Critique Thread

[Anonymous No.10545612]

Old one died.

[Anonymous No.10545613]

Der letzte Tag, ein Samstag, brach um sieben Uhr fünfunddreißig an, als N.M. klingelte. Die Augen unseres Helden, D.F., bewegten sich rapide hinter seinen zugezogenen Lidern, Wasser mag doch jeder, das Klingeln dingdongdingdong dingdongdingdong dingdongdingdong vermochte ihn erst beim dritten - aber nicht letzten - Läuten zu wecken, dummer Hurensohn, dummer Bastard, und er verließ das Bett (lechzte, lechzte, lechzte), noch im Gestern verfangen, das erst um vier Uhr vier erloschen war, mit einer Bewegung, einer Rührung, die die allerletzte dieser Art bleiben sollte. Ein Mann wächst nur bis zu einem bestimmten Punkt, das Namensschild an seiner Tür, der Türrahmen. Kleiner Hurensohn, nichtsnutzig, albern. Ein Blick aus dem Fenster, schlagartig wach, als hätte er noch nie geschlafen: Ein grauer VW Polo auf dem Parkplatz - ach was - der Zahnarztpraxis. Dort stand er zuerst im Sommer zweitausendsechzehn, zuletzt vor einem Jahr. Also, dingdongdingdongdingdongdingdong, kein Vogel war zu hören, keiner, öffnete D.F. seinen Schrank, eine Flasche fiel um, anlasslos, derweil N.M. vor der Tür stand, warum - er wollte ihn ermorden - wusste nur er, allein, einsam, keiner sonst, auch wenn D.F. es hätte wissen müssen; vor 15 Jahren schon, gottloses Stück Scheiße, hätte er es wissen müssen, kétségtelenül. Er trat auf eine Plastikflasche, er war schon angezogen. Gestern Nacht hat er wunderschön gekotzt, ist auf seinen Magen gefallen, mehrmals, immer wieder. Heute Morgen: Nicht einmal Vögel hört man, dingdong dingdong dingdong. Er ging die Treppe runter, wie jeden Tag. Die Tür ging auf. Er hat wunderschön gekotzt, gestern noch, ist auf seinen Magen gefallen, ja, jetzt ist alles dumm, jetzt ist alles blöd, kein Vogelgezwitscher vernahm er. N.M. stand vor ihm, wie ein Baum, hinter ihm war der Rest, die Sonne fiel auf seinen Nacken, unverändert. Der Rest: Sein Auto, die Straße, die Zahnarztpraxis, weiter rechts das Tanzstudio. Er, N.M., versuchte sein Grinsen - er grinste wie ein Schwertfisch -, wie immer zu unterdrücken, meistens gelang es nicht. --Sag auch, warum du lachst, D.F. fragend, selber lachend, er musste nach oben gucken, seinen Kopf heben, um in sein Gesicht zu gucken, sein Rücken tat weh, seit Jahren schon tat er weh, trotzdem hob er seinen Kopf, um in sein Gesicht zu gucken, entwürdigend war das, sieben Uhr siebenunddreißig war es. Das wusste er nicht, konnte es nicht wissen.
--Hat seine Gründe, immer noch wie ein Schwertfisch.
--Seit wann bist du in S.?
--Seit ... Er schloss seinen Mund, musterte das Vorzimmer, als wäre D.F. nicht anwesend. Seine Augen, sie waren schwarz, durchliefen den Raum, rastlos nach Veränderungen suchend, fanden nichts, ratlos, alles war gleich. Nichts, seit A.L. gestorben war, die Ananas die kann was, hatte sich verändert. Nichts: der Boden, die Wände, die Decke - alles war gleich, an Ort und Stelle geblieben.

[Anonymous No.10545719]

[Anonymous No.10545758]

All critiques will be reciprocated, positive or not

[Anonymous No.10545773]

>>10545613
Too nazi for me

[Anonymous No.10545955]

>>10545612
I will be criticizing for free for the next 3 hours.

[Anonymous No.10546113]

https://pastebin.com/UqhDamLU

Rip me a new one. Tell me my weaknesses and my strengths. Anything done well, and anything done poorly.

Thanks in advance

[Anonymous No.10546158]

>>10546113
Lack of any distinguishable style
Repetitive
There is not a single trait in the characters that seem legit, it feels as if they were videogames NPCs
Your use of language is for the most time incoherent with the characters and context

[Anonymous No.10546187]

>>10546113
Is that your shitpost story?

[Anonymous No.10546405]

didn't get any attention in the old one.
A 2,900-word short story set in Ancient Media during Cyrus' conquest.
https://theverboseauteur.wordpress.com/2016/09/28/the-guilt-of-the-magus/

[Anonymous No.10546417]

Posting the same beginning of the same novella I have been working on for a year.

The asylum did not loom, as he had been told, but instead drooped at all sides. Every stone, brick, and hall sagged like a summer squash left out far past its season. The doctor unpacked his bag of shaving kit and linen jumper. From a small window the he could see the peak of the slope where a weather vane span, pointing an accusatory iron finger towards him. That morning the nurse had left green oranges and fresh milk on the table that sat before the tiny dusted window. In the quiet moments preceding dawn, after the moans of the committed's night terrors, but before their morning exercise, he ate eaten the sour fruit. A finger rooted in his cheek, picking at a seed lodged into a molar. Accompanying the fruit had been a short letter, written to him by the nurse, explaining she had picked the fruit herself. It was during vigorous exercise when he entertained two notions, first the possibility if the nurse was sweet on him, and the second beings some kind of indirect spite pointed towards him over his sudden arrival and displacement of the chief physician. Sweat dripped from his scalp, and pooled in the small of his back to soak the over sized nightdress he wore. Afterward a cool towel pressed against his eyes soothed the dull headache the calisthenics brought on, and as he prepared to bathe a pounding knock disturbed his routine.

[Anonymous No.10546428]

>>10546405
"In the interest of marking International Mother Language Day, I’d like to expound upon something with which a lot of you probably are vaguely familiar, but have probably never bothered to examine in any considerable detail."

This is a sentence you wrote. Prolix padding aside, I'm baffled that anyone could put two "probably"s in one sentence. Up your game, kid.

[Anonymous No.10546443]

>>10546428
I knew there was something wrong with that line. Thank you for pointing it out.

[Anonymous No.10546521]

>>10546158

Thanks, I'm interested in finding out what to work on and how to work on it.

>There is not a single trait in the characters that seem legit, it feels as if they were videogames NPCs

How does one add depth? What novels or authors do this well or showed mastery?


>Your use of language is for the most time incoherent with the characters and context

Also interested as to how they were incoherent.

