/lit/ - Literature

>>4445908

the main issue is the contrived and unconvincing dialogue, consider:

>Get this candle out of here! This was your idiotic idea! I spent days, DAYS, perfecting this map! Every detail you see, the mountains, the coordinates, the points of interest, all me! Clean this damn mess you created!"

No one speaks this way, it's almost like you're trying too hard to communicate your intentions to the reader.

The writing aside from the dialogue is fairly good for what it appears to set out to do. What I honestly think has happened here is that you chose a very poor excerpt.

also,

>She wondered for a moment, were they even able?

Awkward sentence.

Not sure what's with the occasional caps locked word, no editor is going to keep it that way.

What's this about, what are your intentions?

>>4445908
>Every detail you see, the mountains, the coordinates, the points of interest, all me!
It's clear you're not familiar with cartography. At least learn a few cartographic terms.

Also look out for your said bookisms.

Ted not only doesn't eat healthy, he actively avoids any food product that advertises itself as being in any way nutritious or good for you. When he shops, phrases like "sugar free," "low sodium," and "less fat!" are kisses of death. Even the word "fresh" warrants, at the very least, a skeptical double-take. And forget trying to sell him on anything "organic." He's not a hippie.

This insistence on eating only the very worst possible combinations of pre-processed artificial sugars and saturated fats is most likely why he's pre-diabetic. When asked why he eats so horrendously, he will tell you that he likes "real food." Irony is as alien to him as fresh produce.

Tom Stanton has eyes deep-set in their sockets, as if they've been half swallowed by the fat of his face. His features are soft. Weak. As if carved from Play-Doh. Beady little half-sunk eyes and a dumpy misshapen fivehead and a chin that becomes a neck the way a heap becomes a pile, you can't tell exactly where. He licks his lips every twelve seconds or so. It's disgusting.

What he does is, he hides your money. And he's very good at it indeed. He can shuffle around checking accounts and Roth 401(k)s and dividends on investment farms &c, so that come April 15th you don't owe anything at all, or maybe Uncle Sam even has an outstanding debt or two with /you/, maybe you even qualify for food stamps and housing assistance, like so many hard-up billionaires these days. And this shell game he plays with your money, it isn't /illegal/, technically, but it isn't technically legal either, rather greyly extra-legal or /supra/-legal, as he likes to say -- well in any case no jury in the country would convict, and that's what counts.

He leaves his Manhattan condominium now, like all days, at precisely 8:00 AM. See him turn out his lights, once twice three times, like he thinks the first two times won't take. See him lock his door and try the handle, once twice three times, just to make extra sure. See him wait for the elevator, pressing the call button once twice-- you get the picture.

He insists that he's just "very particular."

Of course being "very particular" is why he's so good at what he does. It helps him keep track of his dozens of clients' hundreds of offshore accounts in Vanuatu, Nauru, Fiji. It helps him wade through brick after brick of legislation -- indeed, gives him the almost perverse ability to /enjoy/ it -- and the acuity to zero in on every loophole. He's a genius, it can't be disputed. A bona fide savant. He could be out finding solutions to unsolved problems in algebraic topology or non-Abelian group theory or whatever. But this is what he does. He shuttles between his nice little condo in SoHo and his nice little office on the upper east side and he helps the rich evade the law, day in and day out, without breaks for federal holidays or vacations, and every day at 3:15 PM precisely he eats lo mein from Chang's, with one two three packets of soy sauce. This is is his life and if it changed in even the smallest detail he would go fucking bonkers.

"Hey Alex check it out there's a unicorn pegasus in my backyard" I say. He runs to the screen door to see but is immediatley dissapointed. I chortle. "April fools, it was only a regular pegasus" I had tricked him. Little do I know, it is actually April 2nd. I had just mis-fooled. I am arrested and sentenced to 3 years hard time. How will a aspiring master chef take on the harsh regulations of a prison cafeteria?? My 81 chapter fabric explores this -- and more

>>4445959
>>4445960

Thanks!

it's a fantasy story, and it's the very beginning. I'll take all that into account. The caps locked words are supposed to be like italics, but I can't do that on 4chan

I've never sure what to do in these threads because I'm always working on my novels. I can't really post what I wrote today because I often simply start in the middle of a paragraph, where I left off in my previous session.

Post chapters? Exerts?

>>4445994
You dialogue needs work and your sentences need elegance. Other than that, you seem relatively competent.

I'll give you some examples:

>She sat alone in semi darkness and inspected the map, it WAS beautiful.

This is a bad sentence, and the lines that follow it give me the impression that the writer stopped trying.

>Shapes and geometry and things
Lazy.

>But she knew deep down that he had overreacted
Knowing something "deep down" implies a repressed or unconscious thought. Incongruous with context, makes no sense.

>She needed to calm down as well, although she tried not to show it, her heart was beating faster than normal and she had been extremely anxious the entire evening.

Inelegant, ungrammatical and unclear sentence:

>She needed to calm down as well
Where was it said or implied that Vishu needed to calm down? Leaving angry is not enough to justify the "as well."

>although she tried not to show it
Wasn't she alone?

>her heart was beating faster than normal and she had been extremely anxious the entire evening.
Oh, so this is what she had tried not to show. Notice the "had."

Work on it.

This was adapted from a horribly purple passage anon posted in yesterday's thread, which is itself derivative of an semi-obscure Bigas Luna film called La Teta y la luna.

The jar, which had been so full only a week ago, was now empty. “Sorry,” said his mother as she broke the last cookie in half, “I’m afraid you’ll have to share,” and handed each child a half moon of temporary bliss. The boy looked at his piece, and felt tears welling up behind his eyes. Clearly his was the smaller piece. Clearly this was a demonstration of mother’s greater love for sister. He snatched the other half from the little girl’s hands before it could enter her now wailing mouth. “Give that back, you naughty boy,” demanded his mother. He tried to grin and not look hurt, but it was hard. The boy ate both pieces and stared, forlorn, at his mother, who lifted the crying child to her breast. His hopes for any kind of attention were thwarted by the sight of her bare shoulderblades. To his surprise, the sweets he so often craved tasted dry and sugarless without milk to accompany them.

So I guess now he goes on a quest for tits to suck, just like in the movie.

>>4445996
>Post chapters? Exerts?

Not with that spelling you're not.

>>4446042
And then I pulled a full retard. Ah well, not as if people judge you by your spelling when writing without thinking, right?

>>4446024
thank you again, I'll fix all of that, they are good points that I agree with

Sitting perched on the cliff-side, like angels floating on the clouds of their maker, Glaucus and Ophelia watched the endless oceans broil with joy. Below them the waves roared with great efficiency as they battled with the earthen wall, so that despite the distance of a few hundred feet their war cries came to them with audible clarity. Yet to them it was a reassuring sound, one they took comfort from; the eternal battle, like a clap of thunder before a streak of lightning, acting proof that the world continued around them as normal, lending them a sense of peace and tranquillity in their companionship. Together, on the edge, they were entirely at ease. So much so that even the gentle breeze, which sent their clothes billowing and whipped Ophelia’s hair into her face, causing her to brush it behind her ears with a composed tenderness every few moments, did not give them source to worry.

“Oh! Look,” the girl beside him sighed, the words unfurling from her lips like the heat waves permeating from the rolling ocean, a bare arm outstretched pointing towards the heavens.
He followed her motion to a gull, white with black wingtips, gliding freely and dancing upon the invisible fingertips of masterful spectres of wind. As it hastened to an unknown destination, flying into a rupture in time, the bird froze abruptly and the blue skies about it fizzled and shimmered with a sea of colours. It vanished and the sky where the gull had once been returned to the whitewashed azure of its origins.

They waited in silence and watched as the bird reappeared on the horizon, breaking from beneath the glare of the sun, to fly once more, traversing the same route, to fizzle and disappear and reappear again, trapped in a timeless cycle.

“I wonder if it realises how fortunate it is – to spend the same moment over and over, how truly blessed it is in its freedom of the skies. Never having to stop to rest, only ever feeling that joy of the wind born beneath its wings.”

“Perhaps,” Glaucus replied, still watching the bird wend its way down its never-ending path, “Or perhaps it views the predicament as wretched – it can never get where it wants to get to, no matter how hard it tries.”

She turned away from him, her legs swinging as they dangled over the edge of the cliff, entirely trusting in his ability to catch her if she fell. After a moment she looked at him shyly, “What if it’s already found exactly where it wants to be?”

As he mused on her question she swung her legs round, so that she was facing away from the sea and instead towards the low meadow that banked its way towards the edge of the cliff. Plucking a flower, from a bouquet of three, she sat cross-legged to face him. Mirroring her movements he did the same so that they were sat with the caps of their knees touching, their bare legs warmed by the sun as it edged timidly across the blank canvas of sky.

>My prose has a tendency to be somewhat overwrought at times.

The start of my try at writing a book.

I was content in the wrong place. I was doing life, in a place I needed to escape. Small things made me stay sane when I needed to break, Those small laughs here and there, empty kisses, generic greeting hugs, the basic assortment of medical to non medical grass and of course, the occasional pill and FB like(a share would be too much social excitement for me). These technologies and rituals gave only empty meanings to me. My world seem to be a matrix small enjoyments achieved through intense visual stimulation (thanks drugs) and false hope, these kept me sane, away from edge of dying in “bad feelings”. The bad feelings, the feelings of sharing a bit of your world then promptly, like the gods got it out for you, are followed by “What are you talking about?” The type of feeling of going in for a kiss, and they back away, slowly, not to hurt your “feelings” too much… Hell, it’s the fucking feeling when you're talking to your parents about what “you think” they did “wrong”. Bad feelings consisted simply of all the things that fail to go right, things to be shameful about, things to hide. I had woken in my room, wait no. I had woken in a room, not my own, mistook it for my own. The walls were a poor dull-white and baldy painted, the door in corner of my right eye was a plastic brown, a cheap plastic brown; a horrible simulacrum of the “brownness” of natural wood. This room since being similar to my own, I am guessing must be laying on a bunk bed made from the same urban -underfunded-school brown like the door, although the mattress, unlike the bunk bed frame was rather good quality(Yes, I am amazing judge of mattresses). However now, I could see how I made the drunken mistake of thinking this was my room, it another dorm room like my own. I stood up. Looking around the familiar grey-scale dorm; looking for anything, anything to sum up the day. To my far right, an object I wasn’t able to see while lying down. Focusing my muddled vision it appeared to be a wooden dresser, it’s one of two doors was opened slightly; within the opening laid a glass mirror (albeit cloudy).

>>4446092
Cont

Naturally, like anyone looking to confirm who they are, I was drawn to the mirror; I needed to see myself. I wanted to be disappointed. Slowly, my obtusely long legs walk to dresser, closer and further staring into to the mirror. I was a frail man; skinnier than most. Decent shave at least (I knew my Barber for years) but, I was almost cursed with an overly strong jaw; washing out the other rather mediocre features of my face. Overall, I was neither a sight to behold, or a sight of terror, I was nothing to look at; disgustingly, normative. I Hated my normativity, I want the idiosyncrasies of other people’s faces, other people’s lives; I hated being a nobody. How was I here then? How was a nobody invited to a party? Honestly, the only reason I was invited to this party is because host assumed I was friends with someone I frankly, didn't know (this must be the reason). Did I even want to be invited? This party full awkward sexuality, people looking the all important sense of a private familiarity created form discussion of all too pubic movies. Suddenly,

The taste of chocolate only made it worse. The acid feeling spawn on my throat, making it a disgusting experience. But the worst thing was that all the waiters were looking at me. My parents were used to seeing my vomit on the floor but I could imagine what the waiters only thought "Who going to clean up this day's nausea boy", if they only knew. It was my birthday and it seemed that the idea of a free cake only made it worse, for the occasion. My mom grabbed me from the hands and pulled my out of my seat in the restaurant with one hand and with the other grabbing a pair of napkins saying "I told you to go to the bathroom, you fucking asshole, you did this on purpose" while at the same time my dad was mooving my vomit up and down the restaurant table. It wasn't on purpose, I just hate puking. I took the chocolate candy and went to the bathroom. I felt relief. I think the moment before puking is the worst, but the time that you let go, is almost like resignation to death. Or at least that is how I think death would be. Comfort. But as soon as I entered the bathroom, I could hear the sounds of another man puking. At first I didn't care I was just cleaning my shirt taking all the big pieces of chicken that I just regurgitated, and then It hit me, another men ran into a stall not quite reaching, I smelled a fart as soon as he passed me and as soon as he shut the door all hell broke loose. It was a damn nightmare. As soon as I returned to the restaurant, I only saw vomit everywhere. The look of the waiters was of terror. Even the cooks appeared out of nowhere to see what was happening. A lot of them were trying to room towards me where the bathroom were I jump to a side as soon as I saw the first runner throwing up while running, it was red, it didn't make sense,I ate a different thing and it wasn't red maybe it was blood. I felt, I felt....Like a million bucks It wasn't just me it was everyone. The last thing I remember was returning to my seat and sitting. While my mother was finishing her throwing, I grabbed her long hair and pulled it back trying to not touch the creamy vomit. "Do you want some"I just showed a piece of chocolate that I didn't ate.

First time poster, too timid to actually post any of my actual writing, but I have an outline with ideas and such that I'd like someone to at least look at and give me an opinion. I'll take whatever opinions I can get, too, I just want to know what to do different.

My email is up there. If you want (if you like the outline that is) I'll send you some other things, and maybe you can send me stuff too?

>>4446087
>like a clap of thunder before a streak of lightning
Do you even physics? Lightning comes before thunder, sigh.

>>4446212
Nigga just post that shit here. If you haven't noticed, /lit/ doesn't even critique anymore.

>>4446230
The Laughter in Triumph

Lamb Mulligan, novel's first protagonist.
Joel Newton, Mulligan's friend, an overweight guy from Mississippi.
Chenault Charriot, 12 year-old loudmouth brat. Parties with older men. Seen near the end, pregnant at 13 by Dick Golden or Art Fingered, or maybe someone else entirely.

Felix Andrusyzn, 23 year-old paranoid who gets drunk and passes out through time, through random points in the past. May be one of the protag's saving grace.

Dick Golden
Art Fingered
Mary the Prostitute (I remembered : 3)
Johann Friedrich von Eschscholt

Fintan Tighearnan Einri Ormonde, novel's second protagonist. Hosts Alcoholics Anonymous meetings funded by the council. Pseudo-gang that gets drunk and fucks around Flexington, fucking shit up.
Pierette Lucrece Olivie Chevalier, Fintan's lover. Collects photographs of ______. Has a cat named Don Juan that speaks to Fintan, who talks to cats when he is drunk.

Red Crayon Aristocrats:
Captain Minna Amelia Irmingard Von Wegberg, Captain of the Red Crayon Aristocrats
Saskia Mendelbaum, the serious Mendelbaum sister.
Julia Mendelbaum, the semi-retarded, but cute, Mendelbaum sister. Gets involved with one of the Garden's Feast band members. Sings for a few songs as backup vocals.
First Mate Liesl Beckert, has a lesbian obsession with Minna, almost to the point of deluded fantasies. Gets hit by a truck while running after Minna's handkerchief. Bitch dead.

Alcoholics Anonymous Pseudo-Gang:
P. Ruggles, wears kitty t-shirt that says "A MEOWING COMES ACROSS THE SKY" When people he doesn't know asks for his name he says it is Pancho Villa in a Spanish accent. Doesn't wear sack when out in public, only in AA meetings and events, and when someone he doesn't like knows who he really is and recognizes him, he flips a hood over his face and runs out in a French dialect, with a horrible accent. He pulls his hood up and sprints out of where ever he is.
Leonard Winters
Cedric Brassi
Ivan Buczkowski

Callantium Center Residents:
Mexwell "Cat Killer" Johnson, racist cat killer.
Mikes Revak, old sax player, actual professional but no one believes him until he skips town only to return years younger and shredding sax-style at the Gardener's Feast.
Dan Watts, slap-stick guy, remniscent of a certain deputy from a certain show.
Winthrope, geser in a wheelchair, wears brass knuckles for ass-whoppin'. "Boy, I'm gonna show you the inside of your poopchute, and it ain't pretty."
Franz Ormonde, Fintan's father. Socially awkward man in his eighties.

Lake Freetrance Lovetrip Astralhaze, hippie girl who takes drugs to counter her bad thoughts. Prefers to be called Lake.

Don Juan, experimental government cat that may or may not talk. A womanizer and sufferer of hypersexuality, seduces all ages of women. Gambles with people's money.

Freddie Freeloader, random guy. Fuck him, shit don't matter at this point.

There is also a bit of vegetarian musicals.

>>4446240
>Red Crayon Aristocrats
Rule of Rose is cool. Plagiarism is not.

You seem to have all the characters. Now summarize the plot in one sentence.

>>4446240
Is this just a slew of references to things?

>>4446266
I'm so glad you got the reference. The name is just a placeholder until I can find one that I like as much as that. I'll never be published, though, so even if I never change it it won't really matter.

As for the plot:
A group of alcoholics defend a small port town from a band of feminist pirates.

>>4446294
Pretty much, yeah. I haven't actually written in a few months, so this is my way of getting myself back to writing. That's really all there is to it.

>>4446299
>A group of alcoholics defend a small port town from a band of feminist pirates.
Sounds great.

>I'm so glad you got the reference.
Yeah I was just busting your balls. What are the other allusions I missed?

