/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.4040145]

Post the first paragraph of one of your stories.

[Anonymous No.4040153]

>>4040145
On they went, singing “Rest Eternal,” and whenever they stopped, their feet, the horses, and the gusts of wind seemed to carry on their singing.
Passers-by made way for the procession, counted the wreaths, and crossed themselves. Some joined in out of curiosity and asked: “Who is being buried?”—“Zhivago,” they were told.—“Oh, I see. That’s what it is.”—“It isn’t him. It’s his wife.”—“Well, it comes to the same thing. May her soul rest in peace. It’s a fine funeral.”
The last moments slipped by, one by one, irretrievable. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the earth and everything that dwells therein.” The priest, with the gesture of a cross, scattered earth over the body of Maria Nikolaievna. They sang “The souls of the righteous.” Then a fearful bustle began. The coffin was closed, nailed, and lowered into the ground. Clods of earth rained on the lid as the grave was hurriedly filled by four spades. A little mound formed. A ten-year-old boy climbed on it. Only the state of stupor and insensibility which is gradually induced by all big funerals could have created the impression that he intended to speak over his mother’s grave.
He raised his head and from his vantage point absently glanced about the bare autumn landscape and the domes of the monastery. His snub-nosed face became contorted and he stretched out his neck. If a wolf cub had done this, everyone would have thought that it was about to howl. The boy covered his face with his hands and burst into sobs. The wind bearing down on him lashed his hands and face with cold gusts of rain. A man in black with tightly fitting sleeves went up to the grave. This was Nikolai Nikolaievich Vedeniapin, the dead woman’s brother and the uncle of the weeping boy; a former priest, he had been unfrocked at his own request. He went up to the boy and led him out of the graveyard.

[Anonymous No.4040161]

Pain had become a stable companion a long time ago. Pain, and desperate, empty numbness. She had pretended, sometimes, that she hypnotized herself with the delirious mess of deep, pulverizing bass and never-ending, headache-inducing flashes of light. Pretense had become the singular thread of strength that remained for her to cling to, and eventually, pretense had become reality. She drifted through the days and nights aware, but not cognizant.

[Anonymous No.4040162]

Our thought will be of a day in Colorado and another welcome spread, when both my father and I got very drunk, and yet remained brutally sober, and I began to curse him for neglecting my mother, and he cursed me for the misery I had flung upon her, and we grew angrier and angrier, and my mother tried to make peace, and presently my father lost himself in an insane passion to make me suffer for the things I had said, and at that same second I too saw scarlet before my eyes, and the two of us leaped upon each other, and we were like two animals, and I knocked my father to the floor, and he fell with a thud, and, lying on the floor, began to cry like a little child.

[Anonymous No.4040171]

A fiery cyclone whips its way through the bush. A solitary man stands up from his resting place. The man we all expect; the disheveled mountain man, alone for miles. The man runs towards the cyclone, leaping over burnt up fallen logs, running through the flames that engulf the green. The bush is hardly quiet—the cyclone creates a noise like a turbine. He forces his way through the thick growth, head on into the cyclone, and when he gets close enough, he is enveloped by the fire, his immolated body engulfed by the whipping wind.

[Anonymous No.4040199]

The folks of shanty town aged with the day. Dawn broke, as it always did, over the little hills to the east, and lay there for a while in the rosy pink of a new-born. Children would run from their homes to the schoolhouses of the rails, and play jump rope with clotheslines in the breaking light. Maybe their elder siblings would join them, to laugh at them when they fell and dust them off when they cried. Then, when they’d fallen enough, brother taught brother how to jump across tracks, and sister taught sister about boys and blood. Parents cropped up at a reasonable hour, to hammer nails or hang washing, or maybe try shooting with the last few bullets in the shotgun. They’d walk to the nearest little town outside of the city and beg, or steal a newspaper or candy from stores that lined the streets. Then, when all was said and done, and the last train whistled under a dying sun, the oldies would rock back and forth on porches, to smoke and think about where that train was headed.

[Anonymous No.4040201]

Come on guys, read and comment.

[Anonymous No.4040213]

>>4040171
>A fiery cyclone whips its way through the bush. A solitary man stands up from his resting place

Present tense. Sounds like a movie script. Don't do present tense, bro.

[Anonymous No.4040217]

>>4040201
pretty shit way to start a story.

[Anonymous No.4040243]

>>4040217

lel

[Anonymous No.4040247]

>writing stories

[Anonymous No.4040258]

>>4040247

Do you know where you are? The board for stories.

[Anonymous No.4040265]

I don't want to write a story.

[Anonymous No.4040277]

>>4040258
>implying literature=stories

[Anonymous No.4040284]

>>4040265

[Anonymous No.4040291]

>>4040277

Yes. That's exactly what I imply. What do you imply?

[Anonymous No.4040298]

It is too late. The Evacuation still proceeds, but it’s all theatre. There are
no lights inside the cars. No light anywhere. Above him lift girders old as an
iron queen, and glass somewhere far above that would let the light of day
through. But it’s night. He’s afraid of the way the glass will fall—soon—it will
be a spectacle: the fall of a crystal palace. But coming down in total blackout,
without one glint of light, only great invisible crashing.

[Anonymous No.4040299]

>>4040265

[Anonymous No.4040303]

As a child, my wife hated her school and wished she could leave.
Years later, when she was in her twenties, she disclosed this
unhappy fact to her parents, and her mother was aghast: 'But
darling, why didn't you come to us and tell us?' Lalla's reply is my
text for today: 'But I didn't know I could.'

I didn't know I could.

[Anonymous No.4040304]

but the first paragraph is shit, beginnings are the hardest for me.

