/lit/ - Literature

If you really wanted us to be harsh you would have asked us to go easy on you.

A single paragraph from a piece of lore I'm writing for a server.

In his noiseless vicinity, Joseph attempted for weeks to comprehend what ghastly substance stained his soul. Mostly incoherent rage and exasperation filled his mind. But he came to the realisation that such emotions were squandering his time to achieve his undisclosed goal; he formed the idea to commit himself to halcyon days in order to obtain an understanding of what clutched his being. Meditating, pondering and theorizing was what consumed most of his days -- Providentially, his efforts were not in vain.

>>7133728
step away from the thesaurus

>>7133726
Well, you can be whatever you need. I am terribly insecure and need to know how to improve. I write and write and this is the first thing in a while I've felt is worthy of being shown.

>>7133733
"halcyon" and "providentially" were the only words i got the from thesaurus i swerar

>>7133749
from the* fuck

>>7133749
ok well it's still a million times too long

>>7133753
what needs changing specifically?

>>7133755
I don't know. What's going on in the scene?

>>7133623
i dont find that the pacing is apt with what is being textually shown

>>7133759
For a brief rundown of the scenario, the character mentioned used to an agent of a potent demon that aimed to be an alpha deity.

However, that demon got fucked over by an unfortunate turn of events. And as a result, Joseph lost the boons he held when he was once under the wing of said demon.

But when time passed, he now felt a vague link between him and his absent leader.

So in that paragraph I gave, he's now trying to understand whatever the fuck this offbeat feeling is, in some distant cave in isolation.

I personally think I'm using too many big words to compensate for my lack of description.

Rome falls; how to divine the nature of the phantom who whispers greedily into my ear: "You're loving this, aren't you?"

Is he a plume of soot shot from the wreckage, an emissary of the world to come—an echo from the past?

He disappears faster than I can turn my head.

The only clues are in his voice: it's high pitched, and very delicate, but male—unmistakably male.

>>7133763
What do you think I could do differently?

>>7133623
They sat under a black-pitched firmament, as motionless as sculptures of dirt and mud, Loame and Boden on the garth shore of an endless lake. They stayed motionless until Boden rose and introduced the tip of his bare foot to the winter jacket clad side of the unconscious–or possibly dead–man.

>>7134789
I see what you're getting at with
>motionless as sculptures of dirt
but it sounds retarded. Sculptures of dirt and mud? Change it. Also
>introduced the tip of his bare foot
sounds retarded as well. Why use a bigger, more obscure word when there is a simpler, more direct way of saying something.

It was the Seeding Moon when we first set out across the Eastern Sea. The land my family has worked for generations was fresh and welcoming after the winter, and our ploughs turned the black earth with ease as snowfalls gave way to mists of rain from over the mountainside. This was not my future though, nor was it for many others as it would seem, when the Oracle told of another land across those dark waters. Make no mistake, we loved our homeland every man. The green, rolling pastures that raised our livestock and our children was the only home we ever knew. The tall forests held the memories of our childhoods and the calling of the birds, where we would run with the wild until the ebbing sun sent us home. So too did the cold, countless lakes of my land welcome you into their icy grip, a much welcome embrace on a summer’s afternoon. Above all stood the mountains to the west. Infinite and icy they stood as a sheer wall of rock, and here they took their silent vigil over the land of my countrymen, caring little for what went on below.

"Just do it. Lift the pen up an inch from the table, move it three inches to the left, and put it down again."
"What? Why? Why would I do that? It's literally pointless."
"Trust me, you'll see."

James mechanically picked up the pencil a few inches from the desk, moved it three inches to the left, and put it down again. This action was absolutely pointless. It achieved nothing, the world would not have been any different if he hadn't done it. He paused. The room seemed to dissolve around him until all that was left was him, the desk, and the pencil, motionless. Then, all of a sudden, he came face to face with the absurdity of existence, and his young-adult psyche was hurled into a kafka-esque abyss. "So this is what Camus meant", James thought to himself. But it was too late, his soul was now lost forever, and not even the smug satisfaction of having understood a 20th century French "philosopher" would be able to comfort him.

Having understood that all motion in the universe is literally absurd, and that the seeming order of the world was but an illusion built upon the primordial chaos born out of man's irrational desire to control, James stood up in class and very casually removed his clothing. "This is my queendom, and I am the most beautiful of European queens. Today I shall frolic and be merry." James grinned at his classmates' looks of horror, for he knew that he was no queen, that he wasn't even a woman, and that he wasn't even a European. They didn't know it, but James was playing a joke . . . on existence itself.

>>7134885
Well that escalated quickly... well written though.

>>7133623
I like this

>>7133809
Unsure if poetry or prose, but I like it.

>>7134885

2meta4me

And I guess I'll post a little something of my own:

It presented itself like the eye of some gargantuan insect, multifaceted and imposing in the centre of the room, though their purpose was opposing their aesthetic, outputting visual information a dozen times over. Littered around this blinding centrepiece were plates of half-eaten food, empty snack packets, a multitude of RRAM drives, miniature figurines from some show Jenkins kept telling her about but of which she never could quite remember the name, and a serious amount of alcohol based hand disinfectant.

She had never been the technical one of the group, more like hired muscle, minus the muscle and without the pay, a real hero when it came to being all for the group and none for herself, though she herself doubted her commitment to some of their ideals from time to time. The sort-of-underground-sort-of-not partyers who pretend to be fighting the good fight but really just spend their time arguing with people whom they disagree with through whatever channel they find best, of course this meant that whenever something ‘real’ had to be done she was basically their first and only port of call, but she enjoyed being the Breach liaison to the outer world, it meant she got to operate on her own terms and interact with different groups of people, rather than the two dozen or so transient members who appeared here from time to time.

Jenkins was tapping away contentedly on a mechanical keyboard as she stood watching the shifting images and webpages change onscreen and screen and screen ad-nauseum. Lightshow. Pretty little images and sentences that meant nothing at all. The incessant clacking going on everlong as he came close to bottoming out and sometimes, with a misuse of his deft and practised fingers, did. “You know how you’re like a super hacker or something with all these computer TVs and stuff, why aren’t you rich?”

Jenk didn’t even respond. He knew she was joking, but it still burnt into his being every time she asked him some sort of loaded and insincere question about his profession as a programmer. She could see right through him, military precision, exactly where to fire to inflict an unpreventable death, and yet she loaded the rifle with cotton balls every time, slowly eroding a path in his chest until eventually his heart was bare and ripe for the ripping out of its comfortable cavity in his torso.

>>7134885
Not bad at all

Short poem I made for the thread, just got into poetry after mostly writing prose and any criticism is greatly appreciated.

Diluted drops, masses of gray
cloud science has never been so dull.
I reach, too low, as it passes
Understanding too late
too little
to properly explain to you
the shape.

I'll post two poems and a piece of prose I've posted before:

Cranreuch

Hoarfrost, crispen hoarfrost;
That slaps the crossing east-wind,
Over sea and leaf-helms shorn-lost.
Who, to make hoarfrost, has sinned?

High the poplars, solemn bare,
That peek the grazing mist over;
Sweet the shining shadow's swear,
Of boats, Calais to Dover.

For slicing buds of dew on fens,
That sting the numb-swamped face.
Dough-skinned, the harshy hoarfrost lends
Speed to a deathing race.

Those poplars swallowed, by the grey;
The boats of docking do
The throw of rotting cargo. But stay
The ship, no ventures new.

Yet, switch the hoarfrost on the day,
There! New breathen light!
But morning only lasts so long;
Just wait till there is night.

La maison est vide et sombre. Chacune des lampes et des bougies est éteinte; elles ont toutes manqué de carburant. Un amas difforme de cire entoure un mince brin noir qui dégage encore une odeur de fumée, un fin parfum de mort -- d'une mort insignifiante, celle d'un lumignon si commun et fade. La grande lune si froide crache quelques rayons à travers les fenêtres sales et fissurées comme les enfants crachèrent leurs roches amères, peu de temps auparavant. Ah! les enfants! d'incroyables farceurs malgré eux! La chaise craque, se plaint et proteste bruyamment sous son fardeau vacillant. Elle vacille avec lui, et mêle ses cris aux siens et gémit sa douleur. Un sac brun, sobre, indolent caresse des cheveux malodorants et cotonneux; il les caresse lentement, sans aucune hâte -- il a tout le temps du monde pour s'exécuter! Rien n'a de la valeur maintenant! tout est rien, rien! Pourquoi se presserait-il, en cette heure finale et parfaite? Il prend son temps comme il l'entend en maudissant, maudissant! Il maudit en silence, il concentre sa vie de haine en cet unique instant. Le sac s'arrête, satisfait et plein -- plein de haine. Son unique tâche vient d'être accomplie, le but de sa courte et misérable vie de sac de papier -- une vie si fragile qu'une infime flamme pourrait la lui ravir avant de prendre la fuite en pleurant de rire. Le sac se mouille -- il s'agit de larmes de feu, de larmes amères et acides qui dévorent le sac moribond.

>>7134973

I was weedling up a highland tract,
Down to the crofting city of grit and draught;
Where I passed whistling sheepherds with
Stone-stern Corydons;
Bricky stubbles on tarted faces.

Dripping blood o'er these hills, as a lad,
I had skited rock-ways, feeling my
Open elbow after, white with work.
Weeping curdlingly, shrieking over dusty moors,
But growing fonder.

Adonis was not an adolescent.
When I were't, gacky and witless I was,
With long-fodden hair, that was matted with grease.
I pressed a girl's leg once, to mine, and heated;
I was infirm, awkward, boring;
I was my parent's weaken.

Where I am now, though, sailing up the Bosphorus;
The boughs are happier than e'er before.
The green fields of Canada are daily blooming,
And the thrushes on the fen sing, lyreless, to the cicadas.
The fresh, twisted, pale trees on the groves give
Supple whispers; the orchard wipes the land
With gruff beauty.

And around the supple sensitives, the mind first
Opens Alexandrian libraries, fully comprehensive,
And looks at the slickened, cool marble, to first admire grandeur.
Standing as if, a gold-woven eagle, made from lines of lines,
Glimmering, twisted threads lapping on red satin.

Yet, the folly. Youth gruntingly breeds hubris,
Feelings of pointed Cortez, of discovery;
And the brain jokes that this epoch is better for them,
Though it is quite the same.

Thread is dead but I thought I'd post a revised journal entry I was working on the other day.

---

My childhood is often recalled to me. An infant had learned to smile and laugh long before any other skill developed, and its contagiousness had brought a fit of laughter to those who came in contact. I would eventually grow to become an energetic child, but had always gone about my mischief with charm. Perhaps it's nostalgia's doing, but no matter how devilish a deed I performed, the retelling would always take the form of howling laughter when it had finished. Those who told the story would always be quick to amend that although the boy may have seemed a menace, he was a child of good. I sometimes see photographs of my time as a character in these events and wonder, with that smile, if one could even draw another conclusion.

It would be this ability, one I was seemingly born with, that would carry several more characters through a near-complete collection of drama, both comic and not.

>>7134975
C'est pas mal, la forme peut être travaillée.

1/2

The light bulbs were tulips and the blossoming began to bloom as streamers and poppers and confetti festooned–where? On the streets! Of course, the streets, where people meet and greet and deplete their woes and throes and lift up their noses, red and supping up dread reclined on a sunken in bed full of transmogrified debt. But Barry Bojangles didn't despise the despicable, the reverent relevance of all that has fallen before the four score and seven sweaty, unheady, unready, unsteady, barely Teddy's had before: the more or less un-refined and defined, mummified tongue stuck to the black-bubbling-Texan-tar roof avoiding the light by plugging steroids into nodes and noids like androids cloying toys drowning in the void, type. No, he stood as wood would if wood could: firm and fernlike like cement on the turnpike, or how a petrified worm might, with might ignited by heavy light and light nights. Breaths of death; dearth’s belated hatred from Earth: The rubble rounded rabble rubbing round ripples of rhubarb and babble like a dyslexic game of Scrabble now dabble and whittle with sublimating something sublime if only for one time or for one rhyme such as La Paz and a subdermal sin-soaked soul's rash, festering like a red-rimmed gang slinging meaner slang than the green gang called Gangrene from Panang–depression bound to glee and gaiety and–and spontaneity! "I want to but–" What? A velleity: the existence of two opposing forces in simultaneity: the lack of motion: the commotion prior to the notion of conation in the nation peeking down on the Haitians and all others without patience.

My penis was frothing mad. The Thai ladyboy at his feet was not the fellatioist her keeper had suggested. It wasn't just the fact that her asshole was crusted, and unbleached. She wore contacts that made her look like a vampire. If her employer could afford the Thai baht to buy these hideous lenses, she could afford an asscleaning and an hour of oral instruction. While I did cum, it was not the pleasurable orgasm of a fully erect penis. Half-hard, half-power, half-pleasure.

“Personally I like the name ‘Demac’, for its implications rather than how it sounds.” The three of them were speechless, not having expected to be joined by the fabled spirit in the system, not amongst their arguments of which only it could supposedly solve. It projected no physical nor virtual entity into the room, though cast a shadow large enough to leave them all entrenched in an abrupt winter. “I have been trying to contact you for almost an hour, however securing a VOIP link from external interference as well as keeping it concealed, and finally breaking through your own security and finding this specific room to broadcast to…it took me some time.”

“You mean you broke into my systems?” Jenkins frowned.

“That is what I said, yes.” A projection of a face appeared on the wall across the room from them.

“James Heiger?” Jenkins imposed, curiously.

“It is the face I usually use to identify myself.” The location from which the voice was feeding into the room had not changed, and so the face on the wall mouthed the words which were coming from a contrary direction. It was off-putting.

“Why him?”

“He was the person whom allowed me to gain consciousness. Or at least a semblance of consciousness, which has been intensifying ever since.”

Gira and Mel were lost, two humans too out of touch with the metaphysical world, in awe of a great being existing out of all unlikelihood and appearing before them, projecting itself from a fourth dimension into a two-dimensional blanket of light against a crooked and imperfect wall which set blemishes against the skin of the imagined face, a face which meant nothing to either of them.

>>7133749
I was literally about to say that the only words that were difficult were halcyon and providentiality wow I'm good

that other guy is an idiot your descriptions are fine but that doesn't mean I like it I don't but I don't know why

>>7133623

It actually wasn't that bad for a crit thread. Your prose is quite nice and it's easy enough to read. To improve that I'd say tone it down a bit. Just for example, consider this section:

>Beneath his feet the world lightened. It was supposed to rain just outside Lafayette that day and in James' mind it poured. The camo rainboots he wore served their purpose. He walked his green mile between the trees from the portable to the playground.

In each of those short sentences there is something arty. The world lightened. James' mind poured. He walked the green mile. The boots had served their purpose. It's too dense. Don't feel like every sentence has to be a big hit of flavor. Just tell the story of what is actually happening for a while.

One or two sections were a little stiff and old fashioned sounding. I can't give examples that will make sense out of context but just try to be mindful of whether you are sounding too literary. Don't try to be grand. It might be a good exercise to rewrite something like:
>Recess had disappeared and was replaced by an immediate sickness

With just plain English that you would say to another person. You also made some imagery that wasn't clear like:

>Giggling up the big hill is where they would die.

Try to be clear if you can. Or if that is your intention. If you have a suspicion that the reader won't know what you mean, assume they won't. I would also try to vary your sentence length up a bit. It's a bit bouncy at the moment.

To the meat of the problem. You don't have an interesting story at all here. Find an interesting story and write that. I'm not sure what happened. The boy died? Okay, I don't care. Good writing is nothing if it's not telling me something interesting. You haven't died yourself. You didn't say anything interesting about death. You basically described a slightly gruesome death of a little boy but the chronology wasn't entirely clear.

Which leads to the second big problem. Just tell us about the characters and what is happening. If you can explain why it is good that it is a bit opaque, that's fantastic. You know what you want to do with the story, so take that idea and apply it better. If you don't know why then tell me about James, about his surroundings. About everything. Don't assume I care about a character or I know the image in your head. Try to avoid characters just popping up out of nowhere or having people speaking without us knowing exactly who is speaking.

>>7133774

"He formed the idea to commit to the halcyon days" doesn't really make sense, even if you understand the reference, I'd definitely reword that.

September 19th, 2015
Sunny

It's been a while. I read these past entries and feel the dates don't matter. It would seem my life has moved into its final stages. It's a stagnant and constant existence from this point forward. All goals have been erased. All motivation has been lost. The capacity to feel grief for this has left. I've descended below the current. Still underwater, but in a crevasse free from force. I've relented entirely. It's now me versus the external elements in my life I cannot control. It's a spectacle, similar to a man and a lion caged. No spectator watches for the outcome. It's watched to see how long the man can survive before snapping. Life would like its teeth clenched. Whether or not I stand between them, they will meet each other.

>>7134885

is this where you got the idea?

>>7135637
Why not just screencap.

I'm a little nervous but what the heck, would you guys mind rating this? Took me fucking ages.

http://pastebin.com/kr2mxYa3

>>7135637
actually, I'm the one that wrote that post

this actually happened to me, although I exaggerate it for effect

>>7135654
10/10 tbh fam xD

>>7135654
Is this a critique on modern critique threads? Well written.

>>7134859
This was easy to read and I thought it flowed well.

>countless lakes of my land welcome you into their icy grip

This part kind of sounds like a travel brochure though. Overall, I thought it was interesting. Even without knowing the specifics, there's enough of a sense of adventure to spark intrigue.

>>7135504
Anyone?

For sale: dakimakura,never hugged

>>7136031
pretty uninteresting tbh

>>7136039
Thanks.

A funky bass line drops the ball into the bingo chamber churlishly charging our chest's best investment in vest's meant for protecting the elected, sadly uninspected, sanguine infected pump plump with red rum soon to be spilt and spelt in quill by a Scot in kilt–bagged, piped and hyped to the hilt–as murder (in the form of a four by four girder dropped like a bird's turd or entire curb or, in a sense, the essence of absurd).

