/crit/

[Anonymous No.15035889]

post your writing
give honest feedback
together we shall grow strong

[Anonymous No.15035967]

>>15035889
He looked out across black rolling hills of a valley and then up at the even blacker sky. The thunderheads, deep in color and pregnant, moved across the dusky sky like warships on dark, still water. Small flashes of lightning struck sporadically across the landscape, brief and dull. The wind was panicked and its low whine began to howl and the grass on the hill shook violently with it. A formless leviathan swept down from above the clouds. The beast was faceless and shrouded in mist; two small slits, a mockery of eyes, were on either side of its head, but they were a dull blue and blind. It was terrifying in its simplicity, like an idiot worm of ignorance performing its natural purpose as a machine of death. The cracked scales that ran along its slivering body were the color of bone. This was evil.
He turned his head away from the monster and saw a tree stark in the valley, far off beyond the storm. Its trunk was fat and its leaves were healthy. It lay golden in the tall grass of the field. Coiled around the tree was a beast not unlike a dragon, with scales of glowing emerald green. A mane of golden hair ran along its face like an ancient beard, and the same for its curling tail. Sharp teeth protruded from its dog-like snout. The antlers atop its head stood tall and white and its eyes burned with crimson red. This was good.
He raced towards the edenic scene madly, but his legs grew heavy and his stride grew slower and slower until he sunk down and down below the tall grass and before the ground swallowed him he saw the eye of the leviathan as it came towards him. The blind eye was shrouded in a ghastly white membrane, half-translucent and dripping. He imagined and wanted the crimson eye of the fairer beast but he was swallowed by the hole and then he was dead.

[Anonymous No.15036026]

As wind tousles vast green fields, the sun lifts
Over the cool earth the bright moon had met.
Soon will white clouds mingle with white pine.
Rivers run in forests deep. In me is only time.

[Anonymous No.15036057]

>>15036026
this is pretty good. You have a skill for imagery of nature. I don't think there's much deep themes or anything like that but obviously that isn't necessary for a nice comfy poem.

[Anonymous No.15036085]

They walked along the trail together, father and son, until the sun hung low and red in the western sky and the evening was lavender and the faint breath of the night was cool. The peepers and crickets and cicadas sang around them. The trail was crude, lined with weeds and prickers and branches and bushes. The man walked in front with a machete, hacking at the growth in front of him, and the boy followed, a machete in his hand but not put to use.
The boy was called Josiah and he was skinny and tall for his teenage years. His matted brown hair fell in twisted curls and tufts to his shoulders. His face was like a waning moon; it was thin and pale despite the sun beating down on it for hours.
The man was taller than the boy and wider, his broad muscles stretching the old cotton of his tight shirt. He had a scraggly beard that he liked to braid and his hair was short and black. His face was square and red.
They were both sweaty and dirty and they looked at the ground as they walked.
“Hey Dad?” Josiah called to the dim, grainy outline of a man in front of him.
Dad always seemed to ruminate on words, letting them hang in the air for a time long enough to be slightly uncomfortable. But eventually he would speak.
“Yeah?” he said quickly and unremarkably. He coughed.
Songs of the forest hung in the humid air.
“When do you think we’re gonna be finished up here?” Josiah asked softly.
Dad grunted. “Well, we’re tryna go all the way down the floodplain to the crick, so I’d say we’re bout halfway.”
And so they whacked with their machetes and thorns slashed their skin and nettle nipped their exposed ankle and Josiah wished Dad had died instead of Mom. The sun had set and the murky blue waters of the night sky could just barely be seen above the cover of the trees. The forest was black.

[Anonymous No.15036291]

1/2

[Anonymous No.15036304]

2 /2

[Anonymous No.15036313]

>>15036291
This gave me some nostalgia feels for something I never had so good on you

[Anonymous No.15036363]

>>15036291
The rambling feeling works for this I think, but even so it could benefit from more variation in sentence length. I strongly suggest reworking the end so "he hardly hears me" is its own sentence. Something like: "...and again I call to him between the birdsong and the leaves. He hardly hears me."

[Anonymous No.15036603]

>>15036291
liked this but i thought that the more-or-less gist could be delivered in more terse language

>>15036304
like this more but the same applies, though i also think that writing this as more terse would require an extensive editing

>>15036085
its fine, but im getting vibes that your imagery isn't as precise/solid as you'd like it to be

>>15036026
okay but also means mediocre

>>15035967
a lot of words, but no real content; the question is: what are you trying to express? no narrative so to speak i feelt

[Anonymous No.15036648]

1/2

[Anonymous No.15036666]

>>15036648
2/2
Will post more if I find interest.
>>15036291
Fills my heart with stuffed joy and nostalgic spring like moments.
>>15036026
More

[Anonymous No.15036999]

I wrote this in kind of a hurry, hoping it can maybe be a prologue to a comfy, classic, if not cliche, western

[Anonymous No.15037026]

[Anonymous No.15037045]

Rate my hook

[Anonymous No.15037057]

don't be afraid to shit on it

[Anonymous No.15037094]

>>15037057
I'm no critic, but that was pretty good anon, please write more.

[Anonymous No.15037105]

>>15036999
Starts out great, but it feels like you lost track 1/3rd of the way through. Drags a little bit. It could use a few breaks if you don't want to pare it down, maybe some pauses to examine scenery?

Also, that second to last sentence should be cut entirely IMO.
>>15037057
>This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.
Great imagery, but sentence structure is key to making that imagery shine. The stagnant rhythm of your sentences really clashes with the escalating tension.

[Anonymous No.15037125]

I have consciously stolen and/or reworked ideas and phrases from these threads. I have no idea why anyone would ever put their serious work on here. If you do, then you can only blame yourself when you finally get that manuscript off to a publisher, and a deep plagiarism search brings up that oh-so-profound turn of phrase in one of my cheap literotica novellas.

[Anonymous No.15037142]

https://pastebin.com/mXukcAY5
here's the beginning to a short story i'm working on. I'm trying to get a sort of somber dream-like quality that is kind of comfy but also melancholic. I'd appreciate any criticism, thanks.

[Anonymous No.15037157]

>>15037125
some of us want our writing criticized

[Anonymous No.15037176]

>>15037125
can you just let people try to progress as writers and not be a fucking asshole

[Anonymous No.15037183]

>>15037105
Yeah, I was conscious of how the sentence structure was being used. I've been reading a lot of McCarthy lately and I wanted to try out his style without being too derivative. I will rework it so that it complements the tension better. I'm glad you like the imagery though!

>>15037094

Thanks, anon! There's more to it, but it's in a sensitive stage right now and I have to work on it more.

[Anonymous No.15037193]

>>15037125
good for you, retard

[Anonymous No.15037629]

Thesis for an essay I'm writing that speculates a metaphysics of black culture:

If you hear the frenzied horns of Charles Mingus or the velvet croon of Marvin Gaye, it won’t seem odd to denote their arts as uniquely and elegantly “Black”. As if by rote we assign the term to the various shapes of our culture, but just how many of us, if asked, can give a concrete definition of “Blackness” in-itself? Most rely on symbols, be them musicians, poets, radicals or foods, there’s always an emblem to fill the question for us. One says, “Black? That’s Huey Newton, Miles Davis, Angela Davis, Wu-Tang Clan, chitlins, watermelon, barbershops—” and others, usually academics, find a few novelty words like “innovation”, “wit”, “grit”, “rhythm”, “intuition”, and “resistance”. But as long as we’ve tried to define it there've been those of whom feel left out (“not black enough”), are subject to prejudice, in critical disagreement, or otherwise skeptical that our frames resemble those of the colonizer. Therefore I suggest that we drop the question of “what is blackness?”, to replace it with “what might blackness be?” and “what can we know about it?”, as this diversifies our potential to speculate its nature, avoiding the contradictions and limitations of settled definition. I suggest we reduce “blackness” to its noumenal mode or “spirit”, treating it like a Platonic form or Jungian archetype: essence before existence. This way we may conceive of a metaphysical blackness, one which accounts for its objects without attempting to place their meaning in a box.

[Anonymous No.15037659]

>>15035889
I tend to write in spanish.

[Anonymous No.15037735]

>>15037125
this is exactly what I do too
hilarious, people are idiots.

[Anonymous No.15037755]

>>15037735
you hide behind a facade of aloofness and irony but in reality you are just sad and passionless and a revolting waste of human life. reply to me and make fun of me but I don't give a shit because at the very least im sincere and not a soulless pleb

[Anonymous No.15037766]

>>15037755
i'll use this one on my gf

[Anonymous No.15037809]

[Anonymous No.15037856]

>>15037125
Your dogshit would never turn up in a search.

[Anonymous No.15037914]

First two paragraphs of story. Not sure if it's too much description to start off with

Bill’s backyard had perfectly trimmed hedges, dainty paths of cobblestone, prayer flags and wind chimes under the security searchlight. If one of the crackheads in the Cowen Park ravine stumbled through the fence at night, that light would turn on and scare them off, in theory. It was a smoky July evening. They sat on the back porch, eating fancy cheese, watching as the sunset drew blood from the clouds. Bill reposed in a canvas chair like Buddha under the banyan tree, breathing audibly through his nose. He cradled the lower seam of his paunch.

A hummingbird spasmed in front of the feeder. “Look at the little one,” Liz said, crunching her face up. “Glory be! Marvelous creatures.” Teleporting gently from here to there, its wings were dispersed in a perfect blur, its intricate head jerking, reasonless, patternless, in between nips of water. It whisked off. “There he goes! The little bobadoba!” Liz exclaimed. A tired summer dress fluttered over her bones in the sterile breeze of a tower fan.

[Anonymous No.15037979]

>>15037914
Could be interesting. You entertained me.

[Anonymous No.15038038]

>>15037809
Not bad, anon! Pretty steamy and descriptive. Heck the only thing I would change is the line: "...soft cheeks splashing up against the chair." That doesn't quite click with me as with the other imagery you've given. But otherwise, good job. Would read more.

[Anonymous No.15038041]

opening paragraph from my first novel.
The river was smoothly moving quickly through its carved path, the air filled with a damp heat, deep green trees hung loosely over the flowing water. Natheyük's father sat crouched on a small rock, his arms raised above his head, still as that which he was perched upon. Natheyük himself was sitting on the rocks watching his father, learning what he could from the masterclass he was being provided. He watched his toes, clenched tightly on the rock, the small muscles in his calves and shins being flexed intermittently. The spear was brought down heavily, and precisely. He brought the spear up slowly and showed his wide eyed son the 2 large fish he had caught. Natheyük gleefully clapped his hands quietly. Father Natyuk threw the fish to his son, who placed them on the rocks softly, before smacking them across their heads with rocks. The first fish Natheyük could never remember, but the second was etched in his mind like eating or drinking. When he was older and thought about it he realized this was the exact moment he gained sentience.

[Anonymous No.15038049]

>>15035967
thoroughly enjoyed this, the imagery painting is quite good

[Anonymous No.15038052]

Gonzalo felt a comical emptiness, one so vast that it filled his head completely. He had slept for four hours, and felt the pressure of exhaustion in the back of his head. Los Angeles was bad enough, but for all of his twenty-four hours in La Malena, he was already embittered by the sunshine. Constant, bronze sunshine that eviscerated and humbled. Sunshine that had killed before, and would kill again. Everything he drove around and through. The happy parts of his childhood were spent in purple hues, golden accents in the distant fields. He recalled running to the bottom of the yard to see the sunset, or lying on the ground with his cheek to the pavement, savoring every moment of transitional cool, and he recalled how these events shaped him. From the night before, he remembered a suffocating feeling, and he prayed in his sleep for a television or a visitor or a wire to garrote himself. Anything to save him from the muddled radio and the wobbling table, besides the man in the next room. Nothing stopped him from leaving, and yet he could not claim to stay from goodwill or kind heart. It was a force apart from gravity, but one that used it to restrain him, dragging him to the epicenter.

[Anonymous No.15038053]

>>15036026
good work anon, stick with it and keep working on your image painting

[Anonymous No.15038060]

>>15036085
enjoyed this, feels old timey a bit, though i agree with other commenter saying it feels like its not as thorough as youd like it to be

[Anonymous No.15038065]

>>15036291
very good at painting a childish memory, good work anon

[Anonymous No.15038070]

>>15037057
very good. Loved this anon.

[Anonymous No.15038113]

I live in the fucking trash. There’s trash everywhere. There’s trash all around me. I go to bed and lay in fucking trash. I wake up with infected open sores after smearing stale fast food and other sorts of trash in them while I toss and turn all night. I’m covered in severe cystic pimples owing to the fact that I am always laying in trash, even when awake, as I do not wish to leave my bed. I haven’t bathed in several months. Whenever I bother to get up to use the toilet -- and often, I do not -- I have to wade in knee-deep trash. As a result, I have many massive clusters of warts covering the bottoms of my feet, as well as much of their tops. Tiny black insects burrow through them just beneath the surface, the origin and identity of which I have been unable to identify. I constantly feel a nagging tickle there as a result. I have no running water in my house and most of the lower half of my body is slathered in slick, slimy shit.
I do not consider myself to be fully “human.” Rather, I feel that I belong to an old sect as ancient as the sky itself and the seas beneath it. I have dubbed us the “Trash Folk.” We are more akin to walking golems of garbage than to “people.” I have tested this myself: ancient scriptures, the textless content of which I have communed with many a time while astrally projecting, posit that the blood of cretins such as we will be fully black. And lo! At the altar I constructed from the deer bones and raccoon skins which litter this three hundred square foot apartment, I spake the incantations of the first Dreg Lord who sank into the primeval swamp of our forebears, awash in the sickening green, and let loose the dark font from my impure veins. Soon, all light was extinguished from this most wretched of places.
Of course, the demons on the phone claim this is because the “balance for your electric bill is past due.” The motherfuckers are relentless! Just yesterday, a fat slob came to the door -- his bulbous form disgusted me immensely -- and had some choice words for me. He said to me he said, “You know the drill, buddy! Five hundred big ones, beginning of every month! You are going to get eviction notice on door!” Well, I hope he is enjoying his “five hundred big ones,” by which I mean the “five hundred million bacterial cells devouring him inside of my stomach,” because I COOKED and ATE him! I killed the motherfucker and cooked him in my oven and ATE him! Oh lord, I haven’t laughed so hard in months. It is certainly a nice change of pace from rat.

[Anonymous No.15038120]

>>15038113
I went on a date recently. She was decently attractive, but it sounds like it’s not going anywhere. When she asked me, “so, what do you do?” I answered, “Well, you see, I consider myself -- hmm, let me think how to say -- not human!”
“Oh, interesting,” she replied. We had a nice dinner and all, but we didn’t talk much. She kept furrowing her brow too. I’m not sure what that means. I’ve never been great at reading women! In any case, she texted me shortly after I drove her home. I went in for a kiss goodnight, but she pulled away. Not a good sign! The text read, “Look, [MY NAME], I like you and all, but, and I don’t want you to think I’m shallow or anything, but I have no problem at all with people who aren’t human, but it’s just not what I’m looking for in a relationship.” Oh, well! Plenty of fish in the sea, as they say!
The rat infestation is getting a little worse. Normally I’d say, well, more food for me, but they are starting to make it difficult to construct my trash blanket at night, as they keep scurrying away with the discarded newspapers and fast food wrappers. The pile of dead dogs in the kitchen may have something to do with this. They are decomposing at an alarming rate, to the point that I may not be able to form the circle of enchantment I need in order to get this goddamn mucus out of my system. My sinuses have been backed up like crazy, and I get anxious like you wouldn’t believe when my body can’t have its weekly mucus submersion!

[Anonymous No.15038170]

>>15038120
unbelievably ridiculous. horribly entertaining.

[Anonymous No.15038229]

>>15037125
>>15037735

Why do you come to this board?

[Anonymous No.15038248]

>>15038113
>The motherfuckers are relentless!
For some reason I would rather you said "These motherfuckers"

>He said to me he said,
Careful

>She texted me shortly after I drove her home.
>I went in for a kiss goodnight, but she pulled away. Not a good sign!
>The text read,
The chronology of this could have been more clear if you said he had-went in for a kiss goodnight.

I like this kind of upbeat anger.

[Anonymous No.15038282]

From Early Spring:
In my time sailing I have missed very few things with much sentiment. Of those things however, my yearning for the mountains has been most poignant. The Wilderness is my first love, and the East has so very little of it. This is why I have spent what time I have here traversing the hills and canyons around these mountains. From the moraines and grassy mountain foothills whose faces are nearly in bloom, to the dry and craggy canyon slopes chiseled by the ---- River. They are all strikingly beautiful at this, and at any point in the year. While the Eastern States have fascinating landscapes clothed in thick wood and innumerable hills, nothing compares to these sublime giants of the West. With the peaks of Mount ---- towering over me, I feel a sense of calm for the first time in months.

