/lit/ - Literature

[OP !TLOEEfKWC6 No.1014492]

rate my short story, /lit/, and post your own if you'd like


I inhaled deeply, letting the air fill all the compartments of my lungs and holding it before I released. The exhale was long and slow, and my lips twitched faintly as the ant-sized gale escaped my mouth. I opened my eyes and watched as the birds soared about quietly. The scent of the ocean was continuously clawing its way up the spire as it always does.

I calmly stood up and walked to the edge of the spire. I continued stepping until I made the last step a brief skip. I fell for a few seconds before I briefly spun and extended my wings. The air hit the resistance in the wings hard enough that it seemed like I was slamming on some kind of aerial brakes. I flapped my wings a few times to buffer my landing and hit the ground with a soft click.

I walked to the edge of the cliff I had visited before and put my hand on the trunk of the nearby tree for balance - Wait a moment. That tree wasn't there before.

I quirked a curious brow and looked it over. It was no more than a sapling, perhaps six or seven feet tall at this point. I traced a finger along one of its few branches, pondering its existence. It was in that moment when two red robins flew down from the sky and fluttered about me cheerfully. I smirked slightly as I recognized one as the bird I had accidentally hurt before and nursed back to health. I asked it, "So, have you found a companion?" A happy twitter followed.

The wind whistled to me softly, "Consider this..."

And so I thought...Wounds can be healed with enough comfort and care, and growth is always a possibility - but it must be done with care and the right amount of time. To say that I have a tree right now is to over-exaggerate and may cause me to neglect the progression of things, but to say that a tree is growing is perfectly fine.

[OP !TLOEEfKWC6 No.1014516]

come on, guys, what do you think?

[OP !TLOEEfKWC6 No.1014522]

Anybody out there? I guess you guys don't care about short literature after all.

[Anonymous No.1014524]

>ant-sized gale
>I quirked a curious brow

Less adjectives/adverbs/various other fancies, more actual plot/character development.

[Anonymous No.1014534]

>letting the air fill all the compartments of my lungs and holding it before I released.
thanks for explicitly letting us know you're breathing

>ant-sized gale
lol wat

>The scent of the ocean was continuously clawing its way up the spire as it always does.
you're telling me the smell of the ocean has to claw its way up a coast-line cliff? fucking dumb bro

>walked to the edge of the spire.
mfw you don't know what a spire is, idiot

stopped reading there. its not good. go read a famous book and blatantly copy them because that made me herp

[Anonymous No.1014537]

>>1014492
to be honest,it's really short fiction dude. hard to consider the quality of something when so little time is given to immerse yourself in the work. if you like kafka then you're following in his footsteps. look around and enjoy. keep writing.

[Anonymous No.1014543]

>>1014522
You forced it out of me,

this shit sucks and I have to wonder if it's a troll.

>Wounds can be healed with enough comfort and care, and growth is always a possibility - but it must be done with care and the right amount of time.

[Anonymous No.1014552]

10/10 troll.

Shit is BAD.

[OP !TLOEEfKWC6 No.1014555]

Well shit, you guys don't have to be so mean

>>1014537
thanks, man, kafka is one of my heroes

[Take It EZ, m8 !2ryxNis8VA No.1014556]

>the exhale was long and slow, and my lips twitched faintly

[Anonymous No.1014565]

>>1014555
>Well shit, you guys don't have to be so mean
Oh, I'm terribly sorry, can we suck you off now so you can go about mistakenly thinking you're the most earth-shaking thing since the atom bomb?

Fuck off, you dumb twat.

[Anonymous No.1014568]

>>1014556
lol'd

OP your short story just needs to be shorter.

by about 6 paragraphs

[OP !TLOEEfKWC6 No.1014575]

>>1014565
Geez, didn't mean to piss in your cereal, man.

>>1014568
Thanks for the input. Not sure how I could do that, though.

[Anonymous No.1014606]

It's okay, your first story always sucks.

[OP !TLOEEfKWC6 No.1014608]

>>1014606
I appreciate it, bro. I don't think it sucks, though.

