Critique Thread

[Anonymous No.10613155]

Critique Thread.

Post your work in the hopes of it being critique by others.

https://pastebin.com/dqgcY4gs

[Anonymous No.10613174]

>>10613155
yo do y’all ever look at dat shit, dem anime people and think “dems not human i ain’t finna look at dat no mo” n all dat? i be lookin at da anime hos and bein honest wichy’all it be disturbin to me n shit. i ain’t tryna be no bitch or nuthin but they nonexistent noses, they weird ass eyes, they neotenous bodies and hyper exaggerated, one-sided almost demonic facial expressions, make dem seem like dey from anutha dimension where we ain’t supposed to tread nawmsayn?

[Anonymous No.10613192]

>>10613174
New pasta

[Anonymous No.10613217]

>>10613155
You have a tense change in the first paragraph, fucking dropped. Get your basics down.

[Anonymous No.10613326]

>>10608186
that sounds like a good idea. I wanted the cooking to look meticulous, but it's hard to convey that while keeping it entertaining.

[Anonymous No.10613405]

>>10613155
The two guards at the end of your excerpt are saying things to each other they would already know. it's pretty amateurish but easily improved. just have them remark that all the prisoners look the same after a few days. I'm not sure what you have written next but you may or may not need to quickly convey the idea all the prisoners are assassins. Also, in the first paragraph I thought your heroin was a cat. I'm not sure if that was deliberate.

Anyway here's a very short story I wrote together after I obsessively listened to Frank Zappa's album absolutely free on repeat too many times.
https://pastebin.com/XHmfaF98

[Anonymous No.10613427]

>>10613192
should have said poseda

[Anonymous No.10613450]

The name is placeholder.
https://pastebin.com/raw/ePSZQWE7

[Anonymous No.10613803]

>>10613450
It's above average, anon, I like it. I'm nomrally not a fan of passive tense but it works here. You want it to sound lazy and so you open with lazy sounding syntax, (the tone is lazy, not the author, to be clear). The only issue I see is that sometimes you give an inconsistent amount of detail. You should probably cut down the sentence about fans, it's too long. I think I would read the rest of the story/novel or whatever if you managed to maintain the tone you have now

[Anonymous No.10613866]

>>10613803
Thanks for the critique, I'll take your advice. It's encouraging that you like it. I've never written in this style before.

[Anonymous No.10614335]

>>10613405
>The two guards at the end of your excerpt are saying things to each other they would already know.
I wanted to convey that they were frustrated with their situation

[Anonymous No.10614967]

>>10613405
>https://pastebin.com/XHmfaF98
Not, bad, not bad. Might want to fix a few errors though, I could help with that if you don't mind

[Anonymous No.10615405]

>The relaxing,melodious tone of the voice was tainted by the reek of blood and stale air that accompanied every word.

Give it to me straight doc, is this sentence salvageable? I can't even get out a paragraph of my story at this point

[Anonymous No.10615439]

pls critique!!!!!! pls!!!!!! im givin it to my roblox gf

[Anonymous No.10615488]

>>10614335
In that case theres a novella's worth of things they could have said instead to convey that your two guards hated their job. I mean, you have two guys that have to guard prison cells, that I'm assuming are completely rancid, and occupied by people who must be slowly starving to death since they are resorting to eating live rats. speaking of which, some images of the poor conditions in your person would also help your story.

>>10614967
Go ahead
I wrote this about 2 years ago and somewhat forgot about it. I'm aware this story has a bad habit of just introducing one new character after another. I was goofing off and cared more about referencing the Frank Zappa album and making food puns.

[Anonymous No.10615520]

>>10615488
>speaking of which, some images of the poor conditions in your person would also help your story.
Wait as in the character narrating? (I'm writing Third-Person limited) or the cell she's living in?

[Anonymous No.10615597]

>>10615405
>The voices relaxing melodious tone was tainted by the reek of blood and stale air which accompanied its every word.

[Anonymous No.10615606]

>>10615597
Oh fuck that's so much better. I have been completely unable to shed passive voice, it has killed all of my novel aspirations for half a decade now.

[Anonymous No.10615717]

I spent thirty dollars getting chicken to my door step
If I kill myself, won’t matter if I can’t afford it
Lost all of my loans on the vintage Fender market
I went to the mall I bought an Amazon gift card

Tangled up in severed threads
My oldest friends left me for dead
Spent my savings on a ukulele
I’m too clever to ever go crazy
I can’t drink on my medication
I don’t speak because of maturation
I’m afraid of touching myself
Couldn’t let my parents see me dying with my pants down

[Anonymous No.10615740]

I’m not sorry
I forgive you
What’s the difference?
I don’t know
I’ve been thinking
I could hate you
You’d deserve it
But I don’t

Come on acquaintances
Be my friend again
I’ll behave, I swear
I swear, I swear

I’m not sorry
I forgive you
What’s the difference?
They’re the same
I deleted
All my numbers
So you miss me?
What’s your name?

Oh you hope I’m
Doing better
Do you really?
That’s a shame
Because I’m not
Because I’m not
Because I’m not
Because I’m not

Come on acquaintances
Be my friend again
I’ll behave, I swear
I swear, I swear

[Anonymous No.10615746]

Arrogant ego death weak motherfucker. WAKE UP! What the fuck do you need that you don’t already have and why don’t you go out and just get some pussy already my dude because you’ve already seen what you came to see and now here’s your jacket here’s your fucking hat and take your hate too, you might need it for later. Don’t do that. Don’t pull that trigger. Que quieres mija? You feel sad? You feel you feel nothing you feel? You fell? You felt? You what? Well. Cheers to you stranger because it’s a big fuckin place this planet is, and what are the chances because of biology and chemistry and recipes for the shitty cheap booze we spit at each other and the cigarettesss. Fuck I wish I had one in this exact moment. Because see, I guess I’m arrogant enough to love the flavor of Certain Doom because everyone I know knows everything I don’t and nothing I do means anything to you anymore so why are you still talking to me? Pain is your job with its long hours and lonely nights and you deserve a break from the broken but I get the sinking feeling that you need and want this on some level. It feeds you and clothes you and confuses you and tells you everything looks perfect baby don’t change a thing but could you please do this and then do that. I said do it! Do it slut. Do it slowly slut. Don’t speak. Don’t scream. Look at this. I said look at it! Remember it. Imagine it. Take it home with you and sleep with it. Now – DANCE! And weep with me. Kneel with me and lament for what we have lost because we have, we have lost far too much to justify what we’ve gained. More than any visions or dreams could ever contain even within those limitless borders. We lost shooting stars and woodsmoke and cold kisses and deep breathing and hearts beating and in the end it all meant nothing because life is a cunt that way and whatcha gonna do? Cry about it? Go ahead then, cry. It turns me on. Always has.

[Anonymous No.10615751]

>>10615488
Did what I could. Consider re-writing this into some sort of parody.

https://pastebin.com/MGv8tFkP

[Anonymous No.10615761]

>Ekphrastic piece on pic related.

The paltry fire breathes smoke
that licks at the stumps of trees pencil-thin,
such as the cigarillos
that linger ever burning and infinitely
carcinogenic but to watch.
And these
sold by the tobacconist,
he who models
the crestfallen

Swagman or prospector,
he sits in linen dyed the colour
of a lopsided horizon.

Removed of
self-pity, but jaded.
Swag an afterthought
to an idle stoking stick.
His seat is unhewn and white ant
chewed. Succumb to nature and fallen
for it too was weak in its standing

and he wonders if this is a thing’s own fault.

For he knows there was no downed luck
accounting for empty sieve and sovereign;
no dice to throw.

The choices were his own.

>>10613450
The main problem here is that you give too much detail where it's unnecessary. For example, you call Ay large and then comment on his overabundance of insulation. Pick one and stick with it, people don't need to be told the same thing twice.
You manage to capture a lazy vibe well, I would say, but at the same time the tone feels somewhat disinterested, and I can't help but feel apathetic when reading it.

>>10613155

Opening paragraphs are a little weak. I'm not saying you need something explosive and exciting to grab attention, but at the same time, I'm not getting a good sense of mood, tone, or voice.
I think you might also benefit on cutting down some of the ending dialogue.
"All of these wenches are assassins" can go, for example.
It also seems that these guards/gaolers have some pretty sophisticated language, despite cursing and saying m'lord. Is this intentional?

[Anonymous No.10615807]

This is all I could squeeze out. I learned that I'm too much of a brainlet to be literary because this took 15 words to become shitty genre fiction.
>>10613450
>https://pastebin.com/raw/ePSZQWE7 (embed)
I think the weakest part of this is the use of commas. It left me breathless at times, although that could have been your intention. You've a few tense changes
> He sat; looking out of a window at the stillness while the television chattering at low volume in the corner of the room.
At times it felt like you ran a sentence through a thesaurus eg
> He pushed off his hat, letting it cascade down to the floor
This is my favorite bit
>The sound lagged behind it, seeming lazy, just like everything and everyone else.

>>10613155
So like, was there a rat? Was she mackin on her own hands? What's the basis? Regardless, it was a very well written passage, you werent overly descriptive, and your prose seemed to be in your control.
At times I had trouble deciphering your sentences, for example
>However, it was two or more guards she would keep up with her deception. Let them have fun with another girl but me.
In fact, that entire paragraph is very confusing.

[Anonymous No.10615811]

Not exactly a critque, but I need advice. I'm working on a story and I know the important plot points, I know the big events, but I don't know how to get the characters from A to B while showing more of how the world works.

[enthdegree No.10615814]

>>10613155
im imagining laying belly down mouth open teeth grinding on the curb cement like American History X as a 30 pound sledgehammer pivots counter clock wise swishing down thru the air slamming onto the back of my head against the curb at a velocity of 15+ feet per second causing my jawbone & attached flesh to tear off like the pull tab on a teenage engineering po20 while the top of my skull bursts open baked potato style sending brain matter gushing out onto the sidewalk as a bright sinewy pulp that looks like the inside of a pumpkin mixed with sriracha semen except all made of brain matter which has started smelling really bad as it lays out there in the humid 98 degree farenheit august urban swamp rain developing a darkened semi moist half-dried sponge outer layer while the ants and flies start going into the cavity in my skull thru the crack which all has the effect of really pissing off the guy whose task it is to squeegee this septic meat vomit off the cement into his biohazard dustpan

[Anonymous No.10615818]

>>10615811
integrate plot and character progression, don't alternate the two unless absolutely necessary

[Anonymous No.10615824]

>>10615761
>Opening paragraphs are a little weak. I'm not saying you need something explosive and exciting to grab attention, but at the same time, I'm not getting a good sense of mood, tone, or voice.

Can you further expand on this? I get what you're saying, I just want to know if You and I are on the same page when it comes to mood, tone, or voice. because I had written a different first chapter than this, which might fit what you want.

>I think you might also benefit from cutting down some of the ending dialogue.
Reasonable.

>"All of these wenches are assassins" can go, for example.
But that's a Starting dialogue?

>It also seems that these guards/gaolers have some pretty sophisticated language, despite cursing and saying m'lord. Is this intentional?
Pretty much intentional. Will this be a problem?

[Anonymous No.10615858]

We had docked in a port on the edge of Massachusetts, before heading out on the rough seas. Our ship, the Customhouse, was an oil tanker bound for Canada. I'd been on the boat for a few months now. Lots of crew would come and go but I became a regular. They liked me and took me on full time. I had never worked in one place very long. I always liked moving around and trying new things. One month I’d work as a line cook, the next I’d paint houses. Things like that really got me going. I loved working with my hands, which may seem strange for an educated man. It’s really not though because there’s a sense of accomplishment in it that you can’t find anywhere else.

[Anonymous No.10615862]

From then on, notes were written in the cover of the evening. He wrote under bed sheets. He wrote with his bowing body supported by pillows against headboard, greeted only by the outer noise of wheeled carts and walkers over carpets freshly steamed.

Work was picking up, and Walt became increasingly tired and slow-moving. He rang the housekeeper for increasingly menial tasks. Sometimes just to talk. He felt the immovable roots of guilt take form but did not understand why.

On Walt’s last day of work, Mary asked him to take out a trash bag. She told him that it needed to go to the dumpsters out back across the parking lot.

Tasks such as these were normally reserved for the part-timers, though she and Walt were the only staff on lobby duty and her encroaching on forty weeks of pregnancy rendered her static by doctor’s order.

She told him that if he could not do it that he shouldn’t bother. That somebody else would be in the next morning. She remained compliant with workplace safety regulations, she read him unsaid rights.

Walt found the bag slumped against the emergency exit doors. They were unlocked and windowless and airbrushed with little white men running someplace safe.

Walt propped open the doors. He gripped the bag’s plastic tie with both hands and pulled. Though it moved, it was hopelessly heavy.

The bag, lumpy and misshapen, slid out the door and onto the salted asphalt. Walt dragged it inch by fighting inch over the rocky pavement. And he did this for some time, letting the bag follow his steps as he lumbered on.

He was halfway across the lot before he noticed the bag lighten. With his next and final step he felt it lighten more.

The bag had torn and its contents had spilled onto the cool, wet tarmac, leaving a small trail to where he stood.

They were books, most of them. Some magazines. There were twenty-five in all. They were familiar to Walt, because each of them had at one time housed his letters. Every one.

