/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.21228750]

post hilariously bad prose

[Anonymous No.21228991]

>>21228750
Is this AI?

[Anonymous No.21228999]

>>21228750
That was alright. The dialogue was not great though. It sounded like erotica.

[Anonymous No.21229003]

>>21228991
It reads like it was a translation from some other language. 'Timur' so probably Russian or something similar

[Anonymous No.21229010]

>>21228750
How is that bad anon? It flows, doesn't It? What's good prose supposed to look like?

[Anonymous No.21229253]

>>21228750
>post hilariously bad prose

[Anonymous No.21229267]

>>21229253
Long enumerations are patrish

[Anonymous No.21229271]

>>21228999
>>21229010

[Anonymous No.21229297]

>>21229253
I like it

[Anonymous No.21229307]

>>21229271
>no argument

[Anonymous No.21229314]

>>21229307
If you're on this board and think OP is an example of good prose, you need to reassess something

[Anonymouṡ No.21229321]

>>21228750
>hilariously bad prose
Did someone mention Dan Brown?

DB has written many sentences that make his popularity puzzling. Let's restrict ourselves to just a few from 'The Da Vinci Code'.


1)
>Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's Grand Gallery.

An opening that lets us know what we're in for. Stand aside, Mr. Bulwer-Lytton.


2)
>"The Knights Templar were warriors," Teabing reminded, the sound of his aluminum crutches echoing in this reverberant space.

'Remind' is a transitive verb for most of us. Not for Mr. Brown. And if the crutches are echoing, why does he need to tell us the space is reverberant? Does he think we've forgotten about the crutches, which were three words ago? To be fair, most people do forget everything Mr Brown writes as quickly as possible.


3)
>He could taste the familiar tang of museum air — an arid, deionized essence that carried a faint hint of carbon — the product of industrial, coal-filter dehumidifiers that ran around the clock to counteract the corrosive carbon dioxide exhaled by visitors.

Occasionally we get a glimpse into how Mr Brown sees the world and we realize he isn't a human being, he's just got hold of some human skin somewhere and is wearing it as a full body suit.


4)
>A voice spoke, chillingly close. "Do not move." On his hands and knees, the curator froze, turning his head slowly. Only fifteen feet away, outside the sealed gate, the mountainous silhouette of his attacker stared through the iron bars. He was broad and tall, with ghost-pale skin and thinning white hair. His irises were pink with dark red pupils.

A silhouette with white hair and pink irises stood chillingly close but fifteen feet away. You have to admire Mr Brown's cavalier contempt for the laws of physical reality.


5)
>As a boy, Langdon had fallen down an abandoned well shaft and almost died treading water in the narrow space for hours before being rescued. Since then, he'd suffered a haunting phobia of enclosed spaces — elevators, subways, squash courts.

Other enclosed spaces include solitary confinement cells, manholes, and bathrooms on trains.


6)
>Only those with a keen eye would notice his 14-karat gold bishop's ring with purple amethyst, large diamonds, and hand-tooled mitre-crozier appliqué.

God is in the details, they say. Or is it the devil? Definitely one or the other.


7)
>Yanking his Manurhin MR-93 revolver from his shoulder holster, the captain dashed out of the office.

See above.


[1/2]

[Anonymous No.21229322]

>>21229314
>still no argument
I accept your concession

[Anonymouṡ No.21229326]

>>21229321

8)
>Captain Bezu Fache carried himself like an angry ox, with his wide shoulders thrown back and his chin tucked hard into his chest. His dark hair was slicked back with oil, accentuating an arrow-like widow's peak that divided his jutting brow and preceded him like the prow of a battleship. As he advanced, his dark eyes seemed to scorch the earth before him, radiating a fiery clarity that forecast his reputation for unblinking severity in all matters.

How do you tell when oxen are angry? They throw their shoulders back and tuck their chins into their chest. Also, what precisely is a fiery clarity and how does it forecast anything? What does Dan Brown think 'forecast' means? Ah, sweet mysteries of life.


9)
>Five months ago, the kaleidoscope of power had been shaken, and Aringarosa was still reeling from the blow.

You would reel too if someone had just hit you with a kaleidoscope.


10)
>The vehicle was easily the smallest car Langdon had ever seen. "SmartCar," she said. "A hundred kilometers to the liter."

Just because you're fleeing the police, that's no reason to neglect fuel economy. Also, SmartCars do about 20km (12 miles) to the litre.


11)
>My French stinks, Langdon thought, but my zodiac iconography is pretty good.

Who says modern schools don't teach practical skills?


12)
>Pulling back the sleeve of his jacket, he checked his watch — a vintage, collector's-edition Mickey Mouse wristwatch that had been a gift from his parents on his tenth birthday.

Somewhere out there is an editor who tried to eliminate Mr Brown's utterly irrelevant details and was swept aside by the force of... of something.


13)
>His last correspondence from Vittoria had been in December — a postcard saying she was headed to the Java Sea to continue her research in entanglement physics... something about using satellites to track manta ray migrations.

See above.


14)
One final point: 'Da Vinci' wasn't Leonardo's surname. It means he was "of Vinci". So the title "The Da Vinci Code" is like calling T. E. Lawrence 'Mr. Of Arabia'.


[2/2]

[Anonymous No.21229340]

>>21229322
You know what? No. No, I am not going to hold your hand and waste time pointing out the obvious. Just like if someone posted their hot new track - a recording of last night's diarrhea - they shouldn't expect an in-depth anal-ysis of where they went wrong.

If you don't immediately see it, you shouldn't be here.

[Anonymous No.21229343]

>>21229340
Kek you're pathetic

[Anonymouṡ No.21229347]

>>21229003
>It reads like it was a translation from some other language.
It reads like a translation from some other species.

[Anonymous No.21229388]

>>21229326
>>Captain Bezu Fache carried himself like an angry ox, with his wide shoulders thrown back and his chin tucked hard into his chest. His dark hair was slicked back with oil, accentuating an arrow-like widow's peak that divided his jutting brow and preceded him like the prow of a battleship. As he advanced, his dark eyes seemed to scorch the earth before him, radiating a fiery clarity that forecast his reputation for unblinking severity in all matters.
This actually reads fine. The rest of the critique I agree with, but this? It feels like whoever wrote it is being intentionally uncharitable.

[Anonymous No.21229399]

>>21228750
Yeah it’s pretty mediocre but most YA consumed by 20-something women reads like this. Zadie Smith’s first book often read like this too.

[Anonymous No.21229405]

>>21229314
I don't think anyone is saying it is really good, just not terrible. People might be coming here in an effort to learn more about literature by speaking with more knowledgeable people. There is nongood reason for you to not explain why the prose is terrible. I suspect you aren't able to.

[Anonymous No.21229567]

>>21229405
not him but it is laugh-out-loud terrible and if you can't see it you're fucked. doesn't the sentence about uncapping the pen make you laugh at how he fumbles the sequence of two simple events? he wrote that it glared AS he uncapped it, realized it couldn't glare before being uncapped so he added "soon" to "fix" it. "as i soon stood naked, i started to undress." it's funny gibberish.

[Anonymous No.21229607]

>>21229567
You’re analyzing the prose correctly imo, and I myself get cliches and bad connectors for words and actions in a first draft. This is the difference between bad and good writers imo, the ability to question actions down the the verb agreement and timeline of action and have anything flow in a way that makes sense. But I wouldn’t call it hilariously bad. Again, Zadie Smith won awards for similarly mediocre writing in her early 20s. She’s gotten better now but this are rookie mistakes one can unlearn, they’re not indicative of talent or lack. This part of writing is the craft aspect, having fresh ideas and natural flow is the genius part. One of my favorite writers, George Steiner, wrote brilliant nonfictional essays about culture but his novel Portage of AH to San Cristobal has some of the worst prose style imaginable. Smart people can write poorly if they haven’t worked on it and dumb people can write beautiful fluff.

[Anonymous No.21229612]

>>21229253
>This is what white people consider genius

[Anonymous No.21229628]

FIRSTPERSON YA, is storytelling pornography. prose is an effect, not a cause.