[Anonymous No.4040309]

Um dia o Senhor Alfredo, vendedor de fabulosas Alfaces provenientes da Montanha Montanhosa, habitante da Vila Vilarinha, acordou com a impressão de que algo estava mal. De imediato, dirigiu-se à sua verdejante e extensa horta. Maravilhosas Alfaces enfileiradas, em todo o redor da Montanha Montanhosa. Viu as suas alfaces preciosas cobertas de pequenos pontos negros que se moviam.
Estranhando o que seus olhos viam, aproximou-se. Larvas alegremente ocupadas mascavam o fruto do seu labor, as magníficas Alfaces.
Transtornado, gritou impotentes impropérios às ligeiras larvas, e foi ao café da Vila Vilarinha afogar as suas mágoas com um copo de leite, a bebida local predilecta.

[Anonymous No.4040312]

>>4040298
le

[Anonymous No.4040313]

>>4040298
I like the whole glass smashing in the dark and I'm going to have to try hard not to steal it

[Anonymous No.4040315]

>>4040313
**glass smashing in the dark thing

[Anonymous No.4040319]

On one late hour in the early summer in Beverly Hills, on the left side of a very dark (nearly black) grey paved road curving upward with a yellow line down the middle, surrounded on both sides by a very dark (nearly black) brown and green forest of oaks that were densely packed together and which stretched an unknowable distance into the night, underneath a very dark (nearly black) blue sky bigger than any of the former and peppered with very light white dots, I stood alone.

[Anonymous No.4040321]

"Man," said Terl, "is an endangered species."
The hairy paws of the Chamco brothers hung suspended above the broad keys of the laser-bash game. The cliffs of Char's eyebones drew down over his yellow orbs as he looked up in mystery. Even the steward, who had been padding quietly about picking up her saucepans, lumbered to a halt and stared.
Terl could not have produced a more profound effect had he thrown a meat-girl naked into the middle of the room.
The clear dome of the Intergalactic Mining Company employee recreation hall shone black around and above them, silvered at its crossbars by the pale glow of the Earth's single moon, half-full on this late summer night.
Terl lifted his large amber eyes from the tome that rested minutely in his massive claws and looked around the room. He was suddenly aware of the effect he had produced, and it amused him. Anything to relieve the humdrum monotony of a ten-year [Time, distance, and weight have been translated in all cases throughout this book to old Earth time, distance, and weight systems for the sake of uniformity and to prevent confusion in the various systems employed by the Psychlos. - Translator] duty tour in this gods-abandoned mining camp, way out here on the edge of a minor galaxy.
In an even more professorial voice, already deep and roaring enough, Terl repeated his thought. "Man is an endangered species."
Char glowered at him. "What in the name of diseased crap are you reading?"

[Anonymous No.4040323]

>>4040213

Present tense is fine.

[Anonymous No.4040330]

>>4040323

It brings nothing. You imagine the events in the exact same sequence. It just makes you sound edgy.

[Anonymous No.4040332]

>>4040330

Present tense is fine.

[Anonymous No.4040338]

The year 1866 was signalised by a remarkable incident, a mysterious
and puzzling phenomenon, which doubtless no one has yet forgotten. Not to
mention rumours which agitated the maritime population and excited the
public mind, even in the interior of continents, seafaring men were
particularly excited. Merchants, common sailors, captains of vessels,
skippers, both of Europe and America, naval officers of all countries, and
the Governments of several States on the two continents, were deeply
interested in the matter.

[Anonymous No.4040340]

>>4040338

Awful. You're never going to get published with tripe like this.

[Anonymous No.4040346]

>>4040340

Aren't you encouraging...

[Anonymous No.4040348]

>>4040340
>Never going to get published

Have you read Pynchon's "Against the Day"? Quite a bit of it (especially Chums of Chance chapters) reads very similar to this.

[Anonymous No.4040350]

>>4040348

For one published Pynchon, there are thousands of them that don't get published.

[Anonymous No.4040354]

>>4040350

Well, the quoted passage just happens to be from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. So there's that.

[Anonymous No.4040355]

Garble nibble anus anus mcdouble dude. BOOBLE bop doo? Fwop da witch wop, nipples true? Yes, yes, you whore. Fifteen years in Korea, and I'm damn sure of it.

I've sent this to a few agents. We'll see where it goes.

[Anonymous No.4040356]

>>4040338

I don't know why bro, but these lines remind me of those neckbeardish "muh atheism" texts ... they all seem so euphoric

you can start like this, but give your reader something after the first lines ... too unsatisfying in my opinion.

[Anonymous No.4040358]

I was born on the ground. My mother, standing over me, birthing, looked kind. In a moment she invited a new life into her domain, and that moment took nine months, and that moment lasted 22 years. My mother killed me yesterday.

[Anonymous No.4040359]

>>4040358

I like this and would like to read the full story.

[Anonymous No.4040360]

>>4040354

[Anonymous No.4040361]

>>4040356
>>4040340
You fucking retards, he posted Jules Verne.
>lit in charge of being knowledgable

[Anonymous No.4040362]

>>4040330
yo author here, it's for a short story, I like using present tense because I use present tense in scientific papers I write. The idea was to make it like a dream, or like an alternate reality where you are the characters in the story. Yeah it comes off as edgy but idgaf i'm experimenting

[Anonymous No.4040365]

>>4040361

As good a time as any to suggest that being critiqued by others here doesn't generally mean diddly-squat.

[Anonymous No.4040366]

Sage for not an opening paragraph and newfag. Does /lit/ actually enjoy books written to entertain? I always figured the library here would look more like the selections an English class keeps.

[Anonymous No.4040368]

>>4040366

/lit/ doesn't enjoy books.

[Anonymous No.4040372]

>>4040361

that's why it sounded so much like neckbeard-speak. They try to sound as quaint and intellectual as possible. I'm not a fan, obviously.

[Anonymous No.4040379]

>>4040362

Answer accepted.

[Anonymous No.4040409]

I didn't finish this, and I don't think I ever will. Here's the first paragraph, but i think I posted it here once already.

Mother died on this day. It’s been 5 years and it still feels as if it just took place.
I wake up, wash my face and stare at the mirror. I stare into my eyes; the grief, sorrow and hopelessness force my eye-lids to become heavier. As they close upon each other, a pain-drop falls smoothly and neatly against my cheek aiming towards the floor as I look down upon myself. I’m not capable of surpassing the limit of mere seconds with the mirror; it has been repeatedly stated that I have my mother’s eyes. Before finishing my morning rituals, I unconsciously look down into the emptiness of the floor with a melancholic sigh. She’s gone, but the pain lingers on.

