/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14495230]

Critique thread? I don't see one up/

You know the rules /lit/, crit for crit and use pastebin like a big boy.

https://pastebin.com/CAqCZFy5

[Anonymous No.14495286]

>>14495230
reposted after noticing some stupid grammar mistakes

https://pastebin.com/SPyuLaxw

[Anonymous No.14495333]

>>14495230
>>14493398

[Anonymous No.14495755]

[Anonymous No.14496769]

>>14495755
I remember you posting this a while back, I like the subject but the pathos in the closing lines needs a bit more of a build-up towards it in the stanzas previous. You've got half of the picture there with your descriptions of things encapsulating the teansience of lazy youth etc., but if there was more of a sense of the father being tied down by adulthood, like not being able to spend much time with the narrator as a child or not being able to follow his ambitions for example, it'd make the thematic arc over the course of the poem more cogent.

>>14495230
Interesting subject matter but the prose is a bit stilted, if it's to emulate the feeling of a translated foreign/ancient tongue then it should do so without distracting from readibility to the point of taking the reader out of it; and imo it should have consistent rules where it breaks from ordinary cadence etc. For example, English spoken badly by a Japanese person will often mix up or omit in/definite articles like "the" because such words don't exist in Japanese grammar.

[Anonymous No.14496773]

>>14496769
Here's mine: Opening of a short story, repost from last thread.

There were a dozen or more sailing yachts floating upside down in the ocean of the sky beneath the torn blanket of clouds that marked the meridian between the two planets and Ed was quite sure he had lost his grip on reality again. Stopping to avoid being hit by traffic, he rubbed his eyes and blinked gawping at the ocean, whose waves receded now into mean ripples zig-zagging across the blue. It was beautiful but it was not what he needed right now. With a deadline looming overhead much lower than the fibrous clouds he had no choice but to fight the Spectres off for the next five hours until he was finished.

A gaudy halo surrounded every leaf of every hedge, every brick of every garden wall lining the pavement, even after Ed had regained his focus and began repeating his mantra under his breath- ‘SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS’, ‘SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS’, ‘SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS’. He covered his eyes with his hand whilst using the other to feel his way forward.

Even looking up at the sky to guess whether it’d rain later on or not had been too much for him, so Ed knew today was going to be a tough one finishing his current assignment in time. Looking at a screenful of text for hours straight wouldn’t do his stability any good. Five hours. What was it on again?

[Anonymous No.14496780]

>>14496769
Ed blinked again as if awaking from a nap and found himself staring at a wall of gibberish he had just typed over the past who-knew-how-many minutes he had been hallucinating. A muffet of tea he had turned his attention away from his assignment to make was affixed to his hand, drooped at an angle that fed a steady drip onto the jute carpet that appeared as a distant mid-20th-century American metropolis far beneath Ed’s feet lit by a golden setting sun. Correcting his grasp, Ed took a sip from the cup. Stone cold. Exasperated, he put the lot of it in the sink and spoke his mantra aloud as he sat back down to try and orient himself in space and time.

The deadline had already passed about 20 minutes ago, which meant that he had been standing there for something approaching six hours total. There was no sign of the brown-paper parcel of food and essential toiletries he had thought he had ventured outside to pick up courtesy of the Caretakers’ League around lunchtime, and his hat and faux-leather coat still laid on the radiator where he had hung them out to dry two days prior on Saturday, which meant he probably had not been out at all. This meant three things:
1) He was liable to receive a 25% cut in pay for the proceeding month for requesting extra time to complete his assignment
2) It was now gone 6 PM, and it was night-time
3) He would have to attend tonight’s Trust meeting after all in order to ascertain whether his weekly package was still awaiting collection from the drop point or whether he was going to be screwed for toilet paper for the next fourteen days and nights

Ed continued his mantra while scrutinising the wall of text he had typed in his Spectrous fugue, fully aware that the more he used the magic words the less effective they would become and he would have to take new classes if it came to it. Practically none of what he had written was usable.

Right- He would have to start from the top, then. Sighing, Ed requested more time and re-read his brief. ‘DFW Q4 Industry Working Group- Onions-Based Goods Exports Snapshot and Summary of Key Indicators’. No wonder he had let his mind wander. Most of the lonely transcriptionist’s work for the past few months had come by way of the DFW, so much so he had had begun to enter terms like ‘tetrasaccharide stachyose’ and ‘Bradyrhizobium japonicum’ as special-case terms on his Sullivan node. Ed’s purpose and path in life at present, he realised with a monosyllabic scoff, quite literally amounted to a hill of beans.