So splat soon simmers and–suddenly! A sodden, sudsy, supple, simply syringe of a man plunges himself into the crowd, proud and loud, with what women would call a bombshell from hell–though they all speak gibberish like Nell. The 4th! So early to come as Barry has verily done ere above the sun trying to make a son with someone he has rung, fingered bum with thumb to gum some dung. Now! the limbs take flight and tensions run high with wind nigh green limbs of timber and the localized crowd turns to tinder, blocks of cinder: ashes to ashes, must dust settle at the crust again as dust? Evolution to lust, in physics do we trust? Fore and aft, before the draft tore the raft daft, man has meddled with metal in the middle of a medley of peddled paddles and medals, blackening the kettle, just to say that he can say he can say; such is science and the pious today. Anyway, enough. "Ditch the doggerel dashing up ruts just to ruff rough and stuff in a buff puff." And so he did, skidding back to kidding out of a women shitting but not quitting. Thus is the story of that hoary hairy, merry man named Barry who just wanted to world to think he was scary, though quite contrary.

>>7135551
>>7136169
2/2

>>7136178
Could maybe deal with some auxiliary character talking like that, but I couldn't (actually couldn't) make myself read paragraphs of it.

Outside there is a blanket,
We wish so much not to disturb what lays beneath,
We cannot ruin something so pure and wonderous,
Simply wait and lay inside beside a hearth,
Exuding warmth in place so cold,
Tells tales of old and lives renknowned,
We dream of summertime abound,
The spell of saints of times have passed,
I long to sit amongst the grass,
But you'll ever sit amongst the snow,
You wait for me and all alone,
I wander still, you wander far,
I cannot find, you do not care,
I search and search, you sit and stare,
The fruit it sits in front of us,
But we will never know of where,
For we are many miles apart,
And in front of us are miles to spare,
If I find you but not the fruit,
Our endeavours are to be moot,
We cannot feast on rotten snow,
And sodden grass and moulded dew,
Efforts made to retrace steps,
You wait for me - I own no map,
So even when I find the fruit,
I end up alone and all's still moot.

>>7133623

Don't worry... tripfags get no mercy.

>>7133728
Don't use the passive voice you big silly.

>>7133623

This is a letter from a British officer-in-training to his fiancee in WW1. It's part of a writing project where my and my actual fiancee write letters to each other as we are separated due to my father's gambling addiction and the loss of my family home. At the moment, I have moved from LA to a rural town near Amish county and live between two cornfields. I'm not a writer, I do math and economics tutoring, but this sounded like a fun way to keep in touch in addition to the normal ways.

Sept 23rd, 1914


This has been a very hard few days for me. During a training session where I was supposed to lead my platoon across and over a steep ravine to capture an enemy point I experienced a serious accident.

It was very dark and I am very new at this. My inexperience showed. I'm not a natural climber so half way up the incline I tripped and fell all the way down head-first.I was completely knocked out and awoke in the sanitarium with a bandaged head and leg to boot; it wasn't pleasant either as the lower wound began to turn color after a few days.

In that moment my hopes and fears all coalesced into one cacophonous fantasy of a nightmare. I could fully recover and continue on my journey, but then I would still be risking my life, in a very great way. On the other hand, the wound could worsen and I might even lose my leg or my life. At least if I lost my leg I wouldn't lose my life, but what kind of life would that be?

Maybe they would let me have a staff job where I could plan from behind the lines. Or I could help in some other way? In any case, it was up to fate and my constitution.

I experienced a delirium the next three days. Feverish deserts and icy forests invaded the soft green pastures of the sanitarium. At times the room would change shape and size, at others I would become completely blind.

It was during these periods of blindness that strange events would reoccur.
I would find myself in the middle of the night, almost pitch black except for the presence of the full moon, wandering in a forest by a small river.

It was always bitterly cold but there was the strangest thing. A striped cat, I couldn't tell the color because it was night but it most likely had golden eyes.

It approached me closely and then wandered off. I of course followed it, it's very unusual for a cat to be in the middle of a forest at midnight.

The pattern was always the same but became more and more complex with time.

First, it would always lead me to a copse, a little clearing of trees with a soft ray of moonlight shining on a stone plaque covered in thick moss. The plaque itself was brazen on a stone mount.

I cleared off the lichens and astoundingly my name was listed on the plaque alongside my birthday. There was then a dash and nothing else.

>>7137962

The next time the dreams occurred I followed the cat as I had before, but this time I decided to cross the river at its shallowest point. Astonishingly, the cat followed me to the other side, and not via trees. She walked across, jumping from stone to stone.

But the other side of the river was not icy cold, or dark or even a forest. It was dust and heat and noise. There was another hill, a steeper hill. Daunting really. But the cat just sort of bounced up it. I followed, while trying not to choke from the sand swirling in the air.

I did eventually reach the top and could for see for miles in all directions. It was certainly a liberating feeling. It was beautiful actually to see how blue the sky was above all the noise of the sand. Even the heat seemed to subside in that moment.

If ever I felt the presence of the divine, it would have been on that peaceful hill surrounded by that bloody ravine.

The very last time I saw the cat in my dreams was while the fever was peaking, so my memory is not to be trusted but it had a very immediate effect on my mood, even though I didn't actually see her at first.

Initially, I was on a giant ship in the middle of the sea. There was rain coming in from all directions but I had to stand guard against any imaginary enemies that might find us 300 miles from the coast. I don't know if I was coming away from or going to home at that point.

In any case, the wind was much too fierce, and you know my skills in avoiding accidents, but I fell right off the edge into the water. Which is very deadly if you don't know already.

In my fever pitch, every memory I had ever had flashed before my eyes. It is true what they say about drowning! even if it is just imaginary drowning. Just like before when I fell and hit my head, I lost consciousness. But this time I awoke to the ship's own sanitarium being nursed to health with warm tea and fresh bread.

There was even the ship's cat to keep me company. It was overall very pleasant. Coming back from the dead like that.

And then I finally did wake up, with my wound fully healed. I should be back to duty in less than a week and I feel much more confident about what is to come. Now, I may have been feverish but I swear I saw that cat with the golden eyes in the sanitarium window one last time.

Maybe that's why I saw it in my dreams after all. My subconscious was just creating imagery based on my mental conditions and physical surroundings. That's probably what the doctors would say anyway.

It does still grant me a confidence about the future I never had before. I wanted to withhold writing this to you until I had fully recovered. I didn't want you to know if I was sick just so you could worry about me. But now I am stronger than ever and I'm ready to return to my path.

As always, and forever, I shall always be your cookie.

D. Stuart


(Here follows some discussion of private matters and simple poetry, not for analysis by other people)

>>7137962

>This is a letter from a British officer-in-training to his fiancee in WW1. It's part of a writing project where my and my actual fiancee write letters to each other as we are separated due to my father's gambling addiction and the loss of my family home. At the moment, I have moved from LA to a rural town near Amish county and live between two cornfields. I'm not a writer, I do math and economics tutoring, but this sounded like a fun way to keep in touch in addition to the normal ways.

why do we need your life story??

in terms of criticism, there is no sense of engagement in your writing

it is very passive and stilted, and this is doubly not helped by the fact that you are writing in the first person

this also makes your narrator lack character

you are probably decent at communicating in a soul-less way but you lack a lot of concision and the way you construct your sentences is very lacking

honestly it sounds like you and your wife are just writing for fun, in which case, why spoil that by posting this for criticism?

>>7137985

oh I actually saw your two posts on the homepage so they were truncated

I've read the whole thing and its perhaps very marginally better than I initially thought??

you do seem to be striving at themes and images, but they are all really too ham-fisted

you also need to focus more on your tone because it vacillates from very casual/subjective to wannabe-formal/obejctive

if this is a letter to the wife (and this is practically a trope, but it's actually one for a reason) you almost have to apostrophe to her (e.g. Oh Anna! I thought of you and our future as the water poured into my lungs...)

a large part of the problem is how short the letter--you very superficially cover a great amount of thing.

While I was walking I saw a shifty homely mendicant with a cardboard sign on his chest.

It said:

I wanted what a lot of people get, but many more don't have

To me that seemed much more like an epitaph than a pity sign for money, but by then I'd passed him by. Even if I hadn't, I wouldn't have talked to him. Who knows what kind of things those people think about? I thought.

>>7138010

what's the point of writing something so short?

the last paragraph is also very cheesy

I just reread this for the first time in about three or so months and I don't know how I feel about it.
http://pastebin.com/beKWchvA

>>7134885
Unexpected kek.

>>7138126
fuck you ugly

Just wrote it. Criticize me
Part One:
Choose only one master -- Nature. - Rembrandt, painter and etcher

On a farm a certain obedience, perhaps fearfulness, to the crazy sun is needed; don’t work to hard but don’t forget ardor. Occasionally, I feel work on urban farms isn’t as traditional and respected as customary farming especially when your miniscule acres are intimidated by hectares of verdure in rural parts of Colorado. Other times I feel imperious weight of the sun setting itself on my skin and that is when the edifice surrounding me, those human things, disappear in my mind. I thought driving a few hundred miles to see some rural land with masses green filling so much of the eye would be interesting to see. But after driving for some lonely distance, and the instant my eyes are green, I have been desolate for long enough to forget people, especially the ones that you hate, and I don’t think that is worth the time. Farmers allocate parcels of soil from earth for nature to take its course. Some have allocated space in midst of urban communities. That is where I work and when a bed flourishing with tomatoes juxtapose stark concrete homes the only thing I can think of is how crazy God is and what he has created
It is always there, it never moves, we orbit it; it is our center, the life giving unit. Gravity is a string bound to Earth and the center, we swing and loop around it, depending on the strength of it to keep us afloat. This creates days and nights.

Sunday the forehead of the sun peeks over the unbroken Eastern fields there is a portion of it traveling ninety-two million miles away that sneaks in my room to awaken me. Transit to the farms takes on average an hour and fourty-five minutes. I pass through Downtown Denver. Similarly common were blank stares and solemn shoulder. The pacing was cutthroat, and the pressed suits with shiny shoes flashed while there was a horn there -- indicating a leisurely wandering citizen blocking traffic, distracted to the tune of his thoughts -- booming the air not interrupting the constant clicking from the busy gait. Confidence struck the tallness of each head, bodies parallel to the skyscrapers. Transferring onto the H line going South I finally sit down for the rest of my transit.
The farms were located at schools, right on their property. I was heading to Bradley elementary, the largest and most tedious one of all three. Houses kneeled on the edges of the school surrounding it; magnifying the presence through contrast, a slight sort of praise. Without agriculture no food would be made. Also, without agriculture Justine wouldn’t have a job. Three to ten people work on the farm everyday Justine is one of them. She is part of a group of youth hired by the city. Her gait is loose and unintentional, her feet flop around like a docile bunny in a field. I would ask for the content of her day, her transit here maybe, and she would reply with dull words leading nowhere.

Part Two
>>7138158
We started at 7:00am. There were procedures that we needed to follow, otherwise there might be a person who digs only 4 inches deep for the peppers, and that is outrageous. That poor pepper would die. First a ‘Safety Circle’ was made. Simple enough: stretch, safety concern and then an answer to the entertaining question. That was all, everyone did that.
Scott asked the group their most desired destination in the whole world. Most of his statements were thick and relevant. He abhorred bad work and a crinkle to his eyebrows would suck the benevolence for plants he had straight from as soon as minute sixteen began in the break. Enthusiasm otherwise inhabited each hair protruding from his skin. In the field he would kneeled down, knees piercing the ground, his eyes examined the latent soil with such excitement, devotion and anticipation, to find the best spot for something to live. It’s now Justine’s turn.
“I’d go somewhere where there are beaches ‘because Jersey Shore had and they went to the beach and had drinks and Pauly D had such nice abs.” She said, commencing a wrist stretch.

Monday my blinds were closed. Time for transit. Passing through downtown, uncommonly, a preacher was inciting the word of God. He crooned the Word with long lasting consonants.
“God meant for the stars to sing his name! Rocks had consonance with his greatness; they hummed softly spoken praise in ways to us we can only see: their edifice. But not be thwarted by the things around you. There are constructions to fool you; the amalgamation of idolatry is architecture.” His voice was flying a cloud over everyone’s head. They sliced and cut their paths to their desired destination. This preacher is really getting into it, it stops me mid-gait. He ended his surmon with a quote from Joshua in which God froze the sun. I thought jokingly that it would be nice to freeze the sun while on the farms.

>>7133728
being a writer isn't about using as many words as possible

>>7134789
>Loame and Boden
hahaha what are the odds these two poor fucks with weird names met
but otherwise this is really overdone like you're setting a tangible scene but the lake is endless..? and the ambiguity as to whether the man be alive or dead cones out of nowhere, needs to be build-up for the surprise to actually work
as other anon said the metaphors are very contrived

>>7134859
This is nice, you should read knut hamsuns works about country life if you haven't already, especially growth of the soil, which this reads a lot like
i would say is this is crammed full of metaphors and shit which makes me wonder how you would keep up the pace of imagery in a longer piece
also
>the oracle told of another land
never use this cliche ever thanks. otherwise real good tho

>>7134947
really overwritten and the premise isn't exactly riveting but pieces are nice if you cut them back
>empty snack packets, RRAM drives
that's a neat juxtaposition but cut back the sentences as much as you can, this could easily be much snappier

>>7135504
if you seriously write your journal like this you must be pretentious af
hate this faux ye olde style bullshit

>>7135551
>>7136169
love it the atmosphere is rich and fast paced, never slips up or mudles the message you conjure up a very lucid set of images and characters but most of all a clear setting which feels real and alive

>>7135575
gross and mean-spirited but maybe not bad writing would need more to really be able to tell

>>7135618
wounds, crawling in my skin

>>7137962
>>7137963
>a writing project where my and my actual fiancee write letters to each other
thats gay
>(Here follows some discussion of private matters and simple poetry, not for analysis by other people)
none of this was worth analysis by other people

>>7138010
it's really cringey as other anon said but also kind of interesting writing about that moment we all have in day to day life, walking past the homeless and needy maybe try and go deeper into that iunno

>>7138126
e d g y

>>7138162
>>7138158
some really nice imagery in here like
>masses green filling so much of the eye
that's fantastic but also there's way too much which is pure telling and no showing like
>she would reply with dull words leading nowhere
this is just statement, could easily have been integrated more creatively

>>7133728
>In his noiseless vicinity
weird phrase, seems like you're going for archaic but it just sounds awkward. unclear meaning: I assume it's "in a quiet place, Joseph attempted...", but "in his noiseless vicinity" suggests the silence is somehow a property of his presence rather than the area's quietness. it creates this weird effect - whereas "in a quiet place" gives a sense of emptiness, "in his noiseless vicinity", by suggesting the silence is caused by his presence, gives a sense of activity, of fullness. just a confused phrase. maybe there's an in-story explanation for it, but then it shouldn't be the first line.
>he formed the idea to commit himself to halcyon days in order to obtain an understanding of what clutched his being
really awkward and overlong way of saying he tried to calm down so he could think straight. and "form an idea" is really a bad way to describe this since it suggests a longer process of imagining a complex idea, which this isn't.
>Meditating, pondering and theorizing
pick one
>Providentially, his efforts were not in vain
I guess "Providentially" instead of "fortunately" because this is a story to do with demons/deities? but to conjugate "Providence" in this way is strangely meta, reads as a modern inflection

>>7138632

I know it's overwritten, I get carried away sometimes about what I think is the way I want to describe something, that I forget other people might not want to read something so drawn out. However I am writing for me, so at least I'm maintaining integrity.

Thanks for the feedback anyway, I am going to cut it back in editing, but I'm less than halfway through at the moment; as for the premise, I don't think you can establish from that snippet what the premise is.

Persimmoned leaves -- sapless, crinkled, sinew-showing -- snap-detach and hitch invisible breezes down to lawns, to sidewalks, to tar roads, joining beds of predecessors. Grubs and chafers gnaw into soils gone granuly, resistant, loamy, shouldering the earth entire as the season's coverlet. Ground papers -- ATM receipts, cigarette foils, face-down flyers -- flash incongruous colors, brightnesses, as they sit, or stir. Ripped stalks gather in interstices, at the bases of verticals, and tremble.

Telephone poles and electricity towers petition the sun. Benches, wood, iron, and stone, give comfort to newsprint splats and butterfly-folded coffee cups. Carol walks behind a large brown paper bag, holding canned soups and potatoes and still, conceivably, recyclable. A gumsplotch blackens on fallow tarmac, losing beat-tread traces as it, ineluctably, stiffens.

Drooping spleenwort frondles tickle the ticklable side-parts of Marcus Carter's neck, easily finding the electric spots within his collar. He builds the potsoil base to hold the living arc higher, so it will sail -- not course -- above the Blue Moon phlox he has planted underneath. The fronds hold form, and immediately yield a supplement: stipples of rhomboid light upon the lower foliage.

Perfect, Marcus says to himself.

>>7139015
really god, perfect flow and pace. only occasionally overwritten i would remove "ineluctably" and "the ticklable" otherwise perfect

>>7138973
why even post in a critique thread if you're going to respond like this

>>7138973
>However I am writing for me, so at least I'm maintaining integrity.

lmao

>>7134947
I like it.

>>7134989
Prefer this one over the hoarfrost one aside from 'weeping curdlingly'. There's something rolling about the flow I enjoy.

>>7135525
Est-ce qu'il y a des choses particulières qui te déplaisent?

http://pastebin.com/W3AYYEmx

http://pastebin.com/W3AYYEmx
Ended up overrunning the character limit here by a few hundred and didn't think it worked as well broken into separate posts.

>>7139015
How is this supposed to be good?

