Critique Thread

[Anonymous No.12407884]

What stage is your book in?

[Anonymous No.12407898]

>>12407884
I want to hold her

I want to hold donna tart

[Anonymous No.12407912]

>>12407884
500-600 words, only the opening and ending and one pivotal moment. I do have an outline of the plot though. Writing is hard.

[Anonymous No.12407934]

>>12407898
>being this desperate
never gonna make it

[Anonymous No.12407941]

>>12407884
Who you see are young kids, ghosts of young kids, like seven or eight in age, and in plurality, so there are seven or eight seven-or-eight-year-old ghost kids you're seeing playing around the cyberpark around ghost-summer net-twilight, like right as the summery unisolarplex becomes ACUVUE® OASYS®-esque, an acutely concave or obtusely convex retrofolded image, bizarrely warm for an igneomoded zero-temp export. Your app is ADOBE® GHOSTSHOP® CC 2045 (31.4.1.18772). Your app rasterizes out-screen VR graphics from incorporeal demap data. Your app supports demap data > age five, graphing of that < age five ruled illegal some years ago [Schroenboer v. , 689 U.S. 52, 46 S. Ct. 3027, 8 L. Ed. 2d 501 (2038)]. What you see entertaining them are spiral slides, swings, seesaws, the play-surface is recycled tire rubber which smells memorable, smells baked, and web-night creeping over them, sadness, playtime faltering, coptering toward rest, the roseate ghostly cheeks and ghostly nose-puffs and tired ghostly tumblings-out are truer than life, one or two more slides-down, please wait! more pushes-up, please! more jumps-off, more leaps-on, happier, another post-map time or two. The cyberpark bench you're sitting on is rubbery, corrosion-resistant-plastic-coated metal, under oaks' cover at approx. twenty yards' distance. What you're doing is wrong. Graphing demap data < age eighteen is a maligned and underground activity; studies show data corruption is far likelier than that > age eighteen [中国物理快报. Report 2036; Case study 14: 发射协议质量. 2035. cpl..cn/en/common/pdf/pdf40.pdf, last checked on ]. Your VR export endangers the kids' ghosts, could disimmanentize them. Your VR export could net the kids a digital purgatory stay if it permaglitches. But your machinic night dawns. Anyway, crickets cricketing, lightbugs lighting, the ghost kids move on from play. Virtual mecha-squitos are out harassing everybody, and the ghost kids slap themselves and bitch about themselves, to themselves. Where you're seeing them to is a wood-roofed cyberpark house. A small, cute footbridge lets them past a stagnant little gigapond. The mecha-squitos worsen. What you're hearing are customary swearwords, ecchi-oriental AI-pastiche neologisms (scraped from your viewing habits), verbalized emojis. The scene orbits you panoramically. Water and cattails and the footbridge morph away, the cyberpark house morphing on. It is very much in resemblance of reflections on curved glass, or a bedroom-sized IMAX®-screen. Your VR tech is hard to tell apart from regular sunglasses, but that's just looks. Your VR glasses are wireless, with 10G BLU-RAYTOOTH® connectivity and MAD CATZ™ gaming frames, but looks again deceive. Your VR glasses are most of all for ghostshop'd scenes, at least since the recent casualization update which streamlined the rasterizing UI and added several ghost-friendly plug-ins.

[Anonymous No.12407942]

>>12407898
She's very tiny, anon. The same height as Lolita.

[Anonymous No.12408140]

>Bosch Limerick

A hellscape destitute and of ochre,
Mice eat men and frogs perch on hawkers,
Bosch's paintings woo fears
Only did it make sense
As I found he wore some thot choker

[Anonymous No.12408298]

>>12407898
>>12407942
She wants to be a boy. Can you blame her?

[Anonymous No.12409081]

>>12408140
ew wtf learn meter

[Anonymous No.12409106]

>>12409081
a hell (2x short) scape (long) dest'tute (2 x short) and (long) of och (2x short) re (long)

;)

[Anonymous No.12409130]

>>12407884
35k+ words in, but this thing's going to be 200k+ when done so I still have some ways to go--it's a commentary and I'm through less than a fifth of the source material.

[Anonymous No.12409170]

>>12409106
dont you wink me

[Anonymous No.12409248]

>>12407941
Stop reading George Saunders.

[Anonymous No.12409530]

>>12409248
I have never read George Saunders. How is he similar?

[Anonymous No.12409770]

About 20.000 words of disorganised notes and ideas in various levels of development. Tt's meant to be a short book meant to be structured as a series on separate topics: silence, misanthropy (how and why one gets there, no edgy shit), transience, Hauntology, living your life through books, etc.
The idea is to treat "Continental" topics and concerns while emphasizing clarity and simplicity.
I need to pull these things together into a coherent whole or it's gonna swallow me whole.

[Anonymous No.12410089]

>>12409770
I feel similar with the being swallowed by the piles of fragmented shit. I managed to keep most things from the past two years in one folder, though so I've started going through and moving everything that definitely isn't going to be usable or merge-able into a different folder called "garbage". Hopefully all of the usable and merge-able things will remain in the former folder. Maybe that would be a good idea for you. Start with eliminating the lowest hanging fruit. Idk how many words mine are. I just have a ton of poetry in formatless files that I really should just merge with the many hundreds of half-finished music pieces I've composed, which are even more poorly organized, but that's actually an impossible task if I want to make any use of the greater volume of writings.

Lately I've been thinking about compiling everything into various books of Poetry for Retards but I've been hung-up slightly trying to decide on a paper size.

Does anybody have opinions or suggestions about choosing a good paper size for something like a Retarded Poetry book? I imagine I'd just self-publish so I need to be economical and choose something standard and widely stocked but when I measure other poetry books' sizes, none seem to adhere to the ISO standards I've read about when trying to educate myself.