[Anonymous No.4040435]

>>4040409

Camus' The Stranger. He ripped off Hemingway and that was all.

[Anonymous No.4040451]

>>4040372
it was written in 1870 for shit's sake.

[Anonymous No.4040505]

oh dear god this is so bad it was like 3 years ago


Memories can lie. Think about that for a second: most of what you think you remember could have not been what actually happened. It might only be little facts or details, like the color of someone's jacket, or a phrase uttered. Isn't that fundamentally shattering? Your whole image of the world in your head could be wrong. Another thing is, the older the memory, the more skewed it becomes. Some people though, some people have the ability to recall certain events with uncanny precision, even years after. I was one of these people who possessed a more keen memory than your average human being. I also had the advantage of being a recently reborn immortal, but I'll never forget that first night.

---------------------------------------

The halberdier regiment had just come back from patrol duty around the nearby forest, and found me near the road, bloodied, weaponless, and near-death. Thinking me some peasant who got lost in the forest, they brought me into the infirmary of their Garrison. I remember after the incident hearing rumors about how when the nurses cleaned me up, my wounds had already sealed neatly and wholly. Useful, that is - you wouldn't believe the medicine in those times - you were more likely to die from the cure than from the actual illness. Oh yes, I should probably also mention that the nurses found one round scar on my neck, left by something akin to a large syringe.

Thankfully, when I woke up, I wasn't detained or anything, so I could leave and finish my business with the asshole vampire that had bitten me. Of course, in the process of our last fight, he had managed to bite me, although he didn't kill me. In fact, it felt kind of good, if not for the subsequent smackdown that had occured. I departed through the main gates, as they were open for the day; I also grabbed a handful of fruits from the stalls on the way out. Now, had I previous knowledge about what the hell a vampire was and how they work, I would have realized upon biting the apple that I was one of them. The first thing that threw me off was my slightly painful canines, when I bit into the apple: as though they were not designed for that purpose. Secondly, my first instinct on biting the apple was to revel in the delicious lifeblood contained within, but all I got was fleshy pulp mixed with my own saliva. Unsatisfied, I dropped the apple and continued on my merry crusade.

[Anonymous No.4040520]

>>4040505
It's actually not that bad, just needs to be tightened up here and there, better words and sentences restructured.

[Anonymous No.4040522]

Trapped in thoughts of Mother’s garden. Three potted plants on a tiny patio; a garden. “Green around us makes us happy,” Mother’s hopeful prayer. No green around me. All gray, excepting white shoes wrapping themselves around my still chilled feet, a gift from Mother.

[Anonymous No.4040536]

>>4040522
IMO that paragraph is light. Check out my personal favorites:
Rumbling. Boots slapped the concrete for its passive audacity. Legs were counting the slaps; sets of threes. One slap was for the concrete’s being there, the second was for its just being. The third was good luck.

Boots at the door. They had a ram. Thunder boomed as the steel of the pate expelled its most abyssal secrets into the iron portal. Thunder boomed again after that, and again after that. And the purge was consummated as lightning fell. The door fell too.

Boots rushed in. A troupe of shadows advanced against the brilliant whiteness. Three batons burst towards me, metamorphosing into a bull and his horns, not wasting time. Jumping, I collided my head with the bull’s. We clapped, and blood flowed into my eyes. The light was red. I twisted my torso, let slip my fist and it faced a horn. It struck the horn too, and a fire grew from my knuckles, my fist recoiled. It was the right horn. One left. The red light obscured him, and my arm danced leftward, flailing to extinguish the blazing flame. Darkness began to overwhelm the lightning, two more bulls had come. Already hooded with blood, my head was assailed. Baton after baton. Red was black.

[Anonymous No.4040562]

The sky is opened wide with an orange paste, dripping from its atmospheric skin like a sludge rain in colorful disguise. The air is contaminated with particle farts and dying flesh, burning nostrils and flaring skin rashes. Pellets fall like the just-fried bullets from the barrel of God’s gun, and they eat away at the surfaces they reach. Small portions of land and building are eaten up, people scatter about, taking shelter, knowing their haven will soon dissolve, exposing them to the shower, eaten in the deluge. No roof can prevent the executioner’s water gun from spraying acid into a city-wide panic; nothing can dissipate the anger of a cultivation of universal wrongs. They cry out from the atomization of their selves, but their tongues are snapped back by the onslaught and sizzle, with the ferocity of a Salsa Dancer, of the molecule seekers—sent to relieve and absolve.

[Anonymous No.4040587]

>>4040358
Nice. Would continue to read.

[Anonymous No.4040622]

Heat makes the smell of trash more potent. I wheeled a black cart stuffed with soggy garbage bags out to the dumpster. Some hours are worth $7.50, and some are not.

[Anonymous No.4040623]

Blood thundered around the warrior's skull as if seeking to drown his senses, the throbbing agony of his muscles balanced only by the putrid stench of a thousand corpses. Blistered feet constantly slipped, fell, righted themselves, instinct prevailing over agency in a fruitless effort to find purchase on soil awash with seas of the dead. Drunk with fatigue, Logar's battleaxe was already lost; falling from grasp in a battle that had taken a dozen of his brothers, it already seemed a lifetime ago - some strange eon where his thoughts were yet his own, where the blood that strangled his vision had not yet plagued him. He knew he could not hold on: his screaming muscles, as shaky as a newborn's, were on the verge of failure. Organs that had served thousands of moons of war would shut down. His ancestors awaited him. In his mind's eye Kaldra was already there, her breastplate shining as if newly forged, his daughter Daga holding the spear that had slain the Great Boar --

[Anonymous No.4040630]

>>4040201
," said the fat man in glasses, staring around at the group he had forced his writings on. They sat in the circle of chairs, squirming against the ropes that held them in place and staring at the him in confused fear. He had projected his opening paragraphs against the granite walls of the cross-basement and now he sat with his arms crossed, waiting for a response.