"Ducks" I thought to myself. "I fucking hate ducks." As I sat on a worn park bench in Greenwich on an overcast Monday morning I thought about the mallard ,with its resplendent emerald head and brown plummage, and I thought about how much I despised the things. They drifted around the park in little packs, remaining close to a body of water at all times, then they'd run up to your feet to see if you had any bread to offer and if you didn't then they'd run from you as if they'd just glanced over your shoulder a news report depicting your image and the headline "serial rapist at large". They made you feel revolting if you declined their carbohydrate-orientated advances and used if you olbiged them. There's no way to stand up to them, no way to express to them just how awful they made you feel or how stupid you think they are, so I was forced to sit on a worn park bench and hate them from a distance. My therapist, if I had one, might have told me that my hatred for those harmless avian creatures was unhealthy. "For me or for them?" I might have asked her - therapists, in my mind's eye, are always female - smuggly. Later, in bed, I would have considered that retort and thought about how witty it was. I would consider telling some of my friends about it, sure that they would laugh and thing more positively of me in the future. Then I'd realise that telling that story would necessitate telling my friends I was visiting a therapist., which would lead to why I was visiting a therapist

>>4446365
*think more

>>4446333
Other than The Andy Griffith Show, Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, Pynchon, and Rule of Rose, there aren't many. Chenault Charriot is taken from Hunter S. Thompson's The Rum Diary, well, her first name is. She's kind of a mix with Thompson's Chenault and Dolores Haze (Lolita).

I like allusions, I like puns. I'm that kind of guy, I guess.

Talk to me, /lit/!
And I don't want to hear about not starting a story with exposition, I don't give a damn.

After the discovery of the new continent "drifter" became a loose term. The world as it was on the grand continent didn't have much room for adventure, and the drifting type found it hard to not just stick to one place. They were there though, that is, WE were there. I think we always were, not filling pages in the history books but instead existing somewhere between the lines. In the empire it wasn't so easy to just pick up and disappear, but the deserts of the new continent gave an alternative. Two days in the right direction you could be living an entirely new life, two days in the wrong direction and you'd be dead. Not a very clean ultimatum, but it was an alternative and it promised glamour to any fool who would listen.

These fools were not drifters though, not really. They had goals, and just going where the wind takes them was their cover for the reality that they were searching for something. True drifters are quiet different. Whether or not a drifter uses the word fate, that is what guides him. Others call it God, I call it fate. Have you ever been called upon to do something you think you otherwise wouldn't if it were not for that subtle intangible intervention? Probably not, or if you have you probably didn't realize it. In any case...

I have been drifting for a long time, much longer then you are likely to believe. In that time I have seen many things and of those things I have many stories to tell. You may be wanting to hear my story, but I promise you that would be a complete exercise in futility. You see, my story is really just a conglomeration of other peoples stories. I promise you, my life as a whole is not very interesting and it lacks the key building blocks of conflict and resolution that would make for a proper story.

But, there is a story I intend to tell. It is the one that has called to me the strongest throughout my years, and is the one story that I would like to take with me into the next life. This is the story of The Black Rider.

>>4446399
>Other than The Andy Griffith Show, Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, Pynchon, and Rule of Rose, there aren't many.
Okay I think I got most of those. I would have kicked myself for not recognizing another game ref though.

>I like allusions, I like puns. I'm that kind of guy, I guess.
Same.

Guess we're email buddies now.

Of the billions of dump stars, it had to be this one. He nudged the little tangle of wires by his foot. In the old-old world the great American westerns had real organic tumbleweed, then as the 20th century drew to a close, these beautifully adapted bushes became clumps of carrier bags and melted scrap plastic. As he watched the bundle of PVC covered aluminium trundle down the hill he reflected how this modern equivalent of tumbleweed looked just as fitting in this grey present setting as the original did on the sepia-toned Great Plains. DS-4481 might not be considered arid and dusty, but it was certainly barren and inhospitable. How very fitting it was that the cyclical nature of this detail was also present in Hen’s purpose for landing on the dump star.

my dick was hard and when she finally finished undressing it shrank like a worm does when it sees red sores all over its mates vagina. i put on my pants and she said "what are you doing lol" and i said "my girlfriend is calling" and then she said "i am your girlfriend" and i ignored her and put on my shirt without buttoning it and left the room . after i left the room is when i buttoned my shirt. she chased after me in a towel because she didnt want to be naked in public and i understood why (its because she had fucking herpes) and she said to me "why are you doing this to me" and cried and i cried too and i shouted "its because you're a fucking whore" and i left and i think our relationship ended then. i checked into a motel half an hour away becuase i never wanted to see her again and drowned my tears in cheap beer and semen from sleeping with my hand

>>4446561
by sleeping with my hand i mean masturbation lol

"Love of My Life"

I fell in love with
love that night that
I fell from grace
with you.

To be loved is such
a chore, such a burden,
each embrace returned
and for each kiss
a face.

Let my lips kiss
and fumble with air,
let me dare to dare
myself to dream of you and I
living not as us,
but as I loving you
and as you dreaming on.

To love is the want I
want; to hold and
lose, to never lose
and never hold. All is
the same when I love
not you but it.

ACT ONE
SCENE 1
Lights up on BRADY, tied to a chair, head wrapped in a leather bag. MARS and QUINCE watch him, wearing pig masks. As BRADY becomes more desperate, he begins rocking back and forth so hard that the legs of the chair bang into the ground. QUINCE grabs him by the collar and shoves it all down to the ground, kicks him viciously in the ribs.
QUINCE: Hard to breathe, huh, buddy?
MARS: You doin’ alright, pal? Huh? Want a break?
QUINCE: If we take this shit off you, you gonna behave?
BRADY sobs, thrashes
MARS: Don’t look like it, Quince.
QUINCE: Hogwash, mein freund! He’s just hyperventilating is all. Here, let’s just cinch this up...
QUINCE tugs the bag tighter onto BRADY’s face. BRADY’s struggles become more desperate, then cease.
QUINCE: <during the struggle> There we go, there we go, just relax, alright? Huh, buddy? Go to sleep, go to sleep, sh, sh…
MARS: For fuck’s sake, Quince, did you kill him?
QUINCE: Calm yourself. <heaves BRADY upright> He’s knocked out. Takes a full ten minutes to suffocate to death. Doesn’t work like in James Bond.
MARS: I’ve never seen James Bond.
QUINCE: Fuck’s sake, Mars, it’s not “James Bond” it’s, like, Moonraker, or Goldfinger.
MARS: What-
QUINCE: Dr. No or something
MARS: What is-?
QUINCE: It’s a-
MARS: What is it?
QUINCE: It’s... spy movies. It’s spy movies, and people get choked to death in ‘em, but they don’t just die like that.
MARS: Don’t just die like what?


continued...

contaminated sine wave:
engines bellow at
spaces in the tactile composure of
Us.

God
suffocates

clouded pH increases

the sky cries
ammonia.
governments feed us
syntactic sugar in the form of
manufactory glucose

to keep our mouths muffled
as our lungs
slowly
sleep.

>>4446641

QUINCE: Like, right away.
MARS: In the movies?
QUINCE: No. In – what? No. In real life, you don’t just die if someone’s choking you for like two seconds. It takes a lot longer. What I’m saying is, in these movies-
MARS: -The James Bond movies-
QUINCE: -yes, the, the James Bond movies, in these movies, in any movie, it shows people dying instantly-
MARS: And that doesn’t happen.
QUINCE: And that doesn’t happen. Not from strangulation, no. Now, if they crush your windpipe. That’s a different story.
MARS: Yeah?
QUINCE: Yeah. Someone crushing your windpipe, you’re done for. Which can happen, during a strangulation.
MARS: Yeah.
QUINCE: But not a suffocation. Suffocating takes a lot longer.
MARS: About ten minutes.
QUINCE: Precisely.
MARS: Exactly?
QUINCE: What?
MARS: Exactly ten?
QUINCE: Minutes?
MARS: Ten minutes?
QUINCE: What? No, I was saying you’re right. Like, “precisely”. Not actually, literally precisely ten.
MARS: But around there?
QUINCE: Yes. Ballpark.
MARS: What?
QUINCE: Ballpark. Around there, yes, you'd die around ten minutes if you were being suffocated. Could be eight, could be eleven.

>>4446649

MARS: Unless they crush your...
QUINCE: Crush your windpipe, yeah.
MARS: See, I never knew that.
QUINCE: Well, mi amigo, you learn something new every day in this line of work. We are truly men of the world, you and me.
MARS: Mm-hmm.
<Pause>
MARS: So how much longer does he have?
QUINCE: Hm? Who?
MARS: The guy. MacGuffin. <gestures to BRADY>
QUINCE: Oh, fuck! I forgot we left it on! Jeezus! <undoes the drawstrings on the mask> Shit, I’m here-
MARS: Is he-
QUINCE: I’m here talking about James Bond with you-
MARS: He okay?
QUINCE: Completely slips my fuckin’ mind we’ve got-
MARS: Is he dead? Check to see-
QUINCE: Oh, fuck!
MARS: Is he dead?
Quince has taken off the leather bag to expose BRADY’s face. BRADY is still unconscious.
QUINCE: Fuck! God DAMN it!
MARS: Is he dead?
QUINCE: No! No, he’s not –
MARS: He’s not?
QUINCE: -dead. He’s not dead, he’s fucking...
MARS: What?
QUINCE: Black!
MARS: <removes his mask> What?
QUINCE: <removes his mask> You kidnapped a black guy, Mars, you fucking shit?
MARS: What? So what? Who was I supposed to, to...
QUINCE: You can’t just do that!
MARS: Why not?
QUINCE: Because! It’s... racist!


And that's as far as I've gotten so far. It is a work in progress, of course. Should I bother continuing?

PLEASE critique this please

"Another day of pissing in the old cup, eh?" Jeff said, as I pissed again into the damn aforementioned cup for what seemed to be the fortieth time this hour. It couldn't have been true, all that piss, I knew, but alas I was crazy. I couldn't make sense of time or place or what have you. We were all crazy.

And so I pissed into that god damned cup. What Jeff hadn't realized was that I needed this piss, the bastard. He didn't understand and heck I didn't either. After I was through I had a full six ounces in that piece of shit cup of mine and I swished and stirred and smelt it like it was some kind of fine wine. I flicked the side of the cup, counted 1 2 3 and downed that hot nectar, one gulp cause I hate the taste. And then for the fortieth time this hour I said, out of breath from the piss-chug, "That's the last pee I ever drink!" "Sure it is," Jeff said, "sure it is."

>>4446669
go to bed Charles.

no, I'm kidding. I like it... I mean, I feel like there should be more, but I like the grittiness and vulgarity of it. It feels authentic.
but really it feels seriously incomplete.

>>4446669

What is your plan here? Where is this going?

Alright since none of you bitches are critiquing I guess I have to do it. I'll start working through some of these.

>>4445969
I like the first paragraph. It presents an extreme personality trait in your character and raises questions about why he acts that way.

the second paragraph... "most likely" the reason? why don't you quit beating around the bush and just say he is diabetic.

"When asked why": I think this point can be brought up with a little more finesse. I think you should just stop with the exposition and get into the story, let his actions start giving out details instead of just having the narrate spell things out.

>>4445984
>Tom Stanton has eyes deep-set in their sockets
makes me think sick a frail, not fat
>Beady little half-sunk eyes and a dumpy misshapen fivehead and a chin that becomes a neck the way a heap becomes a pile, you can't tell exactly where
what?
>>4445987
lol, corny but I like it

>>4446092
>I was content in the wrong place
too vague, your first sentence needs to pop. I already don't feel like reading anymore.
>I was doing life, in a place I needed to escape
prison, good, still vague and you don't have to be subtle about saying where he is, thats just annoying.
>Small things....
run on sentence and I dont know what an FB is. You dont want to confuse your reader so early on, and like I said you need it to actually be interesting. Raise questions, make your character relatable or intresting, something to make the reader want to continue. Like I said I already want to stop.

oh ok, its not prison, my bad. Still boring though. Work on that.

I'm done for now. someone else do something.


These bitches still need critiquing. Get on it you lazy fuck! That's right, I'm talking to YOU!
>>4446152
>>4446365
>>4446427
>>4446442
>>4446561
>>4446606
>>4446641

>>4446726

>lol, corny but I like it

He ripped it off from a Nedroid comic.

>>4446669

Is he drinking it to get all the possible alcohol? I know some alcoholics drink their own vomit not to waste any.

You're authorial voice, just from this at least, is kind of tongue in cheek clever, which can be annoying but I think it works here. The grandiose description for seriously fucked stuff works, but a tone like that might make it difficult to evoke actual emotion in the reader because it sounds like the narrator doesn't even care about what he's doing.

For example, a different style might describe that scene with emphasis on the narrator's desperation and related emotions. Now, yours might better reflect the thoughts of someone in this situation - they don't give a shit anymore.

But I've always found in that kind of writing, like in Bukowski's novels >>4446679, that I never actually get attached to the character or (perhaps more importantly) get any insight into what they're feeling. That's not to say it can't still be entertaining and meaningful, but the narrator ALWAYS being withdrawn and not giving a shit doesn't really work IMO.

A great example of a book with similar tone that does work I think is Catcher in the Rye. Holden tries so hard to sound down to earth, mature, serious, but his descriptions and actions betray how sad and confused he actually is.

Sorry for rambling, hope this was some help

For a dark fantasy that's slowly coming to life.
-Sigil Atrocious
Chapter One: The Devil’s Dreams
“Toby take your sister and run.”
“But father where I will go?”
“Away from here” His mother’s voice was barely audible over the roaring fire that engulfed their village. “Listen” amidst the chaos and screams of agony the boy’s father took a knee. “Remember what we told you when we sat upon the tallest hill, gazing upon the rolling landscape at sunset?” The boy nodded his head. “One day I would have to be a man.” Toby recollected the past that now, in this suffering, seemed like a dream.
“Right” his father said ruffling his brown hair. “That time is now.”
“Take good care of Seiya, Toby.” He gripped the sling over his back that carried a crying infant. Toby’s mother kissed her children before rising from the ground “know that we will always love you.” Yet Toby didn’t move an inch. His father growing irritated was about to scream at his kin to go, to survive, but a cackle resonated above cries and the crackling of flames. “What a touching scene. A beautiful wife and her husband trying to preserve their seed.” The voice came from a silhouette walking through the flames. The figure emerged from a wall of crimson fire, a man of enormous statue. From behind gleaming silver bangs he stared with piercing red eyes. “Michael, Erin” he said addressing the boy’s mother and father. How long has it been since you defected from the Legion?”

>>4446669

The dialogue is just, ugh I hate it. The voice is kind of creative but there's too much ambiguity and reeks of "we're degenerates and crazy and do wacky, gritty stuff." Could work, but I don't see it much anywhere.

>>4446718 seconded. The first paragraph is very great, but the second gets too preachy and "nyeehhh look at how much of an idiot this guy is." It's one thing not to have sympathy for the character, but quite another to actively make him look like an asshole for a behavior most would consider unwise but normal.

Here's something I wrote in the past two days, I have no idea where it's going, it's probably not going anywhere, and I dislike it as is, but at this point I'm writing just to get in the habit.

True = srand()%2
False = srand()%2

So then there's this sperglord living the NEET life, curled up with a Haruhi body pillow on top of assorted bedspreads, Captain Falcon and Earthbound-themed, based on layer distance from ground, inversely, and topped with a Sonic The Hedgehog duvet and pillow cases, because this specific individual is if nothing else symmetric. In a room with strewn clothes, piss bottles, cups, napkins, an overflowing garbage can long since rendered superfluous if not plain unnecessary, Mtn Dew game fuel cans, books including Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan's The C Programming Language (the second edition, adapting C to the then new ANSI standards; of course these standards being nearly 20 years old the book is still more than valuable for its superb technical writing and instruction, which, though the glue on this subject's copy was still pristine and the pages in no way fanned out from creasing, the subject had had a more recent book by the wonderous and extensive O'Reilly series of progamming books reflecting the more modern ISO/IEC 9899:2011 standards on his MicroSD of ebooks, but it's like why even bother? Because it was free.) Learn You a Haskell For Great Good (Lipovača, Miran, 2011, Starch Free Press [the liars] ISBN-13 9781593272838) amongst the cherished .hs's devloped by Sperglord, the Fizzbuzzes and number calculating games, the floating point celsium-fahrenheit he's worked on, God and Man at Yale (Buckley Jr, Willam, Henry Regnery Company 1951. ISBN-13 9780895266927) The Fountain Head (Rand, Ayn, Plume, 1994. ISBN-13 9780452273337) coffee mugs, wrappers of plastic wrap and that crap they stick to the screen of electronics one has to peel off and be very careful at the start for one's long fingernails not to accidentally scratch the screen, white and green kneesocks, of course dragon dildos, mainly for novelty; and he is curled up in his bed, naked top-down to his waist watching Toradora, in which Ryuji and the palmtop tiger, a total tsundere, become an odd couple of friends and eventually fall in love, which is all dramatic and played out, when the Comcast guy is led to his room by the subject's mom.

>>4446815

That's just plain terrible, m8

You've stitched together the most overused tropes in pulp-fantasy history with the soggiest, meanderingest prose imaginable, with some unbelievable dialogue sprinkled on top to boot.

F minus minus. Start over.

>>4446820
>This is my son, anon, he's wonderful with computers!
And this very situation he prepped for, many times, but to no avail. His room is a den of stale cigarette smoke, heat from electronics, a shameful place intent on keeping the outside world away.
>I could've done this my self, b-but Comcast said you would have to come out
>Yeahhhh, Comcast can be superfluous about this stuff because they don't want someone messing up their modem. Keeps me in work though dunnit? Where's your computer at.
He leads the young and to him but not in reality entirely handsome, but certaintly not acne-riddled and chubby, technician to his (the NEET's) computer, logged into a tty.
>T-this is Gahnoo plus linecks, I don't know if you've used it ever, I-t's a developer operating system with no GUI for programmers and power users that respects my freedom!
[name@hostname]~uname -a
Linux hostname 2.6.35-22-generic-pae #33-Ubuntu SMP preempt Fri Dec 30 19:54:53 CET 20XX i686 GNU/Linux
>what are you dooooing
The comcast guy fiddles with his small and spidery hands, rotating them around to Ctrl + Alt + F7, clicks and it works!; GNOME pops up, a lolicon doujin is fullscreen, goes to navigate spinnan cubez to another desktop that's not plagued by creepy porn, this point the guy's staring not seeing the comcast worker do a quick iwconfig command to flush his DNS and reset the router.
>Alright, should be all set up for you. I hope my work has been satisfactory and thank you for choosing Comcast!
>Y-you too

>>4446821
>dialogue

gr8 b8 m8 i r8 8/8 almost had me there

>>4446830

wot in th fk r u on abt m8

>>4446832

Weren't no dialogue in there ya nut

>>4446839

There was... people talking... to one another...