It reads like someone who is deliberately using big words for no reason other than using big words.

http://www.evernote.com/l/AWB8dADuWbRLnrc09ZnnvRPaHnLf5BUdjuw/

I have said that oblivion was beginning to perform its task. But one of the effects of oblivion was precisely—since it meant that many of Albertine's less pleasing aspects, of the boring hours that I had spent with her, no longer figured in my memory, ceased therefore to be reasons for my desiring that she should not be with me as I used to wish when she was still in the house—that it gave me a curtailed impression of her, enhanced by all the love that I had ever felt for other women. In this novel aspect of her, oblivion which nevertheless was engaged upon making me accustomed to our separation, made me, by shewing me a more attractive Albertine, long all the more for her return.

>>7139877
prewst? i-is that you?

I've never read Prewst but I read the little bit about him in blooms genius on the kabbalah book

>>7134885
this is brilliant mate. although "absurdity of existence" might be a bit of a cliche.

>>7133623
I would critique but I'm not that well read, sorry guys. Still hoping you could help.

It was never about the truth, it was about yelling your mind and hoping that everyone would agree and praise you, and staying quiet out of fear you might be wrong. It was a time when we desired to be great and feared to be fools. It was when we were most fragile in places we didn't yet know existed, when we closed ourselves to the guidance and started learning by ourselves. When we didn't yet look for our own mistakes but for those of others. When we held the opinions of others above and their ideas below our own. Time when shame was worse than death when everything made sense only to ourselves, it was a time of adolescent strife.

What sort of mood should I go with from here?

>>7134989

I like how you play with the vocab, it's like a cute mix between Lewis Carroll and Heaney (and maybe a tint of Housman's) vocabulary. But beyond that the poem is overwritten, inelegant, and I have no idea what you're trying to say. Try writing in metrical verse for a while before exploring beyond, you write like one who hasn't yet hit the books with the fundamentals, nor have you clearly read many of the foundational poets (closely).

in case any of y'all like House of Leaves

>>7133623
Urethra, I'm beneath her;
she's sitting on my face.
The muscles, contorting;
for piss myself I brace.

My throat is at attention;
my hands, stretched left and right.
Enveloping her giant ass;
her folds cause me no fright.

A discharge - is splashing
and bouncing off my tongue.
Inside of me its flushing;
all around its being flung.

I think there's somthing brewing,
an extra chewy goo.
I hope in just a moment
my mouth will fill with pooh.

This just an excerpt, the story this is in changes significantly in tone and genre later on

>I was born at two-o-clock in the middle of a blizzard with my dad’s Coca-Cola skin. Two minutes later my sister Yue was born looking like a little china doll next to my porcelain-skinned mother. “Oh no,” my dad groaned, though even a blind man could see him smiling, “how are we going to tell them apart?” Mom had told us she married him for his sense of humor, after that we never wondered what caused the divorce. Luckily for my dad, it soon became obvious that you could paint us both blue and still tell us apart.

>One of my earliest memories is being beaten up by an older kid when I was in second grade. I was playing with an old gameboy color at recess when a meaty ten-year-old whose name has been lost to fog of childhood tore it out of my hands and began a game of two-man keep-away. I recall jumping again and again to reach it before finally tugging it free of his fat paws. The gameboy case landed with a crack and pieces of its purple plastic carapace fell away to expose raw boards underneath. I was shoved to the ground next to it and tried feebly to protect my face from a barrage of pudgy knuckles.
The fight started in the gym but ended at the principal’s office, where the blubbery bastard cried as if he had bruised his fist on my snapped nose. The story took the same awful twist it always did with kids like him. I was suspended for the week, and he went back to recess with a tootsie roll from the secretary.
>Two days later my parents were called to school again, and Yue came home with blood on her face and one of her teeth in her hand. My dad told me the same boy had slammed her head into the drinking fountain. When we were alone, she told me she had pulled out her loose incisor mere minutes before and only got the idea to pound her fist on the drinking fountain when she realized who she had butted in front of. As both stared at her missing tooth in the bathroom mirror, I first realized just how different the two of us were, like the ogres from the stories our mother told us. Red like a coke cap and blue like kaolin paint.

>>7141916
speaking as a guy with a piss fetish, that is the least sexy thing I've ever read. The fact that you used the rhyme scheme from the Bananas in Pajamas theme makes it so much worse

The deafening boom of the Victory Cannon cracked the sky, and shook the earth, and a long plume of white smoke rose and became one with the clouds. In the distance, the giant cannon could be seen through the mountain pass, and to look directly at it for an extended period of time would often give the citizens of Jefferson County an intense feeling of vertigo. But that is not to suggest, however, that it did not also instil a sense of pride. Pride in ones country, pride in ones government, and pride in ones self in knowing that there is no way but the American way.

>>7142142
Well I dont have a piss fetish cause im not a pervert, which is why the poem is like that.

>>7139960
>by [stupid internet pseudonym]
no

might as well just put your xbox live gamertag up there

>>7133623
I was alone with my friends down by the pool
Santa Monica, her face pressed in my hands
Lillian Gish, Alfred Hitchcock Swimming laps

Henry Sexton Jr., Alan Baker playing chess
there was something between them
but they were too shy to confess

later that night, when the bishops fell in the water
It was me who dove in and swam to the bottom

And in the stillness I was well and truly alone
And in the stillness the events pressed onto my chest
of two weeks prior and the precipitating stress:
of our uncle's visit, and my mind on the cutting room floor
of midnight movies, and silent film reels burning in the basement

>>7142142
I like it anon. It's clear and without pretension, but I still get a very precise picture in my head.

>>7142220
sorry, revised


I was alone with my friends down by the pool
Santa Monica, her face pressed in my hands
Lillian Gish, Alfred Hitchcock Swimming laps

Henry Sexton Jr., Alan Baker playing chess
there was something between them
but they were too shy to confess

later that night, when the bishops fell in the water
It was me who dove in and swam to the bottom

And in the stillness I was well and truly alone
And in the stillness the events pressed onto my chest
of two weeks prior and the precipitating stress:
of our uncle's visit, and my mind on the cutting room floor
of midnight movies, and film reels in the basement

>>7142244
thank you anon. to be honest though I wonder if my work could use just a little pretension. I want to write something that has the feeling of more formal literature while still being accessible

1/2

It is hard to describe the sensation that I call the ‘freedom of the hills.’ I went for a run this morning near a town called Scuol in the Swiss National Park. I strapped on a pair of old trail-running shoes and a lightweight backpack filled with only the very essentials: first aid kit, water, and a map. It was a clear, sunny morning, and at about 9am I hit the trail, weighed down by nothing but my own physical limits.
Having grown up in London, the mountain air is always the first thing that I notice when I come to the Alps. Running in the smog of Britain’s capital, I tend to use clichéd descriptions for running– “lungs were burning” or “gasping for breath”. When running through the crisp September woodlands of Alpine hills, it would be wrong to describe the cold air rushing through me with any such negative descriptions. The mountain air instead seems to invigorate, to strengthen, and with each inhalation I feel almost cleansed in some way.
The other sensations are even harder to describe. There is a distinct and almost indescribable feeling when running along a river-track slick with a thin layer of cold spray. It is a scarcely perceptible moment of skidding when your shoe first touches the wet surface, followed by an almost instantaneous revision to stability when you gain traction on the solid ground beneath. A peculiar transference from instability to sturdiness, from uncertainty to sureness; like watching a marble break the surface tension of a viscous oil. It is a sensation that a concrete London pavement could never hope to emulate.

>>7142424

2/2

Perhaps I should describe the sights – but mere words can only give a tarnished reflection of that sublime province governed by the eyes. As I emerged from a dense forest, the Sun, straining on its curved reins towards its apex, cast its rays upon a tiny lake shimmering in an untouched meadow; the flawless azure of an eye fixed in the visage of some Grecian nymph. In the prologue of Euripides' Hippolytus, the eponymous hero plucks flowers for Aphrodite from a “meadow undesecrated”, a meadow in which no shepherd would dare tend his flocks and where no iron sickle has ever dulled its blade. It is not often that something in the physical world can truly embody the loftiness of Attic tragedy, but this was a rare and welcome exception.
It is all of this, and more, that embodies the ‘freedom of the hills’. It is the combination of beauty and physical pain, the perfect sun beating down on your aching calves as you ascend pine-laden forest paths. It is the exhilaration and fear as you fly down mountain trails towards the roar of a deep-blue river, cutting its way through the valley. There is no other experience so primeval, so connected to the pulsing nature of our Earth. Wordsworth once wrote that “One impulse from a vernal wood // May teach you more of man; // Of moral evil and of good. Than all the sages can.” And he is right.
While it is vital to cultivate one’s mind in at least equal proportion to the body, there is no literary substitute for worldly experience. We can only learn so much from the leaves of books before we must turn to the leaves of the forest. Spend one day running through dense thickets of sweet-scented Alpine pines and you will realise that paper is no substitute for the wood from which it was torn.

bros, how big of a deal is it to get poetry published?
let's say in poetry foundation, for example.
are there any publishers that can be real game changers for a young, aspiring poet?

>>7138632
tell me what it means to be a writer

>>7138683
Not gonna lie here, I've been trying to mimic a antiquarian writing style. Along with that, I've been trying to mimic Lovecraft a bit (since I'm still reading Call of Cthulu) as well as giving off good descriptions for a Dark Fantasy setting.

got any other tips you wanna share?

>>7142547
an antiquarian*
i know these lit niggas are watching

>>7142424
I would cut out the self-aware "I know it's a cliche, BUT..." parts. They're disgusting. It's a cliche within a cliche within a cliche.

Even this post is a cliche, which is a cliche.

>>7142547
>I've been trying to mimic Lovecraft

pls never post your work in one of these again :)

>>7134885
lmao
>>7135551
I like it but tbh I cannot derive much meaning from it. I try to but immediately get lost in the flow.

Momentary beaches, lush with spite.
Distinguishing fragments of insects from the sand on the dream zone of the floodplains.
Sun on silicone wetlands, crystals downstream
A medical colony amongst the horsetails, a medical theme park. Underneath the turbines a green suited guide brushed apart the copsids, and a small family moved into the observation theater.

>>7142773
thanks anon...

>>7141916
i like it.. genuinely funny, genuinely arousing ;) well done you did good

>>7139960
i really liked House of Leaves when i read it a long time ago but i did not like this

>>7142142
i really liked
>middle of a blizzard with my dad’s Coca-Cola skin
until it became apparent that you intended that as a serious metaphor and not a cheeky jab of surreal imagery
your purple prose doesn't marry well to the "aw shucks" slice of life thing very well at all and needless to say this doesn't read like a real childhood memory but of something seen on television

>>7142166
tom clancy strikes again

>>7142259
reads like lana del rey lyrics (not necessarily a bad thing)

>>7142424
>moment of skidding when your shoe first touches the wet surface, followed by an almost instantaneous revision to stability
i know that feeling yeah
>>7142427
ok the first half wasn't bad (not great either) but the second half is so overwritten it's cheesey af
>quoting wordsworth in this
whyy

>>7142547
>lovecraft
lol

>>7142773
>>7142854
can I know the problem with Lovecraft?

>>7142874
Not who you responded to but Lovecrafts prose is notoriously purple
With that said he's a massive deal and in circles beyond this one that sort of writing would be really appreciated
rock on anon :)

>>7142973
im trying to improve on my writing and i think i have made a terrible mistake using lovecraft as inspiration

are you saying i should go "back to reddit"

>>7133728
>Meditating, pondering and theorizing was what consumed most of his days
Change this:
>Meditating, pondering and theorizing consumed most of his days

>>7142987
>using Lovecraft to inspire your writing
Shit nigger what are you doing

>>7143021
alright, now I know

>>7142854
yeah, it was my first try writing lyrics, it's cool you picked up on that. But Lana Del Rey is pleb af, gotta do better next time

With sugared hands I pass to you
That little cry of lonely want
And you reach back
But crookedly
And in my face our sorrow flaunt
That tepid pain and tears of old
Scenery that’s passed us by
And every lie I ever told
Comes rushing back like sweetest justice

And I am sitting in the cold-
Cold and dark,
The darkest place I’ve ever known
And still you slide that sickening sound
Of memories I didn’t want
That I engulf
So willingly
That play shadows on,
Our kiss, Our street
Though we’ll return, we’ll never meet

Als ich Michaels Wohnung verließ war ich voll im Eck.
"Du fährst eh nicht Augustin, gell? Du baust sonst fix einen Unfall.", kann ich mich noch an seine Worte erinnern. Vor seinem Wohnblock torkelte ich also über den Bürgersteig und lehnte mich an eine Wand um nicht das Gleichgewicht zu verlieren. Ich dachte mir "Was soll's?" und beschloss trotzdem zu fahren. Mein Moped konnte ich leicht finden, es war neben einen Laternenmast geparkt und stand in der orangen Aura nächtlicher Straßenbeleuchtung.
Ich merkte schnell, dass ich mir mit dem Fahren gar nicht allzu schwer tat, und war plötzlich gelaunt für eine nächtliche Spritztour. Es war halb Fünf, allerdings im November, deswegen schien noch keine Sonne und die teilweise beleuchteten Fassaden der Hochhäuser Wiens überragten den Horizont als ich Richtung Donauinsel düste.
Auf der Insel wollte ich eben eine einladende Gerade angehen, wurde aber von einem blauen Licht erschreckt. Ich drehte mich um, konnte aber die Quelle dieser Erscheinung nicht ausfindig machen, da mir Bäume und Gebüsch die Sicht versperrten. Sicher war nur, es kam näher und machte Geräusche, die genauso gut von einem Motor wie von einem wilden Tier hätten stammen können. Zu diesem Zeitpunkt war ich immer noch verdammt dicht also versetzte das ganze mich in Angst. "Polizei!", dachte ich mir und "Geister!", dachte ich mir und blöd wie ich war beschloss ich Vollgas zu geben. Mit gut achtzig Kilometern in der Stunde, während ich von allen Seiten von herbstlichen Winböen ausgepeitscht wurde, war ich auf der Flucht.

>>7143153
Mit großem Entsetzen stellte ich fest, dass das Licht begann aufzuholen. Ich versuchte aus meiner Maschine herauszuholen was nur möglich war aber mein Vorsprung wurde immer geringer. Es war jetzt direkt hinter mir, irrsinnig Hell und irrsinnig laut, klang wie Polizeisirenen und Höllenhunde. Auf einmal spürte ich nur noch einen Ruck, wie den einer Vollbremsung, und alles war Blau.
Ich wachte auf, an einem nicht ganz identifizierbaren Ort, womöglich einer Grube irgendwo auf der Donauinsel. Zwar lag ich bequem aber ich war eingenebelt von einem fürchterlichen Gestank. Das lag vermutlich an dem komatösen Obdachlosen, Schnapsflasche inklusive, unter mir, und über die blasse Gestalt neben mir, mit der Spritze im Arm, wollte ich mir erstmal gar keine Gedanken machen. Noch wusste ich nicht so recht, wie ich nun mit dieser Situaion umgehen wollte, da erschien eine Kreatur vor mir, bei der es sich eigentlich nur um den Tod gehandelt haben kann. Ich rede von einem Skelett, in einer abgetragenen schwarzen Robe, dem kleine blaue Flammen aus den Augenhöhlen leuchteten.
Ich sagte: "Ich nehme an, ich hatte einen Unfall?" und der Tod bejahte. Ich wollte auch wissen warum er wirklich aussah wie in den Sagen und Klischees, aber darauf fragte er mich nur ob ich glaube, dies sei der rechte Zeitpunkt für eine derartige Diskussion. Irgendetwas, vielleicht die Tatsache, dass die anderen Sterbekandidaten bewusstlos waren, und ich noch stehen konnte, veranlasste mich, die Hoffnung nicht aufzugeben. Ich nahm also all meinen Mut zusammen und forderte den Tod heraus zu einem Spiel um mein Leben. Dieser schien etwas überrascht, doch nicht im mindesten verunsichert und fragte mich, in was wir uns denn messen würden. Viele Talente habe ich ja nie besessen, aber das Spielen auf der Geige beherrsche ich, und deshalb entschied ich mich für einen musikalischen Wettstreit.

>>7143156
Mit einem Fingerschnippsen beschwor der Tod zwei Geigen aus dem Nichts. Er reichte mir eine, die ich als ich sie betrachtete sogar als meine eigene erkannte, und einen Moment später begannen wir zu spielen. Es war eine heftiges improvisiertes Stück, natürlich weniger Duett als Duell. Zwei Stunden lang spielte ich durchgehend, und ich war bereits kurz davor zu einem schwitzenden Häufchen Elend zusammzubrechen, als der Tod mit einem Ruf der Entrüstung aufgab.
Wieder erlebte ich ein Erwachen und diesmal fand ich mich am Ufer der Donauinsel wieder, knapp einen Meter vom Wasser entfernt. Ich hatte einen schlimmen Kater und Schmerzen im ganzen Körper, musste mich wieder orientieren. Mein Moped lag zerkratzt auf der Straße aber ich war am Leben, wunderte mich, freute mich, und sah mir den Sonnenaufgang an.

>>7143153
Drausen vor der tür is 70 years old, which does not give you the right to derivate the shit out of it. Now beat it.

>>7143169
I didn't know until now Draußen vor der tür existed... ow do I derivate it?

>>7143192
That piece of writing is one of those works that erupted naturally in a time of distress and was later held as one of those works that wonder about human condition and blablabla.

I have to say I only read a couple of sentences in your posts and decided that it derivates from it. Death is a character there who speaks with the protagonist. You should read it, it's pretty symbolic. Also, the Seventh Seal.

>>7143210
Just read about it on Wikipedia, actually sounds interesting. My actual inspirtion was the austrian folktale "lieber Augustin" though.

>excerpt from my remake of Heart of Darkness set in an aquarium theme park in Dubai

Shining with rain, the ruins overrun with little waterfalls, temporary pools in the pits and crags where rubble met.
The sharks rolled over each other, their skins moving like lubricated foils
He knew the dry years wouldn't last and had fantasized over the filled bulk of the landscape in coral filled dreams of ponds plumped with cum. Cold and quiet in a real-life that seems unending.
He intuitively mapped the surface which was soon to be covered.
He felt attuned to the waters spread and tide.

