person in particular, in this excerpt, that detracts from the piece, or could have been accomplished better with the third person? More than happy to attempt a rewrite on this one.

My own reasoning for using the second-person was that it immediately establishes a sense of intimacy with the reader -- a sense of intimacy which I think is vital, in this piece, since the piece's main goal is to articulate some thoughts/emotions that I think a lot of other people have. The goal is for someone to read this and think "Oh man -- he sees me."

>>6405599

Thanks man (if you're still here, too.)

>>6409183

Reallllll cool. Read it first and rolled my eyes a little; read it a second time and started putting the piece together; read it a third time and genuinely enjoyed it. If I had to give it a dumb commercial blurb I'd call it "Invitingly dense."

There's just enough assonance in the first paragraph for you to kind of slide along on the song of the words -- also the clauses "a milky star in a bottle" and "The lantern seeds the trees with orange" are just fucking delicious.

Things get a little too heavy for my tastes after the inserted paragraph, but then at this point you've reached the Joycean Plateau, i.e., I can't tell if I'm just too lazy or dumb to get it, or if you just got drunk, opened up an etymological thesaurus and a Blackwell Compnaion to the Greek World, and went to town.

Anyway if you keep in this vein and historical contingencies work out right you could become a great meme author, one day.

>>6409350
>Reallllll cool

Thanks a ton! I was kinda doing my own spin on the prose of Joyce, (early) Beckett, and perhaps a touch of my own. Seems my close reading of both is turning out.

> Things get a little too heavy for my tastes after the inserted paragraph

The inserted was largely an attempt to bridge from the pastoral qualities of the first paragraph and the more encyclopaedic/wistful third paragraph. The intelligence of Julas summed in a paragraph, his learned connection to a world that died thousands of years before his birth exploited, and his outwards demeanor as a well-learned boy achieved in a roundabout way. The third paragraph pictures, and more humanly explores, the scene set forth in the first through the eyes of well-read julas, and not the "curious" julas of paragraph one, which will all be important later on.

As for the dialogue, admittedly nothing of any importance has happened yet.

> Anyway if you keep in this vein and historical contingencies work out right you could become a great meme author, one day.

My first goal is to, within the next 50 years, have threads of my ugly mug making weird contortions and smiles while drenched in sweat featured on some sort of imageboard.

Perfectly punctual
I - hire-to-be - shall strut my stuff,
And place my bet in that ante room.
I’ll sit, or maybe lean
next to that tired applicant
his face turned down
straining under the weight
of his own existence.
While I, the man with a dream,
shall seem to float on a smile,
doing last Sunday’s crossword,
in pen
as if to show the world
that what is in my head is truth
and all other realities shall bend to me
I hear upper management likes that.

>>6407234
I like this overall, though there are a couple things that I think need work. First and most important, is the idea that the kid is actually his child. Whether or not he's "adopting" the kid or it's his biological child, you need to clarify why the cop's child is also his.
Aside from that, just little things.
Instead of what you have, try
>the cuffs broke my wrists while
>but settled down
>as the welfare
maybe use future/wellbeing? welfare in this context sounds like welfare checks, although I doubt that's the meaning you want.
Overall, I liked it a lot.

>>6401553
http://pastebin.com/c0aWmTyg
any feedback would be great

No bully plz

The landscape had long since disappeared. All that remained was the orangeish-yellow lights of the of the occasional rural street lamp and house window. Nothing else could seep into the synthetic environment of the train. Across from Mathew was a tall man reading a thick Swedish newspaper. The man sat with poise, legs crossed, the end of his shoe dangling only inches from his knee. To his right, a short muslim women was drifting in and out of sleep; her head neatly nestled in a blue hijab
As the train slowed the city became dense. The outside world began to come alive with lights and cars so did the people inside. Soft murmuring conversations gave way to loud robust exchanges. People began to pull their bags down from the luggage racks, the leather straps and plastic buckles of backpacks and briefcases thudded and clinked against the hard metal floors. Mathew joined in on the chorus and sat down once more with an overweight backpack on his lap. With the train now late by two minutes, the conductor began to speak into the intercom, first in danish, then swedish, and finally in broken but confident english, that they would be arriving at Copenhagen Central in only a few minutes.

>>6409617
The only thing i can say is show dont tell, aside form that its good, flows nicely, paints a nice picture. Specific examples would be orange-yellowish (find a better word - amber - for example) and the tall man reading the newspaper, could be more flavorful. The man, towering like a smoke stack, bided his time reading a paper headlining (something in sweden related to your story). Sorry, this might not be in the direction that you're going. But if you're telling a story I feel as though every detail should be captivating.

Not saying you don't accomplish that but it could be fine tuned.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CH2njksjt8-4qkFtXLew5YaUSVSqlqT_Q1wMsQLqs1E/edit?usp=sharing

>>6409580
It feels impersonal, to be perfectly frank. Every description seems to be mostly cosmetic, so it leans entirely on its concept and narrative, which is very simple and built around the joke of deadpan reactions-- not something inherently bad, mind you, but not enough to carry a story. You do show a ton of promise as long as you try to really work out these kinks, though-- maybe go for a more ab ovo style of storytelling so you can really get a connection to the characters and setting before the apocalypse. As much admiration as I have for an in medias res piece, I don't think it really fits here. Also, try to expand your descriptive prose; what you have here is the nascent form of a really well-written story that just doesn't breathe as much as it should.

>>6409517

Thanks anon!

As for yours, I quite like. Between the 'ante room' and doing Sunday's crossword in pen, it reads well and entertains. My only suggestion would be to add some sort of punctuation at the end of the second to last line; and also maybe consider fusing 'straining under the weigh/of his own existence' into one line. I think that might help stress the magnitude of said 'existential weight.' But, overall I'm glad I read it, and i'm not just saying that to reciprocate your compliment–so, well done

Delicious–crave the deep rooted cane of
sugar–scones plop into the–the
dashing between neural circuits be-
gan millennia a-
go–sticky hands of neighborhood–
what city are we talking?
Let's go with Detroit, God did.–
children whose parents warn–
we all know that cautionary tale–
the cat's curiosity, sans tail–about
smelten Jimmy Vantrapp and the
woods–a collection of wood–and
the frosting melts near our star–bursts
gush and saliva pools–and the parents
corral their offspring–vesicles of genetic
information–throwing them back
in the not-so-min-van––––––nothing is
free.

http://pastebin.com/zWjL4EpS
One of the only complete stories I've ever done

>>6404671
things ive been thinking but unable to express

>>6404671

I enjoyed it.

I'd like to see more of this. It's something I'm trying to do in my writing, intersect banal daily life with anticdotes of surreal consciousness. I'm doing a piss poor job with though

In you, I find my strength
Strength to face the day
all my problems go away
I love you, and it’s great

I’m building us a house
but I’m gonna need your help
to keep the demons out
please, don’t let our house fall down

Leave our past behind
our mistakes turned out just fine
when we’re alone, we wanna die
but optimism makes us feel alright

Our future makes us smile
but it’s gonna take a while
We don’t have to worry
I’m as patient as a tree
I’ll sit and sit and wait, until I cease to be

I’m building us a house
but I’m gonna need your help
to keep the demons out
please, don’t let our house fall down
please, don’t let our house fall down

x3

We can take care of your sister
we can take care of my brother
maybe someday we’ll have a daughter
bright and nice like a flower
and then we’ll take care of her

loving others gives us purpose
it keeps the demons nervous
and gives us time to really love ourselves

I’m building us a house
but I’m gonna need your help
to keep the demons out
please don’t let our house fall down

I used to be a hermit, pretty much a turtle
but you’re the one who took me from my shell
With you I love the world
and I don’t feel like a burden
Thanks so much for taking off my shell

thanks so much for taking off my shell"

R8 my short edgefag story.

Hate these damn undead immigrants. Got jumped by five of the little bastards behind a damn burger joint. They fan out, confidant like, trapping me against the wall as the boldest one demands my wallet and shoes. I do the most logical thing at the time and shoulder charge his ass, knocking him flat as I try to run. Two of them grabbed my legs as a third pulled a fucking knife and went for my face. Fuck it. I ate the knife in the cheek, hurt like hell but I'd live. The leader was screaming at them to drop me, so I picked his head up, and started slamming it into the ground. Two of the others ran off, but one kept stabbing me. I remember feeling the leader's skull crunch under my hands shortly before I passed out from blood loss.

I woke up in a hospital, he woke up in a morgue. Bloody undead. I never did get my wallet back neither.