[Anonymous No.4040654]

She lived in a mountain of filth. Floor to ceiling, boxes and tissues, old newspapers and dirty socks mortared together like secondary walls that left only a small path by which to navigate her labyrinth. She lived there, in that state for fifteen years. It was always bad but in the final few years it became a hell I would not wish on the devil himself. Rats had also taken residence with her and through the rubbish walls they bored out holes and tunnels and when she slept they came from the walls to bite little holes in the flesh of her thighs and underarms. Still she said nothing and never asked for help. It was only after the fire that we knew the extent of her prison and only then in an observational capacity. That was my first case on my first day and for a moment when I saw her burned black skull resting atop a pillow of roasted soda cans I was sure it would be my last. There is nothing good about this job, nothing to be proud of. No good news awaits us when we investigate a fire, only images of burned human faces buried in ash.

[Anonymous No.4040661]

I have always been a fly on the wall.
I am a terrible human being, a failure and for this purpose is why the story will be in first person and I will not divulge my name or any hint of identity to the reader. My story began before I entered University. I had come from another part of the country to attend school in the big city and everything was going well for the first couple days then before I knew it I suddenly clamped up on my way to class had a panic attack and then shut myself in my house of residence. Another important point in this story I should make is that I lie frequently as my parents still think I attend classes even though I have never been since my attack.

I feel like it's too big for a first paragraph.

[Anonymous No.4040664]

>>4040661
>before I knew it I suddenly clamped

[Anonymous No.4040666]

Fucking hell. It's so dark in here I can't see anything.

Darkness is going out of fashion real quick. The world is already dark enough. I like to live in a little light.

[Anonymous No.4040668]

>>4040664

Any criticism?

[Anonymous No.4040671]

>>4040666
I thought you were commenting on the overall edginess in this thread.

[Anonymous No.4040675]

>>4040668
Starts off a little "Notes from the underground'ish"
Its honestly not badly written but it is not very attention grabbing. Fo zample i could see Michael Cera playing the role of your narrator.

[Anonymous No.4040678]

Chastity Bortinelli was genuinely surprised that someone had chosen to rape her. By no account was she a pretty girl. She had given up on make-up and her hair was a wiry, sad shade between ginger and rust. She had poor vision, but not the money to correct it, and so she was always squinting. She was thirty pounds overweight. At least, that's what she told people; in truth though, she was fifty pounds overweight. And because she was so large she had taken to wearing the most drab, unattractive clothing imaginable. If the great play-wright William Shakespeare was presented with the likeness of Miss Chastity Bortinelli he would have described her with one word: frump. But you see, what Charity and Mr. Richard McDonald (the man raping her) had failed to realise was that it was precisely because of this frumpiness, and the how the way she walked reminded him of a childhood mini-vans on Friday afternoons, that she had been chosen for the transformation. "Holy crap, stop talking you fucking slut!" He grabbed her hair and slammed her face into the basement wall.

[Anonymous No.4040681]

>I am a terrible human being
>She lived in a mountain of filth.
>Blood thundered around the warrior's skull as if seeking to drown his senses, the throbbing agony
>Heat makes the smell of trash more potent.
>The sky is opened wide with an orange paste, dripping from its atmospheric skin like a sludge rain in colorful disguise. The air is contaminated with particle farts and dying flesh,
>No green around me. All gray,
>Memories can lie.
>Mother died on this day.
>I was born on the ground
>>4040338 WOW ONE THAT ISN'T NEGATIVE RIGHT OFF THE BAT AND IT GETS CRITICIZED, when really, it's the only good one I've seen so far.
>"Man," said Terl, "is an endangered species." - Not so negative, but kind of.
>I stood alone.
>As a child, my wife hated her school and wished she could leave.
>It is too late. The Evacuation still proceeds,
>The folks of shanty town aged with the day.
>Our thought will be of a day in Colorado and another welcome spread, when both my father and I got very drunk
>Pain had become a stable companion a long time ago.

HOLY FUCK DO YOU ALL KNOW HOW ANGSTY YOU ARE?!?
People like a little light in the life. Nobody wants to know how dark and demented your soul is, and few people actually wanna read that shit.
People are poor and hungry today. Don't fucking remind them how much their lives suck by talking about other people whose lives suck.
Live in the light a little, and stop being so fucking edgy and full of angst.
Write a happy story, fuck.

[Anonymous No.4040684]

>>4040671
I was commenting on the overall edginess in this thread.

[Anonymous No.4040688]

>>4040675

Notes from Underground was actually a huge inspiration for it. The main character is supposed to have social anxiety and it's where most of the comedy comes from. I am also trying not to name anything in my novel example the main character never gives his name, the landlord is just called The Landlord and the city isn't even named because when I want people to read it I want them to imagine it's taking place in their city.

[Anonymous No.4040689]

>>4040684

[Anonymous No.4040690]

>>4040681
No good stories in heaven.Turn 13 and see if you are still optimistic.
Its also a proven fact that people like reading about those worse than them to feel less shitty about their own shitty life.

[Anonymous No.4040704]

>>4040690
>mfw i'm actually a published writer.

Forreal though, I stopped reading after the first sentence of most of your all's 3edgy5me dark tales brewed from the suburbs.
Isn't it funny how almost every single one of the stories posted here is dark and depressing, yet you all think you're so unique.

Bukowski is for hipsters, so keep riding the fagwagon if you want.

[Anonymous No.4040712]

>>4040678
>Chastity Bortinelli was genuinely surprised that someone had chosen to rape her.
Are you fucking kidding me?
Another dark and depressing first line.
Have you all even read famous books? The most famous books are not the most depressing ones.
The cure ISN'T a cool band, you know? They may be in the rock and roll hall of fame, but there aren't too many other bands like it. Very few make it in any profession being a dark and depressing fuckwit.
Those that do make it really big, but it's very rare.

[Anonymous No.4040720]

>>4040681

The soul of story is conflict.

