/lit/ - Literature

After high school he managed to get an academic scholarship to Fordham. He didn't want to go at first, because for some strange reason he wanted to join the Marines. He was always kind of heavy, but starting in the 10th grade he took up running, and actually lost quite a bit of weight and joined his school's cross country team, athough he lamented the fact he was never able to complete a run more then eight miles. Seemed plenty far to me.
He watched a lot of war movies. He told me that it's not right that people who live comfortable lives like his should be unhappy when real men where fighting and dying. He left for boot camp four weeks after graduation. He was back not even three weeks later
"They said I was too quite. I couldn't yell lough enough."
He moved out and went to Fordham, and for a while seemed to be doing well. I saw on facebook that he was in a relationship. The girl was very pretty. I moved into his old bedroom. When he dropped out his junior year and moved back in he insisted I keep the bedroom and he would sleep on the pull out until he found a new place. He never looked.
I awoke on the last night to the smell of cigarettes, a habit that I joked he had picked up to punish me. He was sitting at the kitchen table, awash in the blue glow of the news reading off the victims of the latest massacre.
The TV flickered.
He flickered back, and then the sound of barking dogs.

>>10121594
Sauce?

>>10121594
Gotta give me the rest of the story

>>10121594
>>10121596
That's it
>>10121627

>>10121636
It feels that a few paragraphs are missing

>>10121594
tfw no saucE<

>>10121594
>Towards the end the air
what the fuck does this even mean

I posted a couple of my 100 word stories in the last thread, but never got any replies. Hopefully this time will be different. Here you go lads:

Sitting deep in trenches with sulfur ravaging their nostrils, the bonus boys struggled for life. The squad hadn’t seen food in days, yet the constant drumming of artillery provided some comfort, like a mother’s heartbeat. On alert the men still stood stout. Shouting from down the line again prompted quick charges with rifles raised. Men rushed through squalor with guns held as spears and slayed their foe. They’d found themselves lucky with the third large rat of the day. With bloodshot stares, they dined on bayonets, haunted by the knowledge these rats were fed on the flesh of the fallen.

Let me know what you think! Cheers!

>>10121594
Sauce for pic?

>>10123018
Ending is niice. 'Dined on bayonets' is so effective. Maybe a little flat in brutality, but the ending makes up for it.

Wrote this today

The stillness
I hate to be pretentious
But even more
In this way I meant it
To explain to you with lines
This feeling of the stillness
The Sunday morning
And the coffee yet to hiss
ANd outside the rain pit-pats
A rain you won’t smell or feel
As it will make you sick
As I spat out into a fogged glass
The phlegm from an unbrushed night
ANd i felt the pain
In the back, the side, the neck
The hair on my head was dry
Dryer than the body I saw
Before me on a day like today
In Northern Indianapolis
On a day north of May
I felt, at once, the stillness
Like bonds opening
With the spiral and the black-gray
But without a girl
And without the blood stain
Rather you feel, feel, hear
The words on the page, from years ago
You smell and feel and taste
At once, the sense of stillness
Like a shot of something
Barelling through the back of my head
ANd i heard drones from one thousand funerals
And weddings, baptisms
Drinking in the bars and cafes
And my best friends, who each have gone a separate way
Lucky, lucky, lucy number three
That they have not felt this stillness
This, how to say
The stillness, the stillness
ANd commencements, convocations
Couples in the middle age
Standing with friends on the beach
To the drones from the city
And the drones from the sea
ANd the feeling of faux-pas
Creeping up the flat of your back
As I stared into the black and white
Each one with its’ own smell
And its own origin
The stillness, the stillness
For once I prayed that you and I
You and I and your mother
Do not have to feel
The stillness, stillness, stillness
The stillness of the sunday

>>10123018
There's something wrong with this.
Too brief, too quick, some off-putting statements. Like you romanticize it, as if you have no real understanding of the horrors of war.
But it isn't bad overall.

he had stood waiting for around 40 minutes the sweat on his body running making his uncared for flesh glisten in the violent and piercing bulb light that was also affecting his eyes like a icepick of pure light going in and out of his head the pain reverberating low in his head like there was giant waves in there made out of cheap metal bouncing against the wall of his cranium bit for bit chipping away at the bone he closed and opened his fist again and again focusing on his muscles moving he thought how weird it was that he could move his hand so fast and precise his thoughts of movement immediately manifesting in the physical world capable of affecting the environment the grand piles of stone that the city he was in and had been in forever he could remember he could push someone into the incoming subway car if he wanted but he didn’t want to do that but the important thing was that he could control his muscles moving the lines of bone doing that if he wanted to but that was also assuming that the subway would be here the thing he had stood here waiting for for 40 minutes and that which looked like would never arrive it was just him and two others far away looking like whole black ink dots smudged on his vision it was just he and those two standing on the gigantic platform the architecture looking like something out of an art deco nightmare where white marble geometric shapes had infested the otherwise stylish look looking like tumors like an infestation in the otherwise grand artistic vision, disgustingly white triangles coming out of the well carved facade it was like well polished kitchen knives in a blonde hollywood starlet murder victim. There was 6 robust pillars in the station their monolithic radiance made him feel uneasy if he looked into them deeply something ancient and forgotten would be reflected in the whiteness the snowy square of impressionistic experience he stood next to the third one but he averted his eyes looking into the dark tunnel spiraling into the earth a violent thought shot through his body like the high impact of car bomb, what if the tunnel was a mouth? what if the opening of the tunnel would expand towards him like a snake the void swallowing him whole? still waiting he is still waiting but now it annoyed him the annoyance was boiling up through the headache taking over it with bitterness one of the messy spots on the left field of his view started moving towards him, god. what time is it?

>>10123043
the man was in front of him now his dirty dragged out facial features perfectly symmetrical his eyes crescent the man was wearing a golden bathrobe over a white stained ripped shirt one of his military boots had a hole in the center revealing a brown red mucus inside the man raised his hand at him in a machine like motion pointed his fingers at him and said with a whispery but clear coarse voice “you have been shot, one of these days your head will explode, maybe later this day, or someday, your brain will swell up like a fungus, don’t tell me i didn’t tell ya when they ask” the man laughed and spat at the ground and left disappearing behind the last pillar to the left. he looked anxiously to the tunnel hoping to catch the sight of the subway finally arriving his hope was smashed by the hammer of confirmation by observing, there was no subway coming to take him away from this place. i have had it, he thought. god, what’s the time? he started walking his steps having the power of a man with focus he was not gonna wait here any longer his movement echoed louder and louder ringing against the hegemony of brown black and gold that was the colour of the tiled floor under the weight of him. he went the same way as the man in the bathrobe going from the station to the ticket line. it being a big hexagon shaped piece of concrete that had carvings of cherubs happily floating in the silver clouds above the ticketlord. the lord looked up from his subway destination program and asked what the matter was, he spoke about what the matter was. well, well, well, well, well…….well. the lord said. that train haven’t arrived at this station in years, you must have the wrong place. no, he said to the ticketlord. you may be a fourth generation lord of placement and travelling but i am sure of it. the subway train has always been here, i was here yesterday, it arrived in time and took me to my mother, she’s sick you see. i have to see her everyday. otherwise she may die. that’s what the doctor said, he said. something is wrong with her head, that’s what the doctor said. she not right, there is a dissonance inside her. no, i have to get there in time, she will worry. you don’t understand me, i have to get there now. it should have been here by now, i know it, i was here yesterday. it was in time, i don’t have enough time for this. i need to get there in time, my mother’s sick you know, that’s what the doctor said, he said she haven’t much time, you see, i have to spend my time with her and i don’t have time for the subway not to arrive in time, god, what’s the time? can you tell me?

>>10123048
the ticketlord stared in complete banal silence before answering, according to the protocol for dealing with crazed tunnel men i will call the off duty subway security here right now if you don’t get away from me. i don’t think that is a very nuanced thing to do he responded with vitriol in the words spitting out of his slithering tongue, i just want the subway car to arrive in time, is that to much to ask for? i am a citizen, i have things to do, important things, you expect me to put my life on hold because of your malfunctioning function as a service? i laugh at you, you pathetic snail. i could stomp you out, in my eyes you are a ticket peasant, not even worthy of the accolades of a farmer. a beggar, down on the street sucking the moisture from aristocrats feet. he screamed. what’s the time? before the ticketlord could answer he turned around and started throwing his feet like boules the impact of each step forcing his upper body to move in an eclectic way to keep connected with the rest of him as he entered the station again the dirty man in a shimmering gold bathrobe was leaning against the pillar closest to him he smiled the sickness radiating in his black hole of a mouth the soiled earth creeping out of the sides spilling out on his face like smoke distorting the already unnatural features, he paid the man no mind and continued forward to where he had stood before. It’s gotta arrive soon, he said to himself. i have already been here awhile. best i wait. 40 minutes, 4 hours, 4 days. what is it really, gotta arrive soon.

>>10123024

hentai

>>10123043
You used the word "like" ten times.

>>10123073
i like like

today, in the house
adam asked me
"what did you eat today, brother'
i had to think
'a slice of toast with peach jam
and green tea in the morning
i went to the kitchen
my mother brought pork roast
and vegetables
potatoes and carrots
i sprinkled the pork
ginger, pepper, ponzu sauce
then i ate that
two servings
jug of lemon water
coffee with cinnamon and milk
a little after'
he looked towards my cup
'very cool' and stood up to piss
i dont like him very much

>>10123024
There's no sauce brother, not here not ever in this thread. We are cursed with longing for a knowledge ungiven by those who hold it. Invisible ghosts that can't hear, we see their lips move with grace but cannot descipher the words, the knowledge is in our reach but it shall never be revealed.

>>10123100
blow my booty

>>10123036
That's my favorite part of the story as well, it just sounded so right to me, thank you for the feedback!

Your writing just makes me remember what it's like to be depressed. Just very much somber, thinking about people, everything feeling terribly still and numb and awful. Is there any particular reason the AN of and is always capitalized? Over all nice.

>>10123042
The part I personally dislike about it is the middle, On alert to the slayed their foe bit, when writing it, it was difficult to make it flow how I wanted, I definitely want to rework that.

I'm trying to keep it all very brief and very quick, would you recommend any way to make the pacing feel better? Maybe instead just describe the scene of them eating more than the killing of the rats?

And no, I don't recon I have an understanding of war. I don't want to make it sound glorious, I tried to portray how awful it could be, you know, eating rats ect. What could make it more authentic?

What are the off-putting statements?

Thanks for the feedback though, I really appreciate it!

I wrote a short story, but it is unstructured, sort of meaningless and probably sucks.

>>10123142
I forget that google docs autocapitalizes and i have a habit of doing stream of conciousness stuff when i have a sudden moment. so i start writing and writing and writing and i end up keeping my hand on the shift

>>10123142
It was more the choice of words, like "bonus boys" I have no idea what is meant by this, I assume untrained "reinforcement". And the word "squad" gives me ptsd from Chad calling his friends a squad. I think "troop" is even more proper historically. Little things like this.
And I misread drumming of artillery, but that's my fault, ofc you meant far away sound of artillery being fired.

>>10123110
Will you punish me for misspelling 'decipher'?

>>10123173
Everything highly regarded story from modernists is about nothing and pretty meaningless.
>I stopped reading To the Lighthouse cause it got fucking nowhere.

>>10123238
It's also unstructured, though, and might suck.

>>10121636
Why promise us incest when it isn't there?

>>10123260
Unstructed as in awful syntax or unstructed as in Joyce wrote it?

>>10123383
The syntax is fine, I think. It just isn't based on any structure found within other short stories.