>>6410361
Forgot pic

"I’m swept into the ocean
an endless sea
I can’t control what I feel
discern what is real
everything seems like a dream to me

I have trouble accepting my fate
when I think I know it (I never do)
my premonitions are second rate
but it’s never too late
to fix all my mistakes
leave the past behind
everything that’s happened, it’s all in my mind
no longer real, not tangible
maybe there’s one little granule
of truth

in all this mess
something to hold on to…
leave the past behind, it’s all in your mind
move forward, and forget
because that you isn’t you
everybody’s searching for the truth
trying to make it
you're no different
so stop trying to fake it

x2


I walk away thinking there’s a hole in my heart
self-hate, regret, can’t get these thoughts out
and better yet
I embrace them
I gave up trying to fight,
let my feelings explode I just sit and write
depression, suicide, letters by my bed
I’m not trying to hide
anything, from anyone
don’t jump the gun

I’m not gonna do it
I’m not stupid
there’s so much to live for, but sometimes
life just seems like too much, and dying seems like too much fun"

PLS read pls then maybe I post more?

To this date, 9/16/99, at 5:18 PM EST, I still grapple with existential questions. Not
necessarily why we are all here (I am an atheist), but how I can find meaning in everyday life. I have grown a little since last year; I have stopped worrying about how to please people and make friends, because I have realized that the only way to be happy is to be yourself. But something happened today which has made me question my habit of introspection; is it really worth it?

>>6410362
cringeworthy and fedora-like
i feel the fedora crunch in my fist when I SMASH YOUR SKULL INTO A GORY PULP like that dude whose FACE WAS CHEWED OFF by the bath salt guy
tl;dr your writing a shit, find something meaningful to write about

>>6408649

Anon, this is pure gush: sappy, cliched, over-romanticized, overly-saccharine, just plain cheesy.

>>6410482

Please let this be bait.

Something I just wrote for music theory. I'm doing a choral arrangement.


"Forget Me Not"

In the still of the night
While the whipping spring wind bows low
A reverent silence for the day that has died
I walk slowly, softly, gently caressed
By the calm, soothing touch of the still breeze

And much like the bright, blue day for which the sky now grieves
I too will fade
Into the ether of night

Already for me the dusk is calling
Beckoning me to slip over the horizon
And let darkness bathe the sky, to wash away the bright of my day
That a new one may know life

I ask not for sympathy
I only ask for forgiveness and the promise,
That when your day finally comes
You will shine
Shine, brighter than the morning star
Brighter than those who have shone before you
It's what I would do

And forget me not
Don't let my light fade into the night of your memory
When a dark still night falls on you
I hope your heart is open
So that I may find my way
Home

Honest-rex

I'm writing this with my eyes closed
because I've been told just stating the truth
is good enough to be poetry.

My left ring finger feels strange,
like it's not getting enough attention,
but that's probably just me projecting
onto a smaller potion of me
(or myself,
I'm not sure about the grammar on that one).

I've since peeked
(no true potential
not you) and
have edited the mistakes I made
when my eyes were closed.

And still, I can do nothing
but stare at Tommy Lee Jones'
disapproving eyes;
good thing it's called:
No Country for Old Men

HonesT-rex

I'm writing this with my eyes closed
because I've been told just stating the truth
is good enough to be poetry and
my left ring finger feels strange,
like it's not getting enough attention,
but that's probably just me projecting
onto a smaller potion of me
(or myself,
I'm not sure about the grammar on that one).

[pause for thought]

I've since peeked
(no, true-potential,
not you) and
have edited the mistakes I've made
when my eyes were closed.

And still, I can do nothing
but stare at Tommy Lee Jones'
disapproving eyes:
good thing it's called:
No Country for Old Men

>>6410366

I heard a Seether-esque band in my head, reading this. Not necessarily a bad thing. Guess it depends on what you wanna do, but if the goal was to write a rock tune, you have it pretty much licked.
I will say, however, something about it seems a bit generic.

HonesT-rex

I'm writing this with my eyes closed
because I've been told just stating the truth
is good enough to be poetry and
my left ring finger feels strange,
like it's not getting enough attention,
but that's probably just me projecting
onto a smaller potion of me
(or myself,
I'm not sure about the grammar on that one).

[pause for thought]

I've since peeked
(no, true-potential,
not you) and
have edited the mistakes I've made
when my eyes were closed.

And still, I can do nothing
but stare at Tommy Lee Jones'
disapproving eyes that begin every sentence with:
"Boy..."
Good thing it's called: No Country for Old Men

HonesT-rex

I'm writing this with my eyes closed
because I've been told just stating the truth
is good enough to be poetry and
my left ring finger feels strange,
like it's not getting enough attention,
but that's probably just me projecting
onto a smaller potion of me
(or myself,
I'm not sure about the grammar on that one).

[pause for thought]

I've since peeked
(no, true-potential,
not you) and
have edited the mistakes I've made
when my eyes were closed.

And still, I can do nothing
but stare at Tommy Lee Jones'
disapproving eyes that begin every sentence with "Boy..."
good thing it's called No Country for Old Men

HonesT-rex

I'm writing this with my eyes closed
because I've been told just stating the truth
is good enough to be poetry and
my left ring finger feels strange,
like it's not getting enough attention,
but that's probably just me projecting
onto a smaller potion of me
(or myself,
I'm not sure about the grammar on that one).

[pause for thought]

I've since peeked
(no, true-potential,
not you) and
have edited the mistakes I've made
when my eyes were closed.

And yet, I can do nothing
but stare at Tommy Lee Jones'
disapproving eyes
that begin every sentence with
"Boy..."
good thing it's called

No Country for Old Men

>>6410482

>>6409617

There's not that much to mention because nothing happens. I can't really say it was that interesting.

I'd basically say the opposite to >>6409668 I don't think you need metaphors or fancy names for colors. If anything I'd cut more of the gay words like "poise" or "robust exchanges".

In Washington D.C., millions of young black men march with picket signs reading "Where did you go?" and "Please come back," all the while chanting "COME-BACK-DAD, COME-BACK-DAD." On television, white women in angular suits hold microphones hovering in front of black mouthes as white teeth chatter, big lips reject, shining gums accepting tears as pink fleshy tongues gesticulate "Dad! Please come back!" towards the smiling camera, behind which millions of faceless viewers masturbate perpetually reaching no discernible climax. Now, somewhere in Europe a 13 year-old-boy speaks to no one "Tomorrow, I kill myself." And an adolescent fly whispers suicide notes to a microscopic piece of lint tucked away in some cavernous chamber where the ceilings, the walls, and the furniture are all made of the same sick substance.
Despite their alienation, fragmentation, and ultimate dissolution at the hands of god-knows-what boring collection of infantile assassins, none of these monkeys have succeeded in escaping themselves. They drool, they giggle, they circumsize themselves progressively, they finger their assholes screaming "SLUT!" at the top of their lungs, all hyperventilating in sync. But to hear one another, they would have to quit singing along to every song that is sung by their neighbor, for their own voices outsound each other, and only by this process, do they believe cacophony is the soundtrack of new cinema. But, of course, it is. Try to silence yourself without going unconscious; if you awake, still breathing, you may be a candidate for the twirling team that yells just one octave higher on the second floor of brutalist apartment buildings.

>>6410482


I love this so much

Leaving this here:
>http://pastebin.com/ZzRaKPgu

and going to sleep.
Would appreciate any kind of feedback.

Promise I'm gonna critique (based on what little I know, but trying to be helpful) as much as I can tomorrow, I've already seen some stuff which picked my interest.

Por cierto, para el anónimo que escribió en Español: aún no lo vi, pero prometo que al igual que a los otros, mañana le echo un ojo e intento colaborar como pueda.

>>6405093
wee is never used as much as this in Ireland, if at all; it's more a scottish thing, and it's cringe-worthy as fuck. 'Mate' is used more by english people, sounds really odd the way you've used it.

>>6404993
*breathe (has breath), last word of first sentence of chapter to last.
*a space missing before 'my mouth to close' in the next sentence.
*delirious (has delerious) first word of the third line of the same paragraph. The hyphens surrounding that thought are meant to be em dashes I assume, I think it can be expressed by a pair of hyphens (--) if you have no key for it. There should also be spaces before and after those (before half and after carcass).

Enjoyable plot, good prose. Do keep writing, would love to read more from you.

Feels like something is missing, the end lacks impact or conclusion, feels rushed or not sufficiently connected. It almost feels like an introduction to something longer (eg the introduction of the narrator) - just doesn't come to a full circle on its own. Not that a punchy ending is needed, it could probably be remedied by subtle changes, more connections perhaps. What's the main idea you wish to convey? For me it was the conclusion - the ambiguous reality and existence of the narrator. The last thought 'something must always follow the past' felt important because of its placement but I'm having a hard time relating it to the story and I'm not sure I know what you're trying to tell me, it seems a little abrupt and disconnected/unexplained. Perhaps you could elaborate on that or try to weave the idea through the story to create a more complete experience.

I'm also slightly confused about some logistics, time and space within the story, but that could be intentionally confused or unreliable given the conclusion (or I could be slow). 'In the garden where I was buried' the hole with a depth of 'to China' through the ceilings and roofs lead to their garden? The use of tenses makes me think we're talking about the garden after he has been buried in it but then we see him eating crops in what appears to be the same period of time (admittedly English is not my first language so I really might just be slow about this).