[Anonymous No.10546559]

This is sort of a starting point for me, I just took a random idea and went with it. Any criticism, no matter how autistic, is appreciated:

Against the pleas and bargains “for it to be over with”, Mr. Wergingshire’s industrial process through work was halted. Amidst the many lines of one of his students’ work, an anomaly took residence within the fourth page of the stack. As with the preceding paper trio, each thought or solution or rambling was numbered in rising succession. Continuing on with the last page’s surrender of the number 27, the fourth page moved onwards venturing through the, until-now, unforeseen lands of the thirties until Wergingshire’s following of the numerical adventure lost his fueling interest. Number 33, the third two-digit decade’s own twin members, was found to flaunt a mixed relationship instead. Its first three presented itself as the tried-and-true centuries-old classical double-parabolic styling known throughout all constituents of the numeral Arabic family. Moving forward to its partner in vocation, the expected repetition is thrown away, while maintaining the underside too definitive of its predecessor, this 3 chose to flatten its top for a rebellious, rugged fashion. These two numbers did not provide any real problem on their own, besides any fascist association with the buzz-cut 3’s militaristic look, and likely saw each other as two-actors for one role, a competition met with grace, respect, and the deepest contrast. Yet today on Wergingshire’s eighteenth student’s thirty-third example of allusion to 20th century society through the pages of a 1960s dishwasher manual, the two threes stood beside each other stupidly, infuriatingly, between the college-ruled lines that held the document’s content and Mr. Wergingshire together.

[Anonymous No.10546992]

Got some really nice feedback for this in the last thread and someone said that people in here would enjoy it and should read it so here you go. It's 8 pages but I'm proud of the section:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zKJCKjGZ60x0anbneRBMtf4j0QnVHxbT6FgBez9sg7A/edit?usp=sharing

[Anonymous No.10547012]

树./Tree.
Peeling the paper from trees:
Thin limbs stretch out gads,
Boughs bend to aid blue birds.
Shedding skins for a time.

[Anonymous No.10547034]

[Anonymous No.10547036]

>>10545758
Is that made for a robot or a human? You're not some legendary writers who can get away with putting a period after five words, start to write for human consumption and not for some autist who never learned how to actually read in elementary.

[Anonymous No.10547045]

>>10545758
I will never read this.

[Anonymous No.10547058]

>>10546521
Honestly I didnz't even read the story, just decided to make a mean comment for no reason. Your gentle response made me ashamed of doing that, I apologize,

[Anonymous No.10547063]

>>10546992
>someone said that people in here would enjoy it and should read it

Nigga what are you even. Are you saying somebody (who?) told you that the people in this specific thread would enjoy your piece (based on what characteristics?). Just post your shit to be critiqued senpai. Don't preface it with this weedling bullshit.

Also try slobbing some knobs if you want your own knob slobbed. Orgy etiquette 101 fuckwit.

[Anonymous No.10547066]

>>10547034
Really enjoed that one

[Anonymous No.10547067]

>>10546559
This was hard to read. Not because it was bad, but because it was difficult. It seems like you are trying hard to elevate your language which gives it a choppy and drawn-out feeling.

[Anonymous No.10547078]

>>10547063
You're free to hate it but I'd just like as many people as possible to read it and give some criticism, is all.

[Anonymous No.10547084]

>>10547036
Robots are the audience of the future.

[Anonymous No.10547085]

>>10546992
>https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zKJCKjGZ60x0anbneRBMtf4j0QnVHxbT6FgBez9sg7A/edit?usp=sharing
i ain't clickin that shit nigga

[Anonymous No.10547111]

>>10547078
Alright then. I hate it.

[Anonymous No.10547180]

>>10547036
Thanks for the critique, though I'm not really sure what you're getting at. In terms of the sentences, the shorter length was just what struck me as most effective for an action oriented scene. I wasn't aware that autists had any preferences in terms of sentence structure. Anyway, I'd be happy to give a critique in return if you've posted a piece or would like to.

>>10547045
Fair enough

[Anonymous No.10547187]

>>10547058

Well, that's too bad. It was vague enough for me to project though lmao.

>>10546113

Bump, anyone else?

[Anonymous No.10547238]

>>10547187
My friend, you need not bump this--people will see it.
>>10545613
Why do krauts always post their rubbish as though everyone speaks the barbaric language?
>>10546417
You lose your effort about halfway through.

[Anonymous No.10547372]

>>10547078
Thanks, I keep that in mind when I write some more.

[Anonymous No.10547375]

>10547372
Sorry I meant
>10547067

[Anonymous No.10547377]

>>10547375
I'm not being an asshole,
but in honesty,
how new are you?

[Anonymous No.10547380]

she i just break pov and if i want to just describe my character's appearance real quick. I'm sick of writing and reading some bullshit like they are looking in a mirror / puddle / store window / glass dildo. It seems better to just state it instead of coming up with some dumb-ass plot device used only to say the bitch has dark hair and pale skin or whatever.

[Anonymous No.10547391]

>>10547380
just draw a picture of them in the margin my guy

Here's some prose:

We had spent the previous December in Arizona, chopping apart with machetes the barbary cactus that had grown to behemoth proportions in my Grandmother’s yard. Our blades sliced through the fleshy stems that extended over the driveway and they fell to the dirt with the rubbery bounce of true severed limbs. The cactus had engulfed the orange tree we used to pick fruit from as children, my cousins and I, and as we worked we gradually uncovered its remains. A twisted gray corpse at the center of the thorny mass, all the water long sucked out of it by the cactus, its bark fossilized into a kind of skeleton, its fruit dried hard and black. We picked up the fallen stems and tossed them into the dumpster we’d rented, which was about as big as the house we were emptying. My cousins and I wore gloves, while Uncle Drew worked shirtless and with his bare hands. He sweated in the dusk and bled from countless small puncture wounds. His skin was loosely draped over a hard rack of muscle and he said not one word to us as his brothers, our fathers, carried a sofa out of the house and tipped it over the rim of the dumpster. Drew’s shaved head wore a laurel of veins that pulsed under the skin and he leaned back to drain the warm dregs from his beer then threw it clattering into the street. The mountains in the distance were beautiful and pink and supposedly populated by Apache spirits; were supposedly where a lost Dutchman’s treasure was buried; were supposedly where a hole leading to hell could be found.

[Anonymous No.10547431]

>>10547063
I'm the one who said I liked it. And I still do. It's the only thing I've ever seen on this board that isn't completely cringey and belabored.

He still has a long way to go (I think he is hiding behind a meme genre to spare himself the long, painful, and dangerous process of becoming who he is) but he has a much better control of rhythm and imagery than I had when I was 21.

[Anonymous No.10547438]

>>10547431
No you're not. You're him samefagging. Stop being so needy and transparent.

[Anonymous No.10547514]

Christmas in the Jungle

https://pastebin.com/raw/0cbz4fjq

[Anonymous No.10547539]

>>10545758
Ignore the fags this is publishable quality. Moody atmospheric and actually interesting... I’d keep reading

[Anonymous No.10547548]

>>10546113
Wtf is a “belonged lot”? The whole story carries that vibe of weirdness

[Anonymous No.10547556]

>>10546428
I’m often guilty of this. I think the mind subliminally reads the word and suggests it to itself, having forgotten

[Anonymous No.10547560]

>>10545758
>Lattice
>Geodesic
>filled with stolen terms and textbook jargon
faggot

[Anonymous No.10547589]

>>10547539
Thanks, anon. If you've got anything to critique I'd be glad to give it a look.