>>10121594
https://pastebin.com/rZkvbXfY

pls i want to make sure my writing isnt shit before continuing

>>10123497
Before I read; I just wish to parlay the truth that, unless you're me, most people's writing will suck in the beginning there was Jack and Jack had a groove.

>>10123497
Anthony Ryan? Is that you?
Reads just like Blood Song that I'm currently reading, or maybe that's how you're supposed to write in first person.
It reads like a book that would get a best seller award, but 'I' would "never" read it.

Although the horse was tired, and tired it should be, for it spent the last ten years fighting a war it never knew, a war it never wanted, it carried on valiantly, and with a glimmer in its beady eyes, it FUCKED HER RIGHT IN THE PUSSY.

Pls rate my ‘I’ve just read bright light big city’-core short strory. I wrote the first draft today.

>>10121601
>>10122671
>>10123024
Boku to misaki-sensei

>>10123632
I personally like it.

How do I write? It's so difficult and scary to start. I am constantly judging everything and assuming it's all shit. How do you let go of all that self-doubt and just happily write and enjoy it?

Do I have to get drunk everytime I want to write?

>>10121594
Pretty sure most girls are fully grown by the end of high school

>>10123682
A thousand blessings upon thee.

>>10123714
Read more.
There's nothing new under the sun.

>>10123018
Flat, nothing happens. Just description.

>>10123083
clever but not honest!

>>10123497
Solid, so better than the majority of posts in the thread, but it kind of bores me personally. But I don’t really like any realistic stuff so you don’t need to worry.

>>10123714
Just write, write somewhere you don’t expect and won’t be stressed about (notepad, a comment box, on a piece of paper). Just write garbage as much as you can.

>>10123714
Once you get one dent in your car, you don't care about the rest. Whatever the next stupid word that pops up in your head happens to be, use it in the next thing you want to write. If you end up liking it, get rid of the word.

Hey guys!

>>10124521
melvins are cool but this detail makes the whole thing seem fanfic-ish and pandering, and i have no clue what this is/is about.

>>10123674
The first line doesn't read like a first line, I had to pause and go "oh, because he put milk in it". It'd be better to just say it in order.

Rather than "a pumpkin spiced bullshit drink," I would say "a drink of pumpkin spiced bullshit" to end on the punch.

The last two sentences of the first paragraph spiral out randomly I would be more concise and direct. For example, remove "would MAKE it to easy for you to remember" etc and just directly state "would to easily REMIND you of..." or something like that. Also, the commas in that last sentence are really fucked, and I don't like the non-referential "she" at the start.

I don't like the "a gulp of coffee" or the "she interrupts". The gulp has the right sort of feel to it, but doesn't seem well executed. It should be it's own sentence, and not a fragment.Saying "she interrupts" at the end of a line of text makes it would like that line of text was her interruption (like how following a quote with "she says" usually makes it sound like she was the one saying it). Make it the start of the next line and not the end of the one it's on.

The comma splice on the first line of the third paragraph is bad. Either make the last clause its own sentence, or conjoin them with "while" or a semicolon or something. You have more things like this throughout the paragraph.

I think "rowdy" should be changed to "rowdiness" with how you have that one sentence written at the moment. Though instead of changing the word, you could change everything that comes before it instead.

>photo's
come on man

"the thoughts" would be better as "your thoughts" in my opinion

"No thanks, but I'll take a beer if you have one?" isn't a question. End it in a period. Conditional statements aren't questions.

"I don't really..." "Well, there's some good news and some bad news..." could be broken up better. There's some weird capitalization/lack thereof.

"Just the boiler." is a good line.

>that awkward *blocks ur path*
>it's a gonna be a cuck story
have fun I guess

3/3

>>10124536
oh look a muji unlined a5 binder written in with a 0.4 erasable pen

>>10123497
If you just want to know if it's shit or not, it isn't shit. There are a couple of oddly chosen words here and there; the whole "juxtaposition" sentence felt jarring. I'm not telling you to cut it though.

>>10124545
I pimp Pilot pens

The past sifts through my mind, we're treadin' dark water
Our futures become a homicide with the present all locked up
Drifting through life so dumb, so blind
Fueling this need to build a higher wall.

https://pastebin.com/81pke34t

I have to write a ~8 page fiction piece for a 100 level creative writing course I'm in. I ended up writing two, and I'm not really sure which one I ought to pick over the other. According to my professor they're both independent enough to not really look like excerpts, but bear in mind that she only read an early version of the first chapter and the first two pages of the second. According to her, the first chapter isn't very compelling at the start in comparison to the second because the main character isn't really likeable. I ended up diving into world building in the second one though, which she'd warned against a couple days prior, but it's done meaningfully and I don't think she'd mind it too much.

What should I change? Is the character in the first part not """relateable""" enough? To be honest I can kindof see the problem with it, but I'm not really sure what to do. Feedback on the second part would be nice as well.

>>10124643
-and paste it into word if you want spaced between paragraphs/first line indents

It seems that every road leads back to this room. It is on the 11th floor, and sits with two windows, one door, and three arches. It seems, sometimes, that everyday lived will take me back to the apartment, the three rooms in the sky. One day ago, my dad told me that you can’t make any place a home. That you should take the space you have, the furnishes and the carpeting and make the best of what you have. But that I have to, one day, go big. I told him that the space was my own, that is is my own, that it should always be my own. The building stands on a side street above the green stink of the river, and there is a three floor garage underneath. The garage is half empty, and my spot is never taken, because my neighbors, faceless, have heard my music and know the consequences. Everything around my home is average, grayed and smoked. It reminds me of a painting I saw. A british painter, making only what he knows, rowhouses and fishmongers on a river like my own. I don’t remember its name or size, but it still stands. Vans and cars are strewn up and down the side streets, and once in a while, a greek man with gray mustache will make a path with a dog, off it’s leash. I see him on the street, usually once every sunday, and think of shouting down. I think of our broken conversation, while the dog stares ahead quizically. But I don’t think it’s right for him to tilt his head up, for me to aim down. He walks and walks, and I sit and sit and drink, and we stay the nighbors we are. We don’t have the picket fence or the golden lab, but that’s how it is. Faceless. I see him on the sundays, when everybody has come home from church and has smoked their last cigarette. I stand on the sevillan balcony, breathing in the biscuits and malt from the patios. A grill on an opposite deck lies half-lit and smoking. Or I sit inside, with the tv on the plastic dinner table. I’m watching a film about the serengeti and I think of the child, reading picture books. I remember infatuations with rice patties and alleyways and the moldovan on page 256, just so svelte and bronzed-obssessive. So much, too much, and I think of my woman now. But I sit at the plastic table, and breathe in the black, black tea and the sweet egg smell. The cat is on the other chair, the dog in front of the toilet. I drink and breathe in the tea and I think, think to stand up. Outside of the window, on the thin street below, among the cast-off cars and mopeds, the greek fella and his doggy. How far away. We didn’t want to be an astronaut, but maybe not this low? I let the mountains and women and rice paddies massage me, I let the pages and graphs turn over the leaves and seasons, let the bathwater go cold and speckled as the juvenile inspiration ebbed and flowed, and I end up stranded on the shit-stained river. 11 floors up, with my pets and books and the guitar and computer. The coffeemaker hisses low-down black, the dog whines at the sound of the tanker truck below, the barges across

Here's another one of my 100 word stories, most of them are darker in tone but I tried to write something a bit lighter to show my mom (lmao)

Pen Pals, two young lovers, separated by miles of land and sea. Between them was thousands of chirping birds and splashing fish, yet they were closer than any could imagine. They’d met only once, on a rocky beach along the Baltic coast. It was a stroke of good luck. Years of letters written along many miles traveled, they never stopped. Postcards and photographs, songs and poems, trinkets and gifts, all expressions of the love they felt for one another. They’d met again one day soon, a wonderful family they’d make. Happiness they’d found, in the pen and one another’s arms.

Thanks for any feedback!

>>10123497
You were in the last thread, I already responded once, but I'd still like the say the name of the town is hella comfy.

>>10123714
You can probably just write something, then throw it away, and it really wouldn't matter. Just keep writing everything you can and eventually something will come out

>>10123737
Maybe she got T H I C C?

>>10123962
Thanks for the feedback anon! I'll try and work more action into it!

>>10124521
>>10124530
>>10124536
Pretty interesting concept, desu. I'd read a book about that. It reminds me of a book I read once about a nanny state dystonia, and the main character programmed a companion for himself like that, it was very interesting to read, I wish I remembered the name

>>10124625
Probably something a 'nam soldier would scribe into his M16, desu.

>>10124753
>Between them was thousands of chirping birds and splashing fish, yet they were closer than any could imagine.
that "was" should be a "were"

>Years of letters written along many miles traveled, they never stopped.
This isn't very clear at all. Are you saying the letters were written along many miles-which-had-been-traveled, or are you saying the letters, which had written along many miles, traveled? Also, "they never stopped" is independent. Connect those with a semicolon instead of a comma if you can.

>They’d met
meet, but you probably caught this yourself

>>10124648
>It seems that every road leads back to this room.

Good start. From there it loses the sense of confinement that the first line expresses.

I would use alliteration of "this room" to drive home that point, if that's what you're going for.

Mental block
a lot like the sound of n
in a long line, a thick wall
nnnnnnnnnnnnn
snatching at thoughts, few and vague
flitting by like silverfish, slipping through slow fingers
force a fist
drag them into focus--
they are fragments; they have crumbled in your palm
pull up your hoodie and clothe yourself in dull angst
90's apathy
it's armor for a thick mind
gray brick gray brick gray brick passes to your left
the silverfish dart behind
if you tore down the wall you'd find only concrete and dust

Taking a creative writing class. Teacher has a heavy emphasis on poetry, so I wanted to try and make something with akin to a narrative poem (Because I can't detach myself from more narrative writing.)

It's about some indigenous tribe back in god knows when, if even a real place.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There was so much screaming
A cornucopia of screams, deafening
A conjoined mess of voices raised for several reasons
There was so much screaming

Our screams were full of resistance, and contempt, and fear
But for him, as his hatchet cleaved through our skulls with a thumping crunch
As our blood and his own turned the dirt into a churning paste that squelched between his toes

His ears rang from the force of his own undying voice
And that day, we too came to know his voice
The voice of our new King, as he killed us

>>10124753
>Happiness they’d found, in the pen and one another’s arms.

>>10124770
Thanks anon, that's really helpful, sometimes it's nice to have a second set of eyes proof-read, thank you. I'll clean up that statement as well, make it clearer.

>>10124878
<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

>>10121594
https://pastebin.com/Rmq8Z0C0
Reposting from last thread because only 1 reply

>>10121594
It's pretty good, but be careful about proper sentence structure, eg.,
>Towards the end the air around him grew strange, like looking at him though a glass obscured.
>through a glass obscured
would be better written as
>through a fogged glass
or
>through a murky glass
Stuff like that

>>10123018
Might want to avoid
>fed on the flesh of the fallen.
just because of all the 'f's, but that's just me

>>10123043
I get that you're trying to go for disjointed mental illness, but at the end of the day it just feels like you wrote edgy shit and left all the periods at home. Try to have his thoughts dart back and forth between random things that aren't as bleak to lighten the mood and also make it feel more schizophrenic. Also you can instead go into more important details than the subway architecture, unless that's important

>>10123095
Interesting. If you could do something to foreshadow the punchline, that'd be choice

>>10123497
>but it was a[s] good a place as any
>Hell, unions make an entire industry out of whining and they barely get more benefits.
I'd go for something different here.
>and does it those [expletive/pronoun] do them any good.

All around good, but the last line feels a bit out of place. It's best to let Nash and Richard's talk air his past.