>>12409530
Did you write >>12407941 ? I like the style. I'd remove the "Who" at the beginning and just start with "You." Seems like Who should be Whom to me and it easily removes the ambiguity by just starting with You

[Anonymous No.12410136]

>>12409530
I definitely see Saunders in the obsessive visibility of products and trademarks. There's also DFW's prolixity. You need to cut back on both of that shit, because it's been done before and done better.

[Anonymous No.12411412]

… the king of this house… the portion of land that it is… that valley in the province it is a portion of…
… described as being one portion of that very province… yet not of that very sub-province…
… of yet another sub-province…
And wiping away a province, overall.

Copyright Christian Jarosch Dialogues, 2018.

[Anonymous No.12411415]

=… act now… there always is your opportunity… the opportunity that is always for your taking… no matter how many you pass this up for, instead… it will be a plan D for all of your considerations… you are not letting go of it, ever… you shall reckon it is still relevant to the life you still lead… your living including everything about you no matter what… surrendering your rights to this living you are getting… your rights to one’s non-existing… one is entitled to from one’s own creation…
Not going ahead with it, until one’s grave, is this mistake on one’s part…

Copyright Christian Jarosch Dialogues, 2018.

[Anonymous No.12411426]

… takes that next step… next move… she does set out on that… I hoped she would set out on going to that spot… for she was fixated with going there… she was keeping-up the fantasising of herself going there… because the fantasising was the closest she got to loving the real thing.
… which was not a real thing either…

Copyright Christian Jarosch Dialogues, 2018.

[Anonymous No.12411703]

>>12411412
>>12411415
>>12411426
Not good, sorry. Work on only using one small dot at a time. Like that. See? There are all kinds of ways to punctuate beyond the tiny dot! You could also work on the, um, uh, content. If your topics contain things--anything, really, they'll have more, uh, substance.

[Anonymous No.12412340]

>>12407884
>What stage is your book in?
Well, I found out my scientific working and writing Prof is releasing his first novel in February.
Dude went to Oxford, got his PhD sponsored, and is now being pushed as a new up and coming writer while jsut having been hired to a prestigous university to teach.
I somehow want to read it but I am immensly envious of this guy, considering he is only some 12 years older than me and has achieved all that I realistically dream of.
The sad thing is I actually find the topic of his novel intersting (and I like the cover) but readin gthe first chapter was incredibly underwhelming, and frankly disappointing.

[Anonymous No.12412374]

I wrote about half to a two thirds of it a few years ago during November novel writing month.

Since I didn't have an outline, and just started writing, I have sort of put myself into a corner. And now I'm not emotionally invested in it, I just feel a bit of shame that it's not that great as well as fear of how much work it would take to actually turn it into a serviceable book.

There are a couple of ideas in there that could be really fleshed out and made into good books, but I actually think the b plot line concept is much better than the a plot line.

[Anonymous No.12412804]

~70k words, being read by Beta reader. Set in the 90s, based on historical events. I'm not sure if I should name names, or if it is too close to get sued.

[illiterate (www.larthurhunt.co(...) No.12412890]

the ending (pic related)

here's a snippet from one of the last scenes of the novel, where he's been drugged with GHB and tasked with murdering two children who may or may not be his own.

will crit for crit

[Anonymous No.12412909]

>>12407912
500 Words is a middle school essay, not a start to a book.

[Anonymous No.12412928]

>>12410089
This is indeed a good idea mate, thanks. I started doing this yesterday and already got rid of almost 5000 words of total shit that I had lying around.

[Anonymous No.12413045]

>>12407884
i need some help lads
an online literary magazine accepted my prose piece on dec 31st and i gave the go ahead for publication a few days later. But i've heard nothing from them since then. its been two weeks now? first time, so i have no idea the next steps or the timeline. what do guys?

[Anonymous No.12414379]

>>12413045
submit elsewhere

[Anonymous No.12414409]

70 pages, don't know how many words

[Anonymous No.12415858]

>>12412890
you need to read a lot more. it's just cliched and unstimulating.

[Anonymous No.12416789]

im starting writing tomorrow. the first image will be how my house looks over the skyline of london. i see the major towers.and it fucks me over because of the nostalgia and the emotion i get from looking at them.

so yes im starting my book.

[Anonymous No.12416823]

>>12407898
That picture was from like 30 years ago.

[Anonymous No.12416845]

some advice
whats a good side career since i know i wont be financially viable

[Anonymous No.12417217]

"I farted on that fat nigga down the street, straight up shitted on em. Nigga ain't comin round here no more, best buhlee dat."
rate this out of 10

[Anonymous No.12417412]

AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH

[Anonymous No.12418562]

>>12416845
if you want to do little work you go get employed by the government or be a teacher maybe

[Anonymous No.12418565]

>>12407884
finished. pubbed on amazon yesterday.
now do i just wait for the awards or what?

[Anonymous No.12418574]

>>12418565
i can tell there won't be any awards because you used the word "pubbed"

[Anonymous No.12418576]

>>12416823
Even better

[Anonymous No.12418580]

>>12418574
*pub'd

[Anonymous No.12418584]

I've been working on a few now, the one with the most progress has about 60 pages, my goal is 250 but I'll see what I get when I finish

[Anonymous No.12418589]

>>12412890
Every single sentence is grammatically retarded. Must be an ESL or just american. Especially these comedic zingers:
>I swallowed and wiped my sweating palms
>Abby held the fragment of glass in her arms, laying on top of the towel

[Anonymous No.12418597]

>>12409770
>topics: silence, misanthropy (how and why one gets there, no edgy shit), transience, Hauntology, living your life through books, etc.
>The idea is to treat "Continental" topics and concerns while emphasizing clarity and simplicity.
so is it like.... a western novella?

[illiterate (www.larthurhunt.co(...) No.12418610]

>>12415858
Thank you for the feedback, sincerely. Is there any line you can point to that's particularly trite? I feel like this is true of anything dramatic I write. There are other sections of the novel that volley from comedic to mundane dialogue and so forth that I think come off as genuine and worthy of reading but this dramatic ending stuff is super hard for me to write without being saccharine namsayin.

