/lit/ - Literature

>>7558940
Well whatever you do, don't pull back from that honesty, because it's definitely a huge strength and gives your narrative a strong sense of relatability. It's off-putting at times, but not in a bad way, just rather in that sort of made-me-feel-dirty reading it way because it felt like I was sitting deep inside this person's consciousness, reading thoughts that weren't meant for me or anyone else to see.

That said, yeah, I'd take dindu out just because it doesn't do or add anything to the character in terms of that relatability. And thanks for adding a bit of context, makes it easier to see the other dimensions to this character that most probably present themselves as the story progresses.

>>7558473
Ahhh, much appreciated! Adam's scenes generally read a bit more schizophrenic because of his intense depression and inability to connect in meaningful ways to the world surrounding him, and because of that he can be hard to write for sometimes. I personally do like the way this scene jumps around a lot, but definitely had issues with seeing how to clean it up. Going through your critiques help out a lot to help me sorta center on what needs fixing. Primarily the oversaturation of sentences. I think I might have tried too hard to get the run-on narrative here to line up with the paragraph about Adam's door leaving; when ultimately such a thing wasn't necessary. I can't edit the section yet, but I'll absolutely be able to keep your critiques in mind going forward and once I go back to edit/rewrite that section.

And yeah, definitely a scene that requires the reader to have a bit of context. The opening paragraph returns to Adam after a break in time, so that's another reason it sorta overloads you with information. That doesn't mean I can't break it up a bit better for a smoother read.

>>7558440
Yeah, the rest of her racial tendencies felt really natural and oft times even relatable. 'Dindu' was the only time I was taken out. Soccer moms don't generally keep up on internet memes, so I wouldn't keep it in. Like I said, she doesn't have to lose that quality about herself, just make it seem more rooted in herself as a character, rather than rooted in the experiences of a whole different demographic of individuals.

>>7557682


2nd critique is meant for:
>>7557531
>>7557531
>>7557531


Sorry, >>7557682

>>7557693
That manga's art is fucking ridiculous, man. Like, the level of detail Otomo is able to just stuff into panels is mad. Dancing mad.

>>7557135
>>7557145
Fuck you for not writing more. But kudos to knowing how to write some goddamn enjoyable flash fiction. If you came here for critiques, I can't give you any. I've never read any WWII fiction, so maybe that's why this reads as so fresh to me, but that aside, I think you have a real knack for putting together a suspenseful scene and building it to a climax. I honestly got a semi-Lovecraftian feel from the way your progression works. So take that as you will.

>>7557281
Hmmm, this is one of those rare cases where you've got content that's more interesting than your prose. Which is I'd say is a problem worth having. You're obviously working to set up a world here, and there's definitely a lot of questions I'm curious to have answered as a reader. Definitely got a Deus Ex/Do Androids vibe from it, but I don't know if I like the constant paragraph breaks from the click-click-clacking from the transhuman at the end of the bar. I get that you'r experimenting with your prose, and absolutely do that, but I feel like the click breaks aren't as interesting as you'd like them to be.

As for your prose itself, it's lacking, but I can't say what. Sounds fucking dumb, but it sounds sort of uninspired. I think you just might need some more writing under your belt, or maybe this passage will just read better after a rewrite or something. What ever the case, I think you're circling things worth delving into, so keep writing.

>>7554971
>If you're up to read more stuff, then yeah, absolutely

What Adam feared, was what happened to him after his resourcefulness was exhausted. Not so much in being quieted by Bastille, or thrown off the side of the Plate, but more so in being abandoned by the group completely. A cease in communications was calculated by Adam to be a pain that would be too great to bear. He wasn’t sure if it was a set of circumstances he’d be able to push on through. Life since following the barmaid from Les Yeux Ouverts and ending up tied to a chair in a darkened basement had become… Demanding. After the interrogation from Son’s of Bastille’s Lela and her British associate, Adam woke up in his apartment–which had been nearly completely stripped of its valuables(it should be noted that close to all of his books were untouched, and the few that weren’t hadn’t been stolen, a fact which he had been immensely grateful for)–with the sour taste of either vomit, mucus, or some vomit-mucus combination in his mouth and a lightly dressed chest wound which was beginning to suffer from a red leakage and was soon to be in dire need of fresh bandages. As he came to and the blurring of his vision began to fade, he realized his door, which at first glance looked to have been simply left wide open from where he was sitting on the floor, was revealed to be, upon closer inspection, completely gone from the small apartment’s premises.

As in, no longer there.