>>10123674
I like the HVAC guy, but he comes on too strong. I'd have a brief description about how he has no filter, and then let him mouth off, or if it's supposed to be out of nowhere, describe MC's disgust

>>10124536
Sounds like a teen novel, (whether that's good or bad is your decision), but I like the 'A god, a god' part. Really drives home the hubris of the group of girls who bought the book.

>>10124643
First story is much better as far as a single piece. Second part was better written, but read like the first chapter of something bigger.

>>10124960
>First story is much better as far as a single piece. Second part was better written, but read like the first chapter of something bigger.

Yeah, that's what I figured. The boy from the end of the first chapter is the antagonist in the main plot that picks up where the second chapter leaves off. Well, he's a bit more of a Char Aznable than a big bad.

>https://pastebin.com/Rmq8Z0C0
gimmie some minutes

>I want to seriously improve. I realized the other day just how stiff my writing feels, but I don't know how to fix it.
>Also, I tried to go for some inner-monologue and it all comes across as corny. It's aggravating knowing that I'm shit-tier.
>Also, not sure if italics work with the carrots, so I'm surrounding the cringe-worthy monologues with asterisks.

Light burned through the window frame, the rise of dawn. In his bed, writhing in a certain agony only the fettered mind can dispense Jorr wept his head. He could not hide his pain beneath the cover of the pillow nor blanket nor the dark of night and now the sun would declare another sleepless term for him.
He thought of his patrol he would do while sleep-starved; how late he would sleep again the next night; but these were mere distractions for he mostly thought of the sinking doom in his heart.

*Please, I beg the world and the powers that be! If there is a strength that could save me from the doom in my heart and let me free to love I shall be your slave forever afterwards for the chance!

I beseech any good god on the earth for mercy! Give me a lifetime, and cut my life in half, but let me be in love and be parted from the burdensome questioning and this sickening vertigo I feel from the moment I wake until my dreams come which I scorch with daily chore and practice to erase from memory!

I would give anything! Name it, and I will give it! Stop this dread in my heart! I would do anything! Please, let me love her.*

Yet, no power would answer. The world left him in the dark as his fit turned him out of his bed and unto the floor where he wept.

*Lenna, I would love you but if only I knew how.

Lenna, save yourself from me! Hear this omen in your dreams for the Jorr you see on this and every morrow is too frail a man to say! Oh forgive me, my love, and if I could love, there is only you to choose! For you I’ll make kingdoms dust, raze the sky in fire! Save me, Lenna, I am the enemy!*

>>10124984
Since you replied so quickly I figure I'll give you a few more things

First, if you were trying to make the space part of space western a bit of a suprise, I'd have gone more along the route of talking about the space elevator mystically. Have MC go towards it, first describing it as looking like a building that was as tall as the clouds, before getting close enough to visually confirm that it extends to infinity. Then the 'bam, it's a space elevator'.

Also if you're going for Char Aznable, he should be less of a pussy, unless this is Samsons 'Origin - 01'. If that's the case, then I'd look into at some point in the future going into his backstory, at least far enough to explain what it was that made him go from just being a rich kid, to a vengeance driven warrior.

Also I'm not quite following the meaning of 'bender'. I usually take it to mean getting too drunk, but it seems unlikely that MC would just forget that until it's mentioned to him, unless that's because he's out of it, in which case I'd have given a bit more detail into his mental state. Maybe a headache and some obvious concussion. If you mean something else by bender, then it'd probably be best to use some other wording to describe the coup. Something like 'I knew we had destroyed some humvees, but other than a few flashing memories of mortar fire, and a quick rifle butt to my face, I could only recall the feeling of pain, of defeat.'

>>10124960
1/2
>Saturday at noon was not their most popular time, and so I sat, alone, eating, and then drinking, and then drinking some more, for the better part of the afternoon.
not sure if the first and is worth it

>I had decided to sit at the bar instead of my usual spot close to the stage, because there are no live performances until six on a Saturday.
You could replace "are no" with "aren't any". Though if you think that breaks the narrator's character then don't.

>The Nightingale wasn't known for it's food, but after two full days of hospital food
The double "food" is a huge eyesore.

>During the mere seven minutes it took me to finish, the withdrawal symptoms completely vanished.
I would replace the last "the" with "my".

>I turned to see Veidtberg, standing over me, he had his hands clasped behind his back in a manner that only old rich and those pretending to be old rich ever do. He sat down on the barstool next to me.
"standing over me" should just end in a period. You could use a semicolon, but I don't think I would. The last sentance has sort of the same ugliness to it as the double food from earlier, but to a lesser degree.

>In spite all I knew about Veldtberg,
"In spite of"

>He put his index finger in front of my mouth. A magician never reveals his secrets, I guess.
>``How I know is unimportant. What is important is what I know, and how much my friends are willing to pay to know for it.''
The magician sentence takes up too much space, it makes me visualize him standing there with his finger over his mout for a long time, when he should put his finger on the speaker's mouth and then begin talking immediately. I'd either cut the magician line or move it after that quote.

>``You know something pertinent to my case don't you.''
"case, don't you?"

>I gave him double...
>He leaned in to talk to me.
>``Thanks. I heard a story from one of my sources...."
The "thanks" seems misplaced. I want to see him say "thanks," and then lean in; when I read the quote I rewound all the way back to "I gave him double".

>You never sit at the bar. Deep down you must know why you're there.
I think that should say "here".

>The Big Zero
This sounds like an insult and makes me think of Zero from Megaman to be completely honest.

>"But you're the best detective in the city. You catch criminals and villains all the time don't you?"
If you want this character to sound like more of a fan, you could write this as something more like
"-but you're the best detective in the city; you catch criminals and villains all the time, don't you?"
though I'm just being stylistic here, save for that last comma I threw in, which really ought to be there.

>``Why, do you think I'm a precious little angel that needs to be mollycoddled and protected from the harsh reality of the world?
Just make "Why?" a question; I know you put a comma there, but I ran right over it the first time I read that line and read the sentence as as "Why do you think I'm a...?"

>>10124960
2/2
>I can handle a little harsh reality.''
>And so a harsh reality was what she got.
I'd say "And so a little harsh reality was what she got."

>it was clear that nothing else would suffice to satiate her desire.
just remove "would suffice"

>They sat and waited with their electronic keyboards and synthesizers as the pianist and trumpeter played their heart out.
change "as" to "while"

>I recalled what Veldtberg had told me about the RDW model in the past. It contradicted what she said.
The last sentence here has somewhat confusing pronoun reference.

>"If they go with androids, then they're genetic dead ends, which is against Darwinism."
Unless you want your character to be not-quite right (which would be totally fine), it would be worth changing "Darwanism" to something like "fitness," or to say that it isn't biologically fit according to Darwinism maybe. "Against Darwinism" makes it sound like he's claiming it's a counterexample to Darwinism, but what he's actually doing is employing the theory to explain something.

>Clearly he was enjoying my suffering.
you mean "she," I think, unless "he" is supposed to refer to the laughing in the back of the man's head, which wasn't obvious to me

>Her animated eyes
S U G O I
I would consider working on the eye twinkling, but the last bit of dialogue was good and fitting for both the characters and the theme.

>She left for the car, and I payed for the meal, before joining her.
this reads really poorly; I can't imagine someone saying this out loud the way the commas suggest it ought to be read

>but I felt like prying might make her lose the silver lining expression that had illuminated her face.
maybe try "might make her lose the silver lining she seemed to have found"

>When she closed the door I turned the air conditioning to maximum and rested my head on the steering wheel until my sweat dried and my jitters subsided.
change the "and" to a "then", and use a comma beforehand maybe

Sorry for not having any plot-based criticism

>>10125083
>>10125085
>Sorry for not having any plot-based criticism
That's alright. I gave you a chapter from smack dab in the middle of my story. I really have to work on spellchecking, but I usually pound out an hour's worth of work well past my bedtime on weekends only.

Also, can you explain why you don't have any plot related criticism. Did you like it, or did you just not feel like you could properly criticize it, and if the latter, please explain further

>>10124960
I liked the rhyming, I don't know, I thought it was kinda cool to string the f words all together, like a little tongue twister.

>>10125110
Yeah man, if you like it then do it, but to me it was too short to be a really nice 'V for Vendetta'esque tongue twister, but too long to just pass by unnoticed.

>>10125113
I'll try and work on it, thank you for the input!

>>10125013
>First, if you were trying to make the space part of space western a bit of a suprise
I wasn't, but it ended up looking like that dispute my efforts. I wanted to start in the saloon, but that's making it look like just a western. I might just roll with it and do what you said with the cables.

>unless this is Samsons 'Origin - 01' If that's the case, then I'd look into at some point in the future going into his backstory, at least far enough to explain what it was that made him go from just being a rich kid, to a vengeance driven warrior.
That's more what I was going for, though it's more a matter of him coming to certain realizations in the prison rather than him being put through total hell. Though he is supposed to come off as far more serious by the third day, so I might work on that.

>Also I'm not quite following the meaning of 'bender'. I usually take it to mean getting too drunk, but it seems unlikely that MC would just forget that until it's mentioned to him, unless that's because he's out of it, in which case I'd have given a bit more detail into his mental state.
The point was supposed to be that he'd ditched his own forces preemptively and just drank himself to sleep prior to waking up in a prison cell. I should probably state that explicitly somewhere. Up until the third day, he avoids thinking of things in terms of loss/defeat.

Bartholomew is based off of someone I know who watched half of rick and morty, declared himself a nihilist, then read half of the myth of sysiphus and claimed he'd reversed his perspective entirely. I found it strange how he just seemed "wrong" in spite of trying both opposite "answers"; you'd think either P or not-P would be correct since it's a tautology and all. Samson is supposed to learn from Bartholomew's failures and sortof become the "complete" version of what Bartholomew was striving to be.

>>10125108
>Also, can you explain why you don't have any plot related criticism.
Because I have a hard idea figuring out how and when to judge plot. That's all it is really. I have a hard time discerning when a plot change would fundamentally alter the author's point as opposed to just "improve" the story.

>>10125083
>>10125085
Thanks for the criticism. I edited the chapter. Feel free to just copy and paste both into a diff website. I took most of your advice. If there was anything I didn't it was for a reason
https://pastebin.com/65bksfzA

>>10125130
>I wasn't, but it ended up looking like that dispute my efforts.
A quick explanation of where the saloon is would likely suffice.
>Under the heavy sky of [X] planet, in the shadow of the giant cable that ran to the heavens, a dainty saloon stood, in the middle of a nameless town, where nobodies and former somebodies idled their days away
Or something like that. Whatever fits.

>Though he is supposed to come off as far more serious by the third day, so I might work on that.
Write about him more then. Have a conversation. Even if it's only a small thing, it'll really give an impact. it felt out of place when he chased MC out into the snow.

>Bartholomew is based off of someone I know who watched half of rick and morty, declared himself a nihilist, then read half of the myth of sysiphus and claimed he'd reversed his perspective entirely. I found it strange how he just seemed "wrong" in spite of trying both opposite "answers"; you'd think either P or not-P would be correct since it's a tautology and all. Samson is supposed to learn from Bartholomew's failures and sortof become the "complete" version of what Bartholomew was striving to be.
That's some grade A shit to start with, but for THAT to work, you're going to need more than the tiny chapter you wrote. That's a whole story unto itself. To fit THAT into a chapter you'd probably have to give disjointed flashbacks in succession about what happened to Samson in prison, preferably from his POV

>Because I have a hard idea figuring out how and when to judge plot. That's all it is really. I have a hard time discerning when a plot change would fundamentally alter the author's point as opposed to just "improve" the story.
Try anyways. Worst case is I thank you for your time and ignore your inputs. Best case scenario, I get a new insight on the characters I wrote.