[Anonymous No.21229638]

how do you actually git gud at prose

[Anonymous No.21229646]

>>21229638
write like the OP but then take notice of how bad everything actually is, from the shitty ellipse usage reminiscent of the worst light novels have to offer to the terrible choice of words both in dialogue and prose, the unnecessary commas, and the stilted flow your passages have to them
then fix it just to come up with other trash and keep doing this until you're fifty

[Anonymous No.21229650]

>>21229612
>SEE BOUY PLOBLEM

[Anonymous No.21229675]

>>21229253
AND GANDALF THE GREY AND GANDALF THE WHITE

[Anonymous No.21229715]

>>21229321
>>21229326
Holy shit lmao

[Anonymous No.21229735]

>>21229399
no it doesn't. any professionally published release would have had the most glaring fuckups polished away by the editor and you would end up with something that's just lame and not actively illiterate-sounding.
>Zadie Smith’s first book often read like this too.
i looked up the sample on amazon and no, not even close. she is clearly at least competent and the editor would have fixed it if she wasn't.

>>21229607
>But I wouldn’t call it hilariously bad.
if the "emotions frank" bit doesn't make you laugh and ask "who's frank?" you will never be a writer. then the next sentence starts "lifting my gaze" and forgets to provide a subject, which is schoolboy level shit. this isn't on the level of some mediocre woman author, this is a kid struggling with grammar.

[Anonymous No.21229857]

>>21229388
>It feels like whoever wrote it is being intentionally uncharitable.
>radiating a fiery clarity that forecast his reputation for unblinking severity in all matters.
nah, this is actual gibberish. he's filing the page with what looks like writing until you actually try to make sense of it. "his dark eyes radiated a fiery clarity" does not actually produce any kind of coherent image or idea, and how do eyes "forecast reputation?" maybe you can read character from a face, but reputation? the stark flame of his black hair reverberated with the crystal abyss of his murky past. it's nonsense. it's impressive to people that don't read because they can't understand good books, either, so it makes no difference.

[Anonymous No.21229928]

>>21229675

[Anonymous No.21229935]

This is the third "poem" from a book called "Milk and Honey" that has sold over 10 million copies.
I did not read any further. No, the first 2 were no better.

[Anonymous No.21229946]

>>21229321
>>21229326
Your post made me laugh

[Anonymous No.21229949]

>>21229928
That is a really funny post

[Anonymous No.21230000]

>>21229857
>"his dark eyes radiated a fiery clarity" does not actually produce any kind of coherent image or idea
His dark eyes were clear, and had a fire in them. This being a metaphor for focus; passion; anger; etc.
>and how do eyes "forecast reputation?"
Forecast as in presage. Foreshadow. The look in his eyes let others know before anything else that his reputation for anality is by all means adequate.
It's funny, because the awkward metaphor preceding that sentence is way worse on every metric imaginable.

[Anonymous No.21230026]

>>21229935
It's true
Kinda
In fact, there are women where I'd want to stay

[Anonymous No.21230121]

>>21229253
Ithaca is one of the greatest things ever written in the english language

[Anonymous No.21230145]

>>21229567
You can uncap the pen while looking at the glaring cap. There's a bulb in the room after all. It doesn't have to glow before. This is just a matter of where you look. But you make it sound autistic as if the writer failed some math test.

[Anonymous No.21230201]

>>21230145
Kek, accusing someone of autism in the most autistic way

[Anonymous No.21230254]

>>21230201
The fool is making a really stupid comparison. Comparing being naked before undressing to a cap glowing in a bright room, before uncapping. The former is a matter of definition while the latter depends on perspective.

[Anonymous No.21230262]

>The nice man looked at the red cup.

[Anonymous No.21230338]

>>21229735
'Emotions frank' is not someone misunderstanding grammar, it is an attempt to sound good. Like when Cormac McCarthy writes 'world entire'. It sounds shit in this case, sure, but you can clearly see what happened and I think it shows a lack of comprehension, wilful or otherwise, to attribute it to poor grammar. 'Lifting my gaze' sort of does have a subject. Again, the shitty grammar is the writer trying too hard, I think. This is definitely shit, don't get me wrong, but by no means hilariously so. I don't think having this point of view means one would never make it as a writer though I don't really know why you would assume that everyone here aspires to such a thing.

[Anonymous No.21230401]

>>21230000
>His dark eyes were clear, and had a fire in them.
no, that's not what he wrote. he wrote that that the clarity had fire in it, and that the clarity with the fire in it radiated outwards from the eyes. i can't imagine a fiery clarity (vs a watery clarity?), i can't imagine clarity radiating and "forecasting reputation" etc etc. you didn't explain what he wrote, you wrote something else.
>The look in his eyes let others know before anything else that his reputation for anality is by all means adequate.
to "forecast" is to predict a future event, not to confirm something you already know, and i don't think that's even what he meant. it's a nonsense use of the word.

like, i understand that he wanted to say that the guy had angry eyes and looked strict. that's just not what he wrote, he wrote a bunch of elaborate word salad. it's classic purple prose.

[Anonymous No.21230406]

>I jump up: it would be much better if I could only stop thinking. Thoughts are the dullest things. Duller than flesh. They stretch out and there's no end to them and they leave a funny taste in the mouth. Then there are words, inside the thoughts, unfinished words, a sketchy sentence which constantly returns: "I have to fi. . . I ex. . . Dead . . . M. de Roll is dead . . . I am not ... I ex. . ." It goes, it goes . . . and there's no end to it. It's worse than the rest because I feel responsible and have complicity in it. For example, this sort of painful rumination: I exist, I am the one who keeps it up. I. The body lives by itself once it has begun. But though I am the one who continues it, unrolls it. I exist. How serpentine is this feeling of existing, I unwind it, slowly. ... If I could keep myself from thinking! I try, and succeed: my head seems to fill with smoke . . . and then it starts again: "Smoke . . . not to think . . . don't want to think ... I think I don't want to think. I mustn't think that I don't want to think. Because that's still a thought." Will there never be an end to it?

[Anonymous No.21230419]

>>21230406
This is fine. The kind of ruminations a 10 year old might have but not laughably terrible

[Anonymous No.21230422]

>>21229638
You read a lot of very bad prose and don't write like it.

[Anonymous No.21230454]

>>21230145
it's obviously the tip of the pen that does the gleaming, after it's uncapped, hence the "soon." "soon" and "as" can't both be in that sentence. i'm sorry i'm subjecting you to this complicated math challenge but a writer needs to be able to figure out if events A and B are happening simultaneously or in a sequence. it's kind of necessary for conveying a story.

also, a basically literate person will notice busted writing like that instinctively and it will take them out of the experience. the "autistic" analysis is just to articulate what the problem is specifically.

[Anonymous No.21230504]

>>21230338
by struggling with grammar i mean the "lifting my gaze" thing, which absolutely is a basic grammar mistake. you can write:
>lifting my gaze, i saw joe sucking his own dick
but if you write
>lifting my gaze, joe was sucking his own dick
you just accidentally said that joe lifted your gaze. YOU were lifting your gaze, not joe the selfsucker. it's wrong. in op's excerpt the gaze lifter ends up being "the sight," because he forgot what sentence he was writing. it's high school stuff.

[Anonymous No.21230505]

>>21229735
What’s with you and this particular piece of writing? Is it from some woman who wouldn’t fuck you in creative writing class or something? Anyone who would ever be a writer would either ignore a bad passage like this, or analyze why it was bad and move on. Not rant about some generic bad writing for hours on end. Absolute cringe.

[Anonymous No.21230520]

>>21230454
Now you're moving goal posts. Putting your own words into the writer's mouth. Take your meds it's never that serious.

[Anonymous No.21230541]

[Anonymous No.21230547]

>>21230505
people said they don't see the problem, so i'm explaining what the problems are. i don't know where the except comes from. sorry i upset you by discussing writing on the literature board, maybe you could go suck a dick to unwind

>>21230520
is there a pill you can take that will make you understand what a pen looks like

[Anonymous No.21230559]

>>21230547
> sorry i upset you by discussing writing on the literature board, maybe you could go suck a dick to unwind
Why do you think I’m upset, it’s more of pity. You really are an angry little guy. Calm down, fuck some pussy, drink a beer, relax. Trying to give a lesson on prose to anonymous people online and acting obscene when people call out how idiotic the whole thing is means you probably are dealing with other issues and are venting through this particular outlet that you think you know well. It’s easy to make fun of bad prose, if you were a writer, you’d just go write good prose and not sperg. Grab a cigar, a bottle of your favorite beer, enjoy some vagina, and chill.