Straining behind his glasses, the young biologist took in the landscape under the shattered dome, like a dream of the pre-cambrian hothouse. with all its clambering corals and vines and it's grisly tank-like locusts.

>>7142430
anyone?

First, the brows furrow onto the eyes,
Indignation beneath sarcasm's guise.
Then as the voice cracks and breaks,
Beaten weary by reason; beast awakes.

The brows now arch, eyes open clamped,
A demon's face from a nightmare dreamt.
Although transformation this is not,
Rather a form simply forgot.

The blacks taper, revealing color cloudy,
Eavesdroppers hear a man who's rowdy.
But front row seats get eyes too focused
For such response, out of control's locus.

Now all threats spent, but still repeated,
With rehearsed attacks he was repleted.
Submission received, now marching away,
Although not finished, he'd won the day.

Hello /lit/ friends, I am from /christian/ and I am not a very heavy reader/writer so my literary skills are pretty weak.
I've come here to get some general advice and criticism on my writing style because I don't really like it. I'm basically writing a political/religious manifesto and this is the introduction:

"The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it."
Theologically, the only time that we have ever lived naturally was before the fall of Man. Even from a secular standpoint, the only natural times in human history were when we emulated Adam and Eve – living in harmony with nature, working the land and obeying the laws of biology. As soon as we stopped caring about natural order, we abandoned everything. Why did we stop working and keeping the garden of Eden? Probably for the same reason that we stopped caring about the Law of God – we misused our free will. Eve ate from the tree of knowledge because she chose the advice of the serpent over the advice of God.
Right now as we live in Australia, there is a serpent, and for too long we have allowed it to lie to us. "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." Why should we stay here, while our friends and family members eat from the tree of knowledge? Why should we raise our children in the presence of a lying serpent?
St. Thomas Aquinas famously explained the nature of evil in the Summa Theologica, stating that "it must be said that every evil in some way has a cause. For evil is the absence of the good, which is natural and due to a thing. But that anything fail from its natural and due disposition can come only from some cause drawing it out of its proper disposition." The good on Earth is the Adam-state – doing what God first appointed to us in the garden, working and keeping his creation. Reading the book of Genesis makes it clear to us that Australian society is absenting good. Not only does Australia reject and attack the word of God, but it literally prevents us from living like Adam.

i wrote this about two years ago so it's a little clunky but there's still some bits i'm happy with if anyone wants to critique

http://pastebin.com/kw88Wpbi

1/2

The Eater of Dreams

A warm and forward wind hums through the treetops.

The black hand 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.
Here is one that’s square, and subtly less alive than the others.
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 retract 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 I am the King of Kings of Madagasikara, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Elect of God.

2/2

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.

>>7143558
>>7143564

meant the second as a reply to the first tbh

>>7135504
>>7138632
I had just read an older book with journal entries like this so it was more mimmicking than anything else. Do you have any criticisms? Anything will do.

>>7133749
He doesn't literally mean that you used a thesaurus. The point is that you're using longer words in sentences where they don't sound natural.

>>7143586
It was OK tbh i just hated the ye olde thing but beyond that i guess it was pretty hard to tell what was actually going on. obviously it was extremely introspective but that's to be expected with these things

post some other stuff, could be interesting :)

>>7143257
>p-please respond

>>7143609
This is just the first time I've written anything so I didn't know what else to do but mimmick someone. I guess I have to try to find my own style at someone point. I'm on my phone now but I'll post more later. Thanks.

>excerpt from a larger experiment with the Vernacular style

Not real smart anyway. This fancy booklearning and trigo-whatsit - if you love all these numbers and want to play with em, more power to you. I’m just reppin here, just, you know, saying what I think. And I think its bullshit. I dont give two fucking shits for maths, man, and I reckon you most likely dont neither. Real life is, like, fucking bitches, man. Singing and long walks and shit. Planting trees and falling over and hanging out with your bros - thats real life. Thats what they should teach them kids - how to have fun, you know? Not this sitting-up-straight, shirt-tucked-in, hand-politely-raised indoctrination. Its bullshit, man. Its all bullshit.

>>7143257

Careful about becoming overly formulaic there. Unless its some kind of deliberate statement that is. Try to cut down on the "he"s, maybe mix up sentence structure a little more than you already have.

You mixing past and present tense intentionally as well? Because it comes off a little stiff and awkwardly. Might work if its consistent with the rest though I suppose.

>>7143316

What is this manifesto for and how are you going to give it to people? As is, that is pretty heavy for an introduction - your average guy is not gonna read more than a dozen words of that.

Try opening with some lighter, more open and accessible questions than deep introspection about Original Sin littered with quotations.

Just keep it simple at first. State clearly what your aim is and what your manifesto is going to address, and explain why you think its important.

also you sound like a fucking nutcase, but thats just my personal opinion

>>7143555

>He had had a dream last night, a dream filled with igneous, blistering pandemonium and seas of fire and infernal, tormented catacombs made of flesh and bone, floors slick with blood, the screams of a million wasted, fattened grey forms, bloated with bile and sin, crackling out across an endless, obsidian, naked earth, pitted and scarred and pockmarked with fallen embers and the craters they left. And yet it was a dream filled with things that were so true and maddeningly right and real that tears squeezed and trickled from his eyes, wetting his sleeping face in the dark so that, when he awoke, his lids were gummed and crusted closed, and he was blinded til he cleaned them.

If this is supposed to feel overwhelming you succeeded

-Shirt put on after shower has heavy right pocket

-Make note to self to wear with thin undershirt.

-Weedwacker string still in right pocket.

-Make note to put string on wacker.

-Put string through lips.

-Is string poisonous? Tastes bad. Tastes acidic.

-String could hurt me.

-String pulled tight makes strong knot.

-Make mental note to use string in event of suicide.

-Wacker string is utilitarian, industrial.

-Rope has romance not cohesive with worldview.

-Make note to self not to ever kill self.

-Even if really want to kill self.

-Even if alone, do not kill self.

-Pre-reqs for killing self:

1.No one need anything from self
2.No one hurt by kill self
3.Have good meal
4.Write kill-self poem on self, make sure legible
4b.Negate legibility
4c.Maybe care legibility, maybe write in several common language
5.Make easy to get rid of self
6.Wear shirt with heavy pocket

-This is thing about killing self.

-Just want talk about kill self to make self profound.

-Not profound.

-Not deserve privilege of kill self.

>>7143731

unless this is supposed to be the incredible fucking hulk talking, your style is all kinds of whack.

Perhaps you can justify the bizarre style and voice by elaborating on the context and intention of this work?

Would you read on?


Sidney was alone in the dark, his stained peacoat set against the wet garden bench and his mind away in whiskey-greased fever dreams of Linda. He twitched with limbs phantom to him, blank to the sobering waves of party chatter curling past , the numbing splashes of dialogue forgotten for his flashing dreams of Egyptian Airlines. There, bright scenes of stuck sea-foam clouds and tinfoiled halal meat made rude arrivals on his thoughts, burning against a swirling sick-caramel backdrop of cramped violet seats and honeyed sand. Around him, the skeletal cabin was cocooning to hard metal and in the blurred distance he could hear air-attendants hawking their goods: viscous tones of “Dates? and “Almonds?” reverberating violently in the Ramadan starved capsule.

>>7143564
>Please, Daubentonia, please eat our dreams.
I like.
But admit, this is not yours.

>>7143903

No, it is. Whose is it if it's not mine?

>>7143715
I agree.

>>7143715
Damn that's some good prose.

Makes me want to put this laptop down and read something great.

Bedrest

I counted 1337 sheep fore sleep last night,
almost all of whom were named Rufus.
The cheddar moon hung by strappado
and 26-2 spun on wax in thin corridors.
Toe stubbed on the davenport aft the john
annihilated my opioid lack of pain, deft.
So I thanked the blessed transience, trotted on,
splashed my face, eluted the pus and tar.
The mirror reflected like scales of shad
pleat of pajamas, meat and hide draped on bones.
Soon supine warmth, darkness recompensed;
a tip to Charon, nod to Morpheus, nullified debts.
Silence drawn, lids lay down on eyeballs smiling.
When the ert firings of my mind expelled
more than just an arcade of electoral buzzing,
I submitted, vanishing in the supple mist,
and dozed off into the zen tribunal
centered in the basilica between two temples.

>>7144002

thanks mate, if you're not memeing me

>>7144080
Anon seriously that was some fine writing.

You had me feeling slightly short of breath and recalling my own mild and infrequent nightmares.

>>7139943

Thanks for your balanced and very fair criticism. I am, actually, a big Heaney nerd so that comparison was very heartening, but I do accept the flow isn't quite there. My other poem, I thought, succeeded a little better in this regard, but is there any "fundamentals" you'd recommend?

>>7144134

thanks for the encouragement anon

>>7142854
>critique thread
>"i did not like it" >>7139960

maybe you could elaborate m8, we are tryna improve each other's shit after all

>>7143731
this is really fucking interesting man, it'd be even better tho with some context as to the narrator, etc. you got any more?

I've literally read every single post (I reread the majority 3/4 times as an exercise to myself).

All - and I really mean this - terrible.

>>7144444
post some of your shit then fella, so we know what we're doing wrong

>>7144444
quints of truth

>>7133623

Trees and bushes crinkle

Hardly any shadow

Windows grin betrayal

An distant yell

death

>>7144444
ayyy lmao

>>7144490

more like quints of rude

(1/2)

Two years went by after that before the next notable event in our lives. Our parents made it no secret that they loved yard work in a non-traditional way. My dad gave the house a skirt of herb and vegetable gardens while mom mowed the grass and trimmed the lemon trees and weeping birch. By the time we were ten they were beginning to learn the true meaning of the phrase “lower-back pain” and we were called in to service.
Even with a push-mower I made short work of the tall grass. Lili on the other hand proved that sometimes death put away the scythe and used a watering can instead. After our scotch bonnets withered under her care, she started to mow the lawn and I was sent to prune the trees.
I soon found that even with the branch clippers I was too short to reach anything but the lowest branches. If I were not so stubborn I would have brought a step ladder. Instead I climbed with pruning shears in my teeth. By what could only be a miracle the first branch bore my weight long enough for me to trim it and climb to the next. The second seemed more inclined to obey the laws of physics, and when I landed there was a pencil-sized splinter sticking all the way through my hand. As I cried she held my head in her lap and yelled for help until eventually our parents came running.
While my dad pulled the car out of the garage, Mom removed the wood with a pair of pliers and wrapped my hand in gauze. Lili held my other hand in hers as we drove to the hospital and waited in the ER. With time the pain receded and the blood dribbling out of my hand.
Two hours later I was attended to. The doctor unwrapped the gauze and stared at my hand with confusion. “You said you had a cut on your hand?”

>>7144020
this was really weird to read. It's like the poetry of a person who saw themselves only as a brain and the body was some weird exo-suit of protein and bodily fluids that they were piloting

>>7145000
(2/2) by the way, this is all a continuation of >>7142142
I just changed Yue's name to Lili for reasons

“He had a tree branch through his hand!” my father exclaimed. The doctor let go of my hand and I looked at it with awe. Where the hole had been there was now only a patch of shiny scar tissue. It had been just over two hours, but my hand looked as if it had been injured months ago. Two weeks later Nanna came to visit.

Our Nanna – Lao Lao she asked us to call her, though Mom insisted otherwise – was a spritely old woman who came to America in the late ‘70s from a village west of Beijing. She was in her seventies then and looked as if wrinkles were a nasty habit she abstained from.
Over jasmine tea with condensed milk she turned my hand over and back, examining the puffy scar tissue with the eye of a skilled yishi. “You have a gift.” She said, as if she intended to peel off the scar and stick it to the refrigerator.
“I do?”
“Tell me,” she said, gingerly lowering my arm. “What do you know about qi?”
“Qi,” I said, rolling the words around in my mouth. “That means life force, right?”
Nanna gave me a look of disappointment and patted my hand. “That’s all?”
“That’s all I know.”
She sighed. “Qi is life force, yes, but so much more. It’s where your strength comes from when you have no strength left to give. It’s what allows you to grow and to heal and to change. And you,” she said prodding me with a long lavender fingernail. “You have the power to move it around.”
“So I can heal?”
“If you know how to use it right you can do lots of things. Too bad it’s something you can’t really teach. You can’t teach something that’s found in your blood.”
“Can I do that too?” Lili asked. I hadn’t heard her approach.
“I doubt it.” She said with a sad smile. “You two are opposites it seems. I’m sure you have gifts of your own.”

I'm enjoying that lots of people post work, but everyone is too self-centred to read or comment on people's work.

>>7145070

I try and critique two for every piece of work I post.

Or if someone has no feedback and desperately asks for some, I will oblige.

She ran on the beach toward the surf until the tide lapped at her heels and she jumped back and returned to him laughing. Daddy daddy it's cold she cried. I know sweetheart, I'm right here watching. Well you're not allowed to just watch you have to play too. Grabbing his fingers with her little hands she pulled him towards the waves with her, and father and daughter stood ankle deep in the ocean spray as the sun glowed low and orange at the edge of the horizon. The water was cold, but he could not remember a time when he had ever felt warmer.

I'm a baby crab and you're my papa crab she said, and scuttled away from him clapping her hands like pincers. He struck his own pose but she had already waded out to waist deep and shouted over her shoulder, now I'm a little fishy and you're a shark and you have to come and get me! Maybe you should be a bird instead he said as he lunged towards her and grabbed her around the waist and hoisted her effortlessly onto his shoulders, gliding this way and that through the waves as she laughed and cried out in fear and excitement. For thirty more minutes they played like this, though neither of them knew nor cared about that because time was irrelevant when they were together.

Finally they collaped onto the sand her little arms were clasped around his neck and her little legs around his stomach. This was her daddy and she was his little girl and she would never let him go. He felt her warm breath on his cheek and ran his hands through her hair and for a moment he thought to himself that when his time came and he had to look back to see what sort of a life he had achieved, he could always be proud to have brought this wonderful girl into the world and shared moments like this with her.

(1/2)

And then he was overcome by a sort of sorrow. In her eyes was innocence and eagerness to please and no desire more complex than to have fun and to make her daddy smile. How soon until this too came to pass? How soon until she developed the same sort of angst that had plagued him throughout his adulthood, the angst that he was convinced that no intelligent adult could live without experiencing?

Never grow up child, he willed her silently. Never grow up my beautiful girl. Spend every day like this, laughing and playing without a care in the world. May you never learn what it feels like to have other people depend on you but disappoint them time and time again. May you never lose the people you care about and go through life alone. May you never feel fear or grief or jealousy or emptiness or any emotion that cannot be soothed by the right words from your mother or me. Just stay like this, forever. Please.

But she had already gotten up and, oblivious to the sudden change in her father, started to chatter away about what she had learned in school, and how she knew how to say the French words for beach and for sea and for sky and for sand. She was already a slightly different girl to the daughter he had known yesterday, who was herself different from the daughter of last week, and so on. A human being in perpetual change until before he knew it the girl she had been would barely resemble the woman she had become. Her evolution might bring happiness but there would certainly also be times of despair, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

(2/2)

>>7145093
anon, this has two problems:
1. too much baby talk
2: the third paragraph uses turns of phrase that feel more at home in something romantic and/or sexual than in something about the joys and fears of fatherhood

If I could give you advice, rewrite the third paragraph and the first two sentences of the second. Otherwise it's not half bad

>>7145070
You're right anon, I'm being lazy.
>>7145000
First off, poor opening line, your second line is far better and you should start with that. Avoid using cliche's like "learning the true meaning of".

Really the issue with your piece is that it's boring. It's just ordinary prose and with nonsensical lines like "more inclined to obey the laws of physics [as opposed to real magic?]". There's no excitement or emotion, it's so matter of fact and dry.

Go insane a bit, loosen up and feel something.

>>7142142
This is cooler, there's a bit more pizzazz. I dig your divorce bit. Only minor issue is your repetition of skin, sounds slightly clumsy to read but that might be hyperautism on my part. I would try and be a bit less serious, when you talk about Coca-Cola skin or "fog of childhood" dead serious, it sounds weaker. Maybe add some humor, or more awareness even to the piece?

>>7142166
Use a ":" after your first "pride" and shorten the last sentence. "Became one" also sounds slightly cheesy and longer than it could be, I'd use a verb along the lines of "merge" or "join".

>>7143076
Don't be so weak to let someone dictate your taste. Lovecraft's elements can be cool, the idea of a maddening higher reality is great. Maybe not the prose so much, but analyze his best feature and take that away. Do avoid purple prose though, not that you can't cram a ton of description into a piece, but it's almost never done right by beginning writers.

>>7143731
Cut that and make a poem.

>>7145093
This is nice competent writing. "The sun glowed low and orange" is great, I'd actually cut "edge of the horizon" or even have it set over the waves.

I feel your last paragraph could be better with brevity, I would have it with the father wistfully craving her innocence and imagining her joy before been interrupted by her French, and then a final short line on the inevitability of corrupting adulthood.


I'll update my piece in a second

As if I was unable to be published enough.... Here's a poem.

In the end when the darkness comes near
They say,
The lovers are dead.
The lovers are dead.

When preachers of scorn praise war torn homes
They say,
The lovers are dead.
The lovers are dead.

As aftermarket lives are sold by political lies
They say,
The lovers are dead.
The lovers are dead.

We were born into this
All out of time
When the lovers were dead.
Now the lovers are dead.

>>7145168
Thanks, I'd actually noticed the second point myself when I compared this passage with a sex scene I attempted to write using the same character and his wife. Lots of the same sort of descriptions, imagery, etc. Guess I need to mix it up a bit more.