>>10547560
Those are the only two remotely jargonish words in the excerpt, and they are both neccessary to describe the building. I honestly don't understand what's up your ass, but I hope it works its way out someday.

[Anonymous No.10547604]

>>10545758
I like it, I would definitely keep reading.

[Anonymous No.10547612]

>>10545758
This is by FAR the worst I've seen in these threads in a while.

You aren't a Hemingway. You aren't a trendy author. You do not know what you're doing.

[Anonymous No.10547662]

>>10547604
Thank you. Again, feel free to post something (or direct me to your post) and I'll give it my honest thoughts. Otherwise I'll start doing some critiques of stuff already posted.

>>10547612
Same for you, bro

[Anonymous No.10547668]

>>10547662
>I'm open for criticism!!!
>receives criticism
>WAHHH NO YOU ARE! YOU ARE! HA, NOTHIN' PERSONAL BRO

What the fuck is wrong with you?

[Anonymous No.10547695]

>>10545612
The proportions are okay. You seem to have good technical skills, but hyper realism is pretty boring desu. Try drawing from imagination. If your shit at that then pick up some Loomis.

[Anonymous No.10547696]

>>10547662
>>10547668

[Anonymous No.10547713]

I snuck into the theatre. The corridor was interminable, full of posters and uncomfortable squeaky chairs straight out of a soviet-eta classroom; the posters were from mostly sub-par plays from the 50's. I stumbled upon the main locker room, I entered it and hid in one of the lockers. Some faggot entered the room, probably one of the actors. He sat down started reading a script he found on the floor. While he reached out for the script I threw myself out and knocked him out senseless. He fell down like a carrot on ice, I began slowly, gingerly, carefully removing every article of clothing, revealing my erect 9.4 inch penis, all of a sudden some other prick entered the room holding an hour glass. Only a paucity of sand was left, so little time was left, so little.

"I am the individual who is directing the current play, and I demand that you impart the knowledge of what's transpiring in this confined area!" He shouted, while pointing at his sandals
"We're just rehearsing" I said pensively, while looking at his sandals
"But the janitor isn't even in this thing!" he cried.

[Anonymous No.10547715]

>>10545758
The atmosphere is great, but the sentences don't flow very well.

[Anonymous No.10547729]

>>10546417

My overall thoughts are you've got a good sense of place and person, and I enjoy the Chekovian domestic touch it has. My sense is you're big into the Russians (or maybe Munro). That said, for an introduction I feel like you might be frontloading a bit. The description of the asylum, for instance, is good but abrupt. I barely see it before I am in it with the main character. It is obviously hard to judge from just a small sample, but my advice just based on this excerpt would be to take care not to rush through too much too quickly. I think you have the descriptive chops to let things breathe more.

Other than that, the "ate eaten" typo needs to be fixed.

[Anonymous No.10547742]

>>10547713

Could it be anymore obvious that you just finished reading Hegel?

[Anonymous No.10547849]

Leave some critique, first draft and stuck: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KaQSkfrzRnGkDro0zEYt8lrRMqNqSyV0Ritw4r1L5-g

[Anonymous No.10548084]

Christmas in the Jungle

https://pastebin.com/raw/u7BVNX0b

[Anonymous No.10548099]

>>10547662
I admit I’m coming down with a cold (maybe I’m fooled), but I really disagree with all the critics who’re hating on you. Your technical terms flow well enough that it’s clear you came across them honestly, and your sentence length/style didn’t bother me in the least. Sorry if this is a temptation that you aren’t looking for. Or confusing. But ya

[Anonymous No.10548162]

>>10548099
Not at all, anon. I really appreciate it.

[Anonymous No.10548314]

>>10546405
please?

[Anonymous No.10548508]

>>10546113
>>10543357
ctrl+c ctrl+p

Your writing is fine. It's not great, but it's not terrible either. It has the misfortune of occupying that nadir of criticism, where it's not bad enough that it's fun to rip apart, and not good enough that I feel compelled to sing it's praises. My issue comes more from the subjects you're writing about. A bloody suicide in a car followed immediately by a poetry reading? With biblical imaginary no less? Next a philosophical conversation while ordering sandwiches. Why not?

I get the impression that you are a young person, who desperately wants to say something profound, but the thing you are trying to say is neither profound nor particularly interesting. I would suggest instead of focusing on your themes and message first, focus more on your characters and your storytelling and let any thematic elements come naturally later.

[Anonymous No.10548527]

One morning near the end of October not long before the first drops of the mercilessly long autumn rains began to fall on the cracked and saline soil on the western side of the estate (later the stinking yellow sea of mud would render footpaths impassable and put the town too beyond reach) Charles woke to hear bells

[Anonymous No.10548548]

>>10548508
*ctrl+v

[Anonymous No.10548550]

>>10545758
I'm gonna be honest here, this booooored me. I'd like you to make this science fiction setting far more immersive. Maybe your protagonist is stuck in a video game rather than some boring geometric nightmare. You know what, everyone at the moment has crazy 80s nostalgia. Stanger Things, IT, etc., etc. Maybe your protagonist stumbles on a Michael Jackson record without realising what it really is, while he's clearing some dungeon in some futuristic VR - where when you die, it's GAME OVER for real. I think it would be good to cut out the long, antiquated words. Put in some onomatopoeia like THWACK, BOOM, POW, when your character does stuff to really go with that nickname of "Goofy".

Description: 2/10, as I said, work on your diction
Plot: 3/10, boring
Word choice; 4/10, as before, work on your description
Character devleopment: 1/10, I need to see this guy really LEVEL UP

[Anonymous No.10548602]

His head turns to look at me, he has not moved. Face to the painting, mask to me. Searing black behind the eyes. We stand in front of a painting, the only one in the room, distant chatter filters in from other exhibits. A white canvas. No. Something is there, oozing into view. Subtle structure begins to take shape- hair thin lines- red and ochre intricate.
The mask cracks a smile, loudly. How did I ever think the canvas was blank? That caustic darkness seeps out of the broken porcelain. I keep watch on the painting- lines assembling, no intention or intelligence, but assembling all the same as in my peripheral the darkness shimmers like air from a boiler.
“From the illusion of control we derive control.”
The words shock back the ink and the air is clear again but for a thin keening. The man spoke those words, the walls shouted them. I feel the first bite of a cold- that dreary weight, that heat in your gut.
One hand clasps my shoulder. Avuncular, familiar, wrapped over steel cords. He has not moved. Mask to painting, face to me. Why would he smile? He has no need to comfort me and no desire to gloat. One rock in the riverbed has resisted the water’s wear and will forever. The water flows over it in the same way it always has. He nods and smiles and is not moving. If I could one day learn that trick: to walk while staying perfectly still.
The air fills with music and the hand on my shoulder pushes me sideways, lying down. With a touch I stop the soft bedside chiming.
Today I am going to the museum.