[Anonymous No.21230563]

>>21230559
lmao

[Anonymous No.21230574]

>>21230541
this seems perfectly okay

[Anonymous No.21230576]

>>21230563
I know you’re angry about something in your life, but acting like a professor on 4chan about a random piece of pulp fiction isn’t going to help you out of your rut. What’s your favorite beer brand?

[Anonymous No.21230587]

>>21230541
The actual descriptions are perfectly fine, they don’t overstay their welcome. The part after 1935 is a weird tonal shift but overall if you think this is bad prose I’d imagine you focus way too autistically on prose and not enough on content of the books you’re reading.

[Anonymous No.21230600]

>>21230576
lol

[Anonymous No.21230607]

>>21230576
You seem oddly invested in this whole affair, too, despite the cool detachment you want to project.
I enjoyed that anon's taking apart of shit prose. This all should come naturally, but it's good to see it in words.

[Anonymous No.21230632]

>>21230607
Well, I had been posting back and forth with him trying to explain why it’s a good analysis but taken too personally, and it’s always good to tell someone in mental need that they should calm down and take an internet break.

[Anonymous No.21230654]

>>21230632
>taken too personally
lol

[Anonymous No.21230691]

>>21229253
I like it

[Anonymous No.21230702]

>>21229321
I wish I had the linguistic skills you have, anon
But I am an ETL so I forgive myself

[Anonymous No.21230872]

>>21230541
This is actually good, what's it from?

[Anonymous No.21230943]

>>21229253
Tag yourself, I'm Bindbad the Bailer.

[Mulletfag No.21230954]

>>21229321
>>21229326
Why /lit/ can't be more like this regulary?

[Anonymous No.21230978]

>>21230954
Most of his criticisms weren't even valid or just pure retardation on his part. So I would argue /lit/ is actually like that all the time.

[Mulletfag No.21231000]

>>21230978
B-but it's funny!

[Anonymous No.21231051]

>>21230541
>>21230872
Googled it. Came up with this
https://www.newwriting.net/2022/07/little-boy/#:~:text=One%20morning%20a%20small%20boy,rivet%20in%20the%20wild%20grass.

[Anonymous No.21231622]

>>21229010
Oi, vey!

[Anonymous No.21231707]

>>21229567
Autism

[Anonymous No.21231818]

>>21228750
The prose here is nowhere near as offensive of the literary author dark academigician type writing about writing about writing.

[Anonymous No.21232008]

>>21228750
That's just average. The 'wow' was stupid, out of place with the placing of the adjective in "emotions frank". Sounds like some young author trying to write an old novel, perhaps dreaming with The New Yorker.

[Anonymous No.21232017]

>>21229253
For me? It's Hinbad the Hailer

[Anonymous No.21232022]

>>21228750

>He didnt know that he’d be asked so quickly. He walked back through the Quarter. Past Jackson Square. The Cabildo. The rich moss and cellar smell of the city thick on the night air. A cold and skullcolored moon driving through the skeins of cloud beyond the roofslates. The tiles and chimneypots. A ship’s horn on the river. The streetlamps stood in globes of vapor and the buildings were dark and sweating. At times the city seemed older than Nineveh. He crossed the street and turned up past the Blacksmith Shop. He unlocked the gate and entered the patio.

>There were two men standing outside his door. He stopped. If they could get inside the gate they could get inside his apartment. Then he realized that they had been inside his apartment.

Really, most of the book. Corncob got fucking brain damage

[Anonymous No.21232049]

>post hilariously bad prose
>"It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future. The locked and rusted gate that stood before us, with wisps of river fog threading its spikes like the mountain paths, remains in my mind now as the symbol of my exile. That is why I have begun this account of it with the aftermath of our swim, in which I, the torturer's apprentice Severian, had so nearly drowned."

[Anonymous No.21232196]

>>21228750
Trust me, nothing will approximate the incomprehensibility of your average Pajeet in a community college creative writing class. Genuinely indecipherable, and this is still coming from people who are ostensibly fluid in English.

[Anonymous No.21232231]

[from pic related cont.]

In my kind of porno movies the girls wouldn't even have to get naked.
They'd just take the guys down to the rec room and
beat them repeatedly at chess
and then talk to them for hours about Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle
or the underlying social metaphors in the Aliens movies.
Buy stock in some hand cream companies
because there is about to be a major shortage.
And I'm not just talking about straight porn. Oh no.
There should be fuck films for my nerd brethren
of all sexual orientations.
Gay nerd porn flicks with titles like "Dungeons and Drag-queens."
This idea is a fucking gold mine.
I am gonna make millions,
because this country is full of database programmers
and electronics engineers
and they aren't getting the loving they so desperately need.
And you can help . . .
If you're an intelligent woman is interested in breaking into the adult film industry,
and if you can tell me the name of Luke Skywalker's home planet,
then you are hired.
It doesn't matter if you think you're overweight or unattractive.
It doesn't matter if you don't think you're beautiful.
You are beautiful. . .
And I will make you a star.

[Anonymous No.21232243]

>>21232231
This cringe damaged my cardiovascular system.

[Anonymous No.21232254]

>>21229253
Xinbad the Pthailer here
fuck Ninbad though

[Anonymous No.21232269]

>>21232243
He's one of the best selling authors of our time for a reason. Summa cum laude, baby!

[Anonymous No.21232270]

>>21232254
Ninbad here
who the fuck are you
never heard of you

[Anonymous No.21232281]

>>21229253
This reads like a deleted scene from the movie Dr Seuss made

[Anonymous No.21232289]

>>21230547
You're missing the point. You are mistaking a shit writer who is trying too hard for someone with poor grammar.
Like this guy said >>21230338
The problem people have is that your critique is incorrect.

[Anonymous No.21232313]

>>21229321
> A silhouette with white hair and pink irises

Obviously a person experiencing the new emotion dorcelessness

[Anonymous No.21232329]

>>21230504
No, the "lifting my gaze" part is correct, albeit awkward. Besides, if there's any subject in that sentence, it is an implied "it" (because one could expand "what awaited me was ..." as "it which awaited me was ...").

[Anonymous No.21232334]

Once in awhile I remember 'innie between her legs was a katana stab' and I smile

[Anonymous No.21232455]

>>21232329
Exactly. If you think this is hilariously bad you've likely read little and written less. It is definitely not good but there is a wealth of shit worse than this out there.

[Anonymous No.21232495]

>>21230632
geez, chill bro! be cool like me and fuck some pussy instead of being a sperg on the internet. just be like me dude... I'm cool. I have sex

[Anonymous No.21232498]

>>21229928
lol

[Anonymous No.21232613]

>>21229347
Yeah, slavs

[Anonymous No.21232622]

>>21229003
>Timur, Temur, Temür, Temir or Tömör is a masculine Turkic and Mongolic given name which literally means iron. It is a cognate of the Bosnian and Turkish name Demir. In Indonesian, timur translates to east, and symbolizes hope by the rising sun.

[Anonymous No.21232626]

>>21228750
Found my first draft from when I was like 17

[Anonymous No.21232639]

>>21229003
You're wrong

[Anonymous No.21232656]

>>21232334
what is this

[Anonymous No.21232659]

>>21229253
00-06: Tinbad the Tailor
07-13: Jinbad the Jailor
14-20: Whinbad the Wailer
21-27: Ninbad the Nailer
28-36: Finbad the Failer
37-43: Binbad the Bailer
44-50: Pinbad the Pailer
51-57: Minbad the Mailer
58-64: Hinbad the Hailer
65-71: Rinbad the Railer
72-78: Dinbad the Kailer
79-85: Vinbad the Qualier
86-93: Linbad the Yailer
94-99: Xinbad the Phtailer

DUBS: Sinbad the Sailer

GO

[Anonymous No.21232669]

>>21228750
Timur, wow....