>>6411093

>feels like something is missing

I'd agree. My #1 shortcoming is laziness in editing, so the piece you read is virtually unrevised. The only stories of mine that seem to flesh out are the ones that came to me as an ending. In this case, I had the idea of a man falling perpetually down a hole, learning to live, developing a routine, etc.

>I'm not sure what you're trying to tell me
I agree this is a kind of weak summation. Essentially, what I was trying to convey was this: despite the confusion of narrative identity (the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves to project a self) and its veracity, a story always demands to be told. Perhaps I am compensating for my laziness and impatience as a writer, but the fact is that this story could be described as unnecessary. My intuition places me in the position of the narrator at the end of the story: without sensation, still aware, but of what? The ending is supposed to evoke in the reader a question of whether fiction is an arbitrary distraction or a reflection of some form of reality.

>Something must always follow the past
Though we cannot hope to possess our history (individual or collective), we cannot cease to tell it. Regardless of anything we stand to gain or lose in the process, we cannot escape the desire to tell stories.

>logistics, time and space

I suppose I wasn't completely clear. He is buried beneath that garden, in the Hole, which if you remember, was never explicitly said to be finished. To be a bit more brief, the narrator eats fruits in the garden, takes care of the vegetables, but after both categories of crops are thriving, the father loses purpose and begins the construction of the Hole. Hope that clears things up for you.


This story definitely needs some cleaning up but its great to hear some positive, thorough feedback. Thanks a lot.

The young boy locks the door behind him as he enters the room. He leans against a wall and exhales a puff of relief. He looks around to see a sign above the door.

"Library," he reads aloud. Behind him something shakes momentarily. He turns to face the source of the noise.

"Who's there?" shouts the young boy. The boy notices a toppled bookshelf shake slightly. He cautiously approaches it, knife drawn. Upon closer inspection he sees a young girl's body, her head and right arm underneath the bookshelf. The young boy crouches down to her. He begins to feel her pockets in an attempt to find supplies.

"No luck," he mumbles to himself. Suddenly the girl jerks to the side. The boy falls back surprised.

"You're alive?" he asks the girl. He tries to lift the bookshelf off the girl. The bookshelf is so much a burden that he can only lift it a foot off the ground. He instead slides the girl's body from out underneath with his foot. He then drops the bookshelf to the ground with a loud thud. The girl jerks again from the noise. The young boy flips the girl onto her back so he can see her face. Mouth gaping, the girl grabs for air. The boy can barely see her chest rise. He lifts her up in an attempt to help but discovers her body is limp.

"Can you move?" questions the boy. She only stares at him, slowly blinking. The young girl's hair is caught in her mouth. As he pulls it away he notices the stream of tears running down her face.

"Oh honey, please don't cry. It will be okay. Someday." he states as he wipes away her tears. The boy hugs the girl tight. He squeezes her in his embrace until she begins to jerk violently. He holds onto her tighter and tighter until she stops jerking.

"You're welcome," he whispers as he lays her on the floor. He ignores the smell of piss as he wipes the drool from her mouth. The young boy rises to his feet, and walks away.

>>6410866
>if you awake
I would really fix that

>>6410643
>or myself, I'm not sure about the grammar on that one
you're right with using myself on that

>>6410606
>So that I may find my way
>Home
I kinda think these should be connected and not 2 separate lines.

Return Critique >>6411413

>>6411413
I am not sure what I just read.

>>6411430
And I'm not sure if you mean that in a good or bad way.

>>6411434
Maybe a little of both?
Starting out, it felt pretty average. I didn't feel there was adequate description of the setting, I didn't get a clear picture. But I was intrigued.

By the end I was a little disturbed and left wondering what the blue fuck was going on. Which could be good depending on what type of story this is. Hard to judge past that. Is this part of a larger story?

>>6411453
No. I just sort of wrote it.

>>6411460
Any idea of the context? Post-apocalyptic, I guess? Anyway, it's interesting and disturbing. Something could come of it.

>>6411470
I guess I was aiming post-apocalyptic originally. I dont know, normally I write bits of something then just throw it all away.

>>6410866

There's some very nice prose here. I'd just direct it towards writing a real story and then calm it down a little. It wold get a bit tedious and feel overwritten if you sustained this for a long time.

Improvised story in the comment box:

It was lecture hour at the Y.S University when a heavy rain started soon after without warning at all. The class in which my main characters stand is located between the sixth and seventh floor, a lecture room easy to find for anyone midly acquainted with our university, going first to seventh floor, then to third door past the Founder's portrait and five steps from there to a nine-step staircase that gets you down to the space between floors.

Obvious enough is that such classroom was small and with barely enough space to host a 30-student class which was often the case. I believe it would be a good idea to tell my reader that rainy days were by far the worst of any kind, to our classroom between floors. You see, since the room was a closed space between floors with no windows and rain striking heavily both on the windows above and below them, every person at the time fell the sound of the rain in every direction, like being inside a tiny cube to which water droplets are set to fire at every face of the cube.

Today's lecture was about Sheldrake's Morphic Resonance and the university attempts to recreate the epiphany conditions, epiphany here in the para-biological sense of the word, being a realization of unaware knowledge in isolation because of the existence of knowledgeable beings near.

It was a funny concidence, for the lecture rooms for every class are assigned at random with the only constraing being the number of students in them, that according to our lectures the room between floors was, under heavy rain, a perfectly isolated room to hold the experiments.

The university attempts of verifying morphic fields and resonance were unsuccessful until that day.

>>6411731
What exactly are you trying to convey here ?

>>6411420

I know, bro

Just a small segment of something larger.

Tom found the note folded in a shirt he'd not worn in a long time. He was late and in a rush so did nothing with it again, he just opened it, read the first line (when you find this I'll be gone...) and put it back with his other unworn clothing.

It took him a long time to call the place his house. Still when drunk, or tired, our would slip out when he invited people over. But this happened less and less as people had a bad habit of seeing ornaments, or photos hanging from walls, and associating these things with memories he'd forgotten, they couldn't let things die, and eventually they would start asking about her in the present tense. He had no problem lying to them and saying she was on assignment, or that their seperation was only temporary, but it was the intricacies that he was scared of. They were the details that would give him away, they were the details that made her go. There were so many he couldn't keep up. The closer he looked the more complicated 'she is away on assignment' appeared. It mutated into fibourous, alien shapes, spurting horned trendils of possibilities like bacteria under a microscope.

>>6411763
Nothing yet. It's just the beginning.

From a horrid writing prompt on reddit I just posted to:

On the reservation, there's only one man left who can talk about the Invasion Wars because he was in them. All us kids in the 8th year class had to go talk to him to get our 1st person narrative for our assignment on the war. He has a script that he reads from for it, given to him by the overlords. We sit on the dirt floor of his home and listen, trying not to let the motes drifting in shafts of light through tattered burlap curtains distract us, failing horribly. He talks about our lack of conviction, the failure of our fighting spirit. The backwardness of our evolutionary path. How the men and women in his unit died running.
"This is going to be hard," my mother told me when she gave me the family pencil. "He won't tell you the truth. Your Grandmother was in the war too, and died in it. We remember through her words, not anyone else's. Just because there's a man they keep alive doesn't mean his words are any better than what your grandma wrote on my heart."
But Grandma is dead and I never even knew her. I don't know if she'll ever write on my heart the way she did for mom.
"My grandma says it wasn't like that," I say. The man ignores me, drones on. There's pain in his eyes that I notice now, I think, but I'm not sure whether or not that's something I put there, or if it was there always and I never saw it. Mr. Hoshaw, my psych teach, says our brains are just now maturing emotionally; putting the finishing touches on a Theory of Mind. That's also part of the teachings of the overlords; that we are stupider than them, and that's actually a part I maybe believe. There are lots of things I miss, and Hoshaw says I'm one of the most advanced kids in his class. He wants me to join the resistance when I'm older. To die fighting for all our freedoms, he says.

