sample thread

[Anonymous No.14979494]

Posting your writing

[Anonymous No.14979625]

between this thread and >>14978784 it's more proof there should be a writefag general.

Also, aren't second drafts of projects supposed to be shorter? Why the fuck are mine almost always longer?

[Anonymous No.14979646]

>>14979625
Not necessarily. A second draft is just a second draft.

[Anonymous No.14979686]

“Fucking hang yourself” Milan retorted, slamming the tangled, corded phone for the 3rd time today, and wondering if it was too early too drink. No, he realized, the bar’s sole regular patron, bygone Grimley, was already here, multiple scotch and orange juices deep. The single working TV in the bar, a 30 inch CRT from the Clinton administration blasted the usual stock market woes, death counts, and riot footage.

Milan poured a beer. It was 10:30 AM.

The Rosewood Inn had seen better. Scent of aging hardwood, though long ingrained deep in Milan’s senses, would now and again swell in chorus, and when the breeze came in right would once again take him back to his youth, running among the crowded restaurant’s noisy and drunk patrons. How strange that wind was. It would occur only in the quiet moments, which were becoming more frequent, and only when Milan was feeling particularly wistful, snowballing thoughts hazing his vision. He’d find, most frequently, the transcendent moments in his mind to be the most inconsequential. Cleaning the baseboards. The hot water faucet burning his hands. His father at the end of the night, leaning over the bar, smoking a cigarette, chatting with whatever customers, too, neglected the world outside.

It was in silence that Milan would return to those quiet moments. Again, and again, and again. The passing away of time to bring him back, some 30, 40 years, to the same spot the ghosts of his memory once were. Standing where his father once did. Telling a creditor to hang himself. Drinking a warm amber at 10:30, on a Tuesday morning.

[Anonymous No.14979721]

>>14979494
I've started a journal for my thoughts. Here are some shitty samples from it.

I’m reading moby-dick during this corona induced self-isolation, I’m at the chapter with the whale skeleton in the woods. In its passage Melville quoted the eternity in a nutshell line from hamlet and it felt especially relevant(in a less than metaphysical sense), like all of us are tucked into our houses to marinate. Like our internet feeds and the news stations are our egg shelled peckings for a shed of light, our only windows.

I feel like we’re so insular in our interconnectedness, like there’s only so many branches a spider can hang its web from; so the “informed” internet goer strings themself via recommended content algoriths, like an esoteric fate programmed by google, an epistemological engine determined by businessmen. A fragile temple consisting of adjacent and skinny columns.
The feedback looping nature of meme culture is the wallpaper of these various digital sects and their nuance implies the depth of the community, how many places they pull from and the variance in them. Post post modernism is an echo chamber skull trying to clear its mind. An uneducated person on the internet is as dangerous to himself as anyone else.
I played the organ for an hour today, I try to write music, but it’s like they only come as inanimate motifs, there’s a restlessness in on the piano bench, it’s an oscillating muse that hits me like a quantum pingpong ball that suddenly rolls under the couch(god that sounds pretentious af) it’s as quick to arrive as to leave. Anyways, I like gyspsy violin music and Thelonius Monk and capt beefheart, so it all comes out as a mess anyway. Maybe I’ll include some of these clips in here somewhere.

I’m in comparison to the average programmer a luddite, but I often wonder at the ticks and idiosyncratic mistakes that are left in a piece of software. Could these human errors be the progenitors of artificial personality and therefore subjective notion and aesthetic art. Could a sociopathic pseudo consciousness exist oneday? Could a mistaken dash be a miscalculated moral, or drive in a blind eye?

I’ve always been a “recluse”, so when the white-haired and tawny-caked news anchors started instructing their viewers to “self-isolate” above a ribbon of “covid 19 has been declared a pandemic by the WHO” my understanding was “maintain”.
I feel like my best moments are lodged in my head somewhere and trying to dig themselves deeper on every revisit. They teach you in most intro to psyche courses that memories change every time you remember them, a car will change from green to grey and little details like that. As well as the fact that humans(probably most mammals) have difficulty remembering pain. Does pain change in retrograde, or is it beyond even the subconscious flux.

[Anonymous No.14979733]

>>14979686
>“Fucking hang yourself”
based

[Anonymous No.14979737]

>>14979721
please be some new copypasta

[Anonymous No.14979838]

I'm 20k words into my first novel.

[Anonymous No.14979854]

>>14979686
This was interesting anon. Id read more.

[Anonymous No.14979862]

>>14979838
Nice job mate. Take advantage of the pandemic and write. It's what Im doing before have to go wageslave.

[Anonymous No.14979868]

>>14979838
Smirk/10

[Anonymous No.14979871]

>>14979721
>this corona induced self-isolation
weak, i stopped there. dont impress me, impress yourself buddy

[Anonymous No.14979884]

>>14979871
>dont impress me, impress yourself buddy
Words to live by in all parts of you life, anons. This is a wise man, give him your (you)s

[Anonymous No.14979894]

A quick scan of the first trial, highlights the obsessive player-like play with a more streamlined, reactive style. I do like the pacing of the first trial. The reactions happen from your many decisions in the game, ranging from unexpected to planned. What is remarkable is the impact of the decisions that you made in the trial. They are made or tested in the time it takes to toss a coin in a gambling game, and they have major repercussions on the main plot. It is not an important outcome, but rather something that the player must calculate from the input and reaction sequences, which makes for a nice change from the typical 40 minute experience. The trouble here is the high quality of the writing (this being an author's review) and the mediocre acting.

[Anonymous No.14979902]

[Anonymous No.14979904]

>>14979854
Thanks anon. It’s a short story about a passed down, family owned restaurant going under during the apocalypse.

[Anonymous No.14979928]

>>14979494
Finsihed marlowe's faustus recently, got inspired, perhaps a bit arrogant, and tried my hand at my own little take at expanding a scene I really liked
FAUST: Tell me, sweet brother, who made the world?
MEPH: I cannot.
FAUST: You cannot? Oh, that cannot be! Most Loyal Mephistopheles: you can conjur spirits with a wave of your hand; forsee the fortunes of a bloodline with a bare glance; you read the stars like a farmer does an almanac; you raise the dead with a yawn; you command devils of all ranks and creeds; you, and you alone, are the wisest of hell's princes, the scholar of Lucifer's court; do not tell me that you, most ancient of souls, do not know the history of our world. Come now Mephistopheles, the contract shows that you must serve me truly, never to tell a lie: share with me, your master, this long sought truth.
MEPH: I knew, once, Faustus, but have forgotten.
FAUST: Absurd: you are Satan's most beloved lieutenant, you must know.
MEPH: Those accursed, such as we two are, will never know such things. To have declared war against god, to have sworn thyself into this fratenity with thy blood, is to reject his rule, to reject his name, and to reject his works. Come now brother, look not sad--
MEPH. CONJURS A FALSE TREE OF LIFE
taste but this fruit, and enjoy all the knowledge a man will ever need. The wisdom of thy ancestors, of brave Adam and bold Eve, will be thine, with just one bite.
And that's about as far as I got

[Anonymous No.14979930]

Looking around my room, it appears as always. TV hidden behind countless books, most of the unread category. Countless texts expanding upon the lexicon of the English mind. Sitting there motionless upon a dreary wooden dresser. Teapot clear, yet filled with a brown Lapsang tea, filling the room with the smell of smoke. The laminated floor boards as always, with luck not decaying or warping. The bed next to me covered with useless knickknacks such as my banjo and more books.. Between both the beds is a night stand, with a copy of Stirner's Ego and it's Own on it. Yes quite all the same as usual. Perhaps it would be a normal day.

But for Christian, This was no ordinary day.

Walking out into the hallway I look down it to see if any of the dogs have stirred from the noise, sadly they have not. I head straight into the bathroom across from me and proceed to do my usual morning routine. Using the toilet, Brushing the teeth, Showering the body. Exiting, the distinct lack of sound makes itself known, but it could just be everyone in the family had gone to work or was out. Proceeding to get dressed I enter my closet and decide what to wear for today. Usual attire of Slacks, A buttoned up shirt, an undershirt and a belt seems to be the choice for today as it had been for many days past. Looking upon the clock on the wall a calm relief that work would be met on time was given. Exiting once again of the Room, I looked upon the end of this hallway and still no dogs had stirred, must have of course been a tiring night for them or what another. Turning to face the stairs he is met with the shrine of the dead son. A huge painting of his face plastered against the wall, candles lit under it and the usual props that used to belong to his soul. Always a creepy sight first thing in the morning.

[Anonymous No.14979974]

>>14979494
Pretty drunk. Here you go.

[Anonymous No.14979997]

From my horror story called "Human Suit".

I stopped nervously fondling the Kimber .45 in my coat when I saw Marcus wading through the crowd of consumers. Such crowds for a small, out of the way, restaurant were why I picked this place to meet up with him.
"You finally want to talk now after all this time?" He said as he slid into the booth," I thought you said it was such a feminine thing to do,"
"I really have no fucking choice Marcus," I said leaning forward on the table.
He raised a brow at that.
"What is it?" He asked slowly.
I stared into his olive green eyes, still not able to think of a proper way to say what I need too. Fuck it.
"I'm not going to live very long Marcus,"
He only looked at me, gauging to see whether I was lying. Must have not been able to find what he was hoping to see.
"You're serious?"
"Yes,"
"What do you mean not very long?"
"I got involved with something very...evil,"
Marcus looked around for a moment before leaning forward and speaking quietly.
"I've heard these rumors and I don't want to believe they're true. I heard that you got involved with a gang. Tell me that's not true,"
I cracked a big shit eating grin at the incredulity. But only for a moment.
"It's not a gang Marcus," I said clearly.
"Then what is it?"
"It's a cult,"
His eyes widened for a moment before he quickly looked around again.
"It's a cult and it's been in this town for a long while,"
"You can't expect me to believe-," He started.
I rolled up the coat sleeve on my right arm and revealed their insignia carved into my flesh. Marcus stared at it for a long moment before uttering "Jesus Christ".
"Is that a bite mark around it?"
"Yes. It's their way of severance," I said rolling my sleeve back up," Now listen to me very carefully Marcus. Are you listening?"
"Yes,"
"Do you believe me?"
"Yes," he finally said after a moment of thought.
"That's why I called you here Marcus. I could actually count on you and now I need you more then ever,"
"What do you need?"
"Just listen to what i'm about to say," I said before looking around myself and when I was satisfied, I continued on," This cult has been here since the 1800s and all these child disappearances, all these sex crimes, all this sickness plaguing our town comes from them. They don't care if you know it's them, they don't care if the media prints endless articles about them. They're in complete control of this town Marcus. They own the police and the ones in the neighboring states as well. The police are as complicit and do not ever think otherwise for a moment. The cult reigns over this town as kings and they have a very far reach. We are in their thrall and no one they've recruited has dared opposed them but for me. Are you still listening?"
"Yes but...,"
"Keep listening. I know how fucking crazy it sounds but I haven't even talked about what they do with the children,"

[Anonymous No.14980042]

>>14979686
Bit too modern for my taste, but nice
>>14979721
Trying too hard anon
>>14979838
Trash. Made me want to kill myself for reading all of that

[Anonymous No.14980101]

>>14979625
generals are cancer 100% of the time

[Anonymous No.14980128]

bad or good?

[Anonymous No.14980132]

>>14980101
/sg/ and /cpd/ on /pol/ are comfy af. Full of oldfags. Idk what a general on here would be like tho.

[Anonymous No.14980147]

>>14980101
>implying these kinds of threads are any better
At least a general would contain it and stop other anons from making similar threads at the same time.

[Anonymous No.14980158]

How do you guys come up with interesting plots? I find my stories tend to meander too much and they’re a bit of a bore to read.

[Anonymous No.14980161]

>>14980042
>>14979838 here. Any particular quality that turned you off? I'd like to improve as much as possible.

[Anonymous No.14980163]

>>14980158
Come up with a framework that covers your story from beginning to end and then fill it up. This way, you'll be aware once you start meandering from the point.

[Anonymous No.14980232]

>>14980158
Plots don't have to be the most interesting thing in the world if you have good character work and prose
One of the greatest books of all time is about a fat jew doing jack shit for a day

[Anonymous No.14980289]

My feet are standing in soft slippers. Mellow orange light fills this room through a window pane. This room smells of chestnut and sunlight. Outside, birds cry and trees rustle, bugs whine and dogs growl.
I slump into a chair and sigh. Alternating between rubbing my hands and clicking my fingers. I stare down at a desk in front of me. My back is curved in an uncomfortable way. I know that my back will be uncomfortable no matter how I shift into this chair. Regardless, I shift slightly. I have to finish this before dinner. My left hand grasps my right pinky and pulls, clicking my tenth finger.

Taking one deep breath before taking up my task, a distinct smell of dried up coffee hits my head. I lean forward toward the desk and stare down on a dry brown stain at the bottom of a white ceramic mug. This smell is too distracting. I take this mug by its handle and stand. My back feels relief from stretching and straightening my spine. I shuffle sideways, out from between the desk and chair, and turn. My legs march toward and through an open door, taking me out of this room, then through a corridor, through a dining room, and into a kitchen. As I put the mug down, I catch a fragrance of beef stew cooking on a kitchen stove. I should eat dinner while I'm already here. I pull open the doors of a cupboard and take out a bowl and a spoon. Using a metal ladle hanging from a wall next to the stove, I scoop out one serving of beef stew into the bowl. I walk back to the dining room with a bowl of soup in my left hand and a spoon in my right.

After finishing my meal, I take the empty bowl and used spoon and carry them back to the kitchen. After cleaning everything up, I realize that I still haven't done any work today. Sunset has already passed and outside is dark. I need coffee if I'm going to stay awake. I fill my kettle with water and put it on the stove and turn it on. While waiting for the water to boil, I walk over to another cupboard and open its doors to take out a jar of ground coffee and a french press. I open the lid of the jar and pour two spoonfuls of ground coffee into the french press. Water vapor is streaming out from the kettle, but the water is not boiling yet. Still not boiling. The kettle is wheezing. Now it's screeching. I turn the stove off and take up the kettle. I walk back and tip the kettle over the french press. I rest the kettle down and fit the lid back onto the french press. Waiting. Waiting for caffeine to soak into the water. This should be enough. Putting my palm over the small round handle on the lid, I press down with my weight. I walk over to the cupboard again and take out a mug. Holding the mug in my left hand and the french press in my right, I pour coffee and fill my mug.

After putting away the kettle and the french press, I take my mug full of hot coffee and slowly, so as to not spill coffee, walk out of the kitchen, through a dining room, then through a corridor, then walk slowly back through an open door.

[Anonymous No.14980299]

>>14980289
Hit the word limit so had to end it there.

[Anonymous No.14980339]

>>14979494

The intermittent embarrassment and torment would lurch forth and every fiber would contract and rhyme with the contortions of his mind.

The daydreaming and fantasizing, the aspiring and conniving, the boundless imagination of youth never once considered the possibility of his current manifestation.

Inadequate. Disappointing.

