/lit/ - Literature

The knight clanked from his destrier and drew his blade.

‘Demon, leave this innocent man’s body’, he said.

The river was the only thing that separated the villager from the knight. But littered with rocks as it was, and that strong current; he couldn’t cross it until the demon-possessed villager let down the drawbridge. As it was, he couldn’t see that happening. There was the portcullis and walls after it, too, and he wasn’t sure if he could face a dozen possessed villagers at once.

‘Let me explain’, the villager said. ‘No, I’m not possessed. And I suppose you came here to slay the vampire in charge of the village. While the village does look spooky, it really isn’t something you should be afraid of—’

‘Silence. Can’t you see that he’s mind controlling you?

‘Alright’, he said, pointing a finger towards him. ‘I see you won’t listen. But let me show you’.

A blue sphere of magic engulfed the knight’s rusting armour and he panicked, saying things like: “unhand me” and “you’ll die for this”, but the villager paid no heed and he lifted the sphere over the town’s walls.

‘You see?’, the villager said. ‘It’s alright, the vampire isn’t hurting us’.

From the knight’s visor he could see the courtyard and in the courtyard he saw the “lord” of the village playing ball with the village’s youth. But somehow this didn’t get past his dense skull.

‘Let me go’, he shouted.

‘Ok’, the villager said, and the knight dropped.

He dropped into the water and he reflected on how it probably wasn’t a good idea to ask him to let go at that particular moment. His armour weighed him down and so he struggled and thrashed in the water until eventually he stopped, beached by a rock.

The lord of the village, the vampire, chose that moment to appear in front of the villager appointed in redirecting misdirected strangers.

‘Everything alright?’, he said.

‘Yeah. Same old—but it does get frustrating at times. They never seem to learn’.

‘Keep up the good work’, he said, patting him on the back, and he flipped his cloak and disappeared.

Posting more of a story from the last general

“My man Bacchus, you look concerned; this robot shall be easy to fix. Is there something that troubles you?”
Bacchus rattled forth from his daydream; surely, he could not concern himself with the ramblings of some treacherous street-crawler.
“It is nothing, my liege. Prepare the machine for its reset,” he responded, but the thought hung at the back of his skull. He beckoned to his servants for more powder while furiously scratching his brow.
As Little Ricky and his mechanics began the procedure, the machine roared into action and bucked them aside.
BOOTYWARRIOR.EXE BOOT SUCCESSFUL
INITIATING HOE-TOCOL 1
PRIME POSTERIOR DIRECTIVE
A large and oscillating antenna sprang from the machine, calling the hoe-bots to him; Bacchus now could see the source of the alterations: this hypnotic appendage lured all of his hoes together, and, upon gathering, they would begin to gyrate fiercely, perfectly in time with the swaying of the rogue robot’s rod. To the shock of Bacchus, the machine spoke, in a metallic rasp:

>>9990970
Here is my ”hook” for the thing I have been writing on and off over the past few days.

Mr. Olenyev: At this point in my life the Italian sweet cream in my morning coffee and 5 camel cigarettes were my sole daily source of sugar for the day. I often wonder if that could have in some way contributed to the ever present thinning of my hair that accompanied this stage in my life (knowing that the primary cause of my hair thinning was no doubt a mix of the stress caused by lack of direction and the shocking and oft sudden halts to my relentless 45 minuet sessions of masturbatory fantasy revolving around the idea of becoming a non-tactile entity of exclusively optical purpose). This period in my life was my second semester at State university of my nondescript Mid-Western State, where I would be infected by an awareness of the aethereall nethermind idea of Degeneration.

Warning: Furry Stuff
But I did it because I thought it'd fit closer to the theme of showing man's anamilistic masculinity and how it can be sometimes toxic, yet, be noble at the same time (though this page won't get that far.)

"I should have known better when I heard its, y'know...roar, of sorts."

Roger was immediately taken back to that afternoon. The first thing he remembered was the chunks of gravel pelting his face. Jeff had tossed them at him playfully, the warm laughter filling the audio of the memory. Roger had let out a faux cry afterwards, falling onto the tracks and pretending he was dead.

That was one of the things he regretted most. Yelling "Argh! You killed me!" Holding his hands over his eyes and sticking his tongue out -- it was stupid, but the fun kind of stupid. From there, he took his hands off of his face and looked up at the sky. Broken clouds filled its horizon, only a small pocket of sunlight escaping its grasp. Not the perfect day to be hanging out on the far end of town, but serviceable nonetheless. He laid there for a little while longer, soft breaths escaping from his body.

"Hey! Get up, you stupid son of a bitch!"

Roger was taken out of his moment, all at once realizing where he was, hopping up apace and kicking gravel behind him. He began to wrestle with Jeff, joking about something that involved "doing whatever he wanted to do" -- Roger didn't remember all the details. Jeff let out an "aww, shut up!" and hit him on the nose, knocking him backwards.

Roger held a hand over the point of impact. "I-I think it's broken, man..."

"What? I can't hear you," Jeff said, their voices slowly starting to drown out in the growing whine of something in the distance.

Roger raised his voice. "I said I think it's broken!"

"O-Oh shit, really? Hold on -- " Jeff dropped the tough guy attitude and approached Roger, offering a helping hand.

"Yeah, c'mere..."

The fish had taken the bait. Roger kicked Jeff down with a sportive laugh, his friend landing on the gravel below them. Jeff wasn't laughing, however -- he tried to pull himself back up as he let out a scream.

"Get me up!"

In that moment, Roger realized what'd he'd done. His sole option was to watch, his arm held out in vain as the clatter and the blaring horn of the train drowned out Jeff's screams.

>>9991661
>O-Oh shit, really

>>9991665
what?

>>9990974
What does the lord of the village look like? I think it's a good opportunity to describe the attire when the knight is up in the air even if he is still in denial. And when he draws close to the bridge a little description of his facial features.

>>9991661
What the fuck is going on? / 10

>>9990970
”The critique had gotten to page 5 so I decided to bump it. Fuck >>9992049 for not posting in the critique thread. Fuck him for not following the rules.”

There hasn't been a /ñ/ thread lately so for the sake of keeping this one alive, i'll post part of a chapter i really like.
It's in spic kek
https://pastebin.com/vHLLuSvw

Here's something I had to write a few years ago for a writing assignment. I remember how painful it was cringing at my retarded story.

Nobody told me that swimming had been cancelled that night, so went I got to the swimming pool there was no one there except for Jeff the college student and those annoying twins. For some reason, those twins were always pestering Jeff about something.

“Where is everyone?” I asked.

“The meeting got cancelled tonight” responded Jeff, pointing to a sign right behind me.

“Oh well, I’ll see you later then.”

“Yeah I might as well get going too-“

“But then you’ll miss us getting to the treehouse!” exclaimed one of the twins in a high pitched voice.

“You guys will definitely want to see this,” added the other.

Neither Jeff nor I wanted to deal with the twins now, but Jeff still responded.

“What treehouse?”

“It’s the magic treehouse where anything you think of becomes true. All you have to do is swim to the deep end of the pool, sink to the bottom, and then look at yourself with this mirror. You’ll instantly be teleported to the treehouse.” One of the twins then pulled out a small mirror out of his pocket.

I thought that was the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, but Jeff just kept them going.

“Okay then, go for it.” He said.

“We would do it but we can’t, actually. We’ve done it too many times already.”

“Ok, let me do it then.” Jeff responded excitedly. I’m not sure why Jeff would follow along with such a childish story the twins made up, but he did.

Jeff took the mirror, swam to the deep end, sunk down, and I couldn’t believe it, but he actually did disappear. I got really scared for a moment but interested at the same time.

“What happened? This is insane!”

“You should do it too!” cried both twins in unison.

And I did try it as well. I swam to the deep end, sunk down, and the mirror was just lying there on the bottom. When I took it and looked at myself, nothing happened. Did I do something wrong?

When I came back up for air, both twins and Jeff were standing outside the pool laughing their heads off.

“Gotcha! Haha,” laughed both twins.

“You didn’t really think that was true, right?” said Jeff with a smug look in his face.

I got out of the pool and stormed off.

hey /crit/, im getting really worried about making progress in my novel, but two writing sessions ago I took a wrong turn plot-wise and rushed into a confrontation that was supposed to happen later while also leaving out a scene that I think should have happened on-screen and im too afraid to go back because I think if I do Ill get bogged down with re-writing stuff.

>>9992984
Give us a sample of the aforementioned session.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/16EuluzhqL1gfdFXiOt_ytxEWceZOu-6HXXWUIYimvNM/edit?usp=sharing

I'd like some feedback if possible on this if possible. It's a few chapters in, so it references a few things detailed earlier in the story but for the most part it should be comprehensible on its own. It's just an important chapter because it introduces the central conflict.

The work is meant to be a satire of YA genre fiction

https://docs.google.com/document/d/16EuluzhqL1gfdFXiOt_ytxEWceZOu-6HXXWUIYimvNM/edit?usp=sharing

I'd like some feedback on this if possible. It's a few chapters in, so it references a few things detailed earlier in the story but for the most part it should be comprehensible on its own. It's just an important chapter because it introduces the central conflict.

The work is meant to be a satire of YA genre fiction

I always hate anything I write with a passion, so I rarely write, but I still want to be an author someday and get over this intense hatred of myself. So here's some shitty short story I wrote for a class in my second year of my English degree (I'm a third year now).

Hartley was working on her topiary again. I peeked through the blinds at her as she quickly snapped her way through the green. I focused on her delicate little white hands as she snap snap snapped, until I felt my jaw start to hurt from my teeth clenching. Then I let the blinds fall, and stood there. I took the medication two weeks ago. It had clearly worked for her; she had a boyfriend now, whom she intended to marry and have lovely little children with, and she seemed happy enough. So I took the treatment. The doctors assured me that it was absolutely painless, that it would improve my life greatly. Neither seemed to be true thus far. The pill certainly did what it was supposed to do; it eradicated all sexual feelings that I had for women and replaced them with a desire for men. The problem was that it didn’t rid me of my love. And whenever my body reacted to a handsome man approaching me, I felt sick.
A beep beep echoed in the empty streets, and I peeked out again, even though I knew what the source of the noise was. My suspicion was confirmed; it was her boyfriend, Andrew. They performed the usual dance; she threw her shears carelessly onto the ground and rushed to him with a cry as he stood there with his arms outstretched. I couldn’t see his face, but I bet he looked smug while he waited, knowing she would always come to him. Bastard. Then they kissed, and a memory pointed towards me and leapt.
We were lying on the bed together, naked and sweaty. We didn’t feel the need or desire to hold each other like some other couples did; just knowing the other person was there was enough. I was looking at her, but she was looking up at the ceiling of chipped white paint.
“Hartley? What is it?”
She still didn’t look at me, but her wide eyes sparkled in the lamplight with the glitter of unspent tears.
“Sinopa, do you think there’s a God?”
She turned to me with those blue eyes that were narrowed in pain, the small river bed, the water racing through.
“Do you think he’s angry at us?”
I held her in my arms, whispering comforting noises into her ear. I slowly breathed in her scent of cranberry while she breathed in the blackberry smell of my fluffy red hair, but I knew that she still looked up.
(cont)

>>9993635
I found that I had stood up, away from the blinds. A quick glance told me that they were inside. The topiary was beginning to take shape; it had the outline of a stag, complete with clumsy excuses for antlers. I wanted to run over to her house, pick up the shears and slash those antlers off, admiring the feeling of rough green bundles and bunches falling away under me. When she would run out, yelling, I would scream that I just wanted to remind her that I exist. But we all knew that I would never do that. So I let go of the blind and went upstairs, to sleep and forget for a little while.

I was running through a path made up of blacks and greens. Shadows towered over me, and howls were behind me. I could only push onward, unable to see what was ahead of me in the piercing darkness, but knowing that whatever it was could not possibly be worse than what waited behind me. I saw a thin crooked path beside me, and I jumped into it, hiding in the dark. I could see a clearing in front of me, and a shadow standing by it, a creature looking in my direction, frozen and silent. I made a move towards it, but something else moved faster. A beast emerged from the trees surrounding us, a hideous thing with hundreds of arms. They grabbed at the frightened creature in the clearing, who gave a loud screech at the sudden movement and tried to fight against it, hooves battering against hands. The beast bit into the creature’s skin while it wailed in terror and pain, the teeth crunching through the bone, consuming it until the screams stopped and there was nothing left of it but the fading stench of fear and cranberries. Then it turned to me.

When I opened my eyes, it was dark, and I had left the curtains open. I stood up to close them. That’s when I saw her. Standing in the window across from mine, on the other side of the street. I could not make out her face; she was standing in the dark too, but I could recognise her form anywhere, clad in the nightdress that was the outfit of our many nights together. I remembered it was thin red material that hugged her. She saw me too, and so we looked at each other for a few moments. She placed her hand on the window. The breath from her mouth left a frosty fog. I remembered a mouth dripping with red and fat, and I raised my hand up.

There that's my stupid thing

I saw the teacher setting up a movie, so I lie down on my desk and put on my headphones. I turn on my playlist and listen to the soft sound of a mans voice with the scratchy sound of the drums and guitar in the back. Immediately I am sucked in, imagining myself in a foreign city with the women walking by. Next image flashes, I see a jungle on fire and myself aiming. Back in the city, again. This time the men are staring, angry with solid, unwavering eyes. The wall behind him is black, unusually so.

A poem I wrote tonight about transhumanism. Feedback/response is greatly appreciated.

Technicolour Celluloid

A thousand subjects configure and constitute themselves around a shared synthetic virtual physicalized megastructure. In a millisecond, elongated into a permeable amount of time somewhere between a single second and an eternity, each subject materialised into a new identity, (re)constructing themselves along criss-crossing but divided lines of physicality, temporality, intellectuality, emotionality. In a life-time of a second an uncountable myriad of concepts are brought into being, emerged from a collective unconscious but shaped by a million individual perspectives. A universe of gender lines, personality lines, racial lines are retrieved from the raw essence of creation, and then detonated, sculpted into each mind’s own preference and vision.

Each subject is a God of their own internal universe, which in a flash is brought into the external, into the Real. It is a carnival demonstration of birth, a wave of hello, a gathering of peoples. The megastructure towers into the sky, an unending beam of light projecting into the cosmos, and anchored by the human collective unconscious. A million new beings gather below, beaming into one another’s psyche. In less than a millisecond they comprehend and conceive one another’s totality of meaning and existence. They dance among the structure, exploring the mundanity of greeting. Each subject, each being, becomes a cosmos in itself, and while on the outside world, only a day has passed, in these creature’s perspective a millennia goes by as they explore, reconstitute and shape one another’s summation. As dusk approaches these transdimensional crystal fairies reach the embers of their being. Each becomes an empire in decay, and the beauty of their construction burns the warm hue of oncoming apocalypse. As they dart around the virtuality of the megastructure, as real a construct as anything else, the subjects, senses their approaching demise, dance and dart like burning embers of crackling technicolour celluloid.

The beaming light of the megastructure burns and in instant its light stretches over the globe, and the cosmic (yet human) beings dance around the earth. Having experienced an eternity of reconfiguration and reconstruction they anchor down towards stable ground. They remake themselves anew, this time within more defined parameters. Perhaps they sleep. Perhaps they walk. Perhaps they build. Not a universe, but a chair, a table. Or paint. They are the new born flowers of death and rebirth. Then they walk across the earth on newly chosen legs. Or glide. Or crawl. And they construct a new shared synthetic virtual physicalized megastructure, and they start the process again. In a millisecond, elongated into a permeable amount of

Good stuff in here. Kevin MacDonald edition confirmed for best edition.

>>9994834
>elongated into a permeable amount of

Was this intentional?

I started off with "poem about transhumanism" and immediately didn't want to read it, but then I made myself do it anyway and I actually liked it. My thing is really just old-school poetry but I like that the kind of hypnotic drone of the prose (in my inner monologue it became a kind of monotone, artificial voice) produces a soothingly autistic sense which is very appropriate to the topic.

>>9994898
Thanks for the kind words!

Yea intentional, wanted to suggest a perpetual loop

>>9994909

Well, I think it's pretty well done, you can also take the brevity of my critique as a compliment because no "formal" errors (phrasing, vocabulary, etc.) spring to mind, it all runs very smoothly and I didn't spot anything to break my immersion as it were.

>>9993389

I don't read YA but I like this and would probably finish reading it were I holding a book in my hand. There are some formal quibbles but I suspect that most of those are issues I would take with any YA. I enjoyed the humour and didn't find anything cringe-worthy.

Keep writing it, and watch out for moments where a long, multi-party conversation might get confusing when no names are attached to the lines of dialogue (not a huge issue but I had to double back once when I was wondering why one guy wasn't lisping anymore, and realized it was a different character).

This is really the last thing I've written that I considered passable, and this was two years ago after I finished binging The Kingkiller Chronicles books. Here's a little excerpt from the piece.

The air bodes winter’s approach, the transitional season of autumn ever flighty and quick to relinquish its clutch over the late months. Everything is dressed as expected, however, with shimmering leaves of amber and crimson perched among the tree tops. No soon will they falter and shiver on the branches before cascading on the rich ground floor, as is the way of things.

The animals bustle less, scamper less as they stock up their resources for the cold months to come. A small chipmunk peaks its head out of its burrow, sniffing the air in search for little seeds. Songbirds twitter a melody as they return to their nests. Lunetta inhales deep and strong, smelling both life and decay nestled in the forest. Her bootsteps are muffled by the soft grass, freshly soaked with morning dew. She takes another breath in to savor the rich cacophony of smells. The rotting of wood, sweet berries, changing leaves. The scent of melancholy and nostalgia.

Back in the palace city, if she were to take a stroll on a morning such as this, she would smell the brewing coffee outside of a café, most assuredly a blend seized from the warmer Lazuli Isles. The clean streets would take her towards the scent of a pastry shop, lined with the freshly baked products of the first hour of the working man. Meanwhile the stones would glisten, warming as it catches the first waking rays of the sun, rising on the cornerstone of an empire vast as the sky itself. The city would slowly awaken, and the steady staccato of people would trample on the streets, ready to start the day.

With an exhale Lunetta continues her walk within the woods. Hair like gossamer bellows behind her, a midnight blue coat hidden mostly under the warmth of a red-brown jacket and a thick black scarf. Slung across her shoulder is a small leather bag, a gift the meek servant girl embroidered herself on her return. The contents inside it ruffle and clink.