Walt glanced down by his feet where a book lay on the ground, its white cover dampened. Opium. Turning it over, he found no letter inside. He grabbed another and found nothing. There were no letters in any. They had all been removed.

He tried to put them back into the torn bag. He tried to carry them in his arms.

Hello?

He called silently to anyone at all.

He wept, he howled.

[Anonymous No.10615863]

>>10615858
It was late in the afternoon when we disembarked from the ship. The pier was old, but well kept. It possessed a patina gained from the battering of sea water and cold winds. It was an odd sight, we were the only vessel in the harbor minus some local crafts. Some of the boys and I took off and went into town for necessities. Although Alan was a wonderful cook, we were getting tired of pot roast and mashed potatoes. One good thing about our line is that they fed us well. Coffee in the morning with pastries made fresh most days. Warm coffee always helped the cold mornings on the bow. For lunch we’d have hot sandwiches; ruebens, ham & cheese, or a pastrami. Dinner would come and we’d have a nice meal. Usually together in the small built-in down from the kitchen. I never liked using nautical terms for non-sea traveling folk, too pretentious if you ask me. Gully this, starboard that. No one can make sense of it, and neither could I for a while. I can sometimes be slow to learn, but that’s not really important. Where were we? Yes, dinner. For dinner we would have hardy meals cooked with fat and butter. Roasted beef with vegetables, potatoes, heavy bread. Stick to your ribs food they’d call it. Spaghetti and meatballs or sausages. Things to keep us filled and content.

[Anonymous No.10615867]

>>10615863
We disembarked from the ship at a quarter past three. It was overcast. I thought, that’s not going to bode well for our trip tonight. It was a cool fall day, I was wearing thick cotton pants, boots, a wool knitted cap, and a heavy jacket. I hadn’t shaved in weeks, and at the time my hair had just began to recede. I felt like Jack Nicholson in the Shining, and I had a demeanor to match. We first went to a general store, the man behind the counter was wearing a thick flannel and a scowl. The room smelled of cheap tobacco. I walked towards the counter.

Two cartons of cigarettes and a box of matches please.
The scruffy old man behind the counter nodded and disappeared in the back. He soon reemerged with two beautiful boxes of stiff cardboard. He plunked them down on the counter with a lazy underhand throw.

That’ll be 18 dollars.

I handed him a crisp twenty dollar bill and walked out with a smile on my face.

The other boys had sat this one out. They didn’t like going into the store with the old man. He creeped them out with his horror stories of ships sinking or being swallowed hole by monsters of the deep.

I strolled down the block towards the pub we always stopped at while in town. The boys didn’t like to wait for me while I picked up my smokes. After a few days at sea they were ready to drink and carouse with the locals.

[Anonymous No.10615878]

>>10615867
I was writing on and off at the time. Mostly ramblings about things that didn’t amount to anything substantial. Occasionally I’d hit upon something interesting and try to flush the idea out, but could never get more than a few pages in. I thought it was my lack of will power that stopped me, but as I came to realize it was my lack of self confidence. They say you have to like what you write, but I seldom find that true. Some of us are born with unquenchable doubt, and they say that those of us possessed this affliction are often brilliant. Its sad because there is so much wasted potential born from a lack of faith.

I hated to tell people I was writing, it made me feel like an attention seeker, especially when I didn’t follow through. I felt a release when I transferred my thoughts to paper. There were so many stories I longed to tell, but just couldn’t seem to get out. I remember when I was a boy in Chicago, I loved writing stories about animals. I had stacks of them, but one day my father came into my room. He scolded me. What are these? He threw them away and told my mother I was acting like a faggot. That was a painful moment for me, to have someone you love, someone you looked to for protection and reassurance cast off your dreams, the work you poured into those things from yourself really hurt. My mother fished my papers out of the garbage and put them in the trunk of her car. When she took me to my grandparents house the next day she put them in a plastic shopping bag and handed them to me. She told me that she saved them for me, she said she read them and that she thought I was a good writer. My mother was the only person who ever believed in me. I miss her everyday and sometimes I wish my father would have died instead of her. I left home at twenty-one after she passed and went to live in the south where I began living with my cousin in Georgia. He was a difficult person to be with, but he taught me so much and as much as I hate to admit it, I credit him for my meager success.

[Anonymous No.10615888]

>>10615878
I stepped into the bar, a dingy little place filled with rough fishermen and near do wells. Who else would be drinking at 4pm on a Wednesday? The boys took a seat and I made my way to the bar. Neon signs displaying the names of beers I've never tried lined the walls. On ground level were a series of dinged up pool tables with more than their fair share of stains. The bar was made of old wood, stained dark brown to hide the scruff of old age. Out the corner of my eye I noticed a woman I had seen around before. She was pale with blonde hair, but her roots disclosed the fact that it wasn’t her natural color. Something about the light hair, dark eyebrows combination really got to me. Her jeans were tight and the checkered shirt she was wearing was unbuttoned enough that it left little to the imagination. I sat beside her and took a fresh pack from my pocket. I lit a cigarette and offered her one, she accepted.

I’ve seen you around here before, what’s your name?
Margarette.
Pleasure to meet you.
What brings you around these parts?
My boat docked in the harbor for the night and I’m here to drink. How about you?
I come for the charming atmosphere and refined clientele.


Being lonely causes a certain strain on your soul. Its like you’re being deprived of an essential nutrient. I basked in the warmth of her next to me. I tried to savor that momembt because I knew it was fleeting and I may not experience something so soothing for a long time. She smelled wonderful and every deep inhale through my nose release more endorphins than any drug, liquor, or cigarette ever could. Her skin was soft, like nothing I had ever felt in my hand. I had been with other women before, but this time was different. I was in it for different reasons. Companionship was something I missed dearly while traveling on the open waters. I kissed the nape of her neck softly, she was fast asleep with a half smile fixed to her face.

[Anonymous No.10615897]

>>10615888
You could use Pastebin. you know

[Anonymous No.10615901]

>>10615807
>a child cannot help himself from gazing into the sun
I liked this
>man didnt want to discover the source of these words
I think this sentence could be better if you replaced "didn't want to" with another word. Something like "he dreaded discovering the source of the words"

It seems like you put more effort into some paragraphs than others. The first two paragraphs are great but most of the rest don't feel as "poetic"

[Anonymous No.10615905]

>>10615888
The fog came across the bow of the boat as we crept slowly through the water. I was smoking a cigarette and fiddling with the equipment. Pierce's eyes lowered. This was the area of the distress call, but there were no signs of the boat. I put the binoculars down and walked out of the wheelhouse and down to the deck. Some of the boys were perched on the sides holding life vests and ropes. Their faces were a mixture of apprehension and confusion. The fog was becoming more intense. I heard a boy call out from the front. By the time I got there they were pulling someone from the water. A young man with short hair and a fisherman's uniform. He was ice cold, shivering fiercely as he clung onto the coat of one of the boys. He was making little sense. Sputtering and stuttering, he couldn't get it out.

What are you saying boy! What's happened to your boat? Are there other men out there?

We had floated right through a scattering of men floating in the water. Low moans from the dying. The smell of smoke began to fill my nostrils. I began to make out light in the fog.

[Anonymous No.10615906]

>>10615897
sorry new to all of this, I guess i'll use paste bin from now on thanks

[Anonymous No.10615908]

>>10615906
Yyou might want to delete those previous post as they won't get published if archived by 4chan.

[Anonymous No.10615923]

Second Paragraph of a story I just started working on:
>Jennifer Etolin waited at the entrance of Arrowhead Middle School, classmates passed her by, leaving with the crunch of gravel. Couples, held hands. She cupped her palms before her mouth, blew warmth into them, and placed them back into her coat. Rainwater puddles mottled the gravel entrance path. Eyes down, she moved to and fro on her heels, humming a song of her childhood but the name escaped her and she stopped with a sigh. She began to think about it. In sotto she said her thoughts, and started to move to and fro again, the homebound crunching of gravel receding. When it became silent, she looked up to the empty gravel path and turned around to see the entrance hall, which was empty too, even the secretary was gone. With eyes down again she heard the start of steps at the end of the gravel path, she recognized the staccato of the footfalls and looked up. She smiled and began to walk. Hi, Edith.

[Anonymous No.10615930]

>>10615923
Could be just me, but it sounds choppy. Particularly in the first half

[Anonymous No.10615940]

>>10615761
>The main problem here is that you give too much detail where it's unnecessary. For example, you call Ay large and then comment on his overabundance of insulation. Pick one and stick with it, people don't need to be told the same thing twice.
>You manage to capture a lazy vibe well, I would say, but at the same time the tone feels somewhat disinterested, and I can't help but feel apathetic when reading it.
Thanks, I'm not sure how I could make it less disinterested but it's the opening scene of my novel so it's important that it keeps you reading.
>>10615807
>>https://pastebin.com/raw/ePSZQWE7 (embed)
>I think the weakest part of this is the use of commas. It left me breathless at times, although that could have been your intention. You've a few tense changes
That wasn't my intention and I definitely agree. Punctuation is something I struggle with.
>> He sat; looking out of a window at the stillness while the television chattering at low volume in the corner of the room.
>At times it felt like you ran a sentence through a thesaurus eg
>> He pushed off his hat, letting it cascade down to the floor
I did run it through a thesaurus, was hoping it wouldn't appear that way.
>This is my favorite bit
>>The sound lagged behind it, seeming lazy, just like everything and everyone else.

Thanks again everyone for the critiques, I'll return the favor when I get time.

[Anonymous No.10615948]

>>10615930
It is. I usually do fine for the first paragraph, but not so much the second. Sometimes even goes for sentences. It's weird, I lose traction so quick with writing. But, I'm making an outline this time to try and create cohesion. This paragraph I shared was pre-outline and rather rough. At least it's salvageable... I hope.

[Anonymous No.10615966]

>>10615908
different anon,

So I've posted some stuff on /lit/ like in the reply box (300-700 word bits that I plan to compile). Am I fucked basically if I ever try to publish?

[Anonymous No.10615970]

>>10615908
thanks for the advice I appreciate it.

https://pastebin.com/9Cju3Nab

[Anonymous No.10615980]

>>10615824
>But that's a starting dialogue
What do you mean? This is the second sentence that the second person speaks

>Can you expand further
Sure. The way the opening paragraphs are written don't give off any particular vibe and seem generally disinterested. Later lines like
>The consequence of her actions be damned, better dead and free than alive and captive in this hell.
are better because they give insight into character and because it is a direct thought conveys a sense of desperation. Lines such as
> tears streaming down her cheeks by this humiliation as she feasted on its corpse.
Don't really mean much to me, however. Who is humiliating her? Herself? If that's the case you're not showing it here. Sure she's crying, but you don't write why, not really. Many of your early sentences are like this. It leaves the piece without a general mood until later when it should be established early (at least, imo). The voice itself seems rather apathetic too initially. Actions are described without character emotion behind them, like the narrator is somehow distant. Obviously, don't give character emotion and explanations to why shit is happening every sentence, but balance it so there is some early on. You do it well later, just not enough initially (once again, imo).
Hope that makes sense.

And, I guess it wouldn't be a problem if the guards spoke like that, but it just leaves me with questions. Are they educated? If so, why are they lowly guards? If not, why are they speaking in this way? Does everybody speak like this? etc etc

[Anonymous No.10615988]

Critique would be great

https://pastebin.com/eV4G3RRH

[Anonymous No.10615993]

>>10615966
Should the publishing company find it, pretty much? They will ask you to rewrite it or remove it.

[Anonymous No.10616003]

>>10615993
fuck me ugh

I intend to reach out to religious publications (that's what I've been writing), so perhaps they won't find it. Technically speaking, what I've posted are not complete works (I will put them all in an aphoristic fashion) and I do not believe I have posted more than 2500 words of excerpts.

[Anonymous No.10616041]

>>10615980
>Sure. The way the opening paragraphs are written don't give off any particular vibe and seem generally disinterested. Later lines like

>>The consequence of her actions be damned, better dead and free than alive and captive in this hell.

>are better because they give insight into character and because it is a direct thought conveys a sense of desperation. Lines such as

>> tears streaming down her cheeks by this humiliation as she feasted on its corpse.

>Don't really mean much to me, however. Who is humiliating her? Herself? If that's the case you're not showing it here. Sure she's crying, but you don't write why not really.


>Many of your early sentences are like this. It leaves the piece without a general mood until later when it should be established early (at least, imo).

>The voice itself seems rather apathetic too initially. Actions are described without character emotion behind them, like the narrator is somehow distant. Obviously, don't give character emotion and explanations to why shit is happening every sentence, but balance it so there is some early on. You do it well later, just not enough initially (once again, imo).

>Hope that makes sense.
Pretty much, you would have liked my draft on this chapter then.

>And, I guess it wouldn't be a problem if the guards spoke like that, but it just leaves me with questions. Are they educated? If so, why are they, lowly guards? If not, why are they speaking in this way? Does everybody speak like this? etc etc

Major subplot later in the series, can't go further than that.