[Anonymous No.14980479]

bump

[Anonymous No.14980589]

>>14980232
What book are you talking about?

[Anonymous No.14981015]

>>14980589
The Bible

[Anonymous No.14981792]

A glory hole in the ground
i lie on my stomach
and just wait

[Anonymous No.14981820]

>>14980589
Ulysses

[Anonymous No.14981989]

>>14979494

>Notes on self

>Consciousness. Self-conscious. The doer-watcher. The watcher watching its doing. The doer doing its watching, doing what it watches. Will and awareness. Left, right. Up, down. For- amd backwards. In- and outwards. Macro, micro. No true hierarchy to it, other than unbalanced balance. Not Calvin-ball, not Monopoly. This, that, and the other. Will !


A friend told me it's good but he's not /lit/erati so I want to know what you think. I have more but it's just a diary type thing and it's interspersed with passages in german.

[Anonymous No.14982010]

>>14979974
Is that like the manchurian command to make you kill John Lennon?

[Anonymous No.14982466]

>>14981989
Are you trying to larp as joyce or something

[Anonymous No.14982529]

>>14979721
Take off the corona jewishness and the paragrafh just needs polishing
PS: The final line fucking made it

[Anonymous No.14982530]

Start of my second chapter I wrote this morning

[Anonymous No.14982538]

>>14979902
Good quite nice

[Anonymous No.14982550]

>>14980128
All last three are good but the 2nd is weaker

[Anonymous No.14982551]

>>14982530
I actually really liked it, what's your book about anon?

[Anonymous No.14982575]

>>14979625
We used to have a critique general, no idea why I don't see those anymore because I quite enjoyed them

[Anonymous No.14982580]

>>14982551
Thanks anon. It's a little novella about the ways different people respond to suffering.

[Anonymous No.14982609]

>>14982530
>boarding school
Anyone have some good recs for books that take place in a boarding school? Ever since Dead Poets and Bully I've been mildly interested in them

[Anonymous No.14982614]

>>14982609
Not quite a boarding school but The Magic Mountain takes place in a sanitarium pre-WW1 which I feel mirrors the aesthetic of many posh boarding schools.

[Anonymous No.14982615]

>>14982575
/crit/ always seemed a little too focused to me. It's only purpose is getting your shit judged, which is good, but that not all writefags could be talking about.

[Anonymous No.14982617]

Reposted from my blog, I would just post a link but for some reason the filter thinks I'm posting spam now when I do. I worry that I come off as a bit too tryhard or wanky, but I really enjoyed writing this one.

Why did he do it?

His whole energy lent to it, that tetrapod to whom all our insecurities and petty quarrels can be traced. Not to their foundation, but a crucial – to us, though in the grander scheme possibly quite insignificant – point of reference. Nothing so simple as a fish-lizard, a hero and our doom. If life is comedic, or tragic, respectively. I’m still not sure, but I’ve at least narrowed it down that far. Modern life microcosmically, and grander life in all it’s scope as well. Life itself possibly a mere peculiarity or detour in the great unending motion that all forces serve, all things submit to.
Through him fate made itself felt. Always moving, no one can say where except maybe the initiator, a pinball game of a complexity unimaginable to any creation of itself yet made manifest. One day maybe our goal in turn, like Tiktaalik’s before us, will be recognised as to bring that forth. Or at least, to drag the line along a little. Only unknowing agents of the all unifying principle, the reliably unreliable Logos.
He did it because he was born to do it, because every event he met upon his way there pushed him further to it. His body was built for it, the product of the very same process which he was an avatar of. As am I, as are you. What specific series of events led him to the beach now long lost, where he slipped free of the primordial deeps and into the loving embrace of the sun, we will likely never know. Not to worry, to what end would you seek such knowledge anyway? Trivia. The gravitas of the day the deed was done is what should hold your attention. That brief spike of sudden momentousness, dead aeons on either side.

[Anonymous No.14982631]

cont/ from >>14982617
sorry for shitty formatting in first half

We’re in the desert, and then the world changes. The product entirely of undetectable ripples, that make themselves known only when they meet to turn the tide once more. Perfectly predictable, the only thing you truly can be sure of, yet every time unanticipated. For of course every time the twist twists, it takes on a totally distinct character. Probably unrecognised completely in it’s own time, if anything with such power is present, the weight of the turning is felt truest in the next. Proof of itself, and the guiding principle, long after it is of use.

The potential for prediction doesn’t need justification by the thing itself, innumerable elements – every thing that was and is – combine in the weave of fate, the arrogance to assume that have not implies could not is unwise. One day further on along this strand of the greater stretching line of All, prediction may occur. Mayhaps even the or an conclusion, if ever there will be, to totality will be something within itself achieving such realisation. Enlightenment from within rather than beyond, replication/ birth of divinity anew and an end to what can only be called a kind of feeding process.

This mighty minion of the Moirae, he did his duty. “Do what you would do” was all instruction given. Indirectly, from an indescribable number of sources. None of the neurosis that inspires man’s pathological illusion of choice – a quirk I struggle to understand the purpose of, yet owe everything to – existed to give him pause as it appears to do us, though of course such stumbling is just as much a part of the performance in truth. No, he had none of the unease you or I are at all times aware of. He only did exactly what he only ever would do, and thus was content. We should be so lucky.

[Anonymous No.14982708]

>>14982530
Unironically kino. One of the better excerpts I've read on here, although there's not really enough for a full assessment

[Anonymous No.14982738]

The disco ball is attached to the handlebars with cable ties, tape and shoe laces. It remains steadfast, though slightly sloped inward. It is small and cheap and its almost-expired LEDs struggle against a vast night. The kids are playing in the unpaved street end where there are no parents and no rules. The dogs run with them, eyes rolling in excitement as they attempt to take bites from the bike wheels. The occasional yelp from a mutt. And they are mutts, this is no place for anything other. The kids, too. Trace their lineage and you will not have to venture far to find an unforgiving future. But in the now, in the present: they run wild and free. Junior would not join the other kids often. His Raleigh , once red, was now a rusted brown. Its front wheel had broken many months previous and he diligently saved to buy new spokes. His arrival back was greeted with awe by the others. His new spokes wink in the sun and wink in the night and served furthermore to emphasise his Raileigh’s superiority. His vocabulary of tricks is larger than his peers but he is younger. In the October twilight there is the expected fireworks. Chinese gunpowder harkens back centuries prior to intricate global trade systems and back again to the present in an explosion of light and sound that is more befitting of a battlefield than a midnight dance with dogs. Those who do not have bikes make due with the viscera of the swamplands: sticks, branches, vines, stones. Anything. The nature of their neglect has made them numb to such circumstances, for some even content. Junior takes a breather on the edge of the circle with a cigarette. In his early teenage hands the Marlboro looks untoward and gaunt. He wears sunglasses despite the darkness. Aviators. He found them on the way to school months ago and swore he would cherish them and he has. Always one for gathering things, a magpie instinct. The disco ball found amongst scattered plaster and window frames. This will fit somewhere.

[Anonymous No.14982792]

>>14982530
Is the novel about a shy boy who gets physically bullied by big, strong older boys, ending up in a wrestle during which strange emotions are awakened on both sides, and a torrid love affair begins? Because I hope it is.

Excellently written, by the way. Keep going.

[Anonymous No.14982799]

>>14982631
>>14982617
I like this. Link your blog?

[Anonymous No.14982956]

>>14982466
No but that site that tells you what your writing is like also gave me Joyce. And I never read any of his books. So d'ya like it?

[Anonymous No.14982966]

>>14979974
What fountain pen is that and can you control it?

[Anonymous No.14982986]

>>14979838
I don't know if all those years of reading modernist/postmodernist literature rotted my brain, but this is bad, really bad

[Anonymous No.14982991]

>>14979686
>>14979838
Can you fuckers use pronouns? It agonizes me that I have to read the same fucking name every sentence

[Anonymous No.14983010]

>>14982466
>>14981989
Yeah it looks like a bad pynchonesque draft

[Anonymous No.14983032]

>>14982956
It reads like you ripped it straight from one of stephen's SoC passages, I refuse to believe you never read joyce

[Anonymous No.14983080]

>>14983010
Ayy I'll take it. But I've never read Pynchon either lol.

>>14983032
I haven't. I have portrait of the artist lying around somewhere but I never got to it. It's weird because my writing style say two years ago was marked with endless run on sentences. I have begun to read Man without qualities tho and I think the times called Musil the german Joyce

[Anonymous No.14983136]

>>14982986
What don't you like about it in particular? I'd like to improve as much as possible.

[Anonymous No.14983216]

>intro to 3rd chapter in sci fi novel
All Aboard the Hyperreality Tour flew straight through the sides of all probable universes and came back screaming. Earth interfaced with identical realities. Blone had a spat with its media. Green City buses gathered outside Gelepo. Memos asked to arm tactical nuclear weapons. Parliament was not adjourned. At universities, anti-universalization protesters were dispersed with microwave beams, dosed with aerosolized calming gases then beaten with batons. Prices went up with grinning anticipation for the weekend. Worldenders initiated three percent of Blone’s population.
Hours before midnight, still Wednesday, on foliage covered hills in the Subcon, Captain Roky of an Insurgent Air Defense Brigade squatted under a camouflage cover as he slapped a screen of his S-343 radar guided surface to air missile platform. He squinted at what the sensors saw. Two small dots flying together at sixteen thousand meters above and on the other side of Gelepo province.
Sergeant Milsavic shrugged as he zoomed the screen on the dots and said, “probably interference or birds, the signature is too small.”
Captain Roky prodded the screen for more information, “not birds, those are planes.”
Sergeant Milsavic’s eyes furrowed, “planes, are you sure, Comrade Captain?”
“Stealth planes, those dots are going to City fast. Look at the flight manifests on the airport, two lanes are kept open for a landing, but no planes logged. We saw the same signatures come from there a few hours ago,” he nodded slowly, “government machinations, Comrade Milsavic.”
“How can we know?”
“Shoot at them, four missiles, manual fire control, switch thermal when we close.”
“What will we tell HQ?”
Roky’s gap tooth showed as he smiled,“tell them to give us medals.”
“Yes Captain.”
The technician closed his eyes, finding the flight path. Missiles launched and looked through scanners and cameras. Screens highlighted a grey plane with delta wings, emerging through clouds. A Desvault. The missiles twisted, tracking the plane. One exploded beside a wing. Remains of the plane were rolling down as it blew apart. Roky and Milsavic screamed and danced, bouncing up and down together. Brigade-wide celebrations lasted long into the night and morning. Commemorative products were produced and sold across Blone through insurgent networks, and replacement missiles were quickly crowdfunded.

[Anonymous No.14983710]

What's the best way to post a 6,400ish word short story here?

[Anonymous No.14983718]

>>14983710
google docs link

[Anonymous No.14984104]

>>14982799
System thinks my post is spam so just put the dots in yourself

http://ineedhelp (dot) home (dot) blog

[Anonymous No.14984118]

>>14983710
Just link a pdf of it, I'll read it.

[Anonymous No.14984136]

>>14984118
Yeah, but where do I post it? Mega?

[Anonymous No.14984146]

>>14984136
google docs like the other anon said

[Anonymous No.14984215]

>>14983710
>>14983718
>>14984118
>>14984136
>>14984146
I went full autist and just did a quick shoop.

[Anonymous No.14984313]

>>14979902
cute :)

[Anonymous No.14984316]

>>14984215
This is peak sleazecore, but you really need to edit it a bit because I noticed a few typos
Also, can you explain the thought process behind /this shit/? Just for emphasis, or meme purposes?

[Anonymous No.14984366]

>>14984316
I do that for italics out of ease so I don't break my flow. Before final I go in an get rid of the /s and italicize them.

[Anonymous No.14984529]

>>14984316
>sleazecore
Call me a newfag, but what exactly does this referring to?

[Anonymous No.14984554]

>>14984529
It's primarily an /fa/ meme, at least it started as a style that was being ironically memed there a few years ago.
Think something between Tony Soprano and Robert Pattison's character from the movie Good Time (fantastic movie btw), but nowadays the term is just used to refer to anything that fits into that same vibe

That meme of the guy smoking weed and drunk at a gas station with his shirt unbuttoned, /sleaze/ as fuck
and based

Hunter S Thomson was pretty sleazecore as well, the Terry Gilliam movie adaption of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas has a very sleazy aesthetic

[Anonymous No.14984564]

>>14984554
Bukowski count as sleazecore then?

[Anonymous No.14984582]

>>14984564
Yes definitely, and early Tom Waits

[Anonymous No.14984595]

>>14984582
At least OP is in good company then. Thanks for the explanation.

[Anonymous No.14985007]

Two eras over yet another,
Calling names of the same sound,
In which the past bids two blood-brothers,
To stay, and keep their souls around,


A mournful night that dresses clouds,
Inside the crystal moon-lit trees,
And in these forests kept so loud,
There stirs a group of squirrels and bees,


And when a stream passes overhead,
And washes all the filthy clean,
The stone-roots turn to velvet red,
And still remain quiet, unseen,


So when day comes all is changed,
The sun bids brighter and fervent life,
But madness may still be arranged,
By lucks awestruck, bouncing knife.

[Anonymous No.14985196]

>>14979494
wrote this some 8 years back when cable TV was still the norm

[Anonymous No.14985586]

Bumb

[Anonymous No.14986046]

From this story i'm working on that i think im gonna call "Feronia in Grease"

As he stood under the greasy smear of the fluorescent lights at the register, Ray stared, eyes glazed over in dull apathy, out at the empty restaurant. He could barely gleam his reflection in the big windows across the room that smelled of stale french fries and flat soda. What he did see did not completely register. He was featureless, indistinguishable. He was faceless. His hair combed back looking oily like the burgers on the grill and the deep purple sacks weighing down heavy on his eyes, begging him to shut them, begging him to sleep. But his shift did not end for another seven hours and so as always his eyes bore the weight of the time and he stayed conscious in the comatose drift that was the graveyard shift.
The hum of the light reminded him of the cicadas. It was his dad’s home in the woods where he’d spent his summers. In his memory that wilderness was edenic and smeared in the warm sunshine yellow of nostalgia. He would climb up to the little beach a mile or two away from the house and sit there for hours looking downstream, until sunset most days. On others he would sit in the fields to see the lazy afternoons and watch the trees sway slowly in that mellow summer wind. The cicadas would roar their chant in these afternoons, and he would be transfixed on that sound, that cacophony of insect choir. They would still be there when dusk seeped into the sky. He remembered sitting on a fence and watching a storm roll in on the byzantine evening sky, heat lightning dashing across the bulbous, pregnant thunderheads, the insects whooping their summer war anthem all the while. He remembered the air right then, heavy and palpable with the tension of the impending storm. And then with a great boom like a barrel rolling down the stairs the thunder would burst and the storm would crack and–
The cold of the restaurant was back and it seemed like a dream washed away because there were no cicadas; there was only the inhuman metallic drone of the light, that hymn for the sleepless, hypnotizing and eternal.