She comes across a stream bank and silently sits under a tree of copper and fire. The water whispers and flows, unaware of her presence.The bag is set gently on the ground beside her, handled with the delicacy of a child’s first breath of life. The quiet sounds of nature surround Lunetta's lithe body, ensuring her of their small but lingering presence. She listens to them. Her ears are attentive and sharp, more like tools of great craftsmanship forged in the cold, invisible flames of silence and void.

>>9995428
Lunetta lowers her head and lifts the flap of the bag. Inside she retrieves a small book, more akin to a journal. The linen covers are of a blue as deep as the depths of the sea, as fragile and expectant of a robin egg, and as mournful as the long departure of a long known paramour. Small specks of silver dot the front cover, like stars in a constellation. A soft scarlet quill is next to be set aside her, followed by a small bottle of ink. The morning chill still permeates the air, the rest of her slightly damp from the wet dew.

Lunetta rests and lies back on the rugged trunk of the tree. Taking small breaths, she adjusts her scarf before turning the cover of the journal. She greets each page marked with past musings, poems, and songs. Words that are from a forgotten time, yet still hang and loom over as if it were yesterday.

A phantasm that silently stalks its host, bolting and bleeding into the shadows at a moment’s notice. It waits until it drapes around her, a smothering done in the dead of night. It strangles her quietly, leaving neither trace nor presence.

The words help her cope with a long forgotten act. A forgotten act, in a forgotten age, yet still echoes and traces still resonate to this day, in the whimpers and scowls of subjects she glimpses at in the corner of her eye. Lunetta settles her back against the rigged and rough bark, sits on the flat grass, and watches the sunbeams shining on the water’s surface. A good enough scene as any for retrospection. She picks up her quill and dips it into the ink well, putting pen to paper.

Bumping the thread because why not.

>>9996781
Any feedback to give?

>>9996798
Already did, my guy. I don't want to keep flooding the thread with my own critiques. But you can go ahead and give your input to someone.

On The Dominant Political and Social Groups of this Era
There were no longer any fascists or communists, only anti-fascists, and anti-communists. Violence erupted in the spring semester of my 12th year at McGill university, and it continued for the rest of my tenure as Professor. At first their conflicts were strictly ceremonial. All of that changed in the spring of ‘26.
Nothing was serious until money was involved. The belief that held the world together was money and capital. All of us were content to play both the activist and consumer. We had our cake, and we ate it too. The mass boycotts started at the end of winter and the tensions began to escalate around March. The Anti-Fascists found every reason to boycott a company, real or imagined, so long as that company’s product did not clash with their own personal indulgences. Some of the reasons were offshore human rights abuse, environmental abuse, and the holy grail of all transgressions: emotional abuse. Serious issues, indeed, but the truth of these transgressions was more messy, complicated, and incoherent than the neat moral narratives that they had laid out for themselves.
The Anti-Communists retaliated with their boycotts a few weeks following. The corporations left off of each respective party’s list were forced to take sides. The corporations that fell into each camp were precisely what you would expect. Most major tech companies rallied around the left, while the right had a massive chunk of the financial sector. This civil war was not like the first one in America’s history. There was no North or South, no Union or Confederacy. Each nation was stacked on top of each other. Two dissonant notes played across the nation. There were isolated areas of control that were exceptions to this rule. Major urban areas with exception to Atlanta, Houston, and D.C. were largely leftist, although significant portions were populated by card carrying anti-communists.

>>9995445
I assume you mean "smothering drone"
Other than that small typo I really liked this piece. It's so imagistic and really gave me a good sense

>>9997262
Sorry posted this before finishing.
This work gave me a good sense of the mood you were working at. I felt like I really had a clear picture of the sensations you are trying to make me feel, which is a very good feeling when writing manages to pull off. I feel like this would appeal very much to young women. The smells and sounds of the streets remind me alot of the Starbucks on my college campus.
What is the story about? The only viable critique I feel like I could give is with a greater sense of the context of the plot. I feel like there is no tension built up towards the act of her being strangled. Her death seems as placid and calm as the preceding paragraph, but this could work if the context allows it to fit.

Contributing something i found in pastebin's public pastes.

Her legs were spread in the stirrups, her plump, pink pussy lips spread for him, and already beginning to bulge with the imminent birth. The patient clutched at her swollen stomach with both hands, rubbing it in slow circles, between contractions. "When I say so, I need you to take a deep breath and push hard for me. Think you can do that?," he instructed.

Sarena nodded urgently as she felt the powerful muscles of her pregnant stomach beginning to contract, bracing herself back against the bed, clutching balled up handfuls of the hospital bed sheets in each hand. She pulled her legs back until her thighs were pressed against her swollen stomach, and threw her head back with a groan.

"Ohhhhhh~!!"

"Another contraction?", Koji asked, even though it was obvious at this point. "Lets go for it. Just like I said honey, deep breath..."

"Aaa... aaaahhhhhh~" She gasped and breathed in as he instructed, emitting a primal grunt as she bore down. Bearing down with the pain of the contraction against the baby boy or girl that was lodged between her hips, she reached up and grabbed her legs on the underside of her knees, spreading them wide, her fingers denting into the soft flesh of her plump thighs from the strength of her grip.

(This needs a lot of work, desu. Wrote it about 6 years ago and it resurfaced recently.)

Sobre cómo no iniciar un día laborioso

La mañana empezó como cualquier otra para el vendedor de especias. Como de costumbre, soltó un largo suspiro para despedirse de Morfeo y su reino infinito, y con esfuerzos admirables logró finalmente separar los párpados. Poco a poco su mente fue reemplazando los recuerdos del sueño de la noche anterior (una agradable merienda con el embajador de Suecia y esa simpática cajera de la oficina de correo) con los quehaceres matutinos.

Había que recoger un paquete del almacén, llevarle el almuerzo a Vicenta en el 302, acompañar a los Encino al mercado por la calle Roma (hace rato que querían comprar un no sé qué y un qué sé yo para el nene), y lidiar con el volátil temperamento de su jefe en la junta semanal del sector. Todo eso antes de las 2, claro estaba.

Pero primero el desayuno.
“Curioso,” pensó el vendedor. “Esta mañana tengo antojo de un café americano, negro…amargo.”

El vendedor nunca tenía antojo de café americano, negro, amargo por las mañanas. Debió haber reconocido ese arbitrario y caprichoso antojo como lo que en verdad era, un mal augurio de lo que le deparaba esa mañana, pero no lo hizo. Sin levantarse aún, cogió la llave del cuarto que estaba sobre el bureau adyacente. Finalmente le llegó el valor suficiente para ponerse de pie, moviendo las piernas cuidadosamente hasta que quedaron parcialmente afuera del colchón. Con más precaución puso un pie en el suelo, luego el otro. Estaba consciente que esos primeros pasos tempraneros habían matado a muchos hombres en el pasado.

1/2

>>9997578

“Esta vida me va a matar,” dijo en voz alta, pero dirigido a nadie en particular.

Cual caballero medieval prepara su espada larga para el duelo final, el vendedor estiró un brazo en dirección perpendicular al cuerpo, con la llave del cuarto sostenida hacia afuera. Caminó en dirección a la puerta, retándola como si fuera un contrincante. La llave-espada apuntando directamente hacia la chapa-corazón de la puerta-rival.
Con esta acción, que tantos desenlaces pudo haber tenido, el único que no había cruzado por la mente del vendedor fue el que se manifestó en su realidad. Un desliz Freudiano de los buenos: la llave ni siquiera pudo entrar en la chapa; como si no fuera la llave correcta; como si su labor nunca hubiera sido abrir esa puerta; como si la puerta y la llave se mofaran del vendedor, lentamente destilando placer a expensas del pobre hombre, disfrutando los efectos de la dosis de sorpresa y humillación que le habían propiciado.

El vendedor intentó de nuevo, la llave otra vez se rehusó a atravesar ese corazón.

Le reprochó a la llave, “¿Cómo puedes hacerme esto? Por 5 años has tenido la misma rutina: cierra la puerta en la noche, ábrela en la mañana, repetir ad infinitum. No es una labor difícil ni ardua. Llave, ¿cómo te atreves a hacerme tal barbaridad?”

Pero la llave no obedeció.
Y esa mañana no pudo recoger el paquete del almacén, ni llevarle el almuerzo a Vicenta en el 302, y nunca más acompañó a los Encino al mercado por la calle Roma, y no lidió otra vez con el temperamento volátil de su jefe en la junta semanal del sector.

Y el vendedor de especias nunca jamás pudo saciar el antojo de café americano, negro…amargo.

2/2

>>9997262
>>9997273
Thanks! I was hoping to evoke those sorts of feelings. There's no plot right now, but the piece is supposed to convey her current mindset after something she regrets doing a long time ago. The penultimate paragraph was supposed to be the personification of those feelings and how it threatens to engulf her. I may have to work on it more to get the point across. But thanks, I feel like my descriptive writing is the only thing I'm passable at putting down. Around this time I was looking at some oil paintings for inspiration, and I think I did have some coffee while I was writing it.

>>9997578
>>9997584
Neat. I wouldn't read anything more from you though, no offense. Seems like an entire novel would be an hour of the life of the character and I have normie-tier patience for reading in Spanish.
I still like the idea of the daily life of the seller. What was he selling?

>>9997830
Spices

>>9997867
Here is your (you) my friendo amingo.
Also.
>spic
>Spain = Europe
>Mexico = North America

sound the mantra out loud:
I'm different
I'm unique
I'm loved
I'm complete
then think about the last time someone called you special
and quietly ask yourself what that means—
sourpusses and bitterants alike
lend themselves to a harsh nobility
that decries the soppy vicissitudes of caprice
captured at each moment by rhubarb rumbles
quaking through the infrastructure of the social id
so much more powerful than the ill-named superego,
but let's stick to the first syllable of psychology—
carry on careening about with the lower level chariots
racing to the beat of sunlight fading by into the bright night
turning dark days into a whiff of the glory daze
destined to collect dust like Earnie your uncle collects retro video games
the poster orphans of obsolescence in sentimentality's cape.
The zoo cages animals, the riddle reminds of compartmentalization,
the stranded shout for bars to rattle,
the prey beg for fears to battle,
the losers fail to fail in their muddle,
the winners lose and reflect in the puddle
the right turns left behind their emblazoned trails
while the bystanders lose themselves off the rails
and pause as a single hermit uncovers the holiest of grails:
dying a Senna death, a Mozart death, a sewer's breath.

Your cantankerous cunt of a grandmother is just scared,
loosen her gravity and change her Dependz.

The theme is always the same, the death and impossibility of the protagonist to live to his ideal of imperfection, in both cases fails miserably.
The mirror in which his face is barely reflected is superfluous, liquid and encapsulated by a non-existent half, its only exit; it is also partially a total exit.

Moving on to an optimistic view - innocence - it is much simpler and more direct.
Choosing to say everything as a memory and an analogy makes everything much easier, even for those who don't have the basics to deal with meta-cognition. A much better developed syntax. The plot is convulsive and contains a remarkable climax.

In these inconveniences, many aspects of the protagonist's contemporaneity are analyzed and this creates an opaque and disturbing reverberation that catapults the reader towards a reality that is difficult to bear.
There is no doubt that there is a clear cover, under a repetitive and infinite loop.

For the preamble of a will, there's a testimony of what is known to be meagre and of what one has accumulated, is completely different from what was expected. The exceptions here are given, therefore everything is consumed. Another chapter of this story is written tonight. The icy wind is discovered.

Is "Fuck the US' internationalist policy" and a depiction of US/NATO military as heartless invaders in foreign conflict zones a powerful theme to work with, or will I just seem edgy?

I just typed this in an /x/ thread. Do you guys think I should expand on it? Like maybe make a shot story? It seems like a really interesting idea.
>Heaven and hell are both real
>But we have it the wrong way round
>All the good go to hell and all the bad go to heaven

You see what really matters is what your opinion of your life is. And good people always second guess their past decisions in their mind and blame themselves for what went wrong. Good people are only good people because they go through life knowing that they are fundamentally imperfect and need to change that. While the truly evil people are evil because they have the power to justify all of their actions to themselves and only see themselves as acting in the right.

>All those that were kind, loving, and forgiving in life are eternally tormented in death by the demons they saw their past selves as
>All those that were selfish, sadistic, and cruel in life are rewarded in death for how great they saw themselves as.

Give me an idea for a short story /crit/.

I needed some time to fill, so I looked for the most bizarre thing a market could sell. I found a booth that sold garlic, in five different varieties.
"The stuff you buy in the store? That's planted in hew-man shit. This here's the real deal. It'll clean your sinuses right up".
He handed me a piece of bread with butter and raw garlic on it, and he was right. Give a teenager some money and they'll take it as a challenge to use it up. I put six dollars down on garlic gloves that day. Big Rock, Greek, Czech, anything but the Chinese stuff in hew-man shit.

Rub it against your skin, and you can cure herpes. Chew it and you can cure gingivitis. Kill a vampire with it. Devotees of Vishnu aren't allowed to eat it. They are all potential vampires.

>>9997978
Better than everyone else itt but there IS a poetry thread unless this is supposed to be prose-poetry. Either way good job, keep writing.

If one person passes judgment I will critique ten people itt without just shitting on your work.

[I]
Distant shade showers comfort on towers made to touch the sky. When the light blinds those too small to find the sparkle of the stars, too far from lands both scarred and shone, a happy wanderer sits alone on his throne below the fields and above the sea, where he sees the heavens touch his Earth. He lives and dies and no one cares but someone cries. Some dare to live their lives as he tried. Others reach high, while one touches the sky.

He finds no meaning among the stars nor method to heal his scars. He is crushed and reborn; burned and turned to glass; disfigured and perfected over and over until the last turn of the road brings him to gates long closed. An eternity comes and goes and there he waits, frozen in time and place. The stars fade and then the lights come back on. The universe opens and closes like dusk and dawn. His patience wears thin. To him each passing second is a lifetime, while down below time winds on: he is only gone for a few moments. When he returns he learns the fate of the one who came before him. The happy wanderer has waited just as long for his return and though he cannot be seen, he is clearly heard.

"YOU ARE FOOLISH TO ATTEMPT MY PATH."
"At last! What must I do to breach the unknown?"
"YOU CANNOT. MY THRONE IS MY HOME--NOW AND ALWAYS. MAKE YOUR OWN."

[II]
The bones of men and women and children killed by his own hands littered the Wanderer's home. He removed each one and made offerings to the sun. From then on he was alone, shedding himself of all he owned. He gave and helped, begged and starved; approaching death he met a young bard, the keeper of the Gate.

"Live not, you suffer for a purpose."
"My end has always felt close but I never arrive. Death is a hopeful lie."
"And to me life is a dream. It seems you are ready. Come and see: the gates open for you and me."
"I do believe, but my time has come and gone like an endless song. I refuse to leave."
"You choose to stay. Have it your way."

With each beginning and end the man began to mend. He made many friends and wandered alone, forgetting all that he'd once known. In time, atop Earth that hid ruins long dissolved, he built a throne below the fields and above the sea, where he played and stayed. He lived. When he died, just before passing into the beyond, the bard played him a song, and he finally knew why death took so long to arrive.

Wrote this today

At last,
Plants can live without sunlight
Humans can live without love
The Gods have an appetite
For money and blood

We keep them satisfied
And they reward us well
We are all purified
And the sinners are sent to hell

There were people at the party. I was wanting to dance. I surveyed the room. It was filled with ugly ass bitches. Against me they stood no chance. I caught a glimpse of some gentlemen who looked at me as if they wanted to get in my pants. Their hoes were getting mad. The first man approached me. He placed his hands on my hips. I dropped it as though it were hot. I felt as though my attentions were working their intended effect, for he was licking lips. His back was pressed against the wall. My ass was pressed into his bulge. We remained there, I continued grinding. Little did he realise that he wasn't the only one in this couplet who was getting firm. His inattentiveness has betrayed him. Because what you see isn't always the truth. "Baby boy" I spoke "I have all the same parts that you do"

>>9993635
Weird tips I've learned.

You're not allowed to use adverbs.
> quickly
Weird isn't it. Also you should use as many unique words as possible.
>little
>little
It sounds bizarre, but even a little repetition like that can mess things up.

I think the idea of a pill that turns you gay is cool, enough to make a story on. Line about memory leaping too impressionistic. Tell me things straightforwardly first of all.

>>9993760
>lie
should be lay. Also, you switch tense.

Stop trying to conjure, stop trying to be a magician, and tell a story.

The cult of show don't tell makes writing like this. The point of telling a story is to describe events without boring people. If you take three or more lines to say "I put my headphones on," you'll be boring people. Don't pretend you or really anybody has enough thoughts in the time it takes to put on some headphones to fill up three or more sentences.

>>9994834
big words are actually bad

>>9995428
Don't start with the weather, Senpai. I don't read genre stuff as a rule, but I'll say that much. Sorry I couldn't give you a more positive critique. Ok, how's this.

Damn I just read more while my mind was wandering and it's very nice. Walking through town and all. Needs more polish, but it's nice..

>>9999566
either make it a poem or don't, otherwise it sounds like slam poetry

>>9999897
You realize only self loathing losers hate slam poetry right? I've met so many fun girls doing slam poetry because most guys are terrified of it.

Short poem I wrote.

Your voice lilts, middling treble clef
Matching each my pins and springs.
A twist, turn
and I am undone.

>>9999554
hey thanks man, that means a lot

cookie chps and braces eroded
in a dirty sailor mouth
by sea salt air

the toothless breathe through a cheesecloth
and my priest anoints a prostitute
named Chastity

the baritone bounce house
full of candy sticky finger hellions
reads Free Candy

in reference to the incarcerated stripper
who went Wuornos
unlike her sister Chastity

and the eclipse forgets itself
like Mima while sundowning
and bakes one more batch

>>9999906
just because I loathe myself doesn't mean I'm wrong

>>9999883
>You're not allowed to use adverbs.
How on earth is that a rule? Every writer uses adverbs, a lot of them. Is there something I'm not getting?

>>9999925
The first poem on /lit/ I actually like.

>>9999023

I mean, it strikes me as extremely conventional and a very "safe" position to take, but it will probably continue to sell well

Dripping space, expanding time
a whirlpool from a straight line
The door is leading to itself
an infinite corridor or just blank space?

Abstractions of the dark drowned by the sun
coloring the scene in it's own way
But in a world where everything's painted without my say
do I close the curtains, or choose to be numb

Some milk in my coffee
It doesn't really taste different
looks sorta decent outside
Maybe I'll take a jog later

wrote something after a small bout of insomnia:

Entering an empty seminar room to greet a grizzled-veteran of the digital age.

The man in a neutral-colored sweater put his hand to greet the student with a deep “hello”.

Embrace and sharing occurred; human contact appreciated.