[Anonymous No.21232707]

>>21232329
>>21232455
>No, the "lifting my gaze" part is correct, albeit awkward. Besides, if there's any subject in that sentence, it is an implied "it" (because one could expand "what awaited me was ..." as "it which awaited me was ...").
what the fuck are you talking about lol. there's no "implied 'it,'" the subject of the sentence is "sight." "the sight was what awaited me." because "lifting my gaze" lacks a subject, the sentence ends up saying "the sight was lifting my gaze." the cart was pulling the horse. it's "awkward" because the grammar is wrong.

>Exactly. If you think this is hilariously bad you've likely read little and written less. It is definitely not good but there is a wealth of shit worse than this out there.
yeah and you've probably written it seeing as the two of you together can't find the subject in a sentence. even for this board that's dire.

>>21232639
holy shit lol, this entire time this was some eceleb thing? that's why people won't admit there are glaring mistakes in it, because they stan the youtuber? lmao

[Anonymous No.21232715]

>>21228750
>didnt know that he’d be asked so quickly. He walked back through the Quarter. Past Jackson Square. The Cabildo. The rich moss and cellar smell of the city thick on the night air. A cold and skullcolored moon driving through the skeins of cloud beyond the roofslates. The tiles and chimneypots. A ship’s horn on the river. The streetlamps stood in globes of vapor and the buildings were dark and sweating. At times the city seemed older than Nineveh. He crossed the street and turned up past the Blacksmith Shop. He unlocked the gate and entered the patio.

>There were two men standing outside his door. He stopped. If they could get inside the gate they could get inside his apartment. Then he realized that they had been inside his apartment.

[Anonymous No.21232717]

>>21232455
You were the one who shat it out, aren't you?

[Anonymous No.21232825]

>>21232707
Waldun's been a lolcow for about a year now, most of the praise for him is ironic.

[Anonymous No.21233004]

>>21232334
great find

[Anonymous No.21233030]

>>21232656

>>12345080

[Anonymous No.21233035]

>>21232659
obligatory roll; minbad or it's over

[Anonymous No.21233046]

>A tart's fart has been times too numerous to count the proverbial wind behind the sails (sales) of a thousand ships (hundreds of thousands of dupes). Her lower regions, not infrequently porcine, at times equine, at best smaller cetacean, are a merciless furnace wherein the dreams of all flesh and blood men are ultimately exterminated, genocided, in short, turned to ashes. The female flesh in its all too frequent precipitous ruin belies the inherent paradoxical cruelty at the heart of sex, especially procreative sex, itself. The purer and more virginal she remains the more enduring is not only her sexual attractiveness (her fame), but her sexual and overall vitalistic energies too. Including whatever cognitive and spiritual brilliance might (have) at one time illumined her mind. Thus the virginal female martyr in the very act of dying exorcises for a time those witness to her martyrdom of all their sins and simultaneously the pall of evil madness that otherwise entails or constitutes the sum total of man's condition on earth: universal malign ensorcellment by the witchcraft of his own solipsistic senses and sensations, which are precisely so because of their carnal composition, i.e. their microbiological constitution and nature.

[Anonymous No.21233056]

anyone have the first page of Ready Player One?

[Anonymous No.21233062]

>>21233046
it's weird but I wouldn't say laughably bad

[Anonymous No.21233071]

>>21233056
No, but his poetry is posted here >>21232231

[Anonymous No.21233087]

Our hopes when elevated to that standard of ambition which demands unison may fall asunder like an ancient ruin. They are no longer fit for construction unless on an approved principle. They smoulder away like the ashes of burnt embers, and are cast outwardly from their confined abode, never more to be found where once they existed only as smouldering serpents of scorned pride.

The little chat that Irene apparently enjoyed in the conservatory would gladly have become an act of forgetfulness on her part had not Sir John reminded her of its existence a few days afterwards. The spark of jealous passion had not fully died out after the incident referred to, and awaiting silently its decease, Sir John almost had grown a mourner to its imagined demise, following its undying remains so far as the village of Opportunity, when it was again to revive and shine as luminously as before.

[Anonymous No.21233098]

>>21232659
Hmm

[Anonymous No.21233228]

>>21230338
I agree with your points.

[Anonymous No.21233233]

>>21230541
This is ok, what are you bitching about? Is this just the passage of an MFA student that stole your Thunder?

[Anonymous No.21233432]

>>21232659
Kek

[Anonymous No.21233445]

"tim tim tim yeah yeah tim"
"sir... s-sir i can't"
"it's so big timtim"
"s-sorry s-s-sir"
"it shines like the sun, so perfect"
wtf was that

[Anonymous No.21233447]

>>21232659
I’m rollin

[Anonymous No.21233449]

>>21228750
That is abysmal.

[Anonymous No.21233456]

>>21232659
I need to know.

[Anonymous No.21233466]

>>21232281
i didn't think it was bad since it barely has anything of meaning written but now that you've said it lmao

i don't hate dr seuss tho

[Anonymous No.21233468]

>>21228750
>my pen in my blazer
English is the greatest language on Earth! No, in the Universe!
Didn't read after the first sentence.

[Anonymous No.21233528]

>>21232659

[Anonymous No.21233538]

>>21232659
Make me beautiful

[Anonymous No.21233553]

>>21232659
ROLLING

[Anonymous No.21233567]

>>21232231
This faggot has a signature species of cringe, I knew it was him before checking

[Anonymous No.21233568]

>>21232659
I want dinbad the kailer for how much it made me laugh the first time I read it.

[Anonymous No.21233574]

>>21232313
For the love of God, lay off the Thalasin+. Repeated use does chronic damage to your corpus callosum and other components of your limbic system.

[Anonymous No.21233575]

>>21229253
>no sexbad the virgin
ngmi

[Anonymous No.21233579]

>>21232659
ahem

[Anonymous No.21233587]

>>21233445
Japanese gay porn scene

[Anonymous No.21233598]

>>21232659
Roll

[Anonymous No.21233621]

>>21229340
>go on 4chan
>make low effort statement
>refuse to argue in defense of your statement
>throw a bitchfit when anons don't spontaneously drop to their knees to worship your posts
You can read >>21229321 and >>21229326 for inspiration then try again, or you can keep whining.
The choice is yours.

>>21229388
It skims fine, it reads terribly.
The "chin tucked into chest" pose is already cartoonish and in no way acceptable for a scene meant to be serious, and then you have this:
>his dark eyes seemed to scorch the earth before him, radiating a fiery clarity that forecast his reputation for unblinking severity in all matters.
which might be one of the worst riffs on the good old "if looks could kill" trope.
It's so overconstructed yet meaningless it reminds me of CoC2 writing.

[Anonymous No.21233628]

>>21230505
Hello Waldung

[Anonymous No.21233644]

>>21229567
He wrote AS where he should have written AND, but looking at the sentence I'd assume typo or overzealous spellcheck.
Adapting your example to be more accurate, you'd have:
>I started to undress, as I soon stood naked

[Anonymous No.21233650]

>>21233621
>You can read >>21229321 # and >>21229326 # for inspiration then try again, or you can keep whining.
>The choice is yours.

My man, the fuck is going on with you. I could entertain you and your weird spergy crusade to defend OP, but life is too short.

[Anonymous No.21233673]

>In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I don't know what I am. I don't know if I am or not. Jewel knows he is, because he does not know that he does not know whether he is or not. He cannot empty himself for sleep because he is not what he is and he is what he is not. Beyond the unlamped wall I can hear the rain shaping the wagon that is ours, the load that is no longer theirs that felled and sawed it nor yet theirs that bought it and which is not ours either, lie on our wagon though it does, since only the wind and the rain shape it only to Jewel and me, that are not asleep. And since sleep is is-not and rain and wind are was, it is not. Yet the wagon is, because when the wagon is was, Addie Bundren will not be. And Jewel is, so Addie Bundren must be. And then I must be, or I could not empty myself for sleep in a strange room. And so if I am not emptied yet, I am is.

[Anonymous No.21233683]

>>21229253
>*blocks your path*
a lot of famous and influential works have this autism

[Anonymous No.21233697]

>>21233650
>every post shitting on me must come from a single anon on a crusade
>every post mocking my inability to formulate an (easy) argument is secretly defending the mess in the OP
Kill yourself, faggot: you don't belong here.

[Anonymous No.21233800]

>>21233697
If you really are another anon, your vicarious sperg-rage is immeasurably more embarrassing.