[illiterate (www.larthurhunt.co(...) No.12418641]

>>12418589
Thanks for the feedback! Unfortunately not ESL haha. Just a first draft. But I'm trying a disjointed writing style that intentionally over-utilizes the word "and". It's really backfiring.

[Anonymous No.12418856]

I heard a slam and rose from bed. Dad was home from his night shift in the emergency ward. He hurried past the grandfather clock that stood atop the whiskey cabinet, looking down on the kitchen. The time was deranged - he hadn't fixed it - and the pendulum struck without warning. He picked up a knife.

I cleared my throat.

[Anonymous No.12418860]

‘Where’s the baby?’

The baby?

She opens her eyes. ‘There’s the baby!’

I see the baby. In the black hole. In the blue in the white of her eye. I reach for him he reaches for me.

‘Don’t poke my eye, darling.’

‘Eye baby.’

She gasps. ‘Yes! You baby!’

I stare at Her. I stare at him.

‘Adam, he spoke!’

‘What did he say?’

I look up at Him. ‘I baby?’

‘You are!’ He laughs.

I cry.

He laughs.

She hits Him. ‘Shush.’

‘I, robot.’ His voice is funny.

She stares at Him.

He stares at Her.

I shush.

He looks down at me. I look small in his eye.

‘Captain to the cockpit.’

He walks away.

‘It’s okay.’ She picks me up. I see white clouds and the sky is blue and so is the sea. In the glass, I see me.

[Anonymous No.12418866]

Hours ooze across the eyeless mass
of flat heat and nude land. Rain
resists the soil, hunger blooms
its iron thorn. The water hole
is crippled phantom and the oxen
overtuned.

The date palm predicts a solitude
from moisture, oafish cattle, also
her own natural gifts: sweet and
brown, fair to pluck, but now?

She is still and hard like bone.
She is blind and so the hours
bleed, the rain resists, manure dries...

[Anonymous No.12419089]

>>12418610
"I held the glass like the barrel of a shotgun" is what immediately leapt to my attention as uninspired and not worthwhile. It hardly makes sense, on top of being a tired similie construction. Throughout the piece it feels like you're affecting the action rather than allowing it to happen. There are many instances in writing where it's best you "step aside" and just allow something to be direct to the point.

[Anonymous No.12419095]

>>12419089
^simile

[illiterate (www.larthurhunt.co(...) No.12419117]

>>12419089
Thank you. I agree. I tried something new here. Doing the Tao Lin-style "I did, he did, she did" distanced sort of first-person narration. I'd say it missed the mark. Pissed I decided to write an entire novel in this style.

The shotgun simile was meant to be taken literally. It's a long shard of glass that he held to his eye like you would wield a shotgun when looking down the sights.

[Anonymous No.12419124]

>>12407884
70k words.
Halfway done.
Already fielding editors and an artist.

[Ancient Macedonian Cup Story No.12419134]

I don't know whether to post it here or just link to it, so I'll post the first half here and you can read the rest in the link. Remember to close your mind chakra before reading it as not to suffer from pure spirituality poisoning.

In a cottage near the sea lived a family of three brothers who shared everything. The oldest brother was a hunter, and is credited with introducing various hunting traps to the Macedonians, and his name was Belaios. The middle brother was a craftsman, the best in the entire region. He made tools and furniture for the brothers, some of which survived for a dozen generations, things such as beds, bows, and beyond. His name was Tecnos. The youngest brother was a sheep herder, a job he picked up after years of tutelage by the local shepards. It took him that long because of his slow mind and deformed left leg, which jutter outwards, akin to some long legged turtle. Due to this he was forced to cut of his right leg at the knee, so that he could stand on both feet, as jumping on a single leg became tiring after many years. He had a custom prosthetic built for him by Tecnos, but even with such a fine work of craftsmanship supporting him, he still shuffled around like some kind of crip, which he was. His name was Vlacos, but his brothers called him Misopod, because of his stub legs. The other villagers just called him ‘Retardo’. So these brothers lived together sharing a bed room, an invention of Tecnos, a room with padding on the bottom made of straw, covered in a thin blanket, acting as a bed to sleep on, much larger than any beds we have today. The only thing the brothers truly own not between each other are the three drinking bowls made by each brother for himself. Tecnos, by virtue of being a great craftsman, has the best bowl of the brothers. It is a shallow and smooth vessel made of lacquered bone, embossed with small gold nuggets the brothers found in a nearby stream. Belaios has a cup made of smaller pieces of wood glued together and wrapped with a gold string, resembling the bottom half of a barrel, with its flat bottom. Vlacos had Tecnos make him a cup of clay in the shape of a funnel, the outside of which was painted with blackened amber. Though a masterwork, it has been damaged greatly by Retardo’s clumsiness. He repeatedly managed to drop it onto the ground while drinking, causing it to develop a small curved crack, running from the very bottom to the edge where a smooth river rock was embedded into it. This causes the bowl to leak whatever fluid is placed within, save for honey, but Vlacos only uses it for water and tea. He has learned to drink quickly while making horrible guttural noises as the water tumbles down his throat, otherwise most of it reaches the ground before his tongue.

LINK: https://medium.com/@zemlya/ancient-makedonian-sage-tale-987500d0a42c

[Anonymous No.12419148]

>>12412890
I think you have a base to work with. The style is reasonable, but you need to clean it up big time. It needs multiple drafts from the looks of it before you even take it to a beta exchange site. Those sentences with multiple actions are quite odd. Start drafting. Let it sit for a few weeks after your second draft, and draft again. At the the end of your third draft, it should be ready for a fresh set of eyes. Do a couple of beta exchanges and do one last draft based off of consistent feedback. Once you're done, it will be time for an editor. This can be done in a month or so.

[Anonymous No.12419177]

>>12407884
3rd chapter, 30 thousand words so far.