There can be no harmony without discord; no high without low; no light without dark.

To seek a world without pain, even through fantasy -- is puerile, facile, and childish. It is a self obliteration. It is the effacing of that which makes you human. It is the realm of children's television programming, of Japanese cartoons made for hunched perverts, of bored housewives masturbating to paperbacks with pictures of Fabio on the cover. It is the realm of those who do not wish to be burdened by such things as thought.

Please go. Return when you wish to think.

[Anonymous No.4040723]

>>4040704
>fagwagon
>hipsters
>namedropping Bukowski

You could not possibly be more of an uncreative simp if you tried.

[Anonymous No.4040725]

>>4040720
Well NO FUCKING SHIT
Have you ever read dickens?
He is an author who is able to take very very dark themes, and place them in his books without making the story depressing.
Lots of authors are able to do this.

Of course a story needs to have conflict, but conflict does not need to be depressing. Even if that conflict is very dark, it does not need to stain the story with its depression.

Do you even read a variety of books?
Have you ever read the classics?
Do you even know who Shakespeare is?

[Anonymous No.4040728]

>>4040725
It's the first paragraph you moron.

[Anonymous No.4040731]

>>4040723
Yes, because everyone knows that bukowski is for hipsters.

Also, if you ever want to learn how to write stories, you need to learn how to appeal to your audience. You need to learn how to appeal to the widest audience possible.
Simplicity is the key to doing this.
I am proud to be called an uncreative simp, because that means i'm doing my job as a writer very well. It is my style of writing, and it gets me paid very well.

[Anonymous No.4040733]

>>4040704
I agree that the very first line shouldn't be so obviously angst ridden, the worst defense of all being that a story needs conflict when you're not gonna do jack shit for introducing it with one sentence. You, though, are pretty fucking insufferable in everything you say. It doesn't take a damn thing to be published and if you were you'd be more aware of that. In a world where people like Hepler get published if that's the only accolade to your name you're best to remain anonymous like the rest of us.

[Anonymous No.4040734]

>>4040728
Yes, and the first paragraph sets the stage for the entire book.
If you're going to start it off with, "It was the worst of times." Then you better have in there FIRST, "It was the best of times."

[Anonymous No.4040737]

>>4040725

Do YOU know who Shakespeare is?

Does Hamlet not begin with a ghost confronting his troubled son? With "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark"?

[Anonymous No.4040738]

>>4040733
Meh.
It's ok.
I gotta go though.
Think about being a little more positive in life!
Bye fags.

[Anonymous No.4040740]

>>4040731
>cherishing ignorance
2013 and this is still a thing, how sad

[Anonymous No.4040741]

>>4040731
>You need to learn how to appeal to the widest audience possible.

says who?

[Anonymous No.4040742]

>>4040734
ur mom was the best of times
>i troll u so fucking hard m8

[Anonymous No.4040751]

>>4040623

This is alright, but the verbosity needs to be trimmed down. Things like "of a thousand corpses" rub me the wrong way. And the wording of "organs shutting down" seems very anachronistic for a medieval-ish setting, unless you've intended that.

[Anonymous No.4040759]

>>4040712

I don't get what your big hang-up is, it's not like everyone aspires to be a professional writer. Some of us have day-jobs and write only for fun. I'm never going to write something up-beat to appeal to the world, because, quite frankly, I don't enjoy up-beat books. If that was your main goal you should be writing teen-fantasy.

I get that a lot of classics aren't depressing in their tone, but a lot also are. Hemingway, Kafka, Vonnegut, Goethe, DFW, most of the Japanese writers, the entire alt-lit scene, etc etc. Yeah they're often optimistic too, and in this respect most amateurs will fail, but the thing that makes them special, fundamentally, isn't happiness.

[Anonymous No.4040762]

>>4040741
read as
>need to learn how to appeal to more than just angsty teens

[Anonymous No.4040763]

Through light gun smoke Jayden Gonzalez sees that he’s punched three neat holes into the paper target’s head, a testament to the little known fact that video game journalists often double as competent sharpshooters. With actual firearms, that is; proficiency in gaming has negligible effect on real life marksmanship, as multiple Pentagon studies have regrettably confirmed.

The quality assurance tester tries to mumble, “Nice shot,” in a tone so low nobody would’ve heard it anyway, but his tongue trips over another thin strand of his own hair despite the lack of any kind of breeze on the plateau. He continues spitting even after having yanked the strand out with his fingers.

Five pale-faced journalists squeezing off measured shots on this makeshift desert range, drawing exactly zero analogues between the snug kickback on a Bushmaster AR-15 carbine and the vibration of a DualShock 3 controller. Jayden is the best shot here.

[Anonymous No.4040766]

Kinda hard to translate... From what I'm working on currently.

>Kaivopuiston taivas oli musta. Maa oli kuuran ja syyslehtien liukastama, usva leijui polvien alla. Päätön ruumis roikkui lehmuksen oksasta. Puu kahisi ja narisi nilkoista köyden varassa heiluneen ruhon painosta. Veri katosi mustina tippoina usvaan.
>Harri kuvasi ruumista poliisien puhuessa radiopuhelimiinsa ympärillä. Salama paljasti päättömyyden, välähdys, ja hartiat irvistivät. Hänestä tuntui epätodelliselta, kuin hän, ja koko elämänsä olisivat olleet lainausmerkeissä. Vielä tusinoittain kuvia, ja jokaisen kohdalla häntä kuvotti entistä enemmän.
>Ruumis oli puettu pukuun, pikkutakki sullottu vyön alle, kuin varmistaen ettei se pääsisi valahtamaan. "Ei päätä eikä häntää", Harri kuuli jonkun sanovan. Välähdys. Välähdys.