[Anonymous No.14986475]

Bump

[Anonymous No.14986508]

Who will read this poem?
When the era comes to pass...
The brevity of the eras,
Which cease to last...

The success bards have,
Achaisms time past,
Dost thou comprehendeth thy tongue?
O Thy lad?

[Anonymous No.14986523]

>>14986508
I feel there's a meme here, but I'm' too tired and lazy to figure it out. Good job either way

[Anonymous No.14986575]

>>14980161
not that anon but here's actual crit
>she declared' at first paragraph.
Delete. I already know who's talking. Most of your dialogue tags are weird. This is kind of taste but 99% of the time 'she said' is all you need
>Caitlyn's eyebrows shot up
too much
>sigh
people sigh twice in the first half of the first page. Repeated words elsewhere, eg ...likely fueled his guilt. In all likelihood...'
>a warlord with an army of the dead
>burn every kingdom to the ground
what the fuck. Is this a fantasy novel? I refuse to crit genre fiction
>she made an attempt at a coherent response
cut it. her stutter says all it needs
>i was getting out of my armor
fuck me it's fantasy

[Anonymous No.14986593]

-A ese burro arrecho si me le pego-se murmuró a si mismo Juan Torreón-estoy seguro que me dejaría la boca ensangrentada, ¡tremendo pedazononononón que se carga!-
Juan Torreón no era el único de su tipo. Había millones como el, de hecho. Todos intentaban disfrazarse bajo la oscuridad de la decencia. Y no con poca ayuda. Hollywood, y anterior a hollywood, los maestros universitarios, entre ellos muchos judíos, y aún más, la influencia de Freud y los esfuerzos colectivos de los oligarcas habran hecho creer a más de un cuerdo mental que Juan Torreón era como uno de ellos. Sí, era como uno de ellos, y simplemente, como uno de ellos prefiere a su opuesto, su complementación, Juan Torreón prefería a su igual.
Un grave error de dejar de pensar. Encima teniendo la pobreza, los esfuerzos para vivir apenas de un día al otro, necesitado de la ociosidad para continuar viviendo, se dejo de pensar, y aquellos que eran normales, creyendo que Juan Torreón también lo era, permitieron que el parásito judío se les clavara. Era pues el caso, que Juan Torreón era un homosexual, y como todos los homosexuales, era un pervertido, no como un hombre fuese pervertido por desear una mujer, sino como un ser miserable, trastornado, <i>jódido</i>. Sí, esos son los homosexuales. No tienen una orientación sexual, simplemente una perversión, un trastorno.

[Anonymous No.14986598]

>>14986575
>fuck me it's fantasy
Not him, but honestly, why is this always a sticking point for people? Why can't people like both realist War and Peace shit AND LotR? Why does one inherently have to be superior? I just don't get the snobbery.

But then again, I'm in to at least a little bit of everything. Maybe I'm just an anomaly.

[Anonymous No.14986635]

The young girl was seated on the side of her bed when her father yelled from the bottom of the stairs that dinner was ready. She groaned, plopped herself up, put her laptop on the floor, and went to the corner of her room to make sure her phone was charging. Looking out the window, momentarily, she felt a pleasant euphoria run down her spine as she gazed at the tranquil lavender sky. Large telephone polls in the distance made her curious, she noticed wires everywhere, and imagined what it would have been like one-hundred years priors when the poles were not there. “Supper,” was bellowed again and her brief solitude was disrupted. She looked away dejectedly, almost exaggeratedly so, and then pinched her face as if to indicate something was extremely sour. It was almost as if another person were observing her and she purposely contorted her face in order to receive a reaction; she ruffled her curly red hair and walked out the door. Coming from the other end of the hall was her sister looking down at her phone. Noticing each other the two exchanged a brief expressionless glance, then proceeded down the stairs.

The father was seated by himself on the large wooden table and two plates were set up opposite him. “Tonight, is chicken. I hope you chics don’t mind being cannibals for the night,” he said with a soft laugh. “Dad that’s sexist,” replied the young girl. “Shut up Ginger,” interrupted her sister who glared in her direction. “Girls, girls, we all know that I am a sexy man, no need to argue over it.” Ginger let out a snort and a quaint chuckle, then replied “Dad, I said sexist not sexyyy,’ in a melodic lingering tone as if she was convincing herself to be euphoric, as if everything in the world told her to be in complete despair but the only reaction she could ever feel was hope. “What’s wrong with being sexy honey?’ he laughed softly, ‘I’m only teasing honey; your chicken is ready… unless you’re a vegetarian again.”

[Anonymous No.14986640]

>>14986635
P2.
“No no, maybe next month,” she said beaming. Throughout this conversation, the father, a brown-haired man with an elongated ghoulish face and sunken eyes had gotten up and brought a plate of barbeque chicken over to the kitchen table. He placed it down and the girls and him took turns putting some on there plate. “So, Amelia, what is going on in phone world?” “As if you care.” “You’re right I don’t,” he said facetiously followed by a smile. “Why are you so mean dad?” said Ginger with a subtle tentative laugh. “I’m sorry honey…. Amelia, I do care but if you don’t want to tell me then that’s okay too. We’re all entitled to our privacy. Solitude is one of our virtues.” “Shut up, dad,” said Amelia. “Alright, what is going on there is no reason to talk like that… I only care for you, I love you, and to see you bothered, bothers me. We never talk anymore. It’s always the phone and silence and my stupid jokes and I guess you’re getting older, but let’s not rush through life.” “What are you talking about?” said Amelia with a demonic laugh and exaggerated grin. “Just put your fucking phone away you filthy slut,” screamed Ginger as she smashed her small fist on the table, “Fuck you” she added. “You’re one to talk… How’s Mr. Richard? How’s he? Are you kissing him? Sucking his dick, who are you calling a slut.” “Girls that’s enough…. It’s enough okay,” said the father, a tall athletic man, with a nervous quiver from his lips and subtle pauses of uncertainty. “You always fight… but you just have each other… There’s no truth to any of this… You’ll regret it trust me, these little moments, just add fuel to your conflict. Come on your sisters out of the same womb, you love each other. I love you. I want to have a nice dinner and enjoy ourselves; we fight and want more and always strive for something better, but tonight right now is better… Unless you dislike my cooking, then we have a problem,” he finished with a hefty laugh as he regained his composure mid-way through and was delighted with his potentially mitigating monologue. “Alright dad that’s enough sermons tonight,” said Ginger in a joking intonation. “Your chicken is terrible,” said Amelia. Ginger: “Why do you have to ruin everything.”

[Anonymous No.14986659]

>>14986640
P3.

Amelia: “I’m just telling the invaluable truth. A means to an end, and whatever pseudo-stoic bullshit you want to preach dad,” she said while her blondish hair glowed celestially under the dinner chandelier complemented by a sentiment of gloating evinced by the positioning of her eyes and the way in which her mouth was curved in. This was indubitably due to her superior amoral inner monologue, which was Nietzschean with a tingle of Machiavelli and Thucydides. “You’re such a cunt, thank God mom is dead so she doesn’t have to see what a dog you are.” And with that Amelia stood up and lurched at gingers hair, pulling and tugging eliciting screams from the receiver. In the midst of this outrage, the father stood up with his glass of beer and smashed it on the floor, shattering glass everywhere, causing the two to pause and resulting in Ginger running out the backdoor while Amelia going upstairs.

Thoughts racing through her mind, Ginger got in her car with nowhere to go. Middle class troubles. An insouciant father, an unsteady income, apprehensions about college, senior year. Poor Amelia she’s so thin too that was horrible especially with her eating disorder and all. I’m such a terrible, terrible person. Why would I call her that? We never speak anymore. I miss her, I love her, imagine if she died today, tonight, right now, why. She hates me so much. I don’t think I could even talk to her anymore, even to apologize. Bad breakup, all those older college guys, and businessmen. Acute inarticulable angst, streaking down her leg, pain, severe headache, must pull over. All the while, Ginger was heading in the direction of the library,

[Anonymous No.14986814]

Anyone have any dialogue tips? Want to write a short story but like 80% of it would be dialogue, not sure I could carry an entire story with just dialogue

[Anonymous No.14986836]

>>14980289
This is really hypnotic. Nice job

Several rows of students drugged themselves with caffeine, sipping simultaneously stimulant concoctions. Some gazed like gargoyles at personal computer screens, taking notes ostensibly, browsing Facebook/Twitter/Instagram, contemplating atomized reified digital mirror-selves, sitting still in meatspace while they moved in the metaverse, jacked in to a matrix where their curated avatars signed petitions, liked self-replicating metastatic memes, uploaded uncanny hyperreal selfies, gaped with horror at trending news topics. Jonah Thompson sat in a middle row scratching zealous notes in pen. He was fleshed bulbously, jeans ill-fitted, hair a dense rubbery bowl. His face sloped in a Neolithic curve from a long sweaty forehead and dark button eyes, slanting forward through ruddy cheeks to a bristle-stained chin that protruded ungraciously. Jonah wore a bland sweatshirt meant to conceal an endomorph torso. While he had sloughed off some weight in the last year, red lines still encompassed his belly, designating folds of mawkish blubber.

[Anonymous No.14986851]

Ms. Pierce knocked twice firmly through the walls from her bedroom where she seldom left as she did when the boys were too loud. But they kept howling this time. So much so that the short, wide woman made the effort to get up from her bed and enter the room.
“What’s the matter wi—”
Jameson pointed to Nelson with one hand and the other covering his mouth to no avail.
The sight of Nelson’s pre-teen chubby tits perfectly filling out the lids from two Slurpees was enough to make Ms. Pierce’s night-shift face crack, roll her eyes, and retreat to her territory less irate than she had come.
“Unironically best tits I’ve seen,” said Chris through laughter, as he mostly spoke. In fact, even when he was offended, you could say he huffed in manor not unlike laughter.
Nelson made one more grand gesture for the boys, sticking out his tongue with cross-eyes and pushing his tits nearly cross-tit, to oblige them before hiding his chest, red from suction, back underneath his shirt.
“Buncha homos,” he said. Slightly humiliated, perhaps, but always keen to fulfill his role.
It was Corey who had convinced him, as he convinced him of most things worth a good memory and an even greater story. And it was Corey who told him what to do next. And what they did next would be the beginning of the end for those boys who had not yet even begun their high school years.

[Anonymous No.14986857]

>>14985007
this was pleasant to read

[Anonymous No.14986915]

He poo-pooed. Afterward, he pee-peed. Ronald never liked the latter. For some odd reason, the urine stung, as if the flow of the orange-brown waste had been embroidered with tiny needles so as to finely mince the edges of his poor urethra. The dreadful smell of the fecal matter did not do much to stall his unhappiness either. When he got up from the toilet and looked inside to see the damage, he noticed a rather peculiar discrepancy inside one of the lumps. It was an undoubtedly whole item from his last meal: an Oreo cookie. He could tell because of the happy Nabisco logo which seemed to pop out from the lagoon of filth like an advertisement in a soiled newspaper. Astounded by the feat achieved by his inner workings, Ronald could not help himself to not reach for the seemingly pristine biscuit. His amazement was heightened when the cookie was pulled out of the poop nugget with virtually no cracks or tears. Luckily, the top half was above the water level of the toilet, so he could see no noticeable drippings of his loathsome urine there. However, the bottom half and sides of the cookie held within its complex molds specks of the deep black abomination that emerged from Ronald's anus--though, of course, no human eye (especially not Ronald's) would have noticed, for the deep black of the abomination was, remarkably, the same iconic shade of black as an Oreo. Ronald was not one to pass up on any treat. So, with his trademark nonchalant attitude, Ronald slowly placed his newfound prize into his mouth. He felt the warm biscuit melt on his tongue just how he remembered from his meal. The muscle rubbed against the Oreo's side bumps and bluntly scraped its textured creme onto the taste buds. Though certainly not Oreo-like, the taste, as Ronald would describe later in his relatively adventurous life, was "simply delightful". It was such that after that day, Ronald's anus grew to about 5 inches: the approximate circumference of the average Oreo! For you see, the second time the cookie passed through his intestines by its circumference, again it remained whole, and yet again did Ronald pick it up and swallow it. He stated that this third time was the best one, for he finally bit into it. "The built-up fecal matter," he says, "was what gave it the flavor sensation ten times that of a normal Oreo." Despite the joy he felt from his discovery of the "Improved Oreo", I'm afraid Ronald's story does not have a happy end. He still wept whenever he felt the rumblings of a number two's awakening. On February 7th, Ronald DeTorre released his final defecation, for the moment he sat down, he also released a bullet into his head.

[Anonymous No.14986953]

>>14986915
>He poo-pooed. Afterward, he pee-peed.
10/10 on principle

[Anonymous No.14986958]

>>14986915

cringe

[Anonymous No.14986968]

Gazed upon by a low blood-orange sun mirrored on the surface of the vast sink of the Pacific’s primal brine. The rhythmic surging clasped my ankles in the black sand. The bloodwater was the pendulum of the grandfather clock keeping account of my final standing hours. I was to receive a flippant disregard commensurate my own which I had worn on my sleeve.

[Anonymous No.14986986]

>semi-purposefully tried to make it sound like the narrator is a /lit/-tier pseud (so literally me)

My thoughts will all die with me you see!
Oh but they’re already lining up for suicide right after conception, quite sad really.
Why is that? Here I will try to recollect and make some sense out of the frozen wasteland, join me.
Not all of these are memories,
And not all of these are mine.
Tread wearily, uh, nursery rhyme.

CHAPTER 1
This is not so much a stream of consciousness as the search for it. I will be very careful to try not to document or lecture, and dive right into my subject of study with you, the reader, along with me (I was reading Foucault when I wrote this. Too obvious?). One last warning: neither my English nor my prose are particularly apt or efficient. My Spanish isn’t either for that matter, though I may try it to see if it works any better. Advisory over, let’s get to the meat of the issue.
To avoid any repulsive metaphor, I woke up from my couch after what felt like a nap today, ninth of May, at 6:22 pm. Oh god! Lecturing already. Again.
Time, space and matter (not the same thing) flow congruently, like waves of light on motor oil and the northernest hemispheres, neat. Venturing outside for better footage, I find…

[Anonymous No.14986996]

>>14986915
this is honestly fantastic. Please continue. Do you have a burner email to exchange writings with? I could not stop laughing at this.

[Anonymous No.14986997]

>>14986598
Because it's collectively trash. No one who writes fantasy has the slightest aesthetic sensibility, it's all just 'oh this would be really cool, this is what I wanted when I was a preteen boy,' it's just author wish fulfillment. I know that's a tired cliche but it's totally true.
I actually sat down and read all of The Name of the Wind, and even enjoyed it sometimes, but my God, the main character is a complete Mary Sue and the world is pretty much lifeless and most of the people inhabiting the world just exist in their relationship to the protagonist and there's supposed to be some big dark conspiracy the MC is fighting and apparently he kills a king at some point but it just rambles on about his adventures at magical boarding school. And that's supposed to be the high point of contemporary fantasy writing.
At least sci-fi has individual writers with literary merit even if the genre is mostly trash. But I don't think there's been a single post-Tolkien work of fantasy that is anything resembling 'art'.