The veteran pulled out a chained time-keeper from his front khaki pocket and held it out to the student.

“You left your pocket-watch in here yesterday evening…”. The veteran spoke in warm tones and with a deep crackle in his lungs.

Eager to destroy the facade, the student answered “how could you know this accessory was mine. I’ve never been seen with a pocket-watch nor would I like to be. There are tens of other students in this class, why me?”

”Why, because you are my only student, and I know no-one better to gift this item to.”

Feeling as though arguing with-himself, the student accepted the trinket and muttered thanks. An indescribable urge to destroy the piece was welled up inside of him as he began to put the watch in his own pocket.

The dim yellow of the seminar room was abrasive to the poor boy’s eyes which had seen very little of how truly inconsiderate this room’s lighting could be.

The young man then turned and left the room.

How do you come up with character names? I want a strong name with a concrete meaning related to the character, but I feel like using something like "Achilles" or "Atlas" would be far too direct a reference to other media and would come off as weird in a modern or futuristic setting.

>>9991490

>>9997978
fuck did you say about my nan ill bang you out cunt

This might not be the right thread to ask but, where do you guys post your stuff for help/criticism if you still want it to be publishable so that excerpts from your text don't turn up on their web searches?

>>9990970
>Kevin Macdonald edition

>>10001743
post pastebin link, you can set it to expire after a week

https://pastebin.com/fWSB25YF

Critique would be appreciated.

I've always wanted to write a fantasy novel, so any help or advice is appreciated

>>10001564
I take it, it didn't go so well?

>be me
>check /lit/
>wonder if the Culture of Critique anon is still on here 24/7 shilling The Culture of Critique
>yep

>>9990974
The NEET rose from his basement and drew his katana.

'Mother, leave this humble otaku's sanctuary,' he commanded.

>>10001564

I actually read most of it and also really wondered if I was getting memed or if he was serious

shitty book

read e michael jones jewish revolutionary spirit instead

>>10003308
Hey, was that really necessary? If you're gonna give me (You)s, at least give me some proper feedback.

>>9999906
>You realize only self loathing losers hate slam poetry right

>>10001516
>https://www.behindthename.com/

There's also a surname version of the website. Gives you names and meanings of names organized by culture/nationality.

If you want to name your character after someone specific, go more obscure so it doesn't sound eye-rolling. Pick someone else from the Iliad with a similar meaning who's less of a household name than Achilles or Hector, maybe anglicize the name somewhat so it's more scifi-y

>>10002461
>Madeline
>See,

If you don't want to come off as YA, consider not doing either of those

Also, the explanation of golems is kind of something I would rather be shown than told, unless you much more clearly establish that this is a first-person narrative and who the narrator is in which case s/he can say whatever in whatever manner seems fit.

Finally, needs some more proof-reading, too many minor but jarring errors here and there. In chapter 2 it's kind of annoyingly unclear that the two characters primarily referred to are Madeline's parents.

Overall it's very Young Adult-y in tone, so if that's what you're going for then you succeeded. The brevity of the chapters reinforces this impression. Aside from just kind of "setting the scene" there's not a whole lot going on that seems significant, which is ok for introductory chapters as long as what comes later makes them significant. Aside from that, I don't know if there's really enough to hook me in the first chapter, but it doesn't really seem like it would be my cup of tea even were it flawlessly done so I can't definitively say that's a problem.

Try reading a book or two specifically for prose-inspiration, rather than plot-inspiration, if you want to take it out of YA territory. Edging close as it does to a kind of victorian fairy-tale tone (and with steampunkish overtones already present) you could push it over the edge in that direction and read Dickens or George McDonald. If you want it to feel more wry and tongue in cheek, you could try Pratchett or Wodehouse (It seems like the intention is fairly light-hearted, so I'm not suggesting anything dark or tragic).

Once you develop the talent, you can absorb prose-influence after just a few chapters instead of reading a whole book. An exercise I picked up in college is copying a particular passage by hand if you want to really absorb the tone of the prose.

Mind you, that's if you aren't happy with a "YA" dismissal, as it were. Also note plenty upon plenty of genre fiction is published that is full on Young Adult tier (while being presented as serious fiction), so it's not necessarily a bad thing, it depends on your target audience. Also, even if you do try to improve your prose, it's probably better to just keep banging away at it in the meantime, since it's easier to edit and improve an extant work than to pick back up where you left off after a hiatus, for me at least.

Is there software for writing that has built in git-like features?
I'm particularly looking for something like those archives showing the edits made to news website articles, especially the ones with highlights, notes, and strikethrough text, with timestamps for edits.

Also what are the best books on story/literary/narrative structure in general, and composition of sentences or... effective communication. I feel like when I write things it comes across as too much like technical reference when I want it to be more accessible.

>>10004222
>Is there software for writing that has built in git-like features?

uh, git?

>>10004227
I want all or some of the edits to be viewable on the same page, without the directory structure.

I staggered from my bedroom, nine square feet of floorspace below a twenty foot high ceiling because the property managers had a wry sense of humour, into the loft's kitchen. It was some time after noon on a Wednesday. I had cut class, as I often did, and was high as a kite on at least cannabis, I cannot recall for certain if anything else was involved. I wished to cook breakfast, which I had put off to use my computer, but my forty-three-year-old meth-addicted roommate (whose fondness for late-night usage of compact, urban chainsaws within his bedroom was a baffling inconvenience to me) had invited a pair of homeless drug-addicts into my living room, allowed them to sit upon our couches, which he had rearranged upon moving in, without my permission.

They saw me. It was too late to turn around and flee. I tried to fry my egg, my gardein patty, my whole-wheat burger bun, swiftly, cranked the heat up to ten. I don't know what they said to one another, I only remember that one, who was quite old and looked rather like Kenny Rogers (a man with whom I am familiar only due to Will Sasso's admirable MAD tv portrayal), approached me as I was tapping Tabasco sauce atop the still-frying egg. He was shorter than me. He violated my personal space. He peered around my shoulder and said, breathing heavily, "Tabasco sauce? That's from New Orleans—just like me!" He smiled dreamily. I feared he wished to violate more than just my personal space.

Heart pounding in my chest, I murmured something along the lines of "Oh, really? Cool," slapped a slice of swiss cheese on the egg, stacked it with the gardein on the bun, excused myself somehow, fled, just as the other two were beginning to lurch to their feet, my wretched roommate whose name eluded me then, as it does now, his faceless companion.

Through my paper-thin door, I heard the roommate muttering through gritted teeth, "I'm a tweaker who hates tweakers, heh heh heh!"

I sought safe harbour within my enveloping headset, the shrill titters of the outrageously flaming homosexuals who composed my essentially-imaginary online friends. In the absence of real friends, who graduated the past fall (whilst I foolishly remained for the spring), these outwardly beautiful but inwardly repulsive degenerates kept the emptiness of my soul at bay, like a starving belly filled with Pringles.

They were younger than I, and immature beyond the distance of years, and we all took pleasure in the post-ironic embrace of the most deeply homosexual interests, mannerisms, and stereotypes. I was closeted (literally within that tiny bedroom, and figuratively within my mind) but too stoned to care what the three tweaker hobos in the living room heard from my end of the paper-thin door.

>>10004525

The young queers in my headset tittered, as I have said, about this and that shallow and empty subject, adopting the persona of teenage girls with a precision, expertise, and mastery that, to be frank, eludes the female sex. We watched pirated episodes of Drag Race while mocking transsexuals for their insanity; each of us possessed at least some articles of female clothing for various totally unserious (honest) purposes (I had the most, a veritable wardrobe) and makeup as well (though I was the only one who tried for a full female appearance, privately of course) foundation, eyeliner, eyebrow pencils and so forth utilized with artful subtlety (again, a kind of discipline to it beyond the capacity of its intended users) to enhance their "masculine" features.

Over the course of our association, I began to adopt effeminite mannerisms, not entirely by intent, began also to fear that these habits were jeopardizing my terrible "secret", and, worse, to fear that I was beginning not to care whether I kept that secret.

Some time passed, as we childishly teased each other (I could dish it out but I couldn't take it) or ruthlessly eviscerated outsiders (this I preferred, though I could never admit it to them). I inherited what I cannot describe as anything but my bitchiness from my mother, and the sense of power and of being "cool" (to use a lame term) or admired, which I felt when these simple teenagers were impressed by my cattiness, was almost as intoxicating as the various intoxicants with which I dulled my social anxiety. I learned shortly after the birth of my social life not to wax intellectual, even before I entered the realm of these queens, and many substances served admirably to dim my IQ, temporarily (I hope).

I heard a rumbling, lifted an ear of the headset, "If ya do it in here, I'll kill ya," my roommate mumbled to his new compatriots through my door.

* * *

>>10004528

That evening, myself and the Queen Bee alone remained in the chatroom. Neither of us had anywhere better to go. He was not in school, and his work hours were part-time. He was snorting a great deal of Adderall, and he always drank enormous quantites when he snorted. General a fifth of vodka over the course of an evening. He stood about five foot five inches, weighed little over a hundred pounds, and never once puked on camera, which I respected then as now.
We were watching Paul Verhoeven's timeless "Starship Troopers," the Netflix playback timed carefully for near-synchronization. He was being a little fruitcake, and I was in a more deeply homosexual phase, where I felt him too effeminate for sexual attraction (I wax and wane in these predilections), but I did feel a kind of pity, and perhaps a big brotherly affection (as the oldest of four siblings, and one who tends to attract those younger than himself to his social circle without any intent of so doing, this is an instinct of mine at most times) for him. I knew better than to preach about his abuse of narcotics, and I was hardly one to judge (being about a third of the way through a handle myself, though taller and heavier than he), but I didn't want him to die on me, mostly for selfish reasons.
Of course, if it hadn't been Adderall it would likely have been opiates, and an ex of mine, The Ex to banish the memory of all others, had the habit as well, and it had played a role in our parting which began at my insistance and concluded against my will. For these reasons, I had a particularly aversion to opiates and the users thereof, which was probably for the best because I have an addictive personality.
Still, in him it elicited pity and concern, not disgust or aversion. Tonight, I was smoking a cigarette in my room, blowing the smoke out the second floor window into the streets of Athens, whilst he lolled on a purple-clothed bed that engulfed him, surrounded by walls of a green shade more hideous than any I have ever seen. Why did we need to look at one another over webcams whilst watching a cheesy movie? The better to fill that gap in the soul, of course. We could pretend that we were real friends that way, you see, that we were not separated by a gulf of miles and our mutual (though distinct) social neuroses.
We were discussing plans to attend the San Francisco Comic Con in crossplay (costumes of female characters) where we would stay with his sister, and I knew, inebriated though I was, that they were idle speculation, because he wouldn't think it was a good plan when sober, and because I hadn't the money for such a trip. He was picking out a pair of shorts fixed with a rubber buttocks, a kind of wonderbra for the ass, because he was self-conscious about the flatness of his own, and I was trying to humour his plans while talking him out of the fifty dollar expense, but he bought it anyway.

>>10004532

As I flicked the butt of my American Spirit (no, I am not a hipster, I merely pay more for cigarettes in the belief, grounded in a possibly psychosomatic effect, that they are less addictive than, say, Marlboros, and therefore I would save money in the long run despite paying more per pack) at a passing police car in the street below my window, rising from the sill and squeaking into my ancient desk chair, as I did all of that, this boy who was never really my friend but for whom I once felt affection, and felt it returned, I think, was half-asleep, mumbling, his eyes nearly closed.

"Can I ask you a question?" he murmured.

I assented.

"Would you marry me?"

I was taken aback, coughed on the thick, sickly sweet smoke of my truest love, Mary Jane. I was (and am) self-loathing. I didn't (and don't) believe in gay marriage (this was before its blanket legalization). Obviously, it was a more meaningless proposition than the invitation to San Francisco. But I hesitated, and then, as I did to the girl who with whom I shared my first kiss, decided to respond dishonestly for the benefit of the propositioner.

"Yes. Sure."

He emitted a humming girlish sigh of contentment and lost consciousness. I watched him sleep for a moment, closed the call, shut off the movie.

I felt very alone.

>>10004525
>>10004528
>>10004532


no one is gonna read this past the first paragraph dude, i wanted to bail on the first sentences but forced myself a couple before noping out

>>10004536

At least I was let down quickly

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W_mEphQw8SvQmDGsUC6fpA1VuRlShpYwnFZbnVKeH3U/edit?usp=sharing

It's pretty long, but I hope you like it.

>>10004551
words too big

>>10004743
That's a point of criticism?

>>9997578
>>9997584

Viva Peru

Tried writing in English, please fixate

There was an old man,
In the corner of the room,
He saw two men, two children,
The children were both good, and evil,
While two men were not,
The two men look at the children,
Their mouth sticking out, their jaws breaking out of their skin!
The old man yet stayed in the corner of the room,
And there was no fear.
The old man in the corner room did not fear.
He wore a black and a long scythe with his face grim and pale,
The old man watched in the corner of the room,
As the two men played,
They play and tumbled, with the two children,
With their hands dyeing red,
The two men then stopped for a while, as they laugh in disdain
The old man with the scythe then whispered, which was followed with an embrace,
Two whispers replied, the old man then went away.
The two men then laugh, as the smell spreads away

>>10004551

It's pretentious and verbose in all the right ways. I read the whole thing and feel it's the most publishable thing I've ever read on this board. For critique, all I can say is that the pacing felt very slightly rushed at the end (final quarter? Maybe less), and the ending itself was a bit abrupt. I would read it expanded to a novel or novella, and I think there's enough there to do that if you wanted to, but it does work fine as a short story.

Quality of prose, as I said, is precisely what I personally enjoy, admirably polished, and a little old fashioned which makes the contemporary setting perfectly jarring. I didn't feel that any part of the plot was predictable despite constant foreboding, which is exactly how it ought to be. In fact several of my little guesses about where it was headed were proved wrong, which is a good thing.

Overall, please keep writing.

>>10006682

Oh, also I should mention the word "Bourgeois" in the title triggered my autism and made me expect some hamfisted Marxist navel-gazing but you absolutely did not bludgeon me with your politico-philosophical thesis, to the point that I can't necessarily pin down one preachy moment, just a fairly believable series of events and a plausible villain with some themes relating less to class than character as I read it at least. Also dances around the Bildungsroman without ever doing so eye-rollingly. It feels like a contemporized Victorian novel in plot and prose which is exactly what I want from literary fiction, anyway I should stop sucking your dick but still.

I am the air, you are the water
I am lesser and you all the better
You exist to lecture compassion
I persist and never learn my lesson
Two hearts sharing one sickly mind
You’d never get yours if I never got mine
You’re such a princess, you cannot digest
All the bullshit that leaks from a world so malign
I am an insect, I live to protest
Turn my back on the world if you weren’t so divine

Why did I have to be born effeminate. With my weak frame, doe eyes, and thick thighs I would have been blessed if I were a woman. While thinking on this I discreetly adjusted my cock in the panties my sister let me borrow avoiding the eyes of other subway goers. This plan had better work.
I arrived around noon to Gulianni's Pastry Shop, and began adjusting my wig whilst practicing my feminine voice,"Hello Mr.Licetti, my sister told me that you were hiring for a waitresses position, and I know that I'm perfect for it!" It sounded stupid, but sis said it'd work, and she's always been helpful with my...condition.
I opened the door and as the little bell rung the portly Italian man smiled. "Hello, Mr.Licetti I heard you were hiring and-" he cut me offf "Ah, you must be Anna's little sister. It is great to meet you!" Little sister...I'm four years older than her."Yes sir, um about the job position." He suddenly came over and hugged me tightly. "Yes absolutely after how much of a help your sister has been around the shop, I can guarantee that you will have the position." Christ kill me I'm half-mast. I get him off of me as quickly as I could before sitting down on one of the booths. I didn't even mat down my skirt, so now my ass is freezing. He sat down as well and began telling me about my hours, the general responsibilities of the job, and when my uniform would arrive.

Alacritous minds we walk,
Through the gates of Heaven.
The arduous and uneasy journey,
Palliated by pleasant company.

Our hearts racing and imagination pacing.
On paths many a men have treaded afore.
Passing a labyrinth to reach the pedestal of glory.
My imagination dwarfed, my extol derisory.

Succulent snow surround the peak
Frolicking in the midst of Heavenliness
Lapping it up in the snow of grandeur
Punctilious in creation and selection by the master Connoisseur.

The allure of something not made by men
Divine in its creation.
Enticed by the mystique behind the veil of cotton
Unheeding all boundaries, men march-on.

A ship sailing high in the air
Ferrying memories over the lush beauty hills
Another ferry across the creek, by the mountains gated
The surreal sacrosanct splendour unabated.

To not pay homage to the Stalwarts of charm,
Sacrilegious it'd be.
No matter the relinquished gain,
Radiant Remembrances Reign!

>>9994834
i liked it

ok someone read my poem:

Broken grammar sonnet
She looks over under her hair and whispers,
And the mist of the tension between us falls,
The sound of her breathing make then my vespers,
Her blink a fragment of that which my soul calls.

Narrow eyes in the hushed darkness pull away,
Effacing the bluntness of the communication,
As the spangled thoughts so ideal float loll and sway,
The knowledge of what is gone, missing, frustration.

Her sigh echoes liquid the overflowing impossibility,
That I will never live to articulate it,
That she is for my heart my one tranquility,
Rescued from the grammar to which I commit.

The nascent love furrows deeper among my singularity,
Rising incipient for the light that it knows as austerity.

I wrote this story if anyone will care to read it
https://pastebin.com/2pady6CC

it was inspired by a song I heard but then when I wrote it I think it turned into something else. there's no deeper meaning in the story by the way.

I wrote the first chapter of a (fantasy) book if anyone would like to read it. I haven't written anything in the three years since I graduated college, and even then I never wrote anything creatively. Only research papers and such. I don't really know where to share this and I'm way too fucking embarrassed to show my family, so hopefully someone here enjoys it.

It's a survival story of a dude exiled onto a remote island and brutal penal colony. Fair warning: chapter one is 4k words.

https://exilestoriesblog.wordpress.com/

>>10007581

Gay

>>10004941
ya, in this context it's pretentious & does nothing but alienate the reader. you're not choosing big words that fit in like jigsaw puzzle pieces, you're choosing the BIGGEST words possible to express concepts that could easily be expressed with normal diction.

>>10008520
That was not my intention my when I wrote it. Could you give me an example of the kinds of words I should shorten?