The sky above the park was black. Rime and autumn leaves had made the ground slippery, mist floated below the knees. A headless body was hanging from a tree branch. The tree was rustling and creaking from the body's weight. It was swinging from a rope by the ankles. Blood disappeared in black drops into the mist.
Peter Protagonist was photoing the body while the cops were talking on their radiophones. A thunderbolt revealed the headlessness, a flash, and the shoulders grimaced. He felt unreal, as if he, and his whole life had been within quotation marks. Still dozens of pictures to take, and he felt sicker each time.
The carcass had been dressed in a suit, jacket stuffed under the belt, as if to make sure it won't fall. "Neither head nor tail", Peter heard someone say. Flash. Flash.

[Anonymous No.4040767]

>>4040759
vonnegut and hemingway are not that depressing.

[Anonymous No.4040771]

>>4040766
>A thunderbolt revealed the headlessness
Lol, I meant A flash*

Damn whisky.

[Anonymous No.4040777]

>>4040435
I don't really understand what you're trying to say.

[Anonymous No.4040779]

>>4040767
>>4040767
Sure, if you fail to read anywhere past the surface. Hemingway is acclaimed because he has nice titles and describes war and eating food well. Vonnegut for being so lol-random and meta. Herp.

[Anonymous No.4040783]

>>4040763
Tryhard wouldn't be the right word. The firearms jargon is insincere to anyone actually versed in it, extraneous to anyone not, and the gaming analogue feels inserted, artificial, too bitter to flow with the mundane way the rest of the events are going.

[Anonymous No.4040787]

You guys seem to be tangled up in an internet debate so i probably wont get replies but here goes...
I knew it was late, the only company I had was buzzing orange streetlights that made islands of light and the sound of canine and insect mass communication; as dogs emerge from behind wire fences and wooden gates to roam play and bark contently. Crickets and fireflies rose from the nether and dazzled my senses with light and sound. I knew the screaming cries of crickets came from the grass that lined the Accompong cemetery at the edge of Accompong town and from bushes and wilderness beyond, but I could not tell which was which. I saw ghostly fireflies that could kiss my nose and ones flashing in the distance between leaves and trees beyond, but I could not reach out and grab one. The faint green glow made a mockery of my eyes. I could not tell which was near or far. I could feel all the lights and sounds coming from each yard at the top and the bottom of the dirt paved road, in their subsistence farm plots and out in the distance from hills, valleys and streams surrounding me, they called out to me, but I could not decipher a word. I remember Aunt Emma, my grandmother, saying to me the last time I came here that I should never point at graveyards at night as a ghosts would come and bite your fingers off. Standing at the gate of the ancient graveyard, I held my hands up and thrust all ten pink fingers into the darkness, daring whatever spirits lay in the bushes and under the grass that had overgrown on the hand carved headstones to test me. My heart beat faster as a victorious grim inched across my face and I felt a satisfying thrill run through me. I made special effort not to believe in ghosts stories so the spirits of this land could not touch me.

[Anonymous No.4040796]

>>4040783
Thanks, I suspected as much.

[Anonymous No.4040799]

The glare of the sun upon the walls could blind me if I weren’t cautious. They had cleaned them so thoroughly that all around me it seemed I stood among mirrors and glass harboring a captured glow -- imprisoned, perhaps, then released again. None but the rays that completed their travels across some unworldly distance in a moment’s time were to be seen, the ones that rested within my eyes. If only I were to know that beam’s journey, its uniquely refracted and diffracted paths, as although I knew its beginning and end (its death upon my eye, its birth within a star) I still did not know where it had gone, what it had struck and left with momentary illumination. Grazing a hand against the wall, the surfaces were smooth; my smeared fingerprints showed upon them.

[Anonymous No.4040816]

The problem with most of these is not that they're too "dark" or "depressing", they're just juvenile and reek of immaturity in both craftsmanship and lived experience. Which isn't meant as an insult, obviously anyone posting here is some varying degree of amateur. I just don't like seeing people get the wrong criticisms--there's nothing wrong with 'dark', or 'light-hearted', and so on...you just have to do it well, and do it sincerely. That's where everyone is messing up, on the execution, not on some thematic basis.

[Anonymous No.4040817]

June, a time of celebration for those about to finish with their studies. All across the U.S. schools were winding down, preparing to shut their doors for two and a half months of rest and relaxation. In response to this impending end, many found themselves partying to their hearts content; going on trips with friends to exotic places and new sights. On a certain boat floating down the Hudson, one such event was taking place. Although, its passengers were much more than mere schoolchildren.


I'd give it a solid 2/10.

[Anonymous No.4040821]

>>4040704
What the fuck have you written, faggot?
>>4040404

[Anonymous No.4040842]

The shore ran alongside my dorm, laying across a large quad with some trees and a statue of the school's founder. Sometimes, while zigzagging through the old corridors and narrow halls, I'd imagine leaving, riding my bike down the long-winded inlets, into where the sun meets the coast.

I have this one dream where I'm sinking on a boat somewhere and I keep paddling, but it's no use. I see Ash's face as I'm going under and I think why she had to go to UCS and why she's not reaching in to save me and I cry. And when I wake up, I close my eyes tight and for just a second everything is beautiful. And these seconds that become minutes that become hours that become days of my life are all I have to hold on to as I ride the empty overpass, going away nowhere.

[Anonymous No.4041004]

There is a bowling alley at the corner of the big highway bend, and its one of the only attempts at a place of entertainment in the town. Its named and modeled after some famous Las Vegas club, like a casino or something, except with arcade games instead of strippers. The place also charges 10 dollars for a 30 minute lazer tag match inside of an area the size of a modest living room, but this extortionate rate is easily forgiven by the low rates of actually bowling there. They have big screens overhead the gutters of lanes so if you’re shit at it you can enjoy games of other sports or watch videos of bad musicians on television.

[Anonymous No.4041011]

Machines roared, people chattered, and the acrid stench of smoke was thick in the air, yet she comprehended nothing but the wind gnawing at her flesh while the snow fell upon her sickly frame. No one paid her any heed as she staggered down the snow-laden road toward a destination unknown even to herself.