>>10125180
>A quick explanation of where the saloon is would likely suffice.
I'll probably do that.

>it felt out of place when he chased MC out into the snow
That felt out of place because that wasn't supposed to be exactly what happened. It was more a matter of the narrator having a panic attack, which I also didn't make as explicit as I ought to have. Samson yells because he knows it'll scare him outside to his death.

>but for THAT to work, you're going to need more than the tiny chapter you wrote
I might do that or make the days into separate chapters or something. More Samson definitely seems worth it.

>preferably from his POV
This I really don't want to do. It would definitely make my life a hell of a lot easier so I don't blame you for suggesting it, but "having" a POV goes against what the final Samson is to a degree. In a rough draft of a gunfight I have, he's described as moves as though he didn't have an inner monologue: automatic. What's supposed to be creepy about him is that he comes off as apethetic, chalking up poor turns of event to nothing more bad fortune, all while simultaneously being able to muster up enormous amounts of willpower seemingly out of nowhere for the most vain of pursuits (killing the family which replaced his) without having to ask himself "what's the point?". Though I might be biting off more than I can chew by deliberately making an unbelievable character.

I'll read what you posted later.

>>10125212
>he's described as moves as though he didn't have an inner monologue: automatic.
I meant to say "he's described as [someone] moves as though he didn't have an inner monologue: automatic."

>>10125212
>It was more a matter of the narrator having a panic attack, which I also didn't make as explicit as I ought to have. Samson yells because he knows it'll scare him outside to his death.
I got that impression, but his scream subsided my claims. If I may make a bold suggestion, instead of having Samson scream, do a bit where, as he takes Bartholomew's shit, he comments on his panic
>You look like a ghost, is it the grim reaper coming to take what's his, or did you think I was he?

>he didn't have an inner monologue
Write from third person limited then, and never mention his feelings, thoughts, or opinions on matters.

>>10124878
>>10124770
>>10123962
>>10123175
>>10123198
>>10123042
>>10123036
Since you guys were really helpful with those two stories, here is another!

Playing blissfully on the lake, nothing could touch them; they danced like angels along the bank. Frost this Sunday morning had brought pale ice, yet the water had flowed freely just yesterday. Altogether the attenuated ice under Tommy cracked and shattered and far from shore he plunged into the chilly abyss. Companion looking on, he struggled to swim, frigid water seizing his muscles still. It was as if lead weights were attached at his ankles. He could hear the church bells ringing as he sank below the surface, desperately gasping for a breath of air which he would never take.

>>10124648
I like this a lot. Your brevity is a breath of fresh air. You do well to keep it simple while painting the picture. I'd suggest toning down the weary repition of things like the tea though, i already know whats going on now where its going.

>>10125248
Now tell me where its going*

https://pastebin.com/7XbewyhZ

Short story I'm writing for class. As of now, unfinished, but I think for the time being its solid enough to show. tear my shit up.

>>10125236
Remove "It was as if' and "were" afterwards, then add something later on.
Maybe "His legs turned to lead, pulling him . . . Something something" maybe combine it into the previous sentence.

The sun was setting the wayward slopes behind the slits of the commercial scrapers, time ahead of me. There’s a very good reason many scroungers don’t scavenge the dead cities past dark, and all of them don’t come back to tell it.
A left turn along the main road brought me to an old cinema on Pinkton St; one of the few unmarked locations on my list, a risky venture, to say the least, for if fortune was a cruel mistress, and she often was to me, those things were probably lurking in there too.
My watch gave a beep. Seven pm looked at me like a pansy idiot. ‘Dude do you want to die today’? It was saying. ‘Getting eaten alive isn’t the fanciest way to go, ya’ know.’
‘I know, I know,’ I whispered and looked up ahead of me, the stained glass of the cinema entrance eyeing me down. A lick of sun painting only a few feet of the interior lobby. It was like the open closet of your bedroom at night, staring at you – in the stretching darkness of its interior you couldn’t see far enough to discern if someone was in there or not.
‘Well,’ I resolved. ‘Live now, die later.’ I crashed on through, Scattergun in hand. It ain’t reliable in a prolonged fight, bloody thing falls apart under too much heat, but hey – it knows how to scatter, claustrophobic enemies beware.
The theatre lobby opened up to me in a hail of dust. Sand Barnacle shells spread out like a sea of sores on the crumbling walls of faded concrete. And on the laden dashboards above the concessions were some tittles of the last known movies of the Old Age: The Lion Queen, Mash Fiction, Wood Gump, and The Shoreshank Absolution. They all seemed like brainless flicks, something you think for a week then regurgitate to the back of your head. Whatever Atom hit the unwashed masses here might’ve been doing all mankind a favour.
A crash. There was a sudden crash ahead of me. I pulled up the scattergun and pointed.
‘Come out with your hands up!’ I said. You never know, right? Those things out there would tear you to shreds before you muttered ‘live and let live,’ but some people have intelligence enough to be negotiated, at least, from the barrel of a gun. Credits, girls, guns: the holy trinity of the wasteland bargain bin. You got any of these; fifty percent you’ll live another day; fifty for you and fifty for the next guy that takes it from you.
I shuffled forward slowly, an itchy finger on my trigger. ‘Whoever you are, I can pay double what they told you!’
There seemed to be nothing else here; all dead since the day of the Great Fire. My watch gave another beep so I made a run for it inside. Whatever it was, it wasn’t interested in coming out to me; so maybe there’s some comfort in that. If all else fails, there’s always Option B...

(Part 1 I suppose.)

>>10124531
>Rather than "a pumpkin spiced bullshit drink," I would say "a drink of pumpkin spiced bullshit" to end on the punch.

terrible advice

He had not smoked in some time, as he strode he fiddled with the cigarette, occasionally raising it to take a puff of that sick stale smoke that brought such comfort, he had a feeling that these were not the breathing exercises his therapist had recommended he try.

Mostly he just held that cigarette, its presence reassured him, and lulled him into a sense of security, he could rely on that cigarette to still be there the next time he needed a puff, at least until it was gone.

>>10125942

A moment’s delay will get you a chomp and it only takes a few to turn you into one of them. I took my last roll of bandage and applied the red gash on my arm. It was a new jacket too, darn it...
After closing the wound, I shut myself inside and proceeded down the hallway avenue of theatre numbers, looking for a decent one with a secure roof and door. Caution clung to me like a tip-drunk hostess. Which reminds me – I still haven’t payed Diana for that last drink. You know, if there ever was a heaven to look forward to after a hard day’s scavenging, it was a Hostess Bar. Fine wine, blended whisky, air conditioning, and last but not least – girls, clean ones, with scented breaths, conditioned hair, and etiquette – or whatever it is those fancy shmuck places advertise. The fact was: they were infectious, full of bubble and shine; reminding you not every sorry sight of a woman in this foul world had to look like a gorilla out to rob you. Heck, they even wore dresses. I know, right? Bold, progressive stuff!
Which reminds me...
I don’t know what it is, but something feels like it wants to get to know me very soon… For awhile now I thought perhaps the noise was some crash of a fallen film reel or something, but obviously there’s a greater story being woven here – something moving. Little shuffles on the carpet – not mine, mind you, but something external. Waiting turns perhaps to see if it can blend amongst my own footsteps? Clever, but let’s be real here, it might just be me over-thinking my own presence in this desolate place. My own footsteps were echoing, after all.
Then I heard it – and this time I wasn’t moving.
‘Who goes there?’ I don’t say it; it would bring more trouble than its worth. If my presence was given up then there would no telling how many I’d be expecting to meet. Or from where. Most of these halls were binary and either went forward or back, and guess what? My gun can only point one way.
‘Um – excuse me?’ A touch on my shoulder – I screamed and found the floor, the scattergun went off on the ceiling. There was a squeal as debris and dust descended down upon me and whoever it was. I rolled, struggled to get a grip on the red carpet floor. The scattergun in sight, I hurried, shuffling, two forearms rowing at a time. I grabbed it. Turned around. Back on the floor. Stock on my shoulder. I pointed the scattergun square at the figure beyond the light of the gouged ceiling. ‘Okay, pal,’ I said. ‘I got you right where I want you! You make a move and I’ll blow you away quick!’
‘Blow me away quick?’ it said. ‘Do you wish to dry me?’
‘What? You stay right there and don’t you make a move!’ I steadily got up. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to be panicking from the heel-turn of the situation, that’s at least admirable. ‘Okay, pal,’ I said. ‘I got you right where I want you! You make a move and I’ll blow you away quick!’

(Part 2. More to come, maybe.)

>>10125960
he's right though

It started off as a day like any other. I sat in the locker room, ready for a good long day working the bags. I had just taken a moment to collect my thoughts, when suddenly, this Harry Kim looking motherfucker in a leatherman outfit decided he was going to come into MY gym. I let him know he wasn't welcome here dressing like that and he says "Fuck you" to me. To me!? I had to show this jabroni who the real boss of this gym was.

>>10126046
‘Blow me away quick?’ it said. ‘Do you wish to dry me?’
‘What? You stay right there and don’t you make a move!’ I steadily got up. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to be panicking from the heel-turn of the situation, that’s at least admirable. ‘Okay, crapstack, I’m going to count to three. You’re going into that little spot of light over there,’ I pointed with the gun, ‘and if I even so much as see a weapon on you I’m blasting you from here to kingdom come. You hear me?!’
The figured stood awhile, as if it was trying to process something, hands, or the silhouette of hands, resting on what looked like a puffy dress of sorts. Left to my imagination it kinda looked like one of the higher-class gals of the hostess club. The ones with big wigs and doodads like fat birthday cakes: a lot of unnecessary expenditure to look as grand as possible. ‘Under the Code of Ethics I was programmed with,’ it suddenly spoke, I could tell it was female, ‘I am to assist if it best serves the customer’s interest and social needs of this fine establishment.’
The talk itself caught me off-guard, I hadn’t heard that much babble meaning nothing in a long time, and I drink. But something about her tone felt – distant, oddly calm, composed; as if there wasn’t a gun between her and the hell thereafter (like the one now was any better), but simply between me and her. Was it creepy? Yes – but oddly refreshing to the coarse gargling of most women trying to sound tough. ‘Slowly then,’ I said, training my gun on the silhouette of her head, ‘and no sudden movements!’
‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Though no need to raise your voice, sir, we will handle your complaints right away, I promise.’ Steps moved forward, odd shuffles on the carpet floor. Then I saw it – gold upon gold – it was the first thing I noticed as she walked into the light – her blond hair; sparkling like the top of the Kenucky Tower; the tallest, shiniest chrome scraper of this city; and the golden ray of the setting sun outside coming in like a holy pillar, a finger of God, reaching down from the hole of the ceiling; pointing his chosen, laying his mantle on this bright spot of tuft that was her golden hair.
She seemed benevolent, beatific, and oddly enough – honest in her appearance – without saying bloody a thing! And stranger still was her cleanliness, especially for a building this decrepit – so clean in fact she seemed kind of pale – like a porcelain doll in a way. Her skin had this sort of otherworldliness to it that felt divinely different yet still attractively down-to-earth, that at that moment I wondered if she was human at all...
But I guess that’s where the praise ends. For however pretty she may be – like any hostess girl with a suspiciously large bump in her throat – you may still want to check you didn’t fall into a trap.
‘Twirl,’ I said.
‘I’m sorry?’

(Part 3. More maybe.)

>>10124960
>Also you can instead go into more important details than the subway architecture, unless that's important

subway architecture is always important. also, there is no mental illness present here, it's just how it is.

THANK YOU FOR THE RESPONSE I WILL TAKE THE OTHER THINGS INTO THE CALCULATION MY FRIEND

i started reading yours but dropped it when it turned out that the guys name was zero.