[Anonymous No.10616148]

>>10615948
First Paragraph (posted before):
>Edith Byrne sat in Isabelle’s apartment. Across from Jennifer, the girl of Isabelle, who ate the supper Edith made her: egg on toast. The room was temperate, the window obscured by rain. The tatami table they sat at had half-empty bottles of gin by its legs and low-volume laughter from the television made Jennifer smile and laugh. Edith read a dog-eared pulp book, her hand rested on the tabletop beside a pencil, which she picked up and underlined a sentence she found interesting, she subvocalized it: On the beach, she saw a far-away lighting.

[Anonymous No.10616175]

>>10615862
Starts off well enough. I felt invested in the character's issues and relationships. Tone turned quickly and without warning, which threw me off.

>>10615923
Seems overly pensive. You have good control over imagery, and the contrast between the couples' hand-holding and her own palms cupped together was great. I like it, though I agree with >>10615930

[Anonymous No.10616200]

>>10616175
Thank you. I'll try to refine it and maybe move it a long. I always wonder how I shall fill pages since I make my paragraphs so short but with a lot of stuff. At least I don't meander like I once did.

[Anonymous No.10616427]

>>10615807
>So like, was there a rat? Was she mackin on her own hands?
A left over from a previous draft, where she ate the tips of her fingers in her delirium. Was going for some Kafkaesque storyline with her, before being force to abandoned it due to being edgy.

>What's the basis? Regardless, it was a very well written passage, you weren't overly descriptive, and your prose seemed to be in your control.
thank you.

>>At times I had trouble deciphering your sentences, for example
>>However, it was two or more guards she would keep up with her deception. Let them have fun with another girl but me.
She wanted the guards to rape some other girl instead of her, so she feigned sleepness in the hopes it will allow them to overlook her.


>In fact, that entire paragraph is very confusing.
Sorry to hear.

[Anonymous No.10616648]

Was told this was a bit angsty which surprised me since I wanted him to be Flippant about his past.

[Anonymous No.10616661]

>>10616648
https://pastebin.com/1CKyFBv6

[Anonymous No.10617041]

How the fuck do I stop letting my autism get in the way of my writing?

I want to write. It's fun. But I always have these intruding thoughts when writing like "oh this needs to have some kind of symbolism" and "this description could be more verbose" etc, etc.

I just want to write stupid shit and have people enjoy it. For some reason I write my best when I spontaneously write stupid out-of-character fanfic snippets on /a/ about some retarded anime.

How the fuck do I break the cycle of self critique? It's seriously holding me back.

[Anonymous No.10617452]

>>10617041
Spontaneity is a meme. Deeper meaning being the purpose of writing is also a meme. Deeper meaning is just something you use when you need spontaneity. Can't spontaneously pick a color? Pick one that means something. It's all just a way to compensate for the fact that you aren't a random number generator.

> I write my best when I spontaneously write stupid out-of-character fanfic snippets on /a/
I seriously fucking doubt this desu

[Anonymous No.10617459]

>>10617452
>I seriously fucking doubt this desu
Compare this
>>>/a/167812063
to this
https://pastebin.com/vHPQ25FB

[Anonymous No.10617483]

Aye how do I make this line less fucked:

>I was at a bar-arcade, or a “bar-cade” as whoever’d invited me put it, although it really wasn’t so much that they’d “invited” me as it was that they’d just announced they were “going to be there from 8 to 10,” like they were signing books or something.

Everything there is important (including how the speaker corrects themselves, etc), but splitting it up would be acceptable:

>I was at a bar-arcade, or a “bar-cade” as whoever’d invited me put it. They hadn't really “invited” anyone though; they’d just announced they were “going to be there from 8 to 10,” like they were signing books or something.

Might drop the last two quotation marks.

[Anonymous No.10617495]

>>10617483
Is this the internal voice of a character who's narrating the story?
If no, that's trash, if yes, you can get away with it whatever way you like

[Anonymous No.10617506]

>>10617483
I was at a dingy hole in the wall of a bar, with cheap beer and grouchy bartenders, arcade machines lining the walls of the narrow rooms that made for the "bar-cade" as whoever had invited me here had called it. They hadn't really 'invited' anyone though, as if saying they're going to be there between 8 and 10 counted as an invitation. It felt more as I was being invited to a book signing by an underground author.

[Anonymous No.10617511]

>>10617495
>Is this the internal voice of a character who's narrating the story?
It is. That's why it starts with "I"

[Anonymous No.10617514]

>>10617506
Are you the /a/ poster who was worried about being verbose?

[Anonymous No.10617518]

>>10617514
Ye. Just wrote that over the top of my head.

[Anonymous No.10617544]

>>10615761
This will depend on how you like this to sound, but if you make a small change like
>His seat unhewn and white ant chewed
then there's a nicer rhythm.
The same with the last line which could be turned into a (nearly) rhyming couplet if you dropped 'were'.
This line here
>that linger ever burning and infinitely
is the one that seems a little odd to me because of a similar criticism you yourself gave. You use 'ever burning' 'infinitely' but it doesn't add so much after you've already given the sense of lingering. I think just two would be enough, 'infinitely' as well (even if attached to carcinogenic) started to feel a bit strange.

[Anonymous No.10617576]

>>10617459
>two person
hyphen

>made her awake from her sleep
You're not thinking of imagery order at all here. I see awake and then I see sleep, which is the exact opposite of what you want. It's also just weird to say it as you have because people don't awake from anything besides sleep anyways. And then after this you go on to talk more about sleep, and then snap back, and I don't need this talk of mount Fiji water or your obsidian minecraft adjectives.

The pastebin writing is definitely better going off the two paragraphs I read. You're describing things on a micro-scale, but that's a good thing if the story calls for it. When people get made fun of for overdescription it's for thesaurus abuse and too many adjectives, not slowdown. Anna Keasly has a good essay on it, you'll probably find something if you google story time vs discourse time.

[Anonymous No.10617610]

>>10617576
I disagree vehemently, but I'll take your criticism to heart.

[Anonymous No.10617965]

I'll critique for each screenshot I upload... Pic-related is something I wrote in an afternoon - first time I've written this year, so I'm not expecting it to be that great. It's just a rough idea now, not a complete thing yet.

>>10615988
I enjoyed it, seems like a well-worded monologue that's been isolated. Is there more to this? Your voice comes off as realistic and sincere, so much so that it just seems real to me. I'm not well-versed in the Bible or anything, so I don't feel like I could appreciate it as much as I could. I feel like it should be much longer though, or part of something else - it could be a prologue, for instance. First of all, I'd like to know what crime was committed exactly, apart from rejecting God. I don't think you need to change to another scene or anything, in fact, I'd really like to read it as a longer piece of the same nature. For example, a very detailed confession or something - where the crime or the speaker's character can be slowly revealed. Main tip: feel free to write more, but if you want to keep it short, make it more stylistically interesting... no need to sound so real when it's this short. Flash prose should be very stylistic, in my opinion.

[Anonymous No.10617993]

>>10616661
Straight off the bat, I don't really enjoy the voice or the phrases much. "Game" just sounds very cliched to me. I'm not a reader of urban fiction - if that's what you're attempting - so I'm not really the readership here. Sentences are a bit run-on:
>Not much to tell besides being born in some faraway and rural place which I have few recollections of, lived there until seven-years-old which my family got killed and my master spared me out of pity or compassion, she never gave me an honest answer as to why she did what she did.

No need for it to be this long. Feel free to cut it up and make them tighter.

>Dead family
Bit boring, in my opinion. I don't know the character yet, but this is a bit cliched too.

>Changing tense in the last paragraph, mid-sentence.
I'm not saying you can't do it, but most will say it's a big no. Pynchon is probably the only person I've read who does it well. But the first sentence of that last paragraph is a bit shoddy.

Just feel you have a bit of work to do with the voice, grammar and cliches. I understand there's a market for this though, so you should probably listen to that readership critique this more than me. I remember I followed some guy called Dayshawn R Smith who self-published urban fic.

[Anonymous No.10617996]

>>10617993
Fug, forgot the other screenshot.

[Anonymous No.10618020]

https://pastebin.com/rJPuBmNZ

A 2 page setup for a short story I started last night. English isnt my first language, so expect plenty gramatical errors.

[Anonymous No.10618140]

>>10617965
Thanks anon. There are more short pieces like it. And it's not a monologue, I'm describing what I have done and how I feel(I didn't kill a man either lol). It's a sin that I keep fall back to and I hate it...
>First of all, I'd like to know what crime was committed exactly, apart from rejecting God.
I'd rather keep that private; and when I say "rejecting God" I do not mean apostatizing, but rather I, by my actions, have denied what Go wants me to do. Just want to make sure you understand that as you said you aren't well-versed in the Bible! :)

More stylistically interesting for its shortness? Got it. Thanks again!

[Anonymous No.10618188]

Whenever in my dreams I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely depressed, quite unlike their dear, bright selves. I am aware of them, without any astonishment, in surroundings they never visited during their earthly existence, in the house of some friend of mine they never knew. They sit apart, frowning at the floor, as if death were a dark taint, a shameful family secret. It is certainly not then, not in dreams, but when one is wide awake, at moments of robust joy and achievement, on the highest terrace of consciousness, that mortality has a chance to peer beyond its own limits, from the mast, from the past and its castle tower. And although nothing much can be seen through the mist, there is somehow the blissful feeling that one is looking in the right direction.

[Anonymous No.10619005]

>>10615740
edgyteenpopmusic/10

[Anonymous No.10619026]

>>10615761
You did a good job describing how the painting makes you feel, and you noticed very small details in it (such as the stoking stick). Good job anon. I don't think you captured the mans feeling enough, though.

[Anonymous No.10619118]

Love is when
any thing
coheres.

Never to slide,
on a raft of false
thorough-ways,
down the desolate
muddy mountainside.

The gentle wind,
the eyes and ears,
the light reflecting
on the river-side.

Love is when
anything
coheres.

[Anonymous No.10619448]

>>10619118
I like it

[Anonymous No.10619542]

>>10615717
I liked this a lot.

[Anonymous No.10619903]

The light refracted through the water as if with every sound the brook babbled, light appeared like iridescent, bright, flashes of bright, healthy teeth, but gold instead of white, falling in and out of sight as if the small waves were lips, lips that hid and revealed the glory of a smile to tease and dazzle, the flow of the water like the rhythm of a poem told slowly by someone with a tranquil need to entertain for their own amusement.

Her hand penetrated the water carefully, acquiescing to the cold, reaching for something that would make the acquiescence evolve into something new, something that would transform the regret that spawned from the idea of disturbing the speech of the water, into joy,or at least something that would resemble it.

But what she wanted wasn’t there, then and now with no promise of later. She withdrew her hand slowly and held it outstretched over her reflection, diaphanous drops of water with the potential to intimate to her choosing not to, escaping her grasp or falling from the great height as if to be away from their mother was to not exist as they were meant to.

As the sons of the brook ran to to their mother, her reflection changed with the arrival of every escapee, every runaway, every transparent leap off her hand causing it to shake, shimmer and shatter. She wondered if every new reflection that appeared anew as the water consumed itselff was the reflection of another part of her, one that looked the same but celestial, or cosmic, occult or fictional. A liquid eye seeing all realities at once, blinking as it consumes, each blink shifting it’s vision to another perspective, each perspective more bizarre than the other. She wondered if one reflection would be a of the sky showing her body under the lake, devoid of life and consumed by the water as the drops were.

“Macabre”


Wrote this out of boredom, tell me how shit it is

[Anonymous No.10619927]

Clark Lane Fields, aged 40, leaving his office in the gorgeous part of an ugly town. He has been adult for quite some time, but the glow of youthful exuberance still follows his every move. He checks his watch, and seeing he is an hour late, he speeds to his quick car with a certain haste. An hour late for business concerns, would cost him more than some may ever make. The glows of envy follow him, for he has the connections, and the money.

He is the portrait of power,
The master of puppets
From which the world revolves

The portrait of power is not all-mighty, however.
Clark returns to his multi million dollar house in the gorgeous part of an ugly town. He goes home to kiss a trophy wife who doesn’t love him and who he doesn’t love right back. He sees a deadbeat son with no ambition. He looks into the glowing bright eyes of a happy young boy unaware he is going to inherit his father’s monumental debt.

For the portrait of power is running on fumes
He lives on borrowed funds
And borrowed time.

Clark Fields goes home feeling empty and alone in the gorgeous part of an ugly town. He enjoys all the pleasures of the world’s food, girls, and entertainment. There is something off, however, for the portrait of power feels disgusted and weak. He goes to sleep in his bed large enough for 4, and dreams mundane dreams of grey. His wife sleeps on the other side, and though she may imagine them as entirely different people, she dreams the same repetitive dream. The portrait of power sleeps empty and alone, and he will work tomorrow, hard enough to find something else to fill the gaping void

And the portrait of power that has everything
Though he feels that he is really at home
There is something far different
For the Portrait of Power is really
Alone.

[Anonymous No.10619972]

>>10619927
I feel like the whole 'rich people are secretly miserable and hate themselves and im totally not a poor person writing about how much rich people hate themselves' thing is kinda overdone but I like the way you did it. There's some good imagery here and I like the repetition and the mix of sentence length.