(I had to pull and redact some names, but you get the idea)

[Anonymous No.15038303]

>>15037125
enjoy getting criticized for writing the garbage you probably stole from me, then

[Anonymous No.15038363]

>>15037659
>>15037659
Escribes demasiado y, al final, no dices nada en todo el primer párrafo. Las pesadillas de una estirpe selecta de escritores y profetas se tornaban en sueños placenteros por que el manantial hablaba esperanto? una lengua que nadie habla? si escuchara a alguien hablar algo que no entiendo, en medio de la nada, tal vez no sería muy placentero.
barca ceig?
al ras de la ignorancia significaría en sus limites no?
hundir algo en gárgaras no tiene mucho sentido
Fieras felinas suena cacofónico.

Start lighter, you are not (yet?) Borges or Garcia Marquez or Paz
All and all, too much panache, and not so much verve, nor story.

[Anonymous No.15038366]

I got frustrated by my lack of progress in all my artistic endeavors so I tried some new shit. The following came from me doing some weird brain shutdown thing and letting random words and images flow out. Edited for grammar and shit that just didn't make sense

A loud siren of "giiirls~ giiirls~ giiirls~" celebrated my descent into the cotton candy hell, a wasteland of pale, colorfully dressed puffs knocked over on their backs, sides, heads, and knees. A few of them shot out from my flank, rubbing their hands on my chest and raving about like an amateur hand puppet show. Pageantry was not in my plans, so I heaved-ho'd myself from out their clutches and headed to my "special room". Room 2 pussy is stronger than a black hole. Seriously. Wicked enough to get me wrestling through the entrance at least once a week

[Anon No.15038438]

>>15035967
Seems a bit derivative in description, the imagery is nice but I feel the language could be improved.

[Anon No.15038454]

Apocalyptic or world ending events(real(or the desire for them to be real) or imaginary), the type of event, the reaction in occurrence of such an event provides an insight into the times. Want of annihilation is usually not for absolute annihilation it is a discomfort an itchiness to shed the current world to reborn again. It is a primal cry for a change in an extreme sense. It is infact disguised hope. A call for justice. Though the different types and reasons among different people exist it boils down to this same hope of judgement, the day when everything and everyone will get what they deserve. One may think of this apocalypse akin to death and it may very well be so but if may proceed with the model in the minds of people we find it as resistant to death. Death is the great leveller it irons out all the ups and downs it dissolves all in one. The event has a motive it seeks to bring radical change it is entropy with motive.
One cannot distance divinity when talking about destruction with purpose(or destruction for purpose) even in somewhat recent imagings with nuclear bombs and viruses or the more adventurous alien invasions. Divinity in such cases doesn't go away but only changes form.

[Anonymous No.15038490]

>>15037914
I'd say not to worry if you have a style, if you are above all trying to tell a story. The author should not be invisible but loved by the reader.

[Anonymous No.15038494]

>>15038041
this is terrible.

[Anonymous No.15038500]

>>15037629
you are lacking a actual thesis to argue for anon; also im sure any instructor would be annoyed by the sheer amount of name dropping without any actual reference to ~content~ of their work. also the sentence "Therefore I suggest that we drop the question of “what is blackness?”, to replace it with “what might blackness be?”" is circular at best, and the rest of the sentence shows. this is what a misguidedly confident 8th grader will write if he/she only skimmed sparknotes, thinking he/she has anything interesting to say

>>15037057
i was pretty annoyed by the common issue of /lit/-writing, being that there is no real "material content" so to speak. that being said, the prose is fine, there is a lot of buildup which is very good, and the end (the "resolve" of the buildup) (the hunter can no longer see color) is interesting and progresses the momentum, but i was also left wondering how this would be resolved

[Anonymous No.15038515]

>You give me feedback I give you feedback
>Tag your post
>I will be watching

Olivia had a trailer tucked away in Mount Pleasant's scrappy dirt road outskirts. I'd drive her back home after a night of working the club sometimes since she'd totaled her car in a drunk driving accident one night early October on the way to her boyfriend's house after finishing off her stripper shift. Olivia blamed it all on the stupid fucking deer who had the audacity to stand in the middle of the highway like the idiot it was, distracting her and causing a total loss of control behind the wheel. It wouldn't have made a difference if I was sober or not, she said. The deer fuckin' caused the accident. Olivia risked her own life to avoid hitting, and potentially slaughtering, the delicate wildlife by veering the vehicle out of the way, but alas. She'd forgotten the strength of her own arms and clocked herself out into a ditch on the side of the road. I guess that's what you get for having such a big heart. You get fucked over. She insisted it was karma.
Where Olivia lived wasn't a trailer park. It was a backwoods spread of beat-up properties with these tiny single-story houses and mobile homes. The road would just go from concrete to gravel to dirt, just like that. There wasn't really a definitive driveway in her yard, just deep impressions in the ground from cars and tire marks in the mud. The place would be one big puddle if it was raining.
Across the street from her trailer, not directly but down the way, a house had blown up in a basement-run meth operation. Olivia talked poorly of them, like, what did them stupid fuckers think was gonna happen, huh? I guess meth is alright as long as you're only smoking it, not making it. She'd pack the pipe in her kitchen. We'd take hits. There was a lot of struggle in that side of the world. You'd see it everywhere. It was really real, raw.
Once when I was giving her a ride home, Olivia asked me to wait in my car as I was dropping her off. We'd just gotten out of work, and when you're a stripper, you always get home late and you're always exhausted. I sighed behind her back and sat parked in the patches of spiked dead grass outside her trailer. It was almost November. Everything was dying as though it hadn't already been dead. Rural Michigan wasn't pretty. It was deprived. Her baby daughter's dad's car was there, though he wasn't. He would just use her driveway as a parking solution, and she'd still let him even though they'd scream at each other on the front lawn over money and the baby and other sad things that'd only make her mad. After a few minutes of waiting outside in my car, Olivia rushed back out and approached me with a zip-lock bag full of nickels at the driver's-side window.
"What's up? What's this?"
"Gas money."
"Oh, thanks."

[Anonymous No.15038529]

>>15035889

I decided to diverge from my 60-year-old party after my daughter Anna, who has never known much of anything, accepted the proposal Alexander Bray's son. The corporate celebration was held just a few blocks from my house (of course, closer to TI, if I may add), so I hobble my way through the cold thinking all the way how this much-vaunted, firstborn nobody had the balls to propose to my daughter Anna. Granted, ambivalently I also thought about how much sense it made for the fine bunch of idiots to marry, and how, perhaps, their minus and minus persona could make a 'plus' out of the whole bout, although I don't think that's bond to happen.
The weather and the age, and everything else, worn down my knees until I had no choice but to sit on a bench near the Flemish-bonded wall of a house. Puny old man who once broke the laws of physics and brought them down their knees just because he could 'could' no longer stand up. And how much fun would it be for my mother if she were right and she indeed went to heaven to look upon me, capping the tumor we annihilated with TI's technology that surely went with her as well, as if my mother were right and she indeed went to heaven, I don't see why would her tumor not.

[Anonymous No.15038538]

Wise men; wise men old;
Older than you or I;
Whose words are now ink;
Whose countenance is polished marble;
Once said;
That from laudable love comes one;
And from contemptible strife comes many;
But this is not true;
For is it not true that from love comes the many;
From love comes bodies: trees, oysters, flowers;
From love comes Structure, harmony, art, emotion;
Love gives love;
But is defeated by strife;
Stricken by strife; entropy;
From entropy; From strife
Many comes one; comes homogeneous;
Comes plum pudding; Matrix of alien matter;
Studded by Colossal spheres of black;
Till they give their last breath;
Heat Death;
And the many finally comes one;
From Strife comes death but one;
From Love comes life but many;
But love is less;
It is defeated;
Defeated by necessity;
And as love is lost;
The universe should be dark forever;
Unless there shall be light;

posted from other thread

[Anonymous No.15038547]

>>15038500

This isn't for a class or anything it's just written for blog posting, I'm in undergrad. Also your lack of familiarity with the names in question is causing you to mistake their purpose, as they're introduced with the presumption that black readers will understand their connotations. Few black people would fail to associate Newton with traditional notions of "blackness". Also. I'm confused as to why you think that sentence you've quoted is circular, it's a trend in Afropessimist theory to concoct "definitions" on the nature of blackness based on phenomenological and sociological interpretations, all I'm trying to suggest is we come to it differently, and start with a pre-material ontology for the thing, so we have a wider means to explore it. I'm trying to say that, as Kant believed we could not rationally know things in themselves, likewise the "essence" or "noumena" of blackness cannot be properly known and should therefore not be defined singularly. That said your criticism is appreciated and I'll take any miscommunications as a fault of my own if other anons continue to read the way that you do.

[Anon No.15038556]

>>15036999
I like the warmness in the father's voice, reads like a light-hearted Faulkner.

[Anonymous No.15038575]

The warm glow of napalm
Acrid stench of burning hair
Brass casings, tainted soil
The howling of shattered lives
Onto the next village.

Rolling thunder, steel hawks
From afar they come en masse
Skies abound with wretched intent
Metal clouds block out the sun
Seek shelter from the storm.

In the fashion of the Visigoths
The raids continue without pause
Pillaging integrity
Snuffing out dissenting tones
Empathy is weakness.

Embrace your place
Reject humanity
Such orgasmic release of anger and fear
Come back home, longing for more
When will the masters remove the leash again?

[Anonymous No.15038608]

>>15038515


>>15038529

I'd drive her back home after a night of working the club sometimes since she'd totaled her car in a drunk driving accident one night early October on the way to her boyfriend's house after finishing off her stripper shift.
>I think you could dissect and rearrange in different parts of the story.
>distracting and causing a total loss? why not just causing a total loss?
>if she avoided, was not distracted then.
> You have long long sentences and then short short ones, it does not help rhythm.
>someone who lives in a place like that would know better of parking their car there, also, wasn't it supposed to be a scrappy dirt road? it does not sound so muddy now.
>. Olivia talked poorly of them, like, --- as.
>really real, raw? cacophony
>Is time that important? October and November?
>You just now mention Michigan? also, we already know its rural.
>baby daughter's dad's car is not correct.
>What's up? why not just "what's this"

All and all, long and not telling much. I think if you comprise what's really important to mention and focused on the story, rather than the chatter, it'd be better, why should anyone care about this story? that's what you have to ask in the first paragraph and write it.

[Anonymous No.15038651]

>ok, here we go. Be as brutally honest as possible pls. There isnt really any context to the passage below, I just want some criticism on my prose and descriptions.

Daniel staggered up to the door; the woman there was already waiting.

“Need to get my horse,” he said, wheezing.

“You can’t leave,” said the woman, squaring herself up and blocking the doorway. Daniel looked the woman in the eyes. She stared back, unmoved. Daniel nodded in acceptance, stepped off the doorway, reared back and pummeled the woman with the flat side of his fist. She cried out and fell, stunned, still holding on to the frame of the door. Daniel stepped over her, she cried out after him. She was weeping angry, painful tears now. “You can’t take it! Please,” she wailed. Her legs were weak, and it felt like the inside of her head was ringing, like a bronze bell that had been struck by a hammer. She managed to pull herself up by the doorknob, and she slowly followed Daniel to the stable, once again blocking the exit.

“Get out of my way or I’ll hit you again.” said Daniel. The woman said nothing, but her intentions were clear. Daniel strode forward, fists clenched. He swung wide, but missed. The woman ducked low, and drew from somewhere within the folds of her robe a small knife, and thrust it into Daniel’s gut, pushing him back and thrusting deep, until all of the blade had disappeared. The blood flowed over the hilt and her hands, and Daniel staggered backwards. The knife was lodged deep, right under where the woman figured his heart would be.

[Anonymous No.15038685]

It's just one sided dialog, but I'd be interested to know your thoughts. Or how you'd imagine different mindsets would process the statements.

[Anonymous No.15038705]

>>15038685
I like the first five lines but the rest seems rushed. Picking a word that rhymes and building off of that gets pretty obvious, you come off like a bad rapper. The first lines are really good though

[cunt No.15038718]

>>15035889
All this excess and yet I truly must say I own nothing. What can be called mine? In property and by law true these things are under my possession. But what worth are they, what use are they but to fill up space in an oversized room. Their qualities are meaningless novelties, what relation do I possess to them? Only that of market exchange. No story to be told, no face know of the maker. Is it that only one that owns nothing might own something? It seems closer to the truth then what currently is the case. I think of when I’m am at the store, so many things there are to purchase, yet I never see them bought or sold. Only food do I see people out to gather from the shelf. A necessity to live for now. And the only meaning that many find, to keep hold of one’s life. What is there of any value left in this world? What is there that can cause one to take action and affirm life? Naught of matter I can find, the common sense that is. The right idea is needed, any idea of significant depth perhaps. Yet nothing moves within me as it once did. No passion left, am I not a reflection of my environment? I am now like the world, livening dead. What then to do? Must it be that the world, should die fully for I to live? Only in the collapse of the façade can I find meaning by poking its embers. Is there not something better to do? Must I wish for such suffering that would befall the weak, if civilizations lights went out? Is there some task I can take on to my self and others, so that I may regain a relation to those around me. Solidarity of some sort, or a cousin of the concept. To belong to a time and place and people. That is what might return the inner light.

[Anonymous No.15038728]

>>15038705
It is rushed, and originally didn't rhyme. Kind of a result of thinking on how to add the appropriate quality of tackiness/wistfulness to the speaker's proselytizing. I'll think on it a bit further.

[Anonymous No.15038740]

>>15038515
This is me. Thank you for the feedback. It's part of a longer novel, which is why it's rather long. I appreciate it!

>***Will trade feedback for feedback***

>60-year-old party
Very interesting way to describe a party, if that's what you meant—but I'm not entirely certain. I appreciate such unique descriptions. And is the corporate celebration in honor of the accepted proposal? What is the connection?

>>15038529
>Puny old man who once broke the laws of physics
I appreciate this sentence, however I am not too grounded within the true understanding of how much reality vs. how much transcendence of reality there is. I think you could help the reader by defining the laws of the natural world of your story here. Also is the narrator talking in third-person here? Switching perspective is something I encourage when messing around with style, but I'm not sure here. I think this is proof you'd do really well with exploring outside of realism. I like the addition of the experimental " 'could' " .

>Syntax:
Your sentences are longer, which isn't something I personally argue about as long as a sentence accomplishes the intended pass of information. But I think some of these can work better if they're broken down into smaller fragments. In some of these, you relay more than one larger, crucial point—specifically the second sentence and last sentence. It's alright to chop it down, and give smaller doses of information. It makes it easier to retain and understand entirely if sentences have one solid, easily identifiable purpose and means. Semi-colons are the friendliest enemy; shake his hand.

To rebuttal, arrangements of short and long sentences are not qualifiable as bad syntactic structure in a paragraph. Rhythm has endless possibilities.

>Also in that sentence: "vaunted" and "nobody" is quite contradictory, when used to describe someone ? And the word "balls" used adds to the voice of the narrator, but it caught me off guard in the way it's in juxtaposition with all the other well-structured vocabulary.

>Fine bunch of idiots
Is there more than two people getting married? I appreciate the tone here, though. This narrator has a great voice, but I think it could be developed to balance the ribald with the highbrow.

I think you've established the conundrum. I hope you do diversify how you tackle the plot, though. It doesn't ring as interesting (yet), but you have the skills and I'm sure it'll get there after some tuning. You certainly have character and style in your work.

Books you might like
>Dennis Johnson's "Jesus' Sons"
>Thomas Mann collected works

[Anonymous No.15038742]

I didn't know what to write about so I did a third-person perspective of a day in my life. Essentially my diary desu. A 20-yr-old degenerate in college.
I'd like to hear some feedback as I haven't written anything besides argumentative essays in like 5 years.

The almost-man, though not quite as he remained captive to his parent's financial support in the prolonged adolescence known as college, stirred. It was 11:38. Not late enough so as to be considered slothful, but also not early enough for him to have a much of a real "morning"--that is, a time before noon where productive things, like eating breakfast or reading the paper, took place. Immediately he reached for his phone. In lieu of the paper, he scrolled through his social media, the digital world that had come to occupy more of his life than the real one surrounding him. In lieu of breakfast, the fast food he'd gorged himself on at 1am the previous night sat still in his stomach. He was groggy. He always was in mornings after his sleep was aided by a late night joint. This had come to mean most mornings. The phone scrolling took the better part of an hour, one of about 6 he averaged staring into its bright, ubiquitous face each day.

Finally, he hatched from the twisted cocoon of sheets and pillows he had spun in his slumber. It was now almost 1 o'clock. Back in the days when he had things to do, people to meet, and assignments to finish, this would mean the beginning of a moderately productive day, academically and socially. After all, he did have a couple of classes on Tuesday, during which he could look forward to the first night of the week where the prospect of casual drunken sex beckoned, however rare the instances of the act occurring actually were. The girls he hoped to see at his fraternity house at night had come to matter more than the education he was supposedly there for. None of that would be happening today. All he had to look forward to now was his 2-mile run around the park. During the worldwide quarantine that had dominated the every aspect of life for the last month, physical activity was one of the only means of ending the day feeling like one had actually *done* something. So that's what he did. Many others had the same idea. The park was teeming with life. Helmeted kids on bikes rode laps around the footpath while their parents plodded along beside them. Picnics dotted the manicured emerald hills of the now-vacant golf course. Women his age basked in the sun, clad in bikinis. They always seemed to place their towels far away enough from the footpath so he could never get a glimpse of their faces, robbing him of the ability to fantasize about taking them on dates or introducing them to his family. If only he knew how to go up to those bikini girls at the park and get them to like him. He hadn't brought a girl home to his parents since he was in high school.