[Anonymous No.10548613]

His head turns to look at me, he has not moved. Face to the painting, mask to me. Searing black behind the eyes. We stand in front of a painting, the only one in the room, distant chatter filters in from other exhibits. A white canvas. No. Something is there, oozing into view. Subtle structure begins to take shape- hair thin lines- red and ochre intricate.

The mask cracks a smile, loudly. How did I ever think the canvas was blank? That caustic darkness seeps out of the broken porcelain. I keep watch on the painting- lines assembling, no intention or intelligence, but assembling all the same as in my peripheral the darkness shimmers like air from a boiler.

“From the illusion of control we derive control.”

The words shock back the ink and the air is clear again but for a thin keening. The man spoke those words, the walls shouted them. I feel the first bite of a cold- that dreary weight, that heat in your gut.

One hand clasps my shoulder. Avuncular, familiar, wrapped over steel cords. He has not moved. Mask to painting, face to me. Why would he smile? He has no need to comfort me and no desire to gloat. One rock in the riverbed has resisted the water’s wear and will forever. The water flows over it in the same way it always has. He nods and smiles and is not moving. If I could one day learn that trick: to walk while staying perfectly still.

The air fills with music and the hand on my shoulder pushes me sideways, lying down. With a touch I stop the soft bedside chiming.

Today I am going to the museum.

[Anonymous No.10548619]

>>10548550

If there were a market for sowing salt in comment sections, you'd be making a comfortable living. Why are you so mad about Ready Player One?

[Anonymous No.10548662]

Forgetting for a moment the crushing weight of the car that could impact him at any moment, Gerald turned to the side in his prone position to listen more closely to the radio. His Dallas Cowboys were going to do just fine this season, it sounded like, and he loved the feeling of reassurance that came with that. He smiled as the colorful commentators echoed out time-worn exasperations of life's greatest phrases, lost in comprehension behind the rising static that was familiarly boosted by a screaming crowd in the moment.

Gerald was working hard on this Toyota. He would have time to watch football later, he thought though at the same time he felt remiss for not being there, being in the action, and supporting his team: America's team. He wanted to be on America's team when he was a kid. His dad had bought him a jersey when he was in high school, back when the NFL was new, exciting, and groundbreaking.

He still wore that jersey sometimes. The last time he had put it on was four years ago, when his son graduated from law school at the Southern Methodist University two hours from their small town. It was a gift for the two of them, and they had been so happy to be there, in the stadium, roaring in an electric mass that embodied the ecstasy of sports, competition, and light unrivaled in an otherwise too hot, dry, and busy world, all reminiscence of which was blown away like weeds in the wind on those hard concrete bleachers.

Maybe, if he kept working hard enough, he would be able to afford another ticket to another game. He had a hard time keeping up as it was, because of the loans that had been passed down to him by his son, and his wife had never worked, always taking care of the kids.

Death by depression was what the doctors had told him, and they couldn't have even afforded to transport the body home. It was so heavy in their hearts, that New York, the home they'd warned him about, had finally touched them, deeply and resoundingly, like the weight of a car bearing down, crushing and unrelenting.

His dishes from the last holiday he had planned to visit were still on the table: the Thursday before Easter, moved to Friday because of the firm, and then finally Saturday evening, which never came.

Gerald had forgotten about the game at this point, and was simply idly thumbing over the attachment for his adjustable wrench. Sometimes he wondered why he still made himself work, all these later after retirement. The bank had promised to forgive the loans, but they insisted that it wouldn't be necessary. The Huntsmans' didn't need to be social security, so Gerald would go back to work. That partner from the bank, Mr. (Dr.?) Fine didn't need to pay them, even if it wouldn't have been a problem. The Huntsmans' figured everyone had their money problems these days.

The strike of another resounding cry on behalf of one team or another jolted Gerald out of his revelry, and he focused again on the bottom of the old car. One day, he thought to himself.

[Anonymous No.10548686]

>>10548508
Awesome. I didn't get the chance to reply before the thread archived.

I had a few questions. The story is actually about not being able to write things that are profound and being stuck being a mediocre nobody and trying to accept that.

That being said, is my writing too amateur to compliment that theme?
How does one work on characters and such?

Btw, im 24.5, am I doomed?

Any info on how I could improve is greatly appreciated. I'm trying to gauge what level I'm at so I know how to go about improving and what direction to go.

Thanks.

[Anonymous No.10548736]

Shitty concept, help.

The fantasy novel I am starting in on begins with a central concept. Create individuality as a commodity and remove the fact that an individual human is tied to an individual identity. The society operates on the following logic:
>each and every person, save for a untouchable caste, wear masks
>several humans may wear the same mask
>an individual is not tied to the human wearing the mask, but the mask itself
>meaning that four people who each have an identical mask have one group identity and are treated as such
>giving someone an identical mask to yours is essentially make an extension of your identity, their actions and your actions are one and the same
>an individual may have more than one mask, and will essentially be able to change identities
>for the poor these masks are not much more than masks, and this system is less strict
>among the wealthy these masks have a metaphysical significance, with groups wearing the same mask thinking in similar patterns and perhaps even on some level having an empathetic link
>having many masks/identities means one spreads thin their individuality, and can in fact entirely lose themselves to the group think of the shared identity and stop being a person but an agent of the shared identity
>main character is a maskless who an aristocrat discovers has a special talent
>he is able to recreate masks, the metaphysical ones that the aristocrats believes they can use to their advantage
>this aristocrat are four young women
>they take him in with a bid to overturn a deal to essentially abandon their own identity and take up the masks of another in a marriage-like ceremony
>mask politics are complicated and the maskless main character is thrust into world
>impersonating a mask is at minimum punishable by death, even among the low caste

The setting also exists entirely in a ten mile high thirty mile thick wall that circles the equator, the mega structure is honeycombed with the society. They exist in the top layers, the farther down you go the stranger things become. The aristocracy's masks from the orgy of shadow and fractals below. Is this too garbage?

[Anonymous No.10548900]

>>10545613
Is there any more? No criticism, I'm shit, but your style captivates me like no one else ITT. Stay on this board please

[Anonymous No.10548964]

He, a gatherer like any other, drifted out of mind, destroyed by hubris one’d think maybe, or carelessness as the institution would likely say—in regards and our condolences stamped with thin black ink. Either way there was a fire stuck on the front grill, with a gatherer sinking lower and lower into blue sky, a forest below him inescapable of the eye. He had to leave the ship, everyone could see sort of why (or so he thought anyways), and he knew he’d failed them, so it didn’t matter at that point. Now the descent came, as slow as it was, down in the dark, and darker it got such a long ways down. Darker still but no gatherer panics; just before submerging into the canopy, a second passed so quick, the ship, with his memory, he saw it crash straight, perfectly centered, a trained eye, ahead of him five thousand or so meters. A map in his head, a simple A to B line, it appeared so naturally he had no questions, his only answer being the massive satellite transmitter, a prayer with certainty.
Still falling, the map fresh; the ground, somewhat visible, revealed by the lamp, an old acquaintance, his timely coworker. No sun he noticed, not down here; he had to’ve fallen through a thousand meters of tree brush. It was hard to tell, he almost passed out at some point.