>>6412258
People didn't use to die, the old man says. That's what got us in trouble. We were soft. We had too much to lose. The overlords came with nothing, and had nothing to lose. I wonder how much I've got to lose. There's my home, and mom, and my sister - she's the resistance-mandated kid, the one my mom had to have, to keep our population levels up. I hate to think of how much she feels like she has to lose, but she's in the resistance already, mom says. There's also my knife that I made myself in smithing class, and there's all the learning I've got about math, history, home economics, and gunsmithing, but I'm not sure I can lose that unless I start drinking the moonshine more. I guess the still's part mine, come to think of it. Are the shovel and pick assigned to me at the mine something I could lose? I guess so. So there are things I could lose. I wonder if that makes me too weak.
When the old man's done, we file out his door. The sun in the sky says the time's dinner, and if I don't get in line I'm liable to get the bottom scrapings of the prote soup, but food is just one more thing I have to lose, and this old guy's interesting when he isn't talking. Mom says they do keep him alive like we all used to be kept alive, for hundreds of years, on account of the fact that he agreed he will toe their line about the war stories.
"Mr. P., are you done with storytime?" I ask, sweet as I know how. I hold my head down like mom taught me to when I'm asking for food, to look younger. The old man gets up from his rocker and starts to shoo me to the door.
"Yes, there's nothing more to say. Nothing more to say."
"Mr., what about the truth? Your stories don't make sense." I know I might get hit for it, but he doesn't look like he can hit hard or would particularly want to.
He looks at me. I wonder if I can remember all the stuff I was supposed to listen for in his stories, the parts that contradict each other, like Mr. Hoshaw said to listen for. I did catch some stuff.
"Like when you said they defeated us on the field of battle, that doesn't make sense because you said they fought bravely with guns in their own hands against our drones, not afraid to die, but when I spar with the drones in the courtyard they can always beat me. They just fight way better than any, uh, biological. So that doesn't make any sense."
He stops and looks at me. I want to piss him off, to make him snap out of it.
"Mom says you're a traitor to the Human Nation because you value your life over history, and you say we are weak when the overlords were strong, but Mom says that Mr. Colt made all beings equal, whether they were both with claws and poison sacs or not."

>>6412259
Mr P. sits down indian-style on the dirt right in front of me and he's not angry, he's just looking at me, and he looks sad. He looks sad for me, actually.
"That's all right."
"I knew it!" I whisper, leaning in conspiratorially. Mr P. is a double agent for the Revolution! He's part of the Cover!
"We killed each other for what they had to offer like gods kill each other in the old stories."
He's not saying anything, but I know there's more to this story. The true story. The motes aren't distracting anymore.
"They came to each nation one at a time. They were spacefarers - they hadn't developed warfare to the degree we had; they were too busy exploring. The overlords sold each nation information about the cosmos, about their sciences, for little favors. A war here, a corporate takeover there. Governments were only too happy to comply once they started applying their sciences and getting technologies other countries could only dream of. Things that gave them the upper hand. And paranoia, well, that's a great weapon. Soon we were fighting wars not just to get what the aliens had to give, but also to keep others from getting it. To protect ourselves.
'You're right, humans can't fight drones. They'd lose every time. We fought drones with drones. The arms race was fierce. I myself didn't get involved until after the drones ran out, after the nanobombs had eaten most of our factories. Actual people had died by then; even smart weapons generate some collateral damage. We weren't actually afraid of dying; we died a lot. We got used to it fast. And we fought like devils against each other.
'Eventually we were fighting with guns and swords; all our factories could put out. And then, when we had at last lowered ourselves to their level, the overlords struck. And they hadn't been waiting idly. They had our drones, and our lasguns, and our flamers and nanites. Their police carry blades, but we lost to hover tanks and scramjet hunter-killers. The part of the war they actually fought in was short; it was over fast. It was only afterward, when we were put onto this marginal land, that we started calling all the wars the Invasion Wars. To make ourselves feel better about what we'd done."
I don't like the story, but it's writing on my heart a lot harder than his first story. Maybe even harder than mom's story about grandma's story. But maybe it isn't true; he's paid with life to make us feel bad. Could be more overlord talk. Mom says he talked to easily about it.
Now whenever I walk past his hut, he calls to me, a sad smile on his face. He calls me King Phillip, but we don't have time in our history class to go back that far to when Kings fought each other for lands. We have to get the other reservations to help us out, even if they're all cowards who still follow the old ways like Mr. P.

captcha: amlit

>>6412258

my god this is bad writing

>>6411958
you need to get out of your own ass

and then also learn how to write

>>6411731
way too wordy and self-indulgent
God all these babby's first writing attempts are depressing the hell out of me

>>6412050
If you have nothing to say, why write ?

>>6412267
>>6412258 (You)
>my god this is bad writing

critique maybe?

So I go on. I mean, what else is there to do? I almost trip over David, who's sitting by the stairs with one of the girls. For a moment I consider asking him for help, but a flashing light and loud screaming from the front door make me reconsider. 'It's the cops, run', I tell him while already sprinting towards the garden gate. Mind you, I hadn't done anything illegal as far as I'm concerned, as far as I'm concerned I should be president of the Country by tomorrow. Well, goes to show how little of a shit the universe actually gives. I bump into a heavy, pistol-belted chest. Blackout. Awake three hours later, still lying in the same spot. Might as well go back to the house, so I slowly get up and turn around, but the house is not there anymore, just a pile of rubble. I wonder if I should scream someone's name, but then I decide I'd have it for the weekend and headed home.

>>6411731
I don't feel like I can really critique the plot or theme(s) of this work until it gets longer. Post more, but first fix up your grammar, spelling, and punctuation. There are numerous errors of all three in this post, and they are holding you back. If you need specific pointers I will help you, but I bet all you really need to do is simply go over it again yourself.

>>6411413
So I showed this to a friend and he said I should remove the bit about the smell of piss. I'm afraid if I do that then the reader might not understand that she dies. Is there an alternative I could use or should I just not worry about it and leave it in the story?

>>6412368
why did they want the bit about the piss removed?

>>6412372
I don't know, indecent I guess?

>>6412368
Nah, that's just their personal taste. They probably thought it was too gross. I say keep it for the reasons you mentioned.

>>6412381
I'd keep it. I'd rather you removed "oh honey..." and replaced it with his silence. I can hardly imagine a young boy doing something like that at all, much less with such deceit. Moreover he wouldn't call someone "honey" like that, as he's not an adult.

Here's the actual conversation. He goes on upset about it.

>>6412388
But he didn't understand it with the piss mentioned either.

>>6412393
If you had to place dialogue there, what would it be.

>>6410482
Philip has been my crush since the beginning of freshman year. We first met when we sat next to each other in English Comp. I thought he was intelligent because he said he had won a state writing competition a few years ago. He was also on the Varsity Cross Country team. This led to my fawning adoration of him and several attempts to catch his fancy; that is, leaving love notes and carrot cake at his door. However, over the summer, I experienced a moment of clarity. I have always held my peers in high regard because, as a child, I’d been taught to please others. But, at last, I gave pause to my situation with Phillip.
Some days, he would be responsive, and other days, he would ignore me. He would also look at me across the lecture hall while speaking with his friends. He must be interested! I thought. But no dice. Of course, my unrequited love caused me great pain. I lay on my bed nearly every night of December ‘98 and cried while listening to a cassette of Chopin’s “Barcarolle in F-Sharp Major”. 'Why was I so stupid?' I brooded. 'He probably has a girlfriend. I must look so desperate.' For the first three days afterwards, my roommate Stella was so exhausted from schoolwork that, when she came back to the dorm, she said nothing. But a week before New Years’, she became so frustrated with me that she invited me to a Starbucks after class and dressed me down.

Critique my vocab and sentence structure pls

>>6412400
I reject the notion that there has to be dialogue there at all. I would try to make the moment awkward and unnerving because there would be no dialogue.

I once accidentally shot a rabbit in the head. I flipped around for a few seconds before dying, and I couldn't do or say anything, obviously. I just had to wait until it was fully dead, then pick up its body with a shovel and dump it in a ditch so my neighbor didn't have to deal with my mistake.

It was a fairly powerful experience.

>>6412400
Well as I said earlier, I didn't know much of what was going on either, but the piss wasn't the problem. It was just the lack of detail and context in general.

The piss adds something visceral to it. Severity. Barbarity. Cruel nature, etc.

Keep the piss.

>>6412417
sentence structure is mostly OK; I didn't note any glaring offenses. You have some odd and probably unwise vocabulary choices though: "gave pause to my situation" should read "my situation with Phillip gave me pause" but really, this is not a modern turn of phrase. Better to avoid syntactic anachronism and just use something simple like "I finally began to consider my situation with Phillip."

Another one: "No dice" - this is a cliche and doesn't carry the emotional weight I think you are trying to convey. Two counts against it; get rid of it and replace it with a more thorough description of how your speaker's crush displayed his disinterest toward her.

>>6412421
Alright so you think I should remove all the dialogue or just the oh honey?

>>6412440
More detail? So just describe the library more or add more background to what's happening or what?

>>6412440
another anon here, I would say, keep the "piss" but use the word "urine" so your readers will know you aren't in high school creative writing class

>>6412472
Nah keep the rest of the dialogue. "You're welcome" was also kind of jarring for a kid to say, but perhaps there's something about this character I don't know that makes him capable of cogitating like that.

>>6412472
>So just describe the library more or add more background to what's happening or what?

This scene would be fine, I think, if there were context before it, if we knew what led up to this. I wouldn't overthink it and start bogging down your stuff with exposition. Just maybe think about what you might do with this piece.