As in, it had been as if the door had grown existentially tired with the unfulfilling life it led being a door all these years, came to the conclusion that this whole opening and closing thing wasn’t how it wanted to spend the rest of its life, made the conscious decision to unhinge itself, and finally left to pursue a passion closer to its heart. Adam guessed sailing or river rafting.

Soon after that he saw the flatscreen that had been mounted into the wall by his landlord was also missing from its place upon the wall. As was the wall mount. All that remained in the place of the television was stripped paint and ragged holes where the flatscreen’s mount had been violently pulled from the wall. The TV, it seemed, had not left of its own volition. And it was at this point that Adam realized he had been robbed. Soon after that he noted the heavy damage done to the walls and floor of his studio, and it was roughly five minutes after that that he came to the conclusion, much like his door had, that it was time for him to move on with his life, and most importantly to a place far far away from this apartment and what would be a very angry landlord who wasn’t likely to look fondly on the harm inflicted unto the tenant space rented out to the young Addison.

>>7547647
YEAH. I'm a sucker for raw, lucid shit like this, so maybe don't take my praise too highly, but I really enjoyed what you presented to me here. It drew me in, built my interest, and has me hankering for more. I could probably criticize that some lines might be a little too drawn out and possibly needless, but I wouldn't agree with myself. Takes me to a dark seemingly depraved place, but makes at the same time makes me happy to be there. Good stuff, man.

>>7547365
So, first off I wanted to tell you I'm really impressed by your consistency as a writer. It comes through that you really have this narrative voice down pat, and that's definitely an enviable trait. Really dug your pacing, story content, and had a fun time reading through it.

It's definitely a wholly depressing read, and I can intensely identify with this character who so obviously feels imprisoned in a life that's completely made up of lies, insecurities, and a blind adherence to social dogmas. Which is all great because I do not fucking like Beatrice. Which might be what you're trying to do, create an unlikable character that still manages to be relatable through her dull and tragically tedious life.

All that said, I goddamn hated when I came across /pol/'s signature 'dindu nuffin' phrase, and it nearly made me want to stop reading. I'm glad I didn't, but being so familiar with /pol/ and taking a lot of issue with the board, it just felt really off-putting to see the phrase there. Though, if you're planning to give Beatrice some sort of widening of worldview and break down her racism as a way to develop her character to be more accepting of others and eventually herself, then I guess the term works as a supremely negative point for her to make progress from.

If on the other hand she kinda stays in this closed sort of mindset and you have different plans for her progression, I'd change that out because for all the racism she threw forward, that was the only bit that bothered me so much that I thought I might be hearing the author speaking and not the character.

But other than that, supremely enjoyable read, which all you'll ever catch me asking for.

>>7547501
What most others said. Over-dependence on adverbs, and the content you're pushing forward with isn't exactly original for the dystopia genre. I'd offer that you use the opportunity to continue your venture with this piece as a short story so as to not devote too much time to it. It seems like you're still in the early stages of your writing which is perfectly okay. Best way to get better is start cranking out complete pieces of narratives and then move onto the next set of narratives. Don't get too attached to anything just yet and KEEP WRITING. IT WORKS IF YOU WORK IT.

>>7547535
It seems fine enough. It's a short excerpt so it's hard to say too much about it, but nothing from it struck me a inherently bad or off-putting. I liked:
>There was no moon... ...to punctuate the sheer blackness
I feel like you've got decent enough word sense, though from what I'm looking at(which is so very little), there's nothing that's drawing me in so that I want to read more. Keep writing.

>>7554971
>If you're up to it, then yeah, absolutely.

What Adam feared, was what happened to him after his resourcefulness was exhausted. Not so much in being quieted by Bastille, or thrown off the side of the Plate, but more so in being abandoned by the group completely. A cease in communications was calculated by Adam to be a pain that would be too great to bear. He wasn’t sure if it was a set of circumstances he’d be able to push on through. Life since following the barmaid from Les Yeux Ouverts and ending up tied to a chair in a darkened basement had become… Demanding. After the interrogation from Son’s of Bastille’s Lela and her British associate, Adam woke up in his apartment–which had been nearly completely stripped of its valuables(it should be noted that close to all of his books were untouched, and the few that weren’t hadn’t been stolen, a fact which he had been immensely grateful for)–with the sour taste of either vomit, mucus, or some vomit-mucus combination in his mouth and a lightly dressed chest wound which was beginning to suffer from a red leakage and was soon to be in dire need of fresh bandages. As he came to and the blurring of his vision began to fade, he realized his door, which at first glance looked to have been simply left wide open from where he was sitting on the floor, was revealed to be, upon closer inspection, completely gone from the small apartment’s premises.