[Anonymous No.10548970]

He, a gatherer like any other, drifted out of mind, destroyed by hubris one’d think maybe, or carelessness as the institution would likely say—in regards and our condolences stamped with thin black ink. Either way there was a fire stuck on the front grill, with a gatherer sinking lower and lower into blue sky, a forest below him inescapable of the eye. He had to leave the ship, everyone could see sort of why (or so he thought anyways), and he knew he’d failed them, so it didn’t matter at that point. Now the descent came, as slow as it was, down in the dark, and darker it got such a long ways down. Darker still but no gatherer panics; just before submerging into the canopy, a second passed so quick, the ship, with his memory, he saw it crash straight, perfectly centered, a trained eye, ahead of him five thousand or so meters. A map in his head, a simple A to B line, it appeared so naturally he had no questions, his only answer being the massive satellite transmitter, a prayer with certainty.

Still falling, the map fresh; the ground, somewhat visible, revealed by the lamp, an old acquaintance, his timely coworker. No sun he noticed, not down here; he had to’ve fallen through a thousand meters of tree brush. It was hard to tell, he almost passed out at some point.

[Anonymous No.10549006]

>>10548736
Ok have you written anything? Like a beginning? It's rare that I've seen a writer imagine an enormous, engaging, complex world, and then write anything interesting about it.

Avoid exhausting exposition, let things be unknown, and let the world build itself. That's the way I see writing fiction anyways, but there are authors I've read that can do what you're doing. It's just beyond me.

Share something überrough

[Anonymous No.10549031]

>>10548970
nigh unintelligible. It’ll click soon enough. Just keep going

[Anonymous No.10549035]

>>10547589
Thanks, my story is here: >>10548084

[Anonymous No.10549052]

>>10549031
I'm going and going man, just hope I don't go and become less intelligible. Some of the shit I've been writing has m e losing the plot. Idk anymore

[Anonymous No.10549104]

>>10548686
No, you are not doomed. But, you are putting too much emphasis on the your writing ability and not enough in the quality of your storytelling. Instead of editing what you currently have, I suggest writing a new draft. This time, give your central character(s) something to do: they should want something, and work towards getting it. The story's conflict comes from whatever opposition they face while trying to reach their goal(s).

You can still have your themes; consider the scenes you want to have while planning your story, but do not lose sight of the fact that your primary goal should be crafting a good story. Your themes may even change later as your story develops.

If you think your goal is not necessarily storytelling, but rather, really exploring your themes, I suggest reading Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and maybe writing something more essay like.

[Anonymous No.10549284]

>>10548619
Daddy got it for me as a present and it upset my INTelliJence. Also, u could be a shit post responder and unionise all the other Redditors.

[Anonymous No.10549285]

>>10545758
This is well written, anon. It's a bit too Alan Rickman for me though.

[Anonymous No.10549447]

>>10548900
That's very nice to hear. Are you fluent in German? There isn't much more currently since I've only began to write somewhat regularly a few months ago but I will keep working on the story the excerpt is from and post more stuff in critique threads now and then.

[Anonymous No.10549506]

This is a story about Australian life.

https://pastebin.com/haH9dAfz

[Anonymous No.10549576]

>>10549506
I like it - I think it might be good to cut down on the similes, but it reads well.

Here's my poem:

Her poster preached "Life's imperfect"
And her Tinder advertised her as spontaneous,
But her books - colour-coded.

[Anonymous No.10549661]

>>10547695
Is this meant for >>10545613 ?

[Anonymous No.10549915]

>>10549661
Looks like he meant to post that on /ic/

[Anonymous No.10550327]

>>10549104
This helps immensely. I really appreciate it. Funny, I've just bought notes and plan on reading it soon.

Do you think that my characters discussing futility is a problem they are facing at all? Or does a problem need to come along much later.

[Anonymous No.10550598]

>>10550327
>Do you think that my characters discussing futility is a problem they are facing at all? Or does a problem need to come along much later.
Can you rephrase this question? I honestly cannot understand what you are asking here.

[Anonymous No.10550638]

>>10550327
>>10550598
>Is the discussion of futility a problem in itself?
Never mind I figured it out.

Your characters should have a significant problem for them to overcome in order to advance the plot. Any discussion of the futility of their situation should probably be about the central conflict that drives the story.

[Anonymous No.10550713]

Billy Joe Jackson was a strange nigger, but for a nigger he was alright. He'd pass by my house every evening on his way home from what he claimed was work in his same crusty button up and disintegrating jeans. He'd beam at me as I sat on my porch smoking my pipe. That was his way of asking for some. He knew not to come through the gate because he knew I'd still shoot him even though we were on fair terms. I just couldn't have my property tainted and I let him know that because a man needs a reason for his doing or not doing if he's going to abide by either. So, I'd get up from my rocker and slip that goofy nigger a pinch of bacca through the fence and he'd be on his way, struttin like he owned the road and the trees alongside it. The only thing that whipped him now was the sun and his own stupidity. I reckon old curses don't change they just sublimate, but that nigger was going to make the best of it or be both damned and defeated.

[Anonymous No.10550987]

>>10548662

Pretty good.

[Anonymous No.10551080]

>>10548662
This is good, clear prose. The only part that snags a bit is:
> It was so heavy in their hearts, that New York, the home they'd warned him about, had finally touched them, deeply and resoundingly, like the weight of a car bearing down, crushing and unrelenting.
My sense is that the knotted syntax here is deliberate, trying to capture how painful it is for this guy to look squarly at his grief, but it is just not tuned quite right yet I think.

Carry on, fellow Texan.

[Anonymous No.10551262]

bump

[Anonymous No.10551346]

>>10550638
Sorry for the poor phrasing. Thanks. Mind if I ask your professional/academic background? Not that it will change the merit in your critique, I am just curious as to your experience.

[Anonymous No.10551401]

>>10550713

Bad. Very bad. It's so plain that you just want to write the word nigger.

[Anonymous No.10551405]

>>10548662

SHIT NIGGER

DO YOU REALLY EXPECT ME TO READ ALL THE BACKSTORY AND EXPOSITION.

[Anonymous No.10551412]

>>10549506

Was this written for teenage girls?

[Anonymous No.10551416]

>>10549576

WOOOOOWWW so like she says she's spontaneous but she's not.. wew.. that one will stick with me

[Anonymous No.10551478]

>>10551401

Heh. I pieced it together for this thread. It was the first thing that came to my mind and I went with it.

[Anonymous No.10551666]

>>10545758

It's like you're just listing what's happening, which makes you seem impatient as a writer.

