Critique Thread

[Anonymous No.15465340]

The distressed young man scanned the periphery of S_____ street. The sun had already set, overcast dusk was rising over Cambridge. Besides a few students caught out in the elements, he was comfortably alone. He made his way over to the nearest cash machine and, checking that he wasn’t being followed, withdrew his money and stashed the notes in his pocket. Carrying on his way past the empty market square, it took him a quarter hour’s walk to reach the church where the gathering was held. He didn’t think during that time; thoughts and images blurred as he carried on in a state of anxiety-induced delirium. The building was an ancient one, hidden amongst the far larger monumental colleges that lined the main road. Its Norman columns were thickly laced with moss slaked-wet from the rain, and within buzzed the agonising sounds of merriment; the jovial buzzing laughter which only emanated from the silver tongues of those with wealth and gravitas. Outside in the rain he was an impoverished husk, his miserable situation masked only by the natural attractiveness of his youth. Within, for once, he would be seen. The blue-eyed aristocracy would shift their focus beyond their cava and look up at their visitor. What happened beyond that was up to him- he need only open the door.

[SAGE No.15465376]

not enough niggers, 0/10

[Anonymous No.15465403]

>>15465376
The protagonist is a nigger. It is a steamy interracial work of erotica

[Anonymous No.15465518]

>>15465340

It paint's a good picture, I'd keep reading

[Anonymous No.15465694]

It wasn't a large gathering by University standards. Those assembled here were but a clique united by their status above the rabble. Everyone within were people of power in some form or another. Just within the antechamber were two gentlemen guarding the main hall. The first was clean-shaven with flaxen hair, conversing with his taller, more rugged partner before he noticed the new arrival. That they didn't recognise the slightly damp youth before them wasn't of much concern. He paid the fee for entrance, and tentatively placed a hand upon the door to the main hall. He froze there for a moment, reflecting in that instant on what he was in this terrible place to achieve; remembering the
check list. He couldn't help but admire the way his fresh navy suit complemented his olive skin. Could a moment's vanity protect one from an evening of humility, even forbid, humiliation? Disregarding his own procrastination, he took a deep breath and put on a smile.

"Tonight they'll know your name"

The doors pushed open as he faced the gathered crowd.

[Anonymous No.15466087]

small disconnected segment of a semi-stream of consciousness piece Im working on

https://pastebin.com/MDh91t20

[Anonymous No.15466102]

>>15465340
> S_____ street.
Sneed street?

[Anonymous No.15466139]

>>15465340
Good prose, but opening with "the distressed young man" followed by the stupid affectation of S____ Street is a bad idea.

[Anonymous No.15466159]

The grease of the fried butter milkshakes dripped down as cholesterol run amok the veins of the crowd. The One World Government’s first manliness cup was in effect. The winner would have his genes probed and used as the basis of a new generation of test-tube babies. Which would populate the shiny-new Martian and Lunar colonies?

The first man was wearing a powerlifting belt , sweatpants, construction worker boots, and a bare chest. He had a venerable beard, a bald head, and he was going to attempt bending and iron horseshoe. With no visible effort, he succeeded, and then went on a long rant about the importance of British maritime supremacy for the development of world commercial routes.

The second contestant was a dwarf, intent on stopping a tank from moving with a big thick iron chain. He was nicknamed "big bang" among the lads ,because all muscle as compressed into his diminutive frame. He popped some veins ,and the tank was only suffered to advance 2 inches. The third man was a wrestler.

No one could tell if he was a sumo, Mongolian, hindu or Turkish oil wrestler, he just had a thick body, a pot –belly, and the tree-trunk legs of a “wrestler”. He wrestled a muffled bear and broke it’s neck.

The third man was a russian farmer, sporting a stalinist moustache and a giant kettlebell with an Icon carved in it. He made a big swing and sent the kettlebell flyng, then he performed a cossak dance.

>not intended to be serious, intended to be grotesque

[Anonymous No.15466515]

Thoughts? I’d like to flesh it out more.

>>15465340
As the other respondent mentioned, the first sentence needs to be changed. Too much invoking at the get-go and in a coy way. The first half moves cinematically—perhaps too much so—before we get to the building which is then a pile-up of descriptive language. The two parts are off key; work on your tone and balance.

>>15466087
Wish you had more fun with this rather than make it a pure anxiety game. The speaker is simply not interested nor interesting enough for us to feel the impact of the meta-fiction pivot that occurs. Maybe the banal environment isn’t helping you (why begin there?), but your prose mirrors it. I’d also be careful about writing so plainly about an office—we’ve had Jacques Tati, the third season of Twin Peaks, Office Space, and however many novels line take it up already. I wonder if you’re afraid to stretch your intelligence, so you write a neurotic character that speaks in sentimentalized “you got this” phrases? Check out Enrique Vila-Matas. He’ll be fun for you.

>>15466159
Serious or not, that first sentence is a mess. What you’re writing isn’t a bad idea necessarily, but you should extend and make it all more absurd. Give a better sense of place. Think less grotesque and more unreal. You might like “Impressions of Africa” by Raymond Roussel.

[Anonymous No.15467240]

bump

[Anonymous No.15467249]

shut the fup sup duckess

[Anonymous No.15467286]

a passage from a short story im currently working on

[Anonymous No.15467430]

Very short story I just wrote. Want some feedback, but only if you're not a stuck up faggot, and go easy, I'm a virgin OwO.
https://pastebin.com/e65ASQY2

I have a head-ache and can't be assed to read many of these. I also find the writing styles in the few of these threads I've been in to be a bit try-hard and stuffy. Loosen up and have fun.

[Anonymous No.15467626]

>>15467286
Too compressed. The scene as it stands is unbelievable now. There are no real details here—where are the other men? Who killed him? What happened to the other man? Where are they?