Isn't that dialogue?

Are you retarded or am I?

>>4446844

In the first post?
No, there was not. So it's gotta be you

>>4446848

In the post I quoted there was. What post do you think I'm talking about?

>>4446851

...oh

I'm an incredible, massive asshat. I was looking at the wrong post.
Forgive me for wasting your time, I'll go commit seppuku

>>4446862

>>4446820
sorry, its bad.

theres a ton of ton of emphasis on describing this room to the point where i doiny even understand the events. sometging about comcast ??

and why is it so memetic?

>>4446152

wot

It was fucking disgusting, yet compelling. Parts were a little sloppy and hard to read through. When you have something that chaotic, you want the reader to be able to cut through it like butter. Keep the action flowing.

>>4446365

Trying way too hard.

>>4446427

There's a reason you're not supposed to start a story with exposition. Just tell me about the damn Black Rider.

>>4446442

I don't mind it.

>>4446606

2sadboi4me

I like the first line.

I'm not going to post my poem on here because I think it is absolute shit, but my literature professor last semester really liked it and asked me to sign up for creative writing this semester (I didn't because I graduated and moved on to grad school). Do professors just hand out compliments like that to pad their classes for the following semesters? I've never received a compliment on my writing, so I'm curious.

>>4446958
post yourbpoem, and then we might be able to guess if your prof was paddong ornot

>>4446958

Post it.

>>4446965
Not gonna happen. I can tear it to shreds myself. Thanks for the offer though.

>>4446948
>There's a reason you're not supposed to start a story with exposition. Just tell me about the damn Black Rider.
I'm not at that part yet. Cant you feel the fucking air of mystery? Anyway, there's a reason I'm doing it like this, right or wrong its how I want to do it.

>>4446981

Then how do you expect to improve as a writer?

>>4446984

>right or wrong its how I want to do it.

Then don't ask for critique you smegma

>>4446985
One stanza taken from the middle. The rest is pretty shitastic, and frankly, I'm not a big fan of what I wrote here either.

Staring up at the golden morning sky,
We would breathe in the crisp air
Let it fill our lungs as if they were to burst
And all would feel right with the world.

Vexin took a seat on the window sill, solemn eyes weighted with an even heavier sadness looking past the droplets of rain unto the neon city and the orange street lights. The detective lounged on the creaking wooden seat, smoking a cigarette and waiting for the young violinist to begin. After a few swigs of whiskey Richard Vexin began a his tale
“Beauty in such a grey life can only be found I n the crevices wrought by decadence. Such was our meeting as if I had found a flower amidst fields of snow. Walk into the heart of downtown, but fade away from the beating public into a shad- alley and you can find the entrance to Petty Tom’s. It’s a rundown joint, owned by a hearty Russian man were the lost and forgotten would go to receive their medication from the Sandman’s half-brother. We would all sit around and listen to static riddled jazz playing from the cherry wood radio. That’s where I spent those lonely autumn nights, staring into empty space with all the withered faces, and every day I felt my eyes drifting to the dark corner of the small bar where there lied a stage hidden behind black curtains.

>>4447003

That's like showing us 5 seconds of a song and asking if we like it. We have to get a feel for how it plays out.

Some very brief prose.

“Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! - I have as much soul as you, - and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you!”

>>4447014

My favorite ITT

>>4446989
That doesn't apply to other things with the passage that could use critiquing... what are you fucking autistic?

God damn, I specifically ask you bitches not to bring that up and that's right where you fucks go anyway.

So annoying -_-

>>4447014
Someone's been reading Jane Eyre.

>>4447017

It reads like it was written by a high schooler.

>>4447019
Thank you!
God, was that so fucking hard?

>>4447020
So if you are a high schooler your right on the mark, if not...

Rate please, wrote this over a long period of time and would appreciate feedback or critique

I fellowed sleep who kissed me in the brain, Let fall the tear of time; the sleeper’s eye, Shifting to light, turned on me like a moon. So, planing-heeled, I flew along my man And dropped on dreaming and the upward sky. I fled the earth and, naked, climbed the weather, Reaching a second ground far from the stars; And there we wept, I and a ghostly other, My mothers-eyed, upon the tops of trees; I fled that ground as lightly as a feather. ‘My fathers’ globe knocks on its nave and sings.’ ‘This that we tread was, too, your fathers’ land.’ ‘But we tread bears the angelic gangs, Sweet are their fathered faces in their wings. ‘These are but dreaming men. Breathe, and they fade.’ Faded my elbow ghost, the mothers-eyed, As, blowing on the angels, I was lost On that cloud coast to each grave-grabbing shade; I blew the dreaming fellows to their bed Where still they sleep unknowing of their ghost. Then all the matter of the living air Raised up a voice, and, climbing on the words, I spelt my vision with a hand and hair, How light the sleeping on this soily star, How deep the waking in the worlded clouds. There grows the hours’ ladder to the sun, Each rung a love or losing to the last, The inches monkeyed by the blood of man. An old, mad man still climbing in his ghost, My fathers’ ghost is climbing in the rain.

Candle wax dripped onto parchment, Vishu eyed the small white puddles harden over the ink.
"Oh!" he cried, and Maya nearly fell out of her chair in surprise.
"Jorgo! He cried, his face scrunched up. "Get this candle out of here! I spent days, DAYS, working this map! Every detail you see, all me! Clean this damn mess you made!"
A short man in plain robes scurried over and looked at Vishu for second, but he was avoiding eye contact. Then he picked the candle up off the table, careful not to spill anymore wax, and began scraping off the solid puddle with his finger nails. But it was a doomed attempt. The parchment ripped and Jorgo stared hopelessly at the coin sized hole he had created over the drawing of a village.
"Sir, I'm sorry. I truly am sorry. I-" he began in his squeaky voice, but Vishu interrupted.
"Go, Jorgo, I'll fix it up myself." he said calmy.
"Are you sure, sir"
"Yes, I am damn sure, now leave!" he bellowed. He sat silently for a moment, staring at the rip, then kicked a chair, breaking it in two, and left the room without a word to Maya. She sat alone in semi darkness and inspected the map. It was beautiful. Vishu had a knack for geometry, she knew, which surely translated well to map making. And it was indeed inticrately detailed. It had fancy flourishes embellishing ever title and town name. But she knew that he had overreacted. The hole wasn't very large, and didn't obscure anything important. Maybe he knew it too, deep down. She pulled a chewing weed out of her satchel and began working it in her mouth, savoring its sweet juice. She needed to calm down. Although she had tried not to show it, she anxious the entire evening. And the planning was only becoming more complicated, more dangerous and risky as they delved further into the details. She wondered for a moment, were they even able?

I did some revision of this

>>4446641
>>4446649
>>4446652

Could I get a li'l cc here

This is just part of something I was writing about love an depression and art.
"Love and happiness are the absence of anxiety, of depression. Like cold is absence of heat."
I thought it came out pretty beautiful but if it's shit call me out.

>>4447008
I think it's nice but agreed

>>4447040
Not at all, you make use of parallels very well. Depression and cold, heat and passion. Build on it and post more I'd like to see the direction it takes.

>>4447050
Thanks dude. I'll see what I can do. It's pretty damn unpolished right now but that little bit made me pause for a sec.

>>4446652
I'm assuming this is a screenplay, and with the right actors could be a entertaining film. Three guys trying to make quick cash assigned to kidnap a man at night half- ass their work and kidnap a black guy by mistake. Ridiculous, but funny.

>>4447040

I mean I can't judge it just from that, but that's a very good metaphor. Makes me think of the Christian idea that evil cannot exist on it's own, it's only the corruption of good, the same way cold is only the absence of hot, or the way you put it, sadness the absence of love. I really like that idea but obviously you'll need to expand it into a story or something

>>4447060

Thanks buddy! I was thinking a stage play.

>>4447064
Yeah I'm trying to expand.

>>4447031
I noticed, a good scene, though when Jorgo asks "are you sure sir" I'd have the cartographer say "I'm damn sure" in a cool voice rather than bellowing. It adds to the sting that Jorgo fucked up.

>>4447022
I'm 22, faggot

>>4447089
Then work on it

>>4447094
That's what I was trying to do but you fucks weren't much help.
God!

According to history books, the year 2019 marked the beginning of ‘the Exodus’, a period of time where Earth became the center point of inter- and transgalactic travel for extraterrestrials. Within five years, the populace of earth skyrocketed; a baby boom of humanoids, half breeds, hybrids and children of natural born ET resulted in the near exhaustion of all natural resources, and the manual reforming of Earth by the United Nations, which had come to be known as the Congress of Earth.

With the assistance of ET tech, humanity was launched into a new technological era the likes of which had never seen. The earth has been divided into four nation sized Metropoli.

My name is Janneth Allan. I am the son of Jason Allan and Thestrial Marenth. I live in the metropolis of Yog.

---

22 years post exodus,

He stood there in all his ugly glory; with that pale grey skin, the nasty beady eyes that shone black against the light, long ears that seemed to twitch and swivel back and forth every now and again… my reflection is interrupted as the highly reflective bus pod travels away down the street. I pull my goggles over my eyes as the lights over the bus stop regained their full strength. I’m a quote, unquote “halfling” Thestrial being on my mothers side By birth I’m called a Thestrial, a nocturnal bat-like humanoid; fuzzy for the cold bitter nights, the home planet placed precariously far from the closest sun. . My mom says she and my father met during the Exodus. One year later, I was born, a surprise to my father, though I’m not even sure if *anyone* knew how compatible humans were with quite literally everyone. So of course, being a half human I’m entitled to the naked skin, the weird beak-y nose, and of course in grown toe nails. Of course the Thestrial side of me gives a far-too-sensitive sense of hearing, and some manic herbivorous appetites and extreme light sensitivity.

Of course as bad as that all seems it pretty much makes me a perfect delivery service member.

It is a quiet april evening, about midday actually. Clocked out, standing at a bus pod station, next to me is a Terrasque, a large red skinned brute, spines that hace been stripped back down onto his head , 8 foot exactly, his left arm had been replaced with an augmented mech arm, the cables extending from his tricep and connecting into a power pack secured to his back, another system of cables extending and connecting into the back of his neck; this connection made it so the arm functioned exactly like his organic right arm, I could see a set of recessed nodules, the creases revealing the defensive spines that Terrasque often used in fights, The Kaien Race had, paved the way for bionic augmentations, or the humans did…they argue about who did it first, but they perfected it in perfect corespondance with eachother.

>>4447396

tanding to my right was a C’thulhuesque, well, that’s what they roughly translated them to be. A bright fluorescent blue skin that reflected even in the absence of light, tentacles that hung down low to the top of the abdomen, three digted clawed hands that looked to be the bigger part of their arms, and eyes as black as pitch with unblinking, lidless eyes. Certain individuals have been prescribed filtered goggles for interaction with them. Full breed humans tend to be the more prescribed species, there was something about the C’thulhuesque that set off a violent fear response in humans, dilated pupils, screaming, self mutilation, of course the luckier just pass out on the spot. At first of course, most humans barely are bothered nowadays, oddly enough the more exposure you get to them the more immune you tend to become.

The three of us stood there at the platform, the bright lights filtered out by the goggles I wore, it had been mostly quiet today,the traffic zipping with the whirring of hover engines, The Cthuluesque has walked off, leaving myself and the Terrasque standing there silently.


The smell of burnt pork was the what hit me first. father always loved pork, and mother always burnt it, it was a smell I knew well. Then the blood splatter, covered a large portion of my face, my clothing, then the human reaction. “FUCK!” I recoiled back as the head of the terrasque was reduced to minuscule bone fragments, and blood vapor.

The Thestrial instincts soon clicked as my ears swiveled toward the sound that echoed in the air.The sounds of a distinct “shit!” followed by a few clicks. my head shot up, several stories upward at the building across from the stop I saw the shadow of a mane a rifle being pulled back in through the window. I identified the gun as an ion accelrating rifle.

Common sense said, to stay where I was, to wait for the cops and do exactly as I was told. and yet I found my legs bending down, my arms spreading out as skin expanded, pushing out into leathery wings. Legs spring up, arms flap in one motion, and I’m moving swiftly through the air.

not entirely sure where I'm taking it, needs more world build and expositing in bits I know, and there is a ton of grammar issues. but here it is thus far.

>>4447028

Forever not critiqued or commented on :(

>>4447411
Because I don't really know what to say, other than 'I kinda like it'.

The man Pherlerman had come to kill welcomed him warmly at the threshold.

“Ah,” he held Pherlerman's subtle elbow, “Patty Pherlerman, I suppose you have come to kill me. Very good. Please, sit: there are some clams on their way.”

Led by the elbow, Pherlerman followed the man whose name he believed to be Sampson O'Karran. Sampson had left the Pherlerman girl, so under duress did she admit, with child. As the Pherlerman children were already gross in number, and the wedding and bedding of the eldest now to be never, Pherlerman was to kill O'Karran on the claim of fair-play: one life for a family's.

His search for O'Karran was brief: Pillaghcock, the lips that leaked the rumors of the Roughwallow Town, claimed to have seen a fellow, “Fat-cha-see, 'airy too. Rounded, y'know,” wallowing on the rearmost stool of the Town one Saturday night. From Pillaghcock, Pherlerman was also informed: “Look, big focking nose too. An' co'ered in little black heads, h-ha like like shaved pubes” From the Town's landlord, Lilliput, he learned, “Patrick, my boy, he'll kill you. Kill you dead, as they say. And 'e won't leave it there. Come back for Susan for sloppy seconds that bahstaad would—No, never knew 'im: I'm only tellingcha what Beatrice – you remember Beatrice, dontcha? I'm very proud of her: wed a lourvley old banker from that black stump town o're the way: Cathedral. Oh, yers, I'm proud of my girl Beatrice: start bringing some more money into this family, ha. But this O'Karran e'yours: he'll kill you.”

From Beatrice, who Pherlerman remembered only as the brute hinged at Susan's shoulder by her ghastly teeth, he received, “Oh, Mr Pherlerman, he carries a gun always: or so he told me. Even showed me it, his gun. A big old piece: shiney and new lookin'. I never saw where he put it, but he reached behind his coat and pulled from nowhere. Oh and it's a shame about your Susan: we was good mates, her and I.” Beatrice also mentioned that the fat, pimply, deadly and armed O'Karren was to be in tonight, and so Pherlerman came.

He came with his father's piece: it was hidden behind the great black pot he used for stewing the bones of sheep they slaughtered. He found the gun fit down a loop in his jeans, so there it wad hid. There it was, too, he fingered as Sampson O'Karren, his face clean and thin, made like a broom and squeezed between his stool and a table.

Trying to figure out if this is an appropriate voice for a ~13 year old (bright, but emotionally stunted)

The van still smells of cherry syrup and ham on our drive. When we get back home, I pick at the leftovers Mom brought with us. Mom says her goodnight prayers to me. She kisses my face and says that she loves me from here to the moon. I hold out my arms as wide as I can and tell her I love her this much. I squirm a little bit each time she kisses me and hugs me. I stay up for a couple more hours watching cable. Mom leaves a couple more messages for Dad before I go back to my room.

I lie in my bed for a bit, thinking about the alien documentary I watched. I can see figures moving, their bodies outlined by the streetlamp light that came in through gaps in the curtains. I get up and hold my head out the window, looking up at the night sky for a bit before I go to sleep. The sky is too bright to see anything aside from the same 20 or 30 stars that are always there. I close my eyes and feel the cold air on my face. Breathing in deeply, I can feel my chest rise up.

In the morning, I hear the door to my parent's bedroom open and slam shut. I can make out the heavy footsteps of my father's boots. I hear their voices through the walls. My stomach tenses. I remember the signs of an abduction experience. Lost time. Unexplained wounds or bruises. Nausea. Nightmares. I lay in bed for a couple more hours, pretending to be asleep.

You can shit all over it for all i care; i don´t intend to use it anyway.

The bartender was a chubby girl in her mid twenties with small petite features, Jonathan appreciated feminine features of all sorts, he had a particular taste for female hands, noticing every detail, ugly and or overly large hands on females instantly made them considerably less attractive to him. Even if the face was right, if the hands did not appeal to him, he was likely to entirely abandon any chance in his mind of wanting to be with them, perhaps it was shallow of him, but who isnt shallow in at least some way.
He had always been overlooked by women until just recently, he was a 20 year old man now and was just beginning to notice womens interest in him, giving him a somewhat newfound confidence in himself.
He put the half empty glass of beer aside and picked the cellphone from his pocket, he looked at the time, it was about 40 minutes until he had to move to the boarding gate, the plane was to take off 2:45 pm.

>>4447478
>small petite

>>4447486

Yeah yeah, i thought about it and i just forgot to edit it.

>>4447478
a clusterfuck of words


pls use less clauses in those sentences
clear it up
too many adjectives clogged up

>>4447514

I don´t even know what a clause is.

>>4447028
Is the formatting here as intended, or is this supposed to be in a poetic format?

Also is this a fragment or an entire work?

It's obviously well-written but it's so dreamy and metaphorical as to be mostly obscure without any context.

>>4446427
Well if you're going to the exposition, do it right.

> "drifter" became a loose term.
It wasn't already? What did it mean before then?

>the drifting type found it hard to not just stick to one place

this is a contradiction in terms even given your attempt to describe the claustrophobic state of the grand continent (which given it's name, isn't convincing)

> the deserts of the new continent gave an alternative. Two days in the right direction you could be living an entirely new life, two days in the wrong direction and you'd be dead. Not a very clean ultimatum, but it was an alternative and it promised glamour to any fool who would listen.

This just doesn't really make any sense. Ultimatum? What ultimatum?. (Also clean ultimatum? What does that even mean?)