[Anonymous No.1014615]

>>1014555

If you can't take harsh criticism, then don't be surprised when noone wants to read your stuff because it isn't good.

[Anonymous No.1014627]

>>1014608

I hope you're not considering to be a serious author. No writer i know likes their work even after multiple drafts.

[Anonymous No.1014634]

>>1014608
It doesn't matter what you think if everyone else agrees (which they do) that this is bad writing. Nobody's positive you aren't a troll is how bad it is, but bravo if you are one.

[OP !TLOEEfKWC6 No.1014655]

>>1014627
How many serious authors do you know? Why do they write if they don't like their work?

>>1014634
You know what? Fuck you, buddy! My writing is good, and none of you fuckers are gonna tell me different!

[Anonymous No.1014664]

>>1014655
>my writing is good
wait...wut??!!

[Anonymous No.1014674]

>>1014575
>>1014568
mfw OP doesn't get the joke, durrrr

[Anonymous No.1014676]

>>1014615

Come on, you serious? You basicly are telling this guy to accept this horrible and insulting criticism? This is not criticism, it's a variation of the art of trolling combined with destructive words.
"This sucks" - So you thinks thats "Criticism"?

OP, keep writing, don't listen this people.

And, I hope you take my advice, don't come here to /lit/ and post your short stories, chapters or whatever you write asking for an advice, face it: you are not going to get an advice from this people.

In fact, I don't know why you need criticism. If you are going to write then write for yourself, dont do it for the opinion, the fame, or the money, do it for your own personal growth in this infinite world we call writing. Just keep writing, it's all about practice (and reading), by the time you are ready you will find nothingless but a great prize that is discribing your dreams and your feelings.

(Sorry for my bad english)

[Anonymous No.1014686]

>>1014655
dude. good writing is about getting your message across.
the message here is time heals? or some shit anyway. You devoted about 4-5 sentences to the build up for your final great revelation at the end. The rest was walking to the edges of spires and breathing and falling and realizing a tree was there that wasn't there before. (which sort of supports it? wasn't made clear.)

Not enough build up, too much useless description, unclear action/useless action, description that should be there isnt.

Ergo everyone agrees its shit.

[Anonymous No.1014687]

>>1014676

You're right. Let him just live on false hope and get nowhere.

[Anonymous No.1014688]

>>1014655

And stop insulting the others, that only shows what a "great" writer you are. And yes I'm being sarcastic.

[Anonymous No.1014698]

LOL OP COMES TO A BOARD WHERE EVERYONE SPENDS ALL DAY READING GOOD BOOKS AND ASKS WHETHER HIS SHIT IS GOOD OR NOT

LOL WHAT A FAGGOT OLOLOL

MY PROFESSIONAL RATING IS: FUCK YOU

[Anonymous No.1014701]

>>1014687

Thats the correct thing you need to do in most cases. Who are you to tell him he is not a "good writer"? Just leave him alone; If he have the vocation, the essence of a writer he will be capable to find his own mistakes and correct them, and, in a possible future, make an art work.

[Anonymous No.1014719]

>>1014701
>Who are you to tell him he is not a "good writer"?
HE BLOODY ASKED IN THE OPENING POST, YOU DUMB SOD
>rate my short story, /lit/

[Anonymous No.1014723]

>>1014701

I don't even know how to reply to this.

I'm just one person of many who recognizes good writing versus bad ones.

What i got out of the second part of your sentence is that: we should let him pretend he's a good author and somehow he will become one?

How is he going to correct his mistakes if he's too arrogant to accept them in the first place.

[OP !TLOEEfKWC6 No.1014739]

Thanks everybody that's being supportive. It means a lot to me.

>>1014723
I'm perfectly willing to correct my mistakes, but you guys haven't pointed any of them out. You just said it sucks.

[Anonymous No.1014746]

>>1014739

Well you said to "rate" it. We did.

The first few posts after yours point out some specifics.