[Anonymous No.10619982]

Thank you, and I'll take that in to account

[Anonymous No.10619998]

It wasn't really about being rich though, it was more choosing hedonism instead of love

[Anonymous No.10620200]

>>10615751
>Did what I could.
I appreciate it. Sometime in the near future I'll read your edits alongside my original. Some of them I like but others I don't agree with, the first sentence in particular. it's worded that way in reference to Aqua Teen Hunger Force. There's a character in the show who tells long-winded and outrageous stories in about two or three episodes. They always start with "Thousands of years ago" (except for the Thanksgiving special in season two, I think, where he was a robot turkey claiming to be from the year 9595 because of some Terminator shit.) I wanted the story to feel like it was being told to you by an insane robot that just broken into your house.

>Consider re-writing this into some sort of parody.
I think I wrote this about 2 years ago so I've long since moved on from it. Only enough one of the two books I'm writing right now is a collection of short stories revolving around cats and it may include two parodies. one of them maybe a spoof of Beren and luthien where mortal cat tries to impress a goddess of merchandising. He dies halfway through his heroic quest and the goddess of merchandising immortalizes him with a cascade of plastic crap. The other would be a spoof of The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath where a cat goes on fabulous adventures in his sleep looking for the town of Ulthar.

In the future, I could attempt to build on top of this silly fruit and vegetable story into a larger epic of edible slaughter but I have several other book ideas lined up.

[Anonymous No.10620281]

A girl’s virginity is so precious, because it represents all her hope.
No woman in her childhood dreamt of being used and trashed.
No, she dreamt of being loved, of being loved and held forever.
She dreamt of a man that would hold her and love her forever.
If only women knew how much men adored their bodies;
If only they knew what they were giving away with their bodies.
Only a man can understand the preciousness of a woman’s virginity.
Only a beast could take a woman’s virginity without regard.
I am a man, I understand how easy it is to play the part of a beast.
I only wish men, when they are beasts, would stop pretending to be men.
I only wish whores would stop pretending their virginity meant nothing.
But if I had only one wish: every woman would be a virgin on her wedding day;
That way, every woman could have her childhood hope fulfilled:
That after she’s given herself, she may be held and cherished by her husband.
I wish I could weep for all the world’s wasted virginities.
O you women, if you wasted your virginity, at least purify yourselves with tears:
Stop pretending that your virginity meant nothing: that lie is an even greater sin.
I love the Virgin Mary, but sometimes I feel I could love Mary Magdalene even more.

[Anonymous No.10620284]

>>10620281
>A girl’s virginity is so precious, because it represents all her hope.
why read it if you gave it away in the first sentence?

[Anonymous No.10620291]

>>10620284
Don't understand. Shakespeare begins Romeo & Juliet by giving away the theme and the ending. The first line sets the theme, the rest expands.

[Anonymous No.10620329]

>>10620281
>Only men know the childhood hopes of women, which is to be with men
into the trash it goes

>>10620284
The tone of "A girl’s virginity is so precious" would have been open to a lot of misinterpretation if he hadn't immediately explained why, but at the same time I probably should be putting the word "misinterpretation" in quotation marks.

[Anonymous No.10620359]

>>10620291
but u r not shakespeare. Idk, perhaps you can pretty it up, it doesn't feel creative

[Anonymous No.10620366]

>>10620329
>Only men know the childhood hopes of women, which is to be with men

Woman has neither the selfishly developed conception of the self nor the intellectuality of man, for all that she is his superior in tenderness and fineness of feeling. On the other hand, woman's nature is devotion (Hengivenhed), submission (Hengivelse), and it is unwomanly if it is not so. Strangely enough, no one can be so pert (a word which language has expressly coined for woman), so almost cruelly particular as a woman -- and yet her nature is devotion, and yet (here is the marvel) all this is really the expression for the fact that her nature is devotion. For just because in her nature she carries the whole womanly devotion, nature has lovingly equipped her with an instinct, in comparison with which in point of delicacy the most eminently developed male reflection is as nothing.

This devotion of woman, this (to speak as a Greek) divine dowry and riches, is too great a good to be thrown away blindly; and yet no clear-sighted manly reflection is capable of seeing sharply enough to be able to dispose of it rightly. Hence nature has taken care of her: instinctively she sees blindly with greater clarity than the most sharp-sighted reflection, instinctively she sees where it is she is to admire, what it is she ought to devote herself to. Devotion is the only thing woman has, therefore nature undertook to be her guardian.

Hence it is too that womanliness first comes into existence through a metamorphosis; it comes into existence when the infinite pertness is transfigured in womanly devotion. But the fact that devotion is woman’s nature comes again to evidence in despair. By devotion [the word literally means giving away] she has lost herself, and only thus is she happy, only thus is she herself; a woman who is happy without devotion, that is, without giving herself away (to whatever it may be she gives herself) is unwomanly. A man also devotes himself (gives himself away), and it is a poor sort of a man who does not do it; but his self is not devotion (this is the expression for womanly substantial devotion), nor does he acquire himself by devotion, as in another sense a woman does, he has himself; he gives himself away, but his self still remains behind as a sober consciousness of devotion, whereas woman, with genuine womanliness, plunges her self into that to which she devotes herself .

[Anonymous No.10620376]

>>10620359
I'm writing another poem of a similar theme but with more poetic execution. I just wanted that one to be as direct and confrontational as possible.

[Anonymous No.10620386]

>>10620376
Well, I must say you have captured the confrontation

[Anonymous No.10620402]

>>10620366
Was "leap of faith" the original phrase for "hot take"?

[Anonymous No.10620421]

>>10620402
I hope you aren't trying to be clever and implying that somehow Kierkegaard didn't accurately describe a woman's nature in that passage.

[Anonymous No.10620423]

>>10613174
>TL;DR they're fap material

[Anonymous No.10620428]

>>10620281
I kinda liked it, tho I don't know what is speaking louder: the genuine liking of the poem, or my fetishism.
I think both.

[Anonymous No.10620430]

>>10620421
No I'm saying it pretty directly actually.

[Anonymous No.10620441]

>>10620430
But, mi'lady, you are only proving his point with your feminine pertness.

[Anonymous No.10620452]

>>10620441
At least I'm not a thumb sucking """vo"""cel who assumes his conclusion in the proof whenever the world makes him feel desperate.

[Anonymous No.10620459]

>>10620452
I don't mean this to be condescending, but if you are a woman you are cute and I wish I could give you a hug.

[Anonymous No.10620462]

>>10620459
I'm a man but you can hug me anyways.

[Anonymous No.10620463]

https://pastebin.com/sWMM3ZWW

[Anonymous No.10620486]

>>10620463
I guess I should add this is chapter one of a novel I'm working on, I forgot to write a comment.

[Anonymous No.10620506]

>>10620463
Give some background and more description of where they are, who they are, or even what's going on. I felt lost. Also the first sentence say what the guard passed.
It's got some good bits, I liked the sentence about the fingernails digging into his palm.

[Anonymous No.10620511]

>>10619927
>There's something off
try some other description, anything other than "off"
>dreams mundane dreams of grey
what?
>to fill the gaping void (physically repulsed by this line)
do something else with these lines
Other than that, neat story

[Anonymous No.10620535]

>>10620506
I was kinda leaving it a little mysterious because its the first chapter (forgot to add that in the post) and its kind of meant to set up questions that will be answered in the next couple of chapters. I'm not sure if that changes your suggestion or if I should still add more about where they are?

And thank you. I appreciate it.

[Anonymous No.10620568]

The villagers were worried. Kichijuro assured them that there wouldn’t be a raid for at least several days, and there was still ample time to prepare the men. But nonetheless, he said, it’s best to be vigilant, and keep a watchful eye on the outer boundaries of the village. That afternoon he went around visiting the peasant families, telling tales of his journeys, the trials of his youth, lovers lost in faraway lands, making them laugh, making them cry, and comforting them.

In the evening he went out into the field and begin surveying the horizon, making his last rounds before nightfall. He squatted down in the grass and stared off into the distance. He looked past the village, past the green rice fields, towards the peaks and valleys of mountains many miles away where the sky had turned a pale grey, and a dark blue mist colored the clouds. Lost in thought, his mind continued to wander off even further, away from the clouds and past the mountains, to just over the horizon and into a sea of memories.

That night Kichijuro dreamed of his mother, a mother that he had no memory of, but only of descriptions told by his father. He slept deeply, with both hands wrapped around his sword, which was tucked close to his chest as if it were a pillow--his face was peaceful, expressionless.

[Anonymous No.10620576]

Marble columns, eroded by Time's wind,
outlived successor states, obscured by brush,
reminds us of the burden of our sin,
remnants of once what was divine, august.


First part of a sonnet, first real attempt at writing a poem.

[Anonymous No.10620600]

>>10620576
>remnants of once what was divine, august.
Should be
>remnants of what was once divine, august.

But the main problem is that the 3rd line should be last, because it has the most dramatic weight, and your 4th line actually flows logically from your 2nd, so:

Marble columns, eroded by Time's wind,
outlived successor states, obscured by brush,
remnants of what was once divine, august
— reminds us of the burden of our sin.

[Anonymous No.10620609]

>>10620600
I know it is rough, thank you. Poetry is more difficult than it appears. Do you have any recommendations on improving? Writing more? Reading more poetry? Reading secondary texts on how to write poetry?

[Anonymous No.10620668]

His eyes betrayed him of course, a child cannot help himself from gazing into the sun, and likewise The Man’s curiosity demanded satisfaction, the possible destruction of his mind was no deterrent. He turned his head to the brick wall adjacent to him, and where he expected to find lost animal posters and classifieds, a monster with the complexion of slate and the countenance of iron greeted him. Crimson patches of scales covered the monster’s chest and thighs. They weren’t the of the beautiful and metallic nature that fiction had conditioned The Man to, instead resembling the skin of an alligator. The reptilian flesh on the creature’s chest was split apart by a protruding iron shaft, covered in designs unfamiliar to The Man and pinning the Monster to the wall.

An Anon yesterday criticized the prose of a couple of my paragraphs in comparison to the rest, so I rewrote the passage describing the creature. I'm >>10615807


>>10620568
This is tight work, solidly written throughout which is rare here. Unfortunately that also means that nothing in about it is particularly impressive. That may be due to the fact that I've been dropped in a story that I have no context for and in a situation of dubious import and introduced to a character that I'm probably supposed to care for, but have no reason to.

I realize now that this sounds like I think it's bad, I dont, the prose is pretty without being overly ornate and despite knowing nothing about the character, I understand and emphasize with his actions in the last paragraph.

[Anonymous No.10620677]

>>10620609
First, just read a lot more poetry. You have to get a feel for it. Especially when you're attempting a formal style like a sonnet. The problem is that you are trying to squeeze your thoughts into the constraints of the form and coming up with sloppy inaccurate words as a result, i.e. focusing so much on getting the 10 syllables and the rhyme that you lose the sense of the poem. But even then, in attempting sonnets for the first time you should be sticking to basic iambic metre, which you haven't - look up "metre". With something like a sonnet you have to have the "beat", just like in music.

[Anonymous No.10620717]

>>10620535
I understand, but I still think you should add a minimum amount of detail, without spoiling whatever will be revealed, just to keep the reader interested.

[Anonymous No.10620733]

>>10613155
OH NO NO NO
*breathes in*
AHAHAHAHAHA
>>>/r9k/42887337

[Anonymous No.10620734]

Could I have some critique on this please?

https://pastebin.com/9Cju3Nab

[Anonymous No.10621000]

>>10620576
This reads like a high school literature class assignment based on Ozymandias

[Anonymous No.10621127]

ORANGE CRUSH

There was a yellow drink in my hand, called a “screwdriver.” It smelled like blood in my nose, and iron shavings. I was in an arcade-bar, or a “bar-cade” as whoever’d invited me called it. They hadn’t really invited me so much as just announced that they were going to be there from 8 to 10 though, like they were signing books or something. There was pizza there, under a hot lamp, with peppers and onions on top. I stared at it, then took a sip of my drink, bumping shards of ice against my lips. An hour after ordering it I learned the place had served beer all along.
“I don’t like beer,” somebody told me. “I drink to get drunk; beer just makes me pee a lot.”
His girlfriend was the one who’d invited me, a friend from high school. I wondered for a moment if she appreciated his quick wit. After some racing games I tried to play pool with him, but before we could start I fucked up the table by feeding it quarters instead of tokens. After that I went home, then flopped on my bed. I slowly drifted off into a deep sleep.
“So they drink a lot of Fanta in Germany?”
It was a bright classroom; I was pretty sure I’d just told someone that I’d been to Germany before, which I had.
“No, they drink beer.”
“Oh,” said the professor. He went on and said, “Well, Fanta was invented by the Nazis—” or something like that. Actually he’d just said it was invented “because” of them, not “by” specifically, but all I remembered was that the Nazis were to blame.
A week later I was on the opposite side of the room, just in time for a lecture on tardiness. I sat down with some half-eaten breakfast near a girl I’d never spoken to before. She blurted out that I’d forgotten to pick up my usual bottle of Fanta today.
“No, I drink coke.”
She ignored that and kept talking about Fanta somehow while the professor threw us in groups. He called on a student and they told us story about how their friend went to jail for breaking a glass bottle on someone’s back, but with too many details scattered around.
“You have to give someone the axe,” our professor said to them. “Ask yourself: how many of these characters are necessary?”
I went bought a plastic bottle of Fanta from a convenience store. There was the image of a plastic Barbie in my mind. I chewed on its hollow head like a chocolate egg then washed it down with orange Fanta. By then, my next class had ended. I came across a black alley with a red sky, and a homeless man. I looked at him for a moment, still holding the toy, then he asked me something:
“Do you ever feel like the time is just slipping away from you?”
“What?”
“Think about it,” he said. “What if you killed someone?”
“Was that just rhetorical?”
“No, what if you killed someone—what if went right through their body, every last piece—in fine detail?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Would you ever die?”

about half done with this draft

[Anonymous No.10621328]

“One robin does not make a spring.”