>>10004525
>>10004528
>>10004532
>>10004534

Hi Justus

The sun glitter on the water sparkles with the intensity of thousand rubies forcing the eyelids into narrow streaks, the slight searing pain is worth it. “Have you ever seen anything that beautiful?”, June’s voice softly speaks from behind. Turning to her, she gives a playful salute. Short hair,

>That's just an excerpt, I'm not sure how to start describing June. Should I keep as minimal as possible or give a some amount of detail?

>>10008555

I disagree with him entirely, for whatever it's worth.

>Will reciprocate

The room was cold, and damp. Josh remembered turning his heater on before he went to bed so this irked him. He could see nothing, however, so he felt around and found a canvas tunic and belt in place of pyjamas and as he rummaged through a leather bag he found coins in it.

‘Strange’, he said aloud.

A shout erupted from the other side of the room. Steel glinted, and as he searched his belt, he found he also had a blade. He was still shrouded in darkness and so he stayed still. As he opened his eyes he found the moon looking through the room’s only window frame. He noticed the floor was dirt and the walls were crudely baked clay. And then he noticed the figures sprawled around him and they seemed to be coming to their senses as well.

The figure from the other side of the room began to panic. ‘Who are you people. What are you doing in my house’.

And then the room rang with panic. Mass hysteria. Everyone asked questions similar to the instigator and since it was so loud, Josh drew back my breath and spoke.

‘Everyone, calm down. We aren’t in our houses or apartments. We’re somewhere else and if we all calm down; we can figure it all out’.

The panic was still there but not as great as before.

‘Were we kidnapped’, someone said and then she added: ‘who kidnapped us?’

Josh spoke again, his hands trembled, but his voice didn’t. ‘Let’s all get outside, we’ll figure where we are’.

And then they were all out of the creaking wooden door, rotted with age, and into the moonlight.

Josh looked around. There was a wooden mill wheel that he saw was covered with mildew, barrels and barrels stacked about outside, but what caught his attention most was the moon. Or rather ...

‘Two moons’, Josh said. ‘There are two moons’.

Everyone looked up, and they saw it was true. And they all gaped in awe. It was another minute before someone spoke.

‘I don’t think we’re on earth’.

Some murmured in agreement, some in protest. But someone else spoke up.

‘I’m Peter’, he said. ‘I don’t know what’s happening, and I’m sure you guys don’t either, but let’s sit down somewhere’. He waved his finger around until it pointed to some felled logs which were arranged around a dead fire. ‘Perfect. We’ll talk there’.

>>10008555
Woah I'm impressed by the maturity and openness, not the norm here.

I will expand on what I said. It's not exactly long words that're the problem, it's just that you seem to be writing in an ornate, somewhat baroque style. I can tell that you can keep things together in your mind and your story is actually going somewhere. I don't think you need all this window dressing. It's ultimately superficial, and it doesn't last as long as what the story really means. Do you understand what I'm saying?

Anyway, let me go over your first paragraph, to give you an example of what I mean.

>My father used to own a publishing duchy in my hometown.
I don't know why you'd use the word duchy.

>A prosperous enterprise, more or less, it afforded him many thousands of ducats over twenty years as well as the façade of reverence at the modest conventions that our literary community could muster from the dead paper-dust that caked the back alleys of Slum City.

I don't understand this sentence. The business was very profitable, and it also gave him the facade of reverence? Who was revering these works? I like the idea of a location having so little literary talent that it needs to scrape it up like dust off of the walls... but like I said, I don't understand the sentence.

>Our machinery rattled a hundred and sixty-eight hours a week, the bullet-like staccato rhythm of the dozen printing presses coalescing eventually into an unnerving hum, expelled as though from the gills of a sleeping leviathan.
I don't get this metaphor. You're saying that the machines sounded like a sleeping whale? I'm afraid that that metaphor doesn't inspire much of a feeling in me: I've never heard a whale sleep, or snore, so the part of the metaphor that's supposed to hold a memory that I can connect to the imaginary world that you're building is empty.

Also, I don't think that the right word for the sound would be "expel." I think that that word fits better with tangible objects, not sounds or bursts of air.

>A hundred different novels would be shipped to local bookstores every month in delivery vans emblazoned with our logo: the misshapen, pendulous nib of a fountain pen, through whose slit shone the incandescent evening sun. Two hundred more would be delivered incognito. Five hundred thousand books in total, considering long fiction, short fiction, semi-fiction, nonfiction, and a few poetical outliers, would be printed, bound, slapped with our indelible stamp, and dispersed monthly out of our uptown factory belching clouds into the sky. What meagre competition there was neither sought parity not made any attempt thereat.

Why misshapen, why pendulous? I don't think that either of these terms describes a nib. Again, it seems like you're trying to hide what you want to say from the reader. Nothing is lost in simplicity. On the contrary, much is gained. Also, again, the last sentence doesn't sound like something someone would say. I understand that, sometimes... (cont.)

>>10008555
>>10008984
(cont...) ... it helps to write in an un-vernacular voice for the sake of a story. But here, I think that it would be possible (and desirable) to say what you want to say in the vernacular, or in something closer to it.

***

Here's my disclaimer: Literature is a matter of taste. As you can see, other people don't have any complaints about your work.

To weigh the case more heavily against myself, I should confess: I hardly like reading anything. There are many great authors that I dislike. With that in mind, it might be better to discard my criticisms altogether.

It's all up to you.

>>10008941
someone, please critique this

Thumping, loud thumping, like drums, but without end.
“I’ve really messed up this time, haven’t I?”
I sat alone in a cave of flesh, up to my waist with fluvial grime and the rot of mixed meat engulfing my senses - sheep, ox, and the tang of unthawed fish - a butcher's paradise.
A little spangenhelm came floating by my side, thick steel, padded chain, and a big red teeth mark denting on the upper left side of the temple. I held it up to find a flimsy skull still strapped beneath - frozen in ironic laughter.
I grinned. “You and me both, friend,” I said.
The cave shook with a loud roar, drumming the walls with a vibration that crackled forth the pools of white slime like a bubbly sauna, my ears thumping as the octaves shook all the way up to the throat.
“We get it already! You're terrifying!” I yell back, by then I just didn’t care anymore. Out of all the things in the world, all I wanted now was a moment's peace, and I couldn’t even get that.
Sitting here all by myself, I guess there were better ways to go, I mean – he didn't crunch, though a small trade-off when starving to death or corroding in acids are the alternative opinions, but luckily for me when this night comes to an end, all I have to do is just start all over again-!
and again-
and again…
This time I got eaten - more like swallowed, really, by a huge, fire-breathing dragon that is of right now - razing an entire city full of innocents, mercilessly slaughtering everyone and anyone unlucky enough to cross it's wing-beaten path: fire, blood, explosions – and here I sat all cosy in his stomach waiting for my turn to die.
A great way to open up a story, huh? However, that’s where you’d be wrong. You see, this isn’t the beginning, and for all I know, this ain’t the ending either. Confused? I don’t blame you, there’s a lot of things in this universe that can be easily explained, but this story of mine is not one of them.
I wouldn’t blame you if you’re still confused. If there were a simpler way to say it, I’d say it, but if you sought a simpler answer then I won’t stop you from leaving. Good effort, even if fruitless in the end, will eventually yield something. You may not get what you wanted but you may just get something better – or worse, depending on how you see it. However, no matter what you do, I’m afraid this is going to take the both of us awhile. So just give me a quill, a paper, and by all means - an eternity through a never-ending loop of death, madness, and inescapable chaos and I’ll be your storyteller for as long as you’ll allow me, but I warn you now - if the beginning didn’t tip you off, this probably isn’t going to end very well. If you sought to be enlightened, then prepare to be depressed.
This is the story of my story – Cline Weaver.
Ahem.

>>10008441
I tried, overly descriptive for my taste. A chapter with multiple characters interaction would be more easy to read. The name of the MC is weird to read, how do you pronounce it? I dunno if it's just me.

I don't write a lot in English but here's a haiku I wrote for a friend. Be so kind to tell me what you think of it.

A peculiar passerby

Your gleam, not unlike
One I remember fondly,
Lingers. A cadence.

>>9994950
Very soft and comfy prose, but I agree with the poster that said not to start with the weather, although it's well written.
Maybe try writing something that's not phantasy (which I presume it is), I'd love to read it

>>10009605
Cool, thank you for the feedback. Genuinely appreciated. It's interesting because while writing I was actually worried I wasn't being descriptive enough.

At the risk of sounding defensive, making the story start with a singular character was a conscious choice. I really wanted to drive home his utter isolation and alienation from the rest of the world. The chapter ends as he meets a new character.

His name is pronounced N-O.

>>9991661
i kinda like the beginning but it gets weird when they're continually striking and fighting one another. The first three paragraphs though are pretty nice and reminded me a lot of The Body

Claire fucks black dudes and she's slept with 8 guys apparently. About 5 too many in my opinion. She's got an aerodynamic face and big thick lips. She's got eyes and cheeks like a renaissance cherub painting and long, thin legs. Her footsteps look heavy and painful on the knees, like some wounded quadruped.
We've had sex 6 times, every time she was cheating on her boyfriend. It makes me feel like a child, as if my ability to understand ownership has suddenly evaporated. I've picked up this toy now and I don't know or care why that boy is crying.

>>10009920
You are correct, I also prefer individual introduction for the characters. I liked the show don't tell approach whenever the main character described what was around him, but like i said, a more dialogue centered chapter would be easier to read. Or less text for this first chapter but that probably it's my preference. Although English is my language of choice for reading, it isn't my mother tongue.

The man fakes a sip, keeping his lips pursed to the cold smarting splash. Bitter odors are unleashed through the quarter-sized hole and fill the man’s button nose with the stench, the memory of his longdead liverburst father – the stale, ragged breath, slurred conversations all around him now the same scattered thinking that his father muddled through all his life until the end. Till death do us part and there he was shabbysuited, spiderveined, tremblehanded, swolebellied, jaundiced, fevered, and dead before we left under the watchful eye of marbleperched St. Augustine with a hand grenade liver exploded into rushing toxins. Died the moment he gained a daughter, expiring there in the pew, crumpling into himself – a comatose figure with beer-colored skin, lager sweat seeping into the ruin of an ill-fitting thrift store suit – and all seeing but ignoring it for the anticipated stupor of a drunk but knowing better later when this cadaver, made so at I do, was discovered only after the rice they threw settled outside the holy doors and only after the jingle tunes of tin on puppet wire bounced out of sight or sound but toward the last stop before marriage bed and bliss and some assembled there thinking it odd that the missus didn’t imbibe not even the smallest glass of champagne in toast to a foundation of good health and fortune because revelry did commence even with the dead man back in the place of pretty glass and stone unroused by the efforts of elderly stewards who found that there was no pulse to mirror the glugga-glug vitality of the throat in life and what was it that did him in was it the liver torn in a long chrysalis-cut that let death come flying out or was it a heart incinerated by guilt, the sawboards stacked that very day with helping female hand, or maybe the rolling cascade of expiry top to bottom when city lights flicker away during blackout.

>>10008984
That is an extremely thorough response. I must thank you for reading it closely enough to make such an educated critique.

>>10009045
The premise is close to Cube and Predators (Adrien Brody), and to at least one episode of Twilight Zone whose name I can't remember, so right off the bat, I'm comparing to two excellent (former and latter) and one hackish (middle) example. None of these involuntary comparisons are positioned to help you.

There is nothing here to provoke dismissal, nor hostility, so I would merely ask whether you have tried the actual act of falling asleep in a room which is not your sleeping quarters and then attempted to parse out what it really feels like to awake in an unexpected place. My reasoning is that you may end up with something more than the one word conclusion, "strange." I am also dubious about Josh' fluid fluency with the alien objects which are not pajamas.

There is as yet unresolved debate on this page between the author's desire for suspense, versus his fear of maintaining pace, for which we are not unappreciative, but prefer to see it post-resolution. "rang with panic...mass hysteria" may evoke dashing footfalls toward exits, blows rained upon bodies, or individual vignettes of various O-shaped mouths on horrified faces, but none of these resolve in my reality with a single calm voice saying "calm down." And now I am also reminded of Intacto (film) and a Star Trek. Something about "quatloos."

The big reveal is obviously the two moons, which is intended to deliver more newtons of jaw force than I received here - I am leaning suspense now to let this get a little more filled in; suspense after all is pacing within itself.

I re-read now some confusion about darkness v. light, and would like that figured out. Either he is "blind," or not; "shrouded" or not. Having suffered numerous states of incongruous waking, my brain tells me that sources of light would be the chronologically first thing my five senses would register. Going with "moonlight" has the potential happy side effects of foreshadowing, plus allowing the blade to glint and figures to be seen, would fix the singular misnomer that there is only one moon ("the moon looking through") and offers some literary gravitas about a dim light offering hope of escape from this dark predicament. Now I am also reminded of Quiet Earth.

My conclusion is that what you have here is a wireframe. Since Josh comes first and gets preponderance of word count, I presume he is our putative POV char. I want him to introduce our cast by means of observation and interaction which unpack at least one labeling feature of each persona to establish the emerging panic. There are perhaps three, four, or more people here, but I only know two of their names, and none of their deals, beyond their preternatural elasticity between hysteria and docility. For example the sequencing of "a shout erupted" and the hard following upon inventory of gear and scene. I might think the shout would evoke some reaction prior.

At this early moment, better to have more to cut than too little to go on.

An excerpt from a lyric chapbook im throwing together:

Welcome to this brand new play of mine
Like a child who is so wound up I pull you back into the sound
This honey is a finely aged wine
Come drink us up and display your doubt onto the spinning ground
With every act we find ourselves losing time
Do you feel as lost without me, or have you sewn shut your mouth
And with every twist we lose another line
Do you feel as lost without me, or are you happier than ever now

>>10010651
>Do you feel as lost without me, or have you sewn shut your mouth
Try to make every line as evocative and emotional as this. By far my favorite.

"... and they lived happily ever after." June sighed while closing the book. Looking over at her son she couldn't help but feel pity, for the boy had been having night terrors for months on end and nothing seemed to help.
Lying there, eyes wide open with the nightlight radiating a warm glow around the room, the boy silently waited for the inevitable moment he would be transported into that world he hadn't dared speak a word of.
June, exhausted and worried, tucked him in and gave a goodnight kiss for extra luck. A small thud followed by few barely discernible footsteps and then, nothing.
Wall clock kept ticking, giving the boy a notion that time was passing but ever so slightly.
Focusing on the second hand of the clock, the boy could make the sound of gears turning inside of it, the slight snap before it ticks and the echo when the hand sets in place.
Sounds of time passing were soon accompanied by unintelligible whispering and scratching. The boy refusing to close his eyes started to repeat a simple but comforting mantra he had taught himself "One, two, three, four" over and over, but the whispers grew closer and he could start to hear what they said.
Still they made no sense, but were loud enough to drown out his own voice. His eyes started to water as he fought for control of his body while finger by finger, limb by limb he became paralyzed.
Biting his teeth together and not willing to close his eyes, the whispers suddenly stopped. The boy still unable to move started to pant, exhausted as he was, in a moment of respite he let out a sigh of relief which was cut midway, for he felt a warm blow in his ear and a voice he instantly recognized whispered "You're a strong boy, my brave warrior."
His will shattered, he gave in to the comforting voice and closed his eyes, forcing the built-up tears to trickle down the cheeks.

It's sand. The boy feels it shift under him as he stands up to take a better look at his surroundings. Nothing, only pitch-blackness greets his eyes.
In an attempt to cast away the thought of being blind the boy rubs his eyes and just barely sees the outlines of his hands
Noticing an eerie silence alongside the darkness; no wind, rustling, or any other sign of life, he snaps his fingers to make sure the ears work. No reverb, but the snap is there. Senses intact but impaired, the boy puts one foot in front of the other. The sand feels fine, a cool feeling envelops the toes as they sink in which reminds of the sea.
The sun glitter on the water sparkles with the intensity of thousand rubies forcing the eyelids into narrow streaks, but keeping the eyes open is worth it even if for the slight searing pain. “Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?”, June’s voice softly speaks from behind. Turning towards her, she gives a playful salute. There she is, basking in sunlight with her short brown hair becoming unkempt by the wind and her knitwear sweater protecting her from the cold front.

Conjoined in spiralous knots and braids, vines of honeysuckle, orientalis, jackmanii, champion, and lavender draped the bricked walkway and rouge plastered windowpanes of the garden shed, knit and ascent up its sullen wood bearings and across its cream tiled roofing before cascading off its edge upon, and into, the cracked stone and marble ornament (imported once, at no small expense, by M. Burdette for his daughter's amusement, for whom, too, the garden was cultivated and overgrown for and into its densest coils she would often gaze, on afternoons like these, when gold sunray and auburn leaf cloak the garden, much as we may cloak ourselves in the evening, imagining herself a pixie, safely hidden and tucked away within her woven temple) and into the pond basin, alongside moss and dragonfly.

I've been reading and writing steadily for a couple years now, and I've made sure not to show anybody anything, just so I get the initial bad habits out of my system. But now I've been getting a kind of weird cycle where I have no idea how effective what I'm writing is anymore. So I guess I finally need other eyes on it?

I'm in the middle of a twenty part story, fourteen stories in, and the parts are designed to be short-ish and quickly read. My problem is that I was trying to make it work on two parts. One on an immediate level, where you could just enjoy whatever individual story at face value, and a second where details about the setting and characters would appear between the cracks. The problem is that I don't know if I'm being way too cute about purposely not explaining certain things. Am I trusting the reader to figure out things on their own and have fun doing it, or am I just being difficult?

Here are the first four stories:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dALJJufSxpHLX2oHKg16ymw5YwsM_XRmvjViSotlkZM/edit?usp=sharing

>>10010385
Hey, I really liked that. I bet you're at about the same level of insanity as me. You probably drink too much too? Maybe I'm projecting? Either way...good work, keep it up. I'd read more of that. Vicious stuff! Good luck to you.

>>10010888
Nice trips but I hope you're not memeing me! I put a lot of time and soul into that paragraph (and the overall novel)

>>10011164

How are those eyes moving when that's a jpeg?!

>>10011184
You need to stop smoking that ganja, brutha

>>10011197

Never touched it in my life

>>10008441
I'll be honest that I only got about two pages into it. It's not terrible, it's just a slog. I'm guessing you mostly read fantasy or science fiction? Most of the lines seem like they're in there only because you've heard them before and think that that's what a story "sounds like". I'm not trying to be shitty about it, you said it yourself that you haven't written anything in a long time, and everything wrong with it can be fixed by reading and writing a whole lot more.

Some general advice:
>Until you really know what you're doing, always, always slim it down. Your story could be so much more readable if you cut out the words that just don't need to be there.
>Don't use clichéd similes and descriptions.
>Find more interesting ways of showing action and thought, without making it exhausting.