[Anonymous No.21233892]

>>21232626
The prose isn't ungodly awful if you trim the weasel words although the content is dull.

[Anonymous No.21233904]

>>21233046
I actually find this interesting if this the writing of a character in the story.

[Anonymous No.21234034]

>>21229326
>Da Vinci' wasn't Leonardo's surname
This is a silly thing to nitpick, he didn't have a surname in the usual sense. This may not apply in his case since he wasn't a noble (and I don't know if they did it in Italy), but it was not uncommon to refer to notable European nobles by their territorial designation as a shorthand. De Chatillon, Von Liechtenstein, etc. The designation served as a surname in many peerage systems. What do you suppose Otto Von Biskmarck's surname meant?

[Anonymous No.21234290]

>>21234034
>What do you suppose Otto Von Biskmarck's surname meant?
he was named after a boat?
Also, who is Monte Cristo??? Why is there a whole book about his cheese????

[Anonymous No.21234956]

Are there some resources for me to sift through to get what even makes prose good or bad?
I don't have a grasp on it whatsoever and I feel completely clueless anytime the discussion of it comes up.

[Anonymous No.21234969]

I'm too embarrassed to post my own writing

[Anonymous No.21235204]

>>21234956
Read Gass’s essays on literature. He was one of the greatest prose stylists ever

[Anonymous No.21235220]

>>21229253
>my nigga the nailer

[Anonymous No.21235238]

>>21228750
How would you guys explain to someone that writing things like
>"Harry *cough* I am dying"
is worse than
>"Harry," he coughed, "I am dying"
And all other chatroom worthy stylistic choices. I honestly do not know why, and I know it's probably just a convention to not use this kind of shit in prose, but on what basis is it so jarring? It is jarring, right? I don't like reading someone who writes this direct 4chan greentext sort of shit in actual prose. When I try to tell people "you may want to avoid this and do this instead" they tell me, why? I like it better that way, fr fr no cap. How do I respond to this?

[Anonymous No.21235249]

>>21232659
Rolling for hack frauds

[Anonymous No.21235266]

>>21229928
jesus christ I haven't laughed this much in a long time

[Anonymous No.21235282]

>>21232626
cute annotaions

[Anonymous No.21235323]

>>21235204
Thank you very much.
"A Temple of Texts" is good, then? Or is there a website specifically for essays so I don't have to hunt down a book?

[Anonymous No.21235353]

>>21228750

[Anonymous No.21235373]

>>21235323
>>21235204
With "website" I didn't mean a site to pirate them from, by the way.
Just a site that compiles essays instead of having to download a book that collects multiple essays.
Should have made that clear my bad.

[Anonymous No.21235490]

>>21232659
Rollbad the Railer

[Anonymous No.21235588]

>>21235353
The fuck is this gay shit.

[Anonymous No.21235600]

>>21235238
It really doesn't matter, because language is inexact and arbitrary. The latter version is much more flexible, though, unless you want to start mixing styles.

[Anonymous No.21235907]

>>21232659
Zigzag the Zailor

[Anonymous No.21235915]

>>21230541
I'm actually enthralled and disgusted by this. I need moar.

[Anonymous No.21235917]

>>21229935
That's actually the best Rupi poem I've ever seen, and it's garbage.

[Anonymous No.21235919]

>>21229928
Gave me a good laugh.

[Anonymous No.21235930]

>>21229935
dumb fucker needs to accept that everyone likes sex and not everyone is desperate to settle down ASAP

[Anonymous No.21235932]

>>21229321
>>21229326
Wow, and I thought the movies were bad.

[Anonymous No.21235946]

>>21233683
Tolkien is nothing compared to this. This is the most lore heavy thing in the world. Incredible. A masterpiece. Fuck Tolkien.

[Anonymous No.21235995]

>>21229928
shit that's funny

[Anonymous No.21236007]

>>21232659
Rimbad the Raper

[Anonymous No.21236026]

>>21229935
>Noone ever comes
Sad femcel vibes

[Anonymous No.21236045]

>>21235917
Someone compared Neil to Rupi once.

[Anonymous No.21236054]

>>21235915
>disgusted by a tortured nigger child
are you ok anon? maybe a fever?

[Anonymous No.21236101]

>>21232659
Linbad let's go.

[Anonymous No.21236121]

>>21232656
Catgirl Misaki the Vampire Hunter

It's in the archives somewhere

[Anonymous No.21236137]

>>21232659
Rollinbad the Failler

[Anonymous No.21236240]

>>21232659
I already know I'm Finbad the Failer but fuck it roll

[Anonymous No.21236260]

>>21230541
Not very good but not awful. I don't see it.

[Anonymous No.21236265]

>>21228750
One cannot raise walls against what has been forgotten. The citadel of Ishuäl succumbed during the height of the Apocalypse. But no army of inhuman Sranc had scaled its ramparts. No furnace-hearted dragon had pulled down its mighty gates. Ishuäl was the secret refuge of the Kûniüric High Kings, and no one, not even the No-God, could besiege a secret. Months earlier, Anasûrimbor Ganrelka II, High King of Kûniüri, had fled to Ishuäl with the remnants of his household. From the walls, his sentries stared pensively across the dark forests below, their thoughts stricken by memories of burning cities and wailing multitudes. When the wind moaned, they gripped Ishuäl’s uncaring stone, reminded of Sranc horns. They traded breathless reassurances. Had they not eluded their pursuers? Were not the walls of Ishuäl strong? Where else might a man survive the end of the world? The plague claimed the High King first, as was perhaps fitting: Ganrelka had only wept at Ishuäl, raged the way only an Emperor of nothing could rage. The following night the members of his household carried his bier down into the forests.

[Anonymous No.21236279]

>>21232659
Mandatory roll bros

[Anonymous No.21236294]

>>21232231
The amount of cuckery in these lines is beyond comprehension. Instead of trying to better himself, he just goes full cuck? He probably wears a cage

[Anonymous No.21236300]

>>21236121
I think this is just incompetent translation. It sounds like someone simply wrote down an off the cuff telling of a story.

[Anonymous No.21236303]

>>21236265
reddit

[Anonymous No.21236317]

>>21232659
everyone but me is the Failer

[Anonymous No.21236333]

>>21233087
Hey we got a fucking Inkling over here!

[Anonymous No.21236362]

>>21236300
It's not

[Anonymous No.21236495]

>>21229307
there's no point in arguing with retards. anyone with an iq above 125 can see why this passage is hilariously trash, and that waldun is a delusional pseud.
brainlets need to accept that nobody wants to explain the excruciatingly obvious to them when there are better uses of one's time. your kind eventually go extinct, anyway, because nobody wants to be married to an idiot. therefore there's no point in wasting energy pointing out the many cringe-inducing bits of op's picrel. your ignorance is self-defeating in the longterm. i'm just irritated that i was born in this century rather than 300,000 years from now, by which point /lit/ might be a high-quality board. until then, seethe and die alone, smoothebrains.

[Anonymous No.21236564]

>>21236294
He’s a /lit/ user what were you expecting

[Anonymous No.21236614]

How has the thread gone so long without Sanderson?

[Anonymous No.21236617]

>>21233567
>flaccid but hefty penis
I don't know why this made me laugh so hard

[Anonymous No.21236625]

>>21228999
Trips died for this post.

[Anonymous No.21236637]

>>21229321
While the writers are absolutely to blame, how are editors at big publishing companies looking at manuscripts from someone like Dan Brown and not pointing this shit out?

[Anonymous No.21236697]

>>21232659
OKAY

[Anonymous No.21236759]

>>21235238
i would say formatting something in the traditional way immediately establishes a certain level of "authority" (this is A NOVEL by A WRITER, not just some text by a guy typing), which is important because people will absolutely see your writing through the lens of that kind of first impression. writers rewrite their opening paragraphs a hundred times exactly because making the reader feel like they're "in good hands" is crucial and you don't want to ruin that by typing like an internet idiot.

then again a lot of the people that write this way and read things written this way are essentially semi-illiterate. they haven't read enough real books to have developed a positive association with the way the are formatted, so it means nothing to them at all.

[Anonymous No.21236841]

>>21236121
I know this is terrible but I don't really hate it.