>>10126029
smooth, but last line is a bit wobbly.

>>10126240
based

A little thing I wrote at /wfg/ (writefag general) over on /k/. I'm sick, haven't written anything in over a week, I never write in 1st person, but the muse hit me. What do you think? I wasn't planning to bring it here but I spotted this thread, so why not?

>Here it is, below...

All I can hear is breathing, but even that's muffled by the incessant ringing. Sweat drips down my brow as it turns cool from the wind pushed past my face as I run, and I run. The rifle is heavy, the action open; I'm empty. The bandolier, it feels lopsided, heavier on one side than the other; I don't have much ammo left. Keep running, just keep running, I can't tell if there's a fly keeping pace with me and assaulting my ears or if I'm being chased away with bullets. Just keep running, run home to Jenny, she's waiting, in a field of grass and flowers with a smile on her face. One spreads upon my own sweaty, scruffy face. It's been a few days since I last shaved, I hope she doesn't mind, as I reach out to touch her outstretched hand.

I feel light, there is nothing left but her smile, and my own. I reach, and I reach, wishing to feel her warm embrace. It's cold, and I feel the metal of the open action to my rifle, it feels cold as the skin that warm liquid pools around. I can't feel my legs, as I lie in a field, reaching out for my dropped rifle. I'd been hit, the tanks draw closer, and all I can think about is Jenny back home.

>>10123018
I tried to give it a read, but the whole "haven't seen food in days" bit quickly made me lose interest. HOT food may have been a rarity at times in the trenches, but soldiers were still fed. Even if they had to nibble on a piece of hardtack (aka ship's biscuits) then they'd do that, but that's basically worst case scenario. Yes, things were horrible in the trenches, but the soldiers wouldn't go days without food. As Napoleon Bonaparte said a century before WWI, "soldiers march on their stomachs"; you need to feed your troops if you expect them to fight hard.

>>10126411
I'm thinking of changing his name so that it's Ziero, or something that's pronounced the same as 'zero', but I'm not 100% sure. At any rate thanks for nothing

>>10125180
>https://pastebin.com/65bksfzA

>He had his hands clasped behind his back in a manner that only old rich and those pretending to be old rich ever do.
You mean "old rich people"? Why was the third word omitted in both cases?

>Truly only the information that never leave the mind are out of his reach.
I'dve probably phrased it as "Truly only the information which stayed in the mind was out of his reach." Using plural "the information" the way you have strikes me as really weird.

>He put his index finger in front of my mouth. He took it back and smiled radiantly.
This is a lot better but I'd connect these with a "mouth, then took it back" for fluidity. Or you could keep the emphasis.

>``How I know is unimportant. What is important is what I know, and how much my friends are willing to pay to know for it.''
could replace the first period with a semicolon here. I can't be arsed to go check if I'd already said that in the earlier posts or not.

>The fiend had beaten me.
I'm not entirely sure if this is within his character.

>Actually, can I bring my box set sometime and have you sign that.''
this should end with a question mark

>the pianist and trumpeter played their heart out.
should say "hearts," not sure how I missed this last time

>Darwinism thing
I'm partially tempted to tell you to cut that line and have Avanna deduce what he's thinking about after seeing him choke, and then immediately jump to her ``I don't mean that kind of relationship." line. Just providing another option.

>I could hear elated laughter from the voice in my head. Clearly he was enjoying my suffering.
If you're going to keep the "he", maybe change the first part to "I could hear a laughing man in the back of my head" so that the pronoun reference is more obvious.

>After grabbing and promptly discarding my receipt joining her.
this is a sentence fragment

>>10126411
>dropped it when it turned out that the guys name was zero
seriously? I hated the name too, but a hamfisted The Big O reference wasn't enough to downright kill my willingness to go through it a couple times.

>>10127225
>>After grabbing and promptly discarding my receipt joining her.
>this is a sentence fragment
Oh, you meant to say "after..., I joined her" I think

A child is born with no state of mind
Blind to the ways of mankind
God is smilin' on you but he's frownin' too
Because only God knows what you'll go through
You'll grow in the ghetto livin' second-rate
And your eyes will sing a song called deep hate
The places you play and where you stay
Looks like one great big alleyway
You'll admire all the number-book takers
Thugs, pimps and pushers and the big money-makers
Drivin' big cars, spendin' twenties and tens
And you'll wanna grow up to be just like them, huh
Smugglers, scramblers, burglars, gamblers
Pickpocket peddlers, even panhandlers
You say I'm cool, huh, I'm no fool
But then you wind up droppin' outta high school
Now you're unemployed, all non-void
Walkin' round like you're Pretty Boy Floyd
Turned stick-up kid, but look what you done did
Got sent up for a eight-year bid
Now your manhood is took and you're a Maytag
Spend the next two years as a undercover fag
Bein' used and abused to serve like hell
Til one day, you was found hung dead in the cell
It was plain to see that your life was lost
You was cold and your body swung back and forth
But now your eyes sing the sad, sad song
Of how you lived so fast and died so young so
Don't push me 'cause I'm close to the edge
I'm trying not to lose my head
It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under
It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under

she flicked her cigaret at my ear and said, you’re no romantic, i want big muscle arms around my neck the grip holding my essence together in a peaceful bond, i said, lady, i’m post-romantic y’know, tried the sweet stuff, didn’t like the taste, moved past. she said, that’s too bad, your face has the sign of something angelic, you look like a matured cherub, too bad the personality don’t match it. i said, lady, you have the lips of someone with a big plump ass but the only kind of ass you have is the lack of one, i don’t let my flame burn any sticks y’know, saving myself for a treestump. she said, you’re a private detective, but i don’t think you got the dick to handle my privates, little P.I. boy. i said, little PI? check this, bitch, 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679821480865132823066470938446095505822317253594081284811174502841027019385211055596446229489549303819644288109756659334461284756482337867831652712019091456485669234603486104543266482133936072602491412737245870066063155881748815209209628292540917153643678925903600113305305488204665213841469519415116094330572703657595919530921861173819326117931051185480744623799627495673518857527248912279381830119491298336733624406566430860213949463952247371907021798609437027705392171762931767523846748184676694051320005681271452635. and i could go on forever. she said, forever? i’ll give you a forewarning, this woman you are searching for, she gone to hell 3 years ago. i said, a while ago i saw her gone with a gong in ag ong the chinese street block now excuse me i gotta go so you begone. she screamed with animated fury, you will be GONE!

>>10127225
>You mean "old rich people"? Why was the third word omitted in both cases?
Meant it to be old money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_money

>I'm not entirely sure if this is within his character.
He tends to get anxious around Avanna. He gets similarly offended at her advances in earlier chapters.

>If you're going to keep the "he", maybe change the first part to "I could hear a laughing man in the back of my head" so that the pronoun reference is more obvious.
The voice in his head talks a lot more in other chapters. 'The voice in my head' is basically a proper noun in the story, so I don't think it'll be a problem.

>this is a sentence fragment
Sorry, I was typing far too late into the night and way too far into a fever.

I've made further edits as per your suggestions.
https://pastebin.com/uhK4Qmxw

>seriously? I hated the name too, but a hamfisted The Big O reference wasn't enough to downright kill my willingness to go through it a couple times.
;__; I'll work on making it less in your face

>>10124643 (Me)
https://pastebin.com/2jM4hNZp
Took some of my prof's and an anon's suggestions into account for the first chapter, didn't touch the second yet. Look up a text-difference checker on google if you want to jump to the major revisions; I tried making the narrator describe his past life and downfall a little more to generate more interest and display his character more clearly. I also changed the beginning of the third day a bit and had the boy do exercises while the narrator tried to determine the boy's motivations. The changes are a little underwhelming (because I've got shit to do), but nonetheless strike me as a direct improvement over what I'd originally posted.


>>10127606
I might read over it again, but there probably isn't much for me to say at this point.

Konstantin stared at his steak. Medium cooked and with blood, just they way he wanted it. The avocado topping was magnificent, too. Marius spoke, but he was too focused on tasting his meal to even pay attention. So he poked him on the shoulder. He raised his glance and caught an impatient Marius staring at him.

"The elections. I was talking you about the goddamned elections".
"Yeah, what about them?" said Konstantin as he licked his greasy fingertips.
"Are you going to put yourself forward?"
"You and I both know none of us wouldn't have a chance. Even that by some miracle we'd manage to get in the council the chancellor would kick us right out." he said as he took another bite.

Marius was looking outside the cafe's windows. It had been constantly raining with no sign of stopping. He took a pen and started writing on a sheet. His azure eyes showed signs of worry as he passed the note to Konstantin.

Then he took a moment to read it. "Do you think they are monitoring us right now?". He stood in silence.

posted this in the last thread but didn't get much attention

>excerpt from short story
>they're industrial painters who've just won a scam sweepstakes for a minority share in a local casino chain
>they're naive
>central flashback revolves around one of their weddings (where this scene takes place)

Submitting this for publication later this week
Will do crit for crit

>>10127771

2/2

again, offering crit for crit

Finally got around to posting mine. Thank you to anyone that reads it. It's an opening to a short story.

>>10126210
Nobody has said, says, or ever WILL say "a drink OF pumpkin spiced bullshit." That's just not how people talk.

At the Starbucks, me was ordering a drink of the pumpkin spiced bullshit.

Just please advice don't give OF if know don't what you're talking about

>>10126029
first sentence is a miserable run-on

>>10128223

LMAO. I bet that's helped him a load.

>>10128217
"He had a drink of pumpkin spiced bullshit." "I ordered a drink of pumpkin spiced bullshit."

Its an absolutely natural way to speak, the fact that you can fuck it up is your own problem. You're like one of those stay at home moms intupperware commercials that just spill food all over the place. Just stop.

>>10128217
>drink of [liquid]
>Nobody has said, says, or ever WILL say
>That's just not how people talk.
It's such a common manner of speaking that it even has related idioms, you dunce
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/long_drink_of_water
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=drink%20of%20water

>>10128067
It makes me curious what's wrong with her that she'd be so sensitive. Maybe that's just me posturing to myself about how many slaps I can take, or maybe that's what you were going for, or maybe that's a legitimate criticism. Maybe both. I don't know.
>>10127784
>>10127771
I don't know if it's because I'm dumb or high but this lost me completely in term of where I understood in time the events were going on. I got a good feel for the characters, I think, but not what they were involved in really.
>>10125317
I think you should go way more into the clinical detail in the first little bit

Sorry if the sizing is weird. I had to email it to myself (b/c I'm bad with computers) and then resize it in paint and I don't know how it's gonna look on other screens. This is the first time I've done something like this and it's just the most recent few things I've done in this meandering mess of my start of a story.

>>10128574
nobody's trying to read that mate

>>10128644
That's what I thought. I sort of convinced myself that it wasn't that bad, but yeah, I really ought to type it out at least

Can anyone recommend a decent writing community where I can post my stories?

I'm tired of posting my shit here and getting zero responses

>>10127747
Really liked it. Even from a brief conversation, I could already get a feel for the characters. I'd actually like to read more.

>>10127771
>>10127784
The whole scene does read of naive and carefree behavior, somewhat a little annoying, kind of like a wedding scene in a chick movie. I'm not sure if that was what you're going for. I would cut down on the shorthand words like 'em. Also I would reconsider making direct references to actual things like Gmail or Facebook.

Here's my short story excerpt
https://pastebin.com/eQcHXEyp

Lovecraftian(?) thing I did a few months ago.

>>10129632
Shit I forgot context

MC mercy killed his sick mom and moved to the city in an attempt to start over and forgive himself. He winds up a super depressed loner who likes stalking people because its the only social interaction he can have.
MC follows the wrong guy down the wrong alley and sees some shit he shouldnt

The Void is supposed to be a metaphor for religion as a crutch for learning to forgive yourself.