Snow-jay, snow-jay,
Why did you lie?
Now I lay me down to die.
And will not be rescued by a heap of hours.
And will not be rescued by a heap of empty days—
turning and turning
Never to find the beginning again.

[Anonymous No.10621345]

>>10620366
>instinctively she sees blindly with greater clarity than the most sharp-sighted reflection, instinctively she sees where it is she is to admire, what it is she ought to devote herself to.

this is crushing me

[Anonymous No.10621358]

>>10613155
I don’t have time to read all these. Did the guy doing the long poem about Appalachian hill people or the guy writing the abstract impressionist war story (I think it was about WW1) post in here? Their stuff was good and I want to read more if you see this guys.

[Anonymous No.10621422]

>>10621127
could not be any worse
it's like the worst mumblecore movie fused with what I bet becomes a murder mystery or some gay existentialist shit

[Anonymous No.10621517]

>>10621422
no the last half is just me having a conversation while peeing into a urinal

[Anonymous No.10621706]

https://pastebin.com/vHPQ25FB

This is a prologue for a novel I want to write about the main character traveling and pondering upon the implications of modern society versus the values of a simple life.

I already know that I want the first actual chapter to be him dying from not having prepared enough. He'll be rescued by a God of Travelers who happen to stumble upon him, and the god brings him to a different world than the one he was in before, one that's slightly more tailored for travelers and where every town is different with its own culture and such. The question is whether it should be overt, as in the god explaining who he is, and that there's spirits and magic and such present, or if it should be up to the reader to figure out by reading between the lines.

[Anonymous No.10621991]

>>10621345
Don't be disheartened. It's true that because of this feminine instinct women can be most cruel to men when they fail to act as men; however, this instinct is geared towards women finding what is noble and attractive in men, and just as they are more sharp-sighted in seeing your flaws, they are also more sharp-sighted in seeing your good qualities, and you will be surprised what a woman can find in you that you yourself had no idea of.

[Anonymous No.10622231]

>>10621127
Your post got compared to a movie because you have good image and sensory detail. Anon's reply to you is on par with calling Mersault autistic.

It gets worse after the bar, and you won't maintain pace tweaking this word by word. Rewrite it over and over instead of changing what you have. The axe sticks out too much and you reuse too many words near the barbie. The homeless man scene is also too on the nose, but the rhetorical question line and the glass bottle with scattered details is good.

[Anonymous No.10622753]

Two young lovers were sat among friends. The man spoke up, and declared:

“Love, grow your hair long — when we are married I am going to cut off a strand of your hair and keep it.”

“O, and what are you going to give me?” she asked.

“It is a surprise: you will find out when the time comes.”

. . .

Sure enough, after long ceremonies and public vows, they sat together, husband and wife, on the end of the marriage bed. The man brushed his hand down his wife’s hair, from the crown to the end. He drew one strand between his fingers, and cut it off with scissors. Then he took out a ribbon from his pocket, and said:

“You have given me the hairs of your youth: I give you this ribbon, which represents my memory. I tie it around your hair in a bow; for grow old as you may, I will always remember the beauty of your youth.”

[Anonymous No.10622768]

>>10613174
this is bull shit, no nigger would ever say neotenous.

[Anonymous No.10622791]

>>10615439

[Anonymous No.10622800]

fuck me up fampai

[Anonymous No.10622823]

>>10613450
It's not bad but I can't help but think the level of description is maybe too high for the tone you're shooting for. For example, the way you describe the character is unnecessarily drawn out but you don't actually use the extra words to convey any different of a mental image.

[Anonymous No.10622919]

>>10615405

reek is a verb, not a noun. change it to 'stench' and you'll be okay, even if 'stench' is a bit of a cliche.

[Anonymous No.10622925]

>>10615405
The relaxing melody of his voice did nothing to take the reek of blood from the stagnant air.

[Anonymous No.10622946]

>>10622919
Reek, reek, it rhymes with rhetorical technique.

[Anonymous No.10623059]

>>10622919
Reek is fine.

[Anonymous No.10623198]

Slowly, the rain bore down on the tired village. There was patter against tin roofs. Teapots swayed and hissed parallel to the unrelenting wind. Those in the town center wearily looked on as the mud in the streets began to surmount their hopes of getting home.
Vincent was one of such people. He sat at the corner table of the bar. He looked at his watch and remembered something. He remembered why, in the dead of night, he had decided to buy a train ticket and come all this way. Was it to suffer in the corner of some dreary bar, on some morose day, in a town of inconceivable boredom and nothingness? It came to him like a stream, how ridiculous this whole plan was, it revealed itself to him in all its disgusting banality, came rushing in like a torrent of incredulous stupidity and short sightedness, all for what? All for money, he thought, came strolling into town with hardly two dimes to his name, no plans for lodging, no idea of an exit ticket, not a single critical thought had entered into this process, although hardly anything in his life could have hardly been a “process,” more so an endless river of impulse and desire, a true gushing of gross immaturity, a testament to his lack of character. And yet he sat here, a victim of fidelity to the holy edict of “I want it and I want it now.”

[Anonymous No.10623250]

I'd like to start sharing my medieval, male power fantasy, Gary Stu, self-insert story. I'm sorry to say, but this is a work in progress, with still a decent chunk written out.

Any feedback would be nice, but if you're a fan of gorging yourself in ye ole mind-numbing reading, then please enjoy.

https://ataleofconquest.wordpress.com/

[Anonymous No.10623262]

>>10623198
>It came to him like a stream, how ridiculous this whole plan was, it revealed itself to him in all its disgusting banality, came rushing in like a torrent of incredulous stupidity and short sightedness, all for what?
This is great

[Anonymous No.10623268]

>>10615405
Blood just makes me see a splatter of blood on the ground, leaving the reek and the tainted behind.

[Anonymous No.10623648]

Hello nice to meet you hey I like the way you smell
I hear voices in my head and they tell me to kill myself
I hear I act unusual, I hear I overshare
I need some friends, I need my pills, I need some air, ¡I need some air!

[Anonymous No.10623652]

I'm shit at writing and would like to know where to start:

That was my most daring operation yet. Had four cans of the good stuff last night (Carling Special Brew, of course), that stirred up my digestive system good and proper, but there was no time to release my bowels prior to work. I then made the fatal mistake of opting for for the £2.00 latte and scone deal at the cafe at work at around 11am. I realised around an hour later the gravity of the situation, spending the remainder of the day viciously fighting to not shit myself, and to hold back the BRAPs. To contain the gas, I was forced to wriggle around and tactically re-positioning myself on my seat every few minutes to make a perfect air-seal on my butthole. I was subtle in my movements and my co-workers suspected nothing. They had no idea of the internal struggle I was going through, they had no idea that at every moment I was battling a torrent of excrement angrily pushing against my anal walls. Instead, they simply saw someone going about their working day, evicting poor people from their homes and doing so with efficiency.

(cont)

[Anonymous No.10623655]

>>10623648
Could work as lyrics

[Anonymous No.10623661]

>>10623652

5PM called and my working day concluded. As I started to walk the five minute walk to the bus stop, I had a critical moment and thought the entire operation had been compromised. I thought I'd shit myself, but it was just a small escape of fart gas. The ball was still very much in my court, and if anything this small mishap only strengthened my resolve and made my charge for victory that edge more passionate. I couldn't turn back now, I couldn't simply return to work to take a shit. I'd fought off the degrading allure of using a public toilet for the past five hours, I took a moment to remember everyone who was behind me, cheering me on, pushing me towards my goal.

As I boarded the bus and showed the driver my day pass, he took an extra few moments to check the date on my ticket. Normally this would not bother me, but as my internal struggle continued to bubble over I could not help but become restless at his unnecessary checks. My time on the bus was uneventful to the outside observer. I simply sank deeply into the fabric of my seat, closed my eyes and focused my every effort on containing the torrent that raged below. I continued to feel multiple BRAPs build themselves up, then be contained and burst inside of me. As I cautiously made my way down the isle (my stop was rapidly approaching), the driver noticed my expression and must have discerned the quest I was on. As the bus came to a stop and the bus doors swung open, the driver uttered softly "good luck". I looked over my shoulder and simply responded "I don't need luck, I've got bravery", and without a moment's further hesitation I bolted off the bus and charged into the darkness. The conclusion of my journey was so close now, failure felt impossible. As I ran through the night I gave no mind to the hurricane of feces I'd been battling all day, my only task now was making it the final 100 yards to the toilet.

I forced myself through the door, unbuckled my belt as I walked triumphantly up the stairs, removed my pants, caught a glimpse of my proud smile in the mirror as I entered the bathroom, then placed myself upon the throne. As I released 20 seconds of fart gas and covered the toilet in slurry, everyone started clapping and cheering. They were shouting "good job!", "I'm proud of you!" and "I knew you could do it!". The applause of the crowd transformed into a manic roar of joy-filled crying as I stood up to wipe my bottom, and approached to shake their hands and sign autographs.

[Anonymous No.10624107]

Out of generic hot pockets head to HEB
Running through the 10 items or less line with 15
I barely talked to other people, to make up for it I'd read
And I'd listen to podcasts at two-times speed
Didn't leave my home, I'd spend the weekends alone
Never opened my mouth so I just breathed through my nose
Stayed in the closet studio, the home inside of my home
The closet studio: the home inside of my home
Pissed in water bottles to avoid my roommates
Fuck toothpaste, brush was too electric I avoided the noise
Pizza boxes stacked where dirty dishes hide
Roaches everywhere and I ain't talking bout the swisher kind
Living out in Riverside, this was just a different mind
Lying on the ground made the ceilings feel high
Agoraphobes don't have time for summer skies
If you ain't getting busy then you're getting high

Cause all illness is physical
And all weed is medicinal
The mind is the brain
I don't fuck with the spiritual
Everything is material
Everything is material

Brown recluse: feeling like Spider-Man
Found refuge, needed healing from a higher plan
I was dying, man; living had me tired
Busy brooding, seeking quarter-life retirement
Needed God or Buddha (mom or father)
Saw neither when I closed my eyes so fuck it, never bothered
Turned a desk into a cesspit, never ate guess that's a diet
I was desperate, reeling, hearing voices, in a spiral
Thinking if my songs are fire I can make a vine and go viral
And if not I can end it all the week before finals
No bible, growing up I was my own idol
Mood cycles gave me ideations (not quite suicidal)
Eyes vacant on vacation, Melodrama had me crying
My mind a Liability, chemical instability robbed me of all my memories
Cliched and clunky, because cleverness comes from hope
Mania makes you crazy but depression ain't no joke

All illness is physical
And all weed is medicinal
The mind is the brain
I don't fuck with the spiritual
Everything is material
Everything is material

Is my sobriety depriving me of cure for my anxiety?
Caught between filial piety and vital need for privacy
No religion but aimlessness carries piety
The type of kids who quietly wallow in dirty irony
Carpal tunnel from strumming guitar and jacking off
Happy when I'm slacking off, at least in some ways
Skipped all my classes turned hump day into Sunday
Visions of closed garage and running my mother's Hyundai
Too weary to rhyme, but too obsessive for free verse
Haven't changed for a minute but too dirty for clean shirts
Maintenance guy wondering how I live like this
Well, under my bed is kief crumbs and pills: my fix
Tripping off of poorly settled serotonin levels
Grandmamas call it devil, and dualists call it a vessel
Body be a temple for the soul is substance mental
Nah, the mind is just the body cause the brain ain't special

All illness is physical
And all weed is medicinal
The mind is the brain
I don't fuck with the spiritual
Everything is material
Everything is material

[Anonymous No.10624561]

The fresh sound of water pouring down a wheel moves over stone. There’s a stone house with a side painted white, and black dirt with moss, and a wheel on the stone side, cutting through the terrain. Painted bits of ruin are consumed by the grass and foliage but the big rusting wheel turns on, never seeming to come full circle but always almost there. It makes me think of that Douglass Adams quote, "fall towards the earth then miss," the Jackson lean, and edging.

I was told to describe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIr2JzXarzs for practice, without narrative. The last line is tacky but I left it there because I'd rather go too far and cut away than the reverse. I think the decline in scale from item to item feels good, but I hate namedropping fucking Douglass Adams of all people here. I'm not even quoting him right; I threw "earth" in there to keep it in line with the rest of the passage. The Jackson lean sounds safe. Edging is a little too explicit.

[Anonymous No.10624583]

>>10624561
Alternatively

The fresh sound of water pouring down a water wheel moves over stone. There’s a stone house with a side painted white, and black dirt with moss, and a wheel on the stone side, cutting through the terrain. Painted bits of ruin are consumed by the grass and foliage, but the big rusting wheel turns on, never seeming to come full circle but always almost there.