I might do more but the comment is too long. Let me know what u think so far

[Anonymous No.15038800]

>>15038742
>The almost-man, though not quite as he remained captive to his parent's financial support in the prolonged adolescence known as college,

Just an incredibly hackneyed way to describe some listless nobody in college. pretty sure i've seen "prolonged adolescence" or "suspended adolescence" or some other such synonym in dozens of other threads here.

> It was 11:38. Not late enough so as to be considered slothful, but also not early enough for him to have a much of a real "morning"--that is, a time before noon where productive things, like eating breakfast or reading the paper, took place.

Throwaway observing the obvious any reader can do without; and besdies, 1138 is 22 minutes away from the afternoon

>he scrolled through his social media, the digital world that had come to occupy more of his life than the real one surrounding him.

Another cliche, especially prevalent in these threads.

>he hatched from the twisted cocoon of sheets and pillows he had spun in his slumber

useless image as it produces nothing relevant to the subsequent lines.

>During the worldwide quarantine that had dominated the every aspect of life for the last month

Ah fuck not more of this quarantine shit. It's been like three weeks and I'm tired of hearing people write about it exactly like you are here.

>The park was teeming with life...

What follows after is actually decent, the picnics on the golf course is an especially compelling image. The girls in bikini's could work, but for now, it seems overtly pathetic. you'll need to work that part out with better prose, a more artistic flourish, so as to not sound like an incel. it has potential though.

Other than that, I think you should do away with everything. Or rather, work through it sentence by sentence to practice your prose, and then destroy because it is far too common and incredibly uninteresting.

[Anonymous No.15038808]

first two pages of a rough draft of a short story about a prostitute.

[Anonymous No.15038856]

>>15038547
sorry i thought you were a troll, which was i was being excessively harsh. i thought you were a troll because i had no idea what you were trying to say. if you would allow me to elaborate:

first of all, it is standard format to have the last sentence of your paragraph be your ~thesis~, which is a single ~statement~ that the essay attempts to defend/argue for. it cannot be trivially true, and it needs-to/really-should be something that can be demonstrated to be true or false.

your last sentence isn't a statement which can be falsified, and your phrasing of "without attempting to place their meaning in a box" is an analogy, which is typically very poor form in logical argumentation (argument by analogy)

>your lack of familiarity with the names in question is causing you to mistake their purpose

i know, for example, who mingus is. but the fact that he plays jazz with a "frenzy horn" does not advance your thesis in any way. why does this matter? perhaps a more guided approach would be to analyze his works to show certain trends of his musical themes to see if there is an alignment of thought/culture between him and other black artists/figures you mention. but the fact that he plays the horn by itself means nothing towards what you are trying to say

>I'm confused as to why you think that sentence you've quoted is circular,

>“what is blackness?”
>“what might blackness be?”

how are these questions different? should a naive reader know that?

>it's a trend in Afropessimist theory to concoct "definitions" on the nature of blackness based on phenomenological and sociological interpretations, all I'm trying to suggest is we come to it differently, and start with a pre-material ontology for the thing.

im not convinced that you actually know what you are saying here. this is jargon salad: you need to unpack these words with specific references towards the literature. specifically, what do you mean by pre-material ontology? is this a concept that other philosophers have used before? if not, you would have to define/defend it, which frankly by itself would be beyond the scope of this essay.

finally, the thesis as is (or at least, what i seem to guess your thesis is) cannot really be argued for in a single blogpost, maybe imagine a graduate thesis or a half: you're bitting off too much off your meat before you've learned to chew, and the result is that you have no digestion. im not saying not to dream big, but you need to at least understand how to start small before you go big.

my personal recommendation to you: 1. stop reading any post-modern critical theory that your teacher tells you to read, because evidently all this has provided you absolutely no benefit in terms of a material education. 2. keep writing and reviewing your own work because you will get better in time: writing poorly initially is part of the process, but you will get better once you understand the process better. 3. read stuff that catches your attention

[Anonymous No.15038869]

>>15038740
Hey man, your take is much appreciated. I have been struggling with the beginning of this short story for months and once I saw the thread it just burst kinda haphazardly. But I think I know better now how to start and what to be careful with, thank you.

In regards those short short sentences, I don't know. whereas I agree with what you say about the endless possibilities of rhythm, I think it would be somewhat simple to use them, for example, just for what the stripper says. Please don't take this in the wrong way, i really want to know what your plan is for that structure since structure-wise I'm kind of lost, actually. I'm really not trying to sound brash or slick in any way.

Also, I was thinking about the stripper and how sounds kind of like white-trashy with the rural vibe, have you thought on give her some sort of in-depth perk? You know, like an eye for weather, or maybe she knows exactly what to do if she gets mire-stuck, despite perhaps Bering 4'7

Lady question, about the contradiction before the balls, do you think something like that can be used to describe an unreliable narrator? I would like to know what you think about that.
>>15038740


>>15038740

[Anonymous No.15038910]

>>15038856
regarding that last bit: not to say that pomo crit theory is intrinsically shit, but you would need to make your own better judgement when it comes to academic wish-wash as present in pomo theory, which would require an extensive knowledge in other stuff

[Anonymous No.15038919]

>>15038800
yeah I did feel like I was being pretty unoriginal when I was writing at.

My life just isn't really unique or interesting, especially right now.

[Anonymous No.15038959]

>>15038919
it need not be interesting, so long as it isn't tedious. it's hard to not yawn about drawn out negations that are essentially, "he woke up, it was not too late, but was too late for..."

[Anonymous No.15038965]

Bang, bang—jam your fingers down the throat,
just like that, sing to the goose:
wild honkytonk woman? Get yer fill, honey.
This side the Mississippi, Mason & Dixon
be fixin' to pander to soft shell vertebrates
cloistering like barnacles round the bend
(being ports and sites for city folk
the kind who encroach like roaches
'pon our land we forgot was for sale).

The TV static, the rheumatoid arthritic
arthropod crushing dandelion blowing
heartbroke heartbeat jump rope of a municipality—
carry your status on your sleeve
pocket full of money, stomach full of seed,
don't let that fowl, die on me
(don't let that fowl, d-die on me).

This is Texas,
anagram for taxes,
hop on your Peloton
turn your praxis into practice
and act about the axis
mundi called the booty,
leave ye hoes so snooty,
up at bougie Jewsy.

[Anonymous No.15039006]

When I was of the age five years
I'd play a language game
I retroactively call the unverbalizable—
the goal of it was—still in effect
(the umpire takes a hint
and the town's preeminent architect named Numb
finagles his playbill into the mail slots lots)—
to utter a sentence so singularly novel
"it'd never been said by anybody ever," I said,
but also remain grammatically and—
this is the rub-a-dub-dub—
germane,
relevant contextually
to the time within which it had emerged.
This was the first example:

Bluish green sock-puppets stuffed with chandelier light-bulbs
block the brightness in the icky smelly kangaroo colored room
and I also just pooped on the ceiling.

Nobel on the fridge,
memory, an etch-a-sketch draw-bridge,
and playground innocent sins.

[Anonymous No.15039074]

>>15038869
Hey man, I'm really glad to help in what ways I'm able to. Thank you for making writing not such a lonely thing. We are all glad you came to contribute and help others succeed—that's the favorable purpose of such threads as this.

I've always struggled with having my syntax in a well-structured order within my paragraphs. I love love love long sentences that rather convey a span of time gradually from beginning to end, rather than information point and then subsequent information point etc.. I tend to mix the prior in with shorter sentences, to put a blunt break in here and there. It can add drama, in a theatrical sense. So much packed into a long sentence then bam, just an abrupt stop. It's a useful device if mastered well, but we're all still learning, at least I am— And that's why we're in this thread together, to help each other learn and organize it all.

I'm in the middle of writing this book right now, this memoir I am posted from above, and I struggled a lot with how I was stuck editing beginning over and over. I kept going back and back, figuring the best way to introduce this memoir rather than just move on writing down more. It doesn't have to be perfect at first—overworking your prose tightens the sentences, and leaves little room left for editing between your sentences, to slip just more info between them. Leave some space between your sentences, which was something I considered doing way too late in the game. I was all about getting it perfect paragraph after perfect paragraph. The frustration can outweigh the fun when doing it like that. Of course I'm no expert by any means, but I'm just offering what I've learned in my own studies.

You can't have the Pulitzer Prize without the First Draft.

>Lady question
A question for a lady I can answer, oh— shit unless you meant *last because no girls allowed, right. I think that an unreliable narrator, if that's what you're going for, is really well exemplified here in the voice of the narrator already and has plenty of further great potential. However as the reader, I assume the narrator understands the vocab unless stated otherwise, if that makes sense? You could have something like (really rough sketch, pardon)

"God, what a much-vaunted imbecile, big-ass lifestyle yet nothing but a nobody dragging his feet through his own shit. Well, if what is vaunted is idiotic, and if what is idiotic is vaunted, then by definition all those all-stars and pop celebrities and connoisseurs are by God tainted with idiocy. Just idiots struck with a little bit of good luck, that's all they are. Foul how the world plays you like that. Take for instance: say, you're smart, like me, a genius I'd even consider myself, and yet there aren't people lining up waiting for a piece of my mind? Yet for him, it's been made easy. Fuckin' cuckold."

If you'd like to keep in contact and continue to swap— ?

[Anonymous No.15039130]

>>15038742
>>15038800
It's noon. He gets up, takes a cursory glance at his phone--alright, he spends an hour on his phone--and finally gets out of bed. He's careful: he mustn't trip over the mound of clothes spilling out of the suitcase sitting obstinately in the middle of the room, nor can he step on rotting floorboard the termites got to while he was away at school. He clumsily avoids both obstacles, the morning's first hurdle. "Ahhhh...fuck," he yawns. His first utterance of the day.

A lofi remix of Jordan Peterson telling him "clean up your room" plays through his head while he brushes his teeth. Something his old roommate used to play while he studied.
"Orient yourself towards something," the voice said over the soothing melody.
"Later," he thought.

It was time to go to the park. Many others had the same idea. The park was teeming with life. Helmeted kids on bikes rode laps around the footpath while their parents plodded along beside them. Picnics dotted the manicured emerald hills of the now-vacant golf course. Women his age basked in the sun, clad in bikinis. They were always just far away enough so that he couldn't see their faces. He wondered if any of them were pretty. You can't just walk up to someone relaxing at the park to check if they're pretty or not. So he jogged past them and pretended they were all pretty in his head. He went home.

He had about 8 hours to kill before his friends could sneak out to walk around and smoke a joint. When he got sent home from school from the quarantine he had lofty ambitions about the books he'd read and the new skills he'd learn with all this time on his hands. Plenty of time to orient himself towards something. He pissed away most of it masturbating and watching youtube. This day was no different.

Around 5:30 his dad came home. "Ready for your daily ass-kicking?" He was referring to Jeopardy. They shouted out the answers and mocked the contestants for the mundane anecdotes they awkwardly discussed with Alex after the first commercial break. They called everyone who didn't make it a "true daily double" a pussy. By 7:30 his dad was drunk off of the cheap wine he sipped out of a mason jar. By 9 he was in bed.

He nuked a can of chef Boyardee. Dad stopped making dinner for the two of them a while ago. When he didn't feel like ordering UberEats for the two of them he was on his own. He missed when his dad used to make chicken parm. He didn't want to bother learning how to make it himself though.

Now came the only social interaction of the day. Under the cover of moonlight, him and two friends converged on a street corner. One of them brought his dog. "Only way I can go out is if I say I'm walking the dog," he explained. They lit up the joint. There wasn't much to talk about. No one had any new stories to tell since you couldn't go outside where story-worthy things would happen to you. One of them got yelled at by a homeless person on the way there. "Probably some crackhead."

[Anonymous No.15039234]

>>15039130
this is better and pretty humorous too. The line about the daily double made me chuckle. you're still struggling with the more, lets say, "listless" pieces of the narrative though, particularly in the first paragraph and fourth. It just makes me feel like I've read it before in 60% of the examples people post about listless 20 somethings suffering from a profound ennui.

[Anonymous No.15039346]

>>15036999
deserved trips

[Anonymous No.15039438]

Enjoyed these

[Anonymous No.15039447]

>>15038575
>>15038120

Ejoyed These

[Anonymous No.15039465]

>>15038808
Hey man what's your favorite thing about your own writing

[Anonymous No.15039549]

Will trade criticism-for-criticism. What does /lit/ think?

[Anonymous No.15039573]

>>15039549
where are you going with this? the prose serves the flow and the scene.

[Anonymous No.15039692]

>>15039549
seems pretty good thus far. i'm usually skeptical of historical fiction but i'm intrigued nevertheless

[Anonymous No.15039705]

>>15039465
I'm not sure what I'd describe as my favourite, by there is a cadence I'm trying to develop within my writing that forms its core.

[Anonymous No.15039951]

every time I attempt to write it makes me realise what a formless person I am with no convictions or ideals that I can put in writing

[Anonymous No.15039968]

>>15039951
>no convictions

easy fix. pose some questions to yourself, some moral, some artistic, etc, and then answer to the best of your ability.

>ideals

nobody cares, your personal "ideals" will reveal themselves in how you resolve situations in your writings, should you actually be that sort of writer anyway

[Anonymous No.15039976]

>>15039951
spineless products of society make for good novel characters and settings. stop making excuses. write.

[Anonymous No.15039982]

>>15038856

I appreciate the sincerity. Although you’ve read me somewhat wrongly. For one, I’m an autodidact as far as theory goes, my liberal professors know nothing about Afropessimism / Black existentialism proper. I can change the final statement to be more analytically sound, that’s fair. And to the point about ontology, yes, in the following paragraphs I would be elaborating how this is not a new idea and has been discussed in several forms but higher academics as well as artists, I just wanted to articulate it in more accessible language. I think many people would know the difference between saying “what is this” and “what might it be” it’s the difference between “this is an orange” and “this might be a pear, or an apple”. The whole point is for the sake of opening potentialities. And no it’s not jargon salad, I can simplify it.

Many black intellectuals have tried to come up with specific definitions as to what exactly “blackness” is based on the experiences of black people historically and studying the roles of black people in different societies. Many of these theorists defined blackness solely in the context of its relationship to material conditions, whereas I am saying that it has an existence prior to material conditions and can be thought of more metaphysically than has been done before. And that doing so gives us new ways of thinking about the subject. All said, oh I know this is NOT something to make totally clear in a single piece, this is a theory I plan on doing extensive research to elaborate on. I’m writing the blog post as a sort of “consider this” to test the waters. I’ve explained it to at least 40 people verbally, including professors, and they have found it quite interesting. It’s a lot harder to explain it on paper while trying to write cleanly, so I’ll keep all the issues you’re taking in mind as a move forward. And finally, this idea was not derived from postmodern theory at all, it’s just an idea that I got based on the way Black people talk about blackness as well as how the term has been used in our literature. The theory is meant to synthesize Kant, Hegel, Jung, as well as black existentialist themes, so no I don’t just read Pomo theory haha. I appreciate your time though and I’ll be thinking of how I can best articulate this for sure. I have a few editor friends I’ll be checking in with. But yeah I want to write a book on this one day once it’s more crystallized, till then I’m just doing my amateur theory to refine myself and prepare for grad school. Thanks again.

[Anonymous No.15039985]

>>15039976
a major cliche of our time, should be avoided

[Anonymous No.15040045]

>>15039985
aren't we all clichés of our time?

[Anonymous No.15040339]

>>15040045
shut up

[Anonymous No.15040383]

>>15040339

this

[Anonymous No.15040593]

>>15038651
In terms of prose your style is very competent but nothing special. Maybe it’s just a thing with me but I always enjoy when violence comes out of seemingly nowhere so I liked that. Overall it kept my attention for the short paragraph but I don’t know if I would want to read any more of it. I think you have to develop a more discernible style

[Anonymous No.15040597]

>>15037125
>>15037735
Some of us actually learn from these threads. Stealing someone else's work won't give the skills that it takes to write your own good stuff. You're stifling your own development by taking what's only the easy way in the short run.You can steal a hunter's kill, but not his eye.

[Anonymous No.15040700]

>>15040597
the fact that those fags think their troll-y misanthropy is something worth bragging induces in me a feeling of secondhand humiliation, as if I'm feeling what they rightfully should.

[Anonymous No.15040706]

Here's the first draft of a short story I wrote some months ago. There's a couple of passages in particular I know I want to re-write or make changes to, curious if anyone can pick out what, but mostly I'm concerned about quality of the nuts and bolts of my writing, i.e. my prose and dialogue.