>>15467430
For all of the “stuffy” writing in these threads, there’s another kind of story belonging to an author who thinks calling a character (usually a mother) a “cunt” in the first paragraph or so is somehow funny. You have some decent details here (the description of the food at the party), but your narrator explains away most of the story rather than letting us see it or at least filter through the son. Let me say again that I didn’t find this funny or enjoyable to read. Nothing felt all that absurd or clever. And shit like “ The man was a true cynic after Diogenes, free in spirit, an animal of virtuous criminality and candour.“ is ridiculously stuffy due to its out-datedness lacking a necessary irony. Notice in that passage that you move from an almost Wilde-ian description of the skyline to the hipster bars then to fucking and the through line of decadence is lost, you can’t keep up the consistency.

There’s some ground here that could produce satire, but you either: don’t know your prey intimately enough or have fallen into the tendency to write what you think writing like this should sound like. Regardless, cut back on the speaker or sharpen him up.

[Anonymous No.15467644]

>>15465340
only going to do your opening sentence because that's all that matters but I don't like adding two adjectives to the character like you did. instead I would say
>with ( great ) distress, the young man scanned
the periphery of....
maybe it's just me but this sentence structure feels far more dynamic than your declarative sentence.

[Anonymous No.15467688]

>>15465340
Dumbass OP was too concerned with getting his shit seen then making a good thread. Without posting the rules and without critiquing first before posting this thread starts off in shit.

[Anonymous No.15467793]

I'm gonna shitpost my /fit/izen isekai story here as well, since /fit/ isn't giving me enough (you)'s.

https://files.catbox.moe/wskgv3.pdf

[Anonymous No.15468209]

You guys kind of suck, tbqh.

[Anonymous No.15468250]

>>15468209
post work

[Anonymous No.15468626]

>>15466159
I liked it. Be sure to use capitalization to your advantage, as you're dealing with the names of big characters or ideas you find need to embolden. You got it!

[Anonymous No.15469007]

https://pastebin.com/WyWEKsGj
Some quick flash fiction for ya fellas. Help an beginner writer trying to express himself please.

[Anonymous No.15469381]

>>15467286
I'd fill in one more sentence between sunset watching and rustling. a sentence that makes the sunset or the fading warmth more feelable.

[Anonymous No.15469731]

>>15467626
The son is basically the narrator. Most of the descriptions/thoughts are through his eyes/head. The son's a typical 17 year old /lit/ pseud type, that's the point, he's the cunt.

[Anonymous No.15469985]

We slept together back when she had the pixie cut
I had to be back on tinder, to get that re-up
I’ve only ever slept late at night
She tasted like sweat and smelled like heat
I didn’t talk to her for a year until she gave me a retweet
I was hard like iron in the back of the GMC
She didn’t let me fuck and I realized I was never the man I had to be
I always stayed up late in the late 2000s
No one could ever tell me the texture of my soul
I was never scared of the tight rope walk of my goal
People have come and gone to help me realize myself
No one more than her myself and my brain beat dad
I stayed up late then and now
There was never a how,
Just a flat plane of a woman
And bubbling tar pit of a father
I only love life in retrospect
The current of my life flows violent
Two people have put hate in my heart
Exposed that sickening tender part but it wasn’t
Alive like a mouse’s heartbeat
Instead dead a long time ago,
Died in the early 2000s, along with America
I had a conversation earlier on the highway
About how everything sucked,
Plants bloomed but they gave no smell
Bars were open, you could see people but they seemed dead like a painting
We wish that days where we had a gun at our knee
Were here but him and I were too dumb
To realize that they were already here
So stupid that since the early 2000s
All of us have been going along with the skeleton dance
We can’t stay up late like the late 2000s
Maybe the girl still has a few nights to pass
But Dads days have gone into overdraft
I think about the future and I know things won’t go well
But maybe maybe maybe...

[Anonymous No.15470299]

Bump

[Anonymous No.15470725]

>>15469731
Point being, you don’t do a strong enough job conveying that. There’s tension between the third person limited pov and how much you’re explaining. It’s like telling the punch line at every level—okay, the son’s a pseud / cunt, but how do you convey that more subtly? That doesn’t mean shutting them up, but instead you, as the author, flexing more with details and satire. “A confederacy of dunces” could be a model

[Anonymous No.15470760]

'Good morning,' says the voice of a female secretary. 'It is one in the afternoon. You have no missed calls, no new messages and no plans.'
'Mummy,' Ariel slurs.
'Mummy not found in contacts.'
A moment of silence.
'Shall I go on?'
He rolls over. 'No thank you.'
'Your daily virus update is ready.'
Light pries open his eyes. 'I'm good.'
'Updates are mandated by the Wellness Agency.'
'Really, I'm fine.'
'New symptoms include lethargy--'
'Please shut up.'
'And a hostile temperament. Suspect cases must self-report.'
He slides out of his sweaty sheets, stumbles over to the blinds and peers outside. Down at the park across from his apartment complex, friends and familes are out en masse, exercising and having picnics and doing other cliche activities. Drones patrol overhead.
'I can report on your behalf, Ariel.'
'Don't.'
'Reports are mandated by the Agency.'
He holds his phone out the window.
'Submitting in three, two...'
He vaguely hears her say one before it hits the pavement. A passing couple looks up as a nearby drone surveys the damage. It ascends toward his window. He shuts the blinds and realises he is awake.
'I'm fucked,' he thinks.

[Anonymous No.15470863]

Flash-fiction. Need to know if I'm being too cryptic.
https://pastebin.com/cWn4VdLZ

>>15469007
>The same eyes he had stolen glances from for over two years. Since the first time his mother had decided he was old enough to choose his own books.
This particular line stuck out to me; if anyone ever pulls out the show don't tell card on you, it's this line.

>Still on the floor, he had now noticed all the tinkering of the workers had stopped and their eyes were glued on him. [...] He wondered how his breath smelt, if his hair was unruly, and whether his choice of clothes that day conformed to their tastes.
"had now" seems inconsistent with the simple past tense you use throughout; it was also vaguely unclear up until this point that he'd gotten pulled into the store by the worker, I guess. And now he's sprawled out on the floor. Have to comment that it seems ironic that blue-collar workers should factor into his self-consciousness since their choice of wardrobe is, well, a drastic departure from a bookstore's usual customers. If the point of this whole segment is to start him on the wrong foot, maybe there's a better set of background characters to do it with.