Almost there sounds final enough. I'm starting to hate the word "rusting," a sonic adjective might sound better.

[Anonymous No.10624613]

>>10624561
>>10624583
>The fresh sound of water pouring down a water wheel moves over stone.
What did he mean by this?

[Anonymous No.10624621]

>>10624613
Sound moves, and it makes me see wet rocks. I didn't want to just cut the "moves over stone" and leave it as fragment.

[Anonymous No.10624639]

>>10624621
i must be retarded

[Anonymous No.10624649]

>>10624639
I guess sound doesn't move now that I think about it, sound is supposed to specifically be the sensation and not the sound-waves or whatever. I'll try thinking of a way to make it more automatic, I put the description before the link rather than after for a reason.

[Anonymous No.10625139]

I haven't used pastebin before, so hopefully this works. I just started writing a short story about a "love affair" with a co-worker today. It's sort of a true story. Can anyone who's bored enough let me know how it reads so far?

https://pastebin.com/GZUqKN0s

[Anonymous No.10625226]

Below is an extremely short kind of teaser for an idea I had. I've not written extensively, but I love to create stories in my mind and think of different ways of word play and story-telling, it's a shame my writing probably sucks.

The idea in mind was of a schizophrenic main character in a high-school setting, wherein the reader cannot fully distinguish whether or not he is truly insane, or if he is telling the world as it is. Further along, it will become his major character flaw in a man vs. himself event.

https://pastebin.com/vVQR2QJ4

[Anonymous No.10625239]

>>10624107
was listening to this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNo7X1hSBc4
when I came across your post.

It sort of matched the beat but not really. The lyrics you have require something still laidback, but more chill and ephemeral. I really like and relate to what you wrote anon. Hope you can get it on a beat

[Anonymous No.10625240]

>>10625139
Seems kind of retarded, anon. The first sentence, where "too curvy yet never abrupt in change of tangents, is too ideal to not lose my train of thought when I see it", is extremely hard to follow.

I believe mixing in the real-life descriptions with better imagery and the narrator's thoughts together would help widen your audience to people who find it gay to imagine what it's like to be a woman and dominate men, because I stopped reading there.

[Anonymous No.10625255]

>>10623198
It's definitely given the reader a good amount of exposition in a short paragraph. Good job.

[Anonymous No.10625262]

>>10625240
hmmm definitely agree with yah on the weirdness of the train of thought, though I guess that's what I'm eventually going for (I'm gay and confused as fuck). Thanks for the feedback on the writing and ideas anon.

[Anonymous No.10625314]

>>10625262
Not that it's bad or anything, it's just not really my cup of tea. Here's an exercise to try, if you feel obliged: Re-write it and try to use words and curt descriptions of the woman in detail, words that exemplify the woman, make the reader understand what's so savory about her, why the narrator is so enamored, but the descriptions themselves flow and feel like the woman's own beauty. The inner thoughts are important, truly, but I feel like most of them are kind of incel and most readers won't relate. Also, after having read it about two minutes ago, the only description of the woman I can recall is the tights and curvyness. See how that's a problem?

Idk though man I'm just ramblin'.

[Anonymous No.10625348]

Really eager to do a /crit/ for /crit/ as I'm probably going to submit this to my school's lit journal as they are taking submissions on short notice this weekend

[Anonymous No.10625364]

>>10625314
Nah I get you. Thanks for the advice. I haven't taken many writing classes, so I appreciate the tip on working on descriptions. I don't think I'll be sticking with this general idea, but matching the flow of descriptions to the scenery and objects being described is good practice for the future.

[Anonymous No.10625373]

PLEASE CRIT MY V-DAY POEM

>>10615740
these are bad song lyrics, blink 182/10

>>10615717
the last two lines and the entire first stanza are pretty good, the rest kind of show your hand as being somewhat juvenile. Yours resembles mine in high school. Keep at your craft, but I suggest focusing less on rhyme and more so on your observational powers and executing enjambment properly

>>10615807
Not too bad, but overwritten. You need to go back to this and make many excisions. Maybe in your genre this is how things are typically written but to me this feels terribly out of style and dated

[Anonymous No.10625378]

SENTANCES LIKE
ANAGRAMS
READ BACK LIKE WHITE
CADILLAC ON AN
OVERPASS BLACK
QUARTERBACK
BATTLERAM WITH AN
ENGINE BLAST LIKE
ANAGRAMS NOT
really

[Anonymous No.10625382]

>>10625348
I didn't like this starting off, but I got into it at the end. It's very comfy and makes me sad I lived a shit childhood. I'm not entirely sure why you didn't use quotations unless this is just a draft or that's the style you wanted but it kind of tripped me up a little bit. Other than that, the descriptions are slightly lacking, but some of them are pretty nice and work well with the atmosphere. Good job.

>>10625226

[Anonymous No.10625501]

>>10625226

>>10625382
thanks for the crit, dude.

> Without a breath of life I watched in solemn silence, those blades whirr, repeat, and spin.

There is a tense issue here. Watched is past while whirr and repeat are present

ultimately pointless, is the comma in that sentence...

All in all, this is overwritten and suffering from unnecessary adverbs. You did well enough to get across the idea of a disassociated man watching/listening to his washing machine, though

[Anonymous No.10625536]

>>10625501
Haha, my idea was actually a ceiling fan, I love hearing different peoples ideas on what they thought it was/where he was. It's fun, although destructive when I want there to be an established setting. In my head I read it with a pause so I place a comma without remembering if it's grammatically correct or not. I'll have to look back at the text again to fix all the tense issues. I haven't proof-read it or anything so thanks for pointing that out.

[Anonymous No.10625569]

This is about five and a half thousand words meant to be a short story. Read it if you have the time.
https://pastebin.com/j3e4MBNm

[Anonymous No.10625613]

>>10625378
Ride would have spelled sentences right but I heard it

[Anonymous No.10625649]

>>10625536
Ah, i think it was "the spinning cycle" in the opening line. Unless your trying to throw your reader off a bit, which is fine if you are, I would suggest tweaking this a bit otherwise it will seem very deliberate that you're referencing a washer's spin cycle

[Anonymous No.10625659]

>>10625649

>your
YOU'RE. Wow I'm retarded

[Anonymous No.10625674]

>>10625649
Hmm. I can get that. I tried to tie in the narrator's personal belief that his life is "a spinning cycle", and compare it metaphorically through the spinning cycle of a fan. I figured the "whir" noise and the description of blades would give it away, plus near the end where he talks about how it is above him, and turns off with a click. However I do like throwing people off and making it not entirely explicit what the narrator meant. Cause y'know.. he's supposed to be slightly crazy.

[Anonymous No.10625759]

>>10625314
>[make the] the descriptions themselves flow and feel like the woman's own beauty.
This. Just make your sentences sound like themselves. "too curvy yet never abrupt in change of tangents, is too ideal to not lose my train of thought when I see it" sounds like a bunch of straight lines, even if you kill the retard shit and end on "tangents."

[Anonymous No.10626174]

I open the truck’s door, step onto the brick side street. I look at Company Hill again, all sort of worn down and round. A long time ago it was real craggy, and stood like an island in the Teays River. It took over a million years to make that smooth little hill, and I’ve looked all over it for trilobites. I think how it has always been there and always will be, least for as long as it matters. The air is smoky with summertime. A bunch of starlings swim over me. I was born in this country and I have never very much wanted to leave. I remember Pop’s dead eyes looking at me. They were real dry, and that took something out of me. I shut the door, head for the café.
I see a concrete patch in the street. It’s shaped like Florida, and I recollect what I wrote in Ginny’s yearbook: “We will live on mangoes and love.” And she up and left without me—two years she’s been down there without me. She sends me postcards with alligator wrestlers and flamingos on the front. She never asks me any questions. I feel like a real fool for what I wrote, and go into the café.
The place is empty, and I rest in the cooled air. Tinker Reilly’s little sister pours my coffee. She has good hips. They are kind of like Ginny’s and they slope nice curves to her legs. Hips and legs like that climb steps into airplanes. She goes to the counter end and scoffs down the rest of her sundae. I smile at her, but she’s jailbait. Jailbait and black snakes are two things I won’t touch with a window pole. One time I used an old black snake for a bullwhip, snapped the sucker’s head off, and Pop beat hell out of me with it. I think how Pop could make me pretty mad sometimes. I grin.

[Anonymous No.10626271]

>>10626174
> the brick side street
is a side street a type of street?

> I look at Company Hill again, all
the previous sentence sets me up to think you're about to talk about the speaker, like "I look at Company Hill again, all sad about it." I keep stubbing my toes on little things like that.

>Hips and legs like that climb steps into airplanes.
this is good

[Anonymous No.10626364]

>>10626271
>is a side street a type of street?

not him but i've heard it used interchangably with alley

[Anonymous No.10626458]

>>10626271
>>10626364
Not him, but yeah, a side street is basically just an alley, a small street connected to a large one, using running perpendicular to each other.

[Anonymous No.10626547]

>>10626174
It's a bit staccato. It reads more like slam poetry than a novella.

that's my personal opinion and that might just be your style, but I miss a bit musicality in your writing, more flow.

[Anonymous No.10626754]

I suck at poetry but I like to read it. Especially writers like Donne/Shakespeare. The language and style is incredible and I wish I could imitate it. Ill make something up right now.

Lying in my room
Thinking of another day
This bed is a tomb
My freedom only on sunday
I hope tomorrow I can see you
Crazy how lifes can connect two

Time will figure this all out
Whether to stay
Knowing it will hurt but cant pout
Nay nor shy away*
For loving you will be different I see it now
From your small black boots, to your well-kept brow

We arent the same you and I
But I am willing to change
Like Romans at the crucify
Or the kingsmen at the mange
Because your beauty has no bound
We are two lovers lost, and can not be found

*I've used that line before

[Anonymous No.10626775]

>>10613155
note how everyone is writing about drugs and sex and interpersonal shit and pseudoreligious experiences they're too badly read or insecure to fully express. note how soulless all of it is, how performative, synthetic each piece looks. Pathetic, the holy spirit has left us

[Anonymous No.10626780]

>>10626754
>But I am willing to change
>Like the thief who was crucified
>Or Kingsmen at the mange-

to be more correct.

[Anonymous No.10626857]

>>10625378
sentences like
anagrams
run back like white
cadillac on an
overpass black
quarterback
battleram with an
engine blast like
anagrams

[Anonymous No.10626878]

>excerpt from a short story i'm refining

By the second week, most his time was spent passing out handbills informing guests of the week’s programming. He kept a wheeled cart next to his chair for guests to leave their returned books. He would flip through them on the quiet days. And on those very rare days, when guests would trickle in like water from worn taps, he would stray from the page and stare through the sliding entrance doors, looking for the world and wondering what it remembered of him.

On busy days he printed handbills. There were stop-limits on the number of copies that could be made at one time, so supply often ran low. Mary taught him how to create a print order on the library’s copier. He liked the machine. He found computers to defy common sense, but the copier was beige, familiar, and bowed to his touch.

By his tenth day of work, the small talk about weather and politics had begun to wane and Walt, to his surprise, took this harshly.

That day, the tweed coat man walked through the entrance doors. Walt unclenched his shoulders and extended a handbill to the man. He composed his opening line of conversation.

‘Some weather.’

The man gave a nod and a quick exhalation that stood in, Walt supposed, for laughter.

The man pulled a small paperback from his coat pocket and placed it on the wheeled cart beside Walt’s chair. The man refused the handbill and continued on his way while Walt, with every further step, felt of no particular use to anyone.

[Anonymous No.10626891]

>>10626775
>hey guys guess what
>/lit/ is out of their depth
pretty slow too it seems

[Anonymous No.10626903]

Can I write plays, pray tell?


Gallavar enters the scene, a patrol of wretched lizards and orcs at his back. He looks across the barren wasteland filled with constant dark and storm. There is nothing but ruin and skeleton the eye can see. A world long decayed forged by his doing.

Gallavar expositions to himself.

Gallavar: Man is but a miserable puppet, tied to the strings of fate which moves him. But I wonder, as I move day by day this wretched existence, where does the light at the end of the tunnel lead me? Is the light hope, or simply the horrid reality that I’ll have to concede that there is nothing left for me to conquer, to have passion for? This I ask with regret, though hide it deeply in front of my hardened soldiers, my pets, my wretched forms and racks of flesh: the last thing resembling life in this fettered plain of death incarnate over and over again wherever the poverous eyes dare look and find foolish hope of beauty to find.

A Goblin Commander walks up to him, hunched over on one side, almost strutting as he walks.

Commander Goblin: “The Legions have reached their limit, sire. We have marched a thousand miles and found no slaughter to sate. How much more do you decree?”

Gallavar: “Move it forward prey thee, just a trudge more over the horizon. I nary hope to find blood, but there’s blood left in me to sate this journey.”

Commander Goblin: “As you wish, your Darkness. Your eternal lusts know no bounds.”
He bows.

Gallavar expositions to himself.