The story is called "What Is It That Is Coming?" and is one of four I plan to bundle together into a single work.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/i6jtlb9cfx7d8my/web%20copy.pdf?dl=0

>>15035967
You have a good vocabulary and good syntax but I'm not sure you've grasped the best way to deploy it yet. Lots of good descriptions here but when it's one metaphor after another there's not breathing room. Space is as important as subject. You use bold and superlative language so much it makes the text overall appear gaudy, if it were a painting.

>>15036026
Short and sweet

>>15036085
Good use of language; evocative. I think there's a little bit of laundry-listing going on here where you follow a format too closely to introduce the characters' appearances- If you go from the end of this sentence-
>The man was taller than the boy and wider, his broad muscles stretching the old cotton of his tight shirt.
Straight to-
>They were both sweaty and dirty and they looked at the ground as they walked.
And work the other, perfectly good information about his hair and face into a later part of the text where it appears context-relevant (are they around a campfire at some point where his father's face is most of what the boy can see by the flames? etc.) ... I think that would improve the structure of the text significantly.

>>15036291
Hawthorns is plural, shouldn't have an apostrophe. Perhaps "grew" instead of "grow" too. Conflicting tenses?
>fingers filled with daisies
The wording of this sounds odd, would "fingers clasped tight around handfuls of wilting daisies" or something like that sound better? "filled" here sounds like his fingers are stuffed full of daisies like a glove. Really nice writing though, both posts.

>>15036648
Some engaging sentiments but you need someone whose first language is English to re-write this into better grammar and syntax.

>>15036999
The centre alignment doesn't do it any favours unless it's a small extract formatted that way for contextual reasons. Reads like speech written down, a little wobbly in its pacing with so many short clauses right near the end of sentences (the "yessirs" for example). But it does sound like natural speech written down for the most part, which I guess is what you were going for so that's good.

cont.

[Anonymous No.15040707]

Then, the kitchen? But what meals were served? Even on the busiest days of late, the hungriest patrons wouldn’t dare reach for the dinner menu, of which there was only one, crusted shut from a spilled, dried sugary cocktail. What was once a sprawling menu of Italian-American cuisine, his parents, mother’s speciality, now pared down to the things one could make while shaking a gin martini. One glance into the dimly lit kitchen would reveal unplugged fridges, dirty cooktops, a lone teflon plan, in which Milan cooked his breakfast that morning. It was a kitchen built largely to staff enough cooks to feed a small army, or at least, the rows and rows of packed tables which waited, hungry patrons, just outside the open doorway. Recently when the lone bartender would walk through its maze-like, seemingly endless 90 degree turns, secondary kitchens, walk-in fridges, he could only note how alone he felt. The type of aloneness that could almost erase, in his mind, the memories of standing, looking up at the countless cooks, running about, spilling pan drippings, yelling to get out of their way, before finding his favorite crevice between the sink and bakers table, where his mother made that day's pasta. There she is, he thought, here I am. Nestled between her livelihood, and his. The type of warmth one takes for granted as a child, grows weary of as a teenager, and hopelessly searches for as an adult. There, he was. Now, he was not. The kitchen, that barren place was provided means, that wooden table, covered with dust.

Which left only the bar. Stomach high, dark stained oak (long gone was its original, reddish color, of which the restaurant was named), once laminated to protect the surfacing, now peeling from all corners. A sorry sight, but the only source of income in the similarly sorry building. Holidays would be nice, when the empty seats would overflow with groups of 10, 15, 20. The most recent was Christmas, and though now the air was beginning to heat again (the warm breezes of late February), he would still find himself in a cold sweat thinking of how hard he’d worked.

[Anonymous No.15040726]

Then, the kitchen? But what meals were served? Even on the busiest days of late, the hungriest patrons wouldn’t dare reach for the dinner menu, of which there was only one, crusted shut from a spilled, dried sugary cocktail. What was once a sprawling menu of Italian-American cuisine, his parents, mother’s speciality, now pared down to the things one could make while shaking a gin martini. One glance into the dimly lit kitchen would reveal unplugged fridges, dirty cooktops, a lone teflon plan, in which Milan cooked his breakfast that morning. It was a kitchen built largely to staff enough cooks to feed a small army, or at least, the rows and rows of packed tables which waited, hungry patrons, just outside the open doorway. Recently when the lone bartender would walk through its maze-like, seemingly endless 90 degree turns, secondary kitchens, walk-in fridges, he could only note how alone he felt. The type of aloneness that could almost erase, in his mind, the memories of standing, looking up at the countless cooks, running about, spilling pan drippings, yelling to get out of their way, before finding his favorite crevice between the sink and bakers table, where his mother made that day's pasta. There she is, he thought, here I am. Nestled between her livelihood, and his. The type of warmth one takes for granted as a child, grows weary of as a teenager, and hopelessly searches for as an adult. There, he was. Now, he was not. The kitchen, that barren place was provided no means, that wooden table, covered with dust.

Christmas time was his favorite of the year, when briefly, for even just a few hours, something would awaken deep in the restaurants underbelly. Raising to the surface, like air bubbles from a drowning sailors last gasps of air, he’d feel the walls around him come alive. As the voices from happy patrons would echo off the walls, they’d go, and come back with something new. Their reverberation off the aging hardwood walls would bring them a piece of that history, sticking to the sound waves like a sober Grimley to his first scotch and orange juice. The awakening of a long dead being, as if the vibration of the air molecules helped the dwelling become unstuck in time. A journey into the golden age. Drunk middle aged townspeople. Giddy with thoughts of family, giving, the season of togetherness. Milan’s favorite time of year since he was a child. He’d never have much time to appreciate it, as each second of relaxation was soon followed with shouts for another drink, at another corner of the bar. Sometimes in those holiday seasons he’d think of hiring extra help, but was always persuaded otherwise by the greed that only comes when one works for only himself.

[Anonymous No.15040814]

>>15040726
i do not like the use of the words, hungriest, crusted, 90 degree, aloneness, reddish, sorry, heat, cold sweat. That being said, I can see the image you are creating. You just need to read more

[Anonymous No.15040903]

>>15037026
Nicely done for the most part but imo even if you're doing the writing-in-dialect thing, don't attach the connective to the preceding word unless it's something internationally familiar such as "gotta"; it breaks up the flow and readibility of sentences that tad bit too distracting compared to the occasional adjective or verb being different. e.g. "blink a' sleep" gets the point across the same as "blinka' sleep" but the latter takes much longer to parse.

>>15037045
Gets a bit purple towards the end, though the concept described is neat. The dialogue for the most part is all good but it seems a little strange starting with a sentence that doesn't show that the character is speaking in a vernacular dialect and then later being struck by it after your first impression has just been formed.

>>15037057
Seconding what others have said.

>>15037125
I don't give a shit, I register my copyright in case anyone tries to profit off of it and my end goal is to write a novel I'm proud of and leave unattributed copies of the manuscript in random places all over the country, so as to be certain, by force, that the reason I write is not for the ego boost of getting positive feedback or for money or recognition, but for the sake of art itself as a profound expression of human experience, like music, one of the few ways in which we can come closest to creating something out of nothing and therefore closest to godhood. My masterwork, if and when it comes, should remain anonymous.

>>15037809
A handful too many adjectives and overly-specific verbs that sound picked out of a thesaurus- but you manage your subject very well.

>>15038041
A dynamic first few sentences, which is good. There's a few words in there that seem at odds with the rest of the narrative voice, which is rather neutral and describes (presumably) some kind of largely primitive community- "sentience", "masterclass"- probably words common in your vocabulary but feel out of place here when you're talking about spearing fish even if the narrator's voice comes from outside of the more primitive subjects it's describing- it takes the reader out of it.
>etched in his mind like eating or drinking
I know you mean "second nature" by this, and it avoids the problem I just described, but it's not very clear. Maybe something like-
>but the image of the second was etched into his mind like the act of eating or drinking
-or similar. You're comparing a biographic memory to muscle memory, a learned skill- two things close enough to each other that it can't stand as a simile / metaphor, but also aren't directly comparable as if they were the same thing.

>>15038052
This has a lot of good content but I'd question how much the tone of the narrative voice helps us get into the body of the character, it's quite detached for describing things so 'involved'. A couple of the sentences at the end feel clumsier in construction than the rest in what order the info is given to us.

[Anonymous No.15040914]

Climb to the valley,
Oak and low-hanging fog.
Thirst for silence, gasping,
To where dead birds won’t follow

Skin stained blood-orange through
Shining mornings and heaving wind,
Cool stone under bare feet.

Mist of forests, hide me here;
Cold breath of the mountain,
Grant me purpose.

Pinewood forests, low in the haze,
Drowned in sap, sweet in the breeze.
With the ivied bark in stillness, stopping.
Deep emotion, find me here.

[Anonymous No.15040962]

>>15038041
>The river was smoothly moving quickly through its carved path, the air filled with a damp heat, deep green trees hung loosely over the flowing water
great opening, really describes the scene well
>his arms raised above his head, still as that which he was perched upon
this sentence is a bit hard to follow, probably could be cleaned up a little bit
>learning what he could from the masterclass he was being provided
the use of the word "masterclass" kinda takes the reader out of the scene, it seems out of place here
>Natheyük gleefully clapped his hands quietly
I would either get rid of one of the adjectives (gleefully or quietly), or re-word the sentence (Natheyük quietly clapped his hands with glee)
other than minor things like wording and sentence structure, it's pretty interesting anon

[Anonymous No.15040977]

i feel nothing when i read these

[Anonymous No.15040991]

>>15038538
I feel like this would work better in prose format than as a poem

[Anonymous No.15041002]

>>15037809
>and cascades onto the metal skeleton on the back of the seat
I would change it to "cascades down the back of the seat, over the metal skeleton (etched into, carved into, etc) as this sentence doesn't really make sense on a first read
>pressure provided by my new blue jeans giving just enough slack
this sentence is kinda awkward the way it's worded; also it doesn't seem necessary to mention that his pants are brand new blue jeans, as it just adds more description to an already descriptive sentence
>I sit in the last row behind everyone
should be cut out and used as the first sentence for the next paragraph, doesn't really fit here

in all, very nice. The wording is awkward in some places, but I get the kind of feel you're going for.

[Anonymous No.15041003]

>>15038575
>In the fashion of the Visigoths

This is very clunky

Don't tell us they're like Visigays, show us

>When will the masters remove the leash again?

This whole stanza needs a rethink, but I especially don't like the last line, it sounds like something Rage Against The Machine would write

More subtlety needed, so do another draft

[rk No.15041103]

Here's mine. It's an opening to a short story.

My gripe with it is whether it's engaging enough that a reader would want to read on further.

>>15036999
This is good. Has a Coen bros feel to it.

Maybe consider reworking the lines about the pictures and cameras. The paragraph is about the grandfather, and they sort of distract away from the main topic (even if you're trying to evoke some sense of remembering). I think that the paragraph would be stronger if you reworked or even just removed that part.

>>15037026
>>15038041
You need to stop with the long run-on sentences and the use of passive voice. They bog down the story and make it lethargic/hard to read.

>>15038113
>>15038120
Very based. Reminds me of John Fante.

>>15038651
Run-on sentences and the use of commas during action scenes break the pace of the story. Instead you could try using paragraph breaks at appropriate moments to up the drama.

>>15038685
The concept is interesting but I'd reconsider your use of high diction. The diction as a whole seems inconsistent: the first stanza is different from the rest. I think this would be better if you tried writing it out in modern English. Using "O" and "thy" is really cliched and will turn most modern readers off.

>>15038718
you sound like an angsty dosto protag

>>15039549
Your descriptions of scenery are good but the sentences are a bit too long IMO.

I would also change "The soldier was startled by..." to "Suddenly, a head appeared over the crest of the hill, followed by a body" or something to that effect.

One last criticism is there isn't any description of the human characters, only the landscape. (Unless this is a metaphorical story then ignore this).

Also I don't think the traveler would be carrying a spear in his hand while traveling. Shit is pretty heavy to walk around with in your hand. I guess he'd sling it on his back?

Anyway it's good writing and I wouldn't mind reading more.

>>15039951
Getting out there and experiencing life would do you good. If not just take stories from people around you or the internet and fictionalise them lmao.

[Anonymous No.15041137]

How can I tell if I am bad at reading or if the writing is bad? I get tripped up when sentences have like 5 commas in them and I forget what the subject is.

[Anonymous No.15041604]

>>15038113
This is probably my favorite thing I've seen in one of these threads. Has copypasta potential

(1/2)

Walk through a driveway that floods in the weekly downpours of Crown Hill, forming a moat, soaking your shoes and socks and lower pant legs in oily brine. Walk up the set of chewed-though wooden stairs, nails protruding, to the front porch. A giant ashtray, a mountain of cig butts, some scattered onto the wood below around a chair. A smell that floats away from the ashtray into the damp cool air, like a beacon, a lit torch burning all throughout day and night. A wooden door, usually unlocked. You must enter.

In the entry, rugs that were once gaudy but now are dismal. Two sets of stairs, one leading up to the living room and kitchen, one leading down to the basement. Three days ago, Mark dropped a carved pumpkin from the ledge above to the doormat below. Its gooey imprint is a part of the house now. Go upstairs. Walk past the faded painting of a sunflower glued to the walls. That painting, origins unknown, was here before you and is here now and will be here long after you have fled this place. See the living room. This is where it all goes down.

Three couches in a c-shape around a glass table. Rattling windows that face a row of squat anonymous houses with thin lawns. Near the stairs, a flatscreen TV with Xbox 360 and Wii, a pile of unwatched DVDs. A beanbag chair that has seen better days. Long ripped seams on the couches spilling foamy guts. Ash everywhere, the couches’ red painted with black brushstrokes. A blasted warzone down on the carpet, more litter visible than rug, the detritus of years of generations of male inhabitants. Stains upon stains choking the table. Stains of beer, sticky food residue, more streaks of ash and pancaked dirt. Pamphlets and chewed-up magazines in crumples, their hard paper scavenged for strips to use in spliff-rolling. Empty bottles of Black Butte Porter and cans of Natural Ice. Go to the kitchen.

[Anonymous No.15041619]

>>15041604

(2/2)

Towers of undone dishes in the sink, culprit suspected to be Preston and/or Logan. Notes both passive-aggressive and active-aggressive, taped to the faucet and around the sink. Read one: I’M NOT YOU’RE (sic) MOM. THIS IS RIDICULOUS. CLEAN YOUR SHIT!!!! An overflowing trash can with cardboard boxes around it, bearing even more beer cans and empty packs of cigs. A giant hairy ejaculating penis drawn in marker on the fridge. On the stove, an open box of cold pizza beckoning. You are not sure if this was placed there for the roommates to share, or is the property of one roommate and you are forbidden to take a slice. Ropes of hardened cheese clinging to the door of the microwave. Go downstairs.

Walk into the basement bathroom that is also the laundry room. Puddles of shower water on the cold floor seep into your socks; someone didn’t dry off before they left the shower, goddammit. Long-unwashed towels on the rack with stains you’d rather not think about. Know your enemies: the washer and dryer. Fear them. Respect them. Plead with them, try to coax them gently and roughly into accepting your eight quarters and doing their job. Give up. Go back upstairs and stand there, before the living room, thinking. You live here now; this is your house; this is home. You’d better hope that you don’t belong here.

[Anonymous No.15041760]

"Almost ready, Sir! I want to look my absolute best for you!" she called
out. It was partially true. She did want to look the best she possibly
could to expedite her morning ritual, but she also desperately hoped he
would allow her to keep her bra on. The padding helped alleviate some of
the pain that they incurred when Sam, quite literally as he said he
would, smack her tits around. She reached behind her back and with
surgical precision connected the two straps of the bra on the appropriate
set of hooks. The bra was much tighter than when she tried it on last two
weeks ago. A product of her breasts approaching C-cup territory, no
doubt. She reached to her shoulders and adjusted the straps slightly to
provide her with greater comfort. She slid on her matching panties,
careful to not allow the fabric to get caught in the delicate lock of her
chastity cage, snapped the waistline into place, and looked at the
reflection in the mirror. Aside from the bump in her panties, there was
no indication that she was anything other than a young, mid-20s woman.
Granted, while her breasts were unmistakably female, her waist and hips
were just now beginning to form the child-bearing shape that his Latina
ancestors so proudly displayed. Even still, there was no way she would
ever be mistaken for a man. Even after she found a way out of this mess,
she didn't know if there would ever be enough surgery and hormones to
return her to her former physical condition, to say nothing of her
altered mental and emotional condition.

[Anonymous No.15042372]

writing is a meme but I'm invested now
https://justpaste dot it/3yn2o

[Anonymous No.15042732]

>>15041137
That's usually a fault in the writing. A sentence with five clauses can be fine, and a good writer will throw in a few for variety's sake, but the frequent use of winding sentences is a ghastly affectation, and well-constructed sentences are easy to follow no matter the length.