The ending is pretty smooth, though. Good shit. Just about how you'd imagine a first-love deal to go, with an open-ended sort of conclusion.

>>15467793
>“Of course, of course. My, I can’t believe you’re 13 years old already, you’re getting so big and strong.” Natty blushed and waved her hand away. “Geez Grandma, I’m not a kid anymore! I’m getting baptized next week at the chapel and getting my [Class], and then I’ll officially be an adult!”
Normally I'd ding you for the same thing I just said up top but then I realized you were probably trying to channel isekai being trashy as usual, got a solid chuckle out of me.

>>15469985
You remind me of an anon a thread or two back who sounded like the lyrics of a hip-hop song although you're probably not him.
>No one more than her myself and my brain beat dad
Spends too much time talking about her and maybe not enough about the dad, for what it seems he's worth. If he puts that much importance on it maybe add a few more lines on that instead of the only two/three things we know about him being in like three lines of the whole poem.

[Anonymous No.15471256]

>>15470863
Pimply boy is the most interesting character, I'd prefer the story to revolve around him

[Anonymous No.15471271]

>>15470863
thanks for the feedback >>15469007

Let's get this out of the way I'm ESL so some I can't tell if some of your sentences are wonky or it's just my general misunderstanding such as " Uncles he might have caught the deodorant off once at a family reunion who were close with Dad"

In regards to it being cryptic. Yes it kind of is. I had to read it more than once to try and comprehend it. I don't think I might be the right person to critic this type of story. Sorry. One thing though that I enjoyed was your use of present tense. I figured that your use of it was building up to this climax that highlights his loneliness, whether you were intending that or not. Thematically I think it's interesting and I think you use things that build up on that such as the fewer facebook friends wishing him a happy birthday and the cake.

Basically I think you have the bones of a great story however it is somewhat cryptic and confusing to read.

[Anonymous No.15471319]

The sparkling gems of inspiration
orbiting my brain,
like a frog’s tongue to a fly
I catch them with my pen.

I am rich, as if all the pirate ships
broken by the sea
had their treasures drowned in the bank
of my ideas, and I was a swift diver.

But this lasts maybe an hour
and my lungs burst in the pressure,
or the sun, jealous of my new light,
turns everything to vapor.

Then I am an octopus slinking
on naked sand, my brain
like pink crystals of sand.

[yes No.15472388]

go easy on me, i'm stretching my legs. excerpt from a something i'm writing.

https://pastebin.com/1S1s5F8Q

[Anonymous No.15472439]

>>15465340
Haha nice I walk here every day when I'm in Cambridge. You forgot to mention all the homeless people and the perpetual meal lying on the ground.
>S_____ street
I'm pretty sure that's Trinity Ln.
Are you a student there? What subject? I'm a mathmo.

[Faggot No.15472855]

Soo... i wrote this in italian, as a part of a fanfiction that became something more than simple "X x Sailor Saturn"
ps. Octavia is the italian translation of Hotaru
Here's the google translation of it:
You hold me under your spell
I repeated mentally.
The white snowy plain.
I would have liked to go through it with my finger, to dwell on each inlet of his shoulder blades.
See her move:
Elevations.
Depressions.
Abstraction.
Abduction.
Rotations.
Its ribs.
Hear them from above the tank top, see them.
Lean like a nail.
Pale too.
Terribly true.
I was not dreaming, it was all present.
Lick my finger and pass it, moistened on the snow.
Feel it tremble along the spine, visible.
Feel it mine, although I was above all the possessed.
She was no longer there, only Octavia was there for me.
Only you gave me those feelings, but now I had something real close to me.
No more illusions.
No more love.
It was enough for me to simply admire it.
Feel her body under my bed.
His breath.
His voice.
Gently drop.
Tears on it.
Wet.
And I under his spell.
Under the power of Saturn.

[Anonymous No.15473941]

Bump

[Anonymous No.15474015]

oh and here's mine. Trying to pare down my writing, to not feel the constant urge to over-describe, etc.

[Anonymous No.15474049]

Can someone tell me if I'm getting across well what I'm trying to do

>He wakes up in a bed that eighteen years from now at thirty-two, he will long have forgotten the springiness of; he will roll over to kiss his wife and run his hand over her breasts. He will be greeted in the kitchen by his five-year-old son sitting at the table eating the same brand of cereal that defined his own mornings as a child. He will drop his son off at school on his way to work, obtaining the role of his own father who is taking him to school this morning. Before he leaves, he brushes his teeth with a toothbrush that will be thrown away in five months and replaced with one indiscernible from that which he holds in his hand.

I'm working on a story in which the present and the future constantly shift. So it's only written in the present and future tense, and I want it so shift even mid-sentence, and then have sentences which kind of blur the two together. But I'm having a hard time seeing if it's even comprehensible. So this is kind of a practice paragraph, does any of it make sense?

[Anonymous No.15474111]

>>15465694
>Complimented
>Change "That they didn't recognise" to "who they didn't recognise"

Proofread it more and it good be an inspiring piece

[Anonymous No.15474121]

Train

It was a very good day.
With the blissful sun not hiding at all.
I was dressed exceptionally, when I saw you, on the train.
Sucked into your video game.
Words, I find hard to desribe, the tist feeling I felt.
I blamed you for that, in bitter frustration.

I stood holding onto the plastic covering of the rail like a fascist in waiting.
The seats were ripped and foam was erupting, from the wound.
If we had our own personal language, the ride would be easier.
But we didn't. I could be a ghost soon and you'd still be playing games.
Four stops.
I wanted to open up my wretched, stinking body and my mind to show you my soul.
So you could deem it worthy, like a tiger kneeling before you with a fawn.
Or a cat for that matter.
Most gave you less respect. I felt that like led in the pit of my stomach.

It was my stop and you barely moved, giving me no sign of recognition.
People victimised you in school, and you sat beside me while I played games.
You were like a little brother, always ordering to lend you a go.