[Anonymous No.10551742]

>>10545612

Here’s a real teen who’s already racked up some major life experience, and a hell of a lot of fucking experience. Janice Griffith could hardly wait until her 18th birthday to sign on the dotted line and get busy sucking man-wang and shoving as much dick as possible in her moist pussy walls. She’s even already gotten some good anal experience from the industry’s resident good boy/bad boy James Deen, in his Evil Angel "Sex Tapes” series, so we know she’s in good hands, and on good cock. Janice is a fiery sex kitten whose cute face and innocent smile could break the Internet before she even lets one perky little tit out of her blouse. She can sport hipster glasses or fill out a nice evening dress, but what really counts is her rock-hard birthday suit. Light as a feather, you could lift her up on the tip of your boner and spin her around like a horny meat puppet. Her pussy is a treasure trove of tangy sweetness that glistens with excitement when she holds her flaps wide open and invites you in for a taste.

[Anonymous No.10551754]

>>10551742

That's shit and you know it.

[Anonymous No.10551806]

>>10549035
Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. I thought this was a pretty promising excerpt. I think the mingling of the Aesopian/parable-ish tone with pomo authorial reflexiveness is an interesting tact. I think you have a good ear for dialogue that has the right surreal pitch. My only gripe is all the adjectives. Winnow out some of those adjectives. Also make sure you are using the word "aplomb" the way you want to.

[Anonymous No.10551877]

>>10547431
You are very kind - but I agree that I am limited in using my own voice by the genre in question. Here's an opening from something else I'm writing that forgoes any sense of those Post Modern quirks or whatever - it is, intentionally, kind of heightened prose though, so bear that in mind: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14-bMd4YC4JarMkfca2HoEzcU95lrTNDGLbs1CuwpjVs/edit?usp=sharing

>>10547438
Believe what you want bro.

[Anonymous No.10552123]

>>10546992
Your second and third sentences aren't sentences. I know rules are for squares and all, but it looks like they could be formatted into the previous line easily. Before even getting through the whole second line I was already thinking "damn, if only the first line had just had a colon at the end or something." I'm not suggesting that change in specific though.

>The time is 23:35 and P. Pritchard sits shotgun in Bob Monday’s station wagon
I dislike how Bob Monday is smuggled in here. It isn't actually confirmed that he's in the driver's seat right now, but I'm just expected to make that jump. On it's own, I think the line would be better if you instead said "station wagon of Bob Monday," to make it clear you're moving on to Bob instead of just sneaking him in, but the problem is that in the context of the paragraph it might be better to end on the Wagon since your next move is to talk about the peopleoutside the wagon (which is, of course "with respect to the wagon"). Either pick your poison or make a larger change here. I also don't think mentioning Bob at the start of the excerpt is doing you much good either right now; "Bob Monday" still feels like the first time I'm really seeing him, and again, it's shaky. I don't think you can treat him as someone who's already been introduced unless that just has to do with how this is an excerpt.

There's also something unbelievable about him driving at breakneck speed. We were just show a bunch of people on the sidewalks, yet there aren't a bunch of cars? From my experience it's usually both or neither.

You're also flipping back and forth from person to person rather quickly without giving me much to hold on to. Besides names, the only trademark I really got on anyone was the green bob the girl had, but I'd already thrown in a filler image of Elaine Benes from Seinfeld and now I'm feeling liek I have to replace her with that chick from Scott Pilgrim. Your buddy in the passenger seat is Costanza, Bob is some halfway between Camus and Kramer, and your bassist boys -- whose names I've already forgotten -- are the Weasely twins from (the) Harry Potter (movies). You're giving me a lot of blanks, but instead of doing it on purpose to try and draw from the reader's experience, it really seems more like you're just skipping past things you don't want to talk about. Is it a fear of pedantry or something? tfw dfw?

>and how he barely even knows the people around him
For fucks sake, why'd you even name anyone besides Bob and Pritchard? Is this just focusing on him now? It didn't seem like he was paying attention to anything but what he was doing. What's the purpose of your narrator?

>>10547063
Someone did say they liked it in a prior thread. That too could potentially be samefagging, but he isn't making it up on the spot at least.

>>10547431
>It's the only thing I've ever seen on this board that isn't completely cringey and belabored.
then it's probably the only thing you've ever read on this board

[Anonymous No.10552128]

>>10552123
>We were just show a bunch of people on the sidewalks
just shown

there are some other characters I skipped over while typing as well

[Anonymous No.10552137]

>>10551346
I have no formal college education on the subject. I mostly learned from books and online resources (pic related).

[Anonymous No.10552219]

>>10551742
>pasta

[Anonymous No.10552226]

>>10551742
this is genuinely sad

[Anonymous No.10552307]

>>10549506
I don't like how the third sentence starts with "Or," but the "And" you begin the next line with is okay. I like the imagery in the first paragraph but I'm fucking confused. How much of this is figurative? Is there an actual lake or is she just sitting in a car? And her cousins left, right? I'm being told they scaled the fence and left her there in the water, but then I'm being shown images of them cannon balling beside her with very little indication that this was something that had happened prior to their departure. Look at this line:

>Her cousins scaled the fence and left her there alone because the links dug too deep in her skin, and when they jumped they fell like missiles around her and punched through the water.
"and when they jumped" off the fence, away from her? But then I'm being told they're jumping into the water. Everything a blur and you should be using tense to fix that.

The girl's maturity also seems to flip around a lot. "and they watched her all day in the rain without saying a word while she went around with her new water-proof watch telling the time to anyone listening because it was completely safe to do so." makes her sound really young, but then she holds it in when she's told her family is moving somewhere. We've also got mention of sex and childbirth earlier in the paragraph.

I don't like how that next paragraph starts with "And".

You jump really fast from the lake to christmas (around a christmas tree?) to the car to boxing day (empty room?). You could slow down and make it clear that this is all her reminiscing in a lake or something, the lake had given me the impression that this would be a slow jam. It feel like I'm watching a pretty good movie but that the film reel hasn't been hooked up to the camera properly.

[Anonymous No.10552310]

>>10551806
thanks a lot! I think the problem with where I used it was that the sentence should read "...which he jumped into with aplomb and a huge splash of water" rather than "in with..."

I suppose I meant for the connection of the attitude with the literal stuff flung up that both accompany the jump to be a kind of joke, i.e: I recognize that it's awkward to combine the two. Do you think it doesn't work?

A more clearer form of this kind of trick might be: "I had great hopes, as well as a ten dollar bill that I'd found on the street..." That kind of obnoxious wordplay.. I suppose I enjoy the idea of annoying the reader with those deceptive sentences...

I'm well aware of the trait in weak writers of taking full possession of stupid mistakes after the fact and constructing elaborate rationalizations to justify them. If you would, please tell me if I'm falling into that error...

Also, I really appreciate your comment on the adjectives. Though this may be asking too much of you, are there any instances of my use of them that you found particularly annoying? Just as an example. I don't ask this of you as a judge might ask a petitioner for evidence that points towards a certain verdict, but as a person who is genuinely unconscious of his own tendency towards overusing adjectives. I have not developed an ear for it.

Whether or not you respond—thank you! I appreciate you taking the time to read the work and to respond to it.