As in, no longer there.

As in, it had been as if the door had grown existentially tired with the unfulfilling life it led being a door all these years, came to the conclusion that this whole opening and closing thing wasn’t how it wanted to spend the rest of its life, made the conscious decision to unhinge itself, and finally left to pursue a passion closer to its heart. Adam guessed sailing or river rafting.

Soon after that he saw the flatscreen that had been mounted into the wall by his landlord was also missing from its place upon the wall. As was the wall mount. All that remained in the place of the television was stripped paint and ragged holes where the flatscreen’s mount had been violently pulled from the wall. The TV, it seemed, had not left of its own volition. And it was at this point that Adam realized he had been robbed. Soon after that he noted the heavy damage done to the walls and floor of his studio, and it was roughly five minutes after that that he came to the conclusion, much like his door had, that it was time for him to move on with his life, and most importantly to a place far far away from this apartment and what would be a very angry landlord who wasn’t likely to look fondly on the harm inflicted unto the tenant space rented out to the young Addison.

>>7555322
Someone here might understand your first language and thus be able to critique your piece in its original format.

>>7553591
Yeah, I see what you mean, it runs on a bit which makes sense because I kinda awkwardly stuffed that sentence in after the fact. Definitely going for that melodrama, but hopefully it doesn't read as super cliche for the reader as he/she would at this point be roughly 800 pages deep into the narrative. Which hopefully explains all the nonsense terms.

Whatever the case, appreciate the feedback immensely, and I'll be sure to come back and pay it forward to other anons later on today. Thanks a ton.

>>7553591
Yeah, I see what you mean,it runs on a bit which makes sense because I kinda awkwardly stuffed that sentence in after the fact. Definitely going for that melodrama, but hopefully it doesn't read as super cliche for the reader as he/she would at this point be roughly 800 pages deep into the narrative. Which hopefully explains all the nonsense terms.

Whatever the case, appreciate the feedback immensely, and I'll be sure to come back and pay it forward to other anons later on today. Thanks a ton.

>>7552589
>>7552606
that* moment.

And if I took it out it'd just be replaced by 2666 and lord knows that doesn't need to be in another Top 5 list.

>>7552589
Read it when I moved away from home and into the city. To me it's synonymous with the moment of my life.

>>7552545
It's 10:53pm

And this is all the nerd stuff I brought with me when I moved out here.

>>7552499
Yeah, it's good to have a heads up on. Already gave the character issues with using his hands, but since I didn't destroy it completely I'll either think of thinning out the diameter of the stake or will use advanced medical tech to help reconstruct the neural pathways and tissue in his wrists.

Infinite Jest
The Stranger
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
A Scanner Darkly
Rant

How gay am I, /lit/?

>>7552427
>>7552413

Cool, that's more or less all I needed to know. Thanks a bunch, dudes.

>>7552423
>Ugh, I forgot about formatting.


"'Your revolution,'" Étiennette began to recite, her voice unwavering, "'Has been accounted for and counted on. It is the final stage of the reset. It is not the demonization of you, but the demonization of anarchy and rebellion that exists so prominently within the human psyche. The narrative is being changed, history rewritten. In this new world that Cobalt has created, rebellion is to be synonymous with destruction, and soon even you too will believe this. There is no subversion, there is no resistance. There is only the inevitable...' I didn't believe these words, Freddie. Didn't believe anyone could infiltrate what my parents had built and use it against me and what I stood for. I didn't believe Ekkehardt in that moment, and I didn't believe him for a single moment over the past three months since Che and I escaped that facility. Since Len and you escaped Conolly. What we've done since coming together, I believed it was us dictating our fates. Engaging in our existence." Freddie, Len, and Lela all watched on in silence as a thin film of mist accrued over Étiennette's eyes. "I thought we were finally going to unleash a barrage of truth on these Plates. Free these men, women, and children from the artificialized reality they've been indoctrinated to accept. I didn't... I never thought I'd help to throw them further out to sea. Push them away from the realization that the world we live in, these Plates, that they're not ours. That they never would be."

"Etsy..." Lela began, reaching her arm out.