In the context of it by itself, perhaps then just little details. More things to hint that the world outside is fucked, things that might hint at the protag's mindset, so that people can connect the dots themselves.

I'm not clear what happens at the end? Is he giving her a moment of human warmth before she dies? Or is he perverse? Obviously he seems a little strange.

>>6412477
I can't disagree with that. It depends on the narrator's voice.

You're the feeling of hurting
More is what
I'm asking for
Little lies cross overboard
Wait for the crying
Love to aim at besides
Lever pulled
Go where you are little pond
Never be seen by your saw
We'll work it out
Now the feelings are right where you saw
Forever is right where we were
Never be clean
Lever pulled
Be where you are

>>6412507
Sounds like a sucky American teen pop diva from 2006. It's a no from me.

Alright thanks guys I'm going to edit for a bit.

>>6412497
He was supposed to be hugging her so tight she couldn't breathe anymore and dies.

I could be happy in infinity; But I know I'm somewhere else, where the words on this page, are no better than the scribling nonsense they are. And it would be real, And I'd eat my last meal. Wish that I could feel. But now I don't even know if I'm real.

>>6412514
thatsa r00d d00d

>>6412541
Okay, I was wondering if that was it, but it was vague enough that I wasn't sure.

>>6412258
>>6412259
>>6412266

>mfw waiting for someone to critique my work after I critique several other people's

these threads really are shit aren't they

>>6412585
i feel ya mate. but honestly your work/posts are a little too long for the average anon to want to read

>>6412279
lmao your self inserted "(You)" tripped me the fuck out man!!!!

Everything Hemingway said about Life
Was right;
It is not your friend,
Though Spring may kiss your lips
And Summer warm your bones.

Each after the other slowly first
Then faster down the hill
Come the deaths of all who you love
Before you go, and after unabated.

God said it was Good,
But Ecclesiastes taught me better:
Goodly beauty, undeniable rightness
In the cast of this wolrd
Stands idly by our suffering.

>>6412624
got it. abandoning thread.

>>6412636
turrrrible

>>6412477
>>6412486
>>6412567
Alright what about this?

The young boy locks the door behind him as he enters the room. He leans against the faded blue of a wall and exhales a puff of relief. He looks around to see a sign above the door.

"Library," he reads aloud. He scans the room, observing the ruins of a past world. Books, shelves, and bullet casings diffuse through out the room. Something shakes momentarily in the debris. He turns to face the source of the noise.

"Who's there?" shouts the young boy. The boy notices a toppled bookshelf shake slightly. He cautiously approaches it, knife drawn. Upon closer inspection he sees a young girl's body face down, her head and right arm underneath the bookshelf. The young boy crouches down to her. He begins to feel her pockets in an attempt to find supplies.

"No luck," he mumbles to himself. Suddenly the girl jolts to the side. He falls back surprised.

"You're alive?" he asks the girl. He tries to lift the bookshelf off her. The case is so much a burden that he can only lift it a foot off the ground. He instead slides the girl's body from out underneath with his foot. He then drops the bookshelf to the ground with a loud thud. The girl jerks again from the noise. The young boy flips the girl onto her back so he can see her face. Mouth gaping, the girl grabs for air. The boy can barely see her chest rise. He stares at her with concern before lifting her up in an attempt to help but discovers her body is limp.

"Can you move?" questions the boy. She only stares at him, slowly blinking. The young girl's hair is caught in her mouth. As he pulls it away he notices the stream of tears running down her face.

"Please don't cry. It will be okay. Someday." he states as he wipes away her tears. The boy hugs the girl tight, feeling her warmth slowly die. He squeezes her in his embrace until she begins to jerk violently. He holds onto her tighter and tighter until she stops shaking, her body cold.

"You're welcome," he whispers as he lays her on the floor. He ignores the smell of urine as he wipes the drool from her mouth. The young boy rises to his feet, and grabs a handful of books. He places them about her body in an attempt to cover the girl. After stacking as many books as possible, he pulls out a lighter and sets them a flame. He walks back to the library door and unlocks it. The young boy steps out into the desolate abyss he has come to know.

>>6412585
> The man ignores me, drones on.
This kind of factured writing combined with the fact that you lack detailed exposition makes your work tedious. I recommend that you keep a journal about interesting things that happen in your life, then use it for reference.

>>6412636
The thought is interesting, though the argument seems slightly clipped. Your language is flat: there's no music to this, no piercing and original phrases or images. Just a vague sense of elevation that comes from literary references and literary topoi. Why isn't this an essay instead of a poem?

>>6412471
Thanks for your advice. I have a ton of anachronisms in my writing because I self-educated using free 19th-century literature on Kindle. The first sentence you proposed as a replacement to "gave pause to my situation" is more grammatically correct, but it wouldn't have been my first choice because it's passive. When is using the passive voice permissible?

>>6412417
“I hate to see what you’re doing to yourself,” She crooned in the crowded cafe. “You have a bright future ahead of you. You’re attractive, smart, and all the guys like you. Why are you destroying yourself over an idiot like Philip,” She raised her eyebrows dubiously as she took a sip of chai. “I don’t get you.”

“He flirts with me a lot during class,” I blushed. “Like last week, I held his hand during English Comp -- and one time, he took my hands and put them on lab equipment when I couldn’t understand how to operate it,” As I said this, Stella pouted her lips, stifling a laugh.
She crossed her arms. “But he doesn’t want to take it further than that? Let it go.”
Suddenly, the door to the cafe shut and I saw him in my peripheral vision. His right hand encapsulated the waist of a long-haired blonde. I recognized her as a student-athlete on the Womens’ Varsity Cross Country team. They shared a glance and kissed. You would have thought that I cried, but somehow I had foreseen it. I made a motion to leave as I packed my things, and Stella stared at me, oblivious.

I brusquely hoisted my bag onto my shoulders and gushed, “I’m sorry for leaving so soon. I just remembered that I need to return some movies to Blockbuster. Thanks for the advice. Later, Stella.”

For the remainder of that year, I did not sit next to him again, but thoughts of him invaded my mind. 'Just a playboy,' I mused. 'I’m too innocent.'

Evening. The kid settles down on the rotating chair in front of the worn-out desk on which his laptop style Personal Computer rests. Putting his left hand's thumb to an area roughly at the top left of the keyboard, he pushes the deluxe looking button -actually made of cheap plastic- to power the device up. His neck and spine already bent forward, he stares at the screen blankly but intently, waiting for the operating system to finish booting up. Asymmetrical lines and columns of white text set against a black background pop up and slide upwards, at times stopping and then moving again, all jerky. The boot up takes only a little while: 10 seconds later the black screen is gone and a logo appears. It looks like a pinkish P facing the wrong way, and the word GENTOO is inscribed under it[1]. A personal touch by the kid.
The kid doesn't spend much time on his desktop, in fact he launches his web browser -Firefox- right away. Rapidly slamming on the computer's keys, he navigates to his favorite forum site with funny pictures in it[2]. The familiar hue of the blue background welcomes him for the nth time.
"It's time to see what dank memes have been concocted today while I was at school" he thinks.
He opens the page of his favorite "boards", which are called Cinéma and Books, respectively. He accesses the Cinéma board's "Catalogue" page, and a display of all the subjects his fellows are talking about are brought in front of him. There is so much to choose from. He sees a "thread" on the popular TV show, Fixing Good[3]. Entering the thread, he writes a post containing sarcastic comments, ending with the words BRAVO BINCE. In order to actually send his post he needs to prove to the system that he is a human being, which he does by choosing 2 pictures of hamburgers among a selection of other foods. He returns to the Catalogue, and notices a thread with the picture of a man, hands on his belt, standing in front of a plane[4].
"This is my favorite maymay." he thinks.
Upon entering the thread he begins an activity that to him is quite productive, while to others it is nothing but mere "shitposting"[5]. Most of the discussion in the thread concerns big guys, repetitions of the lines from the movie, and appreciation of NSA. Many pictures parodying various frames of the movie's opening are also posted. When the kid is done with it, 2 hours have gone by.
This time he enters the Books Catalogue.