For example
>"His matted raven black hair clung to his face as he violently retched upon the beach. The only thing he had left to give to the beach was more seawater."

Could easily be (and it could be a million other ways)
>"He pulled the black hair off his face and retched old seawater"

Suggest, suggest, suggest, stop telling. The reader can guess that the hair is matted and clings to his face because he had to pull it off. Retching is already violent. The reader can guess that his stomach is empty if he's throwing up something that's been in there for a while.

If this is more than just a one-off thing for you, and you seriously want to get better, just read more and write more, and don't stop. Be hard on your writing, but not yourself.

don't die yet pls nobody's critiqued mine

>>10012276
Which one's yours? I was gonna critique but I got banned and figured this threas would die.

anybody write songs here?

>>10012387
Mostly hip hop but here's a folk song I wrote (each verse is a different family member)

When I was a boy around the time my favorite toy was sold I spent my days around that window
Never looking through, I always thought of times with you and now I'm dying can't decide where to go

When you held me close I tried to beat you I suppose I never was no good at being a man
My father's dying now and all I want to do is
howl he always told me that I don't have no plan

[Watch the wiiiiiind it's a cooooold day in hell
Every siiiiiiiin is a just a griiiiiiin from Satan himself]

Father help me please my brother has a sick disease he drinks and can't commit to any one thing
Me? I'm doing fine and my baby's approaching nine but I just want his dad to give me a ring

Honey yeah no problem, my grandson should see the bottom of the hill where his grandfather would play
I don't think that man you with gonna give you more than a kid, I've said all that I have to say

[Watch the wiiiiiind it's a cooooold day in hell
Every siiiiiiiin is a just a griiiiiiin from Satan himself]

Who the hell is this? How can you sit there and dismiss me? I've been faithful to you all my life.
Now that time has run its course you gonna run just like a horse pretending that I ain't been you wife.

Sweetie this is Karen since I was a boy she cared for me more than my parents ever did
Well she just woke up; before we met she touched a truck, I really thought that she was gone and dead

[Watch the wiiiiiind it's a cooooold day in hell
Every siiiiiiiin is a just a griiiiiiin from Satan himself]

I know this stressful time has made a mess of yours and mine, but I assure you what he says ain't no lie
This is the newspaper, thirty years of sleep and labor, now I just wanted to say goodbye

Okay I believe you, see these times are so damn evil, I don't know what to expect from God
This is our grandson, he always playing, having fun; say hi to grandpa before he depart

>>10010738
Pls critique. I wrote it in one go.

Any tips on handling introspection for characters? Like inner dialogues and shit?

>>10012797
Have the insight of Shakespeare otherwise don't even fucking try

>>10012594
It's good anon, even as a sentence fragment.

>>10012797
first watch Neon Genesis Evangalion

>>9992456
>https://pastebin.com/vHLLuSvw
Bump for critique.

>>10014227
>It's in spic kek
Why bother then?

>>10012797
Don't turn it into a mouthpiece for yourself. Make sure that someone other than you or your mom would want to read it.

There’s not a lesson behind every door
There’s a stain for every body found on the floor,
Your beliefs have misshapen your core
They’re the centerpiece for every mistaken war.
You found yourself on the side of rust
Points of view estranged and blurry,
You find yourself entranced by the musk
Common sense abandoned in such a hurry.

>>10014640
wouldn't be half bad behind some decent math punk, I-made-this-up-at-work-core otherwise

>>10014702
Accurate.

>>10014489
I believe there are cultured Americans in this board that bothers to learn a different language than English.
Who am I kidding, I'm hoping for a fellow latin american bro to lurk /lit/ and give me a harsh critique.

>>10014775
Poopoo peepee poopoo
Ding dong weewee on you

Release with loud sound
Set brown log upon the ground

Eat some asparagus and grass
At you throw the smelly mass

Puke and shit and piss and sweat
Into your mouth you will soon get

>>10014847
Hermoso.

>>10008984
>>10008995

I'm the main guy that disagreed with you, but I appreciate where you're coming from and think it's worth engaging the two opposite critiques for the benefit of anon the author.

I will start by saying you haven't said anything objectively wrong, less is more, clarity and simplicity are ideal, etc. these are the kind of lessons I learned at university and generally, people who make an attempt at anachronistic verbosity need this kind of advice precisely because it doesn't work when they try it;

BUT that doesn't mean it can never work. It's like how amateur poets begin with free verse because they're too lazy to learn meter and rhyme and other formal strictures, but the poets they imitate (at least the best ones) went through mastering formal poetry before attempting free verse. So it is something that is rarely done well, but can excel when it is done well.

I have given similar advice as you have to other works, but I feel in this piece it really does work for me as someone who wants more anachronistic literary fiction and less tired minimalist literature. But you're absolutely right that it's a matter of preference.

Your specific examples, I can see why you made them but the similes work for me *because* they're so theatrical and Victorian. No, nobody knows what a biblical Leviathan sounds like when it snores, but I personally enjoy seeing an author wink at a simile that was once very common and is no longer. For me, the bulbous pendulous nib doesn't make me struggle with what he's trying to describe, but pause and try to picture a pen that fits the description and then alight upon it and move on.

The setting, being fairly mundane, is imparted with a fantastical and mysterious air by its archaic register which I love, but I can't say that I think this is a widespread opinion (not like anyone is getting rich writing literary fiction anyway) so that's why I won't say to just throw out your critique.

I would advise as you did that anon weigh both perspectives, is he writing for academics and writers, for mass appeal, for himself, etc. He found one guy who really liked it but he'll probably find more who agree with you (and that is not intended as a put down or insult, it's not about "dumbing down" it's just different audiences with different expectations and predilections).

Neoformalism is what I personally want to see in every literary and artistic field because I think the conventions of the 20th century are beyond stale, but those conventions are also what a lot of people expect from literary fiction.

To me, he did verbosity and "pretentious in a self-aware kind of way" exactly how I want to see it, and I thought it added a lot to the story, but I gravitate to this kind of writing in most things I read so I'm not utterly impartial. I think as well that there are certainly many narrative contexts where this register just could not be applied successfully, but I felt it worked splendidly here.

>>10015195

I would also love to see a third take on this if anyone else reads it because I don't want anon led astray by anyone including me

>>10015199
I'm not the dude you responded to, but after reading your post I get a weird feeling that you're the same dude who wrote the story. I mean, you might not be, but if that's the case then you both happen to write in a really similar way (which would make sense, you're defending him).

Disclaimer: I'm not even going to try to pretend like I'm hyper educated about all this. I only have vague ideas about what formalism or neo-formalism is. I just read and write a lot.

Anyway, I don't buy any of this. Even if it was a straight up satire of 19th century writing, it's not a good one, and if it isn't a satire then it's just someone who's insecure with their ability to write, so they try to make it sound like what they think a 19th-century classic should sound like. I've read and written a lot of garbage beginner type stuff and this is a dead on match.

Red flags from just first paragraph:
>more or less
>façade
>muster
>staccato
>coalescing
>leviathan
>emblazoned
>pendulous
>incandescent
>incognito
>indelible
>belching
>meagre

I'm not saying good work has never been done with these words, I'm just saying that unless the point of the story is to perfectly emulate someone who just started writing and uses a really stuffy style to hide the fact, this dude needs more practice and should stop trying to be so slick about it. It'll help them get better, faster.

>>10003342
It was meant to be serious.

>>10007581
this reminds me of a doujin

>>10008520
>>10004551
Don't listen to this shitstain. You have real talent, but god DAMN that was some boring writing. If you're gonna write that sorta prose you need a good subject. Your inspiration imo was awful, but like I said, you are no doubt an effective writer.

Boring does not always mean bad, but you need a hook to hold people early or no one's gonna read that shit or want to publish it. Which is a shame because unlike every other writer here, you actually have a strong command over the english language.

>Kid Sampson, Nately and the others wandered apart in a noiseless eddy of motion and were sucked away into the cloying yellow stillness.

what does cloying yellow stillness mean?

>The breeze rustled leaves in a dry and diaphanous distance

what is a dry distance?
(I imagine diaphanous distance means not far away)

>>10015640
>Which is a shame because unlike every other writer here, you actually have a strong command over the english language.
bro, you're doing more harm than good

>>10015668
You wish you could write half as well as that anon. He may be as interesting as a potato skin but anyone with creds would admit he can at least use his worde better than most.

>>10015690
>He may be as interesting as a potato skin
That's the thing, so is everybody else in the thread. He's not very good at writing because it's obvious he doesn't have a handle on it yet and tries to overcompensate at the same time. It's a rookie tactic. It's exactly like I used to write when I mostly read Poe and Conrad.

If he keeps at it he'll grow out of it. Nothing's worse than being dishonest with someone who really needs the advice. He seems like he has a good attitude about it.

>>10015770
Yeah nigga like you some god writer fuck outta here.

>>10015770
>That's the thing, so is everybody else in the thread.

I'll give you that, no doubt

>>10015774
A+ response to criticism

>>10015779
we all learning bro

https://pastebin.com/TvQ8HmnZ

>2nd draft of a short story titled:
THE ALGORITHM OF MADNESS
>there're possibly spelling, grammatical errors
>weird fiction, humor, horror
I'm interested in hearing what people thought of it

>>10016098
I read about a page into it. It's not bad at all, and I like what you're going for, but it really needs to be trimmed down by like 30%.

Stuff like:
>I imagined the glowing headlights bouncing a strange glow off his eyes, but of course I couldn't see his eyes because I faced the back of his head.

The whole second part doesn't need to be there. The narrator doesn't need to state something that's obvious, and it deflates the momentum of the story. Same thing with repetition:
>and I'm still not sure what language he was speaking.
Than two sentences later:
>listening to him ramble in an unfamiliar tongue.

Then there's little things, like moving the description of the man closer to the first introduction of the man so you don't throw a wrench in what the reader's already picturing. Also make the description more natural. Never list the exact height, etc.

On the bright side, you seem to have a good feel for how the story should be paced and none of the lines are real stinkers. In fact, one really surprised me:
>He fixed his hat, grabbed his suitcase which had been by his side like a dog the whole time, both gray.

It feels like the first comma should go after "suitcase", but it's still a nice line.

If you go through and shorten it up, I mean really be merciless on it, and repost it, I promise I'll go through the whole thing and try to help you. If you do, make sure you save the original though.

>>10016225
My gourd, that is such kind criticism. The best I've received in my life. Thank you.

It's interesting that you mentioned problems with repetition. While revising, I made it a point to repeat what was happening in fear of the reader forgetting the plot. It was sort of a counter-intuitive choice on my part.

I think I may revise this tomorrow, if not later tonight. This whole business of '1st, 2nd, 3rd draft and so on' is out of the norm for me, but I find it necessary as time goes on. Why not revise and edit?

Well, you've inspired me to take a knife to it. I'll trim it down to the best of my ability at some point.

Thanks again.

>>10015195
I'm the one you replied to. Perfect!

I think he can safely disregard my critique now.

As long as a single person besides the author enjoys a given work, then I think that that work was a success. As you enjoyed it, then the work was a success, and my criticism is unnecessary.

As I said (or maybe I didn't?), I hardly enjoy any literature--I'm way too picky (I'd like to stress that this is a bad thing, attributable to laziness, malice, and an anxiety about the amount of written work that already exists in this world more than intelligence or culture or whatever self-aggrandizing things people might trick themselves into believing were the cause)--so I'm not a good judge of whether or not a work is good.

Your spirited defense has possibly saved the author from deforming his style for a joyless person for whose sake one is certainly not justified in altering a single thing, especially if it belongs to something pure.

>>10016225
https://pastebin.com/XhpJe8T9

Here you go.
I trimmed and planted.
Please, tear it apart.

THE ALGORITHM OF MADNESS

>>10015319

the guy who wrote the story has been thoroughly silent thus far, and yeah I probably do like it because of the similar style to how I write.

I don't think any of those words are red flags but maybe that means I'm just a tool idk

I wrote and then drunkposted this garbage:
>>10004525

so I'm far from infallible. ive now spent more time defending him that I did reading the story so maybe I ought to reread it

>>10015319
I'm the guy who wrote the story. I wasn't trying to emulate anybody from any other age. That is just the way I write, the way I like to write, and while it's probably just an interim stage in the evolution of my voice (I won't contest the fact that I need more practice), I honestly couldn't see how my usage of those words is a "red flag". I'd love it if you could explain your process. Thanks for reading it.

Does it look buyable?

Also after having read this, would you recommend the first line or would this be okay?
“Somewhere out there in the sea of stars - a war is drawing to its end.”
It’s an integral quote to the story but if the example is already better off then so be it.

>>10016994
By "red flag" I mean words that somebody uses when they're trying to make something sound literary, but are just pumping up each line because they don't have a feel for it yet. Purple prose is what people usually call it. There's a right way to do that formal style of writing, but this isn't it. And it's hard to recommend a way for you to correct it if you can't see what's wrong to begin with.

But you don't have to do anything if you don't want to. Other people here obviously see no problems with it. I just really, really disagree with them, and hopefully you'll keep on writing and eventually understand what I'm talking about. You don't seem like an asshole or anything, and you're not a terrible writer, you just need to practice the basics a little more before you get so ambitious with the wordplay.

>>10016582
Reads a lot smoother. I'll go over the whole thing later and report back.

>>9995445
A bit purple, but I like it
>>9999409
A boss firing an autistic person for making the female staff uncomfortable

>>10017205
I'm sorry, but this is really bad. Your grammar is off right out of the gate with "Tortured screams claws for life" and then you just go into a blend of pure edge and cliche cribbed from Halo, Top Gun, and Aliens

You then proceed to tell the audience what this Lieutenant's character is instead of letting the reader glean this through dialogue and action.

"Charon swallowed cold fem." What the devil is fem? It's like you didn't even edit this.

"It ain't me" starts playing. Oh so this is just a giant meme and I got rused.

Probably not the best place but there are no other fitting general or threads.

Anyway, non-english fag here. Is
>we had to accommodate
in a past-present tense?

I know that
>we had slept
for example is, to in my example verb is unchanged (i.e. not "accommodated").

The tank drove away perpendicularly from the berm, every eye shakily looking around on Romance’s screens, limited but frantically searching sensors. They reached OP Hot House. A rectangle dug deeply into a rise with flat landing zone for vertical takeoff vehicles beside it. All surrounded by smart mines. Romance navigated through a map of the field, held in a coded data packet. The dugout had a camouflage tarp raised over as a roof, Romance parked on top.
Captain Drier said, “Corporal get the tarp,” then she opened the escape hatch at the bottom of the cabin. They had parked over a zipper, it was unzipped as Shad climbed through with a camouflage tarp which he laid down on.
The captain said, “we wait here for your extraction.”
Romance watched over the smart mines streaming with the collection of inputs from the field. As the captain followed Shad, taking off her helmet. At this distance the reaction time is too slow to be safe to operate the vehicle in combat. She shook her hair free and lay down facing the hatch of the tank, Assistant and Glous climbed through it, taking helmets off and laying down, Shad set up the donkey ears just outside the dugout.
After a few minutes of chattering and smoking the captain said, “light and noise discipline,” while she put her hand down and brought her finger to her mouth. She turned around away from Glous who blinked and swallowed, until she bent her torso into his. For a moment he only felt his heart accelerating. Then he put his hand on her flank. She turned back into him as his hand ran over flesh. He breathed audibly as he saw her face. Shad and Assistant had turned to each other as Shad sent a message to Glous.
trying to keep it classy but I cant
Glous closing eyes momentarily and responded to Shad.
let’s go
Glous smiled at Captain Drier as Romance forwarded a comms connection from Eight who said, “landing now, get ready for pick up as soon as possible, we have a choreographed exit.”
Drier jumped up, Shad groaned. Everyone putting on helmets. Glous bemusedly led the group to the landing zone. They saw a small, dark helicopter touching down. Eight opened the side door and helped Glous and Assistant inside then closed it, they sat beside her, buckling in and crossed their arms. The crew of Romance watched together as they flew up and away.

In June we rowed out to the island. We shingled the cabin by day and slept under mosquito nets. Our fingers and backs burned and we reeked of tar. When the sun had set we would jump in the cool, clean water. Out there, I learned the constellations: of Auriga and his chariot, and of Virgo, who rests near an equinox, and of Cygnus. We grew buckwheat and made flour of it. The layers of flavour that had bubbled into the cabin's cast-iron skillet turned omelettes into occasions. As the heat grew worse, we knew we had to deal with the the wasp nest in the cabin's awning. We knocked down the nest with a branch and made a beeline for the water. I held my breath longer
than I had to.

In July we rowed out to the island. We jumped off the mossy outcrop and dove for crayfish under the algae and pebbles. We bought gas for the generator and watched a heron call for a mate. We chopped down a tree for firewood and divined that it was at least a hundred years old. Before long the rain was thundering down and when it had topped we were napping by day and reading by candlelight. We suffered another surprise wasp attack and skipped stones to see who would wash the laundry. I've got a strong arm, but my technique is lousy.

In September we rowed out to the island. I found a poncho to keep me warm and company and I learned how to twirl a
gun around my finger. We pickled food and drank apple juice. I finished Don Quixote and had to use it as tinder.
Mostly we grew quiet and listened to the weather and later I practiced my singing voice.

In February we snowshoed out to the island. We charted the area with a pencil and chased out a family of mice from our poor cabin. We taped over a broken window and we drank sweet peaches from our cans and fried our eggs in sesame oil when we ran out of other ingredients. The island abstained from meat for a while and when we couldn't stand it anymore we walked into the middle of the ice and cut ourselves a hole and dropped our lines and prayed. The next night I found a baby bat that had fallen out of its roost. We brought it inside and gave it some water and kept as quiet as we could so as to not disturb its ears and it mewled for a while and died by morning.

In September, I started to type this account, before I went to the hammock and wrote it by hand.

>>10004551
Like the others said, it's "good" writing. Way too verbose but aside from that it's written extremely well. I liked the subject and it's possible the other anons would like it more if the prose was more palatable. If you were trying to emulate wordy, dry 19th century prose, you nailed it, but that doesn't mean we want to read it. Just cut down without destroying the spirit.

Buses are the petri dishes of the lower-class. There, I said it. The only reason a person might take a bus is because they're either too poor to afford a car or mentally unfit. For a few months I had the displeasure of taking the morning route to the office. And there would only be room to sit at the front of the bus. At first, I couldn’t understand why the other passenger would enjoy cramming at the back. Were they repulsed by the driver, the most normal of all the vehicle’s residents? But I soon understood that the horror of sitting at the front of the bus means sitting within peripheral vision of The Zombie.