[Anonymous No.14496820]

>>14496780
Premise is a world where some time has passed since an event where widespread augmented-reality corneal implants went haywire and much of the population suffers permanently from hallucinations of varying types and severity. Protagonist is a transcriptionist who only suffers from visual hallucinations (some also hear things) and transcribes audio for companies etc. into touch-signing language to be communicated to those severely afflicted via haptic feedback.

[Anonymous No.14496835]

Are there any Portuguese speakers willing to critique?

[Anonymous No.14496846]

>>14496820
You say that, but I didn’t pick up on any of that in your two posts.

Your writing reminds me of cinematographers who pull out all the big guns trying to light a simple dinner scene. Try being more concise. Good premise though.

[Anonymous No.14496854]

>>14496835
manda

[Anonymous No.14496903]

>>14496846
Gunna add on to this because I like the story and I want to help.

>past who-knew-how-many minutes
>passed about 20 minutes ago,
>standing there for something approaching six hours
>meant he probably had not been out at all. This meant three things:

Uncertainties or anything unquantifiable like these can be confusing to the reader or take a reader out of the story.

>Practically none of what he had written was usable.
This is fine, but a comma after “practically” would be better. Maybe a different word. Practically also means “in practice,” or “in a practical sense,” so keep that in mind too.

[Anonymous No.14496919]

>>14496846
Well, that's only the opening, his occupation and the events preceding the story come up later but I thought it'd be needed information to parse that excerpt on its own. More worried about the quality of prose at this early point.

Thanks for that second part though. I'm playing it by ear so far trying to figure out how to write both the objective events that are taking place in the world, and the subjective layer of the character's hallucinatory perspective that appears over it (holding back from distinguishing one from another where appropriate) - and also writing that ever-shifting dream-like perception of the subjective layer. Don't want it to be like that common criticism of Inception's dream-world- "Men in suits firing guns; a room turns a bit". This is society-breaking madness. So far what I've resolved to do is to set certain rules to make writing such a perspective managable- i.e. the hallucinations get worse the longer a character stares at a blank space or is unoccupied in their thoughts, and each of the characters has dominant themes in their hallucinations based upon their occupation, memories etc. that provide a framework to rein in all these possibilities.

But as you've picked up on, it seems it's going to be tough work to balance that with not outweighing the action of the story with descriptions of zany imagery. Any ideas on that?

[Anonymous No.14496941]

>>14496903
I supposed that's UK vernacular, that I used "Practically none of X" to mean "Pretty much none of X" which wouldn't require a comma in this instance but also isn't a very accurate use of the word "Practically". I wanted to portray a loose grasp on the passing of time and uncertainty of perception with the other examples but I see your point that I'll need to find other ways of doing that.

[Anonymous No.14496968]

>>14495230
>You know the rules /lit/, crit for crit and use pastebin like a big boy.
I'm new and don't know the rules or what pastebin is. What do now?

[Anonymous No.14496974]

plz critique its 1 page long and im cooking very nice dinner right now in the oven.

[Anonymous No.14496986]

>>14495230
Just a description of a landscape, using my best prose.

[Anonymous No.14496987]

>>14496974

Christ...
https://pastebin.com/4u1KZCJU

[Anonymous No.14496993]

>>14496986

not gonna lie anon.... its
comfy

[Anonymous No.14497034]

>>14496993
That's what I was going for. In future paragraphs, the sun will rise, and the valley will "Come alive" with color.

[Anonymous No.14497039]

>>14496919
>But as you've picked up on, it seems it's going to be tough work to balance that with not outweighing the action of the story with descriptions of zany imagery. Any ideas on that?
My advice would be to make sure you’re real clear about what’s happening in terms of action and what’s a hallucination, at least in the beginning. You can always blend the line later once the reader knows what’s going on with the main character and your world. As the story progresses, the reader will slowly take Ed’s perspective, which is what you probably want by the end. Clarity in the beginning is most important though.

[Anonymous No.14497053]

>>14497034
>>14496987

care to read me, sweetie ?

[Anonymous No.14497061]

>>14497053
Sorry, college Wifi blocks pastebin. Got any screenshots?