>>6413076
[1]: The best OS ever according to some, because it's very free. As in freedom.
[2]: The site, it is said, was made so that people could talk about Vietnamese Origami, but today users can talk about pretty much whatever they want.
[3]: A show about a physics teacher that gets cancer and decides to take up nuclear weapons smuggling. It is also known as BravoBince in honor of the brilliance of its writer, Bince Gillian.
[4]: About the movie called The White Knight Dashes. The dankest meme concerning this film is about a group of characters that make their appearances at the very beginning: NSA, the agent, meets up with a man called Musket Man and gets a doctor called Doctor Pavelier and a bunch of hooded prisoners into his plane. NSA reveals then that his real desire is to find out about a masked mercenary known only as Bing, and interrogates the prisoners by pretending to shoot them before them out of his plane. However, the hired guns have an unexpected amount of loyalty and say nothing. NSA is puzzled about this, at which point it is revealed that Bing was among one of the prisoners all along. A legendary exchange follows between NSA and Bing after the former pulls the latter's mask off.
NSA: -If I pull that (referring to the mask) off, will you die? Bing: -It would be extremely baneful... NSA: -You're a big guy! Bing:-... for you!
The exact meaning of this dialogue puzzled cinema experts for years, specifically whether NSA was making an observation about Bing's pain tolerance or his size, and accordingly whether Bing was implying that NSA would suffer a painful death were he to pull off the mask, or simply that NSA was a small guy. Making matters more puzzling was the fact that Bing's size grew inexplicably in-between shots. To this day there is no consensus, although scholarly research seems to give more support to the "big guy for you" interpretation. The scene goes on to reveal that the capture was Bing's plan all along, after which Bing's hired guns hijack the plane using their own bigger plane, killing everybody on board except Dr. Pavelier. As Bing gets ready to transfer Pavelier into his own plane, he tells a man named Indreckidge Brother that he must remain in the soon to be discarded plane as they "expect one of them". Thus the plane crashes with no survivors. The White Knight Dashes went on to become very successful at the box office, and its director Christopher Dolan's[4.a] name became synonymous with the word "bravo".

>>6413083
[4.a]: Before filming classics such as the White Knight Trilogy, Dream Inside a Dream Inside More Dreams, Magic Swag and A Space Ulysses, he made small budget films, one of which was rewarded at the Cannes film festival, an event after which he became known to the internet as "le[4.b] cannes face[4.c]".
[4.b]: An inexplicably funny and epic way of saying "the". No one knows where it took off.
[4.c]: This was frequently accompanied by a picture of his face.
[5]: Low quality post. What constitutes shitposting is a very ambiguous matter. The word is frequently used by people that are offended by the post in a deragotary manner.

>>6412553
It'll be okay.

So, I've added another two pages to this story
>>6404768
in the past few days. It's about half done now and I wanted to hear some feedback.

http://pastebin.com/CMXmSdrP


>>6412769
I'm only two paragraphs in and one issue is already apparent. you keep starting the sentences with "He -verb-." try to mix it up a bit. I've made the same mistake before in fact I probably made it today

Soliloquy of the City

Call me Jericho.
I built these walls to last forever. Protect me. Save me. Secure me.
For centuries, isolation kept the city sane;
Xenophobia, the brick and mortar setting us free,
Until the outsiders came...
The walls separate me from those “kindly” strangers.
Circling, inquiring, wanting to get past my defenses.
I solemnly pray to He who watched the walls.
Keep them out, please, just keep them out.
They probe my thoughts,
Wanting to know my secrets.
They want into the city, access I cannot grant
Why do they want in?
It’s always for their own benefit;
Their safeguard, their salvation, never mine.
In response to the rejection of admission
They circle me.
Like buzzards to a decaying carcass,
Their insipid pecking bringing insecurity to my ramparts
They won't stop.
They are compelled to keep up their peaceful siege
Their circles bringing solidarity out to the forefront.
I can feel the final moments of those feebly futile barriers.
I see their faces, strange yet familiar.
Why did I keep them out?
Walls come tumbling down.
Call me Jericho.

I really need some direction for revision and editing /lit/, the people around me are telling me to be complacent but I'm not so sure.

Unremarkably she blinked after staring at me for so goddamn long. Her trashy blue eye shadow smeared and her tar coloured mascara drips down her face followed by blackened tears.
Over the years, dullness became the severance of the temporal lobe in which resides the limbic system; the part of the brain that controls love and fear. I find it ironic that love and fear are somehow related but are such opposite emotions.

As we drive down, back to her house, its dark and the country road is empty like a murderers eyes. The orange lines surpass the car, and i start to fix myself on those orange lines, passing one by one by one, all merging into one long stretch of an orange blur. Then there was a horrendous sound, a sound of utter agony and terror and we look into each others eyes, afraid but so in love and as her head hits the top of the car of her Volkswagen, blood is spilled. The car flips over, and over, and over, glass shatters in all directions, itty bitty parts of shrapnel poking little holes in us, we scream our last words to eachother and with a big splash we fall into the deep, deep revine under the bridge of trust and commitment. We are buried beneath the water now, and as it enters our bodies forcefully, we die slowly, but in eachothers arms. Its funny, we're made out of 60% water

>>6414767
>tfw no one will read this

>>6404424
The fuck?

>>6414767

> temporal lobe...
cut

> orange lines
> orange lines
> orange blur

>>6404739
>Got distracted by "the size of your cock."

You ain't the first m8

>>6414767
> Umremarkably
wtf why do you have an adverb as your first word

> Unremarkably she blinked
She blinked unremarkably? What is your point?

> after staring at me for goddamn long.
Ease up on the edge and profanity or else you're still on the level of high school creative writing class

>>6405093
Better than Joyce at least

Also could someone pls read me here thanks >>6412869

In dreams I saw, but did not hear my father screaming beneath a thunderous shower-head, the boiling water of which hammered his body into rapidly transforming lunatic shapes: fleshy unfolded spheres, hollow cubes of skin spinning at breakneck speeds, seemingly static electron clouds of teeth, lonely weeping tesseracts, fragments of his soul tied in borromean knots, all covered with unopened wounds and rapidly healing scars, burns radiant with the shine of unnatural oils, calcium solutions wanting only to form skeletal structures but forever terrified of solidity.

>>6412869

>encapsulated the waist
>brusquely hoisted
>just a playboy... i'm too innocent

with the exception of these three bits your prose is a-okay, and I'm not going to criticize the content thereof because that is, after all, a matter of personal taste. If you have a decent enough story in mind I don't see why you couldn't write a potentially publishable YA novel/short

http://pastebin.com/X68KAQ9z

>>6414970
a sestina

>>6401553
first couple of paragraphs minus thematically relevant editors notes. Note:this is fresh, almost zero editing so no grammar shit please.
http://pastebin.com/PXZG0Vuh

>>6414967
Noice. thanks.

First few paragraphs of something I'm writing for children. Am I conveying the situation simply enough for younger people to understand? Is it a bit too heavy as an introduction? I could start with a more minor character, I suppose.

http://pastebin.com/2qNPV6nj

>>6415011
I've been told that you shouldn't try to trick your readers with wordplay outside of poetry (I've been told this because I've done it,) so if you give any credence to that you might reconsider the pun on "body." Don't go too hard on Lovecraft - it looks like that's the direction you might be heading. The sentence "three roman numeral gashes in his stomach were visible and still leaked onto the wet pavement" feels weak to me. I like the detective's writing style to some extent but I feel like it's also not something you should overuse. Consider having him write more things more normally so that his strange manner of writing is more impactful when you want it to be.

Putty. Putty. Putty.
Green Putty - Grutty Peen.
Grarmpitutty - Morning!
Pridsummer - Grorning Utty!
Discovery..... Oh.
Putty?..... Armpit?
Armpit..... Putty.
Not even a particularly
Nice shade of green.
As I lick my armpit and shall agree,
That this putty is very well green.

>>6415101
http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Vogon_poetry

>>6415105
thanks for recognizing

>>6415084
>http://pastebin.com/2qNPV6nj

>For our uses
Seems like a figure of speech many children may be unfamiliar with.

>What you can do that you should not be able to do

That's a mouthful. I would definitely alter that. If you're trying to appeal to children you might say something like "doing the impossible" or cheat codes for life (children aren't familiar with cliches).

>It's easy enough to apply this definition too broadly

Maybe I don't have enough information, because if we're talking about grade-school aged children than this is already a bit too advanced, and frankly, too clunky to be read without great effort.
If this is supposed to be junior high level than I think it'd work fine. Just specify the age-range so you can get a valuable critique

>>6415185
The first paragraph is written intentionally more complicated than the rest of the chapter as it is meant to halfway render the writing of a textbook that gradeschool children would be familiar with. It is meant to be a somewhat slow read. Parts formatted in that way should generally be more complicated than other parts of the book. If I had to give an age range, I'd say around 10 and up, though I find specifying age ranges is useless because people constantly underestimate the reading capabilities of children and overestimate the reading capabilities of adults in the demographic my writing will most likely appeal to.

>>6413076
Your references to footnotes don't all need to be at the end of a sentence.

>>6412279

the writing is so beginner/amateurish that it's really pointless for anyone to waste their time giving you advice because you'd still be so incredibly far off :/

if you can really read your own work and not want to change it, the problem is that you're severely lacking in taste

you should read lots and lots more

Sorry.

The garden gnomes pulled down the propaganda of the people,
raided homes and banks and broke the bridges and the crossings
and the cross, the rest marked dimples — each one’s features
cracks now scars
bled blood, as coarse and plaster hats lept final breaches

>>6415094
Thanks, man. Got anything you want me to read?
Yeah, metafictional Lovecraft was kinda what I was going for– mostly using it as a way to explore surveillance. I'll ease up on the horror aspects.