When I say this, I don't mean that I am afraid of The Zombie seeing me, but that I am afraid of seeing The Zombie. It is the sort of thing that you cannot take your eyes away from, no matter how bad it is for you. I put my earbuds in, check my email, count the intersections until my stop, but my eyes always drift back to The Zombie.

The Zombie is an elderly, fat woman, the kind that wears large floral outfits that obscure her folds and blend her form into a large circle. She sits hunched and slouched, perpetually looking between the scenery and her hands. She coughs without so much as moving her arms to cover it, so that sitting across from The Zombie is to stand above an open, flushing toilet. It's a wet cough, so that those in the splash zone can feel invisible amounts of mucus and phlegm flying at them.

The Zombie is a sickly pale, with a large, angry scab that sits between her eyebrows. She will spend the bus ride picking and scraping at this scab using her long, unkempt nails, before putting the caked blood and skin pieces in her mouth. There, she'll nibble and pick away, until she can feel the fresh blood oozing down her brow, and she sits there coughing and sighing, as if she hadn't expected this to happen.

After a few days of this, I stopped eating breakfast before work, preferring to pack a morning snack. Whether you sit or stand, you have little chance of keeping your eyes away from The Zombie. I now realize that she is the reason that everyone on the 8:30 route huddles at the back. Being further down the route than the others, I have little choice. Every “good” seat is already taken. My office contract has been renewed for next summer. I can only hope that I'll have saved up for a car by then.

>>10018302
This sounds like a Nick Adams story. The one with the sex scene where Nick fucks the girl the awkward kid is orbiting.

>>10018669
I've never heard of Nick Adams, can you elaborate?

>>10018674
Nick Adams was Ernest Hemingway's default alter ego in short fiction. He wrote stories about Nick his whole life but they were never recognized or collected as a single narrative until 1972. About half were unpublished at his death. But everybody here hates Hemmmingway.

Anyhoo, what is this translated from?

>>10018754
Ah. Haven't gotten around to Hemmingway, but I like the idea of his prose, at least.

It's an original piece of writing, not a translation. Am I on the right track?

“It was supposed to hold up a little longer, wasn’t it?”

DeMarne points over his head. Past the atrium’s glass, the last of the day turns the gathering clouds purple and blue. The forecast had not called for rain until tomorrow.

“Yes,” Shearer answers after some distraction passes. His hands are folded as if in prayer in front of him. His voice is hoarse from disuse. It seems he has something to add, but he does not.

DeMarne waits for him, nods and looks for something else to say. He slept through most of the flight, doubts that Shearer did the same. Upon waking during their final approach, he watched as Shearer drew a four leaf clover smaller than a dime in the corner of his customs document.

“You were here when they finished this terminal, weren’t you?”

“I was,”

Though Shearer does not remember the aluminum sheets that accent the skylights now, folded in such a way to evoke a bird’s wing. Reflecting the growing dark, their blue is nearly black and to Shearer it seems that some biblical crow is descending upon him.

“That was a long time ago now, wasn’t it?” DeMarne continues.

“Yes,”

“But it doesn’t feel very long, somehow,”

“No. It feels like a very, very long time to me, Karl,”

Once upon a time, the whole terminal smelled of travel.

The smell of travel is of perfume applied too liberally and is of mouthwash used as substitute for a toothbrush. It’s what won’t leave the cabin of a rented car after so many miles with the windows down. And it’s of caffeine, nicotine, alcohol. The base tone is the stale air inhaled and exhaled in coach and business- and yes, even first class.

Travel is not a wholly pleasant scent, but it’s one that is unmistakably human, requires real people to make in their coming and going.

There were red and white banners hanging over the terminal that day, exclaiming, advertising:

-WILLKOMMEN IN DER WELT-

The phone bank is gone now, but there was one by the far wall across from where Shearer stands now. He had to beg in his terrible German, had to grovel to strangers for enough coins to make an international call. After twenty minutes, he had enough to learn that Kerry had gone unexpectedly into labor and that her father was coming to take her to Trinitarian Memorial.

He had to say, I’m going to be late. I’m so sorry.

It’s not all your fault, she answered him, your son is a little early.

-WELCOME TO THE WORLD-

Now the atrium smells of microwave chicken in shallow plastic trays and disinfectant.

Things are just so in this way, always seeming different upon arrival than when leaving them for home. How polished the floor looks, how clean the bathrooms feel.

“I didn’t get a chance to ask you, how is your boy?”

“Spoiled,” Shearer grumbles, “everyone his age is spoiled,”

undefined near-mid future, balkans
a group of five friends is sharing a midnight drink on top of a three story house, the second and third floor is bare brick and piles of hoarded trinkets

it's a mildly chilly night though windy, so the group is dressed in an impromtu mixture of windbreakers, jumpers and milsurp

many topics are touched upon, the discussion eventually reaching a mysterious compound in the outback, owned by a foreigner

everything about it is hearsay, though judging by the armed patrols and convoys of shiny imported cars transiting, it can be reckoned that a lot of wealth is guarded behind the hesco and yugoslav-era structures

the idea of a heist forms, slowly becoming an actual plan, a suicidal endeavor of a burnt-out team of guttermen

dressed in deep-blue coveralls, camo and whatever else was at hand, carrying an eclectic mix of firearms, they drive to the target in a torn-up old german car, still fiercely puffing away even after more than half a century of exploitation, the patchwork body rolling with every corner, the spartanized cracked and faded plastic rattling along with the several times rebuilt engine

unease and anxiety are mutual amongst the robbers, though none are showing it, the leader scanning the horizon with a stoic stare, clutching his rifle between his legs in proper military fashion

>>10018659
this was pretty good

>>10018842
Yeah. You're ready to be the Spanish Jack London.

>>10018302
I like it, especially the rhythm. I have two nitpicks: is it as simple as 'chasing out' a family of mice? My experience with with mice says otherwise. Why wouldn't they return to a warm cabin, especially on a small island?

The second, and more important of the two, is that the correct term is crawfish.

>>9990970
Mark > Scott > Dave > Bruce > Kevin

Mark and Scott were both excellent performers and writers, they get top two; Dave was the most creative writer, but his awkward execution and bland performance undermines it; Bruce was a terrible performer but good writer; Kevin was shit in every way possible.

>>10018122
Anyone? I know it is a dumb question for this thread or board in general, just wanted a bit more trustworthy opinion.

Just throw me a bone and I will scur away.

>>10018122

In what context?

"We had to accommodate the guest, they were upset"

is right for instance

>>10018122
>>10019025
"We had to accommodate" is just past tense.
"We had slept" is past-perfect. To put in the most accessible way, past-perfect is past past. Assuming the default narration in your stody is past tense, past-perfect tense is for sequences occurring in time before the present narrative. "He stepped onto the deck he had built three years ago."

Hope that clears it up.

>>10019037
Not really. That's a run-on sentence.

>>10019037
>It's meant we've only ever had to accommodate a trickle of travellers, even during our busiest times.

>>10019054
If you want that to be past-present, I suggest using the verb "would." "We would accommodate them" or "We would have to accommodate them"

>>10019064
>>10019045
Ok, thanks, so the current tense is just "past", right?

>>10019054
Wait, "we've" is we have.

Is your story present-tense or past-tense?

>>10018889
Thanks! But what gives this a Spanish vibe? I'm a white Canadian.
>>10018892
Crawfish is the American term. Notice that I wrote "favour", not "favor". You're right about the mice though. I did chase out mice in the early fall and never saw them again, so maybe this protagonist will have to kill them when they come back.

>>10019086
Don't need to provide story, just wanna know about that specific sentence.

>>10019101
You don't have to give details of the story, but I still need to know if it is written in present or past tense. Trust me, that makes all the difference.

Throw shade and I'll show you what time it is
I am a sundial

>>10019322
That'd be a pretty good rap line

>>10019374
It is

>>10017996
It... it was meant to be serious. The meme was meant to be a bone to be thrown for recognition points with 4chan.
I guess it didn't work out too well.

bump

>>10017768
greatly appreciated

>>10020577
Was just about to say that I couldn't get to it today, but have the day off tomorrow, so I'll check it out in the morning. Wanted some extra time to compare drafts.

>>10020683
I look forward to it.
I must admit I've been checking this page rather religiously.
Thanks again.

What's a better explanation of QM to put in a YA novel?

>“But he was wrong though,” Eve said, not really hearing Nate's retort. “More and more evidence popped up that the universe really was that weird. For example, Werner Heisenberg calculated that if you could narrow down where a particle is to a very teeny tiny area, the speed and direction it was moving in would get even fuzzier. Later, he proved it by shining a beam of light through this slit he could built that he could control the width of. Initially when he made the slit thinner the ray of light that came through was thinner as well, but when he narrowed it to a certain point, the only light that could come through was passing through a really narrowly defined area. Because its location was so precise the angle of the moving light particles became really fuzzy, and the glow on the wall actually got wider rather than thinner! It was exactly what he predicted!”

>“But he was wrong though,” Eve said, not really hearing Nate's retort. “More and more evidence popped up that the universe really was that weird. For example, there's these two crystals scientists use to in experiments called β-baruim borate and icelandic spar. Both of them split light beams in half but they don't do it the same way. When you send a single particle of light – a photon – through the first one, that particle will actually split into two smaller identical photons. If you send a single photon through the second however, then depending on what direction it goes in, it will have a certain chance of coming out of one of two different directions. The same photon going in from one direction could have a 50/50 chance of coming out of either, but if you turn the crystal a quarter of a way around, the same photon will have a 100% chance of coming out of one of them. It turns out if you split a photon with the β-baruim borate and then send each one through a different piece of icelandic spar no matter how you turn the crystals they'll always take the same turn, even though it's supposed to be random!”

Is this fine?

Lee drew the sword from the corpse. There was shinning silver in his eyes that things were going to be different from then on, better, but he didn’t know where else to go from there.
He stepped back, and almost tripped upon Garret’s corpse, steel cuirass clunking to his boot. Lee turned gasping and saw down the hill of bodies that created the hill he was standing on. There was blood and flies stretching all over, and he wondered in that moment if it was the right thing to be standing there. He bit a lip and returned the sword in its place.
Suddenly – a hand came up and grabbed him, from the place of the sword’s rest came up a gnarled green hand. Lee let out a yelp as the hand of a corpse stretched out to grab his gloves instead; Lee loosened himself from the grip and found himself tumbling down the hill of bodies, and all the way to the river of red and viscera at the bottom.
There was a splash, and Lee found himself submerged in complete translucent red. All was glowing, and as he looked down his eyes popped open when he saw the green hands of the dead reaching out to him like seaweed at the ocean floor, reaching for him, calling for him, chanting “Join us! Join us!” as they did. Lee’s eyes popped wider, the hands got closer and closer, the red of the water turned green as they got closer to him, and then – blackness.
Lee woke up sweating. He woke to the future: to shifting dunes and buildings tipped by nuclear fire and earthquake. A desert stretching miles round in the windy, sandy desert night. Little Ai sleeping by his side almost half-naked, wrapped almost child-like in her innocent greyish white hair. He shut up his panting and cuddled by her again, hoping to catch what warmth he could in the coldness of the night.
Eyes closing slowly, he felt still unsure. He felt her hands grip for his. He was not alone this time. He smiled. And all was black again.

Someone once told me I could market this to 14 year old girls. Can someone check?

https://pastebin.com/du7mp2Fg

>>9999036
Interesting idea, if kind of depressing. There also might be a way to twist that back to "normal" heaven and hell, if you're so inclined.
>good people can eventually realize that they have grown and are no longer the demons that torment them/the people they used to be. This spiritual maturity and true acceptance of themselves allows them to ascend to Heaven/purgatory, whatever the cut of your gib is
>the selfish think they're super great, but this ends up making things worse because they continue the shitty behavior they had in life. Now they have an eternity to deal with their actions catching up to them at some point, and given enough time everything they do will eventually come back to bite them

bump

>>10020916
>>10021021
>>10021163

Crit before asking!

>>10020786
Okay, read through it and took notes, and then spent about a half an hour lining the drafts up and trying to find some of the changes you made. For the most part, they work. Some of the real narrative killers are gone and you fleshed out areas without tripping up the story anymore. With the story itself, again, I like what you're doing, but I think you're only about halfway there. It's a "is this dude going nuts?" tale where you're trying to put the reader through a bunch of really odd, offputting situations that gets their nerves going and, if you do it right, makes them feel as crazy as the narrator does. Here's what I think is preventing that.

(And I gotta say ahead of time, I have to be careful. When you're trying to correct somebody, sometimes you're just telling them to write like you do.)

General stuff:

>easy on the introspection
It seems like writers usually feel isolated, so early stories are usually about isolation and alienation, which means most of the narration tends to be the protagonist's insights on what's going on. I don't think people realize how hard this is to make compelling, especially when it's first person. What usually happens is that the narrator way, way over explains the situation or provides details that just don't need to be there. You have to trust your reader. There's a lot of "as though" and "perhaps" and "I decided" that basically do the mental work for the reader, and where's the fun in that?

>>10022564

>get to the point
This is a little harder to explain, but it's similar to the introspection thing. Don't always think that in order for story to be properly paced, it has to have a certain amount of "meat" to it. You set the pace once you start writing, don't be afraid of making it too short, because there's way more danger in making it too long, and at least a shorter story won't bore people. You'll find that a lot of the fun in writing is in how many different ways you can consolidate thoughts and get them across even more effectively. And to prove that you can do this just fine, the little redux of the night's events towards the end of the story is just that. I know you meant it as a quick summary, to show it was happening again, but it almost works like a lean, more effective version of the opening, minus maybe 20/30%.

>work on subtlety
Again, similar to the other two, and can mainly be improved by just reading and writing more. It's always better to suggest things to the reader and find interesting ways of doing it, rather than being really specific, or worse, telling them what to think. Things like; "he settled on the station the radio was tuned to, which was AM static." Just say something like "radio static came out of the bus speakers. He took his hand off the dial and kept driving." I can't emphasize this enough, especially when you're trying to unnerve the reader. They're creeped out most by things they find out for themselves.

I'll get into the specific things next.

>>10022564
>>10022571
It's true. Writing that's too specific can read like stereo instructions and bore the reader. I fear this. I suppose I have a vision in my head and want to report it as I see it, though to leave details out, or to be vague in some instances so the reader can build the world rather than me constructing it for them, is something I'm aware of and aiming for. in my writing.

>Introspection
I suppose my favorite stories are comprised of isolated protagonists. I'm thinking of Thomas Ligotti and Kafka, who I think are quite heavy on introspection, but they do it beautifully.
But yes, doing the mental work for the reader isn't good. I see how the story could possibly cancel out the stewing of information in the readers head because I'm sharing too many anxieties and possibilities, some of which don't pertain to the story.

>get to the point
Yes. I want to attempt something that's minimal, or at least feels minimal compared to how I normally write. In the same vain as Hemingway who was very simple, thus creating space for the reader to dream. I think all good writers do this. It's hard to not include thoughts and feelings because my stories aren't put together ahead of time, so when I'm writing them I'm on the ride too, prospecting. That is one of the joys of writing for me. I suppose this is why various drafts are important so I can remove myself from the story a bit more.

>work on subtlety
Yes, and sort of getting back to what I was saying, I'm trying to create something that is 'up in the air' in a sense so people have to look and find out what it is as it plummets. I have failed to do so but it is a goal of mine.

I've internalized your points, I think for the better.
I look forward to the next part.

>>10022571
Specifics:

>Lenny on the roof
This was the only part of the story that just didn't work on any level. I think it was mostly because the physical space involved was so vague and out of left field that I swore the dude must be having a vision or something, and if he was, there was no indication of it. How is the narrator supposed to see a man on a roof, in the dark, past the tops of a bunch of trees, from inside a bus, and then recognize it as an individual person, and then see that he has a folder, and THEN read the expression on his face? I get that this is where the switcheroo with creepy Lenny and not so creepy Lenny happens, but there has to be a more effective way of doing this. Don't worry though, this is exactly what other drafts are for. Experiment if it gets difficult. You'll come up with something better and be amazed it was so awkward to begin with.

>character motivation
It gets really tricky here. This is what people are talking about when they discuss the difference between plot and character driven stories. I'm not sure I trust that the narrator is making decisions (examining the bottle, following the man off the bus even if he had to go that way, showing the bus driver the paper) that he would make, based on what little we know about him. For example, I've only taken a bus a few times in my life, but it seems like people who do stay pretty detached from what's going on around them. Not that this man has to, and though he's curious about what's going on, what says that he would go out of his way to get more involved with this weird stuff, other than because the plot says that he has to? You don't have to expressly say at the beginning "I investigate weird stuff on buses" or something like that, it comes back to that subtlety thing. This is where writing gets fun. You'll discover a part of the character you didn't even know was there originally.

>>10022722
Smaller things:

>wolf, porcupine, snow
It's goofy as it is, at least with people saying the words out loud all the time. If there's anything more going on with the three words that I didn't pick up on, then that's another thing, but that means that another reader could miss it too. If it's weird for weirdness' sake, you can still work in the images of the wolf, porcupine, etc. without saying the words themselves, and have it come off as a little more bizarre. Maybe the images on a piece of paper? I don't want to suggest things for you.

>let words relax a little
Though you're not nearly as bad about it as some people are, and more reading (I'm actually curious to know what you read/have read) will solve it, words like "beheld", "demonic", and "psychotic" are pretty ineffective because they've been beat to death everywhere else. There's a good rule of thumb that if you've read something somewhere else, don't repeat it. Try new combinations of words. You actually pull off a good line towards the end with basic words that demonstrates this real well; "There is always something strange around the corner, it's always familiar, and always has eyes or a surface." You have to be careful about getting too faux poetic about it, but the line is one of the most effective in the story because it uses old words in new ways, without an obvious effort to sound literary.

>the title
Honestly, I don't think the title of the story is that effective. It seems a little overwrought. "Madness" would be better, but it's kind of basic and run down. If you do decide to change it, know that the title is a really useful tool that a lot of people overlook. It's usually the first thing the reader sees, and not only gives them their first impressions, but can suggest an important dimension to the story that isn't specified in the story itself. Like the current title could suggest that he's crazy all along, or that this is the recipe for craziness, and this would work, but the wording itself is a little stuffy. On top of that, never, ever mention the title or parts of the title in the text like you do; "something other than this algorithm of madness..." It sounds like there should be a rimshot after it.