Now you have nothing to say.
Sometimes the worst things, is just confusion from a past that leaves no reward.
No fond memory.
The walls are closing in on us and we will be crushed, our brains not
even thinking about, the moment we could've had, but just the wavy motion of the mechanisms of the joltering train.

I could choose not to care, but what would I gain from it, just a boring ride to the station.
And I will continue travelling till I'm tired and go for a sleep, only for the sun to stare at me, with an unwanted look.
I wonder if I'm in your world, or do I just dissolve outside your video game.
Please continue playing, I have no problem with you, we all escape from reality from time to time.

[Anonymous No.15474132]

>>15474049
It makes plenty of sense but try to include more creatively mundane examples to make sure your work is relatable and stands out more

[Anonymous No.15474169]

>>15474132
Thanks, I'll definitely do that
It's supposed to be a kind of overview look at growing up in the suburbs, so it's sort of all about being relatable

[Anonymous No.15474622]

>>15465340
The distressed young man scanned the periphery of St. Mary's Street. The sun had gone down, chill dusk settling over Cambridge. Besides a few students caught out in the elements, he was alone. He made his way over to the nearest cash machine. Checking that he wasn’t being followed, withdrew cash and stashed the notes into his pocket. It took a short walk across empty market square to reach the church where the gathering was held. He didn’t think during that time; thoughts and images blurred as he carried on in anxiety-induced delirium.
Hidden amongst larger monumental colleges that lined the main road, stood the Great St. Mary's Church. An ancient building, it's Norman columns thickly laced with moss, wet from the rain. Inside, the jovial buzzing laughter emanated from the silver tongues of those with wealth and gravitas. Outside, in the rain, he was an impoverished husk, his miserable situation masked only by the natural attractiveness of youth. For once, he would be seen. The blue-eyed aristocracy would shift their focus beyond their cava and look at their visitor. He need only open the door.
Your welcome

[Anonymous No.15474629]

Recently I ate too many edibles and went out for a walk at two in the morning. I was barefoot, and I thought that people could hear my feet slapping the pavement. I felt better without shoes. It was foggy and everything was small and dampened like a playset. I kept thinking that if I were talking to somebody I could act completely normal so I started giving a presentation to myself about narrative structure in Byzantine vernacular romances but I started talking about how I don't shit on purpose sometimes because I like the sense of urgency. I spoke with a slur and a lisp and a stutter and I made sure to be quiet to not wake up the slumbering millions. A gallon of air forced its way up my throat to explode in laughter that hurt but it was still funny. I heard ten unique bird calls within one moment. I felt my back like jello and my bones like slinkies and thoughts were hot and cold in my head. I saw bunnies hopping along the street. I had the alien symbols of the streetlights engraved in my retinas. I knew I wasn’t really there.
Every time I saw a car I would stare at it gravely, and at first I would be scared. Scared that it was somebody bad. Scared I would be shot. But then a logic surfaced that both of us were weary travelers of the night. We could both exchange bloodshed but there was no point. We had an understanding. An unwritten contract. He would acknowledge my threat, and I would acknowledge his, and there we pass. Just two more tired nomads, our paths set in opposite directions, like the sun and the moon, destined for other plains. At least that's what I thought about it.

[Anonymous No.15474652]

>>15474049
>He will drop his son off at school on his way to work, obtaining the role of his own father who is taking him to school this morning
Awkward sentence. Most of the awkwardness seems to come from the phrase "obtaining the role of his own father", but I don't know if doing away with merely that would fix everything.

[Anonymous No.15475060]

>>15474652
>He drops his son off at school before going to work, taking on the same role as his father who is now taking him to school this morning.
Better?

[Anonymous No.15475222]

Didn't know where else to post this, but what do you call those plastic sleeves with the plastic spines that you put business reports and other packets in?

[Anonymous No.15475687]

>>15474629
Good stuff. Try to diversify your language a bit. Play it up without making it too fluffy. I'm not saying add more significance than is there, but add more motion and curvature to the language, if that makes sense.

[Anonymous No.15475698]

>>15475222
laminates? Laminate sheets?

[Anonymous No.15476462]

>>15470760
I enjoyed this one but don't see much to critique. If I were really forced to find a fault I'd maybe drop the bit about "cliche activities" as it feels too blunt. I'd prefer seeing another activity listed, "playing frisbee" or something, and leave it to the reader to decide how the protagonist would feel about it rather than telling them that the activities are cliche.

>>15470863
The first half felt stronger than the second. This bit in particular
>Collecting a few of the strands from the counter, he notices that some of them are still black in places. Tracing them to the point where they turn from white to black, he settles on one that almost looks like a spent candle. Everything but the tip of it white.
is very good. Line 27 seems out of place: the station lost their password? Who's this kid? He stole it, got it back, what?

Here's an excerpt from a fantasy novel I wrote for a while and abandoned. The idea was to focus on the psychological effects of a guy living through typical high fantasy "epic" battles and such but I haven't touched it in 4-5 years. Worth revisiting?

[Anonymous No.15476482]

There is a phenomenon out in space where two stars will sort of “dance” around each other. They get closer and closer, seemingly focused on each other, exactly focused on each other graviationally. They spin and they spin, approaching an ultimate closeness with every eliptical move, and soon: they collide in the most magnificent explosion in the universe. In the silence of space, in the whole entirety of space, with all other gravitational forces, these stars happened upon each other and were entranced, or destined, or trapped, with one another. What is to be said of the explosion? It's character? True, it was inevitable, but what fate is there beyond the forever-mixing of their parts in the projecting force of their shared death?

[Anonymous No.15476569]

>>15476462
I recommend you try rewriting this without directly mentioning what the character is feeling. You want the reader to empathize with your character, and to do that you have to make him feel what your character feels. What you've written here has the opposite effect, it creates distance and that makes even the interesting, emotionally intense actions (like putting the knife to his own throat) comical and ridiculous, in a word, "edgy". Show, don't tell.

[Anonymous No.15476609]

>>15476462
Appreciate the feedback. The idea behind the whole digression with the hacker kid was to show a point of contrast, sort of. Between the protagonist who is just living a lonely existence after his whole family has died, and people out there not him who take life a bit more frivolously.