Gallavar: What does man hope to find in a plain of existence where purpose is forged by his own hand and yet there is no material for him to craft? Long have I pondered for tomorrow, and when tomorrow came I could not see it, and so the tomorrow thereafter, and all the tomorrows my fettered brain could conjour: an endless stream of nothing but disappointment and regret. What then, pray tell, does the land over the horizon hold for me? Man can only hope. Foolish and stupid hope is all I have left to carry…

[Anonymous No.10627229]

>>10624561
>>10624583 Take 3

The fresh sound of water pouring down a water wheel moves like film over a wet stone. There’s a stone house, with a side painted white beside black dirt and moss, with a wheel on one side cutting through the terrain. Painted bits of ruin are consumed by the grass and foliage, but the big wheel groans on, never seeming to come full circle, but always almost there.

I want to say it feels like a bicycle wheel without pedals, I guess? It's like the wheel's spinning but I can't put my foot down. No deeper meaning, that's just my impression. Maybe I should just say it directly.

[Anonymous No.10627272]

>>10626878
>when guests would trickle in like water from worn taps
pretty sure water can trickle out of any tap, not just a worn one

[Anonymous No.10627298]

>>10627272
He needs it there sonically. When guests/Water from; Would trickle/Worn taps.

[Anonymous No.10627313]

>>10627298
that makes sense
i definitely didn't catch that cause i skimmed so hard. wonder how much other stuff i've missed like this

[Anonymous No.10627326]

can you guys critique the shorts from the microfiction thread? >>>10603620

or do you prefer them to be posted here?

[Anonymous No.10627330]

Consumption
She was obsidian and he a gentle dying ember.
The gleam of her smooth dark surface shone back his dimming light and so in utter blackness she too appeared bright.
A glowing coal, reflected in her surface,
which he mistakenly took to be light.

[Anonymous No.10627346]

Her brain’s consistent persistentence onpondering her existence makes her appear distanced. No matter her resistance the thoughts are a subsistent insistentce.

[Anonymous No.10628212]

I'm sat on a grassy hill writing a poem,
Like one of the old romantics.
I see at an old oak tree, tall with long branches.
I look at it and think about the thoughts its inspiring me with for my poem.
But then I wonder, which is best:
To write this poem, or to look at this oak tree for 15 minutes?
Do I give a poem to the world, or do I give this tree my eyes?
Which is the greater guest: the world or the tree?
Which is the greater gift: my poem or my eyes?
What if poetry is a vision for people without eyes?
I've read that Homer and Milton were blind...

[Anonymous No.10628228]

>>10623198
greatest piece in the whole thread right here

[Anonymous No.10628247]

>>10613155
It was another humdrum day deep in the forest. Elmer Fudd was doing his usual routine of staking out the area for any signs of rabbits. "Be vewy quiet," he absentmidedly said with his rifle out in front of him, "I'm gonna catch that wabbit." Hearing rustling in a particular direction, Fudd hurried as quickly as he can while silent to the destination. He peered beyond some bushes for provided camouflage, and nearly dropped his gun from what he saw. Bugs Bunny, now a morbidly obese creature, was leaning on the folds of his back fat, pleasuring his tight bunny butthole with a long carrot. Sweat practically pooled off him like a waterfall as Bugs heaved with each slow motion, his multiple chins slightly obstructing his ability to breathe properly, not that he cared anyway. Despite his cheeks covering his eyes, Bugs quickly identified Fudd from beyond the foliage and rasped out his dead-beaten quip, "Nyeh, what's up doc?" Fudd, realizing just how incredibly vulnerable the rabbit was at the moment, sprang into action. Cocking his rifle, he brought it up to the bulbous form of Bug's stomach and fired. The bullet cut through the air as it darted to the furry mass, but did not penetrate it. Instead, the projectile ricocheted off Bugs and bounded straight back to Fudd, striking him in the head and killing him. This action made Bugs momentarily stop his frivolous masturbation session, and he rolled like a ball over to the corpse. "Nyeh, you're lookin' pretty dead doc" Bugs commented to the cadaver. He then rolled right over Fudd's body, and in the process sucked it right into his anus with help from his pressurized flabs. The body settled right up against Bug's prostate, delivering a pleasure so indescribable and foreign that he unloaded his entire worth of sperm from his testicles. However, the orgasm proved to be too intense for his extremely out-of-shape body, and Bugs shortly after suffered a fatal hemorrhage in his heart.

He really should've layed off the carrots.

[Anonymous No.10628449]

A second attempt. Reworked it into the first person, although I think I liked in the second. Maybe I'm trying to offer advice to others in what I've found out in my journey. To clarify, this is non fiction.

1/2

I don’t know the truth exactly. I’m not ready to confront my past. But I am ready to find out who I truly am. Whatever my reason for leaving, I know why I stay. The bloodied arms after a long day putting up a fence, torn skin and sunburnt arms, leaves a man exhausted, yes, but with the knowledge that for the next decade that fence will stand for all to see. A monument to my hard work, dedication and skill. The creation of a new reputation.

Perhaps it’s the feeling I get when I successfully slow the death rate of cattle during a severe drought. Hours spent cutting mulga trees for the cattle to eat. The sweet stench of a rotting carcass barely 20 meters to my left. The pity that drives me beyond exhaustion. The beauty of suffering so an animal may survive only to be sold to the meat works.

Or perhaps the sadness that strikes as I pause, a tire lever raised above my head, as I take aim, resolved to offer mercy, before bludgeoning a calf to death. It’s never just one hit. Hardened as I may be, it’s painful when the boss asks about the blood splatters on my face some 7 hours after the numbness in my hands has resolved. A product of the repeated blows to the thick skulled young calf. The raw sadness experienced in a moment of merciful death.

The long days and the confronting nature of the work is relived by the adrenaline. There’s something beautiful I’ve come to recognize about death. Not the starved beast that finally drops dead, nor the young beasts I kill with metal or rock or wood. But my own. Wakening to the fact that today you are one mistake from death.

Chasing after a scrub bull. Wild eyes rolling in its head, snot dripping from the nose and the fight or flight reflex coursing through every fiber of its being. Flight first, the bull charges through the bush and I follow. Oblivious to the dangers as I race past trees, through the long grass, passing mere inches from hidden logs and ants nests. Luck serves much better than caution.

Than the bull slows, chest heaving as it draws ragged breaths; he no longer has the wind or the energy to keep running. The fight. That’s the moment to hit it. To slam the four-wheeler into just the right spot, tipping the bull over and riding up onto the bull. Park on the wrong spot, even just slightly, and the bull will tip the bike over. Quickly taking the bull straps and tying the legs. Fear. It gives me the will to live. I’ve made many mistakes doing this, but I know the next mistake I make could be my last.

[Anonymous No.10628462]

>>10628449
fuck me. missed the first part. My apologise.

1/2

There’s a peacefulness of mind that I find at work. A clarity that overcomes me as I appreciate the beauty of what I do. The dust, the heat that seems omnipotent in its oppressiveness and the danger. There’s no glamour or prestige. Just a simple work that keeps the country rolling. But there is a beauty to it. The sweat stinging your eyes, the sunburn and the hot air scorching your throat leads to an understanding about your place in the world. I do a job that very few people would be willing to do. The sacrifices made to earn a pitiful wage, the long thankless hours that build the bosses bank account leave most dumbfounded and more than a few question my sanity. A job for the uneducated and unintelligent, a job for those unsuitable for anything. Perhaps they’re right; am I unsuitable for anything else?

I tell people I came north because I read a book as a child, Hell West and Crooked, and got sick of saying ‘I’d love to do that one day.’ Sometimes that’s the truth. But I’m beginning to feel as if that was just a convenient lie. Maybe if I was able to be completely honest with those around me I’d admit that I was running away. Away from the drinking. The embarrassment of past misdeeds. Of past criminal activity. From the fact that I can be a terrible person, a cruel and petty child in a mans body.

I don’t know the truth exactly. I’m not ready to confront my past. But I am ready to find out who I truly am. Whatever my reason for leaving, I know why I stay. The bloodied arms after a long day putting up a fence, torn skin and sunburnt arms, leaves a man exhausted, yes, but with the knowledge that for the next decade that fence will stand for all to see. A monument to my hard work, dedication and skill. The creation of a new reputation.

Perhaps it’s the feeling I get when I successfully slow the death rate of cattle during a severe drought. Hours spent cutting mulga trees for the cattle to eat. The sweet stench of a rotting carcass barely 20 meters to my left. The pity that drives me beyond exhaustion. The beauty of suffering so an animal may survive only to be sold to the meat works.

Or perhaps the sadness that strikes as I pause, a tire lever raised above my head, as I take aim, resolved to offer mercy, before bludgeoning a calf to death. It’s never just one hit. Hardened as I may be, it’s painful when the boss asks about the blood splatters on my face some 7 hours after the numbness in my hands has resolved. A product of the repeated blows to the thick skulled young calf. The raw sadness experienced in a moment of merciful death.

[Anonymous No.10628465]

>>10628462
The long days and the confronting nature of the work is relived by the adrenaline. There’s something beautiful I’ve come to recognize about death. Not the starved beast that finally drops dead, nor the young beasts I kill with metal or rock or wood. But my own. Wakening to the fact that today you are one mistake from death.

Chasing after a scrub bull. Wild eyes rolling in its head, snot dripping from the nose and the fight or flight reflex coursing through every fiber of its being. Flight first, the bull charges through the bush and I follow. Oblivious to the dangers as I race past trees, through the long grass, passing mere inches from hidden logs and ants nests. Luck serves much better than caution.

Than the bull slows, chest heaving as it draws ragged breaths; he no longer has the wind or the energy to keep running. The fight. That’s the moment to hit it. To slam the four-wheeler into just the right spot, tipping the bull over and riding up onto the bull. Park on the wrong spot, even just slightly, and the bull will tip the bike over. Quickly taking the bull straps and tying the legs. Fear. It gives me the will to live. I’ve made many mistakes doing this, but I know the next mistake I make could be my last.

More dangerous, yet infinitely more beautiful, is tipping a bull by hand. It requires two people. The perfectness of trust is something I’ve found no where else. Stepping off of a bike or horse, a mate just a step behind, waiting for the bull to charge one of us. A dance between three, one of us has to make the first mistake. Teasing it, aggravating it, the bull suddenly charges. Hundreds of kilograms of muscle, horn and killer intent focused on one task. Taking out that which angers him.

There’s an internal silence which I’ve never been able to find. I either step around the bull or die. I catch its tail and tip it or my mate dies. I’m too selfish to be a soldier, but I imagine the feeling of brotherhood is similar. Perhaps instead of running away from who I was I’m running toward this.

It’s a world apart. What I have done doesn’t matter. Who I was is of no consequence. Here, a man who holds his own is good enough.

[Anonymous No.10628893]

>>10628228
PSA: These "greatest piece in the thread"/"greatest thing I've ever read on /lit/" posts that offer no further commentary on the prose are always samefaggery.

[Anonymous No.10629056]

>>10628893
t. jealous anon

[Anonymous No.10629089]

>>10613155

The cigarette. Is anything more quietly aggressive? They're so very subversive. The cigarette has become a very subtle taboo, something society looks down on for the health impact, but quietly fetishize, decades of tobacco-tinged culture taking its toll. Its so perfect, isn't it? Something you can do that makes you a reject of sorts, but only in the slickest way possible. Everyone wants to smoke cigarettes. They want to lean on the street corner in the rain, wearing their trench coat, while the sultry woman in the black raincoat sidles past. They want to wake up in the morning and walk in the marble hall with the massive window, watching their smoke float through the sunbeams, listening to their own footsteps.

But people don't want to die. Except for the artist, that is. Particularly, the writer, the most vile, narcissist artist. The writer is special. The writer, to succeed, must subvert the normal in the most normal-friendly way possible. When academia reads the writer's work, the writer prays they cry; "egad, they have done it, they have shown me something about our human condition I have never known before but have always unspoken seen" The audience must be surprised and awoken; but also must relate. The writer wishes to subvert, but doesn't dare deviate.

It isn't hard to see how writers become insufferable. They think they're seers, enlightened, capable of seeing things that non-artists cannot. They brag with social media posts, they imagine being their audience, reading their work, feeling the same way they feel when they read the old masters. The think they're better than the rest, because they're different.

They smoke cigarettes. It's a symbol, see? Everyone else wants to live, they're not afraid to die - but the part that goes unsaid is they only want to die as long as they can document it, squeeze every drop of attention out of their self-flagellating habits. Do you think writers would smoke cigarettes if they were never allowed to produce art again? No, because the cigarette is just another cry for attention. For hundreds of years people have smoked tobacco. But these writers consider themselves unique, special, deep for harnessing one of the most ingrained, conservative, long-standing pillar of western society - the fetishization of tobacco. It's a pathetic cry for attention.

Create something unique instead - don't just piggyback on what society thinks is unique, you under bred, mentally self-masturbating bandwagon-hopping smug cunt.


(This was originally written in response to that Portland poet who posted all his poems written on a typewriter and posed with cigarettes on the paper. It was fairly thrown together but I enjoyed writing it.)

[Anonymous No.10629162]

>>10629089
>The cigarette. Is anything more quietly aggressive? They're so very subversive. The cigarette has become a very subtle
This part is fucking hilarious

>Do you think writers would smoke cigarettes if they were never allowed to produce art again?
People other than writers smoke, unless your point is that people would give up smoking for their art, which isn't a bad thing at all really.