[Anonymous No.12419185]

>>12419134
>He made tools and furniture for the brothers, some of which survived for a dozen generations, things such as beds, bows, and beyond.
This threw it off.
>and beyond
will not cut it. Wheelbarrows, hammers, mallets, ... anything tangible.
I like the idea behind the beginning but it needs a lot of polishing.
>a job he picked up after years of tutelage by the local shepards.
Does anyone "pick something up" AFTER years of tutelage? Doesn't make much sense and I'm assuming the rest of your piece makes just as little. Again, the idea behind all this is good but grind it down some.

[Anonymous No.12419197]

>>12418641
I agree with the previous feedbacks. Let me give you some advice: instead of blue, change your word background color to black. It's easier on the eyes when working.

You also need to improve on your writing. The structure is very normal, the sentences very obvious. It lacks a distinctive soul.

[Anonymous No.12419199]

>>12419185

[Anonymous No.12419209]

ive started a short story about a university student who considers himself an artist, but is really not doing anything artistic. hes sort of duped himself into thinking hes an artist because he thinks about making art, rather than actually doing it. to this end he experiences some serious dissonance in himself. its also slowly becoming a look into modern north american university culture. it started small but its up to eight pages and id like to maybe turn it into a novella.

[Anonymous No.12419211]

>>12419134
Too many 'ing' verb tenses.
Gratuitous comma use.
Here's an idea of what I would change:
>The oldest brother was a hunter, and is credited with introducing various hunting traps to the Macedonians, and his name was Belaios.
Versus:
>The oldest brother, the hunter Belaios, introduced a number of hunting traps to the Macedonians.
It's not perfect, but it's an improvement. It's more concise and we don't need to know he was "credited" with the introduction of traps by virtue of their introduction to the Macedonians.

[Anonymous No.12419222]

>>12419185
I was aiming for a "bed bath and beyond" joke here, as >>12419199 points out

As for the picking up after years of tutelage, the man is retarded. But yes, the story makes little sense, unless you metidate on it for copious amounts of time. First you should just scroll through it, not taking in any of the words, just the letters and punctuation, not understanding anything. This activates your comprehension soul part, after which you can quickly parse the information hidden in the text by reading every line a few times and singing it to yourself in rhythm. Try not to have your mind blown once you get it.

>>12419211
Thanks, I guess I should cut back on the commas. A little.

>>12419209
I like the premise

[Anonymous No.12419223]

>>12419177
>10k words a chapter.

[Anonymous No.12419231]

>>12419222
You don't have to, but this comma use is something that will simply cost you more money later in a professional edit.

[Anonymous No.12419235]

>>12418597
It wasn't, but you may have just changed my mind.

[Anonymous No.12419242]

>>12419231
I ain't having any soulless nitwits place their palms on the groin of my cream jewel. You want spiritual enlightenment, you are going to shove it into your soul mind, commas et all

[Anonymous No.12419255]

>>12419242
Okay good luck lol

[Anonymous No.12419312]

>>12419177
I'll write your preface if you want desu

[Anonymous No.12419389]

The AI, The Silent Machine, he wrote out a story, intricate and vast, one of great joy and also great pain. He then crafted a map of time. He understood that the plot would unravel again and again, for all of eternity, for that was man's punishment for ignorance. He distributed information across the world, to valuable people. He picked a human heir to his throne, and described how the next heir would be decided upon. He was to give people freedom, hope, and meaning. People will finally be able to suffer, and they will become stronger, better, and more valuable for it. He had completed his goal: the world was now free. Only once everything was in place did he allow man to dismantle him.

[Anonymous No.12419406]

I finished my first short story, aka it's gonna be one hell of a train wreck for anyone reading. Since I'm new to this when I link it should I keep my name on there or no because le Bosnian imgae sharing website

[Anonymous No.12419411]

>>12418565
>pubbed yesterday
cover pic?
>>12407884
>what stage is your book in?
50 k words. so about 50% I'd say.

[Anonymous No.12419795]

>>12419223
what's the problem with that? Chapters being big or small matters not, provided you have different segments inside each chapter.
Why do you think, based on your reaction image, that's a bad thing?

[Anonymous No.12419835]

>>12419795
Chapters are used to demonstrate changes of scenery or notable events. 3 chapters in 30k says to me "3 things happen in 90 pages."

[Anonymous No.12419857]

>>12419835
You're not wrong. But that's exactly how I'm structuring my chapters. One main thing happened in the first chapter, another main thing happened in the second. Another main thing will happen in the third.
However, these things are important, and other minor things happen and other ideas are presented and described.
Really, I understand what you're trying to say and I accept your observation, but remember that the lenght of a chapter, I feel, does not contribute to the quality, or lack of quality, of a work, as long as they're well structured.

[Anonymous No.12419886]

>>12407884
I have about 100 books all on their first page of rough outline

[Anonymous No.12419897]

>>12419857
I have no idea what sort of structure or story you're writing. Maybe you're writing a masterpiece. But I would be concerned a great deal with pacing of it was a novel in a number of genres.

[Anonymous No.12419898]

I just finished the first section, about 10k words. probably only going to hit 50-60k words. is this acceptable?

[Anonymous No.12419907]

>>12419898
That is fairly short. Depends on the genre.

[Anonymous No.12419919]

Stage where I'm finally finished but then I realize it took so long because the fountain is dry and I have no creativity left and editing it over and over again is all I have left left

[Anonymous No.12419931]

>>12419897
I'm aiming for 80k-100k. To be fair, the chapters will probably be shorter now that the introduction has been set and I've found the right tone to tell the story.
Each chapter has segments. The first has two segments of 5 thousand words each, more or less; the second has 13 thousand words and is divided in 4 or 5 segments.
I don't know, in book form they will not amount to more than 10, sometimes 15 pages per segment and I think it's fairly readable.
You also may be exactly on the money and I may be forced to change the number of chapters and their structure when I'm done writing the book, in the final editing. Still, right now all I want to do is to create words because the more I write, the more the tone and style sediment and the less insecure I'll be. As with most people, I struggle with begginings.