>Two days in the right direction you could be living an entirely new life
How so? What is is in the desert? It's never explained.

> it promised glamour
it did? How?

>Have you ever been called upon to do something you think you otherwise wouldn't

This is a very clumsy sentence.

>I have been drifting for a long time, much longer then you are likely to believe. In that time I have seen many things and of those things I have many stories to tell. You may be wanting to hear my story, but I promise you that would be a complete exercise in futility.

You're really stretching the reader's patience now.

>You see, my story is really just a conglomeration of other peoples stories. I promise you, my life as a whole is not very interesting and it lacks the key building blocks of conflict and resolution that would make for a proper story.

conglomeration, building blocks, conflict and resolution - these are very stilted, modern-sounding terms that feel incongruous with the exotic world you are describing

>It is the one that has called to me the strongest throughout my years

This doesn't make much sense in context. Do stories call to people? Needs call to people, or dreams, places and opportunities. Stories?

There's far too much cliched text throughout this that sounds like it should mean something but doesn't actually set the scene or describe anything at all.

>1
The most publicised of the errors took place back on one of the third wave worlds. Nearly half of the colonists had already landed before someone thought to double-check the terraforming ‘bots – frankly, they were lucky for the error or that someone would have been on the next shuttle to a fifth wave world instead of netting themselves a fat finder’s bonus. The error itself was three hundred thousand square kilometres of an anti cancer substance completely unknown to humanity and radically effective. Upon confirmation from Earth, each colonist was reimbursed and promptly shipped off from the now cordoned world lest they interfere with the terraformers.

The most well known, however, of the errors took place on a sixth wave world – the furthest from Earth, resupply and from overview. Before the errors became common knowledge observers like me weren’t sent in ahead of the colonists; which while not really a problem for something like anti cancer medicine it did create some difficulties with another error. Alexios, a Greek national from Earth, discovered a fleet of newly constructed starships instead where a city was supposed to be. Who designed these ships or even if they were designed is anyone’s guess, but they apparently somehow mentally bonded with Alexios and followed his commands. Declaring himself Emperor Alexios VI he promptly annexed the surrounding systems and has been a source of embarrassment and frustration for Earth as his ships prove more than capable of defending his new Roman Empire.

>>4447596
2)
Although I don’t want to make it sound like Alexios is a bad sort. In fact, I’m grateful to him– I only have this job because of the Alexios Incident. I keep one of the official portraits of him above my console, which raises some eyebrows as, technically I suppose, we are at war but Alexios seems content with what he has so live and let live I say. Besides, I’m half-convinced the Alexios Incident wasn’t a genuine error; come on, an entire fleet of military grade ships being built by random error? It’s a big universe, but it’s not that big.

Most errors are just annoyances; cities all painted in blue, or maybe every third window of every second building is missing, or the holiday home ordered (not entirely legally) by the governor comes out upside down. I’ve found a few dangerous ones; sheer holes which drop down kilometres or a residential district built entirely of glass. The nanobots used in terraforming are programmed, sent to a planet and then it’s just a matter of waiting until your brand new world sporting all the modern conveniences is formed. Because of how cheap and easy it is these ‘bots were sent to every known world fifty years ago – tens of thousands of planets even if we’ve barely started to settle a tenth of that. The program written was almost perfect it was just the sheer number of worlds they were sent into that, by random chance, something had to go wrong somewhere. Observers like me are sent ahead to, officially, triple check and guarantee the safety of the colonists. Unofficially, my superiors made it clear (without saying outright) that my first priority is making sure anything valuable is claimed by Earth. Valuable like more mind controlled warships, I’m sure.

>>4447543
A clause is a sub-section of a sentence, a section not generally long enough or meaningful enough to be a sentence in its own right but containing coherent syntax in its own right.

This sentence:
>The bartender was a chubby girl in her mid twenties with small petite features, Jonathan appreciated feminine features of all sorts, he had a particular taste for female hands, noticing every detail, ugly and or overly large hands on females instantly made them considerably less attractive to him.

is ludicrously long and contains a shit ton of clauses that you should separate out into sentences:

>The bartender was a chubby girl in her mid twenties with small petite features

full stop

>Jonathan appreciated feminine features of all sorts, he had a particular taste for female hands

Replace the comma with "but"
Then full stop

>noticing every detail, ugly and or overly large hands on females instantly made them considerably less attractive to him

final sentence, needs some slight reworking too for clarity.

Now go through and apply to the entire rest of the piece.

>>4446087
Anyone?

>>4446087
>broil with joy
Although broil does have a use to indicate a tumult or similar, it is very much associated with anger, not joy.
>the waves roared with great efficiency
efficiency does not seem to be an appropriate word here
>their war cries came to them
the war cries of the waves? this is a bit clumsy

>even the gentle breeze [...] did not give them source to worry
You seem to have got lost in this sentence somewhat. I am going to assume that gentle breezes do not normally cause worry.

>the girl beside him
You already introduced her, her name is Ophelia

>heat waves permeating from the rolling ocean
oh is the ocean really boiling?!

Anyway, all stylistic nit-picking aside, it's an intriguing passage of prose and I would read on. You should rein it in a bit and think about what you are really describing though, rather than what sounds nice in your head, even if you eventually express it in a romantic way.

>>4445987
Plagiarism is the new creativity.

>>4445969
i don't know your intentions but your logic is idiotic. Foods advertised as sugar free just have sweetening chemicals and sugar alcohols in them which, frequently, have the same effect. Foods advertised as fat free are generally just higher in sugar to make up for the "lack of taste". Low sodium i can support but, at the same time, sodium is a necessary mineral to help hold water and a lack of it can cause as many problems as excessive quantities. Your story says "fresh" makes him pause but not that he doesn't eat it.

Your writing is unclear as to whether or not Ted eats truly healthy foods like meats and veggies. It just seems to moronically state that "low fat" "sugar free" and "low sodium" are "healthy".

>>4447399
>>4447396
Newday.
anyone wanna give anything?

>>4446815

Eh, I like it, I don't know what the other guy >>4446821 is saying, it's definitely readable. Still probably very cliche, even just from this, but it's not horrible writing so if you finish this it'll be decent practice for you.

>>4445908
>>4445908
From just looking at the replies everything in this thread is shit or pretentious

Do you guys even read

>>4446752
Thanks.

FB is Facebook.

>>4448005
Fucking hell

Why the fuck would you do that for Literature ;

>>4448009

Well it's good information in terms of what type of person he is. I think people who use facebook a lot would easily get it.

Posted this earlier but now it has context. It's ~900 words long, but is nearly entirely dialogue. I'm interested more so in critique on the prose than on anything else. Thanks
http://pastebin.com/9nGav19M

>>4447422
What's a subtle elbow?
What's with the names?
I like the dialogue though. Everything else is kinda bizarre. A litttle surreal. Don't really understand what's going on.

>>4447454
The prose is fine, except that you repeat "couple" twice in the first paragraph. As for the voice, the first paragraph is fine but the second two, eh. I understand it's inevitable but it sounds more like an older teenager than a thirteen year old. As for how you'd fix that, I'm not sure; maybe stick to simpler thoughts and vocabulary? I've never written characters that young in first person simply because i'm not good at it.

>>4448016
The problem is that FB will become irrelevant in a decade. It's fine if you are planning on publishing it very soon but otherwise people will misunderstand and don't know what the hell you are talking about. You can come up with your own social site and call it something else in your world and work at it that way but overall the syntax should remain consistent.
You ramble on too much. Say something then stop, you don't have to explain everything that you just said.
Also it suck ass.

>>4445908

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. There's this abandoned lighthouse not too far from here. Kids used to go up there and fool around, messed the place up: beer bottles and scraps everywhere; I remember this one etching on the wall: "When all else fails, just follow the light."

I still try to imagine what it would have been like if Ash hadn't left for USC. I'd imagine what it'd be like if everything were back to normal. I'd imagine what it'd be like if I couldn't imagine what anything would be like. And in my dreams I'm off on a boat somewhere, submerged under water. And I keep paddling, but it's no use; I'm still drowning. I see Ash's face on the surface and I'm reaching out for her, but she doesn't help me. And when I wake up, I close my eyes and for just a second everything is alright.

And these seconds that become minutes that become hours that becomes days of my life are all I hang on to as I pedal along the empty overpasses, just following the light.

>>4448070

First of all I thought it was really good and I liked the dialogue better than the prose - but I think you expected that kind of reception anyway.

Here's what I was iffy about:

>Tihovsky had a look in his eyes. The look of a man about to undertake some difficult task, while at the same time coming to terms with a great tragedy, like the loss of his son in a terrible war. A man who had lost his son, and perhaps also an arm himself, in that war, a one armed childless man tasked with rebuilding the life he once had. That was the look Tihovsky had in his eyes. The sandstorm around the three men showed no signs of remission. Jay figured he wouldn’t get any closer to Washington’s location without first appeasing Old York.

I feel like the commas are just excessive. I also think you should remove the redundant point about "losing his son". While I kind've see what you were going for, it doesn't work here.

Note also here:

>Jay figured he wouldn’t get any closer to Washington’s location without first appeasing Old York.

"Jay figured" gives me the impression that the narrator is a chill, down-to-earth guy; I can't see him saying "appeasing". I don't think you should mix tones. The narrator seems to alternate between more informal narratives to narratives that sound too eloquent, like here:

>A sharp nose on which sat a pair of sharp eyeglasses, penetrated by sharp eyes, with a sharp jawline and, some would say, sharp teeth. He kept greying hair slicked back, embracing his receding hairline.

"embracing his receding hairlines" - I don't feel like the narrator would use this kind of phrasing. Or even: "a sharp nose on which sat". I like the descriptions of "sharp" but I don't like how you sometimes sound like you're a writer trying to be more elegant in your descriptions and a narrative who knows these people and doesn't speak so formally.

But hey, that's my take. I liked it and you should consider plays too.

Good luck, dude

This is my post if you wana shoot me some feedback if you have a chance:
>>4448142

Autumn went too fast and now
the death knell is upon us
now your careful answers assuage us
Bury the terrible and buy your beauty
but the world is not what it seems to be anyway
Nothing ever is, the facile concept that somehow
only you exist, only you matter, flit from flower to flower
Second by second and hour by hour
Doth your knell fall on golden mute ears
get on your knees now and sacrifice all
the paradigm shift, that eternal bell
it'll ring for you and it'll ring for me, too
only I don't cry in the face of it; do you?
let your laugh peal and face the coil alone
alone! alone! alone!
you were made alone, none cleft to you
the epiphanies bruised your lips they left so fast!
and, pressing a finger between them, the angel
She kissed you
And she loved you
And then she sent you into the world an unknowing thing
And you'll come back bitter
and broken and crying
"Why? Why? Why?"
And no one will know
Then you will forget everything that ever mattered to you
and bow in eternal supplication?
Choke on your dream and idle this life away

"It's coming toward us now." Something about the way her grip tightened around his hand frightened him, but they didn't stop moving. Her steps quickened as she stared back over her shoulder, watching their pursuer, and he was forced to keep up as their hands were entwined. The bony figure behind them let loose a low, droning growl that seemed to grow louder as it gained on them, and had he seen what she'd seen he would have panicked as well, but he couldn't bring himself to look anywhere but forward. She had seen their pursuer approaching ever so rapidly, she had seen its sickening transition into a feral, predatory gait. Their hand-holding wouldn't save them now, and he knew that from the way her fingers slipped away from his.

>Excerpt from a larger piece chapter in a novel. Not posting dialogue, because that's cumbersome to read on 4chan.

I spend the last few November nights—and maybe a few of December's first—curled up watching television, stuck in an unfortunate sobriety. It seems I can't even watch late-night reruns of Cash Cab without some asshole trying to sell me drugs. Or, more accurately, I can't go a single commercial break without some matronly woman asking if I've been "feeling blue" in a voice that feels as placating as it does chiding. I flip from channel to channel, trying to find something to occupy my burned-out mind, but my brainwaves feel as if they've been pulled through a transistor radio, and every time some grinning middle-aged twat starts questioning my testosterone levels, I flip to another channel.
These goddamned snake oil salesmen, they give you a problem you never knew you had, and then they sell you the means to fix it. It does have a silver lining, though,for people such as myself. I muse about what kind of drugs I can get. These companies seem so appy to push meds on us. I'm sure they'd be just as quick to diagnose me with something, perscribe me some pills and send me on my. I could go to the doctor, get some Adderall or some Xanex. Adderall is an amphetamine, after all...
Now that I think of it, I could spend my nights tripping balls off Barbituates, watching Seinfeld's painfully unfunny stand-up. Wouldn't that be something?
"Do you not enjoy the things you once used to?" a cool male voice narrates while a sad-looking anthropomorphic blob slides across the screen. "You're tired all the time. You ache. You shouldn't have to feel this way. Depression is a serious medical condition. With the help of perscription Zoloft—"
Click. I turn off the television with an audible "fuck you," and set out to go buy some alcohol. Not Scotch this time, though. Maybe something a little more exotic. I've never tried saké, after all...

>>4446427
Take out the last sentence and see how it reads to you. I think it would be better.

As the lights faded, he was back on the track. Brown hat ,old face . The old "Old-Face-Brown-Hat" or, as the more daring youngsters call him, the Brown-hatted old man.
He frequented the most exclusive brothels and bars of the town. Though he stank of alcohol, clothed in mere rags, hands yellow like nicotin and envy, none threw him out. Not even when he started raging, spitting malevolent curses in fantastic languages, trying to shove his dirty old fingers, around the silk band of the stripper´s thong, in her asshole.
Not even then he was bothered.
It was his brown-hatted aura, his bold old-man-esque behaviour, that drove even the most aggressive glances away.
Some say he got mad in the deep swamps of moldavia, where he used to dig up the gold of a pack of raiders, who used the swamps as their hideout.
Some...well some never said anything about him, just turned their heads, their faces getting hard.

>>4447944
anything?

Give it to me /lit/
GIVE IT TO ME HARD
These are supposed to be memoirs of a field surgeon in the Crimean war

22 September

Our forces on the Alma fell quickly. A more concise retelling of the battle will follow after I am done with the wounded for today. The British used a new kind of bullet, I've been picking them out of the men for two days now. Accurately shooting from 1200 paces, they decimated the body of our infantry long before coming into the range of our rifles.

No words can accurately describe the conditions in which I am expected to perform. The constant stream of the wounded and the sheer difference in the number of cots and those occupying them are indescribable. More than that, it seems that the weather itself has conspired against us. Since we have been stationed on this hill we had to relocate the hospital tents three times due to rain and the ground sliding away beneath our feet. Thirteen men had died due to trying to transport them in their condition. The treacherous soil has been made unstable with the trenches dug out on either side of the hill and it seems that General Menshikov is planning to move camp to another location. I doubt many of the men in my care will survive that.

That buffoon Ilya almost got what he deserved today. A fist into the face. The boy can never tell how much alcohol is needed to clean the wound, or my hands. I shall remember to smack him on the head is he uses too much again like today. I couldn't shake the feeling of naked, dry skin for the whole afternoon and didn't even have tea because I was unable to properly enjoy my tea. Even now my hand scrapes on the paper, disinfected, smothered in the foul brew it still reeks of that damned alcohol. The bastard even dared to wash my tools in it today. Damned idiot.

I came here expecting to chronicle the war, to write an account of our brave soldiers marching to victory. I came here to chat with the wounded soldiers about battles, writing down first-hand accounts. I now see that I was wrong to expect that. All my hopes and preconceptions have died with the soldiers on Alma. In truth, I came here only to see the wounded off to a better place (a worse one is unimaginable).

Opening of my movie script, please tell me what you think


OPENS ALEX'S ROOM

ALEX PLAYING ON HIS PS3

CONTINUE FILMING ALEX PLAYING ON PS3, NO REAL MOVEMENT FROM HIM

-KNOCK ON DOOR

Mother: Alex your dinner is ready

Alex: Fuck you mom.

SILENCE

Mother: I suck your father cock all the time.

Alex: Fuck you mom.

SCREEN TURNS BLACK AND WHITE, ZOOM IN ON A COLORFUL PUZZLE GAME.

CONTINUE FILMING PUZZLE GAME, MORE SPEAKING IN BACKGROUND

Alex: Clarissa is a hot bitch.

*Screaming from her room*

Lena: YOU LIKE CLARISSA? LUL.

*alex mutters lul silently*

SOUND BECOMES DISTORTED

HIGH PITCHED INCOHERENT VOICES, CONTINUE FILMING ALEX HIMSELF PLAYING PUZZLE GAME, NOT SCREEN.

Alex: eee eee eee

MOTHER WALKS IN DOORWAY IN A SIMILAR MANNER AS BEFORE

Mother: eee eee eee


MOTHER CLOSES DOOR.

WINDOW IN ALEX'S ROOM BREAKS. HE RUNS FOR SHELTER BEHIND BED.

HIS FRIEND CLIMBS THROUGH WITH HIS PENIS OUT.

AUDIO IS LOW AND WOBBLING, VERY DISTORTED.

Jake: Suck my penis, Dick.

ALEX DOESN'T ANSWER, TRYING TO CRAWL UNDER BED.

Jake: Alex.

Alex: Jake, I didn't know you were coming. VERY DISTORTED VOICES

Jake: I'm you bestfriend. Suck my thing.

*Lena calls from her room* NO LONGER DISTORTED

Lena: YOU GUYS ARE GROSS, I'M CUMMING.

LENA ENTERS ROOM.

WATER IS EXITING HER VAGINA AND IT SOAKS THE PS3.

Alex: WOW.

LENA EXITS AFTER GIVING THEM THE MIDDLE FINGER.

Jake: Do you want to play or what? Or suck a penis? Or do you have any food.

Alex: We have waffles or tacos and apples.

Jake: I'll eat apples.

Alex: OK. SOUND VERY DISTORTED ON ALEX'S OK

>>4448832
Anon, this is the next big movie. probably bigger than avatar. From where do you garner your genius?!

>>4448830
pls guise

>>4448935

'decimated' actually means they only killed one in ten.