[Anonymous No.21236873]

Nothing's quite like suddenly awaking from the dreamless darkness in the middle of the night and finding out that you have just creamed your pants.
This feels like a betrayal. I feed this meat bag, this flesh prison of mine, keep it warm and healthy and away from various vices (including, by the way, pornography) — and as a reward, I have to get up at 2:10am on a weekday and change my underwear, without catching in mind's eye even a glimpse, even a fleeting trace of beauty, or anything good. Grow some more hair on your ass, will you, you animal. I hate you.

[Anonymous No.21236890]

>>21232659
rolling

[Anonymous No.21236928]

>>21236614
Sanderson's prose isn't great, but it's inoffensive for the most part.

[Anonymous No.21236946]

>>21236637
Jews

[Anonymous No.21236961]

>>21233800
> Terrible prose.

Great contribution

[Anonymous No.21236974]

>>21236946

[Anonymous No.21236978]

>>21232659
Rolling

[Anonymous No.21236981]

This loser used to date my girlfriend and I found some of his writings lmao. Laugh at this drivel with me

[Anonymous No.21237002]

>>21233673
Holy fuck I hate this retarded faggot

[Anonymous No.21237010]

>>21236961
As much as it is unhealthy for someone to behave as you are, I have to admit it is very amusing. And, sure, pretend you're another anon. It adds layers to the joke (which is you).

[Anonymous No.21237028]

>>21236981
>Whispered the horn salesman in a hushed tone
Well, I'm out already

[Anonymous No.21237031]

>>21236265
>escapes to the most hidden and well-guarded panic-castle in the land
>gets cucked out of his kinghood and life by a disease and paranoia
Anasûrimbor? More like Ana-skill-issue-bor.

[Anonymous No.21237037]

>>21236981
>Puddler's
dogshit lowest common denominator entry level honker
>Montegregor
contrarian bullshit for honklets
>Whizzler & Dad's
based, true honkino for horn enthusiasts with taste and style
>Anotolli Mad Hatter
a passable honk but nothing to write home about, more of a collectible than a worthwhile honk, absolutely perfect for a pretentious clown like (you)

[Anonymous No.21237040]

>>21236981
>>21237028
These two anons are fatally hyperautistic and need either Jesus or a coffin. Looks passable to me.

[Anonymous No.21237059]

>>21236981
It isn't bad, actually. Sorry, bro.

[Anonymous No.21237060]

>>21237040
I'm this >>21237028
This line is shit because whispered already implies a hushed tone, so the last half of the line isn't adding anything. Not to mention whispered is erroneously capitalised.

[Anonymous No.21237068]

>>21230954
Jews

[Anonymous No.21237073]

>>21237068
>>21236974

[Anonymous No.21237082]

>>21232231
This is amazing. Especially the image part.

[Anonymous No.21237091]

>>21237073
Post your nose

[Anonymous No.21237099]

>>21237091

[Anonymous No.21237245]

>>21232659
rolling

[Anonymous No.21237288]

>>21228750
I don't mean this as a goad or anything, but why is it bad prose?

I'm trying to get good a writing, because I want to write for a living, or for pocket money, or to at least get my stories published somehow, and I'm trying to understand what 'good prose' is supposed to look like.

I don't think I'm particularly good, for the record. I just feel the strong urge to write, and do it a lot, and I want to be good, but I don't understand why this is bad. Can someone expand upon the why, please?

[Anonymous No.21237291]

>>21229253
AND MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL'S BLACK KNIGHT

[Anonymous No.21237310]

>>21229314
>lit user
>cant read
Many such cases

[Anonymous No.21237394]

>>21233650
>i-it's not that I cant a-argument b-baka! It's just that I have no time to answer to these silly little inferiors!!1
>Proceeds to bitch several times in a row expecting someone to agree with him.
Nigga you had plenty of time you wasted on bitching

[Anonymous No.21237428]

>>21237394

[Anonymous No.21237429]

>>21236981
Actually good. Also you have other thread you faggot. So you are either a spammer or a cuck in denial.

[Anonymous No.21237555]

>>21237429
>Actually good.
lol. that sample is classic "retard with a thesaurus" writing. the guy wanted to say "hand" but in a "smart" way, so he googled for it and found the word "appendage." then he slammed it in there without realizing how comedic it sounds to use it for human fucking hands. i said hello and i shook his appendage. me and my girlfriend like to hold appendages on the beach. 10/10 prose stylization.

this board is so fucking depressing. what's the point of all the threads about reading the classics when people have no capacity to tell the difference between shit and chocolate? i could replace your copy of ulysses with sonic fanfiction and it would look the same to you.

[Anonymous No.21237650]

>>21232659
Roll

[Anonymous No.21237751]

>>21228750
here's the funniest thing about this garbage: it's a stereotype that when writers have nothing to write about, they just write about writing - except this guy doesn't know anything about writing, so he can't even convincingly write about that. the scene is about judging someone's prose, but he can't even judge his own crap, so he can't come up with anything concrete for the character to say. it's all filler nonsense: "the prose just wasn't CRAFTED enough. i told him to CRAFT it harder." he understands there is such a thing as the craft of writing, but can't for the life of him imagine what it would look like. "render this scenery more viscerally" is the writing equivalent of "tighten up the graphics on level 3," nobody would ever say that for real. he sucks so much you can keep staring at it and the badness shows up at different levels like it's a fractal.

[Anonymous No.21237759]

pseudcentral

[Anonymous No.21237775]

>>21237759
yup, a lot of people feel outed as pseuds when they can't actually see what's wrong with something like op's sample, so they get embarrassed and angry and try to defend it

[Anonymous No.21237919]

>>21237288
These are by no means the only bad bits, but they're the most hilariously bad (in my opinion).
>jot down remarks
This is a bizarre usage of remarks. It's like when someone just learned a new word and they don't really know how to use it, but they have a vague idea of what it means and want to use it to sound smart - but the word is fucking 'remarks'.
>triggered traces of emotions frank
Frank. He ends this sentence with 'frank'. Of all the fucking words he could have used, he uses 'frank'. It's like he just decided to fart at the end of a, not great, but at least passable sentence. If this were a comedy, he'd be a genius.
More broadly speaking the dialogue is UwU ... anime girl cringe, the characters and events are cartoonish and child-like (but not in a good way), and the whole thing reads like a teenager trying to write like what he thinks writing is supposed to sound like.
If you told me this were an 8th grader's creative writing project, I would believe you.

[Anonymous No.21237940]

>>21232707
Lifting my gaze modifies "me" you sneedful sneedist. The other thing you mentioned was just a commonplace stylistic inversion of noun and adjective order.

[Anonymous No.21238183]

>>21232659
rollando

[Anonymous No.21238202]

>>21232659
I have to know

[Anonymous No.21238230]

>>21237919
>>triggered traces of emotions frank
There's absolutely nothing wrong with this. Are you an ESL?

[Anonymous No.21238252]

>>21237919
Thanks.

[Anonymous No.21238294]

>>21237310
Is it really surprising at this point?

[Anonymous No.21238385]

>>21238230
it's very good to just write normal sentences but then invert the words final. it's called having a style, you swine uncultured. it's even better if the last word ends up also being a name common. when readers laugh at your prose, that just means they are readers happy.

[Anonymous No.21238401]

>>21238385
Are you actually unaware of this device? The way it's used in the op is clumsy but it's not a mistake.

[Anonymous No.21238402]

>>21238385
made me smile

[Anonymous No.21238492]

>>21237940
>Lifting my gaze modifies "me"
what, like "me lifting my gaze saw thing?" are you a cartoon caveman? "me" cannot be the SUBJECT of a sentence, it's literally the OBJECT form of a pronoun.

listen, it really isn't hard. if you start a sentence with "lifting my gaze," you simply have to put an "i" in there at some point or it does not make sense. the amount of pushback i'm getting on this is unreal, it's just elementary grammar.

>a commonplace stylistic inversion of noun and adjective order
yeah, a humorously misjudged one.

[Anonymous No.21238503]

>>21238385
>It's called having a style, you swine uncultured.
Beautiful.

[Anonymous No.21238506]

>>21238401
it's not a mistake like a grammar mistake, it's a mistake like your parents getting together. unfortunate and embarrassing

[Anonymous No.21238536]

>>21238492
Me being the object in no way means it cant be modified. Learn how to capitalize btw.