[Anonymous No.14987011]

>>14986997
Eh, fair enough. I don't really delve into the genre that much to be honest. It just always bothers me when I see people dismiss something out of hand like that.

[Anonymous No.14987198]

"Wait, you're THAT big?" Miku huffed. "Uhm, I've never taken something like that, Beri. I-I don't know if--"
Beri clasped Miku's bare shoulder, gently but firmly, and turned him over so that his belly lay against the bed sheets. Miku mewed as Beri's lubed fingertip traced a teasing circle around his tight boyhole.
"You'll learn to love it," Beri said.

[Anonymous No.14987228]

dunno man, still feel like some shit

[Anonymous No.14987236]

Some people fancy the idea of dying a whole lot, and this leverage is invaluable in tricking people into thinking that there is, at the end of this cragged tunnel, a light. Morrison will tell you, and sometimes his wife and his children:

“There is no light, there is no god. And you’re lucky that buckets of dog shit are only just less interesting than you or we would be toying with them instead. Injecting life in and out of them repeatedly and each time measuring how long it takes them to balance a checkbook, or demograph reception on colorful phonebook advertisements for automobile glass repair!”

Er, ex-wife.
And ex-children.
Since reasonably disowned by either.

Dog shit is capable of no such things. It probably would be however, should it be wrapped in skin and zapped with electricity over and over again.

Anyways,

Evans will have numerous mosfets (secured in the rear of the spinal column) switched off. He will be immobilized and carted off deep into the guts of the facility, strapped on top of a sort of metal gurney designed to fit the contours of most any human body. Evans is then covered with binfulls of sensors and magnets. Some are taped on, some are injected into his veins or fused to his nerves. Next, Morrison will oversee what The Sphere likes to call a “rewrite”, not to be mistaken by an erasure, which removes print entirely. In the end, all the parts are still there, they can just be reassembled into a more convenient configuration, one that uses things like fear and hope more properly.
For instance, Evans used to be afraid of large dogs, because they used to bark ferociously at him from across fences or yards. Now, the motor skills he once used to cower from them will be used to be afraid of human beings with skin of a different color that he would run into every now and then, from across fences and yards. He will pretend to not understand them and have a disgusting curiosity towards their ‘backhanded’ motives and (perceived) secrecies.
According to the itinerary, which Morrison hadn’t bothered to know about, a continent southern bay area city called Portico required more racist individuals to fill its quota to more stable levels. The area had a reputation for such a thing and progressivism wasn’t on the ‘Section Operating Standards’ roster. For now.
Memories of his relatives will have the names and faces all switched around to better match the people he’ll be running into, and asking about the weather, soon enough.
The old Evans will be swept up and dusted into a chute, to be turned into heat energy in the grand furnaces of the Decency Center below that will help keep power in the facility up and running.
“Don’t drop it!” Morrison would deadpan jest from his armchair. “The day death stops taxes is the day that I die!”

[Anonymous No.14987296]

>>14982530
now I feel bad for posting just because this exists, christ

[Anonymous No.14987354]

What if I said that one's entire life had been decided by fate? That every single one of your actions, from the minute to the monumental, stemmed not from your own choices, but had already been decided upon? That life being a journey of limitless possibilities was but an illusion, and no matter how fiercely man struggled, he stood at the mercy of a long-established path? The wealthy shall know their riches. The needy shall starve on the streets. The wicked shall be wicked, the righteous just. The beautiful, the hideous, the strong, the frail, the fortunate, the miserable... and finally, the victors and the defeated. What if I said that all such things had been carved into stone eons ago, allowing for no divergence? If so, sinners have nothing to answer for, nor do saints have any true virtue to their name. What if I said that not a single action is carried out of one's own volition, but had been decided long ago? That we are merely adrift in the current of time? Tell me, would you feel content with such a world? A world in which power is merely given, not earned - would you accept knees bent to a throne build upon such falsities? A universe where the sinless have-nots are oppressed and downtrodden - would you allow such a world to exist?
Never, I say. Never.
Those in possession of such knowledge who can still laugh joyfully, oblivious to what it means to be truly alive, are but slaves, the lowest of the low, hardly deserving to be called human beings. Nothing dampens the spirit like the stale wine of an unearned victory. Nothing is more unbearable than bitter defeat against the chains of destiny. Should ceaselessly repeating this farce - this slander of the highest order - be the fate of mankind, then I will struggle against those chains with all my might. I shall walk this road to its utmost conclusion, and, at the distant place I can call my finale, compose an opera that belongs only to me.
And so, I require your aid, my dear ladies and gentlemen. You, the oppressed, the downtrodden, the massacred - you who where once as brethren. You where born to be defeated, to be massacred till the end of times. Should you curse that fate of yours, come and stand at my side as comrades. Vow to struggle for an eternity, ceaselessly, till the light of victory finally shines upon you. Any that has the strength to do this shall be permitted to become a means to that end - a part of the "sorcery". All in order to claim eternal victory. The Mane of the Beast, each an every strand of it, shall be from your flesh and blood. You are blessed to be as such. Although I, you, and he as well... are still bound by that miserable cycle at this moment... let us believe that the decision we are about to make truly holds a meaning... That one day, we can break free from this perpetually repeating cycle.
My dear ladies and gentlemen. Defeated souls of the present age. I await your answer:
Will you rise to battle?

[Anonymous No.14988464]

[Anonymous No.14988570]

Summer leaves now white as eyes
To carve an oaken heart
And count along to the last spring
A treeline in its art

[Anonymous No.14988602]

>>14988570
To write upon a field of snow
In steps of winding black
Windows on the eddied stows
Of infinity beneath

[Anonymous No.14988606]

>>14988602
To write upon a field of snow
In steps of winding black
Windows on the eddied stows
Of infinite relief*

[Anonymous No.14988610]

>>14988606
>>14988570
These are both about writing and I don't know if it comes across.

[Anonymous No.14988637]

>>14982609
Jakob von Gunten

[Anonymous No.14988691]

Hungry hungry hippos as a game functions in the same way that the incorporation of the antivitalist morality of capital functions. The atomic chaos between four snapping mouths governs more strongly than any skill in making the mouth snap.
We know this but to not snap is to lose so the foremost prerequisite for victory is essentially to accept that the only real choice is to flail or lose.
We can win but it is short lived as the game demands to begin anew, as a winner slowly emerges through the chaotic recursion ones own bafflement must be translated into something approaching rational, the conclusion being either luck or some facet of the winners character or an interplay of them.
In capital as businesses struggle to erect systems which benefit them through the chaos of human consumption this same logic must ensue. The only way to win is to accept that loss is the only definite possibility and that struggle against it is the only path.
In struggling against it you must to some extent incorporate it into ones own narrative as the subject, oblivious to the boundless potentiality intrinsic to fleeing .

[Anonymous No.14988754]

>>14987296
Why? I thought it was good

[Anonymous No.14989168]

bampu

[Anonymous No.14989309]

>>14986836
Okay, here's the whole first page from my novel. This section of the book is intended to be written in Modernist (i.e. Joycean/Faulknerian, i.e. kind of florid and gigantist) style.

Chaotic dust displayed in the windowlight swirled, uncoiling. Terri stood amidst the motes, spiky hair before the whiteboard, fingers interlaced. She was absolutely patient. Buffering undergrads loaded into class, clutching their fat morning coffees and slurping. Chairs squeaked against the warming floor in harsh staccato. Bright yawns echoed, spearheading trails of rumbling coughs and sneezes, vibrant in sour air. Terri smiled strenuously as their bodies plugged in and turned on. Raising her repentant hands through fleeing dust, she intoned:

“Well I would like to start of course with our Land Acknowledgement. We are meeting on the occupied, stolen land of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Lummi Nation and the neighboring tribes.” She paused and chewed her lip with great devotion. “But you know, I’ve actually been thinking about this. I’ve been wondering whether my own formulation of the Land Acknowledgement is actually, um, is problematic in its own way. Cause in the indigenous ways of knowing, which have been erased by our capitalist framework, the land is seen as our mother. And, maybe it’s problematic to claim that our mother can be owned or stolen. So that’s just something I’ve been thinking about more.”

Several rows of students drugged themselves with caffeine, sipping simultaneously stimulant concoctions. Some gazed like gargoyles at personal computer screens, taking notes ostensibly, browsing Facebook/Twitter/Instagram, contemplating atomized reified digital mirror-selves, sitting still in meatspace while they moved in the metaverse, jacked in to a matrix where their curated avatars signed petitions, liked self-replicating metastatic memes, uploaded uncanny hyperreal selfies, gaped with horror at trending news topics. Jonah Thompson sat in a middle row scratching zealous notes in pen. He was fleshed bulbously, capped by a rubbery bowl of dense hair, squeezed by stale jeans. His face sloped in a Neolithic curve from a long sweaty forehead and dark button eyes, slanting forward through ruddy cheeks to a bristle-stained chin that protruded ungraciously. Jonah wore a bland sweatshirt meant to conceal an endomorph torso. Thin orange lines encompassed his belly, designating folds of mawkish blubber.

[Anonymous No.14989526]

Will death grant more suffering,
Or in lack of it do we find pain itself?
For must something end to truly wish to replace it,
Even if it is horrendous in nature?


Would many not wish a thousand fires,
To be lit across their feet in eternity,
In choice over that of dark embrace,
Where the mind sleeps unknowingly?


Is that which we loath,
Not truly so until we surpass ourselves,
So that, outside our own imprisoned mind,
We can truly see the nature of the universe?


And maybe all that we do is in fact in fear of suffering,
Though that word itself holds many fates,
The empty oblivion that gnaws on the horizon of rest,
Or a scorching flame to melt the flesh?

[Anonymous No.14989631]

The Other Woman

His chin rested snug in the depression of her shoulder as he kissed another woman in her dream. Her brows parted in degrees as she came to consciousness and saw him lying there faithful. But furrowed brow betrayal returned when she saw another woman in the mirror that morning. And yet another, after they had painted their face, half in awe of their synchronicity. And there was something fraudulent, later that day, when she was asked her name and two odd, mushy syllables fell from her mouth and she wondered if they would accept that answer—if she could.

She repeated those silly syllables in her head on the bus ride home until one escaped aloud. Startled by the faultiness of her barrier, she surveyed the bus of ear-corked students and disillusioned wageslaves and full-hand single parents to see if anyone had noticed. Only one greasy-haired, scabby-faced, jutting-jawed woman met her gaze with 1.5/2 eyes and she figured her embarrassment wasn’t warranted. “Supplanter,” she remembered before breaking their recognition, that’s what those syllables meant.

The moisture in the air looked like TV static and the town she watched through the window like an unconvincing movie set. The meticulous details, however,—the small people in the windows of the shops; the coordinated traffic; the signs that couldn’t be read in time anyway; the functioning doors and finished four-sided buildings—were persuasive, like peering into a snow globe or a Polly Pocket from some childhood that didn’t feel her own given to her by a mother that now seemed akin to the strangers on the bus.

An unpleasant vibration originating in her hip and rippling through her reminded her she was in possession of a body, and a phone. She watched unusually large hands reach for the machinery in her pocket. Squinting through the visual snow that leapt from the screen, she felt bombarded by a message from her friend—surprised that at any moment, in any place, she could be reached through this device that was both comically insignificant and frighteningly threatening. “HARRY SLEPT WITH MARY ABLES WTFFF” she read, and though she could picture who these people were, she could not for one moment feel any amount of relevance or care.

[Anonymous No.14990680]

bombo

[Anonymous No.14990765]

On Valentine’s Day my wife and I had a decent dinner together at a cafe in Sorsogon City, located in the Philippines. This is her hometown and we’ve been here for over a month now. Tomorrow is our 2nd wedding anniversary and we’re still not 100% sure how we want to celebrate but we’ll probably go to a nearby beach and have a nice lunch and/or dinner together. My wife just stepped out a moment ago to go to her aunt’s house to do our laundry and I am thinking about pouring myself a rum and coke. Last night after dinner we went to 7-11 and bought a bottle of Captain Morgan for about 500 pesos (around $10 USD) and a large bottle of RC Cola. I didn’t know they still made the stuff so I couldn’t resist buying it instead of Pepsi or Coca-Cola. We’ve been here in the Philippines since January 12th. My tourist visa was set to expire on the 12th or 13th of February. I’ve had to get an extension as a result of the CORONAVIRUS which originated in Wuhan, a city I am somewhat familiar with.

[Anonymous No.14990792]

Chinese Communism or “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” matches many of the stereotypes we have in the Western world. For starters, people in public often appear sour just as I imagine people in the Soviet Union would have. This might have something to do with culture but I’ve also been to Hong Kong 4 times and the people there did seem happier and friendlier. It’s really interesting to compare Mainland China with Hong Kong because they are the same race of people but under different systems. Why do you think there have been so many riots in Hong Kong recently? I think of Mainland China and Hong Kong almost like East and West Berlin or North and South Korea. Chinese people in the Mainland also seem paranoid to me which is another stereotype of people living under Communism. Back in 2017 I was walking from my apartment to a Starbucks down the road and I brought my camera with me. It was a long walk and I was carrying my large camera on a tripod with me. It was broad daylight and I am a big, tall white man so I definitely was not being ‘sneaky’ or trying to be inconspicuous. I snapped a few shots as I walking down the road that I lived on when some local jerk, I thought of him as an honorary mall cop, started following me on his motorbike. I knew there was a military base on the street so I made sure to have my camera off when I walked by it. I thought that by turning off my camera and walking on the other side of the street would signal that I wasn’t taking photos of the military base exterior (which would have been worthless to any super secret spy agencies that mall cop I imagined I might be employed by). However, the mall cop on a motorbike drove up to the entrance of the military base and started talking to the guards and pointing at me. Two or three Chinese soldiers came across the street and approached me. I tried to wave them off by they insisted I go onto the military base which I refused to do because that just seemed like a bad idea and I knew if I did they might detain me for hours just because I was walking by with a camera. After about 10 minutes there were at least a dozen military personnel there, I kid you not and then the police came. Eventually it was decided I would have to go to the police station and give some sort of statement and they would look at the photos on my camera. I was at the police station for hours, it was a waste of time and it ruined my day. It felt like Communism: Paranoid and a waste of time. Even though China is improving in many ways (which I am happy about) it’s still a mixed economy. It’s not entirely state run nor a true free market. Many people have enjoyed an increased standard of living and that’s great, I want the Chinese people to have a comfortable lifestyle (along with better hygiene and the freedom to speak their minds).