[Anonymous No.1014750]

>>1014739
see
>>1014686

[Anonymous No.1014757]

Ant-sized gale? How fucking tiny are your lungs?

[Anonymous No.1014765]

>I inhaled deeply, letting the air fill all the compartments of my lungs and holding it before I released. The exhale was long and slow, and my lips twitched faintly as the ant-sized gale escaped my mouth. I opened my eyes and watched as the birds soared about quietly. The scent of the ocean was continuously clawing its way up the spire as it always does.

Way too many unneeded words/descriptions. Feels forced.

>I calmly stood up and walked to the edge of the spire. I continued stepping until I made the last step a brief skip.

Wtf does this mean. He walked on a spiral staircase, of some imaginary spiral tower, and at the top leaped off?

The rest of the story can be summarized with my first point, too many unneeded words. Describing the wrong feelings.

I'll give you this though:

I like the surreal idea of one thing being there at one time and gone the other. (Your tree)

Why is the wind talking to him.. he was talking to the birds.

The ending.. i dont even know

[Anonymous No.1014769]

>>1014723

No, in response to your thoughts of my second sentence is: Yes, he is arrogant. Yes, he acts like a pretentious asshole. But he is asking you for an opinion, he is asking you to qualify his writing. If you are going to criticize him its necesary to tell him if it is bad or not, and, if it is bad, then, to support your own opinion, you must tell him why it is bad and HOW he can improve it. No one in this thread did it. So, How do you expect to help him? You people say "Wow everyone who come here to post his writing always post shit!" Then why don't make a difference? Why dont tell those people how to improve their writing? Whats the bad thing about it? Then, possibly, those people can stop "writing shit", but, instead of dad, you prefer to keep saying those fallacies: "Stop writing idiot"

How is he gonna find he is not a good author? I already tell you, if he likes to write, if he have the vocation and he have the matureness, he will find out some day himself as someone who simply can't write or someone who is a Mozart of writing.

[Anonymous No.1014780]

>>1014739
Dude, it's the internet. People just insult you for no reason, and arguing with them is practically useless. Probably half of these criticisms are just one samefag 12 year old who thinks it's hilarious to insult things using a thesaurus.

On that note, it's a tad bit wordy. A lot of it feels forced, like "pondering it's existence". Sometimes certain phrases or words belong in certain areas, and for the type of writing that you're doing, the large words are unnecessary and distract the reader. With longer sentences you lose the audience's interest, which I found happening to me.

I guess all in all, it's not my cup of tea, but it's not absolutely horrible. I've certainly read worse writers in my time...To be honest, most of my complaints are just personal ones.

[Anonymous No.1014779]

>>1014769

that'

sorry

[Anonymous No.1014781]

Why is this guy receiving more attention than me? Is it because he's worse than me because I heartily disagree. I want angry criticism too!

My story's here >>1014622 if you want something else to mercilessly rip apart.

[nickadams !/ElToLKirY No.1014782]

>>1014781

Actually here's the link to the story itself.

http://pastebin.com/JPUb5TpM

[Anonymous No.1014785]

>>1014782

Because we have to click a separate link.

[Anonymous No.1014796]

>>1014780

>On that note, it's a tad bit wordy. A lot of it feels forced, like "pondering it's existence". Sometimes certain phrases or words belong in certain areas, and for the type of writing that you're doing, the large words are unnecessary and distract the reader. With longer sentences you lose the audience's interest, which I found happening to me.

Jesus fucking christ. I've just said that several posts ago. Read the thread, not all of it is just "hur all of this sucks balls just because"

[OP !TLOEEfKWC6 No.1014798]

>>1014780
thanks, man

>>1014769
I'm not a pretentious asshole, you plebtard.

>>1014781
Maybe I'm getting more attention because you're a shit writer, bitch?

>>1014769
I like your style, friend.

[Anonymous No.1014807]

>>1014798

You call the guy a name and then tell the same guy you like his "style"

No wonder your short story sucks.

[Anonymous No.1014809]

>>1014796
I don't know how to read, sir.