[Anonymous No.14497069]

>>14496854
https://pastebin.com/raw/Q43bvjiq

[Anonymous No.14497109]

>>14497061

The Captain sat silently in his quarters. A swathe of candles flickered on his desk, shrunken waxen stumps close to their end. Their sputtering light glowed over him, showing the Captain to be a gaunt man, thin and bony, his tall form stooped over his maps and charts.
An unkempt salt and pepper stubble covered his jaw, and his hair was long and grey, giving an oily shine in the candlelight. His skin was pale and covered in minute scars and pockmarks, weathered rigid by storms and time.
Severe, dark-coloured eyebrows crowned a pair of deep-set blue eyes; the hint of ice around the fixated irises. They stared at a yellowed, wine stained graph showing naval routes. Notes and measurements had been inked into the parchment, some scratched out or ammended extensively, resulting in a convoluted mass of records that perhaps only the Captain himself could still read.
His cold blue eyes blinked. Once, twice.
The Captain remained frozen when one of the candles fell low and extinguished in a silent flutter of smoke.
Like the captain, his uniform was aged and worn. The deep naval colour of his overcoat had faded to a greyish blue. The golden stitchings had unfeathered and ragged loose. A button was missing, and the uniform was torn and riddled with holes. The white undershirt, supposed to be impeccable white, had turned grey by the captain’s own sweat and filth and the salty winds of the ocean.
The Captain’s bony finger tapped absently on his oaken-wood desk, the pale finger wearing a ruby-inlaid golden ring.
Behind the Captain, the glass windows showed the black waters of a moonless, heavenless night. A vague scattering of candlelight touched the imminent surface of the waters. Beyond this small circle of yellow-topped waves, the wall of darkness was so thick and impenetrable that it could well seem as if the ship had steered into a purgatory realm of nothingness. Grounded in an abyss found at the bottom of the sea, or somewhere amongst the blackness between the stars.
The ship creaked.
Another candle extinguished and the captain finally stirred into motion. Movement slowly came to his body while his mind returned from deep thoughts. He reached for a derelict bottle at the corner of his desk. It was almost empty, a remnant of red swirling around the bottom. The captain took a sip and it tasted old and sour, but he swallowed anyway with a grimace. Then he opened a drawer and took out an untouched candle, spun thin and long, promising another hour of illumination.
He lit it with the waxen remains that had slowly melted out over his maps, and stuck the candle in the mouth of the wine-bottle. Green glass and the spoilt, red liquid reflected in his eyes, and the Captain renewed his attention to the charts.

(1/2)

[Anonymous No.14497114]

>>14497109

He took out a quil and scribbled another note on one of the chart’s quadrants. Finishing the scratching he rubbed his eyes. His mind was tired and sleep taunted him from the dark corners of his cabin, but he had to finish charting a course. His calculations were difficult and, frequently, contradictory. Last week’s measurements now proved wrong, as were yesterdays.
The Captain checked his clockwork; It ticked softly in his hand, but his weary eyes took a moment before he could decipher the tiny mechanism behind the cracked glass.
It was a quarter past four. Outside it was still completely black.
Eventually the light would return, the Captain told himself.
There were no sounds save the periodic wooden moans that were emanated by the setting hull of his ship. Black waves gently bumped against the outside hull; Calm waters.
His ruby-ringed finger continued tapping his desk.

(2/2)

[Anonymous No.14497124]

Would someone read over 30 pages worth of my junk poems?

[Anonymous No.14497163]

>>14497069
chico?

[Anonymous No.14497227]

>>14497124

i dont like poetry im not like you

[Anonymous No.14497228]

>>14497163
É o quê? Chico?

[Anonymous No.14497419]

Our story begins at the navel center of the Bushwick neighborhood of the city of new york. As any competent, sensible New Yorker will tell you, Bushwick is the proverbial "ass-end" of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. An epicenter of still greater failures-at-life than its storied and gentrified older brother. This is the home of the high school bullied. They live in a magical world where hairy, balding men dress up like nine year old boys in polyester athletic shorts and horizontal-striped t-shirts, sport poorly maintained beards and flatbrim thrift store ballcaps to disguise an unflattering bald spot or twelve

It is here we meet Ryan Whitehall, an example of this doomed clade of neo-man. Ryan is 29, unmarried, several failed relationships in his past, a man whose face alone guarantees the loss of a few dollars or twenty from your pockets if you're nice enough to give him a respectful head nod or worse, a cigarette.

One day, Ryan stood outside of a bodega. He stood, his hands stiff and tightly gripping the denim lining of the pockets of his jeans. The jeans were too tight for him and constricted the blood vessels in his legs. The soft adipose and unmuscled subdermal tissue pressed tight against the veins and capillaries, already tightened by circulating colloidal fragments of nicotine and red bull taurine/l-theanine cocktail.