>>4448952
if the definitions of words were identical to their etymological roots, the language would be very different. decimated means "killing a large percentage of", but you are right to say it originally meant "killing one in ten". not sure if you just wanted to express your awareness of its origin or you actually believed that was its modern definition - because if that was the case, people wouldn't be using "decimated" as often as they do.

>>4448728
I really enjoyed this.
You've made Old-Face-Brown-Hat very tangible.

>>4447032

Could use a little comment/critique here.

My life is average. Let me tell you some things. I live in my room. I play video games. And I go on 4chan, an anonymous image board with a toxic community. I sort of have fun, though. My kill-death ratio (equivalent to a high score) in Counter Strike, my FPS of choice, is high. It gets higher every week, although there are unavoidable off days. High, relative to my skill, is about a 1 ratio. Sometimes 1.5. That's average. I blame the dust. My room is dusty and I only bother to sweep my desk with my hands every now and then. Maybe it's affecting my breathing, I don't know. It could be giving me lung cancer. Jesus, I don't want to think about it. I don't have any fucking friends.

>>4447014
do you think of me as some machine? AUTOMATON ?!?

>>4449126
>Let me tell you some things.

>>4449277
is that good or bad?

>>4449296
If he has to greentext it, that means it's bad.

>>4449312
did you like it?

The garage they were using was a chop shop just off the highway, on the edge of the industrial part of town. The man who ran it was a retired biker who had been inside a prison cell during the collapse of the meth and gunrunning empire, and whose criminal enterprise now consisted of buying stolen cars and chopping them for scraps or dolling them up to sell back to their own dealerships as new. It was the kind of dirty, corrupt business that allowed guys like Vince to operate.

The mines back home are not full of what I needed, so I turned to the trade papers for guidance. What I found on those bright pages led me far away from where I had been for so long. The perfect mine appeared to be over a thousand miles away, but I was after gold and the dirt behind the house wasn’t giving me anything, so I had no choice in the matter; I had found a use for my mattock.

Though I was merely a journeyman, I replaced a man who had gotten all he needed from the depths of this plot; a coal miner. Perhaps it was his youth that allowed him to approach the task of mining with passion and enthusiasm. Perhaps it was ignorance. As I entered the mine, I passed him on his way out and he shouted some warning at me. I ignored him.

The earth welcomed me with an initial reluctance and offered no solid footing. I slipped down into the mine, watching the daylight fade. I gripped my mattock and struck out at the wall, catching the edge of something solid and bringing my descent to a halt. There, crumpled and breathless on the ground, I found myself at eye-level with a vein of gold illuminated by the distant daylight.

My pick, struck out only haphazardly, had loosed a hunk of solid gold. In my hand the yellow material felt hefty and significant, though its rich color lacked the shine I had expected. Putting the gold in my pocket as a reassurance of the riches I was bound to find, I quickly began to hack feverishly at the streak in the wall. Lifting and dropping my mattock with a fury, I went to work selfishly. Vibrations of pleasure surged from my hands and ran down through my feet, returning to the earth to be enjoyed by another someday.

Thoughts of home became as distant as the daylight; I suffered the darkness quietly and dreamed only of the future. I learned to use my mattock effectively. The mine yielded to each blow, letting go one chunk after another of its walls. Though I was merely a journeyman, I was not afraid to work. Perhaps a true minor would not have worked as hard as I did. Perhaps he would have worked harder.

Mornings came and nights passed unnoticed. The melody of metal attacking stone rang sweetly, mixing with precious echoes singing harmonies in the infinite distance beyond. I lost myself in the promise of the mine. Pieces of gold and stone piled up at my feet as I blindly went from one wall to another. The mines back home had never made promises to me like these.

>>4449812

It did not take long for my eyes to adjust totally to the dark, though my mind did not catch up so quickly. I thought back on the miner who shouted to me as I entered the cave. His hands had been empty, his lack of success was apparent. It was no wonder he had shouted those warnings to me, they were the bitter yelps of a spurned novice. I boasted silently. Though I was no miner, I had done a better job at bending the mine’s will to meet my own desires. His journey into the mine had been a shallow one, as coal settles closer to the surface than the gold I sought. My own turn inside the mine had brought me deeper than I expected or intended.

The work began to lose its charm. My mattock smacked dead against the wall and the rhythm of steel on stone became an obnoxious tune that I could not shake. My arms were strong, but I lacked the will to continue; dropping my pick, I allowed myself to rest. Dreams of the future had lost their appeal and my exhaustion became an unsavory but undoubtable truth. The dull rocks at my feet clacked against each other as I stumbled in a vague direction that took me toward the entrace; the bright pinhole reminded me of my distant home.

I stooped to retrieve my mattock from the ground and finally noticed the quality of the material I had been striking. Where I expected gold, I saw only dead rocks; my mind had finally caught up to me eyes. Too tired for an exclamation, I weakly pitched my mattock into the darkness behind me as I trudged toward the entrance of the mine. Though I was merely a journeyman, I knew the frustration of a miner. Perhaps it is experience that keeps a miner from knowing disappointment. Perhaps they know to expect it.

The mine made promises and I had been fool enough to accept them without question. As I returned to the daylight, a man passed me with a mattock on his shoulder. I faced him and thought of what warning I might give to a young miner. I considered the initial vein, struck by chance, which did not run as deeply as I had hoped. I considered the promises that lured me so far away from my home. Though he may have been a journeyman or a miner, he would not have proceeded with caution no matter the warning. The weight of the gold in my pocket was sufficient to buy my way home. I turned from him and let him believe that I was emptyhanded.

More from
>>4448070
http://pastebin.com/qRvrNSca
It's an earlier part of the same work.

>>4448142
Thanks for reading it. I'll keep in mind your comments on the narrative voice as I'm editing the work.

As for yours, there's some ambiguity in your first sentence. Is it the shore that lays across the large quad, or the dorm? That semi-colon you have doesn't do much and should be made into a period. The next semicolon in the sentence about paddling can be made into a comma.

But overall I enjoyed it, very much. The prose was easy to follow, and maybe it's because I'm a university student but I could easily picture what was going on. Keep at it bro.

>>4449126
is this copy pasta
or have you been trying to write this story for the last several months
or is this the sort of thing a certain type of retard thinks is interesting

>>4447666

Thanks. Also, beautiful trips.

>>4448216
Anyone? I tried to be brief.

>>4449938
trite, not worth reading.

>>4449949
When did I lose you?

>>4448216
Well written, but it's difficult to empathize or gather any meaning


this is mostly ear-candy;

The Ages

When no evil, nor here nor there
To glean the graces of the ol'
Highway wandering masses whole
And a devil's brace of woe ensnare
A sheen of sadness upon the soul,

Travel light and far be your reach
To touch upon all stories told
And trap the sights of ages old
For much along your way do teach
Of grace and beauty to behold.

Keep for me the best you see
Along the way you roam.
At my behest, though dull for some,
Enlighten me, I ask of thee,
And do swiftly come back home.

>>4449959
Honestly, the title. And then the overall look/structure of the poem. I can tell that the content itself is going to be lame and hackneyed. Then, ignoring all of this, I attempted to actually read the piece and tapped out after the first two lines.

Beans, beans the musical fruit.

The more you eat the more you toot.

>>4449965
Guess I can understand that, it's a bit dark and poetry's really not supposed to be dark. Thanks for your input.

>>4449963

Thank you. Was hoping for an alien feeling off it but it seems to have mostly failed. I like your a lot; it sounds like a song.

>>4448394

>>4449974
>it's a bit dark and poetry's really not supposed to be dark
You're giving yourself more credit than you deserve

>>4449983
Sorry, it's my subjective opinion. I don't "go there" often and when I do it's noticeable to me at least. I knew quite a few wouldn't like it just for the use of the word doth. I've already had this go around with you, lit, time and time again.

On a receipt #2

One hot chocolate
I saved this after I left you,
hurting and alone
At the Miami International Airport
I was okay and for that I felt terrible
and always will
I'm home and things are like I never met you
You're dying and I'm looking forward
To the life I'll live
Without you
Driving alone,
Cold weather, loud music
Sleeping through classes I stopped caring about
Hoping you're okay while I
Spend my days less alone
than I was
At least, that's how I feel

>>4449003
>>4448170
wrote it originally in this thread

>>4449997
I think he meant how you claim poetry isn't supposed to be dark and you act like you're shaving against the grain, but you're not really. I think your poem is decent.

>>4450004
I am just using the old Greek measure of a poem. It's an outdated way but in their estimation a poem should uplift. I wrote too many dark things in my past and to me, well, it is an unhappy return. Truly I am coloring this way too much with my opinion. I had to wrench this out of me. Thanks for your input as well.

I hate the way she smiles
As would a particularly well-fed crocodile

I hate way she moves
Like a drunk horse tripping on its own hooves

I hate the way she sings
With always a praise for the world's most unpleasant things

I hate the way she smells
Like freshly fallen rain on the deepest bowels of hell

More than anything in the world,
I hate how she left without a word

>>4450026
The only poems I like are the ones that rhyme.

As such, this is the best poem I've seen on /lit/.

I am two thousand years tall
Levihemoth
Dense, Craterfooting
Cloudgrazing,
Macrocosmic
Sensitive to
Wavelength shifts and
pressure gradients that
waft my leg hairs and
I often gaze downward
to see how far
above the mountain
ranges my spit can fall
before I
suck it up.

My toe cracks are
tectonic events,
my shoulder shrugs cause
elliptical drift and I look
upward and know that
I probably still won't.

Reach them, I mean.
I sure do think about them a lot.

>>4449999

On a receipt #1

I feel you, Mark
I buried my first victim
when I was 21.
She had no jeans, but had a mask on
It's all I think about,
Driving through parking lots at night
Where a chill wind blows
Where the dumpster cats hide.
Where I feel more like a person
and less like a killer.

But she was nowhere to be seen,
only heard and felt.
And that's the best I could ever do.

I want to share my amateur poetry.

"messy room"

hopeful mind
jumping from one goal to another
relaxation, is something that is forced
searching to create beauty
on paper,words, ideals, body
the search is the pastime
videogames need not apply
adulthood
the desire to create beauty
overtakes the desire to enjoy beauty

>>4450068
This is good. In my opinion.

There will be no happy ever after
There will be no smiles, no gales of laughter
All there will be,
Would be the absence of you and me

Posting this. I'll review something later.

http://pastebin.com/xqeVePLx

>>4450392
:s

>>4450411
S-sorry.

Small patches of blue could be seen by the window. It was raining, but there were no rainbows. The bad asphalt rattled Jerky’s bones, he did not appreciate it. He was going to meet Dr. Sjambones, a respected member of Sts. Patrick hospital and occasional morphine dealer. Their relationship had been going on since 87 when Paul Anderson, aka Jerky, got his heart teared apart by (I’m paraphrasing) “the finest piece of ass in my creative writing class”, devasted as it is by the trials of a young break up he decided to take onto his hands a new type of ticking bomb, opiates.
Some would say it was a hasty movement of his, trying to sink in the same ball park as some of the literary giants who hang around his bedroom wall. I’ll say that’s bollocks! Young Paul knew exactly what he was getting into when he picked up the phone, and breathing heavily, asked for an appointment. ‘Three thirty’, said the voice on the other end. Now he’s sitting inside an empty bus gazing idly as the cars, persons and remaining minutes pass, he brought a book but can’t read, his mind still boiling the last remarks he had to hear. A piece of ass being an asshole, how about that for metafiction huh Professor?

It's the same fear, whether I wake up beside her or the essence of her memory; she doesn't love me. It's been years now, and she's always there in the mornings, and when she's not I can still feel her, and every waking second I'm enclosed in the shrink wrap that allows me to breathe in that fantasy, and the first thing I see in the morning is the watermark of that truth swim rapidly before me. She doesn't love me. She just wanted to be loved, and she was, as anyone wanting to be loved and willing to be anything will be, by many, but time has moved on, and, now, she wants to be something more than loved. She wants to be something that can be. Don't get me wrong; she's loving. It's part of her being. It's the something that she is, the something that I love because it was what it is and will always be, but that something can't love me. She can't see it yet, but she loved me for wanting to be loved and being willing to be anything I can be, not by or for any or many, but for her, because she's my something and she always has been. She wants to know what that something is and feels, and she still believes it's love for me because I knew what that something was before her, and I wanted to feel its love for me. She doesn't, though, not really, and every morning I wake up afraid I'll have asphyxiated her in the shrink wrap of my dream. She thinks she pulled this trick on me.

It was well into the night and yet he could not sleep. Summer had come and with it brought sweat, insomnia, single sheets and a franctic removal of clothing as the nights wore on. He hated nights like this. The weather was in that sweet (though it could hardly be called that) spot where it wasn't quite cool enough to be able to sleep undistubred but it wans't quite hot enough where the sheer mention of the mecury's position was enough to impress foreigners with. He had a name for this type of weather. Uncomftorable. Nothing more, nothing less. The sheer plainness of this uncomfort was what was so awful about this weather; it was completely and utterly inoffensive. This pissed him right off; the fact that something so minor could impede on his entire day's routine. As his nostrils slowly inhaled then slowly exhaled, his breathing brought to a crawl in a feeble attempt to calm himself to any of the seemingly countless stages of sleep, only one thought crossed his mind:
Fuck I hate Australia.

>>4450068
I really like this

>>4450092
>>4450496


Thanks anons. I mostly frequent guitar websites, and my band is mostly instrumental, so I show this shit there and to my bandmates and get a really lukewarm "Yeah it's cool," reaction.

I need to find a good writer's community. All I ever see in my own stuff is what I should be improving.

Something I've been working on for a while, let me know what you think:

I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies. My posture isconsciously congruent to the shape of my hard chair. This is a cold room inUniversity Administration, wood-walled, Remington-hung, double-windowedagainst the November heat, insulated from Administrative sounds by thereception area outside, at which Uncle Charles, Mr. deLint and I were latelyreceived.I am in here. Three faces have resolved into place above summer-weight sportcoats and half-Windsors across a polished pine conference table shiny with the spidered light of an Arizona noon. These are three Deans — of Admissions, Academic Affairs,Athletic Affairs. I do not know which face belongs to whom.I believe I appear neutral, maybe even pleasant, though I've been coached to erron the side of neutrality and not attempt what would feel to me like a pleasantexpression or smile.I have committed to crossing my legs I hope carefully, ankle on knee, handstogether in the lap of my slacks. My fingers are mated into a mirrored series of what manifests, to me, as the letter X. The interview room's other personnelinclude: the University's Director of Composition, its varsity tennis coach, andAcademy prorector Mr. A. deLint. C.T. is beside me; the others sit, stand andstand, respectively, at the periphery of my focus. The tennis coach jingles pocket-change. There is something vaguely digestive about the room's odor. The high-traction sole of my complimentary Nike sneaker runs parallel to the wobblingloafer of my mother's half-brother, here in his capacity as Headmaster, sitting inthe chair to what I hope is my immediate right, also facing Deans. The Dean at left, a lean yellowish man whose fixed smile nevertheless has theimpermanent quality of something stamped into uncooperative material, is apersonality-type I've come lately to appreciate, the type who delays need of anyresponse from me by relating my side of the story for me, to me. Passed a packetof computer-sheets by the shaggy lion of a Dean at center, he is speaking more orless to these pages, smiling down.'You are Harold Incandenza, eighteen, date of secondary-school graduationapproximately one month from now, attending the Enfield Tennis Academy,Enfield, Massachusetts, a boarding school, where you reside.' His reading glassesare rectangular, court-shaped, the sidelines at top and bottom. 'You are,according to Coach White and Dean [unintelligible], a regionally, nationally, andcontinentally ranked junior tennis player, a potential O.N.A.N.C.A.A. athlete of substantial promise, recruited by Coach White via correspondence with Dr. Tavishere commencing... February of this year.' The top page is removed and broughtaround neatly to the bottom of the sheaf, at intervals. 'You have been inresidence at the Enfield Tennis Academy since age seven.'

>>4451195

Structure, grammatically, is clunky and robotic bro.

>asking critique from anonymous "writers".

>>4450026
A very poor rip-off of Bo Burnham's "Sluts".

>>4451223
How do people still fall for this?

>>4451195
le no discernible talent face

Little thing I felt like writing. Not finished yet, but have a few paragraphs.

Nashville is not an interesting city. Get out of a mediocre downtown, and you enter purgatory. Mile after mile after mile of middle-aged ranch houses, hill after hill after hill, the suburban sprawl stretches on endlessly. It's a horrible fugue, in black road and green ditch. There is no cool. There is no young. There is no sidewalk.

In short, for the twelve-year-old child, it is a prison. Particularly in summertime: the child, between distance and immobility, is cut off from his peers, and finds himself instead surrounded by fields of elderly neighbors and empty homes. The absence of school, that much-bemoaned institution, leaves a gaping void. The nearest, and only, diversion capable of filling the wound is the little patch of forest, a mile or so away from his home.

I'm sure you can guess where I spent most of my time.

The forest was riddled through with long, meandering paths, ideal for wasting afternoons. I'd wander for hours, in the cloying heat, spirits high. Jumping across creeks, grazing on unripe blackberries, carving intials into trees- it was a pleasant escape.

Inevitably, the paths ran out. I was left in a memorized wood, with a month of summer still inching by. My wandering continued, but it had devolved from idyllic tramping into dreary, monotonous trudging. The colors of my days had been filtered down into grays and muted tones. I longed for fresh scenery.

>>4447864
Some of that may have been the point? Anyone who specifically avoids something that says "fat free" on it simply for the fact that it says "fat free" doesn't necessarily have the best understand of nutrition.

When describing what a character thinks about something such as food, it doesn't need to make total sense to you. It just needs to show what the author is trying to say about the character.

I do agree, though, that the lack of clarity on what Ted will do with "fresh" food was unfortunate, but otherwise got the characterization across well.