[Anonymous No.14991177]

>>14979838
I'm avoiding writing my theology paper, let's see if I can give my thoughts in a coherent manner.
>Mrs. O'Doerery's smile grew even larger.
for some reason, this line feels pretentious and excessive to me. It feels like a mixture of a synecdoche and outright telling. To be fair, I prefer plain writing myself so that might just be a taste thing.
>Callum returned.
Stop that. Dialogue tags need to be simple or you're interrupting the flow of reading. "X said" works better than complex tags.
>She let out a pained sigh
So you're aware, I have a burning hatred for adverbs unless they're limited in use. I usually prefer to pick out a better very/noun than use a chain of adjectives or adverbs to get the same thought.
>Whatever praise she deigned to give was forever lost.
Comes off as a bit wonked. You're "telling" me that it was forever lost, when it'd be better to show it via dialogue.
>anger got the better of her
To clarify, I'm not a retard that sees "show don't tell" as an objective rule. However, a major skill to develop is to be able to tell when it's better to state a fact or to show it. In this case, stating that anger got the better of her does little to advance the plot.

Things like that are common throughout the pages you posted. The writing comes off as weaker as a result, although I wouldn't say it's irredeemable.

[Anonymous No.14991224]

>>14979494
This is my attempt at something contemplative, the main character lives in the forest.

As the sun neared the end of its waltz, Matt cleared space for a pit. He used one of his remaining matches to start a small fire. The flames climbed up the kindling, before grasping onto the larger logs. The fire swayed back and forth, becoming more confident as additional fuel was engulfed. Willow trees leered at Matthew; light flowed across their bark. He grabbed a stick and rolled it between his fingers, occasionally stopping to draw small figures in the dirt.
In the gaps between the trees, Matthew could see dozens of stars. Such an immense reality, one which did not care should he live or die, yet Matthew lived anyway. Trillions of lives would come to pass, and yet the stars would not blink. Perhaps the stars were gods, completely unaware of the minuscule man looking up at them. Even Matthew himself only knew of the beings on his skin, he could never truly know those who must see him as God. Who, then, do the stars worship?

[Anonymous No.14991249]

>>14980128
I don't understand them but I liked how they sounded.

[Anonymous No.14991292]

>>14982530
Very good, I like the alliteration in the first paragraph. I think it's magnified/justified by the fact it's the beginning of a chapter. Had you said this was an excerpt from the middle, the grandiosity would've felt out of place desu.

[Anonymous No.14991298]

>>14979494
every singe one, as devoid of meaning as the life of a child cancer patient. you guys are just writing really contrived fanfics at this point. ah yes the rosy tumescence of madame cumquats epistemological engine, which she programs idiosyncratically for mrs. o'doerery, who's stupid face lights up 'like a comet' hahah shit, anyway MOTHERS TIME is quiescent for nature aaaaaaaaaaaaa fuck okay okay i looked around my room while expanding the lexicon of the english mind, puffing at my cigarette with the youthful insolence of a literary genius as i stare at a copy of "Stirner's Ego and it's Own" WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[Anonymous No.14991301]

>>14988754
I mean it as a compliment. I'm >>14987228

[Anonymous No.14991323]

>>14984215
Am I the only one that sees Michael Madsen playing Frankie? Just seems to fit imo

[Anonymous No.14991407]

>>14991298
Yes, this is certainly where you come for masterpieces. Leave some constructive criticism or show us something better you've wrote.

[Anonymous No.14991477]

Just threw this together in 5 minutes. A glamorized page of my life. The reality is a lot more mediocre. But I think it runs true to the emotions it conjured.

Anyway here it is..

I thank God everyday for never getting to know you,
Even after all those me and you dates that you held my arm.
She who stinks like crashed plates and self harm.
She whose serpentine eyes are a pleasure to behold for those fools with drunken minds.
Something I never said as I sat in a line of collected empty bottles of mine.


Turkish girl, I don't miss you.
I swear I promise you.
I haven't missed you.

Long gone are the days I've reminisced of she who,
Kept me in second place behind an unknown other.
Ironic the subject of my writing is that same you,
But there's a bottle by my side greeting me as a long lost brother.

[Anonymous No.14991485]

>>14979686
Could use some more pronoun usage, but I like the modern vernacular. I'd read more.

[Anonymous No.14991639]

>>14986814
Not the best at dialogue, but perhaps occasional beats of action within the dialogue?

[Anonymous No.14991665]

>>14986915
I liked it.

[Anonymous No.14991735]

>>14981015
>>14981820
Both are tremendously boring, desu.

[Anonymous No.14991958]

>>14990765
Y'all don't have a laundry at your place? Firstly, any self-respecting wife would realize that you set yourself up for failure by doing laundry late at night. You have to run through the wash, then dry, and the span of time means that it is just enough time to not be able to do anything. Very tedious, honestly, and the only correct way to do laundry is to do it in the morning, likely have breakfast at the Aunt's house, and finish up around lunch time, take a shower, change into the clean clothes for dinner, then proceed with the night.

Also saying "we've been in the phillipines since jan 12th" while saying "we've been here for over a month now" is a waste of writing.
We know you have been there for over a month.
If you tell us, in the same sentence, all the information about how long you've been there, the visa, and the extension, at the end of the paragraph, it streams better into my mindport.

Also here's my garbage
The takeoff from the dew-point hour slowly sours a silence built over time. The waking in the early mourn rarely yields a fresh-face, so likely if work is to be done early enough, its best to be awake before the night reaches her apex.

The darkness slowly gives way to the sun. First, it is hardly noticed. The minutes tick by, and you remain wary of the speed at which the sun does rise. The thickened blackness, irreverent of the stars above, focused by your eyes from the man-made light irrigation, sways and breaks to the hazed gray, melancholy at first.

[Anonymous No.14993604]

>>14979494
https://a.uguu.se/WN2Nh0Fz4Dm7.docx

Working on a screenplay. Sorry I couldn't directly post it, it's too long to copy+paste.

[Anonymous No.14993611]

>>14986598
0 aesthetic merit in post Tolkien fantasy. I don't think a fantasy author would be able to even loosely define an aesthetic principle.

So why would a lit board concern itself with fantasy then?

[Anonymous No.14993653]

how's this? just writing off the top of my head

[Anonymous No.14993685]

>>14993611
>hasn't read gormenghast

[Anonymous No.14993817]

>>14982609
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

[Anonymous No.14993838]

>Just had a thought to write a book about the last year of my life with obvious creative liberties
>tfw I know there's folks out there who would like it but it'd never get published because of our humor/opinions
Why must life be like this?

[Anonymous No.14993855]

He walked into his kitchen climbed his counter to peek at his cabinets top. There was the whiskey he had kept for when the moment was right. He swiped it and started taking desperate swigs hoping it would calm him down. Echos of the fighting, despair, and savagery had reduced him to a shallow state. He struggled to comprehend anything outside his exhausted mind. All that he felt was covered in a tense dread. Soon he was babbling naked on the floor. He tried to cry as he realized the whiskey did not make him feel better but his body couldn’t muster anything. Defeated he pushed himself up off his left knee and stammered into his room. Lying on his bed, he felt uncomfortable with the large space above him. He grabbed his covers and curled up in the back of his closet.

[Anonymous No.14993873]

A cup of tea let off some steam before a pale hand began stirring a spoon inside of it. Dr. Harold Cromwell saw his hand in terms of synapses and muscle twitches, rather than as an attachment to a human being. His parents had undoubtedly contributed to his callous and objective nature. They had a tendency to praise displays of wisdom and trivial knowledge rather than his ability to play and make others happy. Gradually it had dampened his emotional capacity so badly he could not connect with his peers. He would then spend his twenties understanding neural networks and how they played a role in human behavior. Inconsequentially to him, he excelled academically and became a prodigy in the field of neurology for unveiling the key cellular mechanisms behind common social ailments such an anxiety, and depression. However, the military had acquired him for his accomplisments in computational biology. His problem solving ability was top notch. He had written programs to find the genes personally responsible for hundreds of patients mental issues. The sheer complexity of his algorithms made it difficult for peer review.

[Anonymous No.14993882]

>>14979686
I enjoyed it.

[Anonymous No.14994339]

>>14979997
one of the few things I could read without spacing out. captivating.

[Anonymous No.14994395]

>>14985007
what's the story behind this?

[A̡͏nơ̷͢n̵̕ymò͞us͟ No.14994398]

ZAZAS

[Anonymous No.14994435]

>>14989309
this is bait, right?

[Anonymous No.14994654]

>>14989309
As a hole and as an analysis of our society this excerpt brilliantly exposes the pseudery of a sub-class of the proletariat which defines life in its boundaries, and endless futile possibilities of the digital world. The prose of this modern-day campus novel is nothing short of the utmost egg-plant-coloured posts revealing 4chanian linguistics and Joycean neoplastic word-creations. It leaves the reader speechless and in hope for a Preface of the authour to bless his readership with an explanation of why this novel is brilliant, and more importantly, why no-one will ever truly and fully get it.

[Anonymous No.14994724]

>>14993873
It reads unnaturally. I feel as though I don't need to know Harold's title and surname, the paleness of his hand lends itself to a first person perspective but it is written in third, the more interesting aspects of his character are explained briefly and handwaved rather than lived and expressed through the character -- and if you are trying to do that through the way he stirs his spoon then I come back to my point about it feeling unnatural. He also doesn't seem like a real person. Nobody excells in their field like this without a mote of passion, where is it?

>>14993855
'This is that, because this. This is that because this. This is that because this.'
Experiment more, this is very cookie cutter writing.

>>14993653
I enjoyed it. I can feel your character through the prose, good balance of show and tell. There is a paradox I have trouble with, this is written in first person and not in retrospect. He says he goes to great lengths to keep his mind occupied yet mentally waxes lengthly with exact detail about those same memories. I mean, if you're going to even turn this into a short story you can spread out the recall into separate events, it would make the opening more believeable. Seems a little like you wanted to make him more troubled than you intended to write for and it clashes.

[Anonymous No.14994769]

>>14994724, here.
I wrote a thing too recently.

[Anonymous No.14994780]

>>14989309
Writing cynically about people's coffee in the morning is so boring to me. People have been taking all sorts of drugs to wake up throughout human history, this isn't a new plight on campuses, or anything so dire. It comes across like a shallow commentary to me.

[Anonymous No.14994791]

>>14989309
>meatspace
You stole that from neuromancer

[An͟on̶ymous No.14994811]

Burnt Postcard of a Ruined Future

Descent down serpentine steps
Swampish green swirls at the bottom
Viscosity churning the stairwell
Reach the singularity of undefined material
Streeeeeeetch
Fold over fold over fold over
In loops smelted to the essence
Daedalus brings his hammer down
Ah! tempered now
With obsidian edge
A swift circular movement cuts “reality’s” veil
Revealing fluoride staring puppetmasters with pants around their ankles

[Anonymous No.14994931]

>>14994811
pictures rated from bad to worst
>Viscosity churning the stairwell
>“reality’s” veil
>Revealing fluoride
>puppetmasters with pants around their ankles
the last one is exceedingly cringeworthy

[Anonymous No.14994958]

>>14994769
Utter shit expostion telling not showing. Get gooder.

[Anonymous No.14995000]

>>14994958
That excerpt covers about forty seconds temporally, and clearly leads into habbenings, but alright.

[Anonymous No.14995011]

>>14995000
doesn't change the fact that you're boring your reader with am internal monologue and innocuous observations.

[Ano̷͝n͘͜y̴mou͞͞s͝ No.14995038]

>>14994931
was the rest ok?

[Anonymou̶s͠ No.14995056]

>>14995038
no. but you can keep the headline and write a new one.

[Anonymous No.14995307]

>>14994398
Am I the only one seeing this??

[A̵n̶͟o͠ǹ͠y̸m͜ou͟͢s No.14995325]

>>14994435
>>14994654
>>14994724
>>14994769
>>14994780
>>14994791
>>14994811
>>14994931
>>14994958
>>14995000
>>14995011
>>14995056
>>14995307
coof coof, hey jim been keeping the social distancing i see? good good you look healthy as ever

[Anonymous No.14995334]

>>14994641
I'm blooming! Look mom! I'm finally not a disappointment.

[Anonymous No.14995340]

Starting today, we're friends

[Anonymous No.14995342]

new to this
whats shit
whats not (if any)
what to improve
love you all

[Anonymous No.14995398]

>>14994811
I like it. It's nice and vivid. The writing has a good energy and pulse behind it, and I've always found really roundabout metaphors wrapped in a kind of sinister imagery really appealing, which I think you pulled off well.

[Anonymous No.14995447]

I posted a sample I wrote on /wsr/ a little ago asking for criticism. I haven't really done much to the sample itself and I'm still searching for more criticism or just confirmation that it's shit. Right now I'm still working on just describing the world so don't expect conversation or action or anything. Thank you.
>>14995342
This is pretty nice.

[Anonymous No.14995739]

>>14985007
Im interested, whats the story behind this anon?

[A͘ǹo̢͜n̴y̧̧mou̡s̶҉ No.14996480]

We should definitely bring back the general, this is a comfy thread to come back to a couple times a day

[An͢o͜n͜͝y̴͝m͞͡ǫųs No.14996495]

Let the maestro show you how it's done.
>>14995447
awful
>>14995342
terrible
>>14994811
complete shit
>>14994769
kill yourself
>>14993873
garbage
>>14993855
tone deaf

[Anonymous No.14996501]

>>14979686
Solid, anon, very solid

[Anonymous No.14996521]

@14996495
terrible bait just to infect people
shame on you sir

[Anonymous No.14996671]

>>14991477
bump me

[Ano͝n̡͡y̴͝mo̵̕ú̵s̀ No.14996676]

About 5%- maybe even just 1 or 2%, actually- of writing posts in these threads 'have it'. If you have it, you have it. If you don't, you don't. People who don't have it might become people who have it, but it'll be a long grind.

Of that small percentage who 'have it', an even smaller number will actually put the effort in to make their work more consistent, and increase output. Creative types are naturally lazy, depressive and distracted. Any combination of neuroses will sabotage their work, meaning maybe 20% will write consistently.

Of that 20%, very very few will produce finished, edited manuscripts ready for submission. And a smaller percentage still will have their submission accepted by a major agent and be published. I don't know if anyone on /lit/ ever has in all honesty.

Point being- please, just read through your writing critically. Read through- actually read through- the posts which have gotten more positive responses. Compare them to your own. Read more. That niggling sensation that your writing is missing something? It's for a reason. Isn't engaging, structured wrong, flat characters, unnatural dialogue. Whatever.

You can fix it- but please, fix it before posting again.

[An̴̶on̢ym͞o̢͢u̷s̷̨̛ No.14996778]

>>14979686
>>14980128
>>14982530

Best in thread, each for different reasons. Poetry is engaging and has a glimmer of original thought, especially the middle two, albeit short. A sonnet would be nice.

The boarding school piece is very evocative, with excellent rhythm and structure- like another anon picked up on, alliteration and assonance the average reader won't even notice are at play.

The Milan piece is likewise evocative, for different reasons- it's character driven, in contrast to the previous piece which focuses on an environment, and though less meticulously crafted it is more visceral, thus appealing to a different reader. Classicalism Vs modernism.

I'm short, each three pieces- especially the latter two- contain some aspect of truth and beauty, which are effectively the same thing.