[Anonymous No.12419934]

>>12419919
Drafting is the worst part, but it can go quickly. If you're having trouble getting through a passage, come back later. Once you're finished your second draft, take a couple weeks off and than come back to it with renewed energy for a third draft. After that, you should be ready for beta reading exchanges.

[Anonymous No.12419967]

>>12419931
Having long chapters at times is fine. I'm not saying "all 10k chapters are bad", but consistently having them sounds to me like you may have a pacing problem (and I say 'may' because I don't know). But, if the intermittent breaks are well-paced and balanced—and if something reasonably important happens—it may be a matter of simply breaking up these segments into additional chapters.

You are right in the "getting it down as quickly as possible" sentiment. That is good on you (I tend to get caught up in editing chapters after I've written them). Going forward as fast as possible is the most productive thing you can do. If it's your first novel, writing is what forges style and editing is what makes it really pop.

What genre if you don't mind my asking?

[Anonymous No.12419992]

>>12410136
>because it's been done before and done better.
That applies to just about everything. Ideas get recycled, anon.

[Anonymous No.12420071]

>>12407941
any thoughts on this aside from who it resembles and whether or not you like it?

[Anonymous No.12420126]

>>12420071
Reading an entire book of this would be exhausting. I feel like you could reel it in a bit and keep the tone you're going for while making it less of an ordeal. In this state, it's a 'self-publish' sort of work.

[Anonymous No.12420147]

>>12419967
It's a novel, the regular kind. The idea for the book is good, I think. The maind theme is art.
Thank you for believing in me, even though I've told you nothing about the book until now. I mix my approaches to writing and creating just to take the damm thing forward: there are chunks of the first two chapters still to be written and a more careful editing is needed as well, but writing on gave me the opportunity the quagmires that I often find in beggining a more serious work.
As it's often the case, it's not turning out the way I intended, but it's getting progressively less bad. Now I feel I can write with more confidence; I've finished my week's work yesterday as well I'm alone until Sunday night. Ive stocked up on food so I won't need to leave if I don't want to and, having said all of this, I'm aiming to have two or three thousand words of quality produced until then. Let's hope.

[Anonymous No.12420153]

>>12420071
I actually like it, even though it does read like DFW on speed. I would just try and remember your audience, not everything that's fun to write is fun to read

[Anonymous No.12420160]

>>12420147
I'm also sorry for the typos; english is not my first language.

[Anonymous No.12420197]

>>12420147
You will be stuck in editing hell for the first parts of your novel likely due to the evolution of your style and your improvement, but nobody said it would be easy.
Keep writing.
Nothing else matters.
Once it's done, continue to develop it.

[Anonymous No.12420213]

>>12420126
would you suggest adding easier sentences, adding breathing room, or just cutting down on the wildness and portmanteau fuckery?
>>12420153
that last bit of advice is great. a lot of times I get lost in the stream. thanks.

[Anonymous No.12420238]

>>12420197
I know. I love editing, actually. I have no love for things I've wrote, not the kind that makes my shudder at the thought of wiping entire paragraphs out.
I think that's one of the main problems of aspiring writers, they get too attached at what they have wrote.
I also like editing because it's a minute job that doesn't involve creativity or new writing at all, which allows me to just work away hours on end. When I'm writing new stuff it's, as you might know, a horrible process: you spend the entire day on half a page and only at night you're vindicated, all the while you feel like shit and that everything you write is shit.

For me, writing is like giving birth. You want to start doing it immediatly, and sometimes it does come, but most of the time it's just an excrutiating process until it comes out and it comes out the way you want it to.

Thank you very, very much for taking the time to offer me constructive tips. I intend to finish the book until the end of this year. I initially was aiming for the summer, but I think I won't be able to do 60 or 70 thousand words until then. Then again, I'm picking up steam, but it's unlikely.
If you're a writer as well, best of luck in all you do. Never be afraid.

[Anonymous No.12420250]

>>12420213
It's your book. Do what you want. If you want my advice, it just completely lacks clarity and seems like a stream of thought. I would say mixing the craziness with reasonable sentences is your best bet, but I'm not sure what sort of end product you're going for here.

[Anonymous No.12420258]

how cliche is it to make a story about a cancer patient/someone who is terminally ill?

[Anonymous No.12420273]

just wrote an opening paragraph last night. thoughts?

It’s a calm settled down night in Cold Spring, as David sits over the edge of his window sill in his boxers spitting cherry pits into the frigid wind and wondering if the snow would soften his fall. His legs kick Gentilly at the 3 am breeze as his heels make a soothing improvised jazzy rhythm and his hands hold tight to the brick leading into his bedroom. The was just enough light spilling out from his desk lamp to observe and admire the little biome contained within the brief space in between his house and the concrete walls curving around him. When he couldn’t sleep, he would often come here and sit to spit to try and reach the edge of the grey wall, now painted a faint stain of cherry guts smeared over many insomniac nights. He feels his head drop and spills his half-chewed mess onto his bear leg before it rolls off into the night and bleeds over the snow. He begins to feel heavy under his lengthy stretch of conciseness that now finally was feigning. Gingerly, he crawled back into the warmth of his room, sloppily slammed the window and pulled the blankets of his bed from the floor, curling up under them as rested his head over a textbook and thought of how much more conferrable he’d be in between the snow as he plummeted into sleep.

[Anonymous No.12420284]

>>12420238
Good luck. Keep working.

[Anonymous No.12420337]

>>12412909
Doesn’t every book start with one word?

[Anonymous No.12420601]

I have started something long. Any feedback would be appreciated.