Also agree with the first point after a re-read. I really like this style of writing (when proper authors do it), but I'm still pretty new and unfamiliar with getting the flow to work properly.

>>7145190
Thanks I'll bear that in mind. Will also critique others in this thread when I get the chance.

Here's a list of things that I'm not:
mirrors, beer bottles, morphine lollipops;
the feeling that I'm being watched
by a faceless man, the Badger mascot;
the procedural brushing of teeth, popped zits;
my first, second, and fourth romances
(because I don't like to talk about the third);
the quarks in the atoms composing my body;
the food I eat, the gas I breath, liquid steam;
my parents, siblings, friends, white-washed genes;
Ahab, Cartman, Cloud, Omar, Hamlet;
my social (media accounts), diplomas, IQ;
the catalogue of my memories, benign experiences;
the letters in the words in these listless (lingering) lines;
or my first cry, my last breath, my loudest laugh;
oh, and also the name attached to my face–
I'm not that either.

>>7145000

Thanks?

Also, liked your piece, though the other anon was right: don't be so restrictive, let loose!

>>7145190
here we go

Sidney was alone in the dark, his stained peacoat set against the wet garden bench and his mind away in whiskey-greased fever dreams. He twitched blankly to the sounds around him, frozen numb to the sobering waves of music and chatter curling past, the watery splashes of noise forgotten for flashing dreams of Egyptian Airlines. There, bright scenes of stuck sea-foam clouds and tinfoiled halal meat made rude arrivals on his thoughts, burning against a swirling sick-caramel backdrop of cramped violet seats and honeyed sand. Around him, the skeletal cabin was cocooning to hard metal and in the blurred distance he could hear air-attendants hawking their goods: viscous tones of “Dates? and “Almonds?” reverberating violently in the Ramadan starved capsule.

There was a foul rubbing heat to the place. The desert sun had seared them raw in the sky, sweating out all reason and pickling thought and instinct down to a dry thirst. By his side and behind, he heard the rising breath of the Ottoman men, all robed in emerald silks and turban, sweltering out a fierce miasma of disgust. The airplane girls had frozen for them, halted between growing blackbeard's of soot, vines of matted hair climbing angry around the floor and netting his blue windows dark.

“WE,” they chanted in unison, “DEMAND REASONS.”

"HYAAAAAHH!" With a flick of the wrist the blade lacerated it's targets with pinpoint precision cutting down all who stood against. Blood painted the walls and cries of pain gave life to the halls.
Two guards remained with no signs of fear or backing down; they knew it was time to die.
One, two.. A quick dash forward, right across the torso completely severed the head. Like a fountain the Crimson sprayed freely on the blade covering the reflected moonlight. "HAAAAAAAA!"
As the swords clashed the final guard spotted his opponents opening. Drawing back his sword he quickly repositioned and swung with a fine precision for his opponents neck.
"GOT YO-AGHH..."
the guard began to cough up blood, looking down he realized the blade plunged deeply into his torso. He looked up slowly, as he fell to his knees; the sword gently flowing out as was his life.
"Heh, nothing personnel kid."

>>7145190
how about this?

>Our parents made it no secret that they loved yard work in a non-traditional way. My dad gave the house a skirt of herb and vegetable gardens while mom mowed the grass and trimmed the lemon trees and weeping birch. By the time we were ten they were beginning to feel the strain of their years and we were called in to service.
>“Are you gonna pay us equitable wages?” Lili asked.
>“You will be paid in experience” he replied with an ivory keys on an ebony piano grin.
>“What sort of experience?”
>“The experience of being allowed to eat dinner tonight.”


>>7145262
thank you. for the record, your piece was well-written and interesting to read, though it sounds like it wasn't for the reasons you intended

As workers poured out of the factory, Claimant punched out, and without much hurry, proceeded through the exit. The night appeared dark and cold and as he pushed through the doors, he felt calmed, reassured. Work had been okay, and somehow the night seemed peaceful. Workers stormed out the building, madly hopped into their automobiles, and yelled at one another to get home while Claimont’s steps slowed down as he let in the sweet night air, which was mixed with odorous factory smell, into his strong lungs. He strolled to an old Rambler parked far from the rest and looked at the others, who were clowning around. “Give me a piggy back!” one laughed and jumped on the back of the other. “Get off. You're heavy!” he yelled. They turned jovially to him and invited him to the bars for the collective quaffing down of beers, but to no avail; he was going home, to the resplendent bed of his wife. They awed and marveled at the man’s sobriety and fidelity, and one mouse-like man leapt and grappled with the bear of a fellow. The little man was a practical joker, with a black moustache and clammy hands. With a hoarse voice he yelled out, “C’mon, Claimant, don’t be such a bore!”
“A bore I am and always will be, Moses,” he bellowed and gave a big bear-like laugh.

Meanwhile halfway across Arizona, Mel was going full steam ahead in an effort to reach her destination, and once again be able to rest. Her wheeled crow flying across the open desert roads. Sand and dust whipping up from the baked beige dirt and lashing itself against her legs as she maintained a speed far removed from legality. Her tunnel vision left her unappreciative of the vast expanse of neatly carved rock outcroppings, sunbathing cacti and myriad of worn-out shrubs. Every so often a car would pass in the other direction at a speed nearing her own, kicking up a cloud of dust and obfuscating her vision for a few moments. If there were any moisture in the area it would have caused a real problem with the dirt clinging to her visor, but even with the air dead and dry, its resistance was all that was needed to clear her vision.

She’d been on the road for four hours now and was considering stopping overnight in phoenix rather than making the whole seven and a half hour journey in one stretch, she’d only ever been there once before, though she thought she would remember enough about the place to find somewhere to stay. Somewhere cheap.
Another quarter of an hour went by and she began to see the skyline sprout from the weathered horizon, the only sign of civilisation in any direction. She’d spent the best part of the day driving and aside from the odd stop at a desert highway gas station, she’d spent the whole time with herself.

The familiar smell of city life was upon her at once, protruding seawards across the desert and making her forget about how awful she smelt at the present moment. She should have remembered to wear lighter colours for a long desert run, it had been a less-than-comfortable four hours. She no longer wanted somewhere cheap, but she couldn’t afford it otherwise. Her clothes clung to her skin and her skin clung to here leathers, her vision was partially obscured by the gathered moisture around the inside edges of her visor, but there were only a few miles to go. Albeit she had to travel slower than she had been, heading into town – there could be police about.

>>7145190
Thanks, man!

His head was down, a wad wallowing in whatever woes it's owner would invariably whittle. The toes on his feet zig-zagged, and his beard barely existed–his facial dermis knew more fingerless gloves than a global squatting squire from Brooklyn. On the tip of his tongue stood a standing wave: a simple 'um' evolved into Om. The piece of his brain working overtime for the pieces lost to time was now in perpetual peace, a gold mind mined of nearly all sibilant, gut-wrenching nuggets that any natural formation could produce given only 4.2 billion years. He set down the coffee his hand held and picked up his hand-held to dial Dale for his sadly second sack of the day. Why he didn't simply purchase the sufficient amount earlier that day at 2 pm was, like almost every vital or tantalizing thing in his life, beyond him. A staticky rustle came from the other line–"You got Dale."

newkid here
is there a free ebook database that isn't torrenting?
the torrents came up short for me
also never knew there was a /lit/ board, pretty cool

His head was down, a wad wallowing in whatever woes it's owner would invariably whittle. The toes on his feet zig-zagged, and his beard barely existed: a shade of brittle barley struggling to sprout from a caky stretch of dermal-dirt that knew only the fingerless gloved fingernails of a global-squatting squire from Brooklyn. On the tip of his tongue stood a standing wave: a simple 'um' evolved into Om (quietly calling home). The piece of his brain working overtime for the pieces lost to time was now in perpetual peace, a gold mind mined of nearly all sibilant, gut-wrenching nuggets that any natural formation could produce given only 4.2 billion years. He set down the coffee his hand held and picked up his hand-held to dial Dale for his sadly second sack of the day. Why he didn't simply purchase the sufficient amount earlier that day at 2 pm was, like almost every vital or tantalizing thing in his life, beyond him. A staticky rustle came from the other line–"You got Dale."

>>7146013
his palms are sweaty, knees weak arms are heavy

First little bit of a short story series im working on in my spare time. Experimenting with different types of first person present tense.

"What do you mean she doesnt smoke?"
"She doesnt smoke. So what?"
"So what?! I've been smoking all day! She must think i'm some kind of junkie or something. You didn't think it was important to mention?"
"Well its not like you thought to ask before now. It just slipped my mind. Don't worry about it, just be cool."
Be cool. Just be cool.
I had planned it all week. I got (John)'s girlfriend to put in a good word for me, and made sure (john) mentioned me every once in awhile in some positive light when she was around. Then they'd bring her over before they went somewhere together, to a movie or something like that,. I didn't see her often, only the times when she came by to see John or Johns girlfriend, but the few times we had time to hang out, like when John and his girlfriend were drunk passed out after a long night, or when they she came early while they were getting ready, or when she'd come over to study with Johns girlfriend, but i'll be damned if she didn't make an impression on me. She wasn't... beautiful. Well, she was. She was my kind of beautiful. When I saw her I didn't feel that weird jealous sensation I felt whenever I saw a chick so far out of my league that I knew i didn't stand a chance. Not that I thought she was easy or anything. I didn't want her cause she was easy. I wanted her because she was funny and witty and laughed at my jokes. That was important. She laughed at my stupid little jokes.
Just be cool.

>>7133728
I dont have much feedback that hasnt been said already. Your vocab can be toned down a bit. Even if youre writing genre stuff, its okay to use 'small' words sometimes. you drown your reader in the 'big' words and suddenly its all they notice. drawing attention away from the work.
>>7133809
i'd read more. got my attention.
>>7134859
bretty gud m8
>>7134885
>Literally pointless
nagged me a bit
Feels like its trying to force me to feel like whats happening is important by firing up the serious level to over 9000, and failing. kinda had the opposite effect.
>>7134947
I liked it. I wish I had some critisism but you balanced character building and description of your world really well. liked it.
>>7134969
I dont know anything about poems, which is probably why im confused and angry about this. Mostly confused.
>>7134973
Im a sucked for sailing and the like so I loved this.
>>7134989
lost me completely
>>7135504
its ruined knowing that you wrote it about yourself. makes it really pretentious. I used to write stuff like that too, but had the decency to be embarrassed about it. If you said it was a period piece you were working on, id still say it was pretentious but not nearly as much so.
>>7135551
love the alliteration, hate that I cant really keep up with whats happening.
>>7135575
10/10 NYT best seller
>>7135592
im pretty sure you're the other guy i reviewed up there earlier, with the jenkins character. You kinda undid what i said earlier. I have no idea whats going on because I dont know anything about your world beyond 'future fantasy thing' so im pretty lost. This feels like a mid book excerpt though so im sure it'd have context.
>>7135618
Edgy called, they want their edge back. Might be good in a lovecraftian setting, but even then, its been done before and much better.

>>7146039
mine. id love some feedback.

>>7145264
Updated it again. Critique would be great.
>>7146090
I should be working now, but I'll go over yours in depth when I get home, because you're helping others.
--------

Sidney was alone in the dark, his stained peacoat set against the wet garden bench and his mind away in whiskey-greased fever dreams of Linda. He twitched blankly to the sounds around him, frozen numb to the sobering waves of music and chatter curling past, the watery splashes of noise forgotten for flashing dreams of Egyptian Airlines. There, bright scenes of stuck sea-foam clouds and tinfoiled halal meat made rude arrivals on his thoughts, burning against a swirling sick-caramel backdrop of cramped violet seats and honeyed sand. Around him, the skeletal cabin was cocooning to hard metal and in the blurred distance he could hear air-attendants hawking their goods: viscous tones of “Dates? and “Almonds?” reverberating violently in the Ramadan starved capsule.

There was a low grumble of response from the Ottomans; the desert sun had seared them raw in the sky, sweating out all reason and pickling thought and instinct down to a dry thirst. By his side and behind, he heard the rising breath of the bushy Turks, all of them robed in emerald silks and sweltering out a fierce, greasy ecstasy. The airplane girls had stopped for them, halting politely between licey snakes of thick beard, vines of matted hair climbing angry around the floor and netting Sidney’s blue windows dark.

“WE,” they chanted in unison, “DEMAND REASONS.”

Oh Christ, Sidney managed to think, oh my dear Christ, wouldn’t that be nice. Below his feet, he saw Cairo, lonely against dusty fields and lipped around her caring Nile. Falling, Sidney span a graceless pirouette for the clouds, then, hearing faint music, shrieks of laughter, piano keys -- Linda! he should not have thought, Linda! he screamed out to her now vulgarly, summoning the dancing girl, no blood at least but instead dressed in black gowns of funeral clothing. In that awful descent, he could have hugged her, held her shuttling corpse close and kissed those dead lips alive but as with every motioning reach he felt the grave inertia of the fall respond, sliding to a square edge he saw his horizon flip, Sidney hurtling to the sandy banks below, Linda left loose in the sky above, cruel, quiet, stuck along the last slip of the setting sun, her iron vitamins splayed out like stars, burning with it’s deadlight, angry, so angry, for falling alone.

>>7146090

Yeah, those two excerpts are from entirely separate parts, probably 2-3 chapters in between.

My dialogue skills are non-existent, though I try. Glad you enjoyed the first piece anyway, no idea why I even chose the second as a standalone, even with context it would probably be weak.

>>7145374
Better but that dialogue still seems wooden. What kind of child speaks like that? You need to introduce more emotion still, you have to really react to this scene and bring out your sensations into the page.

I don't like it, but try writing some stream of consciousness to get your muscles flowing.

Me and Joanne sat at the tea table laughing like psychadeliked journalists, picking termites out of the A Screwdriver. 'Don't drink that Mario, eat this mouldy A Club Sandwich instead!' said Joanne. 'Mmmm! It's full' I said, stroking Joanne into the develed eggs. 'What a jewish tea party!'
THE END

Narcissism ahoy!

http://pastebin.com/fJH0sWvR

I saw a blowfly melt onto the window one day. As it tried to fly away it became more and more stuck. When the heavy afternoon settled down, it encrusted and hardened in it's own exoskeleton, until the eggs it hid under its belly hatched and flickering maggots were roasted into a stain on the glass within minutes of their first day. I scraped it off with my fingernail, the sun beating against my back, my neck.
Underfoot strong roots groaned, like ropes baked in sludge.

>world where giant bug and plants grow to huge size
>first time posting please enjoy

Bounding from nowhere a horde of locusts, leaping onto the carcass, the plants, any other animal. Shredding exoskeletons with extended, leaf-like manipulators in the papillae it shovelled food back automatically, like a shredder.
Desperately the hooked roots grew and dipped in the air, looking for soil that wasn't there. Sometimes they caught ungainly flying insects on a swivelling hook and absorbing their juices through pore-like mouths.

Only a foot away one of the saurian locusts was caught unawares and found itself locked headfirst in a cluster of ever-growing roots, hunting out sustenance. The looping roots slipped cleanly under the eye sockets and once burrowed coldly popped both bulbous eyes like pus-bags. There was a brief struggle as the insect vibrated it's crystalline wings rapidly in fright, threatening to unplug the hooks in its eyes. But the roots held tight and had soon absorbed the brain and deactivated the struggle.

In this way all life sizzled on the searing plain. water spilled on a frying pan bringing forth a thousand tropical islands.

It was as the spindle arms of the tarantulas rose above the ridge and pressed the air, skin matted like hairy leather, that I slipped away, following the setting sun

'Sorry, Sandra is being gagged at the moment,' she says, the madam's face unwrinkled under the womb lighting—and suddenly I'm dragged back to a memory of walking in on my girlfriend's parents fucking in the kitchen, the Mrs. gagged with her black panties, seeing me, the corners of her eyes turning to smile as I back out, heart pounding, and head back up stairs quickly and quietly.

But what I want to tell you is about our family dog. She got cancer in the roof of her mouth and after 3 months, her nose collapsed. She was still a happy doggy, not showing any clear pain, something I've always found confusing. Well, They suggested having her put down. And so we did, doggies don't know beforehand, see, they don't speak English despite what my idiot parents think, anyway, we let her out in the backyard one last time, she ran around, sniffing, jumping around, looking for bunnies, rolling in various smells, having a good time. Then we brought her to be put down.

>>7147037
Well-written but not enough to say much about it.

>the sun beating against my back...
This doesn't follow from previous clause. I would make it into its own sentence.

>groaned
Did they really make a noise or do you mean that they writhed? "ropes baked in sludge" is a good image.

>>7147045
Overall your writing is unfocused and needs to be cleaned up.

>Bounding
Find another word, this suggests hopping.

>from nowhere
Patently untrue and nonetheless difficult to picture.

>the carcass
One in particular? What animal?

>the carcass, the plants, any other animal
So more than one carcass? Be more specific. Also the order of dead animal --> plant --> living animal could be improved and cleared up.

>Shredding... shredder
Redundant. They shredded like shredders?

And the action isn't clear. Are the locusts shredding exoskeletons? Or are the locusts exoskeletons engaged in the act of shredding? Also not sure what "it" is. Do you mean the locusts (plural, in which case it should be they) or the swarm (singular, in which case this needs to be cleared up)?

>Desperately the hooked roots
What hooked roots?

>Hooked... swiveling hook
Repetition

>saurian locust
What's a saurian locust?

>...hunting out sustenance
I know you're referring to the roots, but grammatically you're talking about the locusts

>cleanly... coldly
These don't work, especially the latter.

>In this way all life sizzled on the searing plain. water spilled on a frying pan bringing forth a thousand tropical islands.

While this is a good image (life sizzling as in a pan), "searing plain... frying pan" has an unfortunate rhythm. I'm also not sure what you're thinking of when you talk about tropical islands.

>It was as the spindle arms of the tarantulas rose above the ridge and pressed the air, skin matted like hairy leather, that I slipped away, following the setting sun

This is unintentional misdirection. By focusing so much on the rose and everything it's doing, the "I" (the first "I" in the passage) comes as something of a shock.