After reading like 4 troll posts I just skipped down. I kind of have this thing where if I read a troll I just gloss over the rest of the thread. Skimming.

>goshes to

[Anonymous No.1014810]

r8 + comment + subscribe plz lol!!!!!!!!111

No, this isn’t right. This isn’t right at all.
I’ve pissed myself. The smell of it is what hits me; breaking through that in-between where you’re no longer asleep but not yet awake. I know that it is coming as I open my eyes one at a time - still leaden with sleep and glazed with delirium – and my room is too bright, too bright, the sleep is all gone now, leaving a pungent miasma and a wetness that’s all too real.
Before I can stop myself I remember Quinn. He got a bad case of enuresis about half a week after we raided this shithole village overrun with chickens. We were on the move, walking, Christ, always fucking walking, and what little rest we got would be broken by his loud Irish cussing as he’d damn the army, the Vietcong, his parish, himself. Gave us all a good laugh. He’d laugh too and walk around half naked while his pants dried over the fire and we all felt his absence when he got cut up real bad and was sent back home. I never really liked him but hell if I could forget that first night. There was this soft mewling outside that had me grabbing for my gun, thinking there’s some starving creature going through my rations but leaving my tent I see nothing but black. Rations untouched. My lighter cuts through the night and there he was, sitting there, looking at the spreading darkness between his legs and whimpering softly. He rocked so slightly you wouldn’t even notice and his eyes gleamed in shadows wrought with shame, confusion. They were wide and glistening and didn’t look like those of a man. I went back to bed but couldn’t sleep and all night he sat there crying and didn’t even change. Poor bastard had no control.

[Anonymous No.1014813]

>>1014810

Take off my jeans, throw them on the bed. There’s no airflow in this piece of shit apartment. It gets so humid that you can’t even breathe but for now, I’m freezing. As I take off my shirt my finger traces hard ribs that are too snug to the skin; they contort and bend with surprising flexibility at each strained breath. The wheezing’s gotten worse. The opiates have long worn off and I’m starting to feel the pain rising deep within my lower back. I’m standing there naked and something isn’t right. All around me dance shadows on my wall - they breathe - cast by the sickly yellow bulb that hangs from my ceiling like a dying sun.
I decide to make my way to the bath. The water’s brown as usual but it’s not too brown, and it’s hot for once, and that’s good. As I ease into the bath my body comes into view and I tell myself I’m too thin, way too thin, but does it matter? I’m feeling sort of horny but that’s stifled by the feeling of laziness – why the fuck did I piss myself? – the water’s rippling slightly and for a second I wonder if it’s an earthquake but there’s no earthquakes here, not ever, so I’m thinking we might be being bombed, shit, can’t even go a decade without a war but it’s nothing. It’s me. I’m fucking shaking.
I’m shaking and so tired but I’ve slept for what, check the broken clock and set it back seventeen minutes, a day and a half. The water’s running cold so I lie there, rub the piss off my leg and just lie there. Something’s not right, yet feels strangely familiar.
I’m terrified.

[Anonymous No.1014815]

>>1014813

Or I was.

I’ve binged on many things, woken up in embarrassing places with embarrassing people laden with feelings of anger and depression and regret and nostalgia, but never pissed myself. Had that going for me. Raise a hand from the water, trembling, the droplets flicking onto my face and back into the bath. So fucking afraid. It’s the infantile fear that comes after a nightmare, that makes you want to race into your parents room and hide under the sheets and sandwich yourself between them because they’re supposed to protect you when you know you can’t. But my parents have been dead for too long and I’ve been through too much to sit in a tub shaking like a damn child because of some nightmare. But there are no nightmares, not anymore. Only the one.

I must have gone back.