1/2
The people at the party weren't noticing how good looking Jeremy is and that made him upset. Jeremy was the best looking guy in the history of the planet and no one was staring at him. He wasn't wearing a shirt and in a bathing suit that showed off his ripped bod and no one cared. What kind of lame party was this? A lot of people were doing drugs so maybe thats why they weren't staring. "Dumb stoners." Jeremy thought. But it made sense because you'd have to be on drugs to ignore something this perfect and godlike. Melissa Anderson was staring at him though and that made Jeremy feel good even though Melissa was creepy as hell. She was really good looking but creepy because she wanted Jeremy too much. Jeremy's cell phone vibrated and he answered it.

"Yeah? Hello?"
"Jeremy..." it was his dad, and his voice sounded serious. "Jeremy, your mom.. she's in the hospital.. Jeremy, you need to come to the hospital."
"Dad? What happened? My mom is in the hospital? What?"
"Your mom... her stomach collapsed, I don't know, she's bleeding to death internally.. Jeremy, they don't think she's going to live past the night."
"How did that happen? Do they know?"
"No, your mom called 9-11 and went to the hospital."
"So she didn't mention anything about soda or anything?"
"Soda?"
"She's like dying?"
"Stop asking stupid questions and get here Jeremy, this is serious. Why are you asking about soda? Get here now. Now!"

Jeremy's dad hung up the phone and Jeremy was in shock about his mom. He thought she deserved having a soda can thrown at her, but she didn't deserve to die. That shouldn't have happened. Jeremy stared at his reflection in the pool water and thought about how good looking he is even in a wavy pool water reflection. He wondered if he should go to the hospital because he didn't think his mom would die, how could you die from being hit with a soda can? Thats just ridiculous.

>>10129676

2/2

"Baby, whats wrong? You look all serious all of the sudden."
"I'm just thinking about my bod and how perfect I am. Ya know?"
"Do you ever think about anything else Jeremy?"
"You don't think my face and body is like pure perfection?"
"I guess."
"Also my Dad called and said my mom is in the hospital and might die."
"Oh my god. Thats terrible. What happened?"
"I threw a can of soda at her and hit her in the stomach. And she's bleeding to death internally."
"Wait - why would you throw a can of soda at your mother? Thats so bad, Jeremy. I don't understand that."
"I had a can of soda in my hand and she was just yelling at me and I lost my temper. I don't know, it just happened, and now she's probably going to die. Thats messed up, huh?"
"You don't even care! You threw a can of soda at your mom so hard she had to be hospitalized. Do you even care? What's wrong with you?"
"You never take my side or try to understand my point of view! You don't get me. I'm sick of it. You don't deserve to have this bod. Like you shouldn't even be allowed to look at me and appreciate how beautiful I am. I'm literally a work of art and you're just some mediocre skanky ass bitch with a nose job. I didn't buy my looks, they came to me through divine intervention. Thats why I'm blessed. I'm touched by a higher being, like ancient greece gods created me in their image. Thats the way it is. I'm gods gift."
"You know what Jeremy, get the fuck out of here! We're over. You're a fucking idiot."
"I'm not going anywhere, the people want me here, everyone wants me here because I'm gorgeous and I slang that dick like a champion. Yeeee."
"You killed your mom. She's dying because of you and all you can think about is how everyone at the party thinks you're like so good looking. But theres more to life than just being beautiful. Theres something called human decency."
"Shut up you camel faced cunt. Every girl at this party wants a piece of this, you know it and I know it. You were lucky I even let you touch me with your greasy boney mummy fingers. Ugh. I swear you're so revolting. You bought your looks with plastic surgery and dermatology. And you're still just a mediocrity. I can't believe I put my penis in your mouth with your invinsilign and snaggle teeth scraping my penis, it felt like putting my dick in a blender. I didn't even cum. I just faked it so I could go home and take a shower and moisturize my cock to repair the damage your mouth did to it."
"I hope your mom dies so she doesn't have to listen to you! I swear she's thanking god and praying for death just so she doesn't have to endure your bullshit! You're such a fucking space case. I don't care if you are good looking, you're mental. Fuck you!"

>>10129678

wait, i need 3 posts instead of 2

Everyone at the party was laughing their ass off at Krista and Jeremy's fight. It was the weirdest couple fight anyone had ever seen. Jeremy was pretty pleased with how it all went down. A lot of people there gave him props and agreed that he was beautiful as hell and should stay. Jeremy walked into the house and towards the bathroom, in the living room he saw Krista being consoled by her friends and she was crying hysterically. Melissa Anderson followed Jeremy into the bathroom and that annoyed him, but he noticed that Krista saw it and he decided to let her stay.

"Sup?" Jeremy asked Melissa.
"That was brutal, Jeremy. You're awful." Melissa said.
"The fuck you follow me into the bathroom then? You know Krista saw you."
"I don't care. I don't care about a goddamn thing, you beautiful fuck."
"Take your shirt off and play with your nips while I piss. If I like how it looks I'll finger you."
"I don't want to watch you piss. Thats gross."
"Don't you know anything about penises? They can't get aroused if they're all full of piss."
"I'll wait outside while you do that."
"You know what, fuck you." Jeremy unzipped his pants, whipped out his dick, and aimed his piss at Melissa.
"You sick fuck! Oh my god, Jeremy!" Melissa tried to block the stream of piss with her hands, then grabbed a bath towel and ran out of the bathroom while wiping herself off.

Jeremy laughed and finished pissing into the toilet. He stared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror and smirked. "I really am beautiful." he thought.

Water drips to my face
Broken concrete down below
Ugly odor fills this place
Paranoid fate is all i know

Mental hell, broken dreams
Threaded death hangs from above
Distorted internal screams
Angels inviting me to their heaven of "love"

Mental issues apparant
Graphic issues become real
Ultraviolence inherent
Now you will learn how I feel

>>10129682
terrible

>>10129695

thats messed up

I'm trying something that I haven't done before so here it goes.

If my family found out what I masterbait to on a daily basis my entire family would disown me. If I became an author and someone found out and it became a scandle here is what I'd say during an interview with Sean Hannity.

"I've masterbaited to hentai where a little sister gets hypnotized by her brother into having an orgasm whenever he fucks her throat. That's entirely true, I've also masterbaited to hentai where a Mom sucks off her son who has two broken arms and can't masterbait by himself. However I don't think I'm a monster or anything because I'd never harm another human being. I hate pedophiles because they are sick predators that are willing to ruin the trust between the next generation and the adults that are supposed to guide and teach them all for the sake of sexual gratification. It's absolutely evil and disgusting."

This is the type of shit I think about at work. I want to run for the Senate in my life because I love the United States and I'd never let myself become corrupt, I'd always vote for what I believe in even if it isn't practical because I believe that our ideals should guide our practical decisions. If you start making sacrifices for the sake of practical living your actions will become corrupt because you are justifying the end as greater than the means. Even though I do believe in what I'm saying I'd kill anyone I needed to in war if I was ordered to because as a soldier your job is to do what needs to get done and to think about the consiquences afterwords.

It's hard to sleep because I'm constantly struggling with blatant hypocrisies in my morality. I believe that the ideals that persist though this constant self evaluation are the foundational beliefs that will help me avoid regrets in life but I'm not entirely sure. These founding beliefs are often not the easiest things to live by and its away at me slowly whenever I fail to meet my own ideals.

I'm trying writing about stuff I actually think about in hopes that its more interesting than the fanfic tier creative writing I normally do.

>>10129682
It's not very interesting prose, but it feels natural. Especially the dialogue.

its okay.

>>10128512
>>10128411
noun vs. verb. makes a huge difference in the context of the sentence though, imagining the act of drinking vs. the reviled object itself. the former removes immediately. KID!

>>10129529
tip: post with a cool image or post the link at the end of a long series of incendiary replies

Add some variety to sentence length. All my other criticisms are covered.

>>10129676
Wrote a long comment and deleted it.

Let it be enough to say that in order to write literature I believe that you must have love for humankind. Nothing less will do. Not quick jokes, not mockery, not sneering, not narcissism, not lust. You need LOVE, the same burning golden force that preserved the israelites, that binds brother to brother, mother to child, lover to lover, and, in the cases of some saints, men to their enemies.

You can speak in the tongue of men and angels, but without love you could have all the riches of the world and you would still have NOTHING.

>>10129726
Kind of flat, but you're right, it is pretty interesting. Rawer than a lot of people who self-consciously try to be raw.

>>10129754

I dont want to write literature. I want to write a hit Young Adult novel and get paid $$$$$$

>>10129758
Do you think there's any format where literal blogposting like this could be turned into a book? I want to write a good book that makes people think and I feel like if I write what I actually think in a conversational manner that people will actually do that. Obviously you need editing and maybe some sort of structure would help but I can't help but worry that there's no way a book that doesn't fit into a genre could be marketable.

I want to believe that if a book is good it will get published, because I want to believe the people reading submissions want to read interesting books on some deep fundamental level.

>>10129735
I do that every fucking time. Still nobody responds to me. Fuck all of you ungrateful cunts

>>10129726
It's spelled masturbate.

>>10129529
That pic is me when I watch 'Inside Out' while drunk.

>>10129895
>>10129529
I wish I could reply more but I can't really into critique except for spelling mistakes usually. So I can only respond when I find something that I can say more about, which happens very rarely.

A place for this I found that looks good is Critters, which you may want to check out. You have to do enough of your own critiques to get critiqued yourself, and their site says most people will average 15-20 for what they post, but you have to have something substantial to post which I don't so I haven't signed up to it yet, not just short snippets like what often get posted on here.

>>>/minitruepornosec/

Has anyone read any erotica? If so can you tell me how what I have written compares to it. It is just the opening. Her friend is a big slut and will later take her out to buy a slutty dress and then they meet a guy. With the sluts guidance she also becomes a slut and the story will end with her total transformation into a fat slut, but also one of the guys she fucks is super hot and rich and loves her and takes her away somewhere to live forever and ever happily ever after because she's so special even though she's actually shit.

>>10127747
cont

Konstantin nodded. "Why is he asking if he knows the answer already?" he thought. Marius then flipped the sheet and began to write once more. As evident by his clock and the absence of all customers but them two, the time was nearly there. He collected the juice left by the steak with the final piece of bread and ringed the button.

Marius passed him the note. 'Should we remove the wires?" it read. He rumbled the paper and angrily shook his head. Marius left out a sigh while the waitress approached them. Konstantin folded 20 mark bill and put it inside the android's mouth. "Eat it, you bitch" he muttered. A few spare coins came out of her open abdomen. "Thank you!" she cheered in her electronic voice.

Konstantin showed Marius his watch. Before he had the chance to get up from his chair, the latter poked his calf. He checked under the table. And there it was. Yellow, small gripped and pocket sized. Konstantin couldn't hide his grin and took the Keyringer.

>>10129733
Its being used as a noun in the original post, go back to the comma threads.

Fuck, I could really use a wine-sip right now. A wine-sip would certainly make this coversation much more bearable. That's how you say it, right? "Wine-sip"? Not "sip of wine"?

>>10121594
I wrote this on my phone at 4 AM on Monday when I couldn't sleep. Is it any good?

Fargus grandifola

I remember what it was like, how I learned the nature of Beach leaves. I remember going for walks with my father, through those grey New England winters. 2015, 2016, yes those ones seemed especially colorless, when he would drag me outside into the cold for my own good. It was when I was in withdrawal. My legs would not listen to me. I fell forward onto them through the sleeping forest as if I were on stilts, up the icy rooted paths towards the water. My thoughts were not my own. My body, burning, crooked, crumbling, no longer heard my voice.