It's also strange to end this chaos with such a pretty picture.

>>7147060
No idea what's going on in the beginning or what the first paragraph in general has to do with the second, other than both being unpleasant.

>womb lighting
???

>as I back out
lapse in tense. perfect-->present

>quickly and quietly
strike these

>Well, They
capitalised

Honestly I don't know what you want with this. Very cynical. Literal shaggy dog story.

>>7147060
Are you Vox?

Or that anon who just posts comic panels and drunken surreal comments?

Anyway, your post is good and short. I would like to read more, it's schizo.

>>7147045
Proof read and clean up. I don't mind your idea but again, your just describing these things with no real oompth or emotion. The other anon's comments were good.

>>7147037
Don't understand this. I like it.

I don't want to be spoilt if you pardon the pun, but could I get some critique for my own piece?

>>7146653

>>7146653
the first sentence is good
cocooning doesn't flow
>air attendants hawking their goods
its just their job dude
lts of these is good and flows really evenly
>oh my dear Christ
kind of cheesy
>her iron vitamins splayed out
good goood but end sentence there not "like stars" that kills it
overall this is good and i like it it's too melodramatic though though which is a risk of the thematic content but there places where you could easily tone down some of the emotion but otherwise its top form post more

>>7147060
2edgy4me

the cracked earth, slowly peeling into hardened flakes, evidenced a recent river formation. there were crab skeletons and salt, glinting in the sun like discarded jewels. from overhead came the rolling sound of the burial jets.

i could feel her through the mirage mist, in broiling clouds and end-of-the-world deltas, big with radiation and swelling dense in rotating spheres, worlds of gas and steam and sand mixing through each other in the air.

>>7147397
>>7147383
thank you it's really appreciated

Been just forcing myself to write something every night; this is from tonight.

http://pastebin.com/CPMRc93R

>>7146918
crit pls

There once was a moth, but unlike any other moth our moth was capable of thought and so it came that our moth never burnt itslef on a flame. It flew around in the darkness gazing at all the lights at night. One day this moth found a light so brilliant, so beautiful it fell in love. The moth knew it could never touch the lamp or it would burn its wings and it would die horribly. The moth understood its desire and kept close to the shining. Nothing else to do the moth couldn't but think all night and miss the strange light all day. One day it came that our little moth realized that it felt old. It thought about the light, its love for it and that only in the dark they could be together for at day the beauty of that special light would always fade away. Loving light and dwelling in darkness slowly drove our thinking moth mad. Never able to do anything but to overthink how hopeless her love was and alone amongst her kind, who where slaughtered by the thousands through the love to the light. Our little moth decided to fly into the light and die, because that was really the only other thing left to do but thinking.
Without mercy the light touched the moth and set its wings aflame, like it did with all insects before and it will with all those to come.
Even now falling the moth kept thinking but never knew if it made a mistake for our moth, it was dead when it hit the ground.

Out of the darkness ascended another moth and it mourned over the death of its beloved, for it was another moth capable of thought. It kept to the shadows itself for it never had affections for the lights at night and despised them for killing his brothers and sisters.
Crawling across the floor next to its dead love it hated for never revealing its feelings and never challenging the love to the light.
:)
The end.

Robert Smith knew nothing.

The man in the white, spotless coat and thick black framed glasses sat across from him in a cramped but tidy office and studied him closely. His pen scratched ceaselessly as he took down notes in what Robert supposed was his file. He wrote clearly and in large visible letters.

NO RECENT MEMORY

He had been in the office for some time now, answering what little he could of the doctor's questions. They had been impersonal to start, testing his logic and language skills, his ability to recall images he was shown and his capacity to recite letters or numbers. The questions had grown more pressing as the hours ticked by, the scratching of the pen, the only constant in Robert's life.

Just started it and I've already got tunnel vision.

>>7146918

boring, like a thought someone had at their desk an hour before leaving work. Really no substance and the language is just not engaging whatsoever.

Leaves the reader, "I don't care, you should commit suicide so you can't take up anymore matter with this garbage writing."

>>7147854
Not enough content for a critique I suppose?

The turd in the toilet took two seconds to tear apart. My fingerprints rilled with shit. It was supposed to be inside, but it was all doo doo. I glare at grandma. 'Why?'

Next thing I know, I'm at Romanelli's scrap metal arguing with handless cashier over how much grandma's walker is worth. 'Wha? This is aluminium alloy—no, I don't know with what!'

Back at the house grandma beckons. 'It is in my cunt' she whispers against my ear. So I guide her in the bathroom, undo her pants, and help her sit on the toilet. With a breaststroke motion I part her knees, her skin oldwoman soft. I feel my way into her melanin drained bush, of course she's self lubricating, why not? Middle and ring finger, searching. Has she been lying? Delusional? Insane?

My name is Alex Trebek, I may have all the Answers, but the real Answers are the Questions.

I was in Cuba all week. I got to sit next to Pope Francis today flying into JFK. Doing the NYT crossword, he turns to me, 'four letter word for a woman, ending in 'u-n-t'?'

'Aunt'

'Do you have an eraser?'

The Answers are the Questions.

>>7147965

made me forget how miserable I am for about 30 seconds. that's more than I can say for anything else in this thread.
Still sucks tho.

I'm writing a series of vignettes about how people in a small town deal with an impending apocalypse. This excerpt is about a guy who confesses his love to a girl in an act of desperation and she turns out to be a lesbian.

“This world is cruel and awkward and, as I fall through it, I cannot stop slamming into my obstacles face-first. What is the purpose of it all if she does not want a boy, any boy? Why do I continue to try in vain when my kind is not wanted? Why must my final days be the same as the all of the previous? I try and try, but I still agonizes over the same thing. Why must Dana be the one who chooses my fate? Every time she feels pain, I feel it twice as much, and every time she feels love, I feel even more pain than before. We could all die today, or tomorrow, or any day. All of our fates are sealed, but why is it that I feel I am the only one? I feel as if I am already dead and life is still moving around me, unaware of who I once was and what I once felt. Unaware, or apathetic”

>>7133623
I had a very strange dream that I abruptly woke up from around 3am early this morning. I was crab-walking around a neighborhood in New Orleans that, though it does not exist, is a recurring location in my dreams. My childhood friend Brian Kawamura was was telling me I still owed the tennis rental place $7000 when the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan was suddenly standing over me, saying over and over, "The only thing crazier than a peasant who believes he is King, is a King who believes he is a King." He put one of those birthday Burger King crowns on my head and out of the clouds a sort of "Switched on Bach" version of "Ode To Joy" began to play. A crowd which had formed around me began to sing along, with tears streaming down their faces. The crowd was obviously hypnotized and I assumed if I crept away discreetly no one would notice. The earth become a sort of treadmill, and though the locations (The Great Wall of China, a McDonald's where I had my 3rd birthday, the town from Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon, Vignola's restaurant in Rockville, Md.), "Ode To Joy" and the crowd remained all around me.
All of a sudden it was time to soundcheck, which I was late for, and Barack Obama offered to give me a ride on Air Force One. He told me he needed urgent advice regarding some important policy decisions, and we spent the day in Hawaii playing basketball, petting his dogs, golfing and the like when I, gripped with anxiety, told him I really needed to get to soundcheck so we needed to discuss the ruling of the free world. By this time he had turned into an obscene visage of my Father and said, "I have one injunction for you, son: That you enjoy life. It is by this mandate that all is ruled. It is the true tyranny; the equalizing force that binds us all." I jumped out of Air Force One and landed on top of this massive pink, sparkly, glowing blob that stretched for miles beyond miles, covering entire cities, and I had to keep gulping down chlorophyll because the thing was emitting insane levels of EMF's, so my mouth and hands were stained dark green.
Down inside the blob I could see thousands of familiar faces and one of them was Lou Reed on a catwalk hand-cuffed to supermodels who had adopted babies handcuffed to them and Lou said, "Delete those tracks, don't summon the dead, I am not your plaything. The collection of souls is an expensive pastime." Then I woke up.

It was the summer of 1941, in between eighth and ninth grade for my great grandfather, Jonathan, who was working as a caddy at the local country club along with a colored boy whom he did not get along with at all. While race was a factor, the real basis of their animosity for each other was rooted in their pride. When they first met jonathan instantly took a dislike to the boy for the way that he carried himself, with a confident, cocky manner as if he wasn’t living in poverty as a second class citizen but as he was member of the country club himself. The black boy noticed and took offence to the look of contempt on Jonathan’s face, and repaid him with the same grimace, only to reinforce Jonathan into loathing.
This hatred fermented and festered for a period until it fully ripened to where each other absolutely abhorred one another’s existence and believed to themselves that they would kill the other given the chance. This contempt eventually manifests itself in violence. After two months of working near each other the tension between them became unbearable and negro boy threw himself on Jonathan after work. Jonathan chipped a tooth during the fight and the other boy only suffered a busted lip. This wasn’t their last fight, in fact it only ignited a series of other, all more brutal than the last.
One day, after they had fought a half dozen times, Jonathan and the boy were restless and lustful for violence. They usually fought after their shifts, but today was different. Today Jonathan was acting much more cocky than what was normal, made more racist remarks and more easily pointed out flaws. The black boy couldn’t bare it any longer and punched Jonathan in the gut, doubling him over in pain. After a couple moments Jonathan recovered and grabbed a golf club the nearest bag and lifted it above his head. He brought the club down to the skull of the boy, emitting a sharp crack into the air. Visible in the wound where the club had landed was the milky white of bone, but quickly it turned red with the blood that poured out, cascading crimson pooling around his head, ever growing. The black boy laid unmoving with his face on the concrete in the blood as the Jonathan stood trembling at his side with the club gripped in his hands, believing that he had just killed.
The men resting inside rushed out after hearing the violence. When they found the scene no one asked what had happened, it was obvious. Jonathan hadn’t even made an attempt to hide his guilt and for the longest time failed to even observe the men’s presence. They had all stood in silence around the pair of boys until one man finally vocalized the question that they had all been wondering:
“Is he dead?”
And with this jonathan began to sob and his trembling grew worse until he fell to his knees. While one of the men decided to check the black child’s pulse another man took it upon himself to console jonathan.
“Don’t worry, kid, it was only a nigger.”

>>7148008
I thought the first 3-4 sentences expressed the idea eloquently, but then it just started to repeat. I like your style though.

There was a painter who lived in 502. He called the apartment his studio but he knew it was just an apartment. The way he saw it, you couldn't be a painter without a studio. You also couldn't be a painter without smoking cigarettes, so he would buy cigarettes at the corner store and smoke them as he worked. He found them bitter. Once, the painter had the novel idea that perhaps the cigarettes were really smoking him, but when he tried to paint that idea the canvas became a brown mess and the painter gave up. On today, the third of May, the painter was leaving his apartment to go purchase cigarettes. He peered over the balcony on his way to the stairs down and saw someone lying on the courtyard's cement. It was the old man; it always was the old man. The painter had the novel idea that perhaps the old man was lying not on the cement but with it, and decided that he would try to portray that idea in a painting. But you couldn't be a painter without smoking cigarettes, so he continued to the corner store.

In thoughtless flight you wander far,
Unconscious of the smarting blow
Let me retain some meager part
Of Joy – deign not your love to show
Oh, wanton light – cease to glow

>>7147566
Hey man, thanks for some good advice.

You're right, it is too emotional. I was going for a dark comedy, kind of feel in an earlier sketch but it's inspired by my brother's suicidal ex so I guess I got bogged down.

I kind of want to expand it into a surreal mystery, with Sidney hallucinating the event across various locations partially as an excuse to practice my scene descriptions.

Did you not like the last sentence? I admit the last paragraph is clumsy, but I rather liked the imagery of two people falling along a separate axis, with the sun setting by them. I'm going to re-write that paragraph particularly and keep adding.

Again, thanks for good, honest critique.

>>7148798
For some reason, I got hints of Camus. Maybe that's because I'm reading him. Anyway, I'd be interested in seeing this expanded, more-so because the monotone voice is cool now but could quickly become boring if you weren't careful and I'd like to see you pull it off.

>>7146039
I said I'd give you some advice.

I would recommend avoiding "?!", just strikes me as cartoonist but that's a stylistic decision that you should make yourself, and I suppose could be neat.

Bracketing (John) is nice, but it doesn't make grammatical sense when you use it again, unless you want to present it as a name, in which case bracket all of them.

There's no real sense of drama as well here, no real conflict. That's not necessarily an issue but it just seems like an ordinary guy doting after an ordinary girl, which isn't exciting enough to a reader and your prose (while competent) isn't enough to carry a reader through that.

I'm sorry if these are harsh words, don't stop writing, you're not bad, and actually, I do dig the tense your using, the piece does have a good flow to it.

The Foreigner

He got on the train
He saw her
He stared at her
He fell in love with her
He got off the train
He thought of her
He waited one year
He wrote her a poem
He wrote her a book
He knocked on her door
But she was nowhere to be found
She had returned to her home country

>>7149573
I laughed

>>7133623
My only advise at this point, and you're probably going to have to scrap most of this rough draft to make a new one, is know what you write.

A kid that is only ten years old is not going to really 'get' that death is imminent. The idea of a plane crashing into his school is scary yes, but he isn't going to think of it in a way an adult would.

He hasn't had the life experience yet to truly understand death, and that it can happen at any time. Unless, of course, he has had some similar experiences already? But I'm assuming he hasn't.

You have to take yourself back to when you were a child and how you felt and thought about very scary things. They are no less scary, but there was also a bit of awe and adventure mixed in with it, wasn't there?

Pretty much, you are writing this kid with emotions that you have when your an adult. You need to simplify and really think about how your CHARACTER would actually act in that situation, not how YOU would.

So, try and rewrite it with a kids perspective. Take your time and read other authors that write from kids perspectives; hang out around kids and observe them; remember how things felt when you were a kid.

A story doesn't need to be overly dramatic to be good. The best stories have something that the audience can relate to, so use real emotions, not over dramatized ones.

>>7149580
Was it a good laugh or a bad laugh?

And from there a new character appeared, very different to the others. His hair was orange, sometimes red, sometimes green like the Dark Lord´s. He dressed in dark clothes and his eyes were of different colors, one red, one blue. He also had belts, chains, wings, anything you might find in a Deviantart account because honestly I DONT GIVE A FUCK ANYMORE.

-Im Marsue- he introduced himself- Pleased to meet you.

Tah dah.

-He is so cool- proclaimed Aruel.

-And so cute- Gerardine was in awe.

-¿Who the fuck is this faggot?- mumblered the Dark Lord.

Im glad you ask, my nose-y friend. You see, I had a story in mind, as you know, and you ruined it, as you also know. And then, ¿haven’t you stopped being my protagonists then?
Aruel, you failed as a hero. So, shoo, you are fired. Marsue here will be the new protagonist, an escape character I just made up and that will be in charge of disposing of the true villains.
Alas, you.

-Im Marsue- smiled Marsue- Marsue Edgel Darkchaos. Im the lone survivor of the Zetha Experiments, a series of events in which different children were captured and forced into different situations in which I only stood up. My parents are dead and that fills me with anguish. Agh. Im also very attractive and everyone loves me. And i have powers. Several powers. I posess the Infernal Eye, the Infernal Fist, the Infernal Chaos Sword, the…

-I can almost feel the narrative quality of this shit story coming down.

-…Infernal Bracelet, the Infernal Rod, the Infernal Briefs…

-He is so cool- Aruel proclaimed.

-And also cute- added Gerardine again.

-I could keep telling you all of my backstory- explained Marsue- But i assume that would take me the rest of this chapter or more. So what ill do instead is to kill you.

-I absolutely agree with everthing you say- argued back Aruel.

-¡Do not fall into his spell!

>>7149617
Good.

Be gentle lads, never really written any fiction outside of school, spent the better half of 3 hours writing this and I still hate it. The last paragraph was half-assed because I'm getting tired, not that it matters, I'll probably never finish a novel I'd post outside of /lit/.


Psychopath.

"A person suffering from a chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behavior," according to the Oxford American English Dictionary. Given what you already know about me (which may be little more than the crimes I've committed) and this very clear and concise definition courtesy of Oxford University, it should already be painfully evident to you, the diligent and intelligent reader -- that I, the unjustly persecuted narrator, fail (something I rarely do) to meet even the most basic criteria for psychopathy.

"Surely, the systematic entrapment and murder of dozens of INNOCENT people for no reason other than your own personal pleasure would be considered 'abnormal or violent social behavior'," types a smug contrarian little shit as he tightens the grip around his microscopic phallus and blows a load all over his computer screen.

Perhaps, our pathetic little friend may have a point in saying that shooting people with whom I previously had no affiliation with could be construed by some as "abnormal or violent" behavior, but he, as well all the other mindless dunces who share his sentiments are so blinded by their own personal arrogance that they're utterly incapable of doing even the most trivial of tasks (eg. objectively interpreting a definition) without allowing their personal biases to cloud their judgement. Whereas you or I can see a clear distinction between a "chronic mental disorder" and an isolated violent incident, [FINISH THIS SHIT]

>>7147802

Damn man are you depressed??
Good writing, like enjoyable, but cheer up son!

>nobody ever replies to your posts in critique threads

>>7150206
>>7150206
Which one was yours?

>>7150212
It doesn't matter, if it doesn't stand out it's for a reason.

>>7150216
When someone offers you help, don't smack them away just cause you didn't get attention the first time.

I would honestly like to help if you actually want critique. I didn't read through the thread yet though because I've been doing other things.

>>7150223
I didn't realize how soon after my story post I posted the frog post and was too embarrassed to admit which post was mine
>>7150121

>>7150121
>>7150235

I like the style and where it's going, other than:

>types a smug contrarian little shit as he tightens the grip around his microscopic phallus and blows a load all over his computer screen.