>No, because the cigarette is just another cry for attention.
wow you're really breaking the mold here

>self-masturbating
why would write that

If you really wanted to take a stab at substance abuse in poetry you could have pointed out how much of a cheat it is to cite a sensory commodity in a poem where you're supposed to be writing that shit yourself. "People want attention, gotcha!" is a real fucking eyeroller.

[Anonymous No.10629167]

Aww shucks mister I never smoked anything, I don't know if smoking crack rock is such a swell idea…

Well now boy I've been prospectin down in these old mines for longer than most folk can 'member. An’ I tell you truthfully that crack rock is the best rock this ol chunk a coal ever found.

Golly, better than gold and silver!?

This here crack rock is the finest rock on Earth. It's prized in geologic circles, and president Reagan smokes it too. Now Jimmy, me I'm just a simple Prospector diggin down in the Earth tryin to feed my wife, Maurice. I'm not a fancy fellow. Jimmy my friend if you don't smoke this here crack rock then you're tellin me you're better than ol president Reagan, and I don't know if a lowly chunk of coal like me can be friends with a high falootin fellow like that.

Oh no, of course not! Quick pass me that pipe and I'll take a hit to make president Reagan proud.
*smokes crack*
Geez mister this rock is making me feel all funny, is this normal?

What you're feelin is the rock bringing you back to nature, Jimmy. Down here in the Earth ya gotta add minerals to your blood.

Oh boy, I feel like Superman!

Here now Jimmy, takes this here pickaxe and go mine down yonder.
*Jimmy goes mining down yonder*
Finally, an easier way to fund the Contras -- crack addicted children!

[Anonymous No.10629185]

>>10629167
>and president Reagan smokes it too.

[Anonymous No.10629286]

>>10629167
Boy

[Anonymous No.10630961]

>>10629167
neat.

[Anonymous No.10631356]

All waiting to go.

We couldn't see the begining so rumors started
to pass from somewhere we decided was forward
and words like magnificent, unreal filled imaginations
with things we'd never seen while awake

we visualised a future where we were more
than a rented house and a shitty job with lovers
luck and nothing else to carry us forward to
that place was where all those things described


existed in reality. We were going. Nowhere
was descent heard. No one disagreed we thought. For a second it was magnificent.

[Anonymous No.10631437]

>>10613155
This is basically one of the first paragraphs of an idea I'm working on, might be apart of a short story or nothing at all. I'm
just wondering how it flows to you guys. Also tips on not procrastinating so much would be nice. I have an almost 3 hour gap between classes but I always end up spending it reading or on my phone.

>The town was brutally cold the night prior and the primary conclusion reached by the police on the scene was hypothermia. Despite the cold breeze the vagrants body bled a foul odor into the air and it became difficult to tell if it was his natural odor or decomposition. Upon closer inspection his knuckles were rough and palms were calloused, implying he has done a fair share of land work or fighting, likely a combination of both. Plenty of farms in the area and plenty of drunkards willing to box over nothing. There was also a dig mark on the neck as if he was cut with a jagged knife, not a deep cut, nor was there blood to indicate it was recent, but certainly noticeable. The tired detective was inclined to agree with the police and that this man froze to death in the alley. But one does not freeze to death without attempting to find shelter the detective thought to himself.

[Anonymous No.10631823]

>>10613155
bump

[Anonymous No.10631849]

>>10631437
Isn't typing "implying" then saying what you're thinking a bad thing? Aka you should convey the fact that he has done farming and fighting without without having to explicitly say it. Maybe if it's an autopsy or corpse inspection it's forgiven, but still kind of awkward.

Also I would probably separate the last part since it shifts from narration to inner monologue.

[Anonymous No.10631861]

>>10631437
It could be interesting. It just seems overwrought. The sentences are unweildy. I also dislike the conclusion you've drawn from rough knuckles and calloused palms. They don't imply he either works the land or fights a lot.

Sorry, I can't give you much more. I very rarely offer criticism and can't really say anything more solid.

[Anonymous No.10631885]

>>10631849
Yeah, when I originally started writing it I couldn't decide how personal I wanted to be with the detectives narrative. So I guess it got kind of mixed and ugly when I wrote it.
>>10631861
It's a lot of new ideas and I should try to be more concise in the future.

Thanks guys!

[Anonymous No.10631972]

Wrote this like 2 years ago and did nothing with it until now.
After editing it so much I have come to hate it, but I would like some unbiased opinions from non-friends or family.
Just read the preview, it gives a good enough baseline for the rest of the book and I don't want to be some dickbag shill.

https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B079JN5V9B

[Anonymous No.10631985]

Heavy footsteps shook the earth as the feet of thousands pounded down against the scorched ground.  Amidst the great army, one man marched with a heavy heart.  Though he walked shoulder to shoulder with renowned soldiers from the far reaches of the world, he struggled to suppress the fear within himself. Ahead of him were rows of heavily armoured warriors, some towering several metres over the rest. Their hulking figures a testament to their status as non-humans. The soldier had his doubts about these foreigners, never being able to shake the unease he felt around non-human monsters, who were capable of ripping through steel with their bare hands. Behind him were his human allies, men he had led into battle countless times, men he knew would not falter no matter what they faced. Yet he did not fail to notice the atmosphere. It was clear these men were feeling the same intense fear he was. The nearby trees and shrubs still lit the night with lingering flames, acting as a guiding light for the vast army. It took only a closer look to recognize the charred corpses lying within the flames, their flesh now shrivelled and blackened.

[Anonymous No.10632012]

>>10628462
>>10628465
Any thoughts, guys?

[Anonymous No.10632016]

>>10631972
Cool premise, but 12 bucks? What are you, high?

[Anonymous No.10632041]

>>10632016
I had it set to $9, dunno why amazon ups it like that, I'll try lowering it more and see if it fixes it

[Anonymous No.10632349]

>>10631972
Neat, how much did it cost you to self publish through amazon?

[Anonymous No.10632390]

>>10632349
It's free, unless you want to do ad campaigns and the like which run upwards of $100, I want to wait and see how it goes before doing that though.
Got tired waiting for professional publishers to respond and finding so many scams so just tossed it out there, still get calls from one of those scam publishers.

[Anonymous No.10632863]

>>10623198
This is a great piece. That I want to copy it.

[Anonymous No.10633206]

INFATUATION SETTLES ON THE FAR SIDE OF THE CATACOMB

Infatuation settles on the far side of
The catacomb, the planet, that grows dim like morning dew—
I enjoy greatly the affectionate,
The devoted, and the so

Infatuation settles in the middle of beauty sleep,
'Tis blissfulness of salubrious haze
Eve's morning dew may cry,
But infatuation delicious looks

[Anonymous No.10633216]

>>10632863
This post is why I never post anything to /lit/

[Anonymous No.10633241]

>>10633216
It was a compliment, actually. Not like I'd actually copy it since it reminds me that I'll never as good as anon.

[Anonymous No.10633274]

Have some of my stuff on a wordpress thingy I made a week or two ago. So far I've had an author or two "like" my stuff but no idea if that means anything.
Mostly extracts and/or explanations in manuscripts already sent out to publishers or in overall lore drafts.

"One must always be weary of the woods where the very will of nature will betray you. With the creaks and cracks of branch and twig and whistles of the wind, none of it being what you think it is as long as you are there. For the faerie folk, they speak in ways unknown to mortal ears. Discussing hate and hunger as they watch you take each step.

The woods cannot be trusted in the lands which they infest, even as the ruins of old might thrill, excite and invite. One must know full well they are ruins for a reason, ancient forts long held in wooden grasps as roots and branches entwine. Places made so long ago in memory long since faded, which tried so hard and valiantly to hold the hoards of faeries back."

[Anonymous No.10633281]

I don't really write poetry very often, but I thought I'd give it a shot

I have met you, my love, in dreams
Though I have lost you a thousand times
In clouds of sand kicked up by your passage,
Screens of water lilies,
Spring downpours in which your fragrance
Was smothered by magnolias

To know you is to know a silver filament
Worked insouciantly through
The eye of a needle, a light cast
In gasps against a silk sheet
A winking of scales in a midnight pool
Beneath the scarlet moon [unsure of this line]

How many times have I called you, my love,
As the bells have chimed in autumn?
How many times have I called you, my love,
When the birds have flown against the southern sky?
How many times have I called you, my love,
When the leaves have fallen on the mountains?

I have chased you, my love, over
Dreaming snow-fields and spires of ice
As the stars unmoored; I have chased you
Into hovels of earthworms and eagles’ roosts;
I have chased you, my love,
Against the wind and rain

And I have never known your name

[Anonymous No.10633291]

>>10633281
sorry, revised the second to last line to be "Through the trembling rain"

Hope anons enjoy, I am open to any critique/criticism!

[Anonymous No.10633305]

>>10633281
This is nice. Bery sweet. Although thenthird stanza seems like it would be better if it waa tightened rhythmically. I also prefered the original 'against the wind and rain' for no particular reason, 'throught the wind and rain' doesn't seem to have the same impact.

[Anonymous No.10633412]

>>10633305
I'm glad you enjoyed it anon. I agree, "against" is much more impactful than "through". I'll probably go with "Against the trembling rain" since "against the wind and the rain" seems to be kind of a canned phrase. Honestly my biggest hangup with the poem are those last two lines, it just feels like the easy way to end it. Will try and see what I can do with the third stanza.

[Anonymous No.10633818]

>>10627346
yeah pure shit
>>10628212
neck yourself
>>10628247
"while silent to the destination" "provided camouflage" fucking good writing then you gotta "brought it up to the bulbous form"
you are wasting your talent
>>10629089
"only in the slickest way possible" sure okay pal. the writer is really subverting nothing but bulllshit here "don't just" I read this was a piece written in anger but I am sensing lust do you want to buttfuck him or not

[Anonymous No.10633872]

Herzog, He was always there wasn't he? dumbass doin something but i never did anything. just watched. I could mimic the masters imitate the greats but couldn't come close to the zog. you get jealous of real artists because the criticism becomes foul, no longer there. suddenly, a voice. Tells you to do this.

[Anonymous No.10634104]

You don’t know who I am yet.
You think I am only a man,
But, of course, I am a god.

You don’t know who you are yet.
You think you are only a woman,
But, of course, you are a goddess.

I am wiser than most men.
Men have seen, but I have seen further.
Men are sleeping gods but I am half awake.

My love, let us wake up together,
To the new world,
In the light of divinity.

[Anonymous No.10634162]

>>10634104
>my love, let us be together
>frolicking about the place
>in the shadow of my fedora

[Anonymous No.10634642]

ramen noodles again, submitting this to something soon:

https://pastebin.com/bvDEeWDv

Spoilering my questions because I don't want to pollute the reading:

>the first line
is it good? comfy? not too adjective heavy or corny?

>making the ramen, generally
too much? The eggs seemed to be more well received in these threads. Someone called me out on the soup pouring specifically, which I worked on a bit but not that much. I want it to look meticulous and step by step; the character having the tact to put the noodles in first and soup in second only to forget about the burner up until the very end is important.

>watching her blow on her food without a utensil to eat it with.
I was tempted to throw a comma on the end and add "fingers on the table." Would that be extrusions? Do I come off as a finger fetishist?

>longer conversation at the end
is this too long?

[Anonymous No.10634653]

>>10634162
If you're going to parody at least do the whole thing.

[Anonymous No.10634828]

>>10634642
Oh crap, I only posted the latter half. Not at my computer right now.

[Anonymous No.10635047]

https://pastebin.com/6xueWiXS

no comment

[Anonymous No.10635107]

>>10635047
>You ___ as you ___
Why not "while ___ing"?

I'll go through the rest later probably.

[Anonymous No.10635127]

>>10635107
Thanks.
Haven't actually read over this in more than a few months so there are definitely some parts I need to change.

If it means anything, this is a script for somebody to read aloud, it's not gonna get published as text.

[Anonymous No.10635168]

Are own wordpress sites acceptable here or only pastebins?

[Anonymous No.10635330]

>tfw you wanna post your stuff for critique here but it's written in a language spoken by only a few million people

[Anonymous No.10635486]

>>10634642
>>10634828
Oh fuck it, I really want crit on this passage so I'm just going to type a chunk of it into pastebin on my phone. Wifi won't work for some reason:

https://pastebin.com/vm35b9NG

>tfw feel like I made it a lot better in the process
Still concerned with my double use of the word "afterward." Bear in mind that this is a phone typed copy though.

[Anonymous No.10635747]

>>10635047
holy shit, wtf

[Anonymous No.10636360]

>>10634642
>>10635486
https://pastebin.com/Ehvy6tzF

five hours

[Anonymous No.10636368]

>>10636360
is this a get?

[Anonymous No.10636455]

>>10613155
>She laid.


The absolute state.

[Anonymous No.10636538]

>>10636455
Grandma had laid the chicken in the oven earlier this morning. The chicken had lain there all day until it was cooked all the way through and ready for us to eat.

[Anonymous No.10636577]

>>10636538

[Anonymous No.10636603]

>>10636577
Opinion Discarded.

[Anonymous No.10637088]

Just a snippet:

https://pastebin.com/Yy4zy2XA