>>6415815
Right now I'm reading American Psycho and I suggest maybe reading that for an example of how to use narrative style to help the reader empathize with what makes the character write in that way. I would ease up with the magical light-bending around the book and such. Lovecraft himself focused too much on the surface level aspects of "horrors unknown," and that's why people give his work a hard time. Make the book horrifying once your reader has understood and rationalized the information you give them about it, not horrifying simply because it behaves strangely. Make the detective horrifying not because the reader fears him because the reader understands his psychosis and fears that the same could overtake them.

>>6415867
*fears him, but because

Rigorous titanium walls enclosed in vigorous malls
Balls deep in society's special place
Art deco halls and gratuitous laws
Sheoul covered monotonous broads express their mountainous desire for sexuality and security
The poison ivy league of extraordinarily busy men
Jumping off buildings, screaming "We must make amends" to the feverish God, counting every blessing until that displacing court day where old men purr with promiscuity and everything is okay in the eye of the state and government agencies, politicians flash their crooked smiles, but they constantly molest us, in hell we rust.

>>6414862
honestly I wrote this while on the shitter at like 3:00 AM

>>6415084
I would like another comment on this, if that's okay, since the last didn't really answer my question.

>>6415920
This is way too angsty without a shred of irony. Your use of language is alright, but what about the underlying theme am I supposed to be interested in here? You're not saying anything thought-provoking, in my opinion.

As he, Eddie, walked complacently up the street he had lived on for the entirety of his life, he breathed in the smell of smoked blueberry scented green tea (his first attempt at getting high); shortly up the same street he took in the unmistakable stench of wild growing fungus (the first of all real drugs Eddie had ever partaken in, albeit begrudgingly). Slightly further he saw the railroad tracks where graffiti marked the first of his "victimless" crimes that lead him to the conscience of now. He realized on this single strip of concrete that he, Eddie, was heading back to the place where he was born having gained or learned nothing. The road, which at the time was darkened by a series of unfortunately maintenend public over head lights led him to the very spot he thought he'd end at. He had walked through the almost unquestionably most dangerous part of his birth righteon municipality; a street; or rather streets, endlessly and enthusiastically blackened out by uncountable cans of opaque paint fumes or the rubble of variously demolished buildings which had held inconceivable significance to those at the time and whose remnants were proudly used to conceal their very loved (formally) streets so that they could now peruse and stalk those who had taken their place. A nostalgia, which wasn't his own (Eddie's) had swept over him in the same way the smell of his entire failure to overcome the drugs had stretched him not more than 45 minutes prior. It was at this junction of faith that he realized for the first time he, Eddie, was heading away from, not towards his inevitable death, but rather, he was heading towards an unforeseen beacon. It was a lighthouse in Utah, an anomaly in the grand scheme of existence. He, Eddie, at this junction had no idea how imminently his life would end, in the fate of a forlorn and desperate drug addict; whom seemingly had appeared out of nowhere. It wasn't until his last gasping breath that realized he was the culprit all along

>>6415961
>he, Eddie..
>Eddie
>(Eddie's)
>Blueberry scented green tea to get high

Stop that

>>6415969
but what else, man? Is the rest acceptable?

>>6415973
The language is okay, but you're not really saying anything. I suggest reading some books. What have you read recently?

>>6415982
A few Pynchon, Huxley, DFW, Carpenter, Dostoevsky

>>6404978
pls someone

http://postmetakolsti.tumblr.com/post/116607472300/this-is-fiction

I got REALLY drunk last night and wrote stream of consciousness after watching Frank and listening to Hospice and Death Grips.

I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, but a few of the lines were interesting. The rest is garbage rhyme grabbing. I guess it was kinda fun, writing something that wasn't a paper or marketing copy for the first time in years.

Maybe I'll turn it into a folk punk song.


http://pastebin.com/03zRWmNk

>>6416055

A wastiod, by most standards, had found himself for the greater part of 4 years immune to the nuances of the middle class private school from which he had just graduated. Enrico; becoming the first of his family to graduate high school. He was set to celebrate this day of such pride and reverance; for he had graduated 3rd in his class,(in arguably because of an extensive series of cheating, or when need be, simply stealing assignments from classmates.) Using his god given adroitness, Enrico could not be bothered
to even scratch off the victim's names off of the assignment for which he invariably got an A, or at least a B+. He spent a good week contemplating this trite piece of paper, a certificate no family member had held with their own name on it; although exactly twice a set of his cousins had broken into a psychologist's office thinking that there may be an uncounted supply of benzodiazopines laying around haphazardly, and had wound up in an empty office save for a chintzy chintz sofa and holding a framed degree pondering what the estimated street value of a stolen medical license was.

>>6401553
LMAO you write like Amanda McKittrick Ros.

http://pastebin.com/kH4XNNSe

Hit me hard. I have no care in the world, critic or not. All I tried was painting pretty pictures.

>>6415867
>that's why people give his work a hard time
Except, you know, he's a canonical writer since some time now and there have been a number of studies by actually informed people on how his horror is anything but surface level.
Only contrarians and offended SJWs still "give a hard time" to him today and always get BTFO.

>>6401553
your writing style is extremely irritation. There's no reason to use so many adjectives or hyphened descriptive terms. I quit reading after 3 sentences because I didn't feel like sorting through all your shit to get to what you were actually trying to say.

>>6416578
>http://pastebin.com/kH4XNNSe
I like the line "and when you leave, gaze out the gates of finity"

>>6404359
Bumping for critiques on my piece.

>>6416055
It's got potential

>>6416682
What should I do to improve?
What's good, what's bad?

bump

>>6416716
I didn't read the whole thing but if you cut some stuff, make a few verses, craft a bridge (if needed), and a chorus, it could be a song.

You can pick from what you've already written.
Here's my shit, (pls no bully)
>>6416518

>>6416716
as far as what's good, I mean it's all kind of nonsensical but some of the best songs are that way. It lets people make their own meaning from the lyrics. That's why I said it has potential.

>>6416499
I think some of the more comma-raped sentences would sound better if the parts were reordered.

This sounds like some kind of postmodern satirical social commentary.

>>6404978
>>6416014
Hey, I'm sort of a less-advanced Spanish speaker, meaning I can't speak with a broad vocabulary, but I know all the tenses so I can help you. Stand by

>>6404978
>>6416947
I liked the majority of it. Es aparente que usted gastó mucho tiempo arreglando el paso y la rima de la obra. Solamente pensé que la referencia al cigarro fue un anacronismo inoportuno, aunque los griegos de hecho fumaban la marijuana. La ultima frase,

> la vida sería solo un triste retablo

me suena 'edgy', pero no es cosa seria

Fragments.

>" - and of course her aunt lecturing her on her future, more or less an interrogation, luckily she was having none of it and was enjoying giving vague and blithe, pointless answers to counter the manipulative dance, the most of which she knew would make the goblin decay at an ever increasing rate, It was not until after being asked what she wanted to be when she grew up and having the question answered; model or ballet 'star' that the facade of a woman's cordiality developed into the overwhelming urge to slap the child."

>"- Sometimes I wonder if I and him don't share the same affliction, the choices in clothing seem to reek of the same aesthetic attention to detail which is all too common to those who understand, the lovely secret language of things never discussed yet anyone with an artful eye can discern."

http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=ijXTmvvg

My first time posting on /lit/ ;^)
be gentle

>>6417327
fuck off kolsti

>>6417327
This is awful.

>>6417388

But how??

>>6417394
There's just something very deeply irritating about the way you write, some central disrespect for the medium that puts off any potential readers. If you asked me it's probably the self-reflexiveness, your insistence of transcendence and post-ification without having developed any "real" meaning or value to transcend or post-ify, and you can defend this flaw in craftsmanship as an ironic commentary on the death of meaning or with some late-postmodernist-outcrop-aesthetic philosophy, and you can invoke subjectivism, and it will be your prerogative to do so, but what you've produced here is at least in my opinion unpolished, arrogant doggerel. It just doesn't work as an art piece, man, sorry. It's self-indulgent and comes across as masturbatory.

>>6417419
ask me*

>>6416578
Requesting a thorough review, please.

What matters to me more than pointing out poetic inversions, perhaps its verbosity, and something about discipline is the private aesthetic. I value the image, if any, which a reader can construct on their own after exposure to the material. It is my goal, and the method I have devised to test this has been implied.

Unfortunately, I'm not the greatest there is with execution, yet I tried to make the work the very least some fun activity. There's my defense.

>>6417419

Thank you for your time. That's pretty glorious, man. Speaks to me deeply. You see and feel more. You knooooooooooow I'm an artless tosser tossing myself off to my 'art'.

I think I love you.