[Anonymous No.4041418]

I was born in 1910, in Paris. My father was a gentle, easy-going person, a salad of racial genes: a Swiss citizen, of mixed French and Austrian descent, with a dash of the Danube in his veins. I am going to pass around in a minute some lovely, glossy-blue picture-postcards. He owned a luxurious hotel on the Riviera. His father and two grandfathers had sold wine, jewels and silk, respectively. At thirty he married an English girl, daughter of Jerome Dunn, the alpinist, and granddaughter of two Dorset parsons, experts in obscure subjects — paleopedology and Aeolian harps, respectively. My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set: surely, you all know those redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges.

[Anonymous No.4041429]

>>4040562
>with the ferocity of a Salsa Dancer

[Anonymous No.4041441]

(I'm translating this from German, mind you)
Again and again, Sigrun looked over her shoulder to the Fountain Square, clad in its most splendid mantle of snow and fallen leaves. She had shyed away from the capital for years, had almost forgotten the Idol Town and the Riót Estate, when her superior and teacher, Orvell, had ordered her to his study. Once more she rang the doorbell, shifting from one foot to the other. Of course it had seemed odd to her, right from the start even, because such a "private" meeting often ment something unpleasant was in store for an agent of the Custodium. They were usually contacted by mail. She huffed at the thought of not being allowed to ensure the security of some secret trade negotiation at the border of the Sharac Lands with inked flame, protected by dark armour, like the other members of her Cell. "It is a delicate matter", Orvell had said, a matter that a houndred and one reasons disqualified her from handling. Why didn't anyone open the door?

(garish amateur SFF)

[Anonymous No.4041454]

I must have appeared dreadfully unapproachable. Matted, uncooperative hair; lines so deeply carved beneath my eyes that they seemed to be part of my face’s natural appearance; hair sprouting sporadically and without curb across my face; all this was probably collectively murdering any aesthetic appeal I may have had. I say probably not because I think myself incapable of objective self-evaluation, but because I have a persistent aversion to mirrors. I have no petty quarrels regarding my appearance, they simply raise such bitter introversion. Mirrors trap me in my own eyes and seem to scream into my unassuming ears that I am alone within my skull.

[Anonymous No.4041492]

Ha.

I saw; I see the ends of the windows cracking up from the ocean and when the mountains parted I could see the collar tightening but I can no longer see what I saw and may never see it again. It beckons to me and begs to see again and illuminate and it caresses me softly--softly the way your mother would pat your back for milk burps--but I can not see what I saw still. The shrimp splitting the frame, the painting of seafood, it says, on top of a salty table covered in hair, it says to me--LOOK, LOOK AT ME I AM A SHRIMP AND I do look but I will never see the shrimp the way it was at that day in the stillness of my revery to its perfectly revealing shape, its pinkly puckered shell against the white of the hair, its fibers mixing into the blackly red salt of a lazily painted foreground it screams at me to see it slits with the salt of the shell of what I saw but I can never go back to it before, my father in his salty anger with the longness of his nose and the iodine pressed into the corners of his mouth pulling me in and pressing me close, telling him that I don't love him and watching his tears stream--how could I have known, I was a boy--but not I can see, now I saw, I saw him, I saw him, he's in pieces before me because I SAW HIM. I SAW HIS SOULS, THEY ARE PINK! THEY ARE PINK AND THEY ARE SALTY! HA-HA! I AM LOOKING AT THE SHELL OF YOU SHRIMP YOUR MEAT ABARE BEFORE ME AND OUT AND OUTPOURING AND OUTSIDE OF WHERE IT SHOULD BE, I SEE AND SAW YOU ON THE SEE SAW YOU LEFT ME AND NOW YOU'RE ALL OPENED UP AND TEETER TOTTERING ON THE BREATH OF A WORD WHICH BARELY BREAKS THE OCEANS AND COLLARS OPEN TO ME RIGHT AT THIS MOMENT AT THIS SHRIMP I HAVE TRIED TO SEE! THERE YOU ARE DADDY! And there is the iodine, the shrimp, the fibers, its YOU its DADDY the shrimp. Daddy is the shrimp.

[Anonymous No.4041499]

>>4041492
This is horrible. Never write.

[Anonymous No.4041508]

>>4041499
I'm published.

I write flavor-of-the-month consumer nonfiction.

[Anonymous No.4041510]

>>4041508

daaaamnnnnnnn youuu

[Anonymous No.4041511]

>>4041508
so are Paolini and Meyer. kill yourself

[Anonymous No.4041594]

The face was hideous. Everything about it was wide, wider than it was tall, as if crushed by its own weight. Yet, while under this weight, the eyes remained open, and the lips were curved upward in a massive, toothy smile, which glimmered in the scorching hot desert sun. It was hard to tell where the skull ended and where the rolls began, but that was much easier to deduce than the rest of the person. The head flowed down into the rest of the body, as if it did not even have a neck. The girth of the figure was immense, at least twice the width of an average human being, and that's from shoulder to shoulder. Three people standing abreast would come about even with the distance between the back and the horizon of the belly. The person would be incapable of seeing their feet, no matter the circumstances. Thankfully, the thing was clothed; although scarcely. The woman had to have plenty of money and power to spare if she had a figure like that, and she didn't go cheap in this area of her appearance. Fine, unwrinkled, perfect silk wrapped around her bosom and underneath, leaving the belly exposed. The belly was supported by a golden accessory, gripping her natural waistline, from which rich cloth went underneath her. In her hand, a massive golden staff, topped with two prongs holding an orb. Her golden tone was absolute; from where she stood, she shimmered and gleamed as a beacon by her reflective, disgusting grin as it shone in the sun.

>While I like showing the reader how much of a caricature this embodiment of pompousness and wealth is with this big old thing, perhaps I should go with a different first impression? While I like the idea and this story has cult themes and roots in weird fantasy, this story isn't weird fantasy, and maybe describing an ugly person the story revolves around in brutal detail can make it seem to some people that she's Cthulhu in a drag.