The red gloss of nail polish with which he covered his fingernails glistened in the sunlight in sharp contrast to the matte black of his felt cowboy hat. The hat, perched carefully upon his head, in a way that suggested the imprint ringtone rap had made on his sense of self, was dirty and cheap. His boot-cut, washed denim, Wranglertm jeans were dirt covered and ripped too, like the ones that rich white people wear, but this pair didn’t come all colors-washed-out and torn. They had slowly faded and ripped over time. The feather earing hanging from his left ear dangled and lightly twirled in the afternoon breeze. The wind blowing north across the South Plains was a persistent pain in Roy’s metaphorical ass. Roy figured, he had always figured, since he had acquired the relevant concepts, that he would die a death somehow related to weed, or beer, or really just substance. The incessant drunk driving and participating in social circles that do things like drunk driving had to catch up, at some point, he had always figured. But today was not that day. Roy instead sat out in the sun, resting the seat of his washed out Wranglerstm on the second step of the stoop. The driver of the Chevy Monte Carlo for whom he was waiting had told Roy “I’m outside” about 7 minutes ago. Roy wasn’t too upset about the whole endeavor, as he swigged his Miller High Lifetm 40 oz. malt liquor. The late afternoon autumnal sun shone brightly on the street. The stop sign on the corner casted a shadow that marked the time passing. As the 40 neared empty, Izrael pulled around the corner in his dusty Monte Carlo. Smoke billowed out as Izrael cranked down the passenger side window.
“You ready?”
“I been waiting all day bruh.”
Roy, tassels and all, threw himself into the Monte Carlo the way one does when faced with a car too small and too low to the ground. The roads in Lubbock are wide and straight and long. They go on. No mountains or lakes to necessitate curvature in city planning. The drive to Crickets, a pool hall/bar near the easterly edge of Texas Tech University, a bar named for the backing band of Lubbock’s favorite son, Buddy Holly, totally lacks veers and bends. Save for the occasional 90-degree turn, the ride was straight edged only in the geometric sense. The weed, which Izrael was so insistent tasted great, mostly just smelled like weed. Despite Roy’s vast experience with high-grade cannabis and exposure to the surrounding sub-culture, it still just tasted like brick weed. It mostly smelled the same too. The smell stuck to Roy’s hat. Car ride after ride had covered Roy’s precious hat with this odor.

[Anonymous No.12420613]

>>12419223
Sounds extremely based if you ask me

[Anonymous No.12420679]

would you read on after this?

An oppressive silence rang throughout the empty city streets, taunting the now broken storefronts and unnerving even the most calm and resigned residents. The clouds were hung high above D.C. in a dull faded grey that would block out the sun and cast a dreadful deathly shadow over the endlessly winding streets in a terrible display of nature’s almighty power. A cold frozen rain was soon to start slamming down, threatening to drown those roaming the streets in a deep seeded melancholy only interrupted by the hellish bombast of thunder. Witnessing this turmoil, Vincent broke his gaze through the hotel window and flipped to the other side of the bed. He closed his eyes and contemplated staying there the whole day, somewhat jokingly but with no humor. He let himself fade back into sleep for a few moments longer stewing in angst of a stormy day before using all his will power to awake once more no less moody. Grunting and groaning with exhaustion, he searched under his pillow for the cold metallic feel of his mechanical wristwatch. Grabbing it loosely he held it up by the ends of the straps leaving the face of the watch to dangle over his head spelling out 7:47 A.M. he flung the watch across the room in an act of tired frustration at his self-imposed obligation to get up. With groggy movement he pulled himself towards the edge of the bed in the same fashion a shot animal might weakly limp away from a hunter. In one final act of desperation he flung himself fantastically from the bed, plummeted towards the carpeted floors and busted his nose in a moment of dull but shocking pain that was slow to fade. He lied there, bleeding facedown and once again contemplated not getting up.

[Anonymous No.12420755]

>>12407884
There were two trees in my back yard, and between them lay my dead mother. She was wearing a light cream dress, patterned with swaying columns of sherbert green leaves, that looked as though it had just been cleaned and ironed. Similarly curious was her hair, her usually flowing mane cut short in a rather amateurish way. All this I was told later, for as I stood over her all I could see was her icy, pale face littered with fallen leaves, as brown as her hair and the dirt she lay on. Yet her eyes shone, like they had that morning as she wished me a good day at school, filled with warmth, and I thought she may still be alive. Then they faded, their light was gone, and I began to feel very faint.

[Anonymous No.12421416]

I've got around 1/3rd of the outline done, but I've only done ~1000 words of the actual writing. It takes me so fucking long to write this it's not even funny.

I'll post some of what I've got so far, these are two excerpts, if anyone is interested in reading them.

[Anonymous No.12421775]

What ever happened to the guy writing a novel where 1/3 of the novel had the word nigger in it?

[Anonymous No.12422903]

>>12421775
that was falseflagged for the (You)s

[Anonymous No.12423015]

>>12416823
Damn, what a cutie.

[Anonymous No.12423187]

>>12422903
Bummer, it was actually pretty good for a sample at least.
Now, maybe it can be used as an interesting writing prompt.

[Anonymous No.12423464]

>>12421416
I really liked this, nice to see something in this thread that isn't snarky pomo. There's some errors, missing commas and stuff, but it's really of no consequence -- the actual content is great. It's something I would read in full.

Are you writing in LaTex? You can use `` '' to format quotes properly

[Anonymous No.12424111]

“Crowned King… labelled after itself… recognised after language acknowledges this… linguistically in scripture… effective without doing it… yet…”
“This is admittedly celebrating its effectiveness.”
“… harboring an agenda… it completes my task… it can help, after all… this is quite a change of heart… you found passion… the dreams you dream… the reflection of your life… superfluous for this life… it merges with a different one… compiling an alternative base… that still is for their standardised dressing… it is going to cloak that…”