What makes the North American Beech Tree distinct is that it hails from the tropics. Long ago these giants wandered into a foreign land, gradually northwards into the cold from warmer climes. Lost in the snow so suddenly, they were forced to adapt, to survive. Unlike the maple or oak with their dark skins and bark ridges acting as radiators, the Beech is smooth, flat, and light. Here in the north, the Beech stands out. A stranger, there is no one in the landscape quite like it.

I have learned from books that this adaptation is to distribute heat evenly, to prevent deadly frost cracks from forming, but I believe differently. I believe the Beech looks this way because deep in its mighty trunk it remembers. As it sleeps under the low New England winter sun, that lazy egg yolk in the sky, it remembers home.

The Beech comes from a land where there is no winter, where leaves may live year round without a care in the world, gathering energy for years on end. Down there they always full, they are always green. No such thing exists up here in New England, not for these giants, so stranded in the cold. No, their leaves shrivel into pale white nothings.

However fragile they refuse to die, turned downwards on their stems like paper quaking in the wind, they are a sore sight indeed. However feeble, the Beech leaf holds a quiet strength. It never lets go, it holds on because in the tropics, because in spring, the leaves do not let go. It refuse to die because it remembers what once was, because it knows what again will be.

I remember being in withdrawal, what it meant to be paper thin, to flail in the wind and hang pale above the icy ground. I remember how I learned the nature of Beech leaves, how I smiled at them as I trudged on quietly through the snow.

>>10123013
I am with you my dude

>>10130165
>Has anyone read any erotica?

>>10129726
>>10129758
The rawness of the quoted passage is fine; the blogposting of it is the annoying part. Usually when I read something where someone really tries to be raw, it's painfully obvious that they're forcing things to the surface and trying to look deeper or more intellectual than they actually are. This is almost the reverse; it's exhibitionism. I can see the author fantasizing about being interviewed. It's like when people like Milo Yiannopoulos present their honesty as a sacrifice when in reality it's a pleasure for them to act that way. I'd go watch and read some Zizek. He says retarded pointless shit every now and then, but it's still worth it, particularly for his discussions on the forbidden and sacred and how he essentially boils them down to the same thing.

>This [porn and political exhibitionism] is the type of shit I think about at work. I want to run for the Senate
>I'd never let myself become corrupt, I'd always vote for what I believe in... [but] I'm constantly struggling with blatant hypocrisies in my morality
slow the fuck down my man

just go read shit

>>10130441
>I'd go watch and read some Zizek. He says retarded pointless shit every now and then, but it's still worth it, particularly for his discussions on the forbidden and sacred and how he essentially boils them down to the same thing.
-oh, and also the notion of "making a pass," where he compares things like sexual advances and dirty jokes to trust falls (though I'd like it if he'd speak more on the subject of risk distribution).

The first couple of days back on land after a voyage were always difficult for Krysanov. He had never suffered from seasickness, even when he was a student at the Marine Academy, and the instructors sent the boys out to sea in bad weather to weed out those who couldn’t take it. The old training ships flopped around in the waves like dying fish, and quite a few of his fellow-students turned green and lay on the deck moaning. But the first night out, Krysanov happily wolfed down a couple of extra portions of chicken that others couldn’t face. And since then, in nearly twenty years in the merchant marine, he had not once felt ill at sea, even in the worst weathers.
But every time he returned from a trip, the first forty-eight hours after docking were unpleasant. His ears rang and he felt dizzy. He stumbled on doorsteps. He dropped cutlery at meals and knocked over glasses. It wasn’t until the third day ashore that he felt balanced again. Even then he wasn’t really comfortable. His natural environment was the sea, not the flat, immobile surface of the earth, and whatever he did on land, he couldn’t forget that he was out of his element.
The only exception was when he was painting. He could stand in front of an easel for hours, painstakingly placing paint on canvas until he was satisfied he’d set down something worthwhile. The act of painting completely absorbed him; he would forget even to smoke or drink tea, let alone to eat. He didn’t have any stock subjects, but painted whatever engaged his imagination, although he realised after a time that the one subject he never turned to was the sea.

I wrote this to my ex right before we started dating. It was my way of expressing how I felt for her.
I am going to try to keep this as short as possible. What I am about to tell you might make you uncomfortable. It might make you gag, even. You do not have to respond. Despite this, I feel as though I have an obligation to tell you this, as I do not believe in carrying around emotional dead weight. You have been my muse, so to speak. I have felt strongly about you since the beginning. When I first heard you speak in debate some massive force seemed to open up within me. I respected you for the humility with which you handled your success, and the grace with which you handled your shortcomings. The glacier of my cynicism was melted away by the idea of you. I never pursued it for a few reasons. My feeling was naive, and all encompassing. It was the kind built on late nights of dozens of incoherent poetry and ideas that had no correspondence with anything close to reality. I do not believe in building houses on sand, only on stone. I thought of two outcomes: either an unhealthy relationship, or worse, an unhealthy rejection. So for this reason I have kept you in a special place in my psyche and will continue to do so. I would wish you good luck, but frankly, you have a more potent weapon: your brilliance.

>>10130495
>>10130489
>Thread flooded with erotica
>Two mind blowing posts in a row.
Thank you /lit/

>>10130495
>I wrote this to my ex right before we started dating. It was my way of expressing how I felt for her.
So, tell us the good part: how many black dicks were you eventually cucked by?

>>10130489
>http://www.americanliteraryreview.com/peter-justin-newall.html
neat

>the flat, immobile surface of the earth
woah there man

>...whatever he did on land, he couldn’t forget that he was out of his element.
Read everything after the conjunction. It doesn't stand up quite right. "No matter what he did on land" might be better.

>...he was satisfied he’d set down something worthwhile
I don't think the word "satisfied" can be used like this. "convinced" might work, or you could change it to "...satisfied with what he'd set down".

Make sure your clauses can stand up on their own. If you want to omit parts, make it deliberate and clear. For example, if I were to say "Not a big deal," it would be obvious this was just shorthand for "It's/that's not a big deal."

>>10130495
>Despite this, I feel as though I have an obligation to tell you this
The double "this" is what's making me gag. I also think you don't have to be so hard on yourself, but I don't want to break your character so I'm not going to criticize the melodrama.

>I would wish you good luck, but frankly, you have a more potent weapon: your brilliance.
The cadence and inflection of this would be better if you ended it with "your own brilliance" in my opinion, but I'm not really sure why.

>>10129682
Until about 2 months ago I was friends with a psychopath and this is a somewhat convincing rendering of that personality type, if a bit caricatured. The argument between him and his girlfriend is the best part, and also the most accurate to my experience.

"That's messed up, huh?"

>>10129686
cringe

>>10128574
Me again. Here's some stuff I decided to type out. Very short. Might not be enough.

https://pastebin.com/a5XZUZdi


>>10129682
I think Jeremy is over doing it. It's hard for me to understand why he would act that way, even if he was a douchey narcissist, he has to attract people to him somehow.
>>10129686
Comes off as edgy and selfish. Not sure if that's deliberate.

>>10128067

Literally the best thing in this thread by a long ways. Measured language, intriguing introduction, and entices one to read more.

9.5/10.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Slf8vQYN6nfgqbUHZs5FjeKOR7gLFIRFdxnyaOf-rg4/edit
crit my story please

bump for crit

>>10131323

Not very good, sorry. Continue to write so you get better.

>>10131184
Here

>>10131323
I don't like "absolute mess". Very uncreative way to say that. Plus the repetition of mess and nest doesn't sound good to me. Whose note who's. Other than that, I like it a lot.

>>10131323
How do you do this?

Someone keeps giving troll criticisms of my work can you please make them stop
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TIeoX9zwrglBk4wfs4efdlH2wcoqgdItYzmmrAc5hJc/edit

>>10123624
>>10123974
>>10124585
>>10124753
>>10124960
thank you all for giving me the courage to write more. I haven't done creative writing in years and was worried it sounded too much like a high schooler. Thank you so much for your feedback.

Oh shit didn't know second episode was out

Feedback on style? Am i going in the wrong direction?

I met Patrick Yun after a Boeing-737 had destroyed the twelve blocks that were located directly across the street from his father’s condominium. I was fourteen and riding my bike along-side St. Stephanie’s Street, looking for something to distract myself from all the things that you aren’t supposed to be distracted from at that age. Fourteen-year-olds do that you know.

It was incredibly surreal in the way that it all happened, and I honestly thought (and probably still would think) that it was all a dream or hallucination if it were not for the newspaper clippings from the following morning’s issue of the LA Times that I had laminated and framed and put (and still keep) underneath my bed.

Any way, as I came to the intersection between St. Steph’s and Williams I turned right, redirecting myself from north on St. Steph’s to east on Williams (now north east on Williams after the city had completely reconstructed the district following the crash.) As I was turning onto Williams the premature landing of the 747 stole my balance, much in the same way it stole the lives of all those people of great notability (well realistically, probably only a couple of the passengers were all-that notable. But still, a loss all the same.)

Seriously though, I was riding my bike into a crashing passenger plane; in every sense of the word and by absolutely every possible stretch of the imagination. And your imagination you will have to use because where I lack in descriptive writing I make up for in my ability to judge the notable. But I’ll start with the terror - it was absolute terror.

[The next paragraphs are describing the actual crash, i just don't want to over load the thread]

>>10132586
misaki sensei? Can't find it. Give sauce.

I wrote something as a sort of personal challenge some years ago, basically as a sort of dark realistic fiction undercut by the fact that it was full of puns on the thing it drew reference from
it occurred to me the other day it was basically poetry since every other sentence rhymed at the the end
I've been thinking about taking out the puns, or more likely taking out the punchline ending and changing a few line-enders and maybe some references, and using that as a story of its own
does this sound stupid?

Huey Long: Owner of House and Senate. An Ironfisted ruler, powerful and prolific, the presidential seat was in sight. Yet the good doctor Carl Weiss cowered behind a marble pillar in the State Capital, with pills of lead in his pistol’s stovepipe. The demagogue must be silenced. Giving his vaccine, he swallowed a heavy dose in return. Weiss fell there; Huey would soon. Socialist sickness must be treated before metastasis, Weiss knew. Although tyrannical, still beloved; Slain in his prime, his last words were, “God, don't let me die. I have so much to do.” Louisiana wept for both men.


>>10124800
>flitting by like silverfish, slipping through slow fingers
Love that line, fuck

>>10124825
Sounds bretty good, desu. Reminds me of FO:NV, with the White Legs.

>>10127334
Damn right, nigga.

>>10132967
Make it. If it's bad it's okay, you'll still have learned something; if it's good, even better.

>>10132676
It's okay, maybe a little /too/ personal, with the "Seriously though" line, but over all not bad.

I think my writing is sending the exact opposite of the message I intended to

>character initially looks like a complete dumbass
>claims he doesn't believe in modern medicine and ends up making trying to heal an injury with something he made from shit in his kitchen
>turns out he's actually a biochemistry genius and knows how to make sophisticated medicines out of honey and spices
>revealed later that he doesn't trust modern medicine because he lost his mother to radium poisoning from early 20th century snake oil

>tfw this story is actually supposed to be pro-science

>>10133000
well I already made it, I was just wondering if I should leave it alone, I certainly only thought about it like twice since I made it
it's big enough to take up three posts here

>>10130353
It's totally beautiful, anon. Prose that sets off my synesthesia, picking across stepping stones in the flow. Saving it to my folder of favorites. Hope to read more of you.

>>10121594
>tfw no female teacher's body to worship with my penis in school

>>10129676
>>10129678
>>10129682
Riddled with mistakes, but still an enjoyable read.