There was a story in the news the other day about the heroic deed of a chief gentleman at the MET called Steven Kavanaugh. He stands up for righteousness, humility and truth. He says ‘Look guys, we’re letting you down, we’ve tried but...we can’t do it. Men; We just cannot stop you from beating your partners to death...’ ‘8 deaths’ He says ‘In 4 years’...’8 domestic beatings to death’ ‘It’s our fault!’ He says. “We’ve come under fire for being in contact with the victims and not actually being able to stop the murders’...Fair play Steven. Starting to look bad are you? Don’t you need to justify that 200 grand pay rise amongst all the cuts? ‘Oh but don’t worry’ Says Steven. ‘We’ve got a plan over here at the met. I’ve got a plan. We’ve got a plan’...What is it Steven? * Steven finger quotes* No, you’ *Steven stop’s finger quotes* ‘me?’ ‘Yes, you’ ‘b-but -‘ He’ll say ‘It’s all your fault now. Look see here women, YOU call us up when you think the man you’re about to hop into a relationboat with sees you nothing more than a meat sack and would possibly cut your wrists and drown you in the bath tub. WE’LL then turf over the information regarding your request. Think about it hard whenever a man smiles at you, for remember he could be fantasising about locking you up in a basement, but worry not. If you think that might happen, we’ll send you a copy of your potential husband lover or killer’s records. We’re stripping your rights, privacy, protection of data, planting seeds of distrust amongst lovers and washing our hands of you, all at the same time. ‘Wow! All at the same time? Thanks dad’


‘blame shift’ That’s it - all the modern age comes with alleviation of responsibility. Something bad happens, an accident, corruption of media and politics - the incidents dallies along fine until they meet the vengeful God of the public eye, when the affair undoubtable becomes a game of hot potato until people are just too exhausted to care any more. ‘no you broke the economy’ ‘no you killed civilians’ ‘no you tracked citizens private communications’ an endless back and forth of ‘No you’ ‘No you’ ‘No, him and you!’. When will we have pressure groups for pressure groups acting in order to stem the theatre of a one man two puppet show? When the corruption of them inevitably begins we must introduce watch dog groups to the pressure groups for pressure groups.When we’ve run out of groups to assert blame we’ll blame an intangible concept like hindsight, or plausibility, or causality.

This Steven guy has proposed a great progressive idea to alleviate the blame he’s being burdened with, for the pattern of failures which lead to men being allowed to beat their women to death in their own homes. His ideas justify his 200,000 cut of taxpayers contribution no doubt; and I’m not upset about this - don’t get me wrong - because I’m some sort of serial domestic abuser trying to add notches to the women he leaves in the dead of night with bulbous splitting plums for eyes. No. Any one should fervently disagree with a society that panders legislation in order to scrutinise and penalise yet-to-be criminals, no one should submit to his society supporting a view that men have already committed a crime or as if he will undoubtably commit a crime in the near future. The same goes to a supporter of these propositions - as a misdirected man upon the mind and respect of the well intentioned citizen, giving them the same treatment as the lowest common denominators of society does not not bode well for the mind of the good man. Where a good man is stripped of the freedom to be good, he has no way to go but down. A place where one holds a feeling of being persecuted by a crime he has not committed and will likely never commit, is a place where I don’t want to be. ‘First ticket to....hmm. Running out of freedoms’ No society should encourage a person to have the power to peer into the records of somebody’s past life with but an inkling of suspicion that he might attack her. What warrants the relinquishing of a person’s record in the first place? What standards would their be for the MET to quantify a relationboat? You there, potential person of interest. What would stop a reporter phoning up the police pretending to be your “surely possibly about to be punched in the face’ girlfriend in order to get the dirty deets about you? MET would feel it required to give out my records, blank or not (it’s not the point) to anyone who was most curious as to whether or not I might be a jay walker, tax dodger or polygamist.

Why are these people hanging around in physically abusive relationships? (I say physical because mental/emotional abuse is a blurred line) Do we really want those kinds of people living any way?

>>4451310
>>4451307
This is bizarre.

>>4451341

Based on truth, brother.

>>4451344
Fucking clearly. I dig it.

>>4451352

You should, and then deeper too. You have your spade..

>>4451241
>How do people still fall for this?

Maybe because they haven't read the book?

>>4450392
>will
>would

I like this barring the mixing of tenses.

>>4451367

I've read the book you twat. I was giving my opinion on the piece, which still holds true.

>>4451195
M>my fingers are mated into a mirrored series if what manifests, to me, as the letter x.

Really pretentious especially about such a seemingly unimportant thing. But you write well.

I liked "digestible air"

This is a random excerpt from a novel I'm working on. Context doesn't matter, I'd just like feedback on technicalities and if it's interesting to read or not.

It's going to be 2 posts because of character limit.

[Old Man] felt a deep, heavy breath chase the words as they left his trembling lips.
"That's the truth... all of it."
He waited for the entity behind him to answer and break down the silence between them. For years he had enjoyed the secluded world of his cabin across the river. The imposing racket of the city was a faint whisper drowned out by the river's trickle. But in that moment, he would welcome even that polluted noise; anything would be more of a comfort than that ominous absence of sound.
His eyes frantically scanned up and around the room. The pine walls and ceiling were bent inwards. Water dripped from cracks in the wood as it creaked under the weight of the ocean swallowing the house. His heart was pounding at his rib cage and he could no longer distinguish the swollen beads of sweat on his forehead from the cold drops that made his eyelids twitch involuntarily with every direct hit. The water had rose to his knees. A chill crawled up his spine as the churning water brushed the submerged legs of his pants against his skin. Clicking metal snapped him from his hallucination; it was the sound of the hammer being pulled back on a pistol hovering inches from his ear.
"W-wait," he interrupted. "Who are you?"
After a brief moment the ebony, leather gloved hand of the hooded figure placed something on the piano keys in front of [Old Man]. His head sunk forward as his eyes fixed on a mask. Its once polished steel had been charred black, and the shape of it shifted in and out of focus. At first he could make out the face of an angel, but as he stared it grew horns and teeth like a demon. The mask blurred, and its then rigid, reptilian features smoothed into those of an infant. [Old Man] knew this time that tears, not the dripping water welled in his eyes. Before he could turn away, the pudgy, round cheeks of the infant deflated, gaunt and wrinkled. Blood streamed from the creases in the steel and out of its vacant sockets. Closing his eyes, he tilted his head back pressing it against the cool barrel of the silencer. His lips quivered upwards into a smile when he recalled the last time he saw the mask and the words written on the tombstone upon which he left it 30 years ago.

>>4451552
Cont.

"R.I.P. [Name of detective], Honorable soldier and detective, loving husband and caring father."
Reading the final words in his mind conjured a memory of the muffled cry of a baby boy. It was a confused and scared cry, one he had heard night after night since his [sixth] birthday.
He could not see the torrent of water burst through the wall behind him, but the time between the crunching sound of splintering wood and the wave crashing against him left no time for contemplation or panic. For an instant he felt the pressure on the back of his skull responsible for flinging his head forward onto the newly crimson, ivory keys. The water flooded his study. His vision faded. He could no longer focus on his music sheets floating around him, or the skeletal hands beckoning or grasping at him he did not know. The last thing he saw was his broken tea glass drifting out of view.

>>4451195
Anyone ever read DFW's shit writing and think 'Jesus I could do that, probably better'

Here is mine. A scifi short story.

http://www.booksie.com/science_fiction/short_story/strangecharm/e4sector-3

>>4451552
>>4451555
[Subject to change]

Stream-of-Consciouness Piece of writing, written about a month ago on the day Nelson mandela died. Not a final piece of work, instead a practice writing exercise:

http://neilalanaitken.wordpress.com/2013/12/06/thoughts-2/

>>4451555
>scared cry
should be "scared whine."
>burst through
should be "breach"

I get the willies when I see closed doors. Even at work, where I am doing so well now, the sight of a closed door is sometimes enough to make me dread that something horrible is happening behind it, something that is going to affect me adversely; if I am tired and dejected from a night of lies or booze or sex or just plain nerves and insomnia, I can almost smell the disaster mounting invisibly and flooding out toward me through the frosted glass panes. My hands my perspire, and my voice may come out strange. I wonder why.
Something must have happened to me sometime.
Maybe it was the day I came home unexpectedly with a fever and a sore throat and caught my father in bed with my mother that left me with my fear of doors, my fear of opening doors and my suspicion of closed ones. Or maybe it was the knowledge that we were poor, which came to me late in childhood, that made me the way I am. Or the day my father died and left me feeling guilty and ashamed---because I thought I was the only little boy in the whole world then who had no father. Or maybe it was the realization, which came to me early, that I would never have broad shoulders and huge biceps, or be good enough, tall enough, strong enough, or brave enough to become an All-American football player or champion prizefighter, the sad, discouraging realization that no matter what it was in life I ever tried to do, there would always be somebody close by who would be able to do it better. Or maybe it was the day I did open another door and saw my big sister standing naked, drying herself on the white-tile floor of the bathroom. She yelled at me, even though she knew she had left the door unlocked and that I had stumbled in on her by accident. I was scared.

>>4449963
I really liked this one. I wasn't quite sure what the first stanza was getting at. I don't think it was as strong as the second two, nor did it feel particularly connected to them, more like it were an incidental mentioning. If you were to remove it I believe you'd lose nothing from the poem. My favorite part was the 'Keep for me the best you see, Along the way you roam' and the challenge it issues, like the poem is itself is just a setup to something greater. Great job anon. 8/10

>>4445908

Ok let's see if I can get some honest critique for this:

why'd you have to go and unravel his mortal coil
now your bitch's pussy i am obligated to spoil
why'd you have to go and take another soul-ja
i remember the days when i used to hold ya
and i water the rose growing out of the concrete
with a tear that flows from soft cheek to shiny brown feet
i hope im in your dreams while you eternally sleep

in a shiny thug box i keep your picture
at first i must have hid it from her
but now she dresses up like you
and i dress up as biggie too
and we kiss
in the moonlight
and when we fight
we do it with sex whips
and i shake my pasty hips
same hips you used to kiss
with african american lips

she'll never be you
even with the big black strap on
she'll never be you

i made her leave.
she's living with her mom.
i loaded this dildo into my shotgun
wait for me baby, wait for me please
im on my way

>>4452052

I feel like your rhyming scheme dictates your ideas, a mistake I make all the time. Is it unfair to say that?

Anyway, here's mine:

little fly trapped in a honey jar
a pig lamenting in his shiny new car
the fire burning the heat increasing lightly
honey god damn hot and sticky tonight be

@ 32

cuddles abound my aren’t your round
you’re sitting alone
with a pen and notepad now
writing shitty stories by the pound
and watching them burn, they’ll keep you warm for at least tonight

>>4445908

>Some common delusions associated with paranoid schizophrenia include, “believing that the government is monitoring every move you make, or that a co-worker is poisoning your lunch”

>Some common delusions associated with paranoid schizophrenia include, “believing that the government is monitoring every move you make

> “believing that the government is monitoring every move you make

> “believing that the government is monitoring every move you make

> “believing that the government is monitoring every move you make

>>4452173

>mfw my co-worker poisoned my lunch

>>4452052
What's a "thug box"?

I like the dildo gun fosho doe

>>4452186

it's like a jewelry box but for thugs

>I like the dildo gun fosho doe

thanks m8

>>4446948
>Trying way too hard
But I literally spent a minute on it.

swearing isn't cool people
it sounds tacky and superfluous

>>4452216

maybe he feels that the language you use is inconsistent thus indicating, to him, a sort of pretension?

>>4451374
I thought of using is instead of would be, but I wasn't sure the grammar would be correct.

I'm still not very good at english.

"Are you a writer?" she asked with no pretense. Her white hair suggested a wisdom and experience that instantly put me at ease. Maybe she could see how comfortable I was with words. In all her years of listening to stories told by sad people, she must have recognized something in me. When she told me to pick a chair at the beginning of the session, I first chose the one by the window. This chair faced the door and would have limited my audience to just one member. Before even sitting fully, I switched to the chair facing the window. I needed a safe place to stare and why does any room need this many chairs?

I thought of the satisfaction I had felt the previous night, when the 900th word was staring back at me and I was reminded of the thing I forgot that I could do. The power to convert the misery and dissatisfaction into poetry is the only thing that makes another empty morning worth enduring. Sometimes I forget that I know how to graft sentences onto each other in such a way that plies the heart. In the moment between her question and my answer, I nearly had achieved a sense of myself. Before responding, I realized that this is the only question I might ever be able to answer honestly.

Passions and desires have not done me any good with their ephemeral tendencies. Tomorrow I am likely to despise the flesh I find under my hand tonight. Yesterday’s vows will be broken or fulfilled without resolution or consequence. Every mood is an artifact and each interaction a study in disappointment or misguided hope. With confidence, I can melt a feeling down to its essence and indulge in the purity of recollection. My vocation requires research and no exotic specimen was ever won without sacrifice and discomfort.

Objective truth swirls around a core of belief as I try to examine myself honestly; Am I a writer? I wondered if she was asking for her own satisfaction. Feeling potent, I straightened my back and controlled my breathing. Please, let her understand. All I need is to be heard clearly. My voice would boom. I looked through the window, opting to address the listening world that sure was listening by now.

"Yes," I answered meekly.

like a loser gambling
so shall I wake up
selfishly and without purpose
just one more time

I will wager my hope
against your promise
and the house will win again.
breaking even is losing

>>4453354
whats the promise dude?

>>4453354
I feel the pain in this, very good

as the colorblind stand at the garden gates
the sorrowful greet another morning

>>4453375
The Mountain Echoes

We crawl across this vast expanse that is blank until we scrawl across it, with our actions, our feelings. This sterile landscape is the boulder we push without rest or succor. With a mind that has transfigured the world we are essentially alone, trapped by bone and fear, prejudiced by what we cannot control.

We O desolate nation, built on biblical law married to barbaric conquest. A nation of jesters, capering for the young and old-all inbetween die on their own. We are suspects and jailers, judges and convicts. We pay a terrible price because we are a terrible price. Cancer our friend, love our enemy. Our twenty-one year old husbands kill their twenty year old wives, pregnant with seven month old fetuses. Our Cains kill with no evidences, no accusations. Think with your sex drives; let the mind on that immeasurable void become dust. No child! No children! The father kills his son, the son kills his mother, the daughters cry, inconsolable, above it all. Murder in the night is your nation’s answer to all dilemma, real or imagined.

Is all information trapped in a supposedly immortal soul? The forensics are non-existent. Prayers echo to a God who promised not to intervene. Why do our bones ache for what we cannot feel? The blocks stack up, blister-like, homely, standing side by side.

We have this dire need for the world to end on our terms. A selfish notion of what is right for us must be right for all. Writing what will never be read in borrowed library books, like borrowed time or borrowed love. What really matters in this life? It’s not sorrow or riches, joy or pain. This is insubstantial. This is transitory and not illumination at all. Only no child! No children! matter. We apes, trapped by biological need, scrabble at the strings of importance, missing what is in front of our weary eyes. It is disturbing to read into others lives the empty promises they inevitably make to themselves and to the ones they love. They claim mortal forms and just as quickly shuck them when something they think is better comes along, traipsing gayly, slyly, deceiving. Lies! Lies! Lies! Your empty promises, O great and humble nation, are lies!

There is a great inestimable pride in our spirit that crawls out and demands we make what we want our own. Our own alphabet and language. Our own buildings, our own discourse, my land, my people. Does it really mean anything? Dreams die on the lips, not the sword. Dreams die in the eyes: let the spear be damned to rot and ruin. To what great masterpiece do we owe life and love? What magniloquent author do we pay our service, our bodies to? Under which rock do we pry ourselves from? Are the angels truly jealous of that ever perpetuating myth of Free Will? What proofs do we have that either actually exists?
>(cont)

The stars are real; they touch us not. What angel races between them? The very act of mournful worship speeds their feet, not their thought. Nothing speeds the thoughts of a million pins dancing on the head of a frost-bitten angel. Their skin is blue from icy breath. Why not ours, too? Where is the mystery in their death or do they never suffer the petty pangs of free will? We are whales in their thought. They, the minnows in ours. To be jealous of clay! The thought is monstrously preposterous. Truly, be jealous of arctic breath.

We smile rictus-like for what was lost to us in unpaced ravages of time, the ravishment of youth who never learned to love the picking of cotton, to say sir or ma’am, to wait for Saturday morning cartoons. The peanut gallery is dead, dead. Hollywood royalty harvests Oedipus like Jimmy Carter harvested peanuts. The new earth recoils at blood and rejoices in dust. Struck dumb at the sight of a veiny cow’s Udder. The mother is struck down in bitterness. To taste despair when a young promise is struck down by Ambiem and Valium. What dies tomorrow is lost today. Fifty years-fifty years it took for the dung eaters to celebrate a vacuous socialite and revile wild-haired thinkers. Da Vinci would be stoned a heretic, a two month old son in his arms. Shall we die in flames? Burnt by unforgiven gravities we are all bound to? The Rituals we’ve grown accustomed to strangle us not by inches but by light-years. New today, gone tomorrow. We’ve dulled our teeth on vacant idols, lost to appetites in dying technological deserts. Dictionaries are as foreign to our hands as condoms. We conform to secret signs that we do not recognize, that lay on our skin like dark spots. Sin is the by-word for fame and success. We taste reason as ashes in our mouth, radioactive and losing sanity. We celebrate Atlantis and destroy Venice. The screed of blood and thinking, you can save us with social reform while we can’t even stand the taste in our mouth. Save us, save us, the careless mantra. Save yourselves! Parry the lies for those who live. Let the dead rest.

The poor author cannot make you understand. You come to it by yourself, the end of a clearing, a dusty road, a love you never wish to forget. The handwritten note or letter from them that you cherish will bring you to understanding faster. No one sleeps in the jungle, anymore, O wealthy nation, so do not claim ignorance. Take your pox-riddled blankets and suckle to a mother you do not claim. It is that very void that defines you and you allow it. By the hells, you celebrate and revel in it! The gods you have created are dead in my eyes, their Mount Olympus deserted and unhallowed. The hierarchies of substance you cannot prove exists. Is the mind a torment? Do you have the capability to answer such a question?