I'm not sure how I could word it better (on re-read, I agree it's soggy and somewhat out of place), but I definitely want to leave something to that effect in the story. Just not sure how.

[Anonymous No.15476691]

>>15476609
I think it would be fine with a bit more lead in or detail. Maybe something about how the e-mail is unread because the station had their password stolen, and a bit more clarity about what exactly the 16 year old had to do with it. I don't think it's poorly written, just a bit jarring in that you're being told that the station got their password back before it's clear that the password was ever lost.

[Anonymous No.15477699]

>>15474015
I think this selection needs to be completely rewritten, anon. You need to figure out exactly what you're trying to convey, and think about if this is the best way to convey that. I think you had a good, solid idea in your head, but you threw words until they stuck. You also use this gimmicky repetitiveness for the first two paragraphs and then switch into foggy stream-of-consciousness. It's borderline unreadable. Sit down, rewrite, and then edit yourself.

That being said, some feedback:

>She is... He is...
Use contractions. I know not contracting seems fancy, but it's grating to the reader unless using it in dialogue for very a specific characterization. The staccato quality of your writing (which I assume you are using to convey her impatience) would be improved, in fact, if you wrote "she waits" and "She taps."
>Intentionally mismatched in style, that the owner has obviously picked to foster some faux cosmpolitan eclecticism.
This sentence is clunky, and your phrasing makes it seem that "She" is the thing being described and not the chairs. I would suggest breaking it apart or cutting it (seems like a darling, desu)
>She focuses.. they can focus on... lose focus out the window
This repetition is bothersome, as it doesn't have any sort of poetic meaning or meter to it. You are trying to use repetition in this selection as a mechanism to convey her impatience and discomfort, but you aren't being as nimble as you need to be to justify it.
>She is starting to lose patience
Why tell when you just showed with "tapping her fingers on the table"?
>She says some of us are here to work
I understand who is saying this but you are speaking in third person about two different women, and in 99 percent of the cases "she" is your main character, not this rando.
>The last paragraph
You're just vomiting here to disguise your unwillingness to think about what you're writing. You didn't make me care, the tension is in all the wrong places (or, more honestly, non existent), and now you want me to read through this butt burp of a narration?

[Anonymous No.15477877]

>>15472388
Does anyone have any input? I know I'm overwriting (and probably overreaching in the process) but am I setting the tone well enough? The flashback sequence is the meat of the passage, and it's my hook into establishing reader interest. If it's not effective than I need to find a way to make it less so. I'm also a little leery about starting it off full blast abstraction, but it fits thematically with what I'm going to talk about, and time is something that underlies it.

[Anonymous No.15477930]

>>15477877
Don't try so hard to 'set the tone' or 'establish reader interest'. What is effectiveness? What produces the desired effect in one person has no guarantee of producing the same effect on the next.
I'm getting a lot of anxiety from your text. If you're going to write, you'll need to work past the anxiety. It's almost as if your piece does not want to be read, does not want to be understood. Your text is hiding behind words and phrases, and you are hiding behind your 'overwriting'.
Each sentence more or less stands on its own, yet what is written in the text remains obscured to me, and I am loathe to go over it and try to divine just what it is that's going on, since the piece itself is hiding from me.

[Anonymous No.15477945]

>>15465340
>The ... man
>scanned
>periphery

Already checked out m8, sorry

[Anonymous No.15477948]

>>15472388
>https://pastebin.com/1S1s5F8Q

You're very indirect with the action to a fault, I think. It lacks coherence, which isn't inherently bad so long as the incoherence has some spine the reader can attach to. Try being more precise with events that guide the passage of time and space for the narrator / character

anything for >>15476482
?

[Anonymous No.15477958]

>>15466515
Bad title, didn't progress from there. Pseudo-philosophy isn't poetry

[Anonymous No.15477967]

>>15469985
I don't know if rhyming about contemporary life would ever work

[Anonymous No.15477982]

>>15477948
It's okay. There's not much there. If I read it out in the wild, I'd pass over it without any thought. I suppose I'd consider it somewhat adolescent. I realize this isn't really helpful. Perhaps think of it like this: it's like eating too much seasoning without any food to put it on.

[Anonymous No.15477991]

>>15474015
>that the owner has obviously picked

Who is making this observation? Why is she seated at a table with so many chairs when waiting for a single person?

>lets her eyes
>she has a catalogue

Which is it? Is she making a catalogue and then purposely focusing on the distance, or is she just letting her eyes look? She hasn't got a phone? She ordered before he arrived?

[Anonymous No.15478001]

>>15474049
>>He wakes up in a bed that eighteen years from now at thirty-two

No thanks. This doesn't ever happen.

[Anonymous No.15478009]

>>15474121
>the tist feeling I felt.

?

Also why the title Train? They're on a train sure but it doesn't add much to the purpose of the poem

[Anonymous No.15478017]

>>15474049
I realize that not everyone has the time or will to read Proust, but you should check out Tangled Up in Blue by Dylan. It should give you some ideas on how to play with time using prose/verse, and you could try coming up with something new from there.

[Anonymous No.15478025]

>>15476482
Not bad at all but I wonder if you're trying to make something small into something way too big by talking about the universe

[Anonymous No.15478048]

>>15477930
>I'm getting a lot of anxiety from your text.
This is the goal. The lack of focus is also intentional, believe it or not. I'm writing something that's ultimately autobiographical fiction, and the lack of focus and anxiety are things I'm trying to express, and explore, since they are fundamental components of my subjective experience. The idea is to wax and wane, and explore their contrast and the spaces between the dissociation and atemporality I'm trying to express in this passage, and concreteness I'd establish shortly. This is primarily why I'm asking about effectiveness. I'm trying to avoid the standard Pomo tropes of obfuscation as much as I possibly can (even though it doesn't seem like it) but I think the reader's confusion is part and parcel. I'm getting what you're saying though about the fine line, and I'll do my best to mind it as I progress.
>>15477948
>>15477948
>so long as the incoherence has some spine the reader can attach to
This is something I'm struggling with, I think, and it might be why I'm finding myself trying to lean so hard on the mechanical use of language. I was hoping the flashback passage might have been enough to convince a reader to keep going.
>>15477982
Coming in loud and clear, thanks. Do you think it's adolescent in the overwriting sense, in content, both maybe? I can work of the former, the latter is unfortunately beyond my control as this passage is 100% just reality as I experienced it.