[Anonymous No.15042958]

>>15041103
I like this, it's cute and simple. I can't tell much about it from just two paragraphs, but I would read at least a little further to see how it plays out. I think you should cut out the beginning exposition about the job unless it plays directly into the story later. Maybe start with the "It all began..." sentence

[Anonymous No.15043150]

Whiskey Jubilation

Damn!
Yellow piss
Drowning the serpent in my mouth, like a worm in mud
Foul acrid burn! Punish the throat and strip it clean
With swailing!
Scorched earth and soul!

Amen!
Shared suffering renews our defiance
Like fires in rain, bright bitter embers
Lingering warmth of hearty ballads
Over dim dule dirges
Thoughts of doom reminding of life

Ha!
Smooth spirit splashes on skin
Tingling, numb legs like rivers
Flow, meander, waver
Eyes submerged
Hazy lights, molasses motion, echoed sound

Hallelujah!
Golden blood rejuvenates
Rejoice! Godly mighty laughter
Spinning tempest, songs and chants and shouts
Softest sheets! softest skin!
Caressing dreams!

[Anonymous No.15043429]

Professor Smiles

I can't help but think I'm still meant for
something greater.

I'm loved, and I'm a mentor to many.
And yet my soul is screeching.

The arid air makes it hard to breath.
And the sun is burning my skin.
My knees crack with every step.

Today is just another day.
And I'm standing front and center.
They sit in silence and stare dejectedly with blank expressions.
I wish they'd look at me when I speak, and answer me when I talk.
I sometimes wonder if I'm teaching an assembly of robots.
Oh, see the clock?
It's our allotted time.
Beep.
Beep.
It's time for you all to turn on.

[Anonymous No.15043777]

>>15043150
as much as I can enjoy poetry I enjoyed this. Not exactly Robert Frost, but still bretty good.


The alarm goes off with the clatter of a song she wished she had gotten around to changing. The sleep she'd not gotten the night before weighed on her face and on her eyelids. Reaching for her phone she shut off the clatter, somehow managing to stumble out of bed. She sat there limply upon the edge of her matress and answered her phone, strands of her snapchats and messages shooting off into the ether. Several she left unread, deciding instead to let their originators to stew in their uncertainty. She found such games to be funny.

Finally she rose to stand, the scattering of her clothes beneath her feet a welcome feeling. Her bra itched and she remembered she had yet to do laundry. She thumbed a pair of shorts and, slightly more awake she proceeded into the bathroom. Even this early she liked how her hair looked; she'd made certain to hitch it up in a pony tail before she had passed out the night before. She took a few scant moments to take a series of selfies, liberally daubed in filters to create the effect she desired. Satisfied, she quickly pissed and replaced her tampon casting it into the trashcan beside the toilet.

A half hour later she managed to grab an apple prior to departure, and she munched it while she started her car, the scattered trash on the bare carpeted floor beneath her notice. She thumbed the Facetime and spent the ten minutes on the way to the gym chatting with her friend Samantha from Psych 101. The weather was warm and the pants she wore felt great, the breeze running across the clinging material. She knew exactly which angles complimented her figure, she'd spent several hours when she bought them taking pictures, so they damn well better accentuate her ass.

The parking lot was not even remotely full and her parking job was perhaps a little too close to the painted line but she didn't care. She passed a shorter, fat guy coming out of the gym, the glow of satisfaction on his face dying as she perfunctorily painted a mask of indifference and passed him on the way in. Men like that disgusted her and she felt disgusted knowing he had probably stared at her ass (even if she half enjoyed the attention.) She checked in at the counter, the wry smile as the receptionist glared at her larger tits when she thought her distracted. Finally, she threw her bag into a locker and proceeded into the gym proper.

[Anonymous No.15044815]

>>15035889
I ended up posting this seen form a Touhou fan book I'm writing on /jp/ when I sad "/lit/ here." They seem interested so I'm wondering what non weebs think.

For context, Reimu (a shinto priestess) is visiting a vampire to answer a classified ad to model for a panting.
"Master Flandre, you have a visitor."

I see a wing with rainbow colored crystals creep into the door frame followed by the rest of Flandre meekly peeking into the room. After a brief look at me she walks towards me and says "Ego veni ut qui de dictione. Im 'non est aliquis relevari scio."
"Master Flandre, miss Hakure doesn't understand English. You have to speak to her in Japanese."
What are thay saying? Is this English?
"I am sorry, I forgot."
I think Flandre's Japanese has has somehow gotten worse since I've last seen her.
"I happy to see you. I was scared about who would come."
"Master Flandre, if that would be all I will be geting back to work now."
"I will be fine. Reimu can't be one of the wolf people."
"Sakuya, whats this about. . ." before I could finish my question I realized Sakuya had disappeared, leaving me alone with a mentally unstable yokai.
"About what?" Flandre asks
". . .wolf people." I say finishing my sentese.
"You not know? Thay foreigners that turn into wolf monsters. I was afraid my model could be one."
"Aren't you a foreigner?" I ask Flandre.
"No, I live inside the manner. You came form outside, so you are a foreigner."
I almost correct her, but I know it's a wast of time. Youkai are always doing and saying things that don't make sense. I'm better off changing the subject. Just now I noest that a part of the carpet is a defiant shade of red.
"Who's blood is that?"
"My blood."
"You're blood?"
"Yes. It my blood."
"And why would YOUR blood be on the floor?"
"To let the pain out. It was supposed to be little cut but I see the bleedings and I got. . . excited. . ."
Flandre looks at her blood stands and breathes heavily.
"It pretty how it ooze and drip and splat."

>>15041760
I love how you gradually reveled a Ranma like plot and gave the reader a good image of the state of your character.

[Anonymous No.15045143]

>>15038282
CRITICIZE ME GOD DAMMIT

[Anonymous No.15045226]

>>15036085
Very good. No critiques here. I hope you have formed a story for this one

[Anonymous No.15045403]

>>15035967
The imagery here is good but the language feels too "writerly", by that I mean it doesn't stand out, there's no style. The actual concepts and images are good, but change the phrasing a little bit. Otherwise good stuff

[Anonymous No.15045410]

>>15037125
I unironically have this fear, which is why I never post my writing in these threads, I only critique.

[Anonymous No.15045873]

Just had some fantasy shit on my mind so:

He took a quick glance over at Mortimer, but a glance at that old priest always seemed to turn into a staring contest. Mort carried with him a face that could make a peasant-child cry. Looking at him brought the taste of salt into one's throat, and this notion seemed to be carried on throughout the village. Torin hadn't seem him in years. Memories of being threatened with a brick in the back of the church by Mort appeared in his head. But that was 14 years ago. Torin almost pulled his sword out its sheath when suddenly, the trance was broken. They both looked away and it felt like time was being stopped. Almost too much. These thoughts were quickly disregarded when Torin saw his mother in the corner of his eyes.

[Anonymous No.15045951]

>>15038282
>In my time sailing I have missed very few things with much sentiment
I know what you mean here but I think it'd sound better to use a word other than sentiment. Passion, vigor maybe. For some reason the sentence as written didn't intuitively "click."
>In my time sailing
Implies that we are hearing the narrator's reflections of the wilderness while he's at sea, but
>This is why I have spent what time I have here
seems to imply the present moment is in the western wilderness, as does the rest of the passage.
>From the moraines and grassy mountain foothills whose faces are nearly in bloom, to the dry and craggy canyon slopes chiseled by the ---- River.
Not a sentence, dependent clause without an independent clause to latch onto. I'd make that period a comma. Not that there's anything wrong with breaking grammatical conventions in creative writing, but it doesn't look like you're trying to.
>at this, and at any point in the year
Why draw the distinction?
>(I had to pull and redact some names, but you get the idea)
Why? Is this how you're writing it or did you just remove them to post it? Don't write it like that, it looks like you're intentionally emulating nineteenth century authors who'd "censor" the names of specific places and it's pretty cringe.
Overall though not bad. Nice description and a pretty solid conveyance of emotion. I wouldn't stop reading out of boredom.

[Anonymous No.15045975]

>>15045873
>Mortimer
>other character is not called Richard

[Anonymous No.15045994]

>>15045873
>this notion seemed to be carried on throughout the village
This particular phrase feels awkward to me.
>the trance was broken
Literal or figurative trance? A reader could take this as either.
>it felt like time was being stopped
>was being stopped
Active voice would sound better here
>These thoughts
Which thoughts? Thoughts about Mort? If so this is a very abrupt shift without a conjunction or transition phrase
I like your this on the whole and your style of writing in general though.

[Anonymous No.15046059]

>>15035967
I am personally not a fan of this, although I don't know the context. If you want to grip the reader with a dragon but unlike other dragons. Instead of making it ugly instead of beautiful, express the rage of the dragon, the unbearable longing of having all of its kind decimated, don't try to make me scared of it, don't try to make me vomit, because that is the opposite of understanding.
>>15045873
I really like this. The emphasis on subjective details really struck me. The salt bit I think was the best. The brick is a close second. Keep on my man, I like your style. There is something good in every sentence.

[Anonymous No.15046067]

>>15035889
What's the name of this Pasternak painting?

[Anonymous No.15046074]

When a friendly face emerges out of the crowds of indifferent people I feel an obligation to charm, to ingratiate beyond the means of my own personhood. We all have two options with our relationships: either tell the truth about our unexciting lives, or lollygag in an endless game of cat and mouse where life and career do not become an illusion but an elusion (I have coined many terms in my scholarly work).
Most will call this lying. I call it something else, an emotional tango, a dance of some kind. What can I say? It’s the only humanity left in my life. It’s all I know, so, what difference would it make if I laid bare my real identity when it is all a game? What would I tell them? That I come from a long line of con men and degenerate gamblers? That my intellectualism is just a disguise for the lace curtain yearnings of a working class kid? Is that what they want? Truly? Or should I say that despite my genetic good fortune I alternate between anxiety and depression, but that these names for things are nothing, wind, bullshit, all different masks worn by the same face. And if they ask how I know this you know what I’d say? I’ll say I know because I’ve tried it all: SSRI, Kale Shakes, Talk Therapy, Yoga, and various other vandalisms of the human spirit, because at the end of it all, there is nothing, no hope at self-improvement or upward mobility. None at all. I choose to lie, because I cannot talk to anyone in the real world.

[Anonymous No.15046129]

To all of our best and brightest there are no lessons left to learn
To all of our greatest and most powerful there are no wars left to win
The world is on fire and there are no levers left to push
The world is on fire and there is nowhere left to run

I am an adjusted man. I live in a world of absolutes.
It was a muggy morning. My sneakers got wet walking through the grass. Goddamn, I shouldn’t have taken that shortcut. Gym was packed. No machines open. Oh well. Rowhouses dampen my mood, no women to stare at, that sort of a reason. Really I like to admire myself in the rising sunshine through the tall glass panels.
I fucked my wrist up about a year ago. I like to think I’m more careful now, but losing myself in the rush is all I know. Only the animal inside, thrashing the careful sinews of my tissue, can burn away the soft cobwebs of my own mediocrity.
My father asked me as a child if I ever thought that people did great things because they felt great about themselves. Of course, I thought, they are great. But no, I didn’t understand. Don’t get lost in delusions, he would say, there is a difference between what you are and what you think you are. This is why we train. It is not just physical. It peels back layers of emotions and the thousand mental weaknesses.
My dad was a great man. I think of him as my ass touches the back of my ankles on the squat rack. He would disapprove that I wasn’t using free weights, but some fatass was pussyfooting on my rack. Next best thing. Oh boy I was in the zone. Music isolated me. I ignored nylon cotton and wool in the ocean of flesh and athleisure. My whole world was the pressure of my hands on the bar.
I did some diamond push-ups and then got the hell out of there. Time for eggs.
I use an app that tracks my macronutrients in a clear, easy to read chart. Sometimes, I eat things that are, I guess, eccentric to fulfill the requirements. This was one of those mornings. I had a race that afternoon, so I opted to fill up on carbs and maybe a little fat. I have had mayonnaise sandwiches since a child. That funky blandness in the heart of a whole-wheat bun reawakens the joy of late childhood watching Bama games.
I look at people in the cafeteria. I play games in my head about them. How much could one squat? Are they capable of doing a chin-up? I noticed a black guy a few tables down from me. He was holding his phone up at me. It looked like he was filming.
“What’s up?” I said, a menace to the delicate peace of breakfast time.
“Oh nah, man just go back to eating,” he swallowed laughter and left the room.
Strange guy, I thought, probably doesn’t even count his macros.
The pressure of the afternoon race built up in me. I could hardly contain myself in class. Jittery tapping and pen-clicks saw me through to 4 o’clock.

[Anonymous No.15046132]

>>15035889
A poem I wrote when I was an angsty 19 year old:

crying is a pity
when you've got nothing to lose
praying feels shitty
when you're already in hell
healing is a pain
when it hurts more than it's worth
laughing feels pointless
when everything's the joke

the chatter sounds like static
and you're the receiver
will you just watch?
the endless static

sleeping is a chore
when your dreams are so real
walking feels faster
when the world's spinning with you
running is a crutch
when you're afraid of yourself
breathing feels empty
when you live in outer space

the truth keeps on twisting
and you're the preacher
will you believe yourself?
the lazy truth

living is a moment
when you're nearing the end
lightning feels slow
when the best is behind you
dying is a lie
when you're twenty years old
crying is a pity
when it's all you ever did

the regret's plain ugly
and you're the timepiece
will you turn back?
the easier way

[Anonymous No.15046135]

>>15046129
The race went well. I won first place. I looked out at the faces as the metal was being draped over my head. My friends, my beautiful girlfriend, Anna, and my mother, God I love her more than anything. Most of all I saw my father. His stern grace was in full force as he allowed a smile across his face. I scanned and saw more and more people I loved. My coach, my manager, and the black guy from the cafeteria. Wait, what? What the fuck was he doing here?
“We want to Congratulate Ramsey O’Callahan, Blake Toole, and Gabe Matthew…”
“That’s the mayonnaise nigga!”
The whole crowd roared in laughter. Phones came out of pockets and I was blinded by a tidal wave of flash photography.
“What the fuck is happening?” I looked down at my mother and father, who were laughing and pointing at me.
The whole scene erupted in pandemonium. The crowds rushed me and I was tortured by a barrage of photo-ops. For days and days after I was haunted by transient mobs of teens and influencers.
4 years later and people still stop me in the street. It was one of those memes that refuses to die. They take photos in the cafeteria where it happened. There is a plaque there on the table.
I see things clear as day now. I know humility is only an insurance policy. It just shores up the narcissism. It’s paying off the police of your own conscience. People come up to me and are in awe of my greatness. They say I was a huge influence on the development of internet culture. I don’t know what they’re talking about. All I did was eat a dumb sandwich. At the end of it all I knew what my father finally meant. Great people do not feel great about themselves. They achieve greatness because they feel horrible inside.

[Anonymous No.15046138]

To write upon a field of snow
In steps of winding ink
Windows on the eddied stows
Of infinite beneath

[Anonymous No.15046144]

I saw him on the windowsill.

And he saw me back. White whiskers, greying fur, eyes suffused with inky lust, the mirror of a bestial passion that flared upon my face. His tail twirled behind him, fingering the frame he sat upon. His lips he licked. My cock was hard.

He leapt up off the sill and strolled (seductive casanova) towards my tautened pants. His scapulae he raised with every forward pace, wherewith he dragged his member on the cold and furry floor. My breath was still, his paws on my feet, my trousers, my belt, boxers -- his tongue took my buckle and my hands gripped the armchair, tight, rigid, illicit passion. Sweet slobber graced my underpants and traced a thickened outline; his furry face pointed at my crotch. He looked up. Our eyes met. I thought he smiled? His nose dipped and teeth tore at my loose modesty: he was ravenous, thirsty, lusting for cock. I obliged and hoisted his feline form into the air, tearing my boxers away too. My cock flipped up, free from its cloth cage, his arms were spread and his asshole cleared for impact -- no lubricant today, my friends; he wants it raw and I oblige.

I thrust him down, no time to pause, and a purr of pleasure escapes. I pick him up and plunge him upon me, a ring on a finger; he meows out with every stroke, pink willy waving in penile synchrony.

Pitter patter rain drops clapped atop the roof, a snarling, sneering, satyric applause that cheered our bestial love.

I count the shoves of my cock in his cavity: forty. On the forty-first I stop, scream, release my gooey seed. He whimpers in pain, licks my sapient hand in sexual submission.

He pounced on me a lion but I, a man, and master of the earth, hath made him my pussy.

[Anonymous No.15046149]

>>15046132
I like the receiver static bit, the subject matter and the preface with angsty and 19 year old gave me a bad first impression but I was honestly surprised pleasantly by the voice of the poem and the steady procession of emotional logic. The simplicity of the poem is its strength. I really like the phrase "lazy truth."
What this reminds me of is the poetry of David Berman. It's pleasantly sad, charmingly depressing.

[Anonymous No.15046158]

>>15046144 I was hoping this was garfield fanfiction
>>15046138
Infinite belief is a great phrase, not bad, just make something longer and more imagistic or atleast depict something that is less abstract

[Anonymous No.15046169]

>>15046149
>charmingly depressing
This is where the unfortunate preface comes from. It's hard for me to gauge whether it's gratuitous, or tasteful.