>>10022729
But anyway, don't take any of this to mean that you're "not a good writer", because there's no such thing. If you're determined enough and legitimately love words and storytelling, you'll get better just through self-criticism, but it definitely speeds things along when somebody can point out bad habits. You have to keep reading and writing though, and try to stay away from genre literature like horror, fantasy, science fiction for a while if you mostly read those. I'm not saying read only the most difficult literary fiction you can find, but it helps to be exposed to art that was made because it had to be made to save the person making it, rather than something escapist.

You seem really open to all of this, so best of luck man. You will get better.

>>10022729
>Wolf, Porcupine, Snow
I used a noun generator to find those words because they don't matter, yet the narrator thinks they do. This is more or less how I approach things.
The only instance of one of the words pertaining to the story outside of the piece of paper is when it starts snowing (a small line I snuck in), which is supposed to reflect synchronicity which is often paired with the onset of schizophrenia. I didn't expect people to notice this, as possibly the narrator didn't even notice.
The meaninglessness of the words pertains to a the concept that language, at it's roots, is useless. I could've made the note say something clear, a sentence which gave direction thus leading the narrator further towards something hopeful and meaningful for him. But I don't think this is how language works. The stupidity of those three words, reflects how I see the stupidity of something that "makes sense." In an abstract way, this ties in with the man who doesn't speak English. And when he finally does speak English, he informs the narrator that language means "Absolutely nothing."
In our daily lives we struggle to find meaning, or if not find meaning, we struggle to go from A to B, and I think this is hard for many people seeing as how the world is confusing and there are no constants. Everything is unavoidably repetitive, even if you do something you think is different, thus one of the last lines about thinking he will find something new, but it's always the same thing. (this is my own empirical experience of course).

>>10022738
I actually spend a lot of time with philosophical texts as well as fiction. Besides that I read whatever I can find.
I'm a big Samuel Beckett fan *breathes heavily*

Thanks for your help.
Yeah I'll continue writing and reading.
I'm excited to see where it will go now that I will consciously approach it differently.
I'll miss you, anon!

>>10022786
I completely agree. The only problem is, I don't think the story says this in a compelling, dramatic way, and finding a better tailored group of three words might help (keep "snow" though, if you're going to work it into the theme of the story). Don't use random anything.

Also, just so it doesn't feel like this is a one-way thing, this >>10010860 was me. It's just as jacked up as everybody else's. We're all learning.

Bumping >>10020916

I just want to know which one to go with

How do you write when you are an autistic neet and don't understand how normal people act and think?

>>10023051
why do you neet to know?

It's always been one my secrets dreams to become a writer. I'd appreciate if you would read this short scene I wrote and share your thoughts

>>10023385
Kept expecting a punchline, so that's probably not a good sign? Decently written, but pretty cliché. Focus on writing longer pieces.

I just shit this out. It's been a while since I've really written anything. I guess it's a poem but it's in that run-on prose style that I'm not sure I like for poetry so probably will be rewritten.

“Sorry, I am making a mess of this. I do not know how to cut open a mango.”

This is, of course, what you told me, while making a mess of a mango,
on a stony beach far north near the end of the world, in a place where no mango
belongs but we had bought a pair at the last grocery that had them in stock and
they had sat wrapped in plastic at the bottom of the lunch box until now when it
was time to snack and now you were sitting there, the mango peeled, and its juices
having dribbled all over your windbreaker and among the morass of mango flesh a few
neat cubes and I was reminded then why I had agreed to go with you, first hold your hand,
and delighted at the taste of your lips and so on and so forth all in the glowing sunlight of fond
remembrance and now knew what I had always known that it was going to end soon
because I had made a mess of all things simply by not knowing
and it was a fucking mango on a stony beach of a northern sea that never knew
clear waters or a still surface,

and of course I imagined it all from a desk in an apartment I was renting at the time
and I was the one mucking up the mango and tried to see it from the eyes of you who
do not exist but I could have given you the features of countless who have, (or perhaps now had existed since having not spoken to you and not seen you in a long time your existence becomes doubtful until contact again),
like hair
as brightly red as the mango’s flesh is an orange-yellow,
and eyes
a painterly mix of blues
like that the endless tumult of brine on a rare clear sky day, and whoever else’s features I could simply
mix together, from a keyboard atop a desk they no longer sell but should

And I cannot even imagine a path that would have led to me and you
sitting cozy at the tent’s entrance, while a wind howls in the only way that it can howl
in such empty vastness, an expression of that impossible emptiness that yet murmurs
with life, and it gives me the sense of the sky breathing down upon me.

I just ate a mango and it was delicious.

>>10023385
is this fanfiction for that one anime?

Haven't written in a while, just wrote this while still without internet in Florida.

It's a story about a time traveling child molestor and I'm mainly writing it to kill time. /crit/ threads have always seemed to be appreciative of my work, so let's see if I still got that magic, baby!

>>10023051
Garcia Marquez, whether you like him or not, is revered, but something like One Hundred Years only has dialogue once every few pages, and it's usually a singular quote. There's probably occasional short conversing, but not often.

>>10025148
I'd read this. Pretty good.

>>10003962
>10003962
this

So can you tell me a little about yourself?

Well, I'm 26, five foot 9, 160 pounds... I like classical music... But I think the most important thing about me, the most relevant, is that I don't exist.

You don't exist?

Yes, that's right.

Could you elaborate?

Well... I have a birth certificate, a drivers license, a bank account... I'm enrolled to vote... but I don't actually exist. I'm not a person, not real. I'm made up.

If you're not a person, why would you need a drivers license?

I'm in a key demographic, you see? It looks good for me, and the others, to appear to be living a normal, happy, successful life. It evens things up a little I guess.

There are others like you?

Oh yes. Lots.

And why does it look good? That you live a normal life, as you say.

For all sorts of reasons. Crime, poverty, stocks... there are all sorts of problems people have these days, you know? It would be good if these things weren't such a big deal. It makes a lot of sense to just create people who don't have these problems, people who have it made. If you have four people and one of them is obese that's 25%. But if you create six more people who are happy and healthy, the figure drops to 10%. It's a much more reasonable amount, don't you think?

I can see the logic. Do feel that's an improvement?

Definitely. I definitely think this trend will continue. I think in the future there will be a large proportion of the population who don't exist. I think in ten years or so you'll meet people, or there will be people who you've known, or people you've worked with, who are made up. There might be someone you've known you're entire life who turns out to have never existed at all. That will be an improvement in my mind.

You feel that would be better?

Yes. Yes, I do.

>>9993760
>listening to guns 'n roses

>>10025148
made me laugh

>>10025148
Very good. The only weak line was "answered on acknowledgement" line.

>>10025148
Tends to ramble I think, but I guess the way it switches from one subject to the next feels seemless. Everything seems to be grammatically correct from what I can see, but I ain't no expert. Grammar wise nothing bothered me except that "-,". Are you allowed to do that?

Also here's a continuation of mine.
>>10021127
Someone once told me I could market my work to like 12-14 year old girls (memory's getting fuzzy) and I need someone to critique me for it.

Link:
https://pastebin.com/rqF3NMZW

A blunted whistling is all he has been hearing from his left ear. All day. For three days, actually. It's that fucking self awareness, again. Not the whistling, but why he can't yawn. Usually it takes a good deep yawn to clear the ear. It's not tinnitus, just a regular fullness. When the pressure inside you fails to equalize with what's on the outside of the drum, creating that bubbly feeling.

All it would take is one good yawn, and he has been yawning all day long. No five minutes have passed without a yawn. And yet the whistling persists.

It's that fucking self awareness. Every time he feels an impulse, a relieving drive coming from deep inside his stomach, right up the esophagus, gushing up to free itself in an almost orgasmic succession of muscle spasms, he fucks it up. Just as he's midway the process, mouth wide open, he suddenly becomes self aware and that's enough to kill the whole thing. A momentary thought of rising expectations and of the need to not fail, and it's over. The damage cannot be undone.

It's kinda like during his first times of having sex, when his anxieties kicked in and he became suddenly aware of himself, his position, his partner, of the realness of the situation, it was enough to suddenly vanish all the fire inside him. One moment you're a beast tearing apart the flesh of your prey. Not with teeth or nails but by fingertips, sunk deep into their pale, soft curves. And the next second you're a fish out of the water. A blank staring retard with a mouth wide open. The door is open but nobody's home.

"Is everything okay? Why'd you stop?"

And now to top it off, not only does he have a whistling ear, he has to relive that blank staring retard with a mouth wide open scene every time he fucks up yet another yawn. If god exists, he's one cruel motherfucker of a sadist. But then again isn't that what the bible warns us about anyway?

It's funny how the mind works; he could find the entire meaning of his life - his desires, fears, successes, failures, destiny, EVERYTHING - encapsulated in a cold induced ear fullness. It was always like that with him. He could connect the dots and extrapolate his lack of worth from even the smallest of things, like when he mumbled up a "Hello" or didn't generate a witty enough comeback (he was always bad at those). It's like he secretly knew the meaninglesness of his life enough to be obsessed with pulling a meaning out of everything, anything. It didn't even matter that most of the time it amounted to nothing more than self pity and self hate. At least that way he was something, had a clear role to fulfill. In the grand theatre of life, it's better to play the loser, than to....Wait, I feel it coming.
Oh shit
oh shit
oh shit
oh shit
don't fuck this up
don't fuck this up.

Fuck.

Another unlived orgasmic spasm. At least this doesn't give you blue balls.

Memory—immortal atoll in the roiling of history
in the swirling of matter, the great grey sea,
which impervious stands to the stuttering surf,
in skirmish with stealthy decay.
Why does time not rot the meagre forts
that mind can build?
Why do spears engirdle rocks and
stark, petrified tree?
Who lives here to nurture,
to nourish unnourished,
to repair the rages of history,
to fight encroaching rot,
to ripen fruit, to burst its flesh,
to splinter pod and seed
the soil,
inseminate with nectar
and bring forth life again?
Who sets the work of antiquity to a
dank, infested order:
life-in-itself, a neighbourly jaunt
with death, and then a resurrection?
Because memories die too; they pale and expire,
their lifeblood seeps through streams
and veins; they feed remembrance
and medicate the constitution—
the pattern of life and death
imprinted on the body:
death in miniature
coiled in every living pore.
But lifeblood flows backwards
against the laws of nature,
against the nature of life,
and restores what is dead
and rotted to empty,
fragile husk washed by
the roiling of history;
replaces rocks forgotten;
regrows dead trees;
restores the spear palisade
from the greying depths of memory.

>>10025586
Anon I don't give good critique probably but I just wanted to tell you that I liked it a lot. Is it part of a longer story?

The PI jumped off his seat about half as high as his heart did. Coming to the door, he recognized the client as a Mr.Jacobs and let him in offering coffee and other pleasantries. After politely refusing the client sat down to discuss his situation.
“I can’t thank you enough for helping this old man” he said in a raspy sigh. The client was indeed elderly, about 70 by the PI’s estimation. He wore an old suit, with a caramel primary scheme complemented by a red shirt. His complexion was expectedly withered alongside thick glasses for cataracts. As he sat however his posture remained forthright and steady, his gaze forward and perfectly level betraying an odd clarity in such an otherwise wizened man.
“I apologize for being late. I’ve always been poor with appointments and now I find myself with so many bad habits flooding back in. I hope this meeting will allow us to chart a plan ahead for our predicament Mr. Richardson.”
“Of course, it would. I’m sure I can provide any needs you require. I remember you mentioned something about a stepson.”
“My daughter has been married to an executive for quite some time. He’s a busy man, which has left her lonely and often alone in her house. Nonetheless, she’s loyal and has been satisfied with her husband coming back being a joyous celebration rather than necessarily routine. However, I’ve been informed by one of my sons, a hedonist, that this man who I’ve given my daughter away to has been present in seedier corners than I can allow.” The man’s gaze grew more stern and concerned as he said this. The thought of infidelity in his daughter’s marriage clearly meant a large check in the PI’s bank account.

>>10025586
This is a very intriguing interview. Keep it up.

Apt #469 Nov 2015- July 2016
Excited to thrive.
Rolling on in
Beat up floors,
Garish paint
Gone roommate.
Paranoia loneliness
CN tower views
Before it was cool.
Pigeons in the window
She said it's unhealthy
Struck out first time
It goes on and on.
Sun shines on walls
Warms face
Tripped so hard.
Violent vomits
Put in work
Stretching on floor
To tribal drums
Coughing neighbors
Uoft girls laughter
Sounds like dogs
Roommate still gone.
Stress insanity
Writing nonsense
Procaptialist texts
4fa frenzy
Ironic bigotry
Dulled sensitivity
Can't remember their faces
Was I with any of them?
Old new years
Dancing youths
Out of place
Roommate lost,
And found
Woozy walking
Joint burns to fireworks.
What a way.
Red underwater kitchen
Sinking into blue couch
Still can't break through
Late mornings
Felt too much.
Long blue coat
Hoodies and ambivalence
Dances in underwear
Stress grips heart
Will I die here
Knives sharper than mind
Time rolls
Red hair
Dance in suit with youths
Burning parks
Don't fit in
Walks by full restaurants
Harness contempt.
People all around
Next step cancelled
Trip like balls
Wiggling walls
Dynamic paintings
Static world lives
Breakthrough failed.
Here again
Conscious
Drugs and distractions
friends alive can't vibe
Work and French girls
Mundane high life
Still can't love
Pick paranoia like scab
Days disappeared
Nothing happened.
Condition madness
Structure frays
Can you get out
Stop thought
Hurtle streets
Sardine subway
Spend and earn
Sun is out
Warm views
Night dances
Universe will provide
Last night
We're you mistaken,
Why leave this sterile place
Cool space
Owned pace.
Will we survive?
Unknown emotions
Like oily bubbles
Felt in throat
Cautions optimist
What's next?
Apt #47

>>10027098
So at some point you switch tenses: you start off with "was" and by the 11th paragraph the "dawning IS aloof." Pick one and stick to it. Also, dial the language back a bit, especially if you're trying to write for 12 year olds. In some cases, it seems like you don't even understand what the words you're using mean. "Aloof" for instance means "not friendly or forthcoming, distant." Even in a metaphorical sense, I don't see how a morning could be "aloof with activity." And then there's your diction: the "of" could be removed from "was of no exception," and it would read better to a contemporary audience. You hit the alliteration too hard as well: "drab dribble," "buds bid their blooming," "puppy pouncing paupers." That's all too much.

And then when the narrator starts talking about her boyfriend. It's like what adult men imagine what young boys imagine what young girls think of their boyfriends. And what kind of 14 year old accuses said boyfriend of having an affair?

Not saying this is awful, but it needs a lot of work. As of now, the school dance backdrop is a fairly generic one, but relatable. But if this bitchy snob is your main character, then I can't see it doing too well unless she starts to have a change of heart early on. But seriously, polish the writing and I think you might have something that a publisher would be interested in

These sugary vows, these whispers of frosting, these saccharine confessions, this is not love. One night you two are cuddling on the bed trying to give each other diabetes with compliments and in the next day the house knives will have to be hidden if the divorce papers take longer to get ready. When I was a kid, my father had this dog that started to get all weak and sickly. He takes it to the vet, he examines it and says a maggot must have laid eggs in the dog's butt. The baby maggots have crawled up, now they've started to grow, and eventually they're gonna eat the dog alive from the inside. He says it should be put to sleep, because it's an old dog anyway. But father won't do it. He takes the dog home, he puts it on the bed, he reaches up into the dog, picking out the maggots with his finger, one by one. It takes him all night, but he gets every last one. That dog outlived my father. That's love, Sam.

>>10028082
>These sugary vows, these whispers of frosting, these saccharine confessions, this is not love.
Then switches over to
>When I was a kid, my father had this dog that started to get all weak and sickly. He takes it to the vet, he examines it and says a maggot must have laid eggs in the dog's butt.
Don't include high functioning verbosity when it isn't needed , unless your character is meant to come from a faux bourgeois background.

>>10028082

Oooh.

The first couple sentences feel a little contrived, but everything after "when I was a kid" is very well done.

I would suggest starting with "When I was..." and then afterwards going with the "These sugary..." but I would not stretch the sugar imagery quite as far.

Very nice for the majority of the paragraph.

Most days, Tom Ames begins all over again. He lives all the way up to where he is now from someplace he came from. It’s as if each night a helicopter drops him somewhere at the base of the same mountain, and he will only wake when he reaches the summit.

Sometimes that means a slog, all the way back from the foothills of a little yellow room with lace curtains and a white bassinet in Bethesda.

Sometimes it means just a thousand paces from a sidewalk in Times Square where three dimensional projections of humpback whales swim over childlike tourists, jaded commuters. It is as if a film is compressed into a series of still images and played for him while he rides in the hold of a ship. And then his eyes open and he’s right back in the Washington Heights where he belongs.

Miranda once asked him to try the new interface and he refused. He doesn’t want to be mapped, doesn’t want to know why he’s the way he is. It’s that part of Wood that lives in him and that he will not acknowledge.

Sometimes, somewhere on the mountain, he begins when Wood rolls up his knapsack and declares hoarsely that he will not sell his soul to the techno-Satan. Parents, more amused than alarmed, declare that he’s too used to the soft life to do the things he claims he will do and let him go, return to their morning scones and discuss just what they will do about their oldest cat.

Ames suspects that as in many daily commutes, this repeated episode passes unremembered by him most times. Going up a mountain, hands in pockets and head down, there are stretches of a climb that will not be remembered at the peak.

Today he begins in an auditorium just outside the capitol in D.C. A girl his age comes stepping to an antiquated microphone stand.

There is a word- the first time this word will be useful.

Vivvyseppulcher the judge says,

Vivieseppoltcher she repeats, “Part of speech?”

“Noun”

“Definition?”

“The act or instance of burying someone alive”

She knows all of this, she just wants to drag out the part where she stares off into the distance, drawing out the process by which Tom feels the weight of invisible stones landing all around his feet, creeping up his torso, drawing closer to their target.

“Language of origin?”

“Latin,”

Her fingernails are painted ice blue, the tips connect with her thumb one by one in line with the syllables as she sounds out the word-

Viveesappelture

“V-I-V-I-S-E-P-U-L-T-U-R-E,” and she raises her hands.

“Vivisepulture,”

The act of burying one alive.

If only to be able to truly begin again.

Is it bad to have thesaurus.com constantly open in your browser when writing?

critique this!
BRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPFFFTFFFTPFPFAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP

>>10027924
Thanks for the long critique anon, I didn't expect someone to go that far for me - thank you.

Was it entertaining at least?

>>10028282
I'm a sucker for near-future stuff and I liked this. Got a bit confused when the characters were sounding out the word 'vivisepulture' but I suppose it would look better and make more sense if italicized or encased in quotation marks.