[Anonymous No.10552381]

>>10551877
Funny, it's sort of like your other piece -- 4chan meme writing, but just a little bit better than everyone else's.

I can't put it much better than this guy: >>10549104
It sounds like a pseud argument, but literature is not just pretty language; you'll find as you work on plot and character that they influence the language itself in interesting ways and turn it into something more than mere stylistic exercise.

Anyway, here's the beginning of a story of mine that I can't get anyone to publish:
https://pastebin.com/imTbH5wy

[Anonymous No.10552395]

>>10548084
3/10

1 point for typing, 1 point for bearing your dirty diaper (Wook, I made dis mommy), and 1 point so it seems plausible to you that it's bad and I'm not ball busting.

[Anonymous No.10552446]

>>10552395
We get it. You're miserable.

[Anonymous No.10552465]

>>10552226
>>10552219
>>10551754

It's a PornHub bio. I can't believe how dumb they sound.

[Anonymous No.10552544]

>>10552465
I dunno I was pretty titilated.

[Anonymous No.10552606]

>>10552137
I see. What was your biggest take aways from those books?

[Anonymous No.10552649]

>>10545612

(This is the unedited first few paras of my opening chapter)

Every epoch has a definitive moment. In my time it was the sale of a $400,000 tin of tuna. The last known edible example of a species long extinct in the wild. Since I was a child I had been coming to the seashore. To watch the sun beam off the sterile ocean. The waves beat and gradually wore the coast away. The local government built vast concrete barriers to prevent more of the adjacent roads and houses from slipping into the sea. One day even the concrete will be eroded away and the sea will take its due. That will be many thousands of years away, but it will happen. Sometimes, I’d think that I could see fish under the waves. My father, who was old enough to remember the last fish, would play along with the fantasy. The coast was mostly populated by twisted pine trees, some hardy shrubs and overlooked by a string of small shops that predated living memory. The road wrapped around the headland and in the days before the concrete barriers; there was a long white jetty made of timber. Today there are several apartment buildings on the headland with a winding road that leads down to the now fully developed shopping precinct. Just enough of this area is recognisable. The changes were very gradual. With each visit something was always just a little different. As a family we came to this small settlement on daytrips. It was a good break from Beirut which at the time was filled with refugees from the war in Jordan.
There were fishermen on that jetty in my father’s day. He told me about a time when boats would leave the bay in the early hours of the morning and haul huge nets of fish in every week. Fishermen would angle their rods into the cool green sea as the tide came in. The sea would swell around them and then once in a while, someone would hook a fish. The water wasn’t really clean enough to eat anything from. It was mostly for sport. The past is a very foreign place to me. I remember the day of the tuna sale distinctly. It was during the last day of Eid. The weather had been so hot that the thronging crowds bellow my apartment balcony reeked of sweat. As the Muslims broke their fast, a dry Mediterranean wind, poured over the old city. The white washed walls and huddled streets reverberated with the air piercing the thick smog. The white thawbs of the faithful clung to their bodies as they prayed in the street. Various skin tones were visible through the sweat patches on their backs as they kowtowed east. A string of policemen in dark uniforms blocked off the roads as they prayed.

[Anonymous No.10552732]

>>10552544

They say Las Vegas is a place where anything can happen. Dreams come true, lives get ruined, and fortunes are won and lost. But there is one sure thing about Las Vegas that is awesome, not just for the city, or even the state of Nevada, but for the entire world and its wide web. Las Vegas is the birth town of a goddess: the one and only Faye Reagan. This sultry redhead with the hot model waif body and deep drilling eyes is an artist of a performer when it comes to the drama of seduction, foreplay, and making men melt. She doesn’t just do it with her moves, but starts turning on that special Faye power the moment she even utters a line or stares at a boner across the room. Then there are the freckles, forever promising youth and innocence. You put those freckled cheeks on a face staring up with her mouth open and you know Faye Reagan is magic. Seriously, this girl has supermodel power, but we know Faye’s appetite for action wouldn’t let her stop at just taking pictures and looking pretty. She’s got a dirty lust and she’s excited to show it. Whether giving it all to the camera, keeping tight with the fans on Twitter, or palling it up with famous comedians and musicians, she’s just one horny redhead who’s loud and proud about spreading orgasms wherever she appears.

[Anonymous No.10552763]

>>10552732
My heart is so full I can barely stand it. Thank you, anon.

[Anonymous No.10552768]

>>10547713

[Anonymous No.10553285]

>>10546113
Guy who gave the mean review here:
So, I felt a lot of remorse and decided to give an honest review right know.
The last guy was somewhat right in his criticism, it seems that you want go for higher themes, but is unable to do so. Instead of going for lower, I believe you should "imitate" better writers who have dealt with themes and characters you want to create.
On paragraph 22, it feels as if you were explaining the story to the reader instead of allowing us to come to our conclusions through their actions. Thus, the characters feel to simplistic and unable to draw sympathy from the reader.It feels as if you were saying "this is John, he wants to be clever, but never studies, let's mock this fool".
The quotation marks all the time( paragraph 23) makes the narrator sound like a smartass. We, readers, are reading the story of uninteresting fools, they aren't funny nor pathetic, they are just models that could be developed into chars: wannabe poet who doesn't try hard and blame the enviroment for his failures, that's all. Also, the final dialogue does not make sense in that context, at least not in the way it was conducted. It was of course your intention to make the dialogue pointless, but you failed to make it humurous or mildly interesting. It feels as a dialogue between two teenagers who discovered Dawkins or listen to some wise guys podcast.
This is the most sincere and detailed criticism you will get in the thread. I advise you to write stories instead of trying another thing that vaguely resembles it.
See ya.

[Anonymous No.10553546]

>>10546113
I like your style a lot, but some things did bug me.


>“Idk, why try?”
Try "I don't know" because "Idk" does not read well at all, jarring in the worst sense of the word. I get that you're being clever, but it felt obnoxious more than anything.


>And with lite mayonnaise please.
Adding some em dashes or parantheses before and after would help a lot with what you're trying to do here I think. Not communicating that it was coming from a different character was sort of interesting, but not to the point where it's anymore than a "Huh, I noticed that" moment.


Good shit man I hope to see more of you

[Anonymous No.10553581]

>>10552649
Protip: don't start your story with an overarching wisecrack. Nobody likes self-importance, and it doesn't do anything to set the scene. If you want to have a 2deep moment, earn it with a story, shitting out profound nonsense is easy.
The rest of your chapter consists of dry and choppy sentences that dart between random topics without focus. You talk about tins of tuns, then the seashores and roads, suddenly dead father, then roads again, then war, suddenly muslims. With all that infodump I still have a very little idea of the world you're trying to paint.