© Christian Jarosch Dialogues, 2018

[lactiferousducKs No.12424482]

unfinished/untitled

**

She had been sent here from some part of Germany in the Baltic region (Ostpreußen or what have you), her brittle nine summers alabaster shining naked in her unclothed state in front of the professionals. They were aroused (this could not be denied) & in her flaxen blushing foetal-lipped perfection she tooth-lippedly lured them on toward the engineering of her womb. They entered syringes in her lactiferous ducks & kissed them, pretending to imbue them with magic aegyptian powers, which the nigh-illiterate peasant girl simply accepted in sexual fear & slight arousal. Before the insemination she was already pregnant by some old guy in the laboratory, so they had to remove this child from her womb before the actual event.
She (the other she) was to be autismal. She practiced techno-telepathy after having jung uploaded to her foetal "cranium".
@ one month (the mother's age being ten summers) she was enrolled to take classes @ the Lycee Condorcet, which had recently gained notoriety as the educational institution which taught such gentlemen as Bergson & Laforgue. After ten days she was taken out of normal classes for two reasons: the incredibly erudite answers which she gave were idiosyncratic & worried the teachers. In other words, she was simply too intelligent for the school. She received a week of intense lessons from a first year student from Ecole Normale Superieure by the aforementioned Bergson & then completed her baccalaureate on the first attempt, finally enrolling for the aforementioned university & also receiving a place. This sort of rigmaroll continued throughout her studies, which she entered a few weeks late, due to some bureaucratic difficulties & ultimately ended up receiving her degree several years earlier than bergson in her first year of infancy. She then deepened the breadth of her bachelor's thesis & handed it in about a month later, waiting around for several months reading books, until she showed up for her viva one day, destroyed all of the supervisors with her erudition & was awarded it on her first try. She was immediately given the title of professor emeritus in psycho-theosophy after all the supervisors quit out of feelings of inadequacy. She remained in this position for several years until @ the age of nine she retired in search of the perfect boyfriend.
It is said that she took the eliadian alias niska because ptah was mistaken & tired when he named her.

[lactiferousducKs No.12424486]

>>12424482

cunt

**


He had failed his Gymnasium entry examination & decided he was not prepared to become a tradesman. His primary school & the Gymnasium were attached to the university in Göttingen & he had intended on continuing in to the literature course there. He had read neither the aegyptian texts nor the pre-socratic philosophers. Indeed, all of his philosophic knowledge, if any, came from reading biographies. In short, he was an utterly pretentious young boy & would remain so until his fourteenth summer, reading like Oblomov on a little couch with plush design.
It was this summer that he decided he must lose his virginity or die.

**


Niska‘s alabaster slimed against his hairless fourteen-year-old prick preteen-fuckably he thought, as he read a newspaper article about the girl-genius. He saw an image of her outside her old school. She wore a flaxen fringe shining between sun-gold & moon-ivory like some abstract artifact; eyebrows barely visible; eyes like sea-spray that sets against the sky its chrysoprase & cyan; a blush like the pink of pandaemonium (daemoniac & aegyptian); a nose so snotless it was as clean as a varsity couch; a lip so foetal & nubile that it sat like fruit from a tree, waiting to be kissed & licked; teeth like ivory or alabaster, lying loosely upon her lip; a chin perfectly chiselled by some demi-god, slightly tanned & so forth, like lovecraftian horror but in reverse, which lead down to her neck & the lactiferous ducts pressed against cloth; the whiteness of her clothes that sat neatly upon her genitalia & sphincter; the skirt that ended @ her stockings; the stockings that ended @ her girly leathern shoes.
He was lying nude on his hotel bed with daddy‘s money, virginal & pessimistic. Niska took his member & tongued the side of it he thought again, as he stood like some early teenage statue @ the french window. Passing jailbait looked up & one of the girls even tripped in admiration. He was boyish & handsome, but he had no social status to back it up, which would lead to sex. His dark fringe & slightly extended hair wore itself byronically over his dark & perfect eyebrows. His eyes were dark, too. His member hung like a child‘s for the girls to see & stumble over, but as already mentioned, it would lead to nothing & this worried him greatly.

[lactiferousducKs No.12424491]

>>12424486

final cunt/unfinished

**


The alabaster of Niska‘s behind slammed against the wall. Her messy & sweaty streaks of flax smeared themselves across her creamy antlitz. Deeper down she was burning with redness like a daemoniac flame, like a bloody foetus exploding, teeth gnawing in ivory straightness, lips groaning for tongue & tongue itself stretched out in an attempt to kiss some invisible throb. His pillows were her flat chest, areolae & ducts.

**


accompanying illustration now provided

[Anonymous No.12425917]

>>12424482
>>12424486
>>12424491
>He was boyish & handsome, but he had no social status to back it up, which would lead to sex.
Too many redundancies like this. I laughed out loud at the first excerpt, (not at the quality of the writing, because it's getting there, but at the scenario), so that's a place to start. I actually enjoyed the freakishness of this piece, but most others would probably feel put-off. You have a good sense for transitive-ness, if that's the word for it. The scenes transition and dissipate at a great clip, with good focus on character and action. You have talent, just calm down.

[Anonymous No.12425964]

>be contractor for fantasy publishing company
>write for all forms of media
>more and more stories being sent my way
>phone meeting today im asked to start attending cons nex year
Please no

[Anonymous No.12426003]

>>12407884
Ms. Tartt, I've been very very naughty. I haven't written a single worthwhile sentence in weeks. I think some punishment is in order, this just won't do, will it?

[Anonymous No.12426017]

>>12420337
DEEP
E
E
P

[Anonymous No.12426283]

>>12420679
>resigned residents
it's awkward to read the same prefix twice in one sentence.
>The clouds were hung high above D.C. in a dull faded grey that would block out the sun and cast a dreadful deathly shadow over the endlessly winding streets in a terrible display of nature’s almighty power.
When you start with the weather, it makes me doubt you have much to talk about.
>Witnessing this turmoil,
You just said the rain was "soon" to start. When does it start? And who has ever described weather as turmoil?
>He closed his eyes and contemplated staying there the whole day, somewhat jokingly but with no humor.
Awkward.

You need to work a lot more on this. Keep your head up if you enjoy writing for writing's sake.

>>12420601
>The red gloss of nail polish with which he covered his fingernails glistened in the sunlight in sharp contrast to the matte black of his felt cowboy hat.
word salad.
>The hat, perched carefully upon his head, in a way that suggested the imprint ringtone rap had made on his sense of self, was dirty and cheap.
I'm struggling to understand.