I know it doesn’t work this way but I try, try as I always do, to piece It together. I’m trying to remember but there’s no way It can be fully realized through memory yet still, here I am, closing my eyes and in my blindness feeling for fragments of somewhere better.
The beach.
It’s so beautiful that thinking about thinking about it makes me want to cry; it’s a beauty that transcends nature and sexuality but still the euphoria that comes with it manifests itself, in one of its many ways, through a painful erection. I shut my eyes tighter, tighter – there’s only one way to go back – run my toes through the crystalline sand that’s impossibly white and listen to the crashing of the waves, a symphony written in time, and there’s venereal warmth on my back from a sun reminiscent of my childhood, but it’s not REAL. I’m not THERE.

[Anonymous No.1014817]

>>1014815

I’m trying so hard to go back there without help, because it isn’t like before. Something’s wrong. And I need need need to figure it out right away because if something goes wrong in there then there’s no point, no fucking point at all. So shut my eyes so tight that I can feel a dull pounding in the front of my skull, and I try to remember the beach, what it’s like, why it’s like –

But of course I can’t.
It’s not the same; it’s all grainy, diluted, technicolor, overdubbed. Cheap. A pathetic replica scrounged from the banks of memory that crumbles to ash and I’m cursing myself for hoping, hoping like I always do, to just stay for a little while longer when she walks in and I open my eyes.

She’s telling me I have to pay, I don’t know who the fuck you are I want to say but don’t, because I do. It comes back and for some reason this stupid hooker has my pissed-on jeans balled up in one hand. Pay for what, I say. She laughs and it’s that laugh that you hear so much nowadays that carries nothing human with it. So hey, what the fuck, I laugh too. I get out, drain the tub, offer her a tab of acid, we fuck. Lather, rinse, repeat. We fuck for what seems an appropriate length of time and as I’m faking my orgasm she moans and writhes and fakes hers too, professionally, and in the end, what’s the point.

I pay her in opiates and when I realize I don’t have any more I get pissed, really pissed, so I’m stumbling through the apartment not quite sure what I’m looking for when I step on a vial of cocaine, which doesn’t break as much as snap and press powder and glass deep within the sole of my foot; the pain is sweet and abrupt and as I fall to the floor the room hazes over and chunks of it are falling away, slowly being replaced by a shimmering familiarity that actualizes itself in one fluid motion and just like that I’m back.

[OP !TLOEEfKWC6 No.1014818]

>>1014807
aww, shit, man, whoops

>>1014810
what the fuck are you doing in this thread?

[Anonymous No.1014821]

>>1014817

The spectrum reverses itself: all pain physical is left behind, replaced with clean, pure emotion that comes in waves. And though the beauty of the beach overwhelms me, as it always does, I can see through blurred vision a wrongness that escapes detection. A sharp pang arrives deep within my stomach as the possibility of loss, of the death and corruption of this comes to me. This is followed by an ebbing sadness that causes me to start running along the vast expanse, the horizon pressing on and following my stride, maintaining an unreachable distance between me and the beyond. The scenery never changes – it flexes – adapting and conforming around me to maintain the same sand, waters, and sky that the beach always carries. I’m running my hands through my hair, the giddiness and euphoria that comes with this place oddly blending with the numb desperation as I search for something, anything tangible that can be attributed to this new poison that flows through the underbelly of my own personal Eden.

[Anonymous No.1014825]

>>1014818
>post your own if you'd like

[Anonymous No.1014827]

>>1014818

>post your own if you'd like

>>1014821

I run without tire, achieving nothing, and when I fall to the ground there’s inexplicable warmth that flows across me and momentarily cleanses my perception. A vine of understanding snakes its way along the mass of desperation and anguish that clouds my sentience like a tumour. This causes me to look toward the sky and suddenly there is no more blue, rather a veil of impenetrable grey that looms across it and ends in the seamless meet convergence of the sky with the ocean. Behind the grey there is an imperceptible semblance of a sun, massive and pure in its isolation from the entirety of the beach. Suddenly I feel miniscule – another grain of sand – and just behind the grey the sun burns on with an omnipresent apathy. My eyes fall towards the ocean, no longer blue but now a shade of deep, murky green. I press my eyes with the palms of my hands and look again, searching with distressed fervour and there is a shape that looms beneath the shadowed surface of the waves. It is massive and all-encompassing and as I’m trying to clear my sight, to make the shape distinguishable, there is a ripple amongst the surface and the shape writhes with the flow of life. I shake and fall into the sand with a raw, burning sense of fiendish horror, yelling, as flashes of a gaping maw and soundless screams and eyes that are planets flood my conscious.