Now- and I hate to pick on particular entries- but take this excerpt, for example.
>>14983216
There are no replies, and that is for a reasons- the eye struggles to read past the first few sentences. Vocabulary is good, but meaningless. Sentence structure is awkward and does not flow, doesn't pull the eye and the mind along with it, and when it does phrases like 'aerosolized calming gases' and 'S-343 radar guided surface to air missile platform' jar and repel. The dialogue strikes a false note and doesn't seem logically consistent, unless I'm mistaken- the planes are picked up almost instantly and effortlessly by the soldier, yet their recognition is worthy of medals? Then too much seems to happen too
quickly- after droning on and on for the first paragraph, the sequence of a plane being shot down, the shooters 'screamimg', 'battalion-wide celebrations' and commemorative products being made? Again, strikes as unrealistic and rushed.

Do not take my critique too much to heart- there is no truth and beauty here, but with a little work I'm sure there could be.

The advice I would give you, I would give to the majority of writers in this thread and all threads like these. Take the grain of your conception of the idea; wash away all the rest, all the clunky prose and artificial dialogue; and keep it safe. Read more. Read even more than that. Read the great short stories- Chekhov, Turgenev, Maupassant, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Borges and the rest. Read more of the Western Canon. Read poetry. Read literary criticism and learn what makes good writing good. Keep practicing. Then, when you're ready, take the grain, the pearl generated by the Divine Creative, and plant it in that fresh soil.

Then see what you've got.

[An̴͜͝o̵n̷ym̛ơ͡us͏̢ No.14996891]

>>14996778
Literally reading a collection of Chekhov rn, ty for the guidance infecto anon

[Anonymous No.14997117]

>>14994724
Thanks for the advice. I wrote>>14993873
and >>14993855 and have not been happy with the results. Need to be more creative.

[Anon͜y̛m̨o͠u̵s̸ No.14997143]

Muses! Thalia or Melpomene,
Whomever dare accompany me,
Incite the waxing gall of waning hope,
For noose-neck nuance upon a tightrope
Let our steps be gray and faces not blue,
For when we falter, at least we fall true
To not walk; not talk, the fate’s much the same:
Asphyxiation. Therefore, take aim.

With one pussyfoot and two out stretched arms,
I dare say, “feminism’s done some harm.”
Some fainted, some gasped some threw their popcorn,
Some used megaphones to echo their scorn
I tried to retract; backpedal; conform,
But my shaky foot found no more platform
Arms flailing about and bent at the waist,
I retook my step, then two more in haste


kms?? continue on?

[Anonymous No.14997167]

>>14994769
Doesnt have rhythm especially the start. Read more Anon and maybe read them out loud to get the feel.

Anyways I found old memos in my phone so I'll post the ones I found, made these two years ago

It has been a long night but in retrospect most nights are long here in Ganymede, a day here is equivalent to 7.15 Earth days, if not for the dome's Earth day cycle, most of the habitants here will go crazy, as what was learned the hard way by the pioneers. Haxs tries to rub the sleep out of his eyes and gulps down on his Guatemala coffee grown in Martian soil, if the advertisements were true. He threw the cup at the nearest bin and took a mental note to never buy one again noting the unpleasant taste.

He takes his vape out, and takes a long drag. He missed Earth, the natural gravity, the smell of rain, the city skylines and most of all the food, God he missed it. Ganymede delicacies specialized in lasting long and preventing micro-nutrient deficiency rather than flavor. The view is a killer though pondered Haxs as he taps on one of the holoscreens where Jupiter's famous scenery, the Red Spot, was sifting aimlessly on its atmosphere.

"Dr. Haxs, you are needed in room 173, ASAP"
Haxs curses, and takes another long drag before walking in back to the facility.

Moonpeak has been running for five years, promising visibile psionic traits within three months. Luminaries all over the solar system came, the Martian State even sent four men to train as spies. Haxs even trained them himself, along with three russian ambassadors and the ten children of Hitsumi Ryoku.

Haxs runs to the room, and finds Nurse Mae tweeking the machines strapped on Kingston, a prominent psion in Africa. Haxs turns to check on the monitors, finding nothing to be worried about and asks Mae.
"What is the emergency?"
"His mind is shutting down"
"What are you talking about" Haxs points to the monitors, and in reply Mae takes his index finger lower and he found his answer.
"Oh, I see now"
"I didn't notice it at first too"
"Tried waking him up?"
"Psions are stubborn Doc, this one is one of the best at it and he's shutting down and I don't know why"
"We cant lose this guy, have you tried reaching for the other doctors?"
"I tried, the cell receptors would be dead for days, something about sunflares and maintenance"
"Well fuck"
Both of them stood there for a moment, Haxs with his hand on his beard and Mae with her arms folded with the machines beepbooping at their background.
"Let's check his medical records, does he have any allergy with Smile?"
"It wouldn't work on him, his drug resistant, unless you want him to die, and he havent had a surgery nor does he have any ailments. He was clear on his last checkup, my best guess is its psychological Doc" Mae stares at Haxs, as he plays one of those loud and annoying figdet boxes.

[Anonymous No.14997179]

>>14997167
"Are you trying to tell me that I, Dr. Haxs, do an invasive procedure on one of the most powerful psionics in the solar system?"
She shrugs but the smile gave it away.
"You're crazy if you think I'm gonna do that"
"What choice do we have, and don't worry, I got you Doc" she swipes through her tablet and shows him the procedure "We are gonna use procedure 45, you go inside his psyche, and give him a pep talk all right? I'll just pull you out if anything went wrong"
Haxs contemplates for a minute, weighing the danger basing on the patients profile.
"We need to have his permission or one from his immediate relatives"
"Are you telling me we should let him die?"
"Sorta, I mean I've seen one these cases before"
"You mean Cassandra?"
"Ya her, the girl who won Psion Challenge twice, and thats why your here Mae, you filled Dr. Higgs' spot" Haxs goes for his phone and searched anything about Kingston and found an article with details about him losing the top spot from a thirteen year old in California. "Do me a favor, would you? Lets keep this between you and me. I dont want to be screwed over here, find us another patient to work on"
Mae looks over Kingston, "Fuck it, this guy's not worth it" she swipes over her pad "Soe needs help on her telekenisis"
"Ya lets go there"
And so the two of them left, leaving the man to die in shame.

[Anonymous No.14997192]

>>14979494
I drifted, shaking awake with pain, then sleeping once more.
‘I’ll be good’ I begged. ‘I don’t need my gym. I’ll stay quarantined.’
My father turned to face me. His hair was blonde and his face was fat, puffed up.
‘I want every American to be prepared for the hard days that lie ahead,’ he said.
‘How’s your diet, honey?’ asked my mother, and her voice came from far away, sounding occupied. I could only see her profile, as she was occupied with something out of my vision.
‘Listen to your mother.’ Said my father, and popped open a diet coke. He sipped loudly. ‘You want to be thin, don’t you?’
On the can was a picture of a rat, laughing.

[Anonymous No.14997234]

>>14997143
Its like two different poems to me. Im a peon in poetry but I do enjoy the 1st compared to the second as it feels more of a meme and even fails at being one OMO. do keep it up :)

[Anonymous No.14997243]

>>14997167
is english your first language?
>>14995342
either you write a gritty horror story or you right introspective wank fiction but not both, pick one and focus on it. your descriptions are cliched. you also try too hard to be literary, leading to idiomatic misfires like your use of cars rusted in drives, countless age ago, any encroaching hands, incomplete sentences (slow at first..., then towns...). Not to say that you cant break the rules, but many of the violations here are not justified
>>14995447
typo central

[Anonymous No.14997253]

>>14997243
*write introspective

[Anonymous No.14997270]

>>14997243
Thanks, I'll try not to make as many typos in the future. Is there anything else?

[Anonymous No.14997289]

>>14997192
Reads like a fever dream anon. Did you made this on the fly?cause its bad.
>>14997243
Its not, how can you tell?

[Anonymous No.14997294]

>>14997289
I did, and it's suppoused to be a fever dream. Not suprised that you think it's bad, but why?

[Anonymous No.14997295]

>>14997270
the fact that you included so many suggests that you dont understand how important it is to edit what you write many times
it's impossible to evaluate your writing until it's not riddled with grammatical errors

[Anonymous No.14997315]

>>14997289
there's just a lot of idiomatic mistakes. ie Guatemala coffee should be Guatemalan, and the qualifier "if the advertisements were true," which needs an element of the preceding clause to be set off on its own to not be awkward and have something clear to refer to.

Your ideas aren't bad, I would recommend writing in your first language, tho. Very few authors have successfully written in a different language than their own

[Anonymous No.14997336]

>>14997295
Thank you

[Anonym҉ous̕ No.14997344]

>>14997289
>My father turned to face me. His hair was blonde and his face was fat, puffed up.
Fat, puffed up sounds redundant.
>I could only see her profile, as she was occupied with something out of my vision.
Profile sounds weird here
>Listen to your mother.’ Said my father, and popped open a diet coke. He sipped loudly. ‘You want to be thin, don’t you?’
On the can was a picture of a rat, laughing.
Do canned sodas pop when opened? And the description on the can felt out of place

[A̸nonym͠ous No.14997375]

>>14997315
Thanks for the critique
Strange as it may, im better at writing it in english. Ill just polish my shit more.

[Anonymous No.14997381]

Prologue to a self-serving fantasy story about life in Heaven.

[Anonymous No.14997407]

>>14997381
not Christlike. also the tone is incredibly inconsistent. words like scoundrels, attribute, boiled mind, telepathically do not belong here.

To quote Screwtape, "I did not want to have your rather infantile rhapsodies about the death of men and the destruction of cities"

[Anony͏mous̕ No.14997435]

>>14997344
>>14997294
Here's why

[Anonymous No.14997437]

>>14997407
>not Christlike

im muslim

[Ą̴́͜n̵onym̴o̷͠u̸͜s No.14997446]

A little poem I wrote, out of homesickness, for my dog who I miss sorely. If it isn't obvious, it's about our regular walks we would take through a ravine which would often become choked with rain water. Apologies for the rough meter, this is only the second poem I've written.

One happy morning I rambled.
Through thick brush and thorn I trampled.
Ahead of me loped a careless old dope,
My great little dog named Riley.
Laughing and chasing and hunting for squirrels
Through a green maze we whirled,
Greener still was the haze I oft deign
Imbibing til’ we reached a watery mane.
To little Riley I would have to say,
What unfortunate luck we’ve received today!
And would turn on my heel
With promises of a meal
A late morning snack to amend
A ramble I wish never had to end.

[Anonymous No.14997471]

>>14997344
thanks mon.

[Anonymous No.14997551]

>>14984215
So uh, are none of you reading my shit because it's in a shitty format?

[A̵nǫnym̛ou̷̧s͢ No.14997645]

>>14979494
Waking up from a nightmare felt cruely unsatisfying, especially if the nightmare was of profane nature. It could be felt as an indiscernible itch right underneath the skin that would stubbornly last the first waking hours. A unscratchable itch at that. It went along with the feeling of being empty brained, as if the juices that keep one operational were largly wasted on conjuring up mocking images. Herman knew it was time and with barely any sleep he stood up in anticipation of 4 distinct knocks. He expected somebody, a friend, who always had to knock with grandiose musicality. He, who usually sees a certain charme in that pesky quirk, could not shake a distinct feeling of deep embarresment for his friend. In his dreams herman krause, barely participated, he usually was a bodyless observer. A direct translation from his waking self to the etherial dreamscape. Bodyless...It was true. Little concern went into his self presentation, odd for a man of 25 years. Wild dark hair on a pale stoic mask with two eerily symmetrical pearly eyes, smooth without any wrinkles, a scrawny body thin as nails but twisted like screws. He had noticable scoliosis. He was not unhappy, rather apathetic to his looks, unlike his friend who occured or rather invaded his dream. Now this invasion would soon become reality...Soon enough 4 irritatingly planned out knocks graced his heavy wooden door (which to his dismay, was a great medium for musical experimentation). He reluctently openend the door.
"Hey, how are you?" the friend said hastily, to signal that he is only interested in getting over the social formalities as quickly as possible. "I have the documents, is your printer ready?"

[Anonymous No.14997690]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2b7o3yzzx4ib7dp/two%20extracts-%20I%20don%27t%20expect%20anyone%20to%20read%20the%20whole%20thing%2C%20dw.docx?dl=0

[Anonymous No.14997701]

>>14997690
Two excerpts that work as short stories in their own right, first drafts and probably not my best work- but representative of the nuts & bolts of my prose and dialogue, and that's what I'm most concerned about improving atm. No point having good ideas if they're not pleasant to read.

[Anonymous No.14997976]

[Anonymous No.14997995]

[Ano͏n͟y̨̕mous No.14998006]

>>14995398
thanks!

[Anonymous No.14998072]

>>14982530
I will smoke a cigarette in your honour, anon, for such a fine piece. Eloquence like this is nourishing.

Keep going.

[Anonymous No.14998126]

https://pastebin.com/vraCpWff

Second chapter of a story I was working on years ago and stumbled across last night. May pick it up again. Warning, it is fantasy

[Anonymous No.14998184]

physically writing is more satisfying imo, but less secure and guarantees tedious work in eventual transcription.

[A̵͜ń͘on̸ym͏̢͘o҉us̴ No.14998314]

“For we are battle-hardened men!” said the German, slugging his beer. He was an accomplished drinker and choked his art down with a fine zeal.
He was Colonel Hermann Halder of the 6th Marine Regiment of the World Protection Force - or, W.P.F. for short. The 6th Regiment was nicknamed “The Skullfuckers” for their penchant to use an ice cream scoop to remove their captured enemies’ eyes and make congress with their bleeding eye sockets.
Colonel Halder and his men, totalling 200 odd strong had just destroyed an enemy nest and where in the mood to celebrate. Some 450 arachnids being dispatched in bloodshed spanning 76 hours, no food or sleep, in the south Asian heat.
Halder was a hard-nosed, stoic man with silver eyes, pugnacious nose, and a scar stretching from his forehead to his chin.
The Colonel was a man I greatly admired, a strong leader whose loud bellowing in the heat of battle commanded more power than the heat of a thousand suns. Everyone in the regiment respected him, whether they liked him or not is not my business to say but Colonel Halder was a man of true grit and Bull Shark testosterone.

My name is Lionel McWham, I was born in 1994 in a small town in Ohio, you’ve probably never heard of it. Even if you did, you’d probably have forgotten it. It’s a bullshit town with bullshit people. As soon as I was old enough I got out, goodbye mum and dad, fuck you, and I joined the army.
I had joined The Skullfuckers not two years ago, when I was a younger man, wet behind the ears and still almost fresh from my mother’s womb. I was a medic stationed in Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania. First of my class.
When my commanding officers gave me the call of my first deployment I was a kaleidoscope of emotion, piss-scared, bi-curious, trigger-happy. I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know what the mission was; only that it was classified and I’d be briefed whilst on the flight out.