[Anonymous No.10553877]

Teeg walked around the outer edge of the skywalk, his hand sliding against the smooth metal railing twenty three sectors up, in the commercial district. He had just finished getting his license renewed and was now preparing to head back to his headquarters on the outer edge of the city.
He missed the cowboy days, before the profession of bounty hunting had become so regulated. He was one of the last to conform to the new ways, but when the federation started throwing 'rogue' bounty hunters in jail, he figured it would be beneficial to just bite the bullet and accept that times were changing. Here on Earth, the federation had too much control. You could try and resist, but chances are it wouldn't work out for you in the long run. On Mars, things were different, or so he had heard. The same regulations were in place, technically, but there was a serious lack of federal law enforcement, meaning the cowboys were free to just continue on as they always had.
He looked over the railing of the skyway. If you stuck your head out far enough, and looked to the side, you could look across the seemingly endless crevice between buildings that just went on and on until it disappeared into a thin ray of light. Looking up, you could see just a touch of natural daylight, peeking in between the steel behemoths that lined the sky. For the most part you would just see railings and maybe a person or two poking their heads out, same as you were currently doing.
You could look down, but you probably wouldn't want to. Most people who lived fifteen sectors or higher liked to just pretend that there wasn't a down, and who could blame them? Looking down was like looking into the deep dark caverns of hell, and if you ever were to actually go down there you would swear that's exactly what it was. Or it was at least as close to hell as your were likely to find here in the realm of mortals.
Hadn't god once punished mankind for trying to build a structure that could challenge the heavens? It was called the tower of Babel, if Teeg remembered correctly. Well, god must have lost that battle, some ten thousand years after the rebirth of his son, because that's exactly what mankind had done. They did it again and again and again, until the heavens themselves were the stomping grounds of men, and their towers raised from the earth like an elongated middle finger piercing the sky and shouting 'fuck you'.

[Anonymous No.10553884]

Teeg walked around the outer edge of the skywalk, his hand sliding against the smooth metal railing twenty three sectors up, in the commercial district. He had just finished getting his license renewed and was now preparing to head back to his headquarters on the other side of the city.
He missed the cowboy days, before the profession of bounty hunting had become so regulated. He was one of the last to conform to the new ways, but when the federation started throwing 'rogue' bounty hunters in jail, he figured it would be beneficial to just bite the bullet and accept that times were changing. Here on Earth, the federation had too much control. You could try and resist, but chances are it wouldn't work out for you in the long run. On Mars, things were different, or so he had heard. The same regulations were in place, technically, but there was a serious lack of federal law enforcement, meaning the cowboys were free to just continue on as they always had.
He looked over the railing of the skyway. If you stuck your head out far enough, and looked to the side, you could look across the seemingly endless crevice between buildings that just went on and on until it disappeared into a thin ray of light. Looking up, you could see just a touch of natural daylight, peeking in between the steel behemoths that lined the sky. For the most part you would just see railings and maybe a person or two poking their heads out, same as you were currently doing.
You could look down, but you probably wouldn't want to. Most people who lived fifteen sectors or higher liked to just pretend that there wasn't a down, and who could blame them? Looking down was like looking into the deep dark caverns of hell, and if you ever were to actually go down there you would swear that's exactly what it was. Or it was at least as close to hell as your were likely to find here in the realm of mortals.
Hadn't god once punished mankind for trying to build a structure that could challenge the heavens? It was called the tower of Babel, if Teeg remembered correctly. Well, god must have lost that battle, some ten thousand years after the rebirth of his son, because that's exactly what mankind had done. They did it again and again and again, until the heavens themselves were the stomping grounds of men, and their towers raised from the earth like an elongated middle finger piercing the sky and shouting 'fuck you'.

[Anonymous No.10554733]

Much can be given by the thought of leaving and living to the moon. How the moon circles the great earth through our own eyes. Indeed, it is this circling which supplies us with our dreams. The men of ancient times would lie upon the hillocks and bathe nude in the moonlight. Staying up all night they would till the land to exhaustion. Then taking a mild drew of hemlock drift into dreams to which we could barely conceive of. Wild fantasies of the most ethereal character would seize upon them, a connection to the very oldest of pre-Saxon rites and devilry. This practice was of course curtailed around the time of the restoration, by the economist priests of the low countries. More grain was needed for our expeditions and these moon rituals became outlawed. A famous case states of a small village on the Usk which attempted to defy this law. Hearing of their defiance, the local magistrate begged the king for aid. The next time the ritual was performed a hundred Kentish soldiers were lay in wait among the grassy tussocks of the moor. Those pagans were driven into a ravine and all among them were slew. After this village was razed and was erased from records and maps. The corpses of the pagans were strung up on posts as stark warning to any other who engage in such foul deeds. This is where the name Hanged Heathen Wood comes from.

[Anonymous No.10554766]

>>10553285
Thanks. I really appreciate that. This is all a big experiment for me, so I'm really grateful that i get to take this back to the workshop with so much perspective and insight. Hopefully I'll return next time with something more well rounded and mature.

>>10553546
Thanks for the critique. I'm glad you liked it. Originally it was italicized but pastebin didn't transfer it over. I was also, half-way about that acronym, but I agree, it is a little much.

[Anonymous No.10555003]

>>10552395
dam, thanks for reading it anyway

[Anonymous No.10555723]

>>10552381
It isn't a stylistic exercise at all though - the language is a reflection on the character's situation. I think it's a bit preemptive to judge the merits of stylistic choices in regards to character in a few opening lines

I also have no idea what 4chan meme writing is supposed to mean. If your criticism was meant in a genuine sense then fair enough, but my previous point still stands

[Anonymous No.10555882]

>>10552137
>>10552606
I don't have a really strong opinion about any of these books in particular, and I certainly haven't read all of them. I do think it's important to learn from multiple sources to prevent falling victim to the bad ideas of a single teacher, and to gain a broader perspective of the craft in general.

That said, in your case I would focus more on the mechanics of storytelling, so stuff like:
How to Write a Damn Good Novel, 20 Master Plots, Story Structure Architect, Make a Scene, How Fiction Works, etc.

But I don't strongly recommend ANY of these. I think it should up you to decide what you want to learn and where you want to learn it from. Most of the ideas in these books are not unique to them, and have been rewritten in countless creative writing articles and blogs all over the internet (and TV tropes; remember, you can learn from anywhere).

[Anonymous No.10556005]

>>10552137
you should honestly learn from real books. take what you like from great works and leave the rest...

[Anonymous No.10556169]

>>10556005
The problem with doing that exclusively is that you can easily fail to grasp some of the underlying mechanics necessary to tell a story. However, emulating an author is probably the best way to develop a writing style.

[Anonymous No.10556573]

John woke up early. Before the crack of dawn, before the rooster crooked. He ignored all calls to pay the kitchen a visit. He made a deliberate start towards the work shop; the farm's most-trodden path. John's gait was a striding one, but with a bit of right-sided limp. In spite of this ailment his posture was that of a marching soldier. His shoulder width was something one would more expect from a bull than a man. His eye-ridge was reminiscent of a bull as well. A trait which had earned him ungraceful nicknames. But all was redeemed by his luminous, domineering, and vaguely innocent eyes. Some complaints had been made yesterday. Junior's sickle felt a little dull, and the ring on Tabitha's scythe was beginning to loosen. If any tools needed mending it would always fall within the first order of business.