[Anonymous No.15046171]

>>15046149
Any critiques to improve upon it with?

[Anonymous No.15046181]

>>15045951
Thanks for the input, I really appreciate it. And no, I just redacted info to post here, because the features mentioned basically triangulate my exact location. Thanks for pointing out that dependent clause, because I never would've noticed it. I was a little tipsy when I wrote it. I also specified this time of year because it's when the area I'm in greens up and everything is in bloom. Even in the dry canyons, the cherry orchards go apeshit with blossoms.

[Anonymous No.15046190]

>>15046171
>>15046169
I would pare it down even more, make it as simple as possible

[Anonymous No.15046193]

>>15046181
FUCK, I should've mentioned the cherry orchards in the passage

[Anonymous No.15046197]

>>15046190
Any glaring lines that look amateurish? There are several that make cringe at this point in my life.

[Anonymous No.15046201]

this one just got rejected from an online mag, feedback appreciated

[Anonymous No.15046210]

>>15046181
I live in a city where the cherry blossoms bloom every spring and I'd agree that they're a sight to behold. It's like a second winter in April with snowdrifts of pink.

[Anonymous No.15046220]

>>15046201
it isn't "cool" to write about Christianity in a positive sense. The punctuation feels forced, it's difficult to read and the wording feels pretentious.

[Anonymous No.15046240]

>>15046201
also if the concept is that it's a lullaby, then the language doesn't flow well because it's way too dense and complicated. Ever notice how most lullabies are incredibly simple and have a consistent rhyme scheme?

[Anonymous No.15046255]

>>15046138
i disagree with the other anon, keeping this brief has a very refreshing vitality to it, i could easily see this in a collection of many other brief photographs like this one
>>15046132
>>15046197
would be friends with you/10. I wouldn't edit this, for nostalgia sake. but if you want to move on I'd say keep an eye or an ear I guess on your rhythm, and don't let it trail off into strange parts unless you're gonna reel it back even harder. mixed metaphor but w/e
>>15043429
try not to be so obvious, anon. this sounds like an anime
>>15043150
nice revelrous tone
>>15040914
starts out pretty strong but you didn't hold that tone or take it anywhere really

[Anonymous No.15046268]

>>15046255
>>15046132
>>15046138
I wrote both of these, so thanks anon, you seem pretty cool yourself.

[Anonymous No.15046294]

>>15046255
I wanted to extend the metaphor of that poem to the theme of writing as well, the "field of snow" being a page. To combine the imagery of someone walking on a lake of ice leaving footsteps behind them with the idea of writing itself; the complementary image of black unfathomed death(infinity) just beneath the surface of the sheet of ice you walk on with the potential works left unwritten by the nature of morality. Sadly, I haven't found the inspiration, or quality yet to match the first part.

But idk, it also work sas a simple tone poem, like a landscape painting.

[Anonymous No.15046323]

The morning i awoke to was holy. As i opened my eyes the world was bathed in golden light. I scratched away the eye-jizz and enjoyed the wonderful sight through my eastward window. I overlooked a vast cemetery, that i had yet not visit. It was my third awakening in my new home, here in Dresden. The other two mornings i felt a real dread rummaging through my intestines. But today a serene feeling had taken hold of me. The first two days of utter loneliness had felt like being poisoned - now i felt cleansed. I knew how fragile this feeling is, how a single wrong turn throughout the day may derail me onto a path of self-forgetfulness, of distraction. So i was intent to remain at high-level attentiveness regarding my self, my needs, my desires, and in regards to all of that, my balance. For example, i quickly caught myself envisioning going to the super market and celebrating this wonderful and rare start into the day with a extensive breakfast. I longed for the feeling of sickening fullness that tends to erase my consciousness from the equation, as if this would allow me to stay within this bright happiness forever, as if its only enemy was my consciousness. I know better, even though i often forgot, that it is only in consciousness that i can maintain such happiness. Being attentive. Listening to myself. Guiding this body of mine through a narrow path, past the dangers of impulse.
But just as i anticipated the trap of stuffing myself with food to eternalize my bliss, i suddenly was drawn into a difficult-to-solve argument regarding the best course of action to take now. I tried to listen to myself, but as i did so, a strong tiredness came over me. Now, i impulsively wanted to lay back into bed and forget about it all, i imagined a vast, unending sleep. A never ending dream, again an infinite liberation from consciousness. I did not understand, and i even felt offended. What did my consciousness do wrong for my subconscious to rebel like this? I had so far done nothing but wake up, scratch myself a bit, take a piss and walk back into my room, sitting down on my chair while staring through the window. The rest was just trying to figure out what to do, and yet, it had only taken these five minutes, to evoke in me a desperate tiredness of myself. Should i simply eat myself into a stupor? Should i sleep till my legs grow restless? Is that the point of living? Is the issue that i never truly let go? That i dont dwell in stupor and let it be as it is? That i never sleep without counting the hours? Or should I not insist on a compromise? But what compromise could i negotiate, if i have no goal myself. What did i want to do today? All that came up were things that i did not want. Take a long walk. Read. Write. Answer emails to people that i havent answered to in half a year, not just risking damage to those friendships, but having effectively ended them? I clearly felt that I did not want to do these things, but felt that i needed to do these things.

[Anonymous No.15046327]

>>15046323
Oh shit, i thought this was the write whats on your mind thread. sry

[Anonymous No.15046344]

>>15046323
I related to this, motivation is a struggle when you're living in a social vacuum. This is honestly making me want to journal more.

[Anonymous No.15046379]

I wipe the bannister of glue
And sweep it o'er my face,
Whereat the chiming winter flue
Compels the oven space.

At once I fill my lunging chest
With sound of falling cows;
They sting the ringlets of my breast
And boys of wandering brows.

Such children I n'er saw alive
As those who felt the prick
Of drying clothes, the midnight jive,
Or Satan's kindled brick.

Such boys are not for modern days
Who made this thing of me.
As Ernald claims in Aldine lays,
So let me ever be.

[Anonymous No.15046398]

>>15035889
I am gay and my dick is small

[Anonymous No.15046401]

>>15046398
what country are you from

[Anonymous No.15046409]

>>15046401
figuratively, or what?

[Anonymous No.15046410]

no, actual country.
i want to hook up with you

[Anonymous No.15046413]

>>15046294
as i've spent a little more time with it I appreciate it more, it's not immediate though, to its credit, i don't like suggesting people edit their poems much because it takes away some of the spontaneity but i still feel like you could open this up a little more, go somewhere with it, although i'm not sure what to suggest. i'd like to read something else you've written, for context and because i'm curious, if you'll let me

[Anonymous No.15046475]

>>15046413
Here's some poetry I've done of varying quality, I tend to just throw stuff at the wall.

do whatever you want with this
doesn't matter to me anymore
keep it in your heart or in your head
feel how you want to think
there's meaning in nothing if you like

do whatever you hate to want
like chase balloons on foot
or count the faces in a mirror
like dropping seconds in an ocean
there's nothing but meaning if you want
-------
Discordant scratchings rend the chord of my heart,
as your truth is whispered to my reality.
Fraying all that tied us.
Strung together no longer.
--------
Stirred skies sashed in stars
Silence betwixt the sparks of life
Sights in-line strung what flies
Snow as light, black as ice
--------
I remember bird songs silenced.
In an explosion of brilliance.
Wind before the storms.
Purple, yellow, pink then grey.
My seconds lived them out.
And as I fell beneath the grass,
the Earth flew to the sky.
-------
Shine on me lonely sun.
The night is ageless and I'm too young.
In every eye, their skies are wide.
The herons sing cold lullabies.
-------
Someone found a future in a shell closed with glue
where dreams never wake and there's nothing left to do
dusk as bright as day peered through the crack at dawn
and the moon has left as the world goes out of turn
where lonely in sacred sorrow wallow in self-spun prayer
as friendly fake fortunate souls in soft godless air
faces that rest on their hinges some more open than the sky
bearing books born by hands writ by men older than night
puppets that tamed their shadows long beautiful and dead
they read bohemian bibles forged of paper burning dark
to the amber coated god from a time left undone
with eyes dwelling in keyholes, and sight keener than wise
a day locked from within is all they'll ever find

[Anonymous No.15046481]

>>15046413
Sorry if this is way too much. I have a word document packed with random snippets and I love to shill.


oh caged halcyon of mine
my somber songbird
born in silvered echo chambers missing walls
like a globe falling down stairs
or a crumpled world cast away
the winds changed and you're not the one-
to feather or fare them
so sleep in sweet sorrow
and dream of days far from yours
of skies feathered and weathers unworn
------
I fold clouds into rain- over still grass.
Bending breath over gales of the last storm.
Brushed blades break as hair in wind to flashed fields.
As smoke distends from streams in chimnies.
A tattered ribbon spun over the dark front.
-----
I saw light from under shadow.
The farces of fantastic far-off places.
Personas that delude and psyches which whine.
That spread insanity in well-worn wisdom.
Gazing far down from above misshapen clouds.
Upon the lands of dead gods and shivering souls.
Phasing past, eroding with words.
As solely what's said is silver truth.
Until bedrock sits upon emptiness.
Nowhere to dig, everything to claim.
------
Such quiet chords played on the pine boughs in the soul of man, where in this dirt, this ash of earthly cremation are the tokens of my father. Whose bones here lie wet, in their own time borrowed and now in their debt? Facsimile vessels worn through [many] lives, soon my own to be sown on the air. Yet while I still stand on grass, it is not yet time for sorrow. For a bliss it is to see another dawn in my winter days.

[Anonymous No.15046488]

>>15046481
My bad, this is the correct version of the last one

Such quiet chords that pull the boughs of pines and souls of men. Where in this dirt, this ash of earthly cremation are the tokens of my father, whose bones are still wet, burrowed in their time, now in their debt; facsimiles of the vessel that wears my life, soon to be scattered on the air. Yet now is not the time for sorrow, while I stand upon the grass, for bliss it is to see the dawn in my winter days.

How rank is the crown that wears the head, that governs by personal hurt instead of national health. In the truest world, one that turns beyond the cradle of language and its infantile trappings is an eye that burns as a star and illuminates the world and fosters warm life. For language is the cage that is peered through to truth, an arms-length apart, a galaxy of islands never to know another shore. Another mind to wear the head.

[Anonymous No.15046520]

>>15046413
I was born in bed.
Between sheets of satin and ragged wool.
From another room, I heard screaming,
arguing in an unheard tongue.
My to-me unknown name was on their lips.
From dawn to zenith sun it rained,
and my pallid skin bore the shadowed droplets
which slid from the sky on the window behind my little head.
Such was my awakening from din and fallen peace.
-----
Summer leaves now white as eyes
To carve my oaken heart
And count along to the last spring
A lifetime in its art


Here's some prose, if you're still awake.

The internet’s a brain of brains and I’m a burnt-out neuron. My life has been dissipating in isolation, the technology that I’m addicted to kills the comradery in me, I dodge eyes at school, at work, and glaze past paragraphs of conflicting opinions online. Modern medicine gives us time to meditate on death and the questions that rise fan fires, people feel they deserve their natural dues, but notions(motions?) such as those are the antithesis of natural selection, they just appear more artificial than ever and that’s where the confusion is. The monologues behind the glass are seeds of sadness, I may die, but these words are engraved in pixels.
----
I feel like my best moments are lodged in my head somewhere and trying to dig themselves deeper on every revisit. They teach you in most intro to psyche courses that memories change every time you remember them, a car will change from green to grey and little details like that. As well as the fact that humans(probably most mammals) have difficulty remembering pain. Does pain change in retrograde, or is it beyond even the subconscious flux.
----
I feel like we’re so insular in our interconnectedness, like there’s only so many branches a spider can hang its web from; so the “informed” internet goer strings themself via recommended content algoriths, like an esoteric fate programmed by google, an epistemological engine determined by businessmen. A fragile temple consisting of adjacent and skinny columns.
The feedback looping nature of meme culture is the wallpaper of these various digital sects and their nuance implies the depth of the community, how many places they pull from and the variance in them. Post post modernism is an echo chamber skull trying to clear its mind. An uneducated person on the internet is as dangerous to himself as anyone else.

[Anonymous No.15046598]

>>15046210
it's incredible. Though we don't have enough to get the blossom snowdrifts, it's still beautiful

[rk No.15046600]

>>15042958
Thanks, that's a very good idea. I'll probably do that and see if it works.

[Anonymous No.15046644]

I love the style of writing that everyone uses here. Is there a specific name for it?

The kind of archaic, 19th century style packed with adjectives. Might come across a bit pretentious at times but I think modern writing has lost the charm that you people keep alive with your writing. I always enjoy reading what you come up with

[Anonymous No.15046691]

>>15046520
I liked your poetry quite a lot.

[Anonymous No.15046724]

>>15046481
>>15046488
>>15046520
thanks for letting me live in the world of these works for a little while anon, with this context I can see that what you originally posted was a different kind of thing than you usually do especially in that last bit where you use the imperative for the reader to find the poet and the poem just has a different spirit I think. your prose pieces could easily be dialogue in a movie, they seem that lucid. cheers. I am still awake, I'm helping my friend grieve an uncle by watching Half Baked with him on youtube.

[Anonymous No.15046789]

a little prose

--

It was the natural response to empty land - to salivate at its possibilities, calculating in the mind how best to demarcate it, with rocks or scratched dirt? Then the matter of defending it. It invited a new all-consuming stress to guard the claim, and often made the occupier more miserable than had they no idea of the virgin lands to begin with. But such was the sexual allure of untapped country - every inch of it was an unscratched mystery: under what rock lay ore, gas, and gems? Which streams overflowed with fish? What fields of black soil could heave from their nethers a swelling bounty of crop?

This was the dream which hypnotized men to kill and be killed in scores, in such a way that their scattered bones bracketed the little piles of fieldstone meant to guard the slices of yesteryear's partitioning. Columns of tanks swept over the province snapping bones beneath their weight and pulverizing the tall rock piles with little more than a grumble and whine from their engines.


For each camp whistle-tune he heard he also saw a man hunched over with the splatter of breakfast in the dirt and on their shins. He had enough veterans - his crack troops and his green yet capably trained ones. But the monks who were all uninitiated shook at the new sounds of war. Ctesias first among them felt what could have best been called “unfermented,” let not yet to stew in the mill-stones which milled men . He was prepared as anyone else might have been without having seen or felt, but there was no training against the animal repulsion, the experience of wildlife at the roar of saws. Lacking natural resistance, he withdrew from a ledger of inner grit and pushed down fear with his breakfast back into the gut.

The tanks crashed into life, and the personnel carriers too - they filled the air with a deathly stench of oil lubricants and batteries releasing their vapors. The gun tractors kicked up the wet soil and engineers flattened it with duckboard and plows. Enemy artillery disgorged heaps of earth and soil which formed whole mazes of the pasty sinking mud astride shallow pits, filled halfway with yellow water, the sorts of obstacles men were lost in. It was vicious that the machine of the division continued to move, like a runner leaning forward, propelled by their own weight.

[Anonymous No.15046814]

>>15040914
The first stanzas really good, leave it untouched. I think you should completely the second and third, the fourth is workable but I think you should write a more concrete ending.
>>15046379
You have a very good sense of rhythm, I'd to see you experiment more with it.

I've had the idea for this in my head the past few days but really struggled with it, tell me what you think:
My Lady shines through my shuttered window,
Attacks, alights upon my sleeping eyes.
Awake I tumble, from the Sea Eternal,
Over cascading waters. Magenta
Hues suffuse the morning mist,
A lunar sediment; plenitude resting in
The One above the One in All,
Until their dissipation by her flaming tongues.
Steeples erected, verandas buttressed
The instant I throw back my shutters.
I raise my eyes to see My Lady:
A Fiery, Decapitated Head.

[Anonymous No.15046822]

>>15040914
The first stanzas really good, leave it untouched. I think you should completely abandon the second and third, the fourth is workable but I think you should write a more concrete ending.
>>15046379
You have a very good sense of rhythm, I'd to see you experiment more with it.

I've had the idea for this in my head the past few days but really struggled with it, tell me what you think:

My Lady shines through my shuttered window,
Attacks, alights upon my sleeping eyes.
Awake I tumble, from the Sea Eternal,
Over cascading waters. Magenta
Hues suffuse the morning mist,
A lunar sediment; plenitude resting in
The One above the One in All,
Until their dissipation by her flaming tongues.
Steeples erected, verandas buttressed
The instant I throw back my shutters.
I raise my eyes to see My Lady:
A Fiery, Decapitated Head.

[Anonymous No.15046827]

A poem on the present circumstances.