The sidewalk was aged and broken in several places. Grass and weeds wormed out in reticulated tendrils from out of the cracks and the gaps between individual slabs. Matured fruiting bodies of dandelions stuck out from the other plantlife. Their gaussian blur fuzzy heads on top of phallic, tubular stems emerged between the thin blades of grass. The leather of his redwing boots was weak and the sidewalk was hot enough to cook the rubber. He looked up to the windows of the concrete apartment complexes above and saw the window curtains obscured by glare on white spittle marking a long neglected shine of Windex. The light of the sun hit the curtains and made them look like boiled gristle. A cheap SUV sped down the road which was in equal state of disrepair as the sidewalk. He heard a loud smack as it drove over cracks and potholes. The driver stared ahead through dark sunglasses. Ryan stared at him and kept staring even after he drove by and out of his peripheral vision.

[Anonymous No.14497428]

>>14497124
Post me on docs or pbin

[Anonymous No.14497432]

>>14496769
Sorry, can you explain what you mean by break from ordinary cadence?

[Anonymous No.14497457]

>>14496773
>>14496780
This was hella hard to follow but fun to read. I second what most anons are saying, though if the next part of the story gives some more exposition Id say this can stay as it is. You have great diction and are a lot more witty than most fantasy/sci-fi writers I've known.

[Anonymous No.14497470]

>>14497432
Well, try reading it aloud including paying attention to punctuation.

"The Younger, meeker, but dutiful measured and said only that "We are our father’s sons and bound to our promise, if we stop, we betray the last of our kin.""

Does this not sound more like standard modern English written like:

"The Younger, meeker, but dutiful measured and said only "We are our father’s sons, and bound to our promise; if we stop, we betray the last of our kin."

Btw are you intending to use 'measured' as a verb there or is it a typo?

[Anonymous No.14497513]

>>14497470
Thanks, I see what you're getting at now. This story was my first attempt at writing a fairy tale, so it's not my usual style of prose. I meant measured in that, he's not capricious, and yes it was intended as a verb, but I agree it sounds stilted.

[Anonymous No.14497535]

Are there any specific resources like what you'd find in other boards and generals that you guys would recommend? I realize most of getting better is just going to be writing a lot but I want at least a basic idea of how this works before I start posting my work for critique and 4chan is marginally better than wiki how

[Anonymous No.14497554]

>>14497535
Searching for essays on writing by renowned writers will serve you much better than any advice you find here. Read an essay on writing, an essay unrelated to writing, and a short story each day, and if you do those things as well as practice it'll be difficult not to improve.

[Anonymous No.14497575]

>>14497554
Any specific authors you would recommend?

[Anonymous No.14497580]

Your fave blogger is wearing head to toe leather and she’s about to be admitted for heat stroke
Your Juul has officially given you bronchitis
The streets smell of rotting limes and diapers
I cannot hear about your fucking Fire Island week one more god damn time
Tiny Jacquemus bags are the sign of the apocalypse
My annoying and ubiquitous Bottega Veneta clutch literally just contains EarPods and tampons
I ask my Uber driver to hit a group of girls wearing Fila destroyers
Some sad girl thinks she’s cute wearing her two season old leopard silk skirt
She needs to go back to St Louis
My new goal in life is to burn down Spring Studios
“Why are you wearing cowboy boots?” I ask more people than I’m comfortable admitting
We are all dressed like 90’s video game avatars
Straight men have given up even trying to fuck models at this point
We are all just sexless vile fashion bloggers
Except for the gays
At least we will always have them
Let’s just do some K and get fashion week over with
Oh, and fuck Danielle Bernstein

Here is some poetry

[Anonymous No.14497600]

>>14497575
honestly, a quick google search of "greatest essays on writing" "famous essays" "top 100 shrts stories" will find you good material. Steven Pinker also has a book on writing called Sense & Style that people on here often reccomend, I've never read it, but apparently it's very good. I'd also suggest reading some poetry, it'll make your descriptions more vivid.

[Anonymous No.14497627]

Ode to an Opened Egg:

Down the eye of a frying egg.
I stare in morning empathy.
For in its yolk is oblivion.
Ne'er to spark from entropy.
No nulling eve of unhewn ink.
To decant in rays of lightning'd cracks
That pour am and nill, all and not.
Down brilliant black, up striking clock.