This is something I wrote not too long ago. It's about 2,000 words long.

https://pastebin.com/md33UNs6

>>10028577
Yes, but it's a necessary stepping stone to finding your style. Trying to look up synonyms to make your writing more colorful doesn't really add anything but verbosity, but expanding your vocabulary is a necessary part of becoming a better writer.

>>10027331
bump?

>>10030187
Virtue signalling

A 300 excerpt of the first chapter. I want to know if I should continue or If I should give up. to lay it on me.

https://pastebin.com/FZvGrH00

Bump

>>10030331
?

>>10028282
Rad, pro quality shit. Keep going anon, you're too good for this place

The ring of the rickety doors being slammed open sounded through the public house. For a brief moment men with faces shrouded by darkened, twirling smoke from engraved birch pipes of Turkish tobacco gave a quizzical glance toward the direction of the sound, only to avert their gaze back to whatever preoccupation they had engaged themselves in. From the doors emerged a young lad, but of a large and domineering stature. His stern hands were adorned with lineaments of hardship, which also seemed to appear in droves on his brow and cheeks which implied a history of deep contemplation, all of which seemed to retract and contradict from his youthful nature. Dark brown hair sat in curls on his scalp, his features sharp and distinguished under the light of the gas lamp, underneath the bulb of his rounded nose lay a clean shaven mandible, strong and well built which only seemed to further the lads handsome and masculine exterior. The most notable feature of the lad, however, was his ruddy complexion and sunken, calculating gaze. His complexion indicated he was either in a state of perpetual boyish giddiness or vexation and his glance gave nothing away, which is very unusual to see in a young lad. His eyes rested nonchalantly, refusing to give away any symptom of emotion he may have had, and so this young lad was a hard judge of character.

The only thing that lay apparent when he entered the public house was that he was already in a drunken stupor and ardently, in an almost effortless manner glided through the stuffy, polluted atmosphere to the bartender amidst the whoops and hollers of Crimean Tatars and drunken soldiers. He exchanged brief pleasantries with the bartender and after lapping up a refreshing sup of his draught, he placed his weight on his elbow and upon generating a pipe from his raggedy soldiers jacket, lit a match and took a long winded pull before briefly exhaling tranquilly. He assumed a most masculine stance, and underneath his wrinkled brow took a predatory glance around the room, til his eyes met that of a small statured dragoon with neat epaulettes and a tidy unscathed uniform. 'Probably one of those Petersburg dandies' he pondered to himself in a most superior manner. The small statured man hastily averted the young lads predatory gaze and continued playing draughts with his companion. 'He shall make for a fine target tonight', thought the young lad once more, cracking a wry smile before taking another long winded drag of his pipe, relishing in the thought of emasculating the young aristocrat.

>>10031741
Certain sentences are runny, but overall it's well paced and the imagery specific.

but why romanticize a homosexual rapist?

Since November, more than two dozen women—of all ages, but mostly in their twenties—had approached me in restaurants, theaters, and stores to apologize for not voting or not doing more to help my campaign. I responded with forced smiles and tight nods. On one occasion, an older woman dragged her adult daughter by the arm to come talk to me and ordered her to apologize for not voting—which she did, head bowed in contrition. I wanted to stare right in her eyes and say, “You didn’t vote? How could you not vote?! You abdicated your responsibility as a citizen at the worst possible time! And now you want me to make you feel better?” Of course, I didn’t say any of that.
These people were looking for absolution that I just couldn’t give. We all have to live with the consequences of our decisions.

Bump

Así acabó aquel día, fecha febril en medio de la ciudad, una urbe maldita donde estaban almacenados sus habitantes estos que luchaban por sobrevivir y convivir, en donde la supervivencia dependía todos los días de una vida miserable, en medio de un sistema miserable y asquiento donde la vida de una sola persona no importaba -ni a mi, ni a usted, ni a vuestra merced- a nadie; especialmente nadie podía ayudarlos a ellos, ni ellos podrían ayudarse a sí mismos, lugar maldecido por dios donde la gente se apiñaba en barrios insalubres, llenos de enfermedades, carencias, hambre y miseria; donde unos pocos disfrutaban de todas las riquezas que le extraían a los demás sin que ellos se dieran cuenta. En medio de todo eso, una pequeña niña, a mitad de la miseria, barro y pobreza, sale a la calle, una calle llena de tierra y aguabarro, para olvidar los problemas que escuchaba; sus padres peleando porque descubrieron a su hijo -su hermano mayor- robarle unas cosas al vecino. En medio de todo esto, la niña solo podía acariciar la cara de su perrito, mientras un globo -uno rosado- pasaba por encima de ellos. Mañana será mejor, se repetía.

>>10032118
If it makes you feel any better Hilldawg, you totally should have won.

>>9990970
I just wrote this spontaneously. I sort of want to be an author one day, but I don't really enjoy writing and I struggle with self discipline. What do you guys think? Any ideas on where to take the story from here?


Elias fells ill. There is a puddle of garbage inside his stomach. Green, bubbly, slurry shit fermenting to the surface in forms of burps. He brings a fist down on his torso, commanding a phantom hand to yank the vile shit and cast it out the window. But the parasite shrieks and ferments more poison in retaliation.

I wrote a song, I'm not a musician though so I can't sing it.

I go to work day by day.
And I try to work and make my way.
And I try to find some time to play.
But things never seem to go my way.
So I just take it day by day.
But I don't think I can live this way.

I know the problem is me.
I can see that plainly.
But it take some courage to see.
And that seems to drain me.

Another day at work, and I'm making the same mistakes.
Another customer, and I'm seeing the same mistakes.
A spineless hypocracy, and I'm getting angry.
I'm staring truth in the face, and even that won't change my pace.

How many times can I fuck up, before time runs out?
Is there even anything? I'm really starting to doubt.
That Gods got a plan for everything, if thats true should I even try?
If he's got it figured out, should I even say goodbye?

I'm tired, I'm tired, I'm tired
Of trusting time.
I'm tired, I'm tired, I'm tired
Of hearing, "You'll be fine."
This fucking life is mine.
And it's time to change my line.
I'm working overtime.

I'm thinking ahead,
I'm going early to bed,
I'm filling my bank,
I'm even losing some weight,
I'm making some right choices,
and its leading to more.
I'm looking to take a step,
and I'll open the door.

>>10030883
I take it its shit?

>>10032118
I fucking hate Hillary Clinton so much.

>>10028577
>tfw I never actively improved my vocabulary at any point in school but when I finally decided to take an AP literature class I found out I actually had a great vocabulary just from reading books and playing tabletop RPG's of various genre's.

It feels like I cheated. However I've never been able to use a word I've learned through study in creative writing. You can get the word "ire" on a vocabulary sheet and read the definition that it's its literally just a synonym for anger but replacing anger with ire is just retarded, it doesn't have any rhetorical or contextual meaning within your experience, it has as much value as reading a math equation that you've never used to solve a problem.

Having discourse with a lot of different people, through spoken word and writing, seems to be the most valuable way to learn how to express ideas and talk to people.

The door opened and he entered and then the door closed. Walking through starless space luminescent footprints mark the course of his reasonless wanderings. The heat of a distant spark catches his attention and he reaches forward with infinite hands capturing that prismatic phenomenon and he uses his fingers to explore it's shape and it's form and he uses his fingers because like all mortal creatures, he too was born blind.

>>10030883
Pls respond

>>10030883
Holy damn sort your tenses out

>>10034858
Noted. May I ask where the issue begins?

>>9990974
>clanked from his destrier
I don't like this, is he dismounting or walking away?
>while the village does look spooky
Spooky is an odd choice of words
>and he panicked, saying things like: “unhand me” and “you’ll die for this”
this is just awkward

I stopped there

>>10025635
I'm a /k/ 'nam-boo man.
>>9999889
You sure it's lay, I thought it would be lie in that case. Yeah I tend to mix up my tenses in english, just so easy.
How was that not showing, I thought it was good that I was showing it was actual music with a guitar and drums instead of wub wub shit, plus it's a reference. Maybe the first and second sentence need to be shortened but I don't see how the third needs to.

I don't think this deserves its own thread:
>and from I, came the first of you
Is this proper English grammar? The 'I' bothers me, it sounds wrong.
I know the rule to distinguish between 'you and I' and 'you and me', but it doesn't apply to the greentext sentence.

On the property, back when the side roads were all still unpaved and the polls down Ocher carried telegraph lines. Twenty acres of beans and rotating cash crops was just enough to feed his family and keep him independent, but it happened when he was an old man. His wife had already passed and rumor has it that two of his three kids had died in childhood. No one knows what happened to the last one. Grieving for the sum of them. One evening he was out in his barn when he was overcome by a stroke or heart attack and dropped dead on the spot. The lamp he was carrying fell and the flame got out. The whole thing went up. Normally a still corner of the town, everyone on the road walked to where the orange light and smoke were. They formed half rings of spectators and watched the little village engine called in from the north go to work. When the flames were snuffed the smoke just hung there and the crowd thinned out.

The lot was silent for years afterwards. Kids broke what was left, burning down the rest of the house two years later. Some say they tried to start a campfire in the living room and it got out of control, others say that it was kids being as cruel as usual.

Years later, a neighboring farm bought out the land and now everything on the lot was rows of the same cash crops the old man used to grow. The story was starting to came together: walk past the fields shortly after two in the morning and you would see the spirit of the old man walking between the bean rows, with his back to you, heading out to a barn that no longer existed. They say that he looks unusually short, that he's walking on his ankles because the man still treads the ground of fifty years prior.

The automobile took over, and in the sticks teens took to cruising around at night (gas cheaper than water) smoking dope and leaving a trail of beer cans in the street. The ghost stories of their grandparents were no longer potent enough. He was now a burnt corpse walking, surrounded by his dead children. The bean field had gone fallow and it was no more than an large, empty lot bordered by a little shack and a set of corner stores. 2 AM would see an open top coupe with five fried teenagers speeding down Ocher. "Did you know that at exactly three in the morning, if nobody else is around, you can see an old carriage stop at the tavern? It's filled with the ghosts of everybody killed on this road, and if you approach it you'll see a man in a trench coat offering you a free ride. Don't take it man, you know where that carriage is going."

>>10028282
So what's the background? Is Tom Ames dreaming? VR experience? Is he jumping into other's memories?

Here's something I typed on my phone notes while I was at the gym. Crucify me or elate me, you know how it goes.

I can't handle my own sense of self. My process of self recognition seems to follow a series of steps by which I drown out every ounce of positive gain I feel from others and smother myself in darkness to test whether or not I'll come out changed for the better. My inner dialogue all the while consists of a peanut gallery throwing down madness-scribbled paper airplanes onto the stage of this meek tragedy. Unraveling these notes which are only illuminated by the faint light of my mind's intuition brings upon the realization that atop this stage of darkness slithers something with a more dire wake.

How's that for cliche? Also, reading recommendations to combat these feelings?

please respond

>>10037625
is this pale fire

The Little Man

Observe his face:
a perpetual frown,
stained with contempt—
it is a perfected reflection
of all that he sees.

His soul
—programmed no differently than yours—
stays bent, compressed, trapped,
in a frame too small
to s t r e t c h,
to breath,
or flourish.
Unable to grow,
it only swells.

And when he sees her,
looking at him,
looking down at him,
he too looks down,
and sees the dirt.

In comes a familiar taste—
Bitter.
It twists his tongue
until only rage,
incandescent,
can anesthetize the pain.

Surely they can all see this?
It’s a thought that keeps his gaze
carefully averted,
forever.

Finding no relief,
he lies on the conveyor,
closes his eyes,
and drifts toward the terrible machine
that cuts things
much harder than bone.
It is atonement
for his sin of being born.

bump

>>9990970
Writing a Web Serial, haven't got much feedback from people who won't pull their punches.

www powersetfive wordpress com

>>10040177
Writing's solid, but maybe a little too minimalist, and I think you're fighting a battle an uphill battle with that concept. Good for what it is.

The darkness of night had long settled in and began to engulf the regimental camp, and with it too came unyielding silence: an eerie, sullen silence that all men are familiar with, tapping gently into the psyche, provoking forthcoming thoughts (fleeting as they were) of completely depraved matters. This macabre stillness is often accompanied by gloom and perverted, sickening thoughts which follow submissively alongside the alluring night, like a wicked lackey suckling meagerly on the emaciated breast of a whore struck ill with consumption. The flood gates of debauchery were occasionally interrupted by the coughing, stirring and snoring of sleeping men and this infuriated Vakha Stolytsin to no end, for he revelled in thoughts of sickness, impurity and deviance and for them to defile his sacrilege was unthinkable, arrogant and even a tad haughty. "How selfish of them" he pondered to himself. "How utterly selfish of those inconsiderate rogues."

He stirred restlessly in his sleeping bag until a brief moment of burning impulse and passion engulfed him. He silently crept out of his tent. The moon beat down most elegantly on his face which was now contorted with primordial rage, a sort of comical grimace expressive of both confusion and ire. Confusion in the sense that when he entered such a flustered state he was often puzzled by what rotten malignant growth that lay inside of him inspired one to commit immoral deeds as he so often did? The time for rational thought had long since expired and his rage someone had to be accountable for, of course, undoubtedly, someone had to bear the brunt of his frustrations.

Short poem- don't know if I should split it in two, use different words maybe?

Voice
Tattered velvet
Torn silk
She tells me her stories
I unravel
when she speaks
Eyes
Almonds
with a chocolate drop
I've got a sweet tooth
All I need is one glance

>>10041710
Wrong thread
Disregard

1/2Stephen Colbert, in one mighty flex of his trapezius muscles, exploded his formal clothes into tattered rags that dissolved into screaming flames. He gave a smile so devious, so shit-eating, so incredibly resisting of the Trumpian Regime that Amy Schumer's crusty, atrophied vagina encased with pounds of flabby fat exploded into pussyjuice despite being a multitude of miles away from the show host. He fingerpopped his glasses down the ridge of his strangely hook-shaped and Hebrew nose, gazing at the unbelievably average body of Seth Meyers.

"Are you ready to get rectally ravaged you fucking piece of shit?" Asked Colbert, flexing his chest and making his nipples turn into razor-sharp weapons of Leftist terror and rebellion. Seth Meyers nodded his head, smirking wide and cramming his hand down into his pants to massage his yoctopenis.

Stephen Colbert's mere glance at Seth Meyers pants caused the article of clothing to wither into nothingness, revealing Seth's smooth and sausage-shaped legs covered with hair and oil. Stephen dun-diddly scaboodled down to Seth's pelvis and gobbled up his schlong, bobbing his head up and down onto his manlover's spire of throbbing erect meat. And wew, did he do a good job. In his first five seconds of sucking he had already ingested five solid pounds of smegma! Soon, Seth's two round dispensers of chunky DNA sludge bursted into both treats and in cum, shooting a repulsive, slimy fluid into Colbert's mouth. He drank the semen in long, greedy swallows, savoring the salty taste of Seth's white, homemade peanut butter.

"Holy SHIT you give good blowjobs, Steve!" exclaimed Seth through his post-ejaculation haze. He was still nutting into COLBERG'S mouth as he said this. "Broffulb Flumph would be mad to know you give the best BJs and NOT Baronicus Glump!"

>>10041821
2/2
Stephen didn't hear this, as his thoughts were focused on only one thing: Seth's thick, moist, juicy, cum-shooting pipe of buttdoom. Stephen performed a majestic somersault and landed his hairy, shit-crusted ass directly onto Seth's incredible ccccoooooccccckkkkkkkk. Seth Meyer suddenly became so erect that distant galaxies exploded into massive nebulas of dark energy that would soon form the planet Morthath, which would give birth to the Zepulchrians.

Stephen bounced his flat, prolapsed ass onto Seth Meyer's cock, coating his dick in a filthy, brownish plasma that smelled like Stalin's left thumb. The erratic, sloppy speed of Seth Meyer's thrusts caused a symphony of moist, squishing sounds to resonate among the empty backstage room the loving couple resided in. Eventually, Colbert's ass could take no more pressure, and it fired off a mighty, cannonlike beam of hazel, chunky shit straight down into Mister Meyer's dickhole. Seth seized up in pain and agonizingly grimaced as his testicles swelled up into balloon-sized containers of Colbert's shit. Veins and arteries bulged around Seth's nuts as the unceasing flow of shit poured directly into his cumholders. He gave a guttural, primal scream, so incredibly loud that it shook the face of Earth, and an enormous column of shit jetted out of his nuts, sending Stephen flying into the air, poop re-entering his rectum. He was speared so thoroughly on the spire of shit that no force conceivable could remove him from the ray of doodie. The beam of fecal matter blasted Stephen through the atomosphere and into the surface of the sun. Holy shit was that nutblast powerful!

As Colbert writhed in the massive tendrils of gas flames which dissolved his body into the greater solar mass, he smiled, knowing his death would not be in vain.

"D…Dobbald Kaaaampf…" were his last words as he was assimilated into the greater force of Sol herself.

A single, salty tear rolled down Seth's cheek.

"Shrothald Cloompf…" he said in response.

Wrote a story a while back about a werewolf adventurer in a fantasy land, this is him arriving at a civilized city for the first time after having grown up a barbarian in the frozen north. How's this for setting the scene?


Wulfric wondered if he would ever get used to these cities. So many people living in one place for so long that they became part of the earth until the place itself tasted of them. He remembered when he had first come to a decently sized farming village and had been shocked by the size of the buildings and the number of people. Now that seemed like nothing compared to where he was now. Buildings of wood and stone rose multiple stories high, glass windows shining with firelight out onto the street. His ears flicked and twitched as they strained to process all the noise from around him. Hundreds of voices, the neighing and stamping of horses and grunts of oxen and the clatter of shoes upon cobblestones all blending together into a vast background hum like the rumbling of some great beast.

The smells were almost too much at first, his nose wrinkling as he tried to parse it all. Countless people living in close proximity, along with their dogs and horses and oxen and chickens and spirits alone knows what else. Then there was the food, meat and vegetables and fruits of all kind being cooked and spiced and cut and served with beer, mead, wine, vodka and more. Every scent blending together into a hurricane of information that had all been here for so long it seeped into the stone and wood of the buildings and into the very soil itself until nothing and nowhere was rid of the pervasive scent of the metropolis. He supposed it wasn't an unpleasant stink exactly, but was frustrating. Back home, on the tundra and forests of his homeland, he could find his way home by scent alone, or track prey for miles across icy hinterland. This great mess of humanity would make tracking so much more difficult than it had to be.

>>10034858
I want to know If I am fixing it correctly. Before I proceed further.

https://pastebin.com/RRv4KqCb