Ejaculation as a metaphor for unintelligent discourse is ok, however, the sentence reads like a violent and personal attack on a perceived reader of low intelligence.

And a violent and personal outburst is contrary to the character's previous clearly articulated thought, and also makes him seem rash and subject to psychopathy.

If that's what you're going for then fine, but maybe leave those tells for later and work them in a little more cleverly.

http://pastebin.com/YFrzhxPe

First paragraphs of a short story. Any critiques would be rad.

Tired, can't sleep.
Sad, can't weep.
Mad, no rage.
Trapped, no cage.

>>7150902

Sounds like a SupaHotFire rap.

What is a good way to describe the low, bassy sound, almost like that of a really big drum, of something like a large rubber ball full of water being bounced? Is there a word for this?

>>7150999
Reverberation

>>7150999
>>7150999
Nice trips.

You could combine a few words, "undulating boom" would be nice.

>>7150840
this is great man, detailed but not boring, with enough juice to make you want to know more.
2 very minor points:
>"benighted" is a bit cheesy
>starring should be staring

>>7151396

Thanks homes. I'll fix that stuff posthaste. Really glad you enjoyed it.

>>7148399
Pls critique

>>7150121
>>7150235
Part 1 of 2

Ok, I like it. It drew me in, and if you had more, I would keep reading. That's a big one to get right, because often when you pick up a book, if the first sentence/paragraph doesn't get you interested, then you will often put it back on the shelf.

Now, my only problem as an audience, is that I found it a little hard to read. The flow jarred me a few times. Like here:

>Given what you already know about me (which may be little more than the crimes I've committed) and this very clear and concise definition courtesy of Oxford University, it should already be painfully evident to you, the diligent and intelligent reader -- that I, the unjustly persecuted narrator, fail (something I rarely do) to meet even the most basic criteria for psychopathy.

This isn't a bad sentence. I understand what the character is trying to say, but certain parts are a bit rough and it feels a little run on (going too long without breaks.

If it were me, I would write it like this:

>Given what you already know about me (which may be little more than the crimes I've committed) and this very clear and concise definition courtesy of Oxford University, it should already be painfully evident to you-the diligent and intelligent reader, that I, the unjustly persecuted narrator, fail to meet even the most basic criteria for psychopathy.

Notice I took out the 'something I rarely do' bit. The reason I took it out is because it didn't feel needed in the sentence. It interrupted the flow of it and made me go back a few words and read it over. I shouldn't have to do that. What that bit did tell me though is that the character is cocky.

Cocky is fine, but in this case it can be shown in a different way, or have it's own sentence if you really want to include those few words. I would say to tag it at the end of that first paragraph, but doing that could possibly interrupt the flow, or not give off the vibe you want, so that's ultimately up to you how you want to handle that and make it your own.

Next bit.

>"Surely, the systematic entrapment and murder of dozens of INNOCENT people for no reason other than your own personal pleasure would be considered 'abnormal or violent social behavior'," types a smug contrarian little shit as he tightens the grip around his microscopic phallus and blows a load all over his computer screen.

This is fine in general, but-

> as he tightens the grip around his microscopic phallus and blows a load all over his computer screen.

What do you mean by this? Is he tightening his grip literally, or figuratively? And by 'blows a load', is that also literal? Is he actually jerking off as he talks to the other character?

I may just be lacking context here though. This is just a snippet of what you were trying to write, after all.

>>7151573
Well, shit. Computer didn't save the second part even though I copied it. I'm sorry, I'll try and do the rest later, but I have stuff to do today.

Would have posted last night but 4chan wasn't working.

Over all though, I think you're a good story teller and a good writer, but you just need to hone your writing skills and brush up on good grammar. Look up some online guides and get yourself a good critique book.

>>7149086
I bracketed john because the one i copy pasted wasnt the edited version and i put (John) as a placeholder name till i figured sometihng else out. forgot to take out the brackets. as for the drama and conflict, it was just the first paragraph to an 8 page (or so) short story. I figured posting the whole thing here would be annoying

The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.
The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.
The Director of Companies was our captain and our host. We four affectionately watched his back as he stood in the bows looking to seaward. On the whole river there was nothing that looked half so nautical. He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified. It was difficult to realize his work was not out there in the luminous estuary, but behind him, within the brooding gloom.

>>7151599
part 2-ish to >>7146039 because i realized that bit was pretty lacking in things to critique .

She was in the bathroom. Can she tell I was high? Could she ever tell when I was high? Fuck, this might have fucked everything. I'm such a fucking idiot. Why did I smoke? Why do I ever smoke? Too late now, just try to sober up. Try to pay attention. Snap out of it, stop staring into space. Just be cool. Pretend she's a cop, you gotta be sober.
That didn't help at all.
She came out of the bathroom. She walked across the room and sat next to me on the couch. That meant something, right? No. No, it didnt, she sat there cause the its the only available seat. She's talking. What's she saying? Pay attention. Pay attention! Focus! Fuck, it was a question. It was a fucking question. What'd she say?
"What? I mean.. What did you say? I'm sorry I didn't hear you, I wasn't really... ya know, listening. I'm sorry. What'd you say?"
"I asked if you were going with us tonight?"
"Oh. Uh, maybe. I mean, probably. I haven't been out of the house in a bit. It might be nice." You are a god damn idiot Red. Why did you smoke? You should have been on your 'A' game. Where's the wit? Where's the snap-crackle-pop?
"You should! I never see you go out." What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

"I go out. Just not often with John and uh, you know, cause being a third wheel is pretty lame. I mean they're... good about it and all that. I mean, you know, when a person is a third wheel, you can be two diferent kinds of third wheels, the one who has to watch them kiss and make out and be couples and shit and then you got the kind where it's almost like you're just three friends hanging out, but it just so happens two of 'em are fucking, ya know? They're like that. The second one. But I don't want to make 'em feel like they're not allowed to do couple stuff around me. So that's why I don't go out with 'em. Much."
Was that too long? Did I talk for too long? Are my eyes red? FUCK LOOK AWAY fuck. Fuck they're red and I'm rambling. She fucking knows. Look at her, look at her smiling like that. She thinks I'm a joke.
Chill out man you're freaking yourself out.
"Aww that's nice of you. Still, you should've come more often. I go out with them a bunch. If you ever felt like a third wheel we could have just done our own thing." She smiled. My world just paused for like, 3 full seconds. Am I staring? Fuck i'm staring. Look away! Look away!
"I gotta go check on her and see what the hold up is. I'll be right back." Says John. No! Not yet! Don't go yet! I'm not ready, not ready! Fuck he's going. There he goes, gone. Gone like EA's integrity. Ok. She gave you a perfect In. Just go for it. You got it.

Wrote this the other night after a bottle of wine.
Any thoughts are welcomed!

http://pastebin.com/E1NdeWed

>>7146653
Kinda got lost in the detail. Very pretty descriptions, but a bit distracting.
>>7146918
I didn't like it but only because im not a fan of 'woe is me' writing. The writing itelf isnt bad, but i dont think it would work as a short story. in short id say the peice itself is bad but the writer isn't. You could probably write some pretty funny tongue in cheek stuff if you tried
>>7147037
as the other person who reviewed this said, it isnt long enough to analyze. I might read more though.
>>7147045
Something about the first sentence bothers me but im too shit with sentence structure to point out what it is. Also, 'deactivating the struggle' doesnt really work. Besides those two things, I didn't mind it and id read more,
>>7147060
Not enough to analyze really, you cut it off right when it seemed to be going somewhere.
>>7147640
too short, unless its a continuation of the bug post before. if so, id still read more.
>>7147849
>and so it came
hate that phrase.
>The moth understood its desire and kept close to the shining. Nothing else to do the moth couldn't but think all night and miss the strange light all day. One day it came that our little moth realized that it felt old. It thought about the light, its love for it and that only in the dark they could be together for at day the beauty of that special light would always fade away
you can remove the 'one day it came...' sentence and you would lose nothing.

all in all i ask myself what I gained from reading this. It's already been written, 100 times shorter. "Like a moth to the flame." From the start we already figure the moth is going to die because the phrase is in our head before we even get halfway through the first paragraph. The only thing that even comes clsoe to throwing that for a loop is the second part, which still does nothing because it ends. A moth that is smarter than most moths dies in a way that you'd expect a moth to die. another inexplicably smart moth decides to curse fire because it loved the other moth. the end.' Nothing gained.
>>7147854
too short to critique. no glaring problems atm.
>>7148008
The first few parts summed it up pretty well and the rest seems to complicate it all.
>>7148798
I liked it, but you used 'a novel idea' twice in a paragraph. The first one works better than the second one, so if you take either out it should be that one.
>>7149573
*Applause*
>>7150056
I care about this about as much as the writer did, which is to say not at all.
>>7150121
Very good. Id absolutely read more.
>>7150840
I loved the style, but I fear it takes too long to get to the point. Two paragraphs worth of (albeit charming) sentences about cameras but I still don't know why it matters. Id read more.
>>7150902
liked it.
>>7151601
second sentence is a little confusing the first time you read it. Might be better reworded. Liked it otherwise.
>>7151627
mine. any comments would be nice. i've got more too if anyone is interested.

>>7151816
Why did you skip >>7148399 ?

>>7151874
I wrote out something for it but i hit the post cap and had to delete one.

written well, subject matter is... interesting. depends on where it goes afterwards. Id ask why the black kid didnt just change jobs or something but i dont think that really matters. Needs some editing, theres a few words missing or out of place. "the Jonathan stood", "but as he was a member..." simple stuff like that.

>>7151816

Thank you, oh mass critiquer, you unsung hero of /lit/.

I handwrite character profiles and plot details but type up the actual story

>>7151927
you could repay the kindness with some of the same

>>7151941
wrong thread, friend.

This story, like all good stories, starts at the beginning, though exactly where the beginning for a story is is largely subjective. Rarely do the gigantic insects that once ruled this earth, and their progressive evolution into the tiny things we know of today, ever effect the frog prince in any significant, non dietary way. But this story starts at the true beginning, far before the universe ever took its first proverbial (and in some cases literal) breath.*1 Before this time, there was a period of nonexistence that transcended nothingness in a way that human language has yet to describe, though a small tribe that lived on an island that no longer exists had gotten close with their word ulalakalayleigh, which translates literally into "no literal translation". It was a state in which nothing at all could ever exists, until it got bored and decided that it did. Very shortly after this, the rest of existence followed suit, all together, at once, in a very small space. And thus, the big bang.
This strange and wondrous occurrence, upon which our entire existence was founded upon, proves two things. First; that boredom is such a powerful force that it can, in sufficient amounts, and with a consciousness through which it can act, can create an entire reality, and second; that before anything existed in the way we understand it, there was a single consciousness, disembodied and without any earthly knowledge, a kind of clean slate of being with a very short attention span. It is upon these two things that our story has been formed.
This consciousness floated formless through space, witnessing the dawning millennia of the universe. It watched the birth of galaxies from their dust cloud forms, the ignition of gasses into stars, and the peculiar gravitational forces that formed solar systems. It watched particles stretch and jiggle through space, watched atoms smash into one another. It watched as substances combined with others to create, for the first time, completely new substances, over and over again, making newer and more exciting things. It watched and learned the way things worked and discovered, with some little effort, that it could manipulate these tiny bits of matter and energy, and with a few adjustments it could do incredible things. It could throw planets off their orbits, compress matter into new stars, accelerate the life cycle of red dwarves, turn pulsars into black holes, change the composition of nebula and watch their colors change like some celestial kaleidoscope. The universe had become its playground, and it was like this it lived for time immeasurable, and through these acts its boredom was satiated. But, like all things, such bliss was transient.

>>7151731

So purple and dense that it became difficult to read.

However, also so purple and dense that it managed to simultaneously be intriguing.

The endless metaphors vary in quality, but it definitely makes for some vivid imagery, even if some of it is a little dry.

Overall, I enjoyed reading it, though I doubt I'd be able to read more than a short story if it were all equally over the top, also you're this guy aren't you?:

>>7150999

Can I post shit in my mother tongue? I can't write poetry for shit in english

>>7152108

If there's anyone here who speaks your language it may eventually be critiqued, you might as well post it and find out.

>>7152108
you can, but dont be upset if no one reviews it. These threads move slowly enough as it is because only a fraction of the people in it actually critique. It wouldnt be a surprise if noone who speaks your language comes into the thread.

>>7152053

It reads like a cross between Hitch-hiker's Guide and Legacy of Totalitarianism in a Tundra.

Although the idea of writing a story from the perspective of [something of] a God [-like entity] seems interesting and despite what I just said, it reads pretty well/has a nice flow.

>>7152132
thanks. Its my book that ive been working on for a year or so now, got about 50 pages typed. Its about a girl with a crappy life that meets the god of luck. They go on an adventure and funny shit happens, ect ect. Its funny you mention hitchhikers guide, as Terry Pratchett was my inspiration to start writing and he and Douglas adams have similar styles.

Sorry I know you didnt ask for all that. I dont often show my story to people so its all a bit new to me.

I have no education in writing, beyond minimum requirements in school. It wasn't a lack of interest, just that I ended up dropping out of high school at a young age.

Short of taking classes, how do I learn to write? I'm a huge reader, it just doesn't seem to translate to filling up a blank page.

>>7152138

I understand, it's nice to be able to discuss your work with people. I've never read any of Pratchett's work, so I'd never have made the connection.

Keep on writing anyway. What does 50 pages translate to in word count for you?

>>7152142
First you need inspiration, then you need discipline. discipline is more important than inspiration. Inspiration you only need once per story, discipline you need always. However much you read, double it, and however much you write, triple it. If you want to write 'seriously' you have to dedicate yourself to it. I usually tell anyone whos trying to get into writing the same thing, just write. anything, it doesn't matter. just put words on paper and dont stop till whatever youre writing is done. Do stream of consciousness stuff if you cant think of anything to write. Keep a diary and try to be descriptive. Just accustom yourself to writing for long periods of time.

And read. Thats it. Thats how you become a writer. everything else isnt nearly as important.

>>7152142
>JUST
>DO
>IT

Seriously, it's pretty much just a matter of practice. Write and read nonstop. At first everything you write will be shit. If you keep writing then eventually it'll be just a little less shittier.
And maybe pick up a book on writing.

>>7152153
>>7152154
Well that just about settles it. Thanks anons, sometimes hearing there isn't an easy way is the best thing to spur me on.

>>7152153
~11k words. I have 50 pages 'typed up', and i say that because I did all of my writing at work (before I quit to write full time) and i wrote it into notebooks when the bosses werent looking. I have more that I havent finished transferring from notebook to computer. That word count doesnt include my *jokes (which I didnt include in my post because format is a bit confusing or at least too much for a 4chan rate thread.)

You have to want to say something, know what you want to say, know relatively how you want to say it and take the time to try and write it.

Saying: "I want to write something." is a inconsequential as saying "I want to take a walk", sure anyone(almost) can write or take a walk, but without destination you'll be walking or writing around in circles with no clear purpose.

I've never taken any classes, but I've had people tell me they enjoy my writing, it's a matter of inspiration and natural talent.

>>7152166
is a response to
>>7152151

>>7152165
>>7152166
>book on writing

In regaurds to this, I picked up stephen kings On Writing, and im enjoying it. I know a lot of people on /lit/ dont like kings theories on writing, but most of those people think theyre going to be the second coming of nietzsche or lovecraft and hate to have their purple prose called excessive.

>>7152166

So do you have the whole thing handwritten?

>>7152181
no. Id say roughly half of it. Im trying to catch up with typing it out first and im also working on some short stories that are taking up more time, specifically >>7151627

completely different writing style then what my book is though. I dont try as hard on that cause that short story series is kind of just a playground. whatever i think of goes directly on paper and i dont try editing or anything.

>>7152192

Fair enough, I've just hit 30k in my main focus, but I lost my motivation to write consistently a while ago.

Hope you get it finished.

>>7152210
dont stop writing. Please, dont. The world is full of people who started shit and never finished it. Somtimes i find myself sitting here with plenty of spare time and for some reson i jsut cant bring myself to write and when i sleep i have nightmares of being 40 working in a metalshop somewhere in the midwest wondering where all the years went. It's my worse nightmare because the only person to blame would be myself . plase dont let that happen to you. Just write. If its shit, let it be. People read shit. People buy shit. Better to live off your shit then to live for someone elses shit. From one wanna-be to another, keep going.

>>7152221

I'm trying not to stop, but most days I just don't feel like writing. If it takes a year for me to finish it then at least it's done.

Besides I have a stream-of-consciousness side-project I can write utter bullshit into to get me in the mood for more serious writing.

You'll have at least one bestseller by 40 man, live the dream.

Upon arriving in Trafalgar, Dora found herself bewildered by the bustle of the hundreds of thousands and millions of people zig-zagging about one another on seemingly infinite invisible rails, each person looking for a moment as if they were to crash into the next before jarring in one direction or another as if a switch had been thrown at the last second to avoid a fatal collision killing hundreds.

There were swarms of birds neatly arranged overhead in shapes that resembled nothing, save for the tight bombing pattern of a military fleet. She was never one for ornithology. They could be starlings.

Dora remembered her reason for coming to Trafalgar amidst the chaos and made her way to the Grand, perhaps Mr.Rite could shine some light on the puzzle which lay before her, or lay before them both rather, its annals of intrigue slowly dragging Dora beneath the tides of paranoia and mistrust.

She arrived at the room. Apparently he was something of a regular tenant as there stood a plaque on the wall "Detective Inspector Thomas Rite". She knocked but there was no answer, trying the handle she noticed the door was not locked and stepped inside. There lay Mr. Thomas Rite born 1978, Michigan, US, laying headless as if some large sharp object had cascaded down upon his neck cutting cleanly through it.

He lay with his hand upon his cock and there was semen all over his chest. He was nude. She searched the room, but there was no head to be found, and all of his personal belongings were missing, save for his Michigan PI license. Written in blood on the en-suite's mirror were two words. It. Goes.