Our Freud is dead! Long live Freud!

The author is dying as are you, right now. The cells strive to promulgate over the force of entropy that started when you were but a gamete.

We die crying other’s names, crying out for leniency, redemption. The black smoke chokes the sky while you breathe your last. Consciousness descends, falling on gold, diamond dusting your brow.

The ending to a short epic I wrote in the spirit of my friends in about 10 minutes.

Knowing that it was inevitable that his onion peeling career was about to reach an abrupt end, he cast the die off the cliffside in a sign of his resignation to Steve-thulu’s throbbing manhood. As it reached the bottom of the cliffside, it bruised the onions it tumbled across. The onions scorned the die. While they had only known the neglect of one who once loved them exclusively for their peels, the die was free to scurry across the top of the ocean of onions. It tumbled and rolled for what seemed to be an hour. It rolled through running water, scrambles of animals and through solid matter as well. It was phasing in and out of existence.

Steve-thulu and Clay stood side by side awaiting the final result. Though Clay’s mortal eyes couldn’t see from such a distance, Steve-thulu knew perfectly well what the end result would be. A perfect twenty two. Steve-thulu’s soul was purged of its contempt for mankind and vacated through his nipples and drifted off towards the heavens. Stephen could see that in heaven awaited him an ocean of korn cernels waiting to be freed of their skin-prisons, and the eyeless figure of Leif was waiting with open arms to meet him at his final salvation.

Here is a pic of my wife's pussy while my friend was kneeling beside me. Jessica was rewarding him for winning a bet she lost, more on that in a few. He kept saying "oh my God..oh my God its so nice" while inching closer to her pussy and touching her thigh just out of the camera angle. I was thinking.."what am I doing! Jess is going to kill me!" I was shocked that this was happening and it definitely wasn’t planned, but apparently the Jameson made her lose her inhibitions.

I can’t say who was more surprised that she was letting this happen, me or Jeff. Jess has never and any point acted like she would be so open to anything like this. Jeff was staring with the look of disbelief that he was actually getting to look at my wifes pussy. She kept looking at me for assurance while holding my hand, I kissed her lightly letting her know everything was okay. As I did, Jeff touched her pussy. That did it, she quickly closed her legs indicating that was a no go. She didn’t act like she was mad, more like she just wasn't going there. I slowly started to pull her shirt up so Jeff could see her tits and she didn’t resist. WTF!!! My wife was so hot and I was getting hard by this point. I have to say, it’s something that you will never forget! My heart was in my throat and it was kinda hard to breathe. Jeff was speechless as he sat on the floor watching my wife basically nude in front of us. I was thinking...where is this going? Still in shock of what was happening.

So back to the bet. Jessica was totally 100% absolutely positive sure she would win the bet. Jess wanted to set Jeff up on a blind date with a girl from her work that she thought he would like. Jeff was reluctant to accept and said it wouldn’t work out but she promised it would and he would really have a great time. She said that if he didn’t she was buying his drinks next time we all went out. We normally got together at least once a month since college where we all met. Jeff being Jeff said, tell you what, if he didn’t have fun, she would have to give him a peek. She said of what??? Jeff said your tits course! She looked at me in fake shock so I knew it was a maybe possibility. But then again in her mind she in no way was going to lose this bet and she let him know. He said oh no... you're gonna lose big time and he pushed the envelope a bit. Jokingly he said “You’ll need to show me your pussy then.” I said...hell ya!! We all were laughing about it and she said we’ll see. The next day when Jessica talked to her friend she found out that she had decided to get back together with her ex-boyfriend. The bet was lost.

>part 1/8

>>4455408
Jess started giggling and quickly pulled her shirt back down. I asked Jeff if he had a good enough look and he quickly said he hadn’t. I then suggested to Jess that she give Jeff a better look at her awesome tits. Jess looked Jeff right in the eyes and said "okay Jeff, better get a good look this time." He quickly moved closer to my wife and she lifted her shirt again to give Jeff a close look at her tits. My heart was absolutely punching through my chest! This was just incredible. Fucking incredible feeling.

Things were starting to heat up, there was an electricity in the room and I am sure we all felt it. Jessica was starting to breathe hard and she had her eyes mostly closed with her head back on the daybed. I did wonder for a moment if this was the right thing to do and I know Jessica likes Jeff and she trusts him. After all… Jeff is a very good friend to both of us. How would he feel after all this? How would my wife feel? How would I feel? But the Jameson mixed with how turned on I was left me hoping this would go just a little further.

Jessica had already removed her yoga pants to pay off her bet and she somehow managed to pull her shirt down enough to cover her pussy. I kissed her softly asking her if it was alright if Jeff to touched her pussy. She looked at me for a long second and said "I'm the only one touching my pussy right now." I only heard "right now" of course but I quickly followed up with "can we see you touch your pussy?" She said "maybe" whispering it in that turned on way that we could just barely hear.

>part 2/8

>>4455408
>>4455412
I just thought about my pics and being NSFW. Is that a problem?

>>4455429
Yes, of course.

Moron.

>>4455437
fuck off with the moron shit. never even posted on this side of 4chan before and your fucking rules page is non-existent.

faggot.

>>4455443
fuck off with the faggot shit. never even posted on this side of 4chan before and your fucking rules page is non-existent.

retard.

>>4449963
Honestly I'm baffled again and again by people that write like they're pretending they exist in the 1700s. I mean, this is well-written but honesly- what? Maybe it's just not my thing. I don't know. I don't understand.

>>4450026
Rhyming can come across as comical or juvenile. Also this reminds me of 10 Things I Hate About You- but I do like the last two lines, that off-rhyme there. Looks good.

Here's some of my shit. I say shit because yeah I know it's mostly shit.

Never Stop Viewpointing

Maybe
your eyes
are
so
brightly
sick and tired
of
not
becoming
who you meant to be.
Break the lines of your hands
and find somewhere
that there’s a meaning
to existing between spaces
(and that this isn’t one).

>>4455443
https://www.4chan.org/rules
/lit/ itself only has one rule, which doesn't mention NSFW pictures. However, the global rules apply to all boards (unless otherwise noted), and it would be a good idea to read through them once or twice.

>>4451883
>>4455475

Like I said, it's more ear-candy than it is supposed to have a definite meaning or message; however, the mood I wanted to convey when I wrote it was that of wanting adventure and the desire to experience or witness greatness, but being "unable" to do so. It can be summarized by "when things clear up and you break away from the confines of routine (or isolation/sadness), go out and experience the world and tell me all about it".

As for the 1700's/1800's style thing, I had just read the Rime of the Ancient Mariner (which was also intentionally written in a style before its time FYI) which quickly became one of my favorite works and I suppose I was kind of in that mindset and wanted to write something short that sounded cool and used a somewhat odd rhyme scheme.

White lightning tore through the black, swollen sky. Waves crashed relenetlessly against the jagged cliffs of the Thorfangs and between them torn sails danced and twisted. A voice bellowed in the distance. “KEEP IN TIME” it rang, but the roar of the ocean drowned the desperate shouts. All around them the water surged and moved, stirred by the great winds. The cold spray was in his mouth, and the constant waves shook his small frame while his arms moved like rusted brass in the worn sockets of his shoulders. He reached forward grabbing at his oar once again and heaving it back against the gushing black tide.

Out of focus

As that blanket of water, draped behind some layer of imperfect glass
moves over those crystalline scars of imperfection,
this texture paints our sky like some God of electricity,
Circling our universe with its divine beauty and frightening government;
it is a moving cage
to trap every mortal soul on a floating island in the cold, dark sky,
like a lonely, blue moon to a tribe of primitive, religious stars.
Here, the dragons of the sky
weave in and out of the many tapestries of color and serenity
that hang above the world.
Dragons as large as the smallest moons,
with tendrils that reach for miles
and wings that embrace the heavens.

Some days it was the dead-mean that gathered in her shade, the ones she so often saw rushing past her window in the early morning hours. They would congregate, congealing together into a solid mass of smart black suits and polished feet, as blood in a freshly opened wound would want, attempting to cut back on the flow of precious life. They would puff together on their branded cigarettes, retelling the days conquests, report style. In those stolen cigarette silences, each man would mull over the possibility of escape. How long might they stand as part of the mass before making a break for it? And they would exaggerate each drag, prolonging each breath before the obligatory next comment. With each exhale, their collective sighs said, “how many more, how many more years? more years? more years?”

She watched the men rush by, death in their eyes and in their cold, pallid faces, contrasting sharply with the tip-tip-tip of their carefully polished shoes on the cobblestone steps.

Once my brother came up to me and said asked me to play with his smurfs, and because I'm too young to appreciate the old smurfs and too old to appreciate them in their new CGI form (I saw the 2012 movie and thought it sucked, even for a children's movie.) I said no. He's accustomed to this, he's become tolerant to it. He'll just walk away and there I'll be again. But he was persistant now, and I full faced him because I didn't really know what was going on. He slammed his fist on the table and scrunched his face up and looked me in the eye and I felt a kind of aversion. This was my brother, I thought. This was the 7 year old who attends elementary school and has a friend named Ryan who he's best friends and owns two pets, I can't remember what kind. I felt weird staring into his eyes. But then I felt pretty bad and I said "no, sorry, maybe later." He really slammed the table now, I mean really, he nearly broke something, then he made a weird noise (high pitched "eeee") and left.

What was I saying about doorless rooms again?. It's an unusual feeling, definitely, being in such close, seemingly open proximity with your mother and father and two siblings while they're in a different room and in a different mode of existence, watching television for instance. You can hear everything that goes on there, laughter following funny jokes, fighting occasionally, hushed voices, you just can't see. There's a wall blocking the way here, a purple one with no paintings on it, and behind the wall a singular hallway. But there's no door.

>>4446641
>>4446649
>>4446652

I like it, but the scene reminds me a lot of The Killers by Hemingway. It definitely has potential, though, and your back and forth is believable.

She had the cruel effect of turning one's hope into a disease - the kind that would leave behind a ghost of a man, still aimlessly seeking her love.

This fat girl was talking about me. I told her I had a doctor's appointment and had to leave. I left. I didn't have a doctor's appointment. Then I fucked her mom.

"Minette"

It poises me. The smell of saliva, the softness of the lips. It intrigues me. Makes me wonder. What is it, is it something? Is it her face, her eyes, bliss, a thunder, a kiss? The touch, the nails, how they dig into my skin, how the bite marks appear forth on my throat, how all of myself disintegrates to the thought, to the feeling, to the view.
The cold in the room, the scar on her leg, the sun in the window bathing my chest. Innocence. Beauty. Perfection. Death. The paint feels weird in the fingers, sticky. My fingertips are purple, I smear it on her face; laugh. The keys resound little big bangs of language, the cold of the room, the scar on her leg. Green tea with too much sugar.
Her. Her. Her. Her. Her guilt. My guilt. My grandmother’s pool, the room is no longer cold. The huskies, a strange angle in the shower, her face in the sun, a smile, two smiles, orgasms. Complains. An afternoon watching movies, eating, playing around. She laughs. She cries. I look away. Look away. Look inside.
Was it for me? Was it for him? Is there someone. No there isn’t. There’s nothing. There’s her. There’s them. Disappointment. Maybe. Broken rules. Rebellion. I go back again; I’m a kid, a saint, a believer, church, Catholicism. I’m good. I’m evil. We all are. My home, her home, my eyes, her lips.
The turtles. An unused piano. Cats. Many cats. A load of emptiness of mind. Nothing to say nothing to write I’m nothing, the pills, the medicine, my mother, him, my sisters, my dogs. The nothing, the her. What am I saying? Nothing, that’s what I’m saying. Honesty I try to follow but I can’t sometimes, don’t know what that makes me. Does it make me?
My books, their words, all of it. All of it. Her face, her hugs, she loves me.
Her, me, you, them, me, her, her , us.
Us.

>>4456720

Is that a poet or the monologue of some artsy teen?

>>4456746

It started as a poem, but it evolved into a stream of conciousness sort of thing. I aimed for it to resemble the process of memory and nostalgia.

I make my poetry concrete.

What I write here is not the truth. Nor be it lies. It's mere recollection; memory. And memory has a way of deceiving us. A way of making what was once real, surreal, and what was once truth, myth and what was once never been, never was and never has been, something that once was.

But it is not my memory, nor my father or relative, not a friend or a tall tale spoken, recited, refined, passed down, ravaged, changed, enlightened. It is but history and the web of memory time seems to spin like wrinkles of an old man, like fissured bark on an elm. And history is as deceiving as those wrinkles, as it's memory and recollection.

These are the memories of a book of old; a time of old, a place of old. Of Asydia.

So whether these stories of Asydia are truth or false, I cannot say. But I am of the teachings of Bu, and I am bound by my teachings to tell this story, in full, unaltered, nor adulterated by the pains of truth nor the relief of lies.

This is the story of The World That Was Asydia

You write things and hope they are good. Mostly they are not and you give up after awhile. You still read good books and hope that someday inspiration strikes and you write the next great American novel but it never does. You die alone with no accomplishments except for maybe your last name got carried on. Movies and music lose all attraction. Friends become strangers and enemies. Wives and girlfriends move on and only vaguely remember you. You will lose everything you own someday. Your health, your sight, your hearing. It will all come to a screeching halt and then you will know surcease.

>>4446641
>>4446649
>>4446652
Have you ever read The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh? This opening reminds me a terrible lot of that.

>QUINCE: Well, mi amigo, you learn something new every day in this line of work. We are truly men of the world, you and me.
This is subtext. We don't need it to be explicitly stated. We should be shown this.

For the most part, the dialogue is solid. What is the play you're trying to write here? Who are Mars and Quince? Why are they kidnapping these guys? If you don't know yet, these are things to think about if you want to continue writing this play.

I'm interested.

>>4453229
There's something here. I enjoyed reading this. There are a few grammatical and syntax errors here and there, but it reads nicely. You have a way with words that goes beyond merely writing; you have a firm grasp and command of the language.

she was decided gravely disabled by the grace of washington's mental state by 21 years old. the meaning of this has been grossly debated. all we know is that she likes to pretend to have no hands, and with silver stake stashed, she begins a debrief of learning to die briefly. our job is to catch you up on current trends + events swimming 'round your fishing hole. we're only crashingly late in this time. for next time we aughta spring for a descent auto, but we resent that we re-sent that bill to the feds to be fed twice already, ya know. (i said.)

leuca set a pot upon the range and upped the neat heat. forgetting to beat the timer to the kitchen, she began false negotiations with the pan and to throw up wallowing olive oil words. the poultry set on fire and burnt rubber and smoke began whithering around. that stew would'a been dank, but instead we're left to roll around in the cashed ashes. leuca danced about as they beep beep beeped their fire alarm songs, then she chewed on last week's dine-out dinner but doesn't get full up. cosmos snake slithers around her ankles and asks to crawl inside her. together they glowed off and licked each other's spine. they have sandpaper tongues now; they need a bit of friction in order to heal the world. i always said she was the holy mother. "hi cosmos!" she would say back to me, "do you want to hear a story?":


you had babies but you ate them. that one's not true but it's what you told the police one day when you were scared for your life. you thought the daddy was gonna dine in your womb warmth and you knew that was pretty bad so you took the excuse for yourself. they conspired together to put you in a crazy prism prison. you were there for three weeks while wild firs fun swayed with the staying breeze. who knows what could'a happened if you hadn't been caught up in all this murder mess; it was 6 weeks before that he killed you. this is of battered cats with crooked tales, folks, please bear with me for a few methamoaned atonal groans.

They came to this place, in the beginning, not because they had to, but because they wanted to. One might assume they were pressed. Their vessels were short on water and food, disease had begun to nip at the edges of the crew's composure. They had to land somewhere. They had to pick a place and stick at it.

But the place they chose, the glinting jewel that sparkled in the black, was indeed and very much their choice. And this is important, because doing something because one must and doing something because one chooses are vital distinctions. Even a paradise can become a hell if it is forced on someone. And if someone freely chooses it, even hell can become a paradise.

Now this was a paradise they found, with its blue waters, its green forests, its lush plains teeming with grass and air and life. But it was doubly so because it was one of three habitable worlds in the system, and of the three, they chose it. They marked it as their own. So when they breathed the air, it was sharp, crisp. When they drank the water it was cool and clear.

And when they first raised their flag into the cloudless blue sky, it was with the joy of at last finding a place, where before there was only road.

>>4449874
Bumping this

>>4449511
Everything was good up until that last sentence. Maybe it's just me but I don't like it when characters are introduced in the middle of a sentence like that.

>>4449999
>>4450085
I like your style a lot.

bump

upon my wooded desk, quietly they sit,
those ragged humans, full of loathsome wit.
And pray as they may, play as they might,
Sometime soon, will come the night.

Numbers don't mean anything and years don't mean anything. The red veins of pine straw piling in the woods and that half-sunk grey dock and keep my parents from looking in on us and the way your lips curled all meant something once. It still does, but only to me.

>>4456880
>There are a few grammatical and syntax errors here and there
Would you mind pointing them out to me?

>>4461381
Clever, well written... questioning your word choice in the imagery a bit. "Wooded, quietly, ragged, loathsome" aren't bad words to use in those phrases, but they don't really work together towards any point, or contribute to the theme of inevitable doom. But that's an opinion, overall good piece

A Prayer

Wherever I may end up
,God,
May I never be fat like that man in the bar
In Fajardo.
Whether I may be
In or out
Of love
Money
Or parole
May I never become a bloated, rheumatic
Cyst
Vile and radioactive
Stirring only to detach myself with a vacuous
schlluuckk
And waddle towards the television
To watch a strong young thick sweating fuming steaming
Black
Man
Catch a football
And run
As if there was good reason
To do so
And
,God,
If I do end up in that sad fat sex starved bar
pleasepleaseplease
As that young Black Adonis
Crosses the think white line
Let me not be like that slug in the Bermuda’s
And cheer.