[Anonymous No.15478053]

>>15478048
Also, thank you all for your input. I really, sincerely appreciate how constructive it is.

[Anonymous No.15478076]

>>15476482
I think it needs more context. I also get a bit of a mixing of narrative tones. Where the opening sentence uses the phrase "sort of," the end is talking about fate in a particular tone. I think if you want to use that tone at all, it's either all or nothing. It feels like a disconcerting mix of casual and formal. From >>15478048, so you don't think I'm going down a one way street.

[Anonymous No.15478117]

>>15478048
If everything you've written is true, then you're doing just fine. Hold true and march onwards. Perhaps a bit of a study of Joyce and Beckett might help you, but of course you don't necessarily want to become them.
Forget about overwriting, forget about pomo, forget about obfuscation, forget about convincing the reader to keep going. Most importantly forget what you think the story is about, or what you think the 'deeper meaning' is. Write as best you can and focus on the words, at the end you'll have a finished work on your hands. If you like it, good. If you don't that's okay too.
But keep in mind you must keep apart the anxiety you are writing about and the anxiety present within the process of writing itself. Focus on finding that purity in your practice. That might be the lack you perceive in your written work. What you must realize is that the lack does not exist in the text but in you and in the writing.

[Anonymous No.15478128]

>>15478117
just to clarify, when I say that the lack exists in you, I am not saying you don't have the skill. Please don't misunderstand that.

[Anonymous No.15478221]

>>15478117
>>15478128
It's rare to get advice of this quality. I'll consider it as best I can. Thank you again

[Anonymous No.15478272]

This thread makes me feel better about my own writing. All of you are such tragic mediocrities, hahaha.

[Anonymous No.15478447]

>>15478001
Huh?
>>15478017
Thanks, I'll check it out

[Anonymous No.15478639]

>>15466515
full of pointless line breaks, mundane word choice, complete disregard for grammar. and worst of all you're doing zero imaginative effort, just writing vagueries and expecting the reader to do all the work. Put more truth into it. 1/10

>>15467286
utterly perfunctory. This happens. That happens. this happens. Too short for me to care about any character or to establish any sense of setting or mood. Rewrite this at 10x the length. 3/10

>>15469007
Flash Fiction always suffers with trying to condense the set-up, to try to hide it into functional sentences. You do it well sometimes (the description of warmth inside vs his emotions outside) but other times it doesn't. Another anon already pointed out the "12 years" bit. But beyond that, the "little daniel" just doesn't work. Daniel is our viewpoint character, he wouldn't consider himself "little daniel." Plus, the only reason its included is to hint at his age. Just front load that info. Tthe genre struggles alot with rushed endings that try too hard to be gut-punches. But overall you've dealt with it alright. Would prefer to see a lengthier version (5x the length, minimum) that would allow you to actually develop this. 5/10

>>15469985
rhythmless rhymes don't make boring statements anymore interesting. 0/10

>>15470863
Unless there's something wild I'm missing (this being a murder-suicide or smthn) it just seems like it's a neet having a birthday. It's well written, overall. I think it's missing introspection. You have no dialogue, very little humour, no action. That's fine but you gotta have something. Either the MC's thoughts/memories or your opinion/purpose as Author. This would work fine as a scene in a longer work maybe, but as standalone flash, I'm kinda missing the point. (also i have no clue why the para about the 16yo was included). 7/10

[Anonymous No.15479163]

>>15478639
cont.

>>15471319
all yr linebreaks are on point, your metaphors or conceptually unified, you've got a proper volta, ironic parallelism between your first and final lines. and on what? a poem about writers block? what a fucking waste. find some purpose in your life. 6/10

>>15472388
You've got words & you know how to use them, that's for sure. But you write like a robot. The way you describe stucco in a way reminds me of Ozymandias' speech in Watchmen, or maybe some sections of Pynchons stuff where he describes mathematical models and scientific theories. But those had clear relevance & obvious metaphorical significance. What you're doing is spinning your wheels. You're wasting time before the real purpose of your writing appears. And even when you're making emotional or rhetorical appeals, it is ineffectual because you've broken the 4th wall by overwriting. it gets much better towards the end, when the writing has purpose. Keep writing, all of this will be deleted in the edit anyway.
4/10

Here's some of my writing:
https://pastebin.com/qEZMyW2c
https://pastebin.com/rBcJBFj5
https://pastebin.com/70FFpxT0

[Anonymous No.15479206]

I'll come back tonight and comment!

The darkness exploded in green red blue and yellow when they passed beneath a streetlight, cab windows fogged up from his breath and the unforgiving sub-zero climate outside. He blinked hazily, nose pressed up like a snout against the cold window, teeth menacingly glaring at anyone who happened to cross their path, which was nobody. They were coming up on the edge of town. The night got thicker the further out they got, and apart from the humming motor and rattling rubber it was dead silent outside. Inside his head a bassdrum pounded its monotonous marching beat, shivers creeping up his spine with each roaring howl. He was coming down gently, started to feel the stomach’s rumblings and muscle’s aches, far too real. Leaning back onto the dusty upholstery, he squirmed his way into the tight jeans pocket, ransacked his belongings feverishly, until he felt the plastic. He fished it out, glanced at the driver’s reflection in the rearview mirror, met no resistance and opened the bag. Passing a streetlight, he weighed a quarter of the bag’s contents onto his fish-hook index and shoved it into his mouth. The chemical jolt of dunked coke forced him to involuntary twitch, neck bent, face contorted into a gallery of disgust. He shook it off, zipped the bag and squirmed it back into his pocket as the driver turned to him, raised his sunglasses and probably said something, pointing to his sleeve. He couldn’t understand the thick Arabic accent, so he just nodded, “Sure man”, but he wouldn’t budge. He repeated, “You have drugs on your arm, DRUGS”, filtering every word through his gaping maw while pointing madly at the sleeve. Max looked down, mumbled something, saw the white breadcrumbs dotting the maroon fabric as they passed another light, grunted his acknowledgement and began to lick it.
“Money, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Show it.”
“No.”
“Ok.”
The car jolted to the side, came to a screeching halt in front of a barb-wire fence encapsulating a listless flat building. Max squinted at the façade, but couldn’t make out the letters menacingly guarding the carport next to the side-entrance.
“I don’t think this is it.”
“You get out, no money, you walk” threatened the driver, brandishing his arms without looking back.
“Listen, we’re good.”
“No good, money now!”
Max got out his phone, lit the screen and waved it at the driver whose eyes he met in the rearview mirror.
“I swish, ok? We’re good people Ali, we’ll figure this out.”
Ali opened the ask-tray, filling the car with a sharp stench, and picked up a half-smoked cigarette, lit it, took a big whiff, and exhaled. He rambled the numbers slow, dragging on every syllable as if rehearsing his numerics. Max patiently tapped them into the screen.
“Bad internet.”
“OK, get out.”
“No, no. Salam al-Hashra?” he said with a thick American accent.
“Yes.”