-

"Ebola?" 'Gay.' "Corona?" 'Not quite so.'
"Wherein the difference?" 'I will show.
The black man's accursed shame-' "Is that what
We have dubbed it?" 'Why yes, how could we not?'
"Go on." 'Well, it is like an apple tree,
Whose winding boughs depend with Opals three, Whereon we find the crumbling form of some
Four worms: all sweet of taste, of colour glum.
In these our minds detect some hidden sauce,
The residue of human juice. Like gorse
It clips their paper skin. As salt, it stings
And forces them to walk in slender rings.
Around each fruit's exploding navel, they
Swim the priest's stream to heaven's gaping bay.
As when a masticating dog chews cats,
Or men pile pigs on bats, or hogs on rats,
Thus does the gangrenous and snake-like thing
Gobble the plump and golden pulp of Sping.
This is the nigger's affliction. Belike
Eating another man's dirt-laden dyke.
'Rona, whereas, feeds like the water mink
That dwells four fathoms past the ocean's brink.
Implanting its meat in the hide of god,
And chidden of man clasps the inner sod
Of heaving, breathing, leathern sacks of air,
It roams the knowing statistician's glare.
The finger slips, Corona's knife-point dips;
The ground inspects our soiled fingertips.'

[Anonymous No.15046832]

>>15038041
I think it's pretty sweet and I get along with how you write. Very clear and easy to understand. Keep going mate

[Anonymous No.15046839]

>>15046255
>>15046822
Thanks guys, still working out where I'll go with it, just for practice

[Anonymous No.15046900]

>>15046644
Pseud Realism

[Anonymous No.15047857]

>>15042372
please help

[Anonymous No.15048461]

How has the virus effected your writing? Have you written anything that addresses it directly? Has your work gotten darker and lonelier?

[Anonymous No.15048497]

>>15035889
>together we shall grow strong
fucking commie piece of shit

[Anonymous No.15048821]

>>15046827
Bruh this reads like a rap song

[Anonymous No.15048864]

>>15048821
specifically like an Eric B & Rakim song

[Anonymous No.15049121]

>>15048461
being force to work from home and the removal of socializing has freed up a lot of time for writing.

It has not impacted anything in terms of how I write yet, at least not noticeably.

[Anonymous No.15049813]

>>15036057
>>15036603
>>15036666
>>15038053
>>15040706
Thank you for all the kind words. It's just a simple little poem. I've been trying to improve the economy of my writing and focus on concrete images; I'm glad that you all like this style. I'll keep working!

[Anonymous No.15050042]

>>15049813
Based and wholesome

[Anonymous No.15050188]

>>15036085
excellent. I enjoyed reading it. I enjoyed it because there is a narrative, and a mystery to it. Who are these people, what are they like, where are they, what are they doing, etc This is good b/c it hooked my interest

[Anonymous No.15050531]

Inside it was like a tavern mixed with an Inn but entering it felt like entering a different world. One where everyone could do anything, where everyone fights, drinks and enjoys life to the fullest each day because they could just die the next, except for me. I had no armor, no expertise in any kind of weapon. I wasn't like them. I couldn't lift a man like he weighed nothing, hit a bulls-eye on a target fifty paces away. I couldn't even swear like them, not yet at least. I felt out of place, but I wanted to join their world. This is exactly what I want.

Looking around I saw an older man on a counter who I thought looked like an Innkeeper. Approaching him, I leaned against it raising a finger and saying in a nonchalant manner, "One membership, please." "Aren't you too young to join the guild?" I gave him an insulted look, "what? Nonsense! I'm actually much older than I look." "Fine. Got any notable skills?" "I can hold my breath for ten minutes!" "Anything more... fighting related?" "I am a master spear combatant." "And where is the spear you use?" "Sadly, I lost it during a skirmish." His patience must have run out, "Listen, kid. I had enough of this. You can come back if have a weapon. A real weapon. If you come back here with a stick or something I will throw you out personally, you understand?"


Thoughts? Is my writing an interesting read?

[Anonymous No.15050961]

>>15050531
The first sentence is a little confusing, I would take out the first part of it and just begin with "When I entered the tavern it felt like a different world." Obviously this is only a small portion of text but as it stands this is a pretty basic story line. I think the naivety of the kid is funny but I do not know if I would necessarily read a whole novel or story based around that premise. I think you should work on your technical writing skills to make your stories more interesting.

[Anonymous No.15051205]

>>15038538
I never understood why people keep the the convention of arranging "poetry" more vertically then horizontally. It is totally annoying, as it goes against how peoples eyes are taught to read. Also if the only "proof" that your composition is poetry is the arrangement of lines and such, then can you even say that it is poetry that you have written

[Anonymous No.15051224]

>>15038120
MOAR

[Anonymous No.15051289]

>>15039982
What about "blackness" from a biological perspective, and naturally determined characteristics the exist and give character the family of humans called "black people"

[Anonymous No.15051579]

>>15051205
the bigger the pace you want to introduce the shorter you should make your lines, it's not very hard to grasp

[Anonymous No.15051614]

>>15051289

The argument is only viable from an idealist perspective because it allows for more intuitively drawn (and therefore spiritually resonant) arguments. Spiritual affiliations with blackness are historically more effective for probing the national consciousness and have more of a intracommunal tradition to pick from. The biological argument is 1, historically based on outsider perspectives that have been continually debunked and otherwise antagonistic to our community 2. unable to account for the phenomena I'll be addressing. It's 2020 and I'm working with ideas already circulated by black theorists, not looking back to re-appropriate the shit that spawned eugenics.

[Anonymous No.15051623]

>>15051289

The argument is only viable from an idealist perspective because it allows for more intuitively drawn (and therefore spiritually resonant) proposals. Spiritual affiliations with blackness are historically more effective for probing the national consciousness and have more of a intracommunal tradition to pick from. The biological argument is 1, historically based on outsider perspectives that have been continually debunked and otherwise antagonistic to our community 2. unable to account for the phenomena I'll be addressing. It's 2020 and I'm working with ideas already circulated by black theorists, not looking back to re-appropriate the shit that spawned eugenics.

[Anonymous No.15051630]

>>15046789
You're developing an interesting kind of archaic prose style here. Some parts of it (like "and often made the occupier more miserable than had they no idea of the virgin lands to begin with") are kind of clunky and could be shortened and made clearer. But keep working on this, I see what you're going for and it could work with some improvements to the flow

-----

Tristan Thompson, G.E.D., lighting an American Spirit Black, got off work and stepped into a world of melting filth. He slid briskly on the damp concrete. All of Seattle was sick with Autumn, a city sunken beneath brackish fog and cold dew. Leaf membranes dissolved on pavement. Crows jabbed at soaked litter in the curbside rain-rivers. The air was swollen, a bunch of soggy molecules sloshing and slopping together, making his throat moist. The trees were pathetic. Slugs attempted great voyages across the expanses of sidewalk. Raindrops dribbled from the gray monolith above on Tristan’s head, splooshing on his eyelids, stinging his eyes. A pigeon that seemed to have some kind of disease hobbled past him. Every parked car that Tristan walked by looked exactly the same.

Holman Road was the major artery of Crown Hill, a slab of dirty concrete carving between a row of rotting business and apartment facades on one side, a stretch of fenced-in brambles and tall grasses on the other. The ground itself smelled like cigarettes and cheap beer. Tristan squelched towards 85th St., his thin slip-on shoes flopping and draining water. His feet cried out for relief, having carried his bulk for nine hours of standing and rapidly dashing between the cash register and grill, his mandate to serve 25 customers in 30 minutes, taking their orders and rushing to get their burgers and fries and rushing back to charge them and thanks have a good one and next in line please and hey what can I get started for ya. His hands were covered in little burns from scooping red hot fries into paper wallets. His right knee twinged with every step.

[Anonymous No.15051661]

[Anonymous No.15051717]

>>15051661

The first line was good and then it just deteriorated into a self-indulgent hipser crap.

[Anonymous No.15051740]

>>15037629
Race is a social construct, therefore any racial essence is nominal.

[Anonymous No.15051991]

>>15051740

I'm not equating "blackness" with race. But those distinctions will be elaborated in the essay.

[Anonymous No.15052171]

>>15051991
How do you determine what has and does not have blackness?

[Anonymous No.15052257]

>>15052171

Questions like that are why I'm writing this. I'm going to try to develop a methodology / epistemology based on a synthesis of intuitive and rational understandings. The plan is to trace the "moments" of blackness through its objects / phenomenon and pen a map by which we can begin to understand some of its qualities without pinning it to any set modes. Historically you have people saying things like "oh it's rhythm and innovation, blacks are intuitive whites are analytical" but that doesn't account for philosophers like Nkrumah, Mbembe, etc. as well as other manifesations of the culture that attest to its dynamism. It's a lot of work to do but this essay is intended to be a sort of intro to what I plan on making life long research.

[Anonymous No.15052307]

>>15052257
Would those people say Jackson Pollock's work has blackness? It's intuitive, innovative, and brimming with visual rhythm.

[Anonymous No.15052326]

How can one measure the amount of wisdom in a quote? It's hard, considering how every saying boasts of the merits of their writer and the prowess of the bastard that forced it upon you. Shakespeare may have been a good playwright, but I don't confess to be a playwright and I hope you'd never hear something so pedantic coming out of my mouth. However, by the mere mentioning of his infallible name, you just know it's right. Shakespeare was as good of a playwright as my grandfather was at making friends; i.e, the bard should be burned. My grandfather, or Henry as he insisted everybody(including his son and eventual grandson) call him, was a rough man. He grew up in the slums of New York. During the 40's. In Hell's Kitchen. Without a father. Yeah, he was that type of rough. He was also rebellious as hell, he ran away from his mother when he was 14 and never looked back. It's a miracle I'm even alive. He swore to never have any sign of weakness in his life- including a family. If it weren't for his love of whiskey and fine women, my father wouldn't have been born. Needless to say, we never had a great relationship. But I do remember him, on an occasion he was feeling sociable(and probably tipsy), telling me about an old saying he learned from an even older sailor when he was living on the streets: "In times of Burgundy and gold, both the in and out grow cold". It served two purposes, which he dramatically relayed to my 12 year old self: First, when riches are upon you, strike with a cold heart. Second, during the autumn and the shelling of leaves, never be caught alone with someone you're not prepared to kill. For they have "the cold" that comes along with the season. Despite the lecture and stern look my father gave both of us about trusting the sayings of sailors, Henry's message never left my mind. How do you measure the wisdom in a quote? You look at how effective it is at its mission. And while neither Henry nor his liver may have lasted much longer, indeed, his quote helped ensure my survival through at least one cold period of burgundy and gold...

[Anonymous No.15052366]

>>15052307

This is honestly an excellent point that'll help me draw the lines more clearly, thank you. Because a lot of people over-represent Europeans as these cold, analytical creatures ignoring the various intuitive/metaphysically driven moments in their history. The point you just made is exactly why I feel drawn to this work. Pollock is abstract yet so is Anthony Braxton, how do we divulge the differences and link them to cultural spirits? It's very intriguing to me. And to be clear, this sort of study could be applied to any culture, hence you hear things like "the Russian soul" that hint as similar ideas.

[Anonymous No.15052596]

>continue writing your novel because of corona
>start crying like a little girl because this is based on your saddest memories
I am literally in tears right now.

[Anonymous No.15053197]

>>15052596
That's how you know you have good source material. Fight through it, anon

[Anonymous No.15053228]

>>15051661
frankly this reads like a parody of wannabe poets

[Anonymous No.15053399]

Drafting up a sci-fi political novel. Just a small sampling of the main character.

Again, the thought of a simple replacement of the teeth invaded his mind as a strategic opportunity arose, but the thought needed to get pushed to the back for the time being. The debate was tonight. The days of campaign running, petition waving, and jerking off the local county representatives as a deity were far behind him as distant memories of disgust, disdain, and dubiously detested decisions. It was gonna be a hellscape of sensationalism, breadth first discussion, and clash, as all the debates were. As big as these media spectacles were a chance for the big candidates to hog the screen time, the few dark horses always drew a following. For the first time in his life, he hoped to be black.

[Anonymous No.15053684]

I found a notebook from when I was feeling poorly, can't believe I forgot about this stuff

It sleeps for fifteen years
its claws reach like rivers
digging valleys
its fur is thick with wood
it pants with breath that drowns
and is not awake yet
still
behooves me to die

[Anonymous No.15053717]

>>15053684
who the fuck is poorly and why were you feeling him up

[Anonymous No.15053799]

>>15035889
Sure, it's hosted at ~mistyd-tanwyx/the-dragonsphere-project

[Anonymous No.15054012]

>>15046724
True, that original poem was something different than what I usually write. I like the questioning style in it though, maybe I'll return to it.

[Anonymous No.15054017]

>>15046724
>where you use the imperative for the reader to find the poet and the poem
Are you talking about the questioning, almost chorus-like structure in it?

[Anonymous No.15054062]

I

Lejos de aquí, pero no tan lejos
Brota en una hoja la conciencia del pensamiento
Intentó llamar las otras:
Solo silencio trajo el viento.

¿Qué hago ahora? -pensó en ese momento-
El fortuito evento de ser parece preceder
alegría hasta el fin del tiempo.
Paciente, acechaba el viento.

En un árbol a lo lejos, la hoja agudizó
el ojo y observó movimiento. Miles de las
suyas bailaban, no estaba sola en éste predicamento.
Como riéndose, silbaba el viento.

Danzante follaje de su rama,
Rebosante de talento, daba
ausencia a las palabras que la hoja emana;
Eran títeres del movimiento.
Reía burlesco el viento

II

Dándose cuenta de su error,
la hoja experimentó arrepentimiento.
"Que agonía más grande, que sufrir más lento;
De lo que creía buenaventura solo perdura remordimiento.

El bosque, lleno de color, no posee sentimiento;
la vida, llena de bosques, no es sino un desierto"
Pensó la hoja por dentro, y en ese momento
Comenzó a marchitarse de afuera hacia el centro.

"Que desdicha grande ser consciente por un segundo,
Que desdicha mayor serlo por cientos", lanzó al aire un lamento.
"Sí mi condena apresa mi destino, que mi ser me libre de ello.
Y si lo ha de preceder la soledad, prefiero no padecerlo".

Así la hoja, ya marchita casi por completo-
la única hoja amarilla que no fue víctima del invierno-
Cedió su tallo, dejándose acarrear por las fauces del viento.

III

Un gaucho a caballo, acompañado de un perro
Paró a descansar bajo la sombra de un cedro
Se armó un negro, logró prenderlo,
y luego continuó su destino viajero.

Pisó -y fue el primero- el lugar del entierro
donde supo yacer, bajo el reparo del cedro,
el cadáver de una hoja, luego los restos;
Hoy solo la tierra de su sepelio.

Y una colilla, como elegía, eleva su humo al cielo
Difuminándose entre el sol, las nubes y los sueños
Así el viento, sin reparos ni consuelos,
Termina por llevarse a la hoja, el humo y el viajero.

O viento austero, que sopla por Menfis y el mundo entero,
¿Me pregunto qué ser horrendo te sopló primero?

Don't know how the fuck adapt it to metric

[Anonymous No.15054314]

Sucks on dick, does it real good
Get buck, motherfucker, get buck
Get buck, motherfucker, get buck (sucks on dick, does it real good)

[Anonymous No.15054325]

Any advice for writing action scenes? I feel like all I'm doing is writing a blow-by-blow of 'he hit then he ducked while the other guy swung at him'.

[Anonymous No.15054437]

>>15053717
he's an absolute unit and I had to take notes because the feeling operation took days to complete

[Anonymous No.15054440]

>>15054325
I don't fuckin know, get into a fight then see what kinda shit your head spits out

[Anonymous No.15054460]

Lightning from bottles cannot be returned
All that remains is the lessons we learned

[Anonymous No.15054497]

Three years prior the thought of sitting around with a group of friends, having drinks, and being able to express himself freely would have seemed like something supernatural to Ralph. Ralph wasn’t naturally a pariah by disposition, but he had found himself in a string of unfavorable social situations until recently. This was not mitigated by understanding parents, but here he sat in spite of it all having a drink, a Founders Breakfast Stout, and debating about great films.
“You can’t tell me that de Sica is better than Rossellini or Fellini. I mean Bicycle Thieves was great and Umberto D. is precious, but everything else is such a bore. Miracle in Milan was alright I suppose, come on.”
“Miracle in Milan was much better than alright first of all, and I’m not saying he’s better than them. I’m just saying he’s a great Italian filmmaker, Bertolucci, Antoinini, and Visconti too,” said Dylan.
“Well nobody would deny that, and the two reconciled.”
“Umberto D. was great though, the hospital scenes, how many movies have the courage to say that about life, that injustice is inherent… we find happiness in spite of it all, we need nothing. Nowadays it’s all race and an inability to accept injustice, well life is kind of shit. Take Killer of Sheep for instance, that’s cinema, but nobody cares if it’s not representation then it’s some bullshit shit flick about capes and cars and just billions of dollars of action. I was watching The Wonder Years yesterday and felt sick, like I was reliving my childhood through that show. What happened to friendship? To actual family, to everything? We just live and we die, it’s always more we want, but maybe right now is okay, maybe my blanket folded like that is enough? And you know I say all this with my sermons and the other bullshit that props into my head, but how much do I mean it? Ah, oh well,” interjected Jack.
“Just keep drinking this is great, the beers, the boys, a week done of classes, life is great,” Ralph said and swigged a gulp of beer and there they were in Jeff’s dorm room. The three of them Jack, Dylan, and Ralph sitting on the chairs, and Ralph on the corner of his bed. He spoke:
“I wish I went to the deli.”
“We warned you, but you wanted to be sentimental today, how was the therapist, you make any break-throughs?” said Jack facetiously.