Man, do any other poets in here find certain metres or forms to be impossibly difficult?

I can only write in tetramaters and maybe trimeters. I can't write a line of good iambic pentameter to save my fucking life, not without padding it with fluff that could easily shear it into a tetrameter.

i dont think i can explain my feelings
unless i bash in a window
take a shards from the broken window
and drag an arbitrary sharp point against my skin
on my arm
upwards towards my face
while I make 0 noise.
and this, of course,
only after I press the button
that vanishes all human beings from this earth
so no one will hear the glass on the floor.

>>4461579
nice satirical poem

>>4447396
>>4447399
Did anyone want to vcritique my shit?

>>4461594
In order to critique it, I would first have to read it. It doesn't engage me in any way that makes me want to read it, so I can't critique it. Address that problem.

>>4461627
It's not my fault you can't appreciate quality

>>4461594
>Of course as bad as that all seems it pretty much makes me a perfect delivery service member.

Pitch perfect and absolutely brilliant writing. This is top notch stuff. I'm a reader from a big time publishing house in the US, would you be interested in formally submitting a manuscript to be considered for publication? Contact me at the e-mail address I've included here and I'll tell you how to get in touch with an editor.

>>4461672
Heh, I knew that would work on you pal. I'm not even the guy. I just like being inflammatory. You have been tricked but not treated.

>>4449812
>>4449820
Even though I've never seen someone received good feedback after having their contribution ignored, I'd still like to read someone's critique.

Here, I had tons of trouble making this correct


Franklin Ford popped the final screw into the device and dropped it abruptly onto the work bench as if it had given him a shock.
“Is it done aye? Franklin?”, questioned Joel .He swiveled his chair from the dark corner of the room next to Franklins workbench, which now presented an intelligent light throughout the room.
“It’s done! WE’VE DONE IT! “ The two sprang up from their chairs, hugging each other In gratitude to the news; they untie from each other.
“Do you know what this means ! DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS JOEL! We’ve changed the New World!”
Joel crashed back into his muggy chair forcing a dust cloud to merge towards the ceiling.

“We’re rich!”, he snatched his phone out of his pocket .“I’m calling my mum!” .

-1/2-

>>4461724
Franklin picked the small grey metal dove from the table, tossing it carelessly in his hands.
A metal tube, weightless, and only four inches long presented a white glow every three seconds. The device was possibly one of the greatest inventions In all of human history.
Franklin studied the device carefully before un-locking a permanent marker lid using his mouth.

While managing the tube Into his left hand, and pushing the marker onto the glass In the middle of the device, he wrote separating each word with a dot the English letters ‘O’,’ I’ and ‘L ‘ .
Satisfied, he re-capped the marker, and like a new born, cradled the fragile device into both hands. The moment was right and words began to slide from his mouth, “The world is going to be a much better place”.


Judge away, I would love tons of feedback weather good or bad .One of my hardest writes yet
-2/2 -

>>4461724
>He swiveled his chair from the dark corner of the room
fify
>He swiveled his chair from the dark corners*

>>4459652
Thanks

>>4461715
Good.

Creative non-fiction from my student:

There's a difference in making meth for profit as opposed to cooking the shit for the hell of it. And by the hell of it, I mean gettin fucked up real good for a day or so. It don't take much to stay up for a while, and its real cheap, too. Matter of fact, I know some folks that spray roach killer shit on an aluminum screen door, wait till it dries, and then slam that door on the ground. All that shit that falls off is smokable. Get you high as fuck, too, but god what a headache! I prefer the shake and bake method myself. Mix your stuff up in a twenty ounce, shake it up real good and you're good to go. First time I did it i had to pay a guy to show me how, but after that I just googled that shit. Thank god for the Internet.
Yeah, you can do it for yourself and nobody pays much attention to ya, cept for folks eyeballin ya while you're tweaking out coming down, but only meth heads go grocery shoppin when they're coming down. For that matter only meth heads go out much at all while they're high. That's a sure as shit way to get on the local police radar.

>>4461627
>post
>go to work
>come back to this.
>>4461682
>>4461672
>>4461662
>>4461627
Damn it.

They were best friends. You rarely saw them without each other. They never fought, their conversations never grew tiresome, no awkwardness at all and certainly no boundaries to anything… They were perfect. Everyone knew they were going to become more than just friends. “Emilia & Anthony, the ones who’ll last forever.”
~Two Years Later~
He prepared for tonight, very carefully. He wore his best clothes… put on his best cologne, and even put on a little make-up to cover up his wounds on his face. He stopped to look in the mirror. He gave himself a big smile. He was happy. Right before he could get out the door, his mom stopped him. She obviously knew what was going on. She laughed and told him to sit down so she could fix his make-up. “If you’re gunna wear it, own it,” she said trying to not die of laughter.
There was still two hours left. He walked down to a little antique store that he took Emilia two weeks before. He remembers her picking up a little music box; she liked it because of its pretty melody. She wanted it so much but it was far too expensive. “I have to get it for her,” he thought, so he did. When he purchased it, he was delighted.
“She’s not going to say yes,” a man said while walking by. He was young, in his twenties, well built, but you could tell he was unhealthy.
“Why would you say that?” Anthony replied with a clueless tone in his voice.
“Because, she’s too pretty and perfect to love you. Look at yourself, you’re a bum. Trash. Even if she does say yes, she’d never stay with you.” He stated back with a devilish smirk on his face.
Anthony was confused for a second. “Who the heck is this guy,” he thought to himself.
“She doesn’t love you, you know. I can tell, I saw it in her eyes.” The man continued. Anthony was about to just tell the guy to go away but… he wanted to hear what the strange man had to say.

>>4462338
You're such a disorganized fuck-face that I can't even figure out what you're trying to say with this post

>>4462263
I feel like this needs to be spoken, not read. It seems like the kind of thing that would derive a lot of power from being spoken.

>>4462499
I posted a request for critique and folks kind of did that thing in the second set of quotellinks

Step alone through the night,
All the way into day
Mornin' light, the mornin' light

Travel light, on my own,
With a knife and a phone
Break of day, the break of day
Steal away, steal away

Make my way to the shores
Of the beach two towns away
Walking sand like shattered glass

Say goodbye to my father,
Threw my phone into the water
Who needs friends anyway?

Forget my name, forget my name
Lay on me
all the blame

I ain't nice, I just like to smile
Your teardrops stain the tile

In my mind I'm drawing curtains
I wanna sail my bathtub across the ocean
But I know that I ain't clean

I'm turning lights off in my house
Kiss my best friend on the mouth
Tell her "Hell, I can't leave"

I can't leave

The air is thin where you once breathed,
Where I still sleep

I was once a ghost, drinking the tears
Of others, and growing stronger
By the day, falling to weakness
By night.

Then I was a turtle
Crying in the pond, where the ghosts
Fed on my misery, and grew stronger by the day
Stronger by night

Under water, the sky is low
And finite, the same as clouds
Holding water, and letting it go
The same as the turtle
in the pond

Now the water has run dry
Leaving only sand,
and the ghosts have left me alone.

The waves of sound,
once flooding the pond,
can't find the air here,
thin, where you once breathed
Where I still sleep

Two therapists hiked similar paths, each with strings of spaghetti in their hands. In the mossy oak cabins, autumnal and Puritan, the dog waited for Jen. Jen, unfortunately, was found between the C, who was then beaten savagely by the two therapists with a lightbulb.

Golden suns and crimson blood stained the eyes of the damning man, dancing on the slaughterhouse and screaming laughing with a sort of decay. I mean, how could he not? He certainly hadn't any stitches, and had all his life read nothing but astrology and classical Greek literature.

Jen was still unsure of the clock. Perchance Umpert did eat the cereal, ten cereals, in fact, then all of her beds would be soiled clean with the musk of May.... I didn't kill your fucking Jen, I fucked her.

humans have a way of
floating to the top
and staying there

the world is a child-proof pool
for those who don't care
to break through the bottom

I'll rip your retinas out
and rewire your
aortas

so that we'll become
dense
and exhale
our reason to float.

The air chokes the throats of
We who break stone. Silence
Stuttered only by
The crack of rock
And dull moan
As we toil away in the merciless mid-afternoon sun.

The guard, he watches us,
And with fiery eyes
Brands the surface of
Our weary skin,
And he curls
His face into a mask of cold contempt.

'Shaded by the laurel tree, I
Watched the mouth of Summer prise
And kiss the leathered flesh of men,
With bloody lips she stained all ten.
Their blackened brows made damp with sweat
Are darkened by the latching dreck
dug up by men of guiltless grin,
An albatross hung round each neck'.

'The convict with the crooked nose
Did break his wife with violent blows,
Who swanned about with easy hips
And flirted with now silent lips.
The convict with the gleaming eyes
Stood trial for his vile crimes
For base desires, conscience gone,
The flesh of innocence he did wrong.'

'These men, these fiends of tainted soul
Show no remorse in endless toll.
Somehow saved from death's own chair,
They take their joy in our despair.'

He sees us by our stripes only.
He does not see the tears
As they dislimn in sweat
As water is in water.

So we toil away in the mid-afternoon sun,
Paying our debt
In currency that neither
Buys back what we have taken away,
Nor what we ourselves have lost.

After all this time I had finally become content, at one with the idea that her and I should be forever. Of course when I abandoned any other ambition and gave myself to her, she would understand completely how I felt just weeks ago and it consumed her as it had me; only she had the balls to end it.

Tinder had a population of only thirty-two people; of that number fourteen were under the age of eighteen. Those citizens deemed underage were the whole reason people had come and stayed in Tinder, the decay was like to warrant disinterest from the many outlaws that roamed the desert and perhaps the children could live to be fourty as some of their parents had. The neighbourhood ran straight along one of the off-shoot paths that stemmed from the main road, it was a feint road and seldom trodden by horse or carriage. The residents liked that just fine.

>>4462664
It's very interesting. Would I be correct in saying you know nothing of metre though? It doesn't scan all that well.I love me a refrain and a bit of repetition though, so it scores points there too. It's very nice but it's rough around the edges for certain.

>>4463059
It's lyrics to a song I'd just written last night, so out of context of the music I can see it being rough to read. It works a little better in poem form than most of my lyrics however, so I thought I'd post it. Thanks for the comment :)

>>4463133
Yes, I thought when I read it that it was a song. This wouldn't be the same guy who wrote that song about John.. something? A couple weeks back I think. I critiqued his lyrics too.

>>4462987
I would get rid of the 'only'
kind of dilutes the effect

otherwise good.

‘Number three is a clear, daybright white wine, medium concentration of colour, paler yellow, green reflections, light straw core, no evidence of sediment or gas flocculation, watery meniscus, viscosity is medium. Aromas coming out like lime, lime candy, lime zest, crushed apples, underripe green mango, underripe melon, melon skin, green pineapple.
‘Wine is bonedry. Crushed slate, crushed chalky note, crushed hillside. There’s white florals, like freshcut flower, white flowers, white lillies, no evidence of oak. Acid’s mediumplus. Alcohol medium. Intensity’s mediumplus.
‘This wine is from the new world. Temperate climate, age range 1-3 years.'
Gazes consciously fixed on two thin sheets of paper avoid my cursory pause of a glance assesor-wards and the clink of a nervous, steady hand slowly lowering a crystal glass of bad, important white wine alerts me to continue. This is wine three of six; all next are reds. I scribble something quickly and it steals about 8 seconds from me. Where I am now I can feel the physical sensation of losing time, in my stomach, in my arms, in my feet.

>>4463145
Nah, that wouldn't be me

>>4463155
I like this. It makes me feel anxious

>>4462842
Well written, but I feel like the sympathy it is trying to stir up in the reader gets lost with the addition of the stanza that details violent crimes. The last stanza brings it back a little, and is probably my favorite, but I feel like the message is somewhat lost in that 4th stanza.

>>4463155
Fuck I hate how ugly 4chan formatting makes posts look

>>4463188
>I feel like the sympathy it is trying to stir up in the reader gets lost with the addition of the stanza that details violent crimes
I see what you mean. I just felt that, no matter how much sympathy I could try and incite in the reader, those criminals are still people who have done utterly atrocious things, something which is unavoidable, although, the message isn't just sympathy for the convicts - it's sympathy for everyone. Regardless of how much you make the perpetrator suffer no one actually benefits from their suffering

http://cmgwriting.weebly.com/

I'd really appreciate any criticism you guys can offer. I write all kinds of things, mainly short stories so far.

Of course, I'm working on a novel too.

>>4463681
wouldfuckyoursister/10

>>4463681
You look cool. In a kind of "that Christopher guy who ventured into the woods and died whose name escapes" kind of way.

>>4463691
Dunno, face is odd. I probably would.

scroll
scroll
scroll
Thread is shit
Prepare to love your anonymity

>tfw can't decide what to put in here

I've got a novel and several short stories to choose from, but I can't decide which one best demonstrates my writing style.

>>4463155
>underripe
>daybright
>bonedry
>mediumplus
>assessor-wards
Why would you avoid using hyphenation and then just put it there like that can you not keep up with your own faggotry fuck

>>4463145
>>4462664

I finished up the song and made a scratch recording of it a minute ago, if you're interested in hearing the words in context.

http://vocaroo.com/i/s0PPasA3oVj8

Wave-licked
with thigh-rolled jeans he had strode
out to where the sea catches its breath,
forgetting the fresh packet of cigarettes in his pocket.

And in that wind-plucked foam,
made a father-pose,
though no sandal'd tussock bug rolled the dunes
waving the prize of a perfect wooden pistol,

and the shore was repeatedly planed clean,
clear of all gust battered figures.

There was a time once,
When I was a man of life.
I lived alone with many others
With dark skin and cautious eyes
Little clothes and a bamboo flute,
I played a song for every person;
but not all at once.
The natives would talk and mark my song
Between work and sweat and aching bones.
One said my song was entrancing and long
Nostalgia pains the heart and, and it brings her
To ages passed.
Another said it was harsh and wild,
Like the tiger out of stalking,
Falling to its destruction
Preying on man with his tools and fire.
A girl said the flute was like many birds
Talking from the highest heaven
With sharp little words,
Playful and scared and precise
In mind and flight.
Or like daily rain, a warm pitter-patter
On leaves as large as the lion's paw
A rhythm so soft and light as the air,
Or anguished and mournful, dirge of despair
A baleful tune, melodic scare

I played the song of Life
To the Earth and its tenants, who
Hear what they feel,
Know or believe
And evolve without change
Hear without ears
and Speak without mouths.

Just in general, if you're writing poetry, it's almost definitely bad.
Most people can't do it, and those that can usually don't do it well.
Poetry is best enjoyed by yourself for yourself. Feel free to not share it.

>>4465621
I've read a lot of great poetry in this thread.

At best, a poet's work is unique and is a literary manifestation of the author. At worst, a poet's work is cliche and is riddled with obvious attempts at trying really hard to be a poem.

There's way too much of the latter in general, you're right, but I've seen a surprising amount of good poetry in this thread. maybe that's just me.

>tfw bump limit

"to the street lamps, from a child"


dearest lamppost
those monsters pace patter
perch upon my desk
and sprawl
comfortable
upon my floor
but not one is apt to linger
into your fuzzy rectangle
of light, but it is salvation
and i pray
that you might stay
just one night longer
you who unflinchingly bears the night
the unseeming spectral waste of all our fears
it had lain so heavy upon me
oh it smothers, oh my god
i can't breathe in the dark
lamppost, shine your angelic light
reach your vaguened hand in
swat them away away these
shadows have placed their murky
pond-water hands on my throat
and squeezed so tightly
hold them against the wall
so i might sleep once more
giant you, who keeps me safe
i shall repay you duly, for,
when morning comes
I shall say
good evening lamp, your work is done
Time for you to sleep, beneath the sun.
Let Father fix you up, as good as new,
Soldered wire, and a brand new screw.
So perhaps tomorrow, perhaps tonight,
Perhaps someday, I shall need your light.
Til then, my dearest lamppost, goodnight.

>>4465632
Not even that dude you responded to and it's just you. What's worse is that the most trite advice is still the best advice: read more. That's it. Simple, you'd think, right?
I have read good stuff on /lit/, sure. I bet we all have uncovered something good here and there but most of it is puerile spewings from people with the maturity level of an orangutang. You should expect nothing good out of 45chins. It's "board culture", anon.

Myself, I like James Joyce and Shelley but it's whatever. Lotta people hate them.

I don't really write poetry, but when I do its shit

Need grasps at attention
Wearing a revealing dress
Clawing frantically like a wolf

Identity cowers in the dark
Wrists bound by fear-clad iron
Reflecting in a puddle what she is not

Honesty sits in a chair
Gagged and tied
Slowly wasting away

Understanding faces down
Eyes with cataracts, lips sewn with commoners' thread
The horizon lay at the valley's edge, burning with desire

>>4465799
And here's some shitty prose

>He didn't really like bars. In his 30 odd years of life, he'd never acquired the taste for them, as so many others tend to do. They get caught in the back of his throat and filled his nostrils, making him sick and irritable. Tonight, that didn't matter. He was feeling too healthy for his own good lately.

>The bar was clean, but freshly so. The perspiration on the surface of the waxed wood was uncomfortable. No one wants to rest their arms in moisture, at least not before they get a few drinks in. He'd wished it'd been a little sticky, rather than so clean. He could just about see his reflection in the grain and he wasn't prepared for it.

rate me /lit/~

looking back to my childhood, i always dig some inquisitive moments for which i can only bear a warm sympathy. i was curious too, and in my youthfulness i thought the answers must lie in some old man's library behind a heavy encyclopedia. i thought that one day someone will read it to me after i had bled enough, and i'll join the wisdom team and wear number 10. i dreamed about being the youngest captain and retire as the oldest coach - dribbling my youth and juggling the limits - a real player to end this game. oh and how scornful i was looking to those who wasted their time. pace up you lazy ass, i'm at my 2nd lap already. how young and quick i was, yet always clumsy. these were not bad times, not at all - they're always a good laugh to think about.

>>4467196
>tfw over the bump limit ;;