>>6417506
What I'm saying is, if you take that artlessness-as-a-trump-card and just pull it out of your sleeve a little less and on more opportune moments in the text, what you've written could be fun and engaging to read while still preserving whatever nihilistic point about art you want to make.

bumpybump

>>6417327
That was soooooo boring.

>>6401553
ewww

>>6417327
>http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=ijXTmvvg
this is extremely boring and makes no sense whatsoever.
No one is going to want to read your boring thoughts.
Write a story or a commentary. Fuck idle nonsense, that shit is worthless.

>>6417327
If there's art and anti-art, this is something much worse.

>>6416578
pls

>>6415084
>>6416578
>>6416578
>>6417935
It's not bad, but maybe you could try being less opaque. There are only about 4 lines in the 3rd one that make any sense to me. You can leave things open to interpretation with poetry, obviously, but you might be taking that too far. That said, I get the feeling that a lot of what determines how successfully you can publish "confusing" poetry is determined by how confidently you present it.

>>6415952
now p l s

>>6417327
>justifications for muh justifications
Metamodernism is for narcissists who are afraid of criticism but want make sure everyone to knows how clever they are. When are you actually going to say something?

>>6417327
when i got to "nadir" i shuddered. had to close it there

Bumping with something I wrote this week.

pastebin.com/wZx93sTg

>>6418293
Same guy, better link

http:// http://pastebin.com/wZx93sTg

>>6418293
Same guy, better link.

http://pastebin.com/wZx93sTg

>>6417327
Superficial.

a short story by the artist known as ''nigger''.

''nigger''- nigger
-
nigger?

http://pastebin.com/whxVDZed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OztMFkRp0k

I've been to Yale.

>>6401553
Just need to know whether or not this story is interesting/compelling or not.
http://pastebin.com/tLQdCTqk

>>6415867
Hey, not sure if you're still here, but I meant critique. That said, thanks for the advice.

>>6419359
>kek'd

>>6416578
very obscure, what does it all mean?

>>6419367
>I've been to Yale.
semi-kek.

dont mind the bad spelling,i am not a native english speaker,i based this of a dream i had.

http://pastebin.com/qCQfVqbL

A short poem I wrote.
Oh Jaradola of life
that brings upon us a lot of.
What's the true?
What's the bad?
What's that thing that an elf puts on my bed everynight?

I can't explain to be
and the reasons why bureaucracy,
the Curb that is on my chest
is growing
stronger.

>>6420183
>What's that thing that an elf puts on my bed everynight?

Cum.
Also, stahp.

first line of my limerick and I'm all set
second line, still with no subject
no subject but this is all mine
what can I say, this is the fourth line
trying to rhyme the fifth line but there's a sniper on the roo-

>>6420199

There's a roof on that building,
but not on that one,
as he's condamned alone,
without a ceiling.

There are many things that can't be explained,
like the wool and stool, in a wooden brick
and the laughing sound of the prick,
the one that i was.

Satan?
The terrible?
Are you true?
Are you coming here?
Are you following my soul?
Are you trying to catch it?
Do you want it on your shelves?
Do you want to make myself cry bad?
Do you want to prove yourself to the Father?
Do you want to become more than a mere shadow?
Have I done something to offend you, o lord of dark?

And now i know,
that begin alive and happy,
wasn't so bad afterall.

Not literary enough to critique anything meaningfully. This is the first bit of prose I've written since I was about 12. Tell me how shit it is.

He was cold. Not the cold of winter, crisp and refreshing in its safety, its promise of later warmth. He knew that once. No, this was the cold of stillness, of half-heard voices dictating their agonies to no-one, raging in the dark. This was the cold of nothing. And it hurt.

He opened his eyes, if he could be said to have them, and eternity assaulted his vision. A riot of blacks struck him like a thousand cutting edges, bleeding his thoughts together into the sickening mess of consciousness he would later call fear. He shut his eyes, he was sure they were eyes now, and tried to remember. Nothing.

Well, that's to be expected, he knew. He didn't know how he knew, he just knew. He was still afraid, and he knew that was right too. He thought for a time. A minute? A day? A year? He knew those things, but he couldn't decide on one. It didn't matter. Later he knew there must have been something before, but he couldn't remember it. Eventually he realised with a desolate certainty that he didn't want to.

Then the voice came.

He ignored the it for longest time. That vague, hideous oration, never quite coalescing into words. Spelling out truths and their terrible corollaries. Picking apart that intricate, soothing web of self deception that all minds need to stay whole, to stay sane. The voice's elucidations were not cruel. Cruelty he could have endured, fallible and ultimately redeemed in its humanity. The voice was free of such extenuations, its purpose, its being, was wholly inhuman, cold, utilitarian, dryly reciting his sins like some deranged bookkeeper.

Then he knew, and his mind broke.

The bleak immediacy of who he'd been in life, who he ultimately still was, shattered his fragile hold on sanity. He knew at that moment, a moment stretching to forever, that this existence was the only thing he'd ever know. The price of his misdeeds. Finally the voice spoke true words for the first and only time: 'you deserve this'.

And so he screamed.

>>6420466
Read it twice, I loved the style. I think I understood the last bit, but I didn't quite understand the relevance of the first. Essentially the story describes regret, right?
>>6420124
Also, bumping to get this critiqued

http://pastebin.com/d5jVSctd

A beginning I wrote a while ago.

>>6421898
>>6420124

It's less compelling in the minor details such as the size of the apartment and how the windows were set up. They don't mean much to the rest of the story right now.

Enjoyed it though.

Part of an essay
>We are adults that were as children fed a diet of lies about space. Namely that it was small, that it was colorful, and that it was interesting. The photographs of the so-called God’s Eye Nebula are all false color photos. The colors are exaggerated and sometimes wholly fabricated. Dull orange and yellow becomes electric turquoise and emerald green. If you can gradiate the different frequencies of exotic radiation as colors, I can give the numbers one through ten personalities and force them to live in a house for one month. A house where-to, no one came to make friends. Although, I admit that even as I write these sentences, space has a romantic allure. I cannot deny the love I’ve been programed to hold for the void. When I attempt to draft stories, they inevitably drift toward space, and toward violence but that’s a discussion for a different day. Space is an inevitability to many in the West. It is our destiny. Once we are in space, our desires will diminish and we will have peace. We will live as brothers and sisters without kings and God. We will wear color coordinated pajamas according to our rank, and nothing will be interesting about our personal lives again.

>>6422511
Damn i want to read this essay, i dig it

>>6422535
Trying to write short stories.
http://pastebin.com/Hm73pXFg

didn't mean to quote him
>>6422611
>>6422535

>>6422611
>http://pastebin.com/Hm73pXFg

Pretty intriguing, would be interested to know what happens next.
I think it should be "me", not "myself".
You should provide clarification as to what "reasoning" refers to.

Here, taste my trash: http://pastebin.com/Qg40pMCf

>>6422511
I like it dude, dystopian space stuff is always interesting.

>>6422685
>http://pastebin.com/Qg40pMCf

>whose is possesive
>who's = who is
>grammar, mate.

Bumping with this.

http://pastebin.com/wZx93sTg

>>6422685
This is just my personal preference, but I think at times you're a little too matter of fact with your prose. You shouldn't just say
>The child's leg caught itself on a twisted piece of metal.
You gotta prose it up, man. Say something like,
>her foot hooked itself on a jutting piece of rebar, an exposed metal rib of the recently gutted tenement.
There's also a few minor misspellings, like 'clam' when it should be 'calm', 'manor' when it should be 'manner', but those are easy fixes.

>>6422926
I've wondered, why exactly is it humans find "matter of fact" writing repulsive?

Is it just because the repetitiveness that comes with it is less stimulating, or does more colorful prose actually add more information?

>>6422799
>>6422926
Yeah my grammar was/is trash. I need to proofread my stuff more.
Anyways thanks for the feed back.

Does this sound like something out of bad fanfiction?

>A wonderful, blissful feeling was slowing my journey across the void between sleep and awake. I started registering a sensation of warmth, then I felt the presence of my body. Upon trying to move, I felt weight and resistance, and my senses were brought fully back into the material realm. The soft fabric both above and below me briefly distorted my sense of up and down. I tried to move the arm that wasn't pinned under myself, and felt it move down a warm body covered in fabric.

>>6422998
I've found that most people are the opposite in that they to the point writing rather than waxing poetic. Can you give an example of a repulsive "matter of fact" description?

At night I am welcomed
by rivets shaking down empty sidewalks
boxcars rolling gravel dice
snake-eyes down the tracks
all steel stealing footprints flash
iridescent neon names
slideshows for viewers of a halted cross
and a welcome sings out
surging over tumbleweeds dancing
with stoplight crosswalks
seizuring yellow and red—
a mobile lightshow only edible
to those stopped and in earshot,
welcoming early night with
blacklight eyes.

NEW C RITIQUE THREAD

>>6423124