[Anonymous No.15479278]

>>15479163
>But those had clear relevance & obvious metaphorical significance
Would it be more forgivable if there were actually a relevance established down the line? I get your reaction and I'm not disparaging you for it. You have no reason to see anything more than a couple paragraphs of text in a pastebin. A core belief I have is that art is basically abstraction -- I'm not saying this is some kind of universal truth, but it's something that guides me. I do have plans for tying that obtuse opening passage in. Whether or not it materializes organically will have to be seen, and will likely delineate its inclusion, ultimately. But I do have plans.

[Anonymous No.15479287]

>>15479163
Also, I like the third one quite a bit. You've got a pretty great command of the natural use of language that I wish I could emulate. My nitpick would be the use of verbal onomatopoeia like "hmmm" and "um," but that's just my personal taste and I'm finding it hard to justify it. I would personally try to express it prosaically or imply it from the dialogue.

[Anonymous No.15479324]

>>15479278
That makes absolute sense. It's real hard to gauge stuff from snippets. I was judging the piece as standalone.

As for art as abstraction - not sure I agree, but as long as you have purpose for your style, I'm sure it'll work out.

[Anonymous No.15479529]

>>15477699
thank you! I normally write in a different style but I wanted to try my hand at something more clipped and it clearly wasn't successful. I appreciate the edits

[Anonymous No.15479619]

I will post comments after work!

"I was sitting in the chair and the back of it, the rest, was digging into me like some CIA pressure-point technic, not to be overly dramatic; yet I had no way to voice my complaints because my professor, in who’s chair I was sitting, in his slightly ramshackle house, during this dinner party, was, in my estimation, a kindly old man who had long ago forsaken perhaps the comforts of the flesh, and so I was in no position to tell him, at that moment, that the chair in which I was sitting had, because the back of it, the rest, a way of making me feel incredibly uncomfortable as if I were undergoing some CIA pressure-point technic to extract information from me and make me feel generally unpleasant, in pain. The professor raised his hand in a toast and I saw what had been rumored, that being that the reason he wore his ring on the wrong hand was due to the fact that halfway across the world, on some numerical hill, a wayward shot had ricocheted off of a rock and in its mercurial journey it had disarticulated his finger, the finger on which one would normally wear his or her matrimonial ring—and I thought that if he had braved this then there was certainly no excuse for me to bring up the fact that the chair, in which I was sitting, due to its lumpen and decrepit, and perhaps at no previous point ergonomic backrest, was putting upon me an unreasonable strain and I could not engage in any conversation, provide any bon mots, which I may or may not have prepared in advance, because at that moment my thoughts were wholly uncollectible as I was under a certain duress due to the chair, its back, in which I was sitting. And I felt like some sub-bernhardian narrator who was wholly lost in his tortured train of thought and I was almost taken by this comparison were it not for the chair which, at that moment, as I tried to lean back and perhaps quickly ponder this, had sent a jagged pain through my left shoulder blade and had I not known better, that being: known that it was caused by the uncomfortable chair in which I was sitting, specifically the back of it which was digging into my shoulder-blade like some archaic Spanish conversion method, I would’ve thought surely that it was a heart-attack, that I would be struck dead young and flop on the table like a fish or some assassinated mobster with my head bouncing off the plate in front of me, stacked high with his wife’s meatloaf."

[Anonymous No.15479624]

>>15475060
Different anon, but it still reads awkwardly. Possibly the repetition of school. Maybe something like

>He will drop his son off at school before going to work, much as his own father will do (for him?) this morning

I want sure about the for him part

[Anonymous No.15480410]

Dehumanizing

I was pretty strange as a kid.
Teachers wouldn't let me play football. Wouldn't allow it.
I got changed out off my gear in the bathroom.
Face sweating, the white of my skin looked like a mushroom,
surrounded by sweaty pores.
Or a mushroom cloud.

You didn't want to hear my sad spiel.
It was life-defining and you were slowly letting me slip into darkness.
Like falling asleep watching teleshopping.
My eyes were burning ambers.
Oak trees collapsed in my stomach and fire erupted in the deepest pits.
I had you.
I screamed:
"Junkie Scumbag"
And only then did you reach for me like a burning angel in shanties.
Freed me from my afflication but I had to fight for it.
I was a pretty strange kid, I didn't know why I had to fight for it.

[Anonymous No.15480494]

“I’ve never done this before”
she is on top of me, undulating, modulating, her pointboned hips rocking, driving. she has her secret, and i will not get near it. ive taken off her top. she is smiling, her eyes are closed, she is alone in her pleasure. her hair is tumbled down her softback, an umber waterfall, running to her pink (i cannot remember the color) bottomlace.
when i had her on her back (for, indeed, i did have her) i cinched hairfuls in my right hand, and cradled her skullbase with my left. out of the hospital week, after hollow gauze, after coffee weak and cupfruits, i feasted her neck. keeping her, i pinched and nibbled at her nipples, which were exquisitely sensitive, young; she gasped with wide openmouthed smiles as her belly rose, undulating, modulated.

the next time i saw her i drove my tongue into her bellyrose as she bit the fingers in her mouth. i then kissed squarely her moundish bottomlace, freed her thighs, and do not remember the rest.