[Anonymous No.21238549]

>>21238506
Yes you have repeated what I said, congratulations.

[Anonymous No.21238590]

>>21228750
Tbqh he writing would be passable enough if it was erotica or fanfiction (except the ungrammatical lifting my gaze) but since the guy believes himself to be an erudite intellectual writing serious and artful literature it's fucking hilarious

[Anonymous No.21238598]

>>21232049
To be fair, the rest of the book is magnificent.

[Anonymous No.21238622]

>>21228750
Last night, I was Mozart. Or someone beside him. It could have been his look-alike, as I could have only known ‘it’ to be him through a delivery of thoughts that it he was indeed and not by my vision, as I never properly saw his face. Sweating he stood upon a great dark stage upon a hundred thousand watchers, or many more. They flutter their little fans in the cold rows. The rows tilt up and spray out into the far away darkness, stretching from beneath his feet until it was level with his eyes – and then gone. With everyone’s powdered faces shining to him like stars, going too until they were too dim, and dimmer, so serene it was at the very back as we felt its whispering afterglow. A feeling of thank you. Those with the furthest seats would watch as they slept, arm in arm, arm on arm, head on arm. The whole place was so quiet. He walks up to the stage from out of the evening – up black marble and velvet carpets of dark colours, up into the dark blue sphere that was too thin to define but certainly there, draping over the entire stage, which was a series of landings widening as they went up, very far. From the top, it was like he was standing on a glass marble at night and looking at all the little specks of dust below settle still in it’s reflection. The piece begins as he ascends, muttering and checking back over his shoulder with a nervous tic. The piece was named, proclaimed to the audience by a man with a great bouncing voice: “A stingray in furs” (or something very close). A long note starts to twinkle as if from a shimmer out of a globe, hanging still – refer to Salieri’s description in Amadeus. Like an eerie haunting whales song, more notes slowly come in as the air and all matter in between starts to appear water-like, as if deep under the sea, with massive windows far above the stage letting in surface ripples across the entire ‘theatre’, if you can even call it that. Like everyone went for a skinny dip at night. It was more like a stadium, but Stadium with a capital S.

[Anonymous No.21238626]

>>21238622
And suddenly the crowd feels wet and naked, and mer-maidens and men ghostly swim through the air. Rippling chorales begin from the sides and an attractively plump woman lined with a ostentatiously large fur shoal, drooping down to her feet and cowling up in a collar around her head like a dark wing protecting her eyes. Lipstick parts and she begins to so graciously howl, like a fat bat standing upright. The stingray begins to manifest as her body is wrapped in tight, throbbing opal scales that flicker across her plum figure, swaying her hips up to her breast, and curling around herself with shiny gloves. Dark hair like Ariel flows down on her body. He continues up the stairs and now I can see his white wig. He is getting hotter as the audience becomes more inanimate. A sense of ferocity and passion starts to burn up from the stage even as it appears to be miles under the sea, the creatures departing as stained glass apparitions bleed in like wine, like spritz, bubbling through, no longer water but candied hyper-pop phosphorescent apocalypse, bright white, up and fire, a great electric fire storm raging through across the entire stratosphere, the choir accompanied now after very long minutes of slowly climbing notes – an organ that builds into an affirmative scream, but those screams of victory. Explosions of ecstasy as the organs oscillate and smooth into a cacophony and the black palace with a gold trim. Stingrays swim overhead and into the light, Mozart goes up into the light. The carpets are olive, red, violet, like ageing fruits smashed into paste and dyed, then the smell of fermenting fruits. And the last organ song climbs into silence.

[Anonymous No.21238657]

>>21238536
but it does mean it cannot be the subject, and the fragment "lifting my gaze" needs a subject. who lifted the gaze? i did, but the "i" is missing from the sentence. instead, "the sight" is the subject of the rest of the sentence after the comma, and that leaves the "lifting" part orphaned and nonsensical. the point of that kind of initial infinitive phrase is to describe multiple actions taken by the same subject. [after/while] doing a thing, [subject] did another thing. it MUST be "lifting my gaze, i [did something]." it cannot be "lifting my gaze, [someone else did something]." i really don't know how to make this any clearer.

[Anonymous No.21238690]

>>21238549
the point is that "it's not a grammar mistake" is an irrelevant defense in a thread about bad prose, because the badness of prose is not limited to incorrect grammar. "uhm excuse me there is nothing wrong with this" - no, there is, it's grammatically correct terrible prose.

[Anonymous No.21238732]

>>21229326
Post more of Mr Brown's greatest works. I beg you. I've never read any of it before and have no interest in his stories, but my sides!

[Anonymous No.21238753]

>>21236614
>>21236928
The fucking spren though. It's like he thought 'how can I connect with emoji loving youngsters' and wrote it into the plot. I have actually read all his epic fantasy so far and kind of like it, but those spren...

[Anonymous No.21238762]

>>21236981
I liked it. It made me lol, it flowed, not so bad. sorry.

[Anonymous No.21239063]

>>21236121
BURN IT!

[Anonymous No.21239111]

>>21232659
if trips I become Darkinbad the Brightdayler

[Anonymous No.21239241]

>>21239111
HOLY FUCK
I KNEEL

[Anonymous No.21239251]

>>21232659
ayyy

[Anonymous No.21239276]

>>21236265
Funnily enough I think that Bakker has the opposite problem of most writers - his prose is technically solid enough, it has flow and euphony and what have you, but the actual subject matter is mostly edgy pseudo-profundity and inane conlang gibberish.

[Anonymous No.21239283]

>>21228750
This is the greatest and best words in the world...
Tribute.

[Anonymous No.21239298]

>>21239276
>his prose is technically solid enough, it has flow and euphony and what have you, but the actual subject matter is mostly edgy pseudo-profundity and inane conlang gibberish.
That was exactly my thought when I begrudgingly dropped The Darkness That Comes Before halfway through. I like his prose. I hate every character and what's happening in the story.

[Anonymous No.21239312]

>>21238657
I don't know why this is stirring up so much contention. You're right - it's a perfect example of a dangling participle.

[Anonymous No.21239347]

>>21232659
rollin'

[Anonymous No.21239354]

>>21232659
Roll

[Anonymous No.21239654]

>>21236054
I'm not interested in your subversions - your wicked soul delighting in the perversity of evil. Clean yourself up, you sorry excuse for a man.

[Anonymous No.21239819]

>>21230541
the individual sentences here are fine, it just seems like someone put them in a random order.
Perplexing.

[Anonymous No.21239919]

>>21232659
dubs pls

[Anonymous No.21240467]

>>21232231
To think that he's seen his dream achieved, what with Twitch streamers and OnlyFans.
Although this doesn't address the part of his fantasy where he's the one on the casting couch with them.

[Anonymous No.21240522]

>>21232659
Rolling

[Anonymous No.21240645]

>>21239111
I kneel...

[Anonymous No.21240683]

>>21232659
rollan

[Anonymous No.21240744]

>>21230559
>>21230576
>>21230632
faggot

[Anonymous No.21240777]

>>21229638
Learn to write poetry imo, many great prose writers are great poets first. Write a poem a day, learn the rules first, then start to bend the rules to find your personal voice and flow. Once you've done that, it's just learning to sprinkle poetry into your prose in a way that is tasteful, your prose ends up being maybe 10-30% poetry, depending on how flowery you want to be. Metre, musicality, pacing, playful repetition of certain sounds, allow powerful words to punctuate each line and let the supporting words dance around them. It's about understanding the beauty inherent in words and the way that connecting them holds a magnifying glass to that. A lifelong learning process to be sure.

[Anonymous No.21240787]

>>21238230
it sounds shit
DUMBFUCK

[Anonymous No.21240795]

>>21237555
If you had any reading comprehension you'd know he was talking about a thumb or finger, not a hand. Also post prose.

[Anonymous No.21240806]

>>21232659
wassup niggas

[Anonymous No.21240814]

>>21237555
this niggot has to use a thesaurus to come up with appendage

[Anonymous No.21240819]

>>21232659
Let's see

[Anonymous No.21240845]

>>21240814
I agree with him about that particular word choice. It comes across as stilted and inorganic. There is no aesthetic merit to the choice of word, nor is there any reason to use it for the sake of clarity. The only apparent motive behind the word choice appears to be an attempt to use a "bigger" word to make it sound more gooder.
It's a classic amateur mistake, but since the piece as a whole isn't littered with that shit it's forgivable.
The piece as a whole is fine, not great, but there's nothing laughably bad about it. A decent amateur effort.