"But I was wrong, Freddie!" Étiennette barked, slapping her sister's hand away. "And you're right... To absolve yourself of that condemnation. The madness stirring on the Plate, all that fear, that isn't your doing. That wasn't what I was trying to convey to you. I know you may not believe it, but seeing the current state of the Plate, I have little doubt; my plan to attack Cobalt and Ehud Hayes, to bring their actions to light on their own territory inside the Council House... Conolly and whoever else directly connected to Ehud that is working to demonize us, they knew what we were planning. They knew before even we did. The way your PIM allowed us to pick up data on Cobalt's past after we already knew what breadcrumbs to follow thanks to Ekkehardt, it all came too easily. Too quickly. With what we found, it would've been impossible to not notice Lawrence Sharp and his anti-TECAP agenda. Would've been impossible to not see him as an asset to our cause. Ekkehardt stressed that some sort of rebellion, my Bastille, it was all part of this perfect concoction to initiate Ehud's 'Global Reset.' So how can I think that the events that led to this madness that we're now at the root of was anything but a series of boxes on a checklist?"

>It's been like a year since I've been here last. Still working on that same novel.

"'Your revolution,'" Étiennette began to recite, her voice unwavering, "'Has been accounted for and counted on. It is the final stage of the reset. It is not the demonization of you, but the demonization of anarchy and rebellion that exists so prominently within the human psyche. The narrative is being changed, history rewritten. In this new world that Cobalt has created, rebellion is to be synonymous with destruction, and soon even you too will believe this. There is no subversion, there is no resistence. There is only the inevitable...' I didn't believe these words, Freddie. Didn't believe anyone could infiltrate what my parents had built and use it against me and what I stood for. I didn't believe Ekkehardt in that moment, and I didn't believe him for a single moment over the past three months since Che and I escaped that facility. Since Len and you escaped Conolly. What we've done since coming together, I believed it was us dictating our fates. Engaging in our existence." Freddie, Len, and Lela all watched on in silence as a thin film of mist accrued over Étiennette's eyes. "I thought we were finally going to unleash a barrage of truth on these Plates. Free these men, women, and children from the artificialized reality they've been indoctrinated to accept. I didn't... I never thought I'd help to throw them further out to sea. Push them away from the realization that the world we live in, these Plates, that they're not ours. That they never would be."
"Etsy..." Lela began, reaching her arm out.
"But I was wrong, Freddie!" Étiennette barked, slapping her sister's hand away. "And you're right... To absolve yourself of that condemnation. The madness stirring on the Plate, all that fear, that isn't your doing. That wasn't what I was trying to convey to you. I know you may not believe it, but seeing the current state of the Plate, I have little doubt; my plan to attack Cobalt and Ehud Hayes, to bring their actions to light on their own territory inside the Council House... Conolly and whoever else directly connected to Ehud that is working to demonize us, they knew what we were planning. They knew before even we did. The way your PIM allowed us to pick up data on Cobalt's past after we already knew what breadcrumbs to follow thanks to Ekkehardt, it all came too easily. Too quickly. With what we found, it would've been impossible to not notice Lawrence Sharp and his anti-TECAP agenda. Would've been impossible to not see him as an asset to our cause. Ekkehardt stressed that some sort of rebellion, my Bastille, it was all part of this perfect concoction to initiate Ehud's 'Global Reset.' So how can I think that the events that led to this madness that we're now at the root of was anything but a series of boxes on a checklist?"

>>5482780
This is the relatively early stages of the writing process. I had written roughly 10k in words with only a vague mental outline set in mind before I sat down and realized I needed an outline that detailed total plot details and a majority of specific scenes leading up to the novel's proposed ending.

It was at 10k that I realized I really liked where things were going, and that if I really wanted this book done, that I'd need something I could continuously reference all along the way. It took me roughly 3-5 months to finish the outline(ie: everything you see in that photo)--I can't remember exactly the length, but it took me longer than I expected it would.

That's not to say that the totality of what the story is is found on my closet door. As I continued with my writing, characters were added, plot devices were further detailed, and the ending as a whole was more or less completely reworked. The story as a whole is vastly different than what's presented on this posterboard outline. What I haven't posted any pictures of are my four legal pads filled to the brim with worldcrafting, more in-depth outlines, and analyses that I've made of characters and the novel's environment.

Basically, a story is constantly shifting until it isn't, and I can't tell you how you'll write your story.The changes I made came to be because I thought they were necessary, and they were taken note of and documented in the way I documented them because those were the ways that felt most effective at the time.

A story shifts as you write it. How you will decide to adapt to that is up to you. Just trust yourself and don't worry about feeling like you have to completely restructure portions of your original ideas to fit the new ones you think are important to implement.

>>5480292
Infinite Jest
The Power of Myth

Sorry guys.