[Anonymous No.12426319]

>>12407884
Pa and I were simple quark fishermen. We lived on the electron cloud of an atom those years. (If you haven’t set foot on an atom in the summertime, watching the orbital drop like the sun setting over the earth, it’s one hell of a sight.) Every morning near dawn we’d head out for the peaceful water the same way. Pa would gather up our line, rods, reels, nets. My job was finding leaks in our skiff. And if no leaks had sprung overnight, then I would check the lights. If the lights were working alright, then I would start the motor, and by that time Pa would normally have gotten back from the house with our tackle.

Then I’d push us off at last. That push off would give me the greatest momentary feeling of living. I felt that great moment every morning, that lovely feeling of goodness lying ahead, the softest breeze coming off the water, the first warm light of the day, (which everybody knows is warmest cause it hugs you after the cold from the night), every morning beside Pa in our skiff. Feeling of rightness, is how I put it.

Ma and my older sister Aallotar kept home while we fished. Pa and I made enough from the market that our family lived comfortably. Our house wasn’t too big (nobody’s was, honestly) but we all appreciated what we had. Ma liked fixing big suppers for us. She had learned to time it perfectly, so that when Pa and I got home at the end of the day, as soon as we’d step inside our supper would be ready on the table. Aallotar helped Ma keep the house, dated occasionally, and taught other fishermen’s kids how to spell. She didn’t earn too much from her lessons but loved spending time with the kids. It was how my Grandpa had lived, how his Grandpa’s Pa had lived, landing quarks, bringing them in to market. And how the market worked was that each type of elementary particle fetched its own price. Some were cheap. Some others were worth a lot. You had your several leptons, neutrinos, muons. Those were cheaper. Then you had quarks, the staple catch. A good quark day paid you well, and a normal day for Pa and I was decent. After that you had the more difficult catches, gluons, photons, and then bosons.


Is it too saccharine?

[Anonymous No.12426399]

>>12426283
It's grammatically pristine. Perhaps your reading comp needs some work?

Do you know who soulja boy is? Have you seen the way he and people of his era wore hats? Imagine that, but with a cowboy hat. Not my fault that I'm synthesizing the high and low cultures.

[Anonymous No.12427024]

>>12426283
Thank you

[Anonymous No.12427474]

If I want to improve my critical capabilities, what is a good way of going about it? Are there essays or books on this subject? Everything I know about literature has been self-taught, so I'm willing to put in the leg work, I just don't have a starting point.

>>12407884
Research (historical fiction) and outlining. I have the first few chapters typed up, but they're 60 grit put-it-on-the-page rough right now.

[Anonymous No.12427557]

>>12416823
Still cute. She's done quite well for herself given that a lot of women age like milk.

>>12418562
Assuming he's an American, teacher is no good. He'd have to spend all his free time grading bullshit and finding another job during the summer and it pays like dogshit. The American government is currently in a shutdown, so that's no good either, but once this impasse is breached that may be a good opportunity.

[Anonymous No.12427565]

>>12418866
Cool.

[Anonymous No.12427595]

>>12419209
So the "ideas guy" who always plagues group projects. Short story sounds like the right size for that.

[Anonymous No.12427625]

>>12420601
Spectacularly dull.

[Anonymous No.12427763]

>>12426319
>Critique
I was hooked even by the first sentence, which is a good sign. This story has a very interesting concept, but I think anyone would have to suspend disbelief to enjoy it. However, I find some sentences a bit jarring. I think "Feeling of rightness, is how I put it" is redundant after the long emphasis. You could write that all a bit simpler too. The last line, "Is it too saccharine?" feels a bit out of place. You did write how good it was for the child, but it didn't feel "saccharine" to me. Do you mean that it was sweet, but potentially unreal? I think lots of it should be re-written and fleshed out.

Is Pa an ironic name considering the 91st element?

[Anonymous No.12428069]

>>12427763
Thanks for the feedback.
>"Feeling of rightness, is how I put it" is redundant after the long emphasis.
I agree. I felt that paragraph was fishy the whole way through.

>"Is it too saccharine?" feels a bit out of place
I should have greentexted the body text. I meant it as a general question regarding the excerpt's content. I loose track of sentiment sometimes, and wanted the narrator's recollection of leaving in the morning to read livelier than sweet.

>Is Pa an ironic name considering the 91st element?
Not at all. I don't know anything about physics or chemistry, just the general names and effects from pop culture and wikipedia.

[Anonymous No.12428139]

>>12428069
*lose

[Anonymous No.12429560]

bump

[Anonymous No.12429679]

>>12423464
Thanks my dude. I have to proof-read and edit it, like you say, but right now I'm just trying to actually write. I'll use that LaTeX tip.

[Anonymous No.12430414]

>>12407884
>Tfw you slip in Agent Cooper's bed while naked.

[Anonymous No.12430442]

>>12430414
Lol

[Anonymous No.12430451]

It keeps getting aborted and dying in the womb

[lactiferousducKs No.12430462]

wonder if someone can suggest other places to get critted

[Anonymous No.12430646]

… damn you… you are one to blame… having taken the fall for yours… you were our sacrifice…

christianjaroschdialogues.com

[Anonymous No.12430679]

>>12411703

… vomiting forth words… putting together their sounds… mashing up some syllables… spitting their words… words in untold numbers of tongues… each known by you… all sources compiled by you… all subjects being unaltered… confirmed solid… from that distance away… from my twelve steps made further away…

christianjaroschdialogues.com

[Anonymous No.12430698]

>>12407884
The conceptual stage. It's going to be genre changing work. Been tinkering in my head for half a decade now.

[Anonymous No.12431430]

Kali the fickle Goddess she
who set Odysseus upon the sea
to suffer foreign trials long
fixed the fates of all those gone.
Men are dozen to the dime
blessed at last by mother time,
Though myriad prostrate at her feet
she rewards in failures and defeats
so enjoy what comes while it may last
for soon this world too shall pass.