[Anonymous No.14497663]

>>14497513
In that case it should be "The Younger, meeker but dutiful, measured and said only..."

[Anonymous No.14498899]

>>14497419
Do you plan to keep posting this without ever criticising anyone like you did last thread?

[Sissy slut No.14498978]

>>14498899
I crit'd a lot of people in the last thred I just don't namefag.
But I will so you know next time .

>>14497457
This is me

[Anonymous No.14498981]

>>14498978
>I crit'd a lot of people in the last thred I just don't namefag.
Then why did you conspicuously ignore my post asking you about your crits last thread?

[Anonymous No.14499001]

>>14495755
You've posted this or an earlier version before, no? I remember liking it, still do. It has a lot of potential

[Anonymous No.14499017]

>>14497419
So, what were you thinking with that "Anal Climax" title?
As for the story, it's not a story. It's a long winded introduction and scene setter. Why don't you skip to where things start happening? Your entire chapter 1 can be summarized as "Ryan stood outside of a bodega." Nothing else happens. That's not a chapter. It's a sentence.

[Anonymous No.14499029]

https://pastebin.com/fDUTE9QX

[Anonymous No.14499050]

>>14499029
nice crits

[Sissy slut No.14499055]

>>14499017
Yes it's not much, I really wanted to post something just to see if my writing style was decent and could grab a reader's attention.

[Anonymous No.14499065]

>>14499055
Read The Art of Dramatic Writing. A story is dialectics. Yours is static.

[Anonymous No.14499071]

>>14499055
Style is nothing without substance. Worry about ideas and then worry about how to make them pretty after you have them. Rough draft before final draft anon.

[Anonymous No.14499223]

>The nigger laid on a rock looking out over his ancestral home, the savanna, watching the animals go about their business. He was hungry, but not hungry enough to want to eat any of them. A stray calf from a passing herd of gazelle strode up to him, possibly thinking him dead from his lack of movement. The nigger, seeing his chance, snatched the gazelle and ran to a nearby tree. After a vigorous raping, the semen-filled carcass was promptly castrated and thrown to the ground. The nigger hung the juvenile gazelle's penis and testicles from a branch of the tree and danced with happiness, as this magic spell would summon the white man to give him the food he so desired. The herd of gazelle marched onward, uncaring of what had happened, and the nigger laid back down on his rock to watch the skies, satisfied with his work for the day.

[Anonymous No.14499674]

>>14496986
Feel like cozying up by the fireplace and reading the rest.

[Anonymous No.14499682]

>>14497109
>Showing the captain to be a gaunt man
This sounds a little awkward, maybe say that the sputtering light shined on a gaunt face then the rest.

[Anonymous No.14499790]

The docks were teeming.
Without fail, the village would gather early every Saturday morning to watch the fishermen set seasonal stalls with fresh hauls: bass, cod, crab, eel, lobster, mackerel, octopus, oyster, prawn, salmon, and tuna; the crowd bid for the choicest seafood; the leftovers were sold at noon to the new wave of t-shirt tourists. Prepared with a mixture of: red peppers, black peppers, bay leaves, paprika, ginger, cinnamon, and occasionally were salted, the travellers paid sizeable amounts for the unwanted fish, and they would continue through the week. When the visitors had left, celebrations were held on the dock for the fishermen as they prepared once more to set sail for another week; and when the moon climbed the sky, the village sang shanties and recounted sea stories and drank and drank until they stumbled home in the gloom of night.
The next day, the now sombre villagers crammed to see the fishermen set sail. As soon as they arrived, the men had set about light maintenance leaving the women and children to wait and watch; Mrs. Henry did break the monotony a little by making sandwiches for her husband and his crew but ended up far too overwhelmed that she began eating them herself and soon ran out of bread to which she cried more and when the ships were approved, her husband looked more than a little embarrassed at his wife crying on the floor.
The day was losing light. The fishermen embraced their wives and children. Mr. Thomas, the priest, prayed for their safe return and wished them well. Little Alice Petherick told her father she was old enough to sail and she would be going with him, and the whole village laughed; then they boarded, and sailed into the sunset without a glance behind.

Opening of what I’m writing. I’ll feedback in a bit, need to write some more, I’m in the zone atm

[Anonymous No.14500369]

Bump

[Anonymous No.14500373]

>>14499682

Thanks bud xoxo

[Anonymous No.14500389]

>>14496986
>...and many animals, who were now curled up in distant dreaming, hid in the flora.

[Anonymous No.14500650]

>>14495230
Bump