[Anonymous No.15480507]

>>15480410
first stanza is nice, i especially like the notion of not being allowed to play football.
the second i think is a bit more distracted, since the abstract language there conflicts with the concrete situatedness of the first verse. also, and this is my bias, but id prefer this as prose, unindented

[Anonymous No.15480841]

Roman Graffiti

I made a discovery recently- a few years ago
Sprawled on Ancient city walls in Rome, were crude markings.
Their meaning birthed by their creator.
It was not all eloquent, but they resassembled similar etchings and sprays
found in urban jungles or internet forums.
Some were even expressing friendship between two already gone individuals.
It blossomed insight.

How laughter echoes in empty halls.
How the mind of morphing consciousness of the old is similar
to the mind of the new intruder.
That our lives were similar like the faces of brothers.
The graffiti was not art
but poetry

[Anonymous No.15481326]

Tell me anon, when do you give up on becoming a writer?

[Anonymous No.15481734]

>>15479624
Reads much better, thanks anon

[Anonymous No.15481816]

>>15481326
When you want to, I guess. On the other hand, it's not like there's a shelf life for writers. As long as you have any capacity to put a word to paper, you can keep writing, keep improving, keep telling your story. Youth is no great advantage. Writers aren't athletes whose bodies eventually stop functioning well enough to compete as they age. Coetzee said a great writer is a great man, and the more you live, the more experiences you have to draw from to twist upon your autorial lyre, the more opportunities you have to actualize yourself. Granted, Coetzee had that particular barb pointed at his own heart, but it works in both directions. Point being, the kind of greatness he wrote about was a magnanimity of spirit which can only be gained gradually.

At the same time, you know what they say: don't quit your day job.

[Anonymous No.15481956]

a resume intro is probably an annoying thing to post, but i need wordsmithing advice and there's not really anywhere else on the site to ask except for /biz/ which is underaged. in particular i'm unsure about "an exchange in expertise would benefit us both". should i rephrase? otherwise feel free to steamroll my carefully crafted bullshit.

>I’m a senior mechanical design engineer. I have an established history of coordinating teams, consistently meeting schedules, and producing designs that mitigate system risks. I’m interested in working for a company that offers diverse and meritocratic career development, along with an opportunity to work on innovative technologies where an exchange in expertise would benefit us both. If COMPANY is such a company, I hope to hear from you!

[Anonymous No.15482017]

>>15481956
Sounds more like an ending than an intro.
First things first: remove the exclamation mark.

Now absolute baby basics of writing any non fiction whatsoever:

1. Intro-- What you've written is fine, provided you can back it all up. Just make it sure it doesn't sound conclusive. Introduction opens up the text, the conclusion closes it. The I hope to hear from you is a conclusive phrase.
2. Body-- This is where you back up every single claim in the intro. One idea one paragraph. The structure of each paragraph reflects the larger structure of the entire CV/Cover letter. First line is the claim. Next is evidence that backs up that claim ('At company x I did abc, ...' and so on ). The final sentence in the conclusion should be a recapitulation of the first sentence that integrates all the lines in between the first and last sentence (don't worry about this too much just 'hammer the point home', so to speak). A decent heuristic for good paragraphs is can the middle paragraphs (that is, excluding intro and conclusion) be rearranged and still maintain their meaning? Think of it like each paragraph is a black box or has an equivalent circuit that tells out what the out put is and you feed that output into the conclusion.
3. Conclusion-- similar to the last sentence of each middle paragraph, except in paragraph form for the entire text. Recapitulate, reiterate, drive the points home. Make sure they know you absolutely will be an asset, and so on and so forth.

[Anonymous No.15482798]

>>15479163
>>15478639
Appreciate the feedback a lot, I guess it really might be too cryptic.
>I think it's missing introspection.
Yeah, that's on purpose. Tried to leave hints here and there of what's going on underneath the surface instead. The most important one from my perspective has to be
>Her husband says something in tears like she died doing what she loved. As though that is supposed to be a consolation, he thinks. He writes the producer, saying it's insensitive to air that sort of thing, saying now people will get the idea that it's a good thing to say that at a eulogy.
It's more a reflection on how people can't really move on from grief; his older brother died of smoking and his dad died in a fire accident from smoking—because he was grieving the brother. So everything that he notices or thinks of is something that reminds him of what went down. It sounds stupid to put it out there just like that, but since this is a critique thread no use in not trying to figure out how I can pull off iceberg theory a bit more properly.

I enjoyed your third piece the most, even if it was a huge toss-up with #2. It had to be on purpose that you picked those three samples specifically considering the narrative voice for all three, wildly different circumstances is pretty spot-on as far as I reckon.

Only comments I have, and what's getting me about #2, is how he sleight-of-handed the fortune out of the cookie before he cracked it open. Love the matter-of-factness about them breaking up, and that adds a lot to the rereadability of it, because all the hints as to why are already there. What's with the not capitalizing specific demonyms like Taiwanese or Japanese? Was this a sort of throwaway piece, or did you do that on purpose to highlight his insensitivity? Either way good shit, 9.8/10.

[Anonymous No.15483839]

bump

[Anonymous No.15483889]

I woke up to find myself with a mouth full of sand and my limbs bleeding and numb. I painstakingly lifted my head and when I realised my wife and Mariette were nowhere to be found, I started calling their names for help.

I took a good look around the beach and our boat was absent, as well as any traces of the two women aboard. I screamed as long as my lungs allowed, but not answer came.

[Anonymous No.15484061]

You gents ever practice via re-writing parts of TV shows/movies/manga/etc and adapting them to your own narrative?
>>15483889
>but not answer came.
I think this should be "but no answer came"
Other suggestions:
>started -> began
>took a good look -> searched/glanced/scoured