[Anonymous No.14998927]

Will an anon offer critique of this prose?:

Scene: I sit upon a toliet seat reading about gnosticism when sudden, hurried footsteps followed by rapid, distressed breathing break my focus and pierce the silence of the toliet room. These footsteps make their way to a far stall. The door is closed. A new sound emerges, indicative of a belt-opening struggle. The breathing increases. The belt remains closed. Now a new series of sounds come to the fore. One of desperation seeps from the cubicle. 'Come on! Come on!' The belt opens. At last! Swoosh! Down go the trousers. Plonk! The porcelain throne is mounted. PRRFFFTTT! Sweet relief! Oh merciful hour. Catastrophy is held at bay. Now to pass the time. Hum-di-di-hum-hum-hum.

[Anonymous No.14999056]

>>14998927
It's like a flowery Bukowski bit. Make it more everyman, and stop trying so hard.

[Anonymous No.14999179]

林间水明月,我入尽古酒。
但啸一小鸟,不去一白云。

[Anonymous No.14999206]

everyone ITT: read Spencer's "Philosophy of Style"

[Anonymous No.14999211]

>>14999056
Thank you for an introduction to an author I was unaware of and for the comment, anon. I am in a constant struggle over the matter of flowery versus unflowery prose. I often write in one or the other, depending on what I am writing. By and large, I thought the piece above was devoid of ten penny words. Moreover, if you do not mind offering your opinion, why should I not use 'flowery' prose. I personally feel tired of people complaining about prose they do not understand because they have a small vocabulary. Surely the reader is obliged to rectify this? Having said that, I appreciate the underlying sentiment. I would be pissed too if a writer wrote with uncommon words.

[Anonymous No.14999270]

>>14999211
>introduction to an author
Yeah, Bukowski is great fun.

[Ano͘nymou̡̢͏s̸̕ No.14999306]

Not posting my writing but have a question and lit doesn't have sqt

I want to start writing essays on some topics, they'll require citations and shit, as far as doing this and presenting it would something like a blog with essays written in html be best?

[Anonymous No.14999354]

>>14982010
kek

[Anonymous No.14999844]

>>14996495
It's kinda mediocre

[Anonymo̵us̡ No.14999865]

>>14999306
You're probably better off going to a book store, looking at the magazine section, and submitting your essays to whatever magazine fits your essay topic.

[Anonymous No.14999948]

>>14989309
So I posted this and it got deservedly shit on. I was trying to be tongue in cheek kind of for part of it, but clearly it doesn't work and I just ended up sounding like pretentious college male /lit/ guy No. 493028759. Anyway here is almost completely rewritten version, free (hopefully) from gee-whiz bullshit and 2deep social commentary:

“Well I would like to start now with our Land Acknowledgement. We are meeting on the occupied, stolen land of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Lummi Nation and the neighboring tribes.”

Terri stood before several stretches of hard blue chairs, dust clotting against the static surface of her gloomy suit, reflecting hot light. Behind her a whiteboard, unused, blended with the outline of her spiky silver hair. The room rotted. Moist lint and pollen flowed in eddies throughout snotty beams of orange sun, irritating throats, spasming in response to the movement of limbs. The cold chairs, unforgiving to the butts of students, squeaked in harsh staccato. Hooked to the ceiling was an old projector spilling its guts of duct-taped wires. Terri’s interlaced fingers cradled the broad lower seam of her stomach, parting and reclosing in almost rhythmic intervals.

“But you know, I’ve actually been thinking about this. I’ve been wondering whether my own formulation of the Land Acknowledgement is actually, um, is problematic in its own way. Cause in the indigenous ways of knowing, which have been erased by our capitalist framework, the land is seen as our mother. And, maybe it’s problematic to claim that our mother can be owned or stolen. So that’s just something I’ve been thinking about more.”

Below her voice a world of bodily noises wetted the sour air. Coughs and sneezes, slurps and snorts, yawns and the sloshing of coffee gulps harmonized, as if issuing from one superorganism. No one was comfortable. Cold white flanks of MacBook Pros jutted dustless from the desks, anachronistic, beaming from serene screens at the room’s disrepair. Laptop stickers proclaimed allegiances to restaurants, ideologies, and local indie bands. On the floor a mated jumble of cords snaked between chairs towards outlets. Jonah sat with a clear desk, gazing at the whiteboard with no expression. His face sloped in a brutal curve from a long sweaty forehead and dark button eyes, slanting forward through ruddy cheeks to a bristle-stained chin that protruded ungraciously. A dense bowl of rubbery hair capped his head. A bland sweatshirt, morbidly gray, hid his amorphous torso. Underneath, orange lines stretched encompassing his belly, designating folds of mawkish blubber. Stale jeans squeezed his bulging legs.

[Anonymous No.14999973]

>>14979494
My ex-girlfriend had a strange kink. He's the weak boyfriend, she's his girlfriend. The guy was a masochist, got off on this sort of thing. Someone found online. Plan was to go to a bar, drink, play the parts, then walk home. I come in, the asshole. Stir shit up. She's repulsed by me, but I can tell she's also turned on by this. I berate her weak boyfriend, escalating the situation. Beat the shit out of him. Then I fuck his girlfriend, right in front of him. After I finish with her I walk away. Head home, knowing she'll be back at our apartment, smile plastered on her face. Strange girl.

[Anonymous No.15000128]

The place, upon which my feet dug rough furrows into the soft earth with each step, dividing pads of moss and crawling insects alike, was the realm of something far beyond me. Whereas the desert was empty save for shimmering in the air and the sun’s murderous rays, a place who’s secrets of life in the flight of hawks were hidden with as deep avarice as it’s supply of water, the forest, with it’s multitude of trees placed along rolling hills and scattered indentations that stood as if shaped and painted by colossal hands, was something more free with the fact that it held such things as life.
Life as in the occasional flitting of a winged shadow somewhere high above from tree to tree, the spear-beaked jay digging into one of those arboreal pillars to find a grub amid it’s normal song of tapping, or a hare, nothing but taught sinews and apertures of perception wrapped up in dark fur as it bolted out back amid the ferns at my passing. And insects, oh insects. Those minute, chitinous things were the greatest abundance of life.
In the air upon the wing or crawling across the ground they were a testament to the aspect of this place as living, making their way across the bark of a tree or moving about in colony clouds. I could not help but admire such things as the beetles ambling about in their heavy armor or the serpentine centipedes as they navigated the land in search of fodder for their mighty jaws.
I found myself transfixed by the sight of something dark and feathered flapping from tree to tree. It was the size of a vulture, perhaps even larger, but built like a raven. A convention of them lay in my path at some point, all gathered around the carcass of a deer. Starving was the nature of their contest to claim whatever meat they could, tumbling about and dragging away respective strips of carrion. Hooked claws and sharp beaks named them something close to raptors and a coat of feathers to each one that was deepest black made me stop to watch as they either flew or hopped off when the corpse was little more than bones.
One stayed behind, combing through the ground for potential scraps until the amber colored things it called eyes caught something glinting in the underbrush. It had found a chunk of crystal, something apparently worth claiming as the bird returned once more to the air with prize held in it’s beak.
Walking under that canopy I felt more like the explorer of some fallen realm, someone striding amid crumbled archways and shattered pillars which had once help up the roof of some incredible hall and had done so until struck down by a horrid disaster, rather than a mere walker of the woods.

[Anonymous No.15000708]

>>14998846
Just read hentai manga. It has both the art and the words.
There's also ton of hentai manga made by girls.

[Anonymous No.15000712]

I'm writing a story, this is the beginning, but it's a much different style from the rest of it.

https://1drv.ms/w/s!An0JVyeGSItThIZxAoxj86w6_-7Rpg

If you like it, great, if you dislike it I'll take whatever advice you want to offer that isn't "quit". It's fantasy.

[A͢n̨ony̕͞m̶̸͡oùs No.15000724]

>>14986046
I like how you subtly rhyme drift with graveyard shift in the same sentence, I do that sometimes too

[Anonymous No.15000740]

My girl drives a double
Pulls out giving me trouble


Seen it in my dreams
White stripe with the cream

Photographs are fading the past isnt what is used to be
Dreams are dying the future doesn’t mean that to me

I still see God In heaven. I myself in your rearview

[Anonymous No.15000799]

>>14999975
Probs try start freelancing online if youre at least somewhat capable. Thats the general direction the economy is moving in, and i suspect that after this whole corona thing itll be even more pronounced since the flaws of a full time workforce are being revealed.

This way you can do less work while being more productive.

Im an SE and trying to move into data science freelancing.

[À̸n̕ony̕mo̢̡u̵̸͏s̛ No.15000801]

>>14997344
I'd say snapped open is better

[Anonymous No.15000926]

almost everyone here would benefit from reading Schopenhauer's short essay "On Style," which is available in English on gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10714/10714-h/10714-h.htm#link2H_4_0004

[Anon͢y͜҉͘͞͞m̀oư̡s̶ No.15000985]

>>14986659
BUMP :( I guess it's boring but what else.

[Ano̵̶͘n̢y̕ḿo̶͞ư͘s No.15000996]

Day 20

Continuous disappointment encumbers me. I remember talking to a therapist many years ago, I remember everything except the conversation. The grey sky, the slumped house, the long road leading to it, the one-time an elderly man asked me for a ride to the top of the hill. Poor being; how the elderly attempt to converse: A few aphorisms, a pithy, some platitudes, and most of it dismissed or reduced to aesthetic pleasure-- a poor old man, a wise old man, a greedy old man, etc. and a sybaritic sensation gesticulated in some manner. I wish it was several years prior… and I was having a cookie (black and white), a coffee, and watching Seinfeld. I wish I could enjoy that again instead of professing to be deep and disavowing all snacks. Instead, I’ll read Zarathustra and pretend to understand it, convince myself I enjoy it, and then go to bed and wake up with an unwarranted grin on my face. How I loathe myself.

Ginger is forgotten, once I’m married it’ll be as if she never existed. Once she’s dead, she never actually did. I will not know when she died, but at one point in life I was the closest person to her. Even if it was just a few days, just a few thumps, and just a few heys we had a moment of understanding. Shouldn’t I be entitled to something more. No! God owes me nothing. I remember so much, skipping school, eating dosie-does, watching shitty TV show. I wish I was a kid again, so I could experience childhood, instead I sit on my coach and type vapid words hoping not to sound depressed, but instead profess some truth. Truth, as if I could understand it. I’m just a person who exists, talks, and wishes he was different.


Day 21

Every great man of the past is remembered by blinking toads that stand antithetical to all their teachings. A few drinks at a dinner party, hazy articulation, “Well Kafka was just crazy,” or some glib pithy about moralism and justice. The system is omnipotent and extended its roots to the past, all academia’s purpose is to boost the agenda of some rich oligarch. Humanities just preach the system in various facets. Everybody is sleeping including myself. What can one do?

No, I’ve been living like this for far too long. Am I pursuing fame. Am I pursuing recognition? What is it to me what they think? Sure, they’re stupid. Take it this way, Dante is remembered, but hardly actually read let alone understood or enjoyed. I’d rather one person read me and enjoy me than millions pretend to. What difference is it if that one is me or someone else. Assuming, it has to be one.

Day 22

It’s so easy to be disparaging and create prisons in this world. Optimism may be naïve, but as is pessimism. I am just a lodger at the inn and that is fine.

[An̶͟o̢nym̛͠oús̴̨̨͡ No.15001004]

I walked from the platform onto the train after a long practice at the gym. I’m just an ordinary guy. My thin torso sunk blissfully into the low seat. From my sides, I could see the darkness of night through the windows from my peripheral. The train was completely empty with only me inside. There was nothing to do but wait, so I began looking at my phone to pass the time. Chung Chung Chung, the train wheels went as they skipped along on the metal track. It went on like this for some time as the charcoal background outside slipped by like a parallax. Then, for some reason the wheels on the train stopped. They just stopped. It was almost spontaneous. I don’t know why the train stopped as it did, I didn’t see anybody waiting outside. The lit up benches outside were empty, yet the ramp started to jut out and the train doors opened to welcome them in. Once inside, the doors briskly closed, the ramp retracted and it continued on it’s way. I quickly checked my surroundings. My eyes darted around a bit. The grip around my umbrella began to tighten. There was no one there, but the train was now full.

[Anonymous No.15001027]

>>14979686
third para reminded me of gravity's rainbow

nice job anon, keep writing and don't quit, finish what you start, you have talent

[Anonymous No.15001664]

>>15001004
I'll give this a quick edit; see what you think:

After a long practice at the gym, I boarded the train. My torso sunk into the seat. Through the windows in my peripheral, I could see the night. I was the only one inside, so I looked at my phone. Chung, Chung, Chung, the train wheels sang as they skipped on the track. They droned on for a while as the background slipped outside, but then they stopped. Just stopped. I didn't see anyone waiting outside. The ramp jutted out and the doors slid open, let.nobody on, and slid shut. The ramp retracted. Chung Chung Chung, the wheels rejoined. My eyes danced around my surroundings. I squeezed my umbrella. Nobody was there, but the train was full.

[Anonymous No.15001681]

>>15001664
the beginning is a bit simpler but I like the way the ending feels

[Anonymous No.15001734]

>>15001681
I cut what I found unnecessary. The key to strong writing is efficiency. You shouldn't explain every motivation for every action; it's usually enough to let actions speak for themselves. Your goal is to say as much as you can with as few words as you can. Get in the habit of trying to shorten your sentences without losing meaning or clarity.

[Anonymous No.15001885]

>>14996495
I assume this is purposefully infantile

[Anonymous No.15001903]

>>15001734
Do you ever feel though that writing that's too clear is a bit sterile? Or is it a balancing act?

[Anonymous No.15001948]

>>14994811
Unbearably pretentious. Don't use fancy words. Don't try to sound profound. Be concrete and clear. Avoid references and allusions unless they're essential. Do you know what every line is trying to express?

[Anonymous No.15001978]

>>15001903
Vivid writing is clear. Clear writing can be sterile, but the problem is never that it is too clear.
The balancing act is of what you put in and what you leave out.

[Anonymous No.15002225]

first two pages of my first two pages. the dream sequence that opens it is still a work in progress.

[Anonymous No.15003056]

>>15001027
Pynchon is one of my favorite writers - thank you anon! This means a lot.

[Anonymous No.15003126]

>>14979686
If anyone would like another excerpt:

The kitchen? But what meals were served? Even on the busiest days of late, the hungriest patrons wouldn’t dare reach for the dinner menu, of which there was only one, crusted shut from a spilled, dried sugary cocktail. What was once a sprawling menu of Italian-American cuisine, his parents, mother’s specialty, now pared down to the things one could make while shaking a gin martini. One glance into the dimly lit kitchen would reveal unplugged fridges, dirty cooktops, maybe a lone teflon plan, in which Milan cooked his breakfast that morning. It was a kitchen built largely to staff enough cooks to feed a small army, or at least, the rows and rows of packed tables which waited, hungry patrons, just outside the open doorway. Recently when the lone bartender would walk through its seemingly endless 90 degree turns, secondary kitchens, walk-in fridges, he could only note how alone he felt. The type of aloneness that could almost erase, in his mind, the memories of standing, looking up at the countless cooks, running about, spilling pan drippings, yelling to get out of their way, before finding his favorite crevice between the sink and bakers table, where his mother always made that day's pasta. There she is, he thought. Here I am. Now, he was not. That barren place was no livelihood either, that wooden table, covered with dust.