[Anonymous No.1014834]

>>1014810
>>1014813
>>1014815
>>1014817
>>1014821

tl;dr

[OP !TLOEEfKWC6 No.1014831]

>>1014825
>>1014827
fuck, my bad guys, go ahead

I like what you have so far

[Anonymous No.1014846]

>>1014810

mfw this guys story is much better than OP's.

[OP !TLOEEfKWC6 No.1014856]

>>1014846
you just don't understand my story

[Anonymous No.1014860]

>>1014798

I am:
>>1014676
>>1014701
>>1014769

And I'm not saying you are, I'm saying you are acting like one, by trying to insult everyone and adding the words "I am a good writer!". Seriously... Does it matter, OP? To try to convince all of this people of your reality when you are just wasting your time. Stop qualifying you as a good writer, it doesn't matter now, just write and write. If you are a good writer then you first stop insulting; becase it's part of how mature you are. Stop defending yourself telling everyone you are good; just understand this last thing, what matters it's to accept your own personal opinion and you must keep it for yourself, and then return to this writing world. And then ask someone who can actually criticize you and help you, and even if that day comes don't take the opinions that serious. ¿What opinions I will consider serious? The opinion of an editor, of a professional, not the ones of a bunch of guys in the internet, I hope you know what I mean.

[Anonymous No.1014869]

>>1014856

No wonder this guy thinks his story is the best shit ever, he's a hipster.

That explains eeeeverything.

[OP !TLOEEfKWC6 No.1014875]

>>1014860
I take back what I said about your style.
I'm a good writer, you are not.
Deal
with
it

[Anonymous No.1014898]

>>1014875

Wow. I was trying to help you, now I take back everything I say.

You are a lost case man.

And I write in spanish.

[Anonymous No.1014911]

>>1014856
Who couldn't understand your story? You completely crack us over the head with a moral in the last paragraph. This is part of the reason that it's bad. Good writing will explain something without actually saying something explicitly. It takes no skill whatsoever to spell it out to the reader.

>And so I thought...Wounds can be healed with enough comfort and care, and growth is always a possibility - but it must be done with care and the right amount of time.

This kind of line, even if everything before this line is fried gold, destroys a story. You should never, ever force some kind of lesson on the reader. A good short story doesn't actually end, and should leave the reader asking questions.

[Anonymous No.1014918]

Hey guys I just wrote this what do you think?
In a twist on the usual plagiarism-situation, the hardest work for Struck here is going to be sanitizing the prose in this Wild Conceits guy's thing, or at least bringing the verbs and modifiers down out of the like total ozone, which the Acadamese here on the whole sounds to Struck like the kind of foam-flecked megalograndiosity he associates with Quaaludes and red wine and then the odd Preludin to pull out of the grandiose nosedive of the Qaaludes and red wine.

[Anonymous No.1014945]

Dr. Jack Shepard here, what did you guys think of my story?

[OP !TLOEEfKWC6 No.1014950]

>>1014898
get the fuck out of here, spic

>>1014911
I'm tired of arguing about it. I'm going to bed. Fuckers.

>>1014945
I like it. It is cool.

[Anonymous No.1014961]

>>1014950

Aw, we upset a fragile writer

[Anonymous No.1014964]

>>1014918
Not OP btw just looking for some pointers.

[Anonymous No.1014999]

>>1014950

[Anonymous No.1015016]

>>1014961

Mission accomplished. Good work /lit/.

[Anonymous No.1015036]

>>1014964
>>1014918

[Anonymous No.1015150]

>>1014524
I imagined that this is the face one makes when letting out "an-ant sized gale" and suddenly lost it.

[Anonymous No.1015471]