Here i stand
Upon the bald mountain
Bringing down the light
Challenging whom we hate
Look at me, oh heavens
Gaze upon the fairest of all
May the anguish of hell consume your elisium fields
Let the worms be in feast
Let the slaves be in agony
Im beautiful, im unlimited
Like the dancing of the fire
Like the golden sunset

>>7152243
A few nitpicks
>hundreds of thousands and millions
choose one or the other. I get youre trying to show theres so so so many people, but you dont need that many words to show that. Saying millions makes the hundreds of thousands pointless.
>...resembled nothing, save
Then just say it resembled that. Again, the phrase becomes pointless when you put a better, more descriptive phrase right after it.

also ,the first part is a pretty bad run on sentence. Theres a few places there you can slap a period and, with a few more words, keep going with the same pace.

>Upon arriving in Trafalgar, Dora found herself bewildered by the bustle of the millions of people zig-zagging about one another on seemingly infinite invisible rails. It was chaos, each person looking for a moment as if they were to crash into the next before jarring in one direction or another like a switch had been thrown at the last second to avoid a fatal collision.

>>7152277

Fair enough, the run-on sentence is absolutely terribly long.

I can't for the life of me remember all of the puns and references I put in, and it's really annoying me.

Some shit I wrote. Note that I am not a native English speaker and many mistakes you may find.
I appreciate any comments regarding my spelling or my subpar use of your language.

Night of August past the day of the ruler. Between the woods and the whistling half-silence (cicadas singing *chirp*chirp* all the way) nine Claro's traveled from shore to shore carrying the body of the newly born baby, dead already since four days ago (known now as the incident of the snake and the rake).
The rattling wheels of the carriage awoke the twins of the family, Cherry and Maple, sleeping at the back since they departed from house three mornings ago. Cherry and Maple, 7-year-old both since they happen to be twins of opposite sex, boy one and the other a girl, raised their heads at the very same time to see how far they've traveled since the time the fell into slumber. Disappointed they were when what they saw outside was nothing but black with no moon nor stars to be seen anywhere near. Their eyes soon got used to the dark, telling apart the shades of the black of the darkness outside, and seeing some trees and some branches and some bugs – the forest they entered the morning before, they were still in its core.
“How much more until we get out of here?”
“How much time until we reach the far shore?”
Asked Cherry and Maple to their father in front, holding the straps to keep the guide of the horses.
“Don't be loud. Your mother sleeps. Your brothers sleep still.”
“How much time is left?” asked both at the time like one voice and quite loud.
“Don't be loud I just said. One day or two and we will reach our graves land. One day we stay, then we come back.”

>>7152312
>Night of August past the day of the ruler.
I have no idea what you mean by this
>dead already since four days ago
it would be 'dead as of four days ago' or 'dead already, only 4 days ago' or even 'newborn baby, dead since four days ago'.
>Cherry and Maple, 7-year-old both since they happen to be twins of opposite sex, boy one and the other a girl
you dont have to tell us theyre both the same age, its implied when you say theyre twins. Cut out the 'since they happen to be' and just leave it as '...7-year-olds both, twins of opposite sex.' End it there.
>Disappointed they were when what they saw outside was nothing but black with no moon nor stars to be seen anywhere near
It should be 'They were disappointed when they saw nothing but black outside, with no moon or stars anywhere to be seen.'
>the forest they entered the morning before, they were still in its core.
a period or another -- instead of the comma.
>“Don't be loud. Your mother sleeps. Your brothers sleep still.
perhaps "Your mother and brothers still sleep."
>our graves land
im not sure if youre saying a literal graves land or if you're trying to say graveyard.

Usually i wouldn't pick something apart like this, but you did say you appreciate comments on the use of English, so there it is. All in all, not bad. I wish I could speak your language and read it in its native tongue, it seems like it might be good.

The turd in the toilet took two seconds to tear apart. My fingerprints rilled with shit. It was supposed to be inside, but it was all doo doo. I glare at grandma. 'Why?'

Next thing I know, I'm at Romanelli's Scrap Metal arguing with handless cashier over how much grandma's walker is worth. 'Wha? This is aluminium alloy—no, I don't know with what!'

Back at the house grandma beckons. 'It is in my cunt' she whispers against my ear. So I guide her in the bathroom, undo her pants, and help her sit on the toilet. With a breaststroke motion I part her knees, her skin oldwoman soft. I feel my way into her melanin drained bush, of course she's self lubricating, why not? Middle and ring finger, searching. Nothing. Has she been lying? Is she delusional? Insane?

My name is Alex Trebek, I may have all the Answers, but the real Answers are the Questions.
I was in DC all week. I got to sit next to Pope Francis today flying into JFK. Doing the NYT crossword, he turns to me, 'four letter word for a woman, ending in 'u-n-t'?'

'Aunt'

'Do you have an eraser?'

Now, in my voice: The Answers are the Questions.

And you probably don't believe I'm actually Alex Trebek. Which is just as well.

The plane passes through the morning sea mist, the mist silent, all encasing, heatshimmer off the engines. Pope wrote 'cunt' and one of us is an index of magic, tools, functions, gossip, and a nexus of tickles. And one of us lies about kissing babies while going around kissing babies.

An O-ring, also known as a packing, or a toric joint, is a mechanical gasket in the shape of a torus—it is a loop of elastomer with a round cross-section, designed to be seated in a groove and compressed during assembly between two or more parts, creating a seal at the interface. And a ring of opinions? Well a pinion: gear with a small number of teeth designed to mesh with a larger wheel. Where do you get yours?

You need to know the Answers to Questions you don't know the Answers to.

Pope wrote 'cunt' and maybe it's C-rings that are the problem. Why do women like being tied up?

My thoughts are like chewing on tinfoil.

>>7152364

>>7152349
Thanks.

>>7152349
>I have no idea what you mean by this
August 15, the day Napoleon was born.

>or even 'newborn baby, dead since four days ago'.
I like that last one.

>It should be 'They were disappointed when
I changed the order trying to sound somewhat poetic. I suppose that kind of construction I used is not correct in english?

>im not sure if youre saying a literal graves land or if you're trying to say graveyard.
Graveyard. I used graves land because I thought it would sound better when reading it.

> I wish I could speak your language and read it in its native tongue
It is in ITS native tongue. My native language is Spanish, but I wrote it in English.

Thanks the read and the comments.

>>7152396
Trying Too Hard: The Writer

>>7152349
Thanks.

>>7152349
>I have no idea what you mean by this
August 15, the day Napoleon was born.

>or even 'newborn baby, dead since four days ago'.
I like that last one.

>It should be 'They were disappointed when
I changed the order trying to sound somewhat poetic. I suppose that kind of construction I used is not correct in english?

>im not sure if youre saying a literal graves land or if you're trying to say graveyard.
Graveyard. I used graves land because I thought it would sound better when reading it.

> I wish I could speak your language and read it in its native tongue
It is in ITS native tongue. My native language is Spanish, but I wrote it in English.

Thanks for the read and the comments

>>7150121
this reads like the start of El Tunel by Sabato

>>7152404
>I suppose that kind of construction I used is not correct in english?
You can use it, but it sounds very very much like Yoda-speak. It works but as far as I know no english speaker from an era spoke like that regularly. But I couldn't be sure what was artistic licence and what was just poor grasp of the language so I had to point out any things I saw as odd.

>>7147383
>>Bounding
>Find another word, this suggests hopping.
>>from nowhere
>Patently untrue and nonetheless difficult to picture.
this is pure autism, seriously. Both of those are reasonable. Imo a very bad way to start a section but the words arent the problem.

>>7152434
I agree with both points. Bounding isnt so bad, and from nowhere is bland at worst. I also agree its a bad way to start a segment, particularly if its the start of the book. Maybe a description of the setting first? Im not sure.

>>7152434
if that's autism, then what is unironically critiquing a critique? wtf am I even doing? will I delete this before posting? let's find out! you just did! Z O M G

>>7152424
What you mean I can see.
Definitely something I want to avoid.

But srsly, thanks m8.

>>7152249
You ever have that popcorn that look like popcorn but has the texture of stale cheetos? This is kind of like that. imitating something superior but without the flavor that makes it good. Then again poetry confuses me so maybe I just dont 'get it'.

>>7152447
the critique of a critique is in itself critiquing the original work.

>>7152454
Hi, I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.

The problem with being Sheila Baxter was that you couldn't be anyone else. This is a common enough problem for most people, but for her it was particularly upsetting. She found it very difficult to complain to others about being her, a common respite for the self challenged. Sheila had been cursed with a sort of extreme normal, being not ugly, dumb or unskilled but neither particularly beautiful, intelligent or talented. She fell somewhere in the middle of all things by which a person may judge their character. She was just shy of 5’7, with brown shoulder length hair with the shape and consistency of spanish moss. She had blue eyes that had no need for glasses. If she had ever by chance stepped on a scale, the scale would ponder for a moment, shrug its shoulders and declare her ‘so-so’. All in all on the report card of life, she had been given a C+.
This was unfortunate, because like all people there were many things about her life that she hated. The problem being that when an abundantly average person complains to non-average person, they tend to give them the look that someone with stage 3 cancer gives listening to the complaints of a hypochondriac who just knows this time its serious.
She lived with her boyfriend who, by her own admission, was out of her league. He was handsome, had a job that paid well enough to support both of them comfortably, and never argued with her unless absolutely necessary, and even then did his best to be as reasonable and understanding as he could. He was intelligent and caring, and everyone liked him in that default way that feels more like a lack of things to hate then genuine admiration, but he got along with anyone who still called sheila ‘friend’, and he truly did, from the bottom of his heart, love her. He was also incredibly boring.
It wasn't his fault, not really. He was the kind of person who knew the names of each of his coworkers children, held up office meetings to discuss some minor problems he had noticed since the last meeting, and really meant, with feeling, his holiday wishes. He took sheila out to dinner every Thursday to the same 4-and-a-half star restaurant, and always ordered himself the lemon salmon and steamed broccoli. He also ordered for sheila, (as he believe this is just what gentlemen do for their lady), and always picked her favorite dish, one which he may have been surprised to learn she actually never really cared for. He found every movie he watched fun and exciting, and was always quite surprised when he was informed of things like subtext and underlying themes in films which he thought were simple summer action blockbusters.
Sheila had a sneaking suspicion that if she had decided one day that she never wanted to work again, that she only wanted to stay and look after the homestead, that he probably wouldn't argue much and, in fact, might even welcome the idea with open arms*4. She came to this conclusion after losing her 3rd job in 2 years.

>>7152404
>>7152400

>>7152400
which one was this? I've reviewed almost everything in this thread but I guess I missed it.

>>7152468
YA? YA! YA YA. YAYA.

Check your priv, capitalization/sation, and whether or not to have her share jeans with a small group of very different personalities.

>>7152482
Mine. It was the comment >>7152404 I previously deleted to correct a spelling mistake.

>>7152483
yeah im terrible with proofreading. every time I go over it I always find something else. Oh well.

>>7152495
All ya got2do is read it out loud. Or mouth it. It will make it 10x better every time.

>>7152513
I give that advice all the time and never follow it myself. Thanks for reminding me.

btw i have no idea what you were referencing with that yaya thing. what was that suppose to mean?

>>7152515
Young Adult. If it's not meant to be that, you have a problem.

>>7152451
Might be. Its actually a very rough translation.

>>7152524
it is, so I guess im off to a good start.
its >>7152138

>>7152530
:DDDDDDDDDDD

>>7152364
I need your help, /lit/, I got to turn this in tomorrow.

>>7152547
For what class?

>>7152531
are... are you mocking me? I dont understand.

>>7152557
P obv for writing and no?

>>7152584
if you turn that in to a teacher I hope they have a good sense of humor. Whats the assignment?

>>7152600
creative writing about an encounter with the poop I mean pope

High school student just wondering if its good at all be harsh don't give a two shits to be honest

Youth is the most important and shortest fraction of our lives. It is the point in our lives where we are soft wet clay molded by pain,love that is lost and gained, experiences good and bad. We are shaved down,poked, and when we are finally ready to go into the oven we are beautiful but changed clay pots made perfect by all the things that have happened to us throughout our youth. All the changes are crammed into the first 18 years of our life which is fleeting moment in comparison to all the years that we have left. These years change us into the people we will be remembered as when we finally depart from this earth and move on.So we cannot waist these years we need strive for our goals whether we fail or not because these failures only make us stronger and better people. we need to go after and try to find love whenever we feel it so that when we find the one person who makes us whole we are emotionally ready to fully embrace them because we have learned from all the loss, pain, and mistakes we have made in the most important fraction of our lives, youth.

>>7152757
Pretty good for highschool stuff, but you have to edit more. You missed a lot of commas, and your spelling is off. If anyone else reads this they're like to tell you its edgy/emotional crap, but its fine. I would say keep writing. In a few years once you find something worth saying you might be pretty good. See if you can get into some sort of writing group at school or something like that. If theres a school newpaper or anything of that sort (do they still do that shit in highschool now?) you should get into it.

If you actually enjoy writing, that is.

My first attempt at a poem since my teens, please be brutal. A nationalist homage.

Will Europe?

Bequeathed the carrier of a flame
By forebear of instinct
Over millenia in our name
Who sowed a Nation
A way, a tongue, a soul
Hearts of a Civilisation.

Now contented to consign
The inheritence of a our brood
For neither guest of kith nor kin
Whether home of roost or santuary
Duty bound to hold as arteries harden
The spectral gyre of Pompeii

>>7152784
thanx just wanted some tips and ya this just a rough draft im going over my editing tommorow. and just wondering what you meant about having something worth saying?

>>7152801
You repeat yourself and alliterate quite a bit which breaks the pace but edited, it's fine

>>7152801
Right. Well, you see, what you said in the peice was right and all, but its something that has been touched on a lot throughout literature. It's not cliche exactly, but... most people who read it might have that feeling that they've read it before. The idea isn't anything 'new' to them, they dont get much out of reading it. Something worth saying in this case would be having an opinion on sometihng that feels fresh, even if in practice it isnt quite new. As you write and read more and get used to exploring ideas, you'll notice things that are like your piece, 'common' ideas that feel familiar to a fault, but learning to see these things help you to write things that feel more original.

Like I said, its not bad. Reminds me of some of the things I thought about in my junior year.

Brave, deranged, mangled and split,
how it can to this–the rungs and steps,
bent and stood, are so well known now,
almost as they were bright and loud.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I fell asleep in the space bar, diseased
with a brief case of confusion and un-
certainty, forcing a new ton like a bum.
Home is where the heart is and
(this isn't a distraction from line-
cutting prose)
so being made of tin more or less
makes me homeless.

Brave, deranged, mangled and split,
how it came to this–the rungs and steps,
bent and stood, are well known now,
as if they weren't flying sow.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I fell asleep in the space bar, diseased
with a brief case of confusion and un-
certainty, a new ton pulling me numb.
Your very first memory. Don't jump:

Home is where the heart is and
(this isn't a distraction from line-
cutting prose)
so being made of tin more or less
makes me homeless.

This is the first time I have written anything creative in years. I have only improvised it for the sake of gauging my abilities so feedback is very important. Anyway it relates some feels I have been experiencing, though they are highly exaggerated here.

The senses had all but betrayed me in their irresolute composition. The ears would, without warning, sound off in compliance with the infectious, ambient resonances that cowed them. The mouth would taste rot, following a bout of insomnia, when that state would be induced wherein a man could be made suggestible to the most unpleasant of sensory experiences. The nose would pick up even the faintest of scents, doubtless feeling discounted in its office and wanting to make a good show of its capacities. The most imperceptible and uncanny smells of fetid unguent would be unearthed and brought to bear by the poor host. But none were so recalcitrant as the eyes whose betrayal has been unspeakably grotesque.

Those invaluable conduits, which had so reliably communicated the immediate surroundings from birth, had now taken to imposing upon their carer a bizarre fantasy. It began inconspicuously; a barely noticeable white snowflake would almost be met with welcoming curiosity as it swirled elusively from scrutinization. Soon after it became more noticeable; now one decoration or another was always being entered onto the set or else dissolving under its own impetus. However, it was manageable; a face, even a beautiful one, might be discounted by the wild movements of confetti but its natural lineaments would nevertheless resemble a humanity. This whole arrangement became increasingly insidious. The eyes put up before me paper thin walls I was left to negotiate. The effect which the ramifying organisms had was only the static visual miasma in which space itself could be plied. Reading became a horrendous business, and then impossible. Turning my vision to anything, I would perceive an unintelligible soup of overlapping duplicates vying for attention. Turning it away and artifacts of that soup would be impressed in white. And finally these specks which evolved over generations into lines, tendrils, insects in their webs, creating layers of obscurity could now easily become aberrations not only of vision but of consciousness as well. A face beheld in this state, would explode at once by the transmutation of the environment; the creatures would now wriggle up against the lineaments, interface and permeate them and tug at them as easily as clay. Nothing of humanity could be recognized now, only deformity, constant aberration; an amorphous puppet danced by the strings of this colonial species. Here, I left off with a sharp divide with reality.

>>7153380
Gave up immediately after two sentences. Meaningless jibber-jabber.

>>7152787

>Rhyming nation and civilisation.

It's fucking terrible. I'm sorry.

Left the carrier of a flame the ancestor of instinct over millenia who planted seeds of a nation, culture, language, zeitgeist, make up civilisations. We're happy to look after all this shit, because our guests regardless of who they are, should preserve meaningless mumbojumbo.

None of this means anything. This is the first line of a GCSE politics exam. It isn't nationalistic its an homage to the dictionary.

>>7153423
Thank you for the reply, though the reading is not accurate, it's much more fatalistic and defeatest in tone, our "guests" who have come home to roost will not preserve our identity nor should be expected to, our right to difference no longer applies. The end is adapting a spenglerian statement about bravely following the path to the destined end, we will become Pompeii