Which leaves only the bar. Stomach high, dark stained oak (long gone was its original, reddish color, of which the restaurant was named), once laminated to protect the surfacing, now peeling from all corners. A sorry sight, but the only source of income in the similarly sorry building. Holidays would be nice, when the empty seats would overflow with groups of 10, 15, 20. The most recent was Christmas, and it was February, he would still find himself in a cold sweat thinking of how hard he’d worked. Those times were his favorite of the year, when briefly, for even just a few hours, something would awaken deep in the restaurants underbelly. Raising to the surface, like air bubbles from a drowning sailors last gasps of air, he’d feel the walls around pulse with aliveness. Voices from happy guests would echo off the walls, they’d go, and come back, with something new. Their reverberation off the aging hardwood walls would bring back some history. The awakening of a long dead being, as if the vibration of the air molecules helped the dwelling become unstuck in time. A journey into the golden age. Drunk middle aged townspeople. Giddy with thoughts of family, giving, the season of togetherness. Milan’s favorite time of year, since he was a child. He’d never have much time to appreciate it, as a second of relaxation was followed with shouts for another drink request at another corner of the bar. Sometimes in those holiday seasons he’d think of hiring extra help, but was always persuaded by the greed that only comes when one works for only himself.

[Anonymous No.15003797]

>>14999948
I edited this more to get rid of unnecessary verbosity. Looking for feedback on prose flow mostly


“Well I would like to start now with our Land Acknowledgement. We are meeting on the occupied, stolen land of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Lummi Nation and the neighboring tribes.”

Terri stood before several stretches of hard blue chairs, dust clotting against the static surface of her gloomy suit, reflecting hot light. Behind her a whiteboard, unused, blended with the outline of her spiky silver hair. The room rotted. Moist lint and pollen flowed in eddies throughout snotty beams of orange sun, irritating throats, spasming in response to the movement of limbs. The cold chairs, unforgiving to the butts of students, squeaked with harsh brilliance. Hooked to the ceiling was an old projector spilling its guts of duct-taped wires. Terri’s interlaced fingers cradled the broad lower seam of her stomach, parting and reclosing in almost rhythmic intervals.

“But you know, I’ve actually been thinking about this. I’ve been wondering whether my own formulation of the Land Acknowledgement is actually, um, is problematic in its own way. Cause in the indigenous ways of knowing, which have been erased by our capitalist framework, the land is seen as our mother. And, maybe it’s problematic to claim that our mother can be owned or stolen. So that’s just something I’ve been thinking about more.”

Below her voice a murmuring rumble of bodily noises wetted the sour air. Coughs and sneezes, slurps and snorts, yawns and the sloshing of coffee gulps mingled. No one was comfortable. Cold white flanks of MacBook Pros rose sharply from the desks, no dust collecting on their clammy surfaces, glowing on faces. Laptop stickers endorsed restaurants, ideologies, and local indie bands. On the floor the tangled pathways of cords snaked between chairs towards outlets. Jonah sat before a clear desk, gazing at the whiteboard with no expression. His face sloped in a prominent curve from a long sweaty forehead and dark button eyes, slanting forward through ruddy cheeks to the bristled hill of his chin. A dense bowl of rubbery hair topped his head. A bland sweatshirt hid his lumpy torso. Underneath, orange lines lay across his pale belly, marking his folds of blanketing blubber. Stale jeans squeezed his bulging legs.

[Anonymous No.15003935]

>>15003797
The description is really structurally monotonous my man. Every noun is preceded by an adjective or qualifier (try counting how many times you do this and then compare to a passage from Joyce or Faulkner), and none of it really adds to the rendering of the image or presents some fresh twist of phrase or vocabulary (ditto the comparison to Faulkner and Joyce to see they do it differently). Also, what's the point of all this description? If there is one, it isn't obvious (at least to me); it just seems like a dump of details. Compare that to say, the opening passage of Faulkner's short story, Barn Burning, where the kid's hunger is rendered economically and vividly and has direct relevance to the character, to the plot, to the themes. Every line should have at least three reasons for being there, otherwise, cut it.

[Anonymous No.15004159]

>>15003935
The thing about every noun being preceded by an adjective or qualifier is totally a fair point, and I'm gonna try and clean up the descriptions a bit more to make them more compact. I'm not sure I agree about the descriptions being unnecessary though. If you look at the opening pages of Telemachus in Ulysses, there's plenty of seemingly pointless descriptions of Buck Mulligan's "fair oakpale hair" and "smokeblue mobile eyes." But I do appreciate your feedback, I think you're right about it being "structurally monotonous" in its current state.

[Anonymous No.15004433]

Recently passed 20k words in my first novel. It is a normal high fantasy story, but it's easy enough for a beginner like me to try and finish. Any constructive criticism is welcome. Also, English isn't my native language, so grammar tips are always welcomed.

[Anonymous No.15004592]

>>15004433
What program is that?

[Anonymous No.15004605]

>>15001948
>Do you know what every line is trying to express?
I do

[Anonymous No.15004614]

>>15004592
Google docs

[Anonymous No.15004660]

BLUEPRINTS

For my writing room, one bulb will do.
A shot of strong scotch burns the throat.
One star lights the whole damn earth.
Two windows accommodate night.

[Anonymous No.15004677]

>>15004605
prove it
line by line

[Anonymous No.15004754]

It must feel bad to be one of those guys that got ignored lol

[Anonymous No.15004796]

>>15004754
If anything it should be incentive to keep writing and getting better. These threads are hit or miss anyway. If you get in too late you wont be read vs the ones close to the OP who got a lot of views.

[Anonymous No.15004834]

>>15004754
I'm ambivalent about it. Since I post my writing in these threads in hopes of receiving constructive criticism, it's disappointing, but I only comment on work if I think I can offer sound advice, and other anons seem to do the same, so, in a way, a lack of comments is a silent admission that nobody here sees obvious flaws in my work, I guess.

[Anonymous No.15004864]

>>15004834
What was yours?

[Anonymous No.15005044]

>>15004754
Yup, you're unsure if it's good or bad, but it's probably bad. But how bad?

[Anonymous No.15005116]

>>15004677
>Descent down serpentine steps
Descent into madness
>Swampish green swirls at the bottom
The endpoint of madness. Once this is reached reality is lost. The green represents a creative vitality or spirit of nature. With consciousness removed the protagonist becomes this vital beast
>Viscosity churning the stairwell
The swirling swamp is distorting the material world (the stairwell)
>Reach the singularity of undefined material
This swampy greenness is unknowable because destruction of consciousness is required to experience it
>Streeeeeeetch
Here I’m equating the primordial swamp to the equally unknowable black hole. It’s theorized when something gets sucked into a black hole’s singularity it gets stretched. The scientific term for this is spaghettification
>Fold over fold over fold over
Now the spaghettified subject is getting repeatedly folded by something
>In loops smelted to the essence
In Japanese sword making (and maybe other cultures I don’t know of) molten steel is folded on itself many times (loops) and hammered to remove impurities. Smelting is another process that purifies the metal. The subject is undergoing this metaphorical forging process, removing impurities and reaching an essence
>Daedalus brings his hammer down
Should be Hephaestus rather than Daedalus. Hephaestus is the archetypal craftsman. This black hole/primordial swamp is something like Jung’s collective unconscious. It has no physical dimension. So archetypes like Hephaestus exist here
>Ah! tempered now
The steel (subject) has been tempered by the craftsman
>With obsidian edge
Obsidian is extremely sharp. Just like this blade
>A swift circular movement cuts “reality’s” veil
The subject uses this magic blade to effortlessly reenter material reality
>Revealing fluoride staring puppetmasters with pants around their ankles
Reality is revealed as a farce. Engineered by malicious and also dumb actors

[Anonymous No.15005168]

>>15005116
>A swift circular movement cuts “reality’s” veil
Reality is in quotations because what separates it from immateriality is far more flimsy than commonly thought

[Anonymous No.15005513]

>>15005116
All of this can be expressed much more effectively. Work this overtly metaphysical isn't my style, but I'll try to help you out:
>Descent down serpentine steps
"Descent down" is redundant, and "descent" is too abstract to conjure a strong image. Also, I strongly suggest adding an item with useful associations to do the descending. Try something like: "The bottle hisses down the spiral steps."
>Swampish green swirls at the bottom
The syntax kills this. All the power's in the first few words, so the end of the line is a dud. Try to make the energy build from the beginning to the end of the line. See for yourself the greater force: "At the bottom swirls swampish green."
>Viscosity churning the stairwell
This does nothing for me. Try having an animal fall into the swamp, or hint at a lurking creature underneath, or show some object that, due to the "churning," briefly surfaces.
>Reach the singularity of undefined material
Way too abstract. If you take some of my above suggestions, the feeling of unkowability should already be there.
>Streeeeeeetch
Cut this. It's silly. It guts the contemplative mood of the rest of the work.
>Fold over fold over fold over
Don't touch this line, but in the subsequent lines you should connect this with the "serpentine steps"
>In loops smelted to the essence
In keeping with the above, let's try "in sinuous, smelted loops".
>Daedalus brings his hammer down
I say "Hephaestus levels his hammer." "level" contrasts with the "descent" in the first line, signifying change, while still reinforcing the theme of downward motion. It's a downward motion of controlled strength rather than primordial chaos.
>Ah! tempered now
SHOW that the blade is finished.
>With obsidian edge
I think it's fine in the context of this piece.
>A swift circular movement cuts “reality’s” veil
Try something like: "His swift hand cuts the veil." Never use quotations like that in serious work.
>Revealing fluoride staring puppetmasters with pants around their ankles
Too silly, and it expresses nothing that the previous line does not.

I hope at least some of this helps.

[Anonymous No.15005557]

>>15005168
Ok sure, but why did you add all the line breaks. Why not just make it into prose and connect and fill out all the imagery into a larger scene. Are you trying to tell me that this Is poetry? Don't you want to feel the flow of meter?
I would be okay with the abandoning of these rules if the imagery was stunning but your imagery is not consistent throughout and falls apart on the last line. The smelting god and revealing of the parisitic creater of Maya seems forced.
nor is the audio truly pleasing. I guess you could say it's vital and has meaning but thats just not enough.
Seriously though why not make it into a larger piece? I dont feel as if you can write poetry but I can definitely see that you have an image in your mind. Just focus on bringing that out.

[Anonymous No.15005592]

>>15004864
My post was about this kind of thread in general; I posted too recently and late in the thread to expect any feedback. This little ditty here >>15004660 is mine.

[Anonymous No.15005729]

>>15005592
I like that, finally poetry with a rhythm.
the last line adds a harsh stop too, if that's what you were going for.

[Anonymous No.15005881]

>>15005557
>>15005513
Thanks for the thoughtful critique. I see there’s a lot for me to learn. How did you learn about stuff like syntax, line, and meter? Were you taught or have you just read a lot?

[Anonymous No.15005928]

I fight sleep like it’s a sickness.
I work up my resistance.
I push it back as far as possible
Every night, like a runner,

Working down his time.
I run through books
And hike through films
And write like a sprinter.

I’m a nocturnal creature
And I’m here to cheat time.
You can see time and exhaustion
Taking pay from my face.

My poor face, carrying bags
Like luggage of a lifetime
And wrinkles like writing
In an ancient book.

In fifty years
My sleep will be death,
I’ll go with the rest,
But I’ll have played

All the games and all the roles

[Anonymous No.15005945]

>>15005881
I'm happy to help!
Read Herbert Spencer's short book "The Philosophy of Style." It's on Project Gutenberg. While you're at it, search "style" on there and read everything relevant that comes up.

[Anonymous No.15005980]

>>15005928
vivid imagery, profound ending - that's some good poetry Anon

[Anonymous No.15005989]

>>15005881
"A Poetry Handbook" by Mary Oliver

[Anonymous No.15005998]

>>14996495
trash

[Anonymous No.15006005]

>>14996676
>>14996778
please return to reddit with your retarded formatting

[Anonymous No.15006010]

>>15005881
http://atlengthmag.com/poetry/muscularity-and-eros-on-syntax/

[Anonymous No.15006047]

Trying to develop my style.


Sammy has found a way through, burrowing under the fence. He stands proudly on the other side, dwarfed from behind by the hulking mass of an Oak, long dead. Unlike the trees around it, it has no throne of vermilion foliage. Instead, it sags upon its roots, imprisoned in sabulous, sterile soil. Its trunk, cracked and mottled with disease is shackled by Bindweed; squeezing and creeping upwards, a sinuous parasite. Several skeletal branches extend from its body; long, contorted limbs raised up to the sky as if invoking something. In the autumnal low-light its bowed figure and raised arms makes it an appalling effigy.

The harsh light of early evening coats the woodland with an apathetic lambency. To the left of the impenetrable hordes of brambles and oaks the farmlands sprawl. Overhead the hills rise to a peak like great flaxen waves, crashing downwards, recede into the waning light.

I want to know.

I need to ask him.

The shoes under the stairs.

The sky becomes leaden. The wind laments. Twilight threatens.

[Anonymous No.15006057]

>>15005881
You have to feel the beat and rhythm first and foremost whilst keeping an idea of the subject constantly in mind. The lyrics and subject should form together and create something that in a way suprises you. It's easier to create a poem after listening to a song over and over and then filling that beat poetically with a subject after turning the wong off. That'll give you an idea of the process.
Pic related is good.

[Anonymous No.15006207]

>>15006057
Same anon:when I first started I began by filling a notebook full of short 1-2 line pithy statements and maxims with minimal rhyme (rhyming the last words of each line should be seen as decorative covering and not a substitue for meter) and matching of the syllables on each line. But real poetry is in matching of stress and forming rhythm that way.
Here's an example of something I wrote recently:

A---A satyr of haughty amor,
B---
A---Stricken and desperate for
B---
A---A Rancid and desperate whore.

I'm by no means the best but I'm able to Count Syllables and match final words while retaining meaning. But if I wanted to continue this into a longer format I would have to put a different pattern on lines B thcat is different yet complementary.
I would recommend the romantic English poets since they followed a very strict structure that is immediately obvious. Do NOT start with someone like Pound. Yeats is pretty good though.
Good luck anon.
>>15005881

[Anonymous No.15006269]

>>15006047
Very clear visuals, nice.
One thing though, wouldn't the folliage be a crown for the oak, why a throne? This gave me the idea of nature losing its Royal crown and throne.

[Anonymous No.15006449]

>>15006269
thinking about it now you're absolutely right, will amend that.
Really glad you liked the imagery, that's something I've been working on - thanks man

[Anonymous No.15006500]

>>15006449
>Its trunk, cracked and mottled with disease is shackled by Bindweed;
This part has a wonderful rhyme also :) I would love if you added another line with a similar rhyme as that.
Good luck with your writing anon.