[Anonymous No.21241053]

>>21240777
Checked. This seems like actually good advice.

[Anonymous No.21241068]

>>21239654
Based

[Anonymous No.21241313]

>>21232659
rollin

[Anonymous No.21242533]

>>21229715
>>21229946
>>21230702
>>21230954
Anon didn't write it, that's why /lit/ can't have nice things. >https://sylvietranslation.wordpress.com/2013/05/13/dan-browns-20-worst-sentences-by-tom-shivers-from-the-telegraph/

[Anonymous No.21242602]

>>21233046
>Rhyming Porcine with equine and not Obscene.

Hooooly fuck

[Anonymous No.21242865]

>>21232049
What's bad about this? I always thought this was a fantastic intro, especially given that severian is a time travelling demigod who meets himself multiple times, and just previously to being at that gate had died and been resurrected in the waters of gyoll in the presence of another demigod like creature who happens to be his mortal enemy...

[Anonymous No.21243847]

>>21229935
not prose

[Anonymous No.21243991]

>>21243847
a diamond shape doesn't verse make

[Anonymous No.21244074]

>>21243991
>>21238385

[Anonymous No.21244080]

>>21244074
homage

[Anonymous No.21245139]

>>21232659
Come on, Minbad the Mailer.

[Anonymous No.21245514]

>>21232659
rollin

[Anonymous No.21245540]

>>21233673
I would argue that this is fairly complex portrayal of what the grief of a maddened and guilt-ridden sharecropper in the 1930s would have looked like given the horrific death of his mother and his burden to take her to the grave. Granted, after he starts talking about the wagon it really loses coherence but I think that's kind of the point: he's losing his mind.

[Anonymous No.21245564]

>>21229735
"Lifting my gaze" is a participle phrase, and "what awaited me" is the subject of the sentence. It has a laughable style, but the grammar is correct in this case.

[Anonymous No.21245586]

>>21228750
I don't see what's wrong with it, reads just fine to me

[Anonymous No.21245595]

>>21229935
>behaves like a whore
>complains about attracting whoremongers

[Anonymous No.21245609]

>>21232825
He's from Pozzbourne, course he's a wally.
https://rcwaldun.com/tale

[Anonymous No.21245637]

>>21232659
rolling

[Anonymous No.21245639]

>>21228750
Way too many ellipses. Terrible dialogue.

[Anonymous No.21245671]

>>21239111
>>21239241
>>21240645
kneelbros...

[Anonymous No.21245693]

>>21239111

[Anonymous No.21245700]

>>21229253
And Dante from the Devil May Cry series.

[Anonymous No.21245775]

>>21232659
Give me my rol(l)e

[Anonymous No.21245879]

>>21245139
shit

[Anonymous No.21245931]

>>21238657
I think the point is that this is a thread about poor prose and people initially said that the op was obviously shit but not exactly laughably so. It is just an example of a poor writer trying too hard. Like this anon said >>21230338
Of course it is dreadful. Nobody thinks otherwise. A few people however clearly feel that it is the sort of thing that you skim read, think 'that's shit', then move on from. It doesn't belong here as it isn't funny. Your only justification for it being hilariously bad is the poor grammar and that doesn't exactly make it laughably bad. It is shit. We all think so. But a sentence without a subject just makes the writing poor, not hilarious.

[Anonymous No.21245975]

>>21232659
I HATE NIGGERS

[Anonymous No.21245985]

>>21229253
Kino

[Anonymous No.21246018]

>>21245931
Not the person you're responding to, but what makes it funny to me isn't the awful prose on its own so much as the combination of the prose and the content. Did you not even smile at the last sentence? It almost seems tongue-in-cheek.

Also, there's something about the way he uses commas ("He took the pen, and reluctantly, began to jot" or "He was slow at first, but soon, words began to pour") that just cracks me up.

[Anonymous No.21246021]

>>21245931
>t. sperg

[Anonymous No.21246028]

A CLASSIC FROM EARLY WALDUN

[Anonymous No.21246032]

AND ANOTHER

[Anonymous No.21246035]

HE CAN'T KEEP WRITING THIS BAD

[Anonymous No.21246036]

>>21246028
I like this one honestly

[Anonymous No.21246043]

>>21246036
Do you read? Virginia Woolf or Saul Bellow would blow your mind.

[Anonymous No.21246049]

>>21246043
Woolf continues to blow my mind, but Waldun is so comfy.

[Anonymous No.21246053]

>Lysidike took her ability to read his mind as a matter of course, but his converse power was still unsettling. Time was only Anaximander ever gleaned what she thought with any proficiency; but he deduced her nature from what his oily smarts told him was the nature of a person, and only sardonically hinted at his mastery. Tlexictli didn’t even have to puzzle to catch her straight away, so the privacy she took for a metaphysical given in her youth broke up, and she felt her disagreements with her husband as dumb sensory pressures, like heat or cold. Their cross-purposes weren’t any easier for their transparency, but there was nothing to worry over – they’d conducted business together before becoming sentimental.

[Anonymous No.21246097]

>>21232659
I'm going to Phtail the fuck of hiroshimoot if I don't get dubs.

[Anonymous No.21246123]

>>21245931
i chuckled two or three times while reading it for the first time, so yes, it is literally "laughable." that particular grammar fuckup isn't really the funny part, we're only talking about it so much because /lit/ sucks at grammar.

pretension + incompetence is funny and i'm going to laugh at it. get over yourself.

[Anonymous No.21246129]

>>21246021
How? Isn't it more spergy to be saying something is hilariously awful because of poor sentence structure?

[Anonymous No.21246131]

>>21246129
No.

[Anonymous No.21246137]

>>21246123
Fair enough, I only found the pretentious shit funny and the poor grammar more annoying than anything else. I have no issue with you mate, just clarifying things.

[Anonymous No.21246140]

>>21246131
I see, my mistake.

[Anonymous No.21246257]

>>21246036
How? It's clunky as fuck and riddled with rookie errors like inconsistent tense.

[Anonymous No.21246307]

>>21246257
Does that really bother you more than something like not splitting rent with bugs? Do you notice grammatical stuff ahead of awful word choice?

[Anonymous No.21246323]

>>21246307
Sort of. Even good writers can have poor word choice at times but it still reads well. Obvious errors by a writer who doesn't bother to proofread and/or edit their work before putting it out there are a reasonably consistent signal you're dealing with shit.

[Anonymous No.21246330]

>>21246028
It's way better than the OP. It's a bit dry and boring, but much better.

[Anonymous No.21246379]

>>21245564
no. what you have is the sentence "the sight was what awaited me," where the subject is "the sight" and "what awaited me" is part of the predicate. the sentence is then inverted for emphasis so it becomes "what awaited me was the sight" but the subject is still the subject even when moved after the verb. the subject of "what matters is family" is still "family."

in either case, the sentence fails to supply a logical subject to "lifting my gaze," which can only be "i," so the gerund is left dangling.

[Anonymous No.21246388]

>>21246137
Well i have an issue with you

[Anonymous No.21246462]

>>21246323
What if the word choice is excellent but there are a few grammatical errors? Is that a talented but lazy writer or just a shit writer?

[Anonymous No.21247140]

>>21246462
Not him, but he's right when he says
>Obvious errors by a writer who doesn't bother to proofread and/or edit their work before putting it out there are a reasonably consistent signal you're dealing with shit
But there are outliers. Grammar is just a tool to help legibility. We need to have an agreed upon language to communicate. If I make up my own rules and start saying:
Glorping ;humbuckers fucked the g!uns just go find gibbus gim,ple in the glorpin starch?
It's nonsense.
If the prose still flows, makes sense and is aesthetic, it doesn't matter if there are minor 'errors' if they have no impact on the legibility. Grammar rules are guidelines rather than concrete absolutes. Language is fluid. What matters more than a rule is why the rule exists in the first place. If the rule is broken, but the spirit of the rule isn't, it doesn't matter.