[Anonymous No.4041630]

Old, late fifties with a balding head and pudgy frame. The mere fact that the lonely maintenance man was cowering in the corner, begging for his life, was enough to unleash the beast's blood lust. Unfortunately, that meant I had to stand by and watch as my body mutated and transformed. The human frame that I knew and loved began to melt into a black, bulbous ooze, breaking down only to reform seconds later. Our new body instead appeared as a black and red wolf, fixed with sharp eyes, dagger like teeth, and huge claws. "Please, don't take this personally," I say aloud, surprised that I'm speaking English and the man, Jose, is calm for a moment. I gulp if that's even possible for a wolf, it's the next part I hate more. "He's hungry and I'm nothing but a puppet." Like a flash the hallway is lit with blood curled screams then the sounds of greedy eating and tearing flesh.

[Anonymous No.4041745]

>>4040704
>Actually caring about plot
>Critiquing by saying the story is bad.
what about the art of the whole thing? Most of the paragraphs in this thread are actually pretty beautifully written, and all you seem to care about is what's going on.
g

[Anonymous No.4041749]

>>4040704
I concur.

[Anonymous No.4041750]

>>4041630
stop

[Anonymous No.4041752]

>>4041745
LOL, kill yourself faggot.

[Anonymous No.4042283]

Summer is the time where there is no time. The entire season seems like an eternal day. Sunshine never appears drowsy and the moon acts like a flashlight to nocturnal games. Sleep is easy in the summertime when the stars blanket the soul, until slowly one wakes to the sight of yellowing leaves.

[Anonymous No.4042285]

>>4042283
Summer is the time when there is no time. The entire season seems like an eternal day. Sunshine never appears drowsy and the moon acts like a flashlight to nocturnal games. Sleep is easy in the summertime when the stars blanket the soul, until slowly one wakes to the sight of yellowing leaves.

[Anonymous No.4042288]

>>4042285
>Summer is the time when there is no time. The entire season seems like an eternal day. Sunshine never appears drowsy and the moon acts like a flashlight to nocturnal games. Sleep is easy in the summertime when the stars blanket the soul, until slowly one wakes to the sight of yellowing leaves.

[Anonymous No.4042331]

“Wouldya look at that?”
Merus lifted his helm from his head and rose from his seat on the furred bench and stepped up beside his companion and fellow Watcher-by-the-sea. He fixed his gaze in the direction over the stone and iron railing to which his companion was pointing. The night sky was much as it usually was; a deep purple pocked by stark grey clouds swirling back and forth like foam on an inverted sea.

[Anonymous No.4042335]

The boy sits alone in his bedroom. Four weeks of worn and re-worn and re-re-worn clothes lay in streaks across the floor. More tissues than usual are mixed in amongst the old, dirty clothes. Either Spring has arrived, bringing with it pollen in varying degrees of irritability, or this was the development of some rhino-virus, of which he has already suffered many in recent times. It didn’t matter; the outcome would still be the same regardless. He decided to decide he didn’t care about seasons, everything stays the same (only the temperature of your experience varies). Uneaten, festering cereal is hardening, rather the milk is hardening, the cereal itself seems to have broken down in the bacterial swamp. He clears some room on the floor, between his desk and bookcase, and sets the bowl down there. Staring at it for a while, he can almost hear it writhing.

[Anonymous No.4042573]

As the tower bells in the courtyard of the Black Keep began to ring, a startled flock of ravens took off into the sky. The bells, chiming monotonously, signified the end of one rule, and the beginning of the next. As they flew, the ravens sensed the tension lingering below them, and knew that the darkness they thrived in would soon be upon them.

Down below, as people pooled out of the courtyard, one man was just beginning to enter As he gently pushed his way through the throng of people filing out, the only thought that filled his mind was that of his lateness.

Not exactly done the first paragraph and that's without proofing it it's a first draft so kinda shitty but yeah, tear it apart.

[Anonymous No.4042605]

Man has always been infatuated with fire, possibly since the first of us first struck flint against pyrite. It is, however, difficult to isolate a single defining cause behind this fascination.
Perhaps it’s something in the mesmerizing shades of bright luminosity; those hues of dancing golden-wheat beards and midsummer poppy tongues, through tails of wispy polished bronze, to those azure violets of the paper fire, and the heady crimson of the residential pulsating undergrowth that throbs and glows, like the heart of a city, like stars in the night sky, like a living, breathing, entity; or the emission of an invisible barrier of heat, a safeguard warding the wary and roasting the flesh of the subdued. Wonder, too, goes to the soothing sounds of its cowed victims crackling and the accompanying roar of the chanting flames. Possibly it’s because, combined, these mysterious facets allude to sorcerer’s enchantment.
In turn, it could be that its allure resides in the form of its practical application, a whisperer of warmth, a bringer of fare, a devourer of souls, equally accessible for the wealthy and humble patron alike. A source of comfort, of sustenance and much needed reprieve from winters wanton wrath.
It is conceivable that it is precisely because of this coexistence, this duality, this fragile contrast between awe and utility, jeopardy and sanctuary, man and chimera, which serves to make the elusive nature of its magic so appealing; so startlingly inexplicable, and perilous, to the small child and yet reminiscent of warmth and comfort, and haven, to the grown man; feeding life with the same hand that threatens to take it.
Or perhaps, simply, it’s because it reminds us of the sun and daylight and the dreaded lull in-between full of fervent fears and dwarfing demons.

>tfw it's entirely purple
>tfw it's pseudo-intellectual gibberish

I'm going to re-write it.

[Anonymous No.4042635]

>>4041594
Anyone have any input on the comment at the bottom? Fine as it is or should I start off with a different set of words?

[Anonymous No.4042639]

>>4042635
Is it your opening paragraph? If so, I'm not sure it's a good idea to focus entirely on description from the offset.

[Anonymous No.4042644]

He walked out and her face got so ugly with crying that it was like a boquet falling apart, the neighbours said.

[Anonymous No.4042771]

>>4040664
>or some other clamping mechanism

[Anonymous No.4042827]

>>4042639
Yes, it is my opening paragraph. It moves into action after that, but your statement afterward is why I felt compelled to ask. I wanted to know if I had it was interesting enough to be the first impression, or if I should rework the intro for something easier to read and a different execution of her introduction.