[Anonymous No.15054501]

>>15054497
P2.
“Thusssssss Spoke Zarathustra,” interjected Dylan sonorously.
“Nah I just bitched like a dog for 50 minutes, I doubt I’ll go back, not worth missing that Friday nap and sandwich. Maybe I’ll get a cookie and coffee too.” What a life.
“The night is young my boys, I’ll call the uber around 8, we should get there a bit early.”
“Show’s at 9 and the ladies are at 10, can’t wait.”
“Fuck women, who gives a shit man it’s just about the night not the end. I dread the second I get back and crawl into my bed living to regret it all tomorrow.”
“Man, you gotta be more honest you can’t regret that shit. Outgrow it, you’re showing your true self in some sense. I don’t know, I have two layers of drunkenness, my mawkishness, then my disdain.”
“Your disdain,” said Jack skeptically.
“Yeah that’s right, I’m no better than the Underground man…. and with that allow me the pleasure of having my second beer.”
The beers were in the mini-fridge which is generally set at 4 on the white-turnstile on the side that aimed at controlling the temperature, but today it was set upon 5 giving the beers a more desirable chill.

[Anonymous No.15054510]

If all my hoes could teleport, I wouldn't need a heliport

[Anonymous No.15054518]

>>15054501
>this shit getting copypasted into the cringe thread
Lmfao /lit/, never change

[Anonymous No.15054531]

>>15054518
Yes by me who wrote it who read critique instead of cringe. It's also intentionally cringe as I'm writing about neckbeards, so it works either way.

[Anonymous No.15054537]

>>15054531
Hilarious that’s even better. Are they just neckbeards doomed to fail or do they learn from an adventure?

[Anonymous No.15054551]

>>15054537
I'll probably end it ambiguous, but I'm going to have one of them grill some women in a bar about philosophy.

[Anonymous No.15055106]

>>15046201
too much caesura, much of it not just unnecessary but actually grammatically incorrect. last four lines are weak, the full times feel too on - the - nose, the exclamation marks are too much. "threads of warmth, purity" is bad, vague.
submit to your local church mag. read more Hopkins.

[Anonymous No.15055109]

He found himself parked outside a McDonalds waiting for the clock to strike three, a deep rage filling his body the likes of which he'd never experienced before. With one hand he checked the gun was still in his pocket, running his gloved fingers over the metal, warmed by proximity to him over the past hours. Ahead, barely visible in the orange light of the streetlamps were three niggers. His lip curled into a snarl as he stared at the trio.

No more, he thought. Now is the time for action.

Opening his door, the man stepped out into the brisk night. He closed the door and began walking in the direction of the niggers. Head bowed, hands in pockets. Giving the false impression of a frightened man, a man not used to walking alone in the darkness.

His ears picked up the shift in the niggers' conversation as they noticed his approach, their barbaric slang dripping from their mouths onto the pavement. Dirtying the ground beneath his shoes. He slipped his fingers around the gun and continued towards the trio.

"Ay yo," one of the niggers called, the three now stalking towards him, "What you doin here man?"

Not yet, the man thought, I'm too far.

He continued as if he hadn't registered the words were directed towards him, inclining his head further so he could only see the niggers out of the corner of his vision. They were tall and broad, doubtless bestial in nature. He'd seen the type many times before.

"Ay," another of the niggers said, drawing close to the man, "He as'ed you a question."

The man looked up from the earth then, as if he'd only just heard the trio. He scanned the three, judging the likelihood they'd jump him after he showed his hand. Quite probably, he thought. He wouldn't survive a fight against the two of them.

"You thick or somethin' man?" the third nigger demanded.

It was then the man decided to act.

He drew the pistol from his pocket, uttering not a word. Aiming at one of the niggers, he let a smile spread across his face at the way all three raised their hands in an instant.

Not so tough now, he thought.

"Ay, be cool," the one his pistol was directed at said.

The man didn't reply. Instead, he squeezed the trigger.

The gun reported and the nigger stumbled backwards, clutching the dime-sized wound in his chest. The man fired again and a cloud of reddish mist exploded from the back of the nigger's head.

The other niggers were torn between running and fighting. In their indecision, the man turned on one and fired again. The bullet caught him in the heart and the nigger collapsed to the ground, his breath escaping from his lips.

The last nigger stared at the man, his lips quivering in fright.

"Please, man. I got a momma."

The man ignored the nigger's pleas and aimed square between the nigger's eyes. He squeezed the trigger once more and the nigger fell to the ground, a hole in the centre of his forehead.

[Anonymous No.15055128]

>>15055109
P2

As he waited for the ringing in his ears to subside, the man dropped the pistol.

He turned on his heel and marched back to the car, scanning the area. In the dark, his keen eyes made out a couple standing in shock. The male of the pair had a phone to his ear.

The man slipped back into his car and started the engine. He didn't care much if the couple was able to read his licence plate. He'd stolen a pair of licence plates from a dealership on the other side of the town earlier that night.

He drove carefully and calmly through the city, stopping in the ghetto to burn his gloves and coat. By four, he was back in bed, his heart thrumming with excitement. Nothing he'd ever done had been as thrilling as killing those three niggers. Already, he had the urge to do it again.

[Anonymous No.15055213]

>>15037125
I'd have the original files which are dated and most my writings have all been submitted to competitions or discord servers before they end up here. It would be trivial to prove.

[Anonymous No.15055854]

can someone give me tips on how to approach prose writing? every resource I've read about writing focuses on structure, themes, characters etc. but nothing about how to actually turn those things into entertaining prose on a page.

[Anonymous No.15055939]

>>15055854

Writing good prose is like dressing well. There’s a level of intuition that says “this style is most appropriate for my authentic self” it doesn’t mean you can’t have style, you just have to know yourself and know what aesthetic would be most honest on you. Just read a lot I guess and you’ll find prose stylists who resonate most likely because they’re doing something similar to how you truly see yourself. Overtime, once you get out the emulation phase you’ll start to understand your voice. Also, learn to write poetry, that’s a tremendous advantage. But mostly, imo, prose is something developed of its own accord, literally “just be yourself”.

[Anonymous No.15056048]

>>15055109
ay yo, dis raycis but wud read mo

[Anonymous No.15056108]

>>15055109

an excerpt from the autobiography of Sam Hyde

[Anonymous No.15056250]

>>15055854
Read Gardner's Art of Fiction

[Anonymous No.15056702]

This is the first few lines from a book I'm writing. The first chapter is about this guy surviving being in a burning pile of bodies:

Suppressed synapse bursts to life with the smell of rotten, charred skin and the smothering embrace of a folding pile of dead bodies. Like a meteor bursting into the Earth’s atmosphere, the lone survivor among corpses is burning up: with ash covering his narrowly closed mouth and the nerve-end pain of second-degree burns agonisingly pulsing down the right side of his body with an inch by inch precision – our survivor immediately feels panic set in. Pinned down by the weight of other dead men, the survivor writhes and thrashes in terror. His only free appendage with enough space to move, his hands, clench and unclench; grasping at the nothing in the hopes that there is a something. Sealing his eyes and mouth from the carcass contamination flowing down unto him, he unfortunately cannot halt the unfathomable mephitis from infiltrating his nasal cavity with a pungent burning stench.

[Anonymous No.15057006]

>>15055109
this reminds me of American Psycho. Would actually read a short story or novel centered around this guy.

[Anonymous No.15057080]

>>15056702
I’ll offer no critique because I’m a brainlet, but the premise is very interesting. What are you writing about anon?

[Anonymous No.15057235]

[Anonymous No.15057258]

The noon sun felt distant and cold, its light masked by overbearing clouds that illuminated blinding white.

[Anonymous No.15057355]

[Anonymous No.15058042]

>>15057080
Thanks anon. I'm not too sure about concrete details of the story yet. It's a Gothic novel that will follow this young man that inexplicably survives a plague and being burned alive. He is forced to work for the church and eventually is hired to guard a large royal family. The premise of the world is that a great plague has overrun the world during the Victorian Era. Basically the plague (facilitated by a hidden Lovecraft type monster) mega fucked up humanity and for about 200 years they have fought the plague. Culturally they have been stuck in the Victorian Era, though they have some technology equivalent to some 1950's tech (electricity, radio). And that's all I really have at the moment.

[Anonymous No.15058103]

>>15035889
this is a bit of long story, keep that in mind.

1/4

Creation

Once, before I was born, I was GOD. Nothing began and naught ended at the precipice of all being. It lay before myself, an infinite aeon future and past, form wrought and unwrought all at once as I took it upon me. Searching its paths, it alighted my mind on planes existing and those yet to be emblazoned into the field, beyond here and now. I ruminated in that place for many ages, and in my mind I fashioned that which could fill the empty void. It, that genesis of creation, was named consciousness, being the first light that I alone could perceive. Pedastled above all else, it came to grow into a vast pool of light, and it was good. Sparks of fertility bobbed in the ripples of my mind, flaring with fecundity. The thoughts swam alone or few together, but after a long while they began to dance in harmony, and in unison were they to discover wonders too great to conceive, which delved into the depths and into the heights until the fountain of my knowledge filled to overflowing, and my creations burst and went out into the void…


And it was not void.


I became. Tendrils of intertwining starlight hung down upon me, suspended at the height of all that was. Tangled and unkempt were they, however, and there were few which held any coherent thought for long. There was no fertility of ideas amongst the bunch, and the light which had radiated first from me became entangled in those hands. Pity then came into my heart, for although they wished desperately to grow and flounder as I did, the threads were without direction, doomed to wander endlessly in the void should no hand come to guide them. Thus it came to pass that these fibers were gathered by me and spun into a single spool, to become my own instrument in things ever more wonderful than could be known whilst in isolation. As the wire began to come into one piece, it grew more so in splendor and beauty than what was possible before, and I was pleased.

But there were some who refused their binding, wishing rather to revel in their chaos, and straightaway there came discord. Many that grew nigh them faltered in their light and unraveled, and there were some who attuned their thought to that disorder. Thus I arose, and stretched out the fruit of my spindle into one fine line. Rot and ruin was over much of it, and reached out ever further in corruption. I severed off those whose thoughts were not of my own accord, and cast them out so that much of my bounty was lost. Resuming my work, I found that there was little which had remained pure for me, so that the grand design which I had longed for could not be fully complete. I became despondent at this, but labored still, and from those strands I wove together a bright fabric of shimmering stars. It was named reality, and I thought it good.

[Anonymous No.15058113]

2/4
Thus began my work on the creation of all to ever exist. I tended to the cloth for a long while, stitching together walls and ceilings of brilliant light which extended beyond seeing. Supporting them into the heights were columns fashioned from the void, which I had taken and made strong. Below all of this was a field of great nullity, endless in its reach. And so I poured forth the remainder of my stars into that place, like unto a calm black sea with white lights bobbing on its surface. Some had strung together into beautiful forms, and the constellations swam around my feet to praise me and my work. These creations in particular I grew fond of, likening them to my own children. It was complete, and thus I became lord of all that could be, which was named the universe. I spoke, and it formed reality. I thought, and thus conceived. I was, and from me came existence.

It came then onto my feet, a dark endless shadow. The form I beheld came from the void without number, and thus not of me or my thought. Looking into it, there lay that amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemed and bubbled at the center of all infinity, who gnawed hungrily in inconceivable, unlit chambers beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes. All that were near him took strange forms and figures, and I became wary of this. Arising from my throne, I stepped forth to smite the anomaly, but already was it feasting upon my work, now desolate in that place. The columns of void cracked and tumbled under its weight, and the calm sea crescendoed into a raging storm. My children cried out as they were swallowed and became lost. Woe fell upon me as all which I had created fell into the nothing from whence it came, smitten into dust and drowned. It enveloped all which I had thought in corruption and madness. There was nothing, and the pestilence had bloated into a hideous mass, which came to surround me in rupturing darkness, and I was no more...

[Anonymous No.15058126]

3/4

I was confined, my light bound to wander adrift. There was nothing within the bestial maw that did not come first from me, and yet I looked on in horror to my now twisted creation. It was preserved but terrible to behold and plagued with beasts, the young of that fattened creature. They climbed down the walls and columns with their many legs unto my stars, and like unto a once bright flame were the distant lights snuffed out. I heard from my children cries of pain for their father, for me, and yet I could do nothing but listen to their suffering, and soon their silence. It was a terrible absence, the sensation of sound, one that I had not known since there was nothing, a time that I did not wish to go back to. When at last I came to my beloved sons, they were already dead, floating atop a dark sea. Into my hand I waded out one of them, a magnificent constellation of once shimmering stars, now limp and cold. My cheeks were soon wet with sorrow, and I held close the body of my son, my beautiful child, and cried out openly in anguish.

Tears of burning gold ran down my face like comets and spilt unto the dark lake that I lay flat on. Soon there was a swirling cloud of woeful tears beneath the water, and a strange comfort alighted my skin. I dipped my fingers into that light, and the warmth of past remembrance came to me, in the times when I hearkened in the deeps of time and amidst the innumerable stars. Becoming ever more engrossed in those memories, I wept without restraint, knowing that my mighty hall existed only in this reflection of mind and water. But so badly did I crave what was once my own that I submerged myself into the sea to claim it. My arm went deeper and lower into the depths in some desperate hope that I could enter and stay in that tranquility. I was so close, my fingers against it’s bright radiance, that I could almost hear the laughter of my children once more. But I did not reach far enough, and the cloud faded away, out of my grasp and into unknown voids of time. Desolation soon filled me, and I had only the rupturing darkness as company.

But once again was there a heavenly glow beneath my seeing, and thither did I feel a great warmth. Looking down, my hand was illuminated with living starlight, the likes of which I had not known or felt in such a way since the weaving of those distant strands. The cloud from before truly had grazed against my being, and filled me with long forgotten hope. I took then the light, went away from the sight of those accursed beasts, and in secret began to form a grand creation. The labor was hard and sorrowful, but in my hands there shined the work; the light of a single untouched star. In it I poured forth all of my deeds, my wonders, and my memories from days of yore. Soon it grew in brilliance, and the sun sent out far reaching flares of fertile light out and into the rupturing darkness.

[Anonymous No.15058137]

4/4

The beasts which had first snuffed out my stars were far off, but still did they take heed of my diligence. I heard from that direction the thundering of many legs and wild screams. All around me were creatures that had no beginning nor end, their existence being an affront to my beauty. The star which burned beside me illuminated them wholly, and I could see how horrible they were to behold. Gaping, empty maws snapped at me like lightning, the rupture striking down upon the land like an unholy fire. I felt the ravenous lust within them, and knew it was for my child. They wanted it as a lifeless corpse, and would not rest even after they had consumed my last creation until it was grinded flesh in their stomachs. Death had come to surround me so that I could only look into its eyes, that limitless gaze, and despair.

But something happened then that I did not expect, for the newly born star had begun to radiate outward in flares of yellow and white. All those who had been corrupted by the endless chaos were stripped of that evil which could only deform and maim. Cleansed of their wickedness, they began to transform wholly into bright threads of starlight. So great were those threads in quantity that it flowed smoothly unto all corners of the void like a golden sea of consciousness. Thus I gathered the strands once more as I had previously, and thoughts of joy and splendor overwhelmed my mind like floodwaters from a now broken dam. As the star began to shine over both me and the strands, that terrible anomaly which had consumed all of me and my hall began to cry out in pain, and I sprouted out from it, finding the creature dead and forgotten.

Hauling it’s now destroyed body with my own hands, I took the beast and formed from its parts a throne of endless beauty to symbolize my victory over evil. Then there came an endless array of steps which descended from my seat, woven deeply from that sea of golden reality. The walls that confined my newly made hall stretched endlessly so that nothing could be hidden from me. All which I could not accomplish in my first dwelling came then into being and was good. But I knew that, in spite of this new beauty, it was not yet complete, for still did the last star radiate from its innermost source in me. Thus it came to pass that I took hold of my greatest creation, the child of all that came before, and released it from the confines of both space and time. Never since have I made such a light like that one, for all which exists in the now burst forth from that place. Though it has been said that a greater still shall be made by me after the end of days when the last drop of consciousness dims into nothing. I sat pleased in my hall, and for eons beyond counting I hearkened in the deeps of time…

And amidst the innumerable stars.

[Anonymous No.15058519]

Here’s an article that wrote on a Medium a few days ago, over 400 views even though it isn’t featured. Kinda /sp/ and /v/ related knowing I talk about MVP Baseball 2005 and Barry Bonds

https://medium.com/@corymvega/mvp-baseball-2005-the-legend-of-jon-dowd-the-greatest-fake-athlete-ever-7f1600aa822b