>>10133028
>mother gets poisoned by other people

Instead it should be he doesn't trust people who use modern medicine.

>>10131323
I would like to know this too >>10131664

>>10133445
Do what?

>>10133475
Set it up so anyone can come in and critique it

>be me
>Troubled youth
>Everything I write would make De Sade blush
>Kind of a weird mix between Balzac, Ligotti, and De Sade, is extremely grotesque and probably difficult for people to read through if they are milquetoast
How do I market this to people?

>>10133495
Sounds terrible. Wait 10 years

>>10133496
Why?

>>10133495
Essentially the goal of my writing is to disgust people a much as possible and make them contemplate their own sanity and ability to understand and empathize with others.

Not sure that would, you know, sell well. Most people want to enjoy what they read, I don't think very many people try to read something that disturbs them

>>10131743
turn off the request access bullshit

>>10133495
>>10133509
fuck both of you, the world is dirty and painful enough without you shitters

>>10133518
Well I want to make it worse to make it better, it's the stagnation of culture with apathy and consumerism that I ultimately want to expose, and the best way for people to break through this cognitive shell is with revulsion that forces them to search for themselves

Or hell kill yourself if that is what you find out you want.

>>10133575
hey, you know what makes the world better better than making the world worse? making it better

pls crit
excerpt frm lrgr piec

https://pastebin.com/14wvamG9

>>10130353
>tfw live in washington state
>tfw these trees don't look giant to me but I'm sure they're huge to most people I guess

I think of douglas fir's when I think of great trees. Some of the trees here are torn straight out of fantasy art it feels like. Redwoods are bigger but I've never seen a redwood myself.

hello friends. Should I look up advice/rules/strategies on how to write or should I just pick a topic and go for it? I'm thinking that writing about some things on my mind will help me out.

>>10133876
Read and write is all you need. But mostly write

>>10123013
Not the OP but I'm pretty sure it means the end of the son's life. I feel like that comes across well, its conversational.

>>10123095
I love this

>>10129608
>still no replies

Well I guess I can go fuck myself then

I have fears that cease to be, "before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain". This plea of ineffable love, I must endure its sufferings. It is the joy to my sorrow, light in my gloaming gloom, song to my barren soul. Yet it is the very torment of my carnal pain, it is like a cacodemon of infinite malignity, bearing itself the scepter of my desires. O! How it toys with my passion.

Oh my, you are greatly mistaken about my lascivious fancy. It is much more than just that, that sylphlike elegance of corporeal flesh. That sinuous outline of a cheekbone, and that childlike, almost demoniac legs. Oh! Can not you just feel the fire ablaze about your loins? How she tortures and agonises me with her fantastic power, she is that deadly demon standing amidst the wonted children, haunting me with her frolic and playful sensuality.

Alright, I'm retarded. If I'm trying to have someone say "I imagined they must have been here," how do I ensure that what is being imagined in the past tense is itself in past tense? It looks like it's saying "I imagined they must have been here with me, at the time which I was imagining it" when I want it to say "I imagined in that moment that they must have been here prior to the moment I'm currently describing".

There is no single ss writing here, i'm disappointed. I have one but it's in spanish, i'll try to translate it for critique but it won't be as literary accurate

https://pastebin.com/kL4UMQmE

>>10133712
Too much shit going on

>>10134679
Good emulation, but I would simplify a few words to make it less pompous and flowery.

>>10129608
>recognizing the identity of their lunar guest
Rephrase
>“You commie bastards! This crater is ours! Were here first! Leave!!” Shouted Miller.
Too many exclamation points. And duh, he's yelling. Does it even matter who you identify as speaking with this line? I would omit everything after the quote.
>"Such behavior is unacceptable!"
Too stiff.
Pretty good otherwise.

I wrote a short story on the themes of atheism and Cosmology. Would appreciate any feedback.
https://pastebin.com/v91A3WMf
Pic related

This is the beginning of a short story I wrote for a class, that wanting to edit and expand upon. Brackets denote unsure and/or temporary word choices. Feedback is duly appreciated

It stood there, centered mutely as was she with her [steady] gaze, on the off-white tablecloth; and a mutual silence pervaded. This thing before her, by its name known only to her, could one be able to give hint as to what its mysterious purpose may be; its shape, its form shed no light on itself or to its origins, but rather softly it spilled a pale soft red rosy hue on the tablecloth skin; regardless whether or not it was truly nameless, this object would still to an unknowing passerby seem to be like a strange blob of fleshy something or another, lipped with slight grooves and cracks that at the touch would blush one’s fingers and arms with florid complexion. The largest crack was the most telling of its features, carving near equal halves into a pair of two red painterly lips, [separate and broke] not entirely apart but rather crooked into an eerily warm and [paternal] smile. If one stopped and gave it considerable attention, likely they would say it takes the appearance of an [irregular and disjointed] disembodied pair of lips.

this is the beginning of a short story I initially wrote for a class that I am wanting to expand on. Brackets denote unsure word choices. Critique would be duly appreciated.


It stood there, centered mutely as was she with her [steady] gaze, on the off-white tablecloth; and a mutual silence pervaded. This thing before her, by its name known only to her, could one be able to give hint as to what its mysterious purpose may be; its shape, its form shed no light on itself or to its origins, but rather softly it spilled a pale soft red rosy hue on the tablecloth skin; regardless whether or not it was truly nameless, this object would still to an unknowing passerby seem to be like a strange blob of fleshy something or another, lipped with slight grooves and cracks that at the touch would blush one’s fingers and arms with florid complexion. The largest crack was the most telling of its features, carving near equal halves into a pair of two red painterly lips, [separate and broken] not entirely apart but rather crooked into an eerily warm and [paternal] smile. If one stopped and gave it considerable attention, likely they would say it takes the appearance of an irregular and disjointed disembodied pair of lips.

You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must", then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse.

>>10136292
It needs ironing. It's like a crinkly drawing that's had an erasure taken to it too many times. Since you don't have a lot you could try typing it back up from memory; the important things will stick. There's nothing bad about your word choice as far as adjectives go, but you're trying to throw out these really windy sentences that just jump back and forth from painting one thing to another. I had a professor once tell me "Cut; don't saw," and I think that advice applies here. You can make elaborate strokes, but keep them clean.

>>10136326
>an erasure
fuck me, I mean eraser

Purple Clay
There was something in the clay, the way it dug under the fingernails as the fingers dug into it, that, although painful and reminiscent of a struggle, suggested life, opportunity, potential, and so was infinitely inviting and endearing, bringing through the arms, through the weight of it, the heave of it, its moist, cool substance, a sense of delightful anticipation, of progress, of fruitful deliberation. The clay, for all its fighting, wanted to be moved, but only by hands strong enough, and sure enough, to overcome its incredible stuckness. The clay was strong.
Sam was not. Sam ran his hands through the clay, as he had for many years, many decades, but found it, as he had yesterday, and the day before that, unyielding. Sam was done for. This was the end, written in the still morning air of an early September and the cold, lifeless slab that lay before him.
Sam wished he'd had time to say goodbye--to his work, his hands, his purpose, the familiar feeling of sitting before the work table, looking out the window upon the woods with a short sigh as if to say there were somewhere else he rather was, when, of course, there wasn't.
This was everything. This was all there was. What happens after the end of the world? Where do you go when you die? Sam thought none of this, and asked none of it, but he felt it, felt it as deeply as the clay felt strength. He looked out the window from the workbench, looking out at a sullen wood under a gray sky, with some leaves touched by a midas sun, others taken by medusa's winds, still others waiting for the news that they were dead, and he sighed, knowing that there was nowhere else for him to go. Naturally, lighting a cigarette, he went for walk.
(pt 1)

>>10135841
m'lady

>>10135166
English is flexible, and you should take advantage of it. The context of this sentence should make clear what you mean.

>>10134679
I don't think this is saying anything other than "I'm a perv." The way you go on and on about carnal passion without ever adding insight beyond the fact that it exists and is very strong makes it seem really creepy when you try and frame it as something romantic. Especially when you use a metaphor with children in it.

Wrote this earlier today, my first attempt at poetry, because I'm in love. I know it needs a lot of tweaking, but let me know if you see anything you like. I hated poetry for years, so my "muscles" in this side of literature are pretty undeveloped, but I'm making up for lost time reading the Romantics.


-Where is my dream, with her eyes of swimming hydrargyrum,
-And laughter on her lips to banish the Devil?
-Immobile, she dances
-In motion, divine
-Her hair my most prized vintage,
-Nectar of some red vine tended in Other soils
-It lends me courage to ask for more
-And so I drink deeply

-To you, dream, I profess that thing,
-Of which love is but a phantasm,
-My utter reverence and devotion
-And unyielding tenderness
-Only visit me again
-Tonight, while the rain patters

>>10136693
>I don't think this is saying anything other than "I'm a perv."
I think that's an overstatement. Perverts are at least interesting. His post sounded more like generic horniness presented through pretentious verbiage.

>>10136701
>hydrargyrum
thanks thesaurus dot com

nothing else struck me as horrible but I didn't really feel like I got anything from it

>>10136716
I actually knew that word already, believe it or not. The pronunciation I felt sounded more pretty aloud than mercury:

(hy-drar-juh-rum)

>>10136726
It doesn't matter if you did or you didn't. It sounds totally out of place. If you're going to make your readers reach for a dictionary, the payoff needs to be worth it. Nothing about the poem suggests a need or a deeper meaning that validates using an archaic word. Using dead words doesn't make something formal, especially when it's flow, tenor, and tone are ill-fitting.

Here are the remains of a bike leaning against a concrete porch, an iron chain passed around the top tube and through an iron lattice. Chained together for who knows how long now, all rusting.

This is New Delphi where the brown lawns are strewn with cigarette butts and dandelions. The sunworn plastic battlements of a child’s castle is pooled with rainwater and crows come to drink. The children who come out at night do not play in their castles any longer. No one in New Delphi can afford to pretend for very long.

And no one knows why this is New Delphi. Those who remember such things do not recall Greek families. Some of them say “Farmhand”- oh, you mean Farmhand- and explain that once all the field laborers quartered there. Some grin wickedly at the boughs of the oak trees and remember their fathers called this “Coontown”. They are not all as old as you may imagine.

John Likely is passing these trees as he pushes uphill on his six speed. A helicopter from the city is distant but then suddenly roars, very close. Then it is gone again. It only served to distract him from the worrying crackle of broken glass under his tires.

All the way up the slope now goes Likely wishing the rotor noise would have distracted him just a moment longer.

At the top of this hill some years ago, Likely’s father said,

‘The grass is always greener on the other side’

Now Likely will never know his father meant to say something different. His old man just couldn’t figure out what it was.

Look down this hill past Redmond Street all the way to where it became Slattery Town. The grass goes from the color of straw to the color of jade and turquoise. It is not a trick.

Likely’s father meant to say something more like:

I’ll work hard and maybe you’ll work a little less hard and then your kid will work a little less hard.

The lawns down Redmond, where Likely’s father long ago bought his house, were somewhere in between now- slashes of green through the pale and dry.

“Ants,” his father would mumble, “goddamn these ants,”

>>10136726
>>10136782
As the person you were originally replying to, it isn't even just the word. Even if we were to substitute a synonym in and say "swimming mercury," it just doesn't even make sense. What the fuck is swimming mercury? "Swimming in mercury" would present an image I could maybe understand, but when you pour mercury into water it just sinks to the bottom and sits there the same way it would if you just poured it onto a table. The image I think you were going for was the image yo use when you shoot something like food coloring into water, like a cat's eye marble, but that wasn't really what I got from "hydrargyrum" and I don't think I'd get it from mercury either.

>>10136782
Maybe so. It definitely is one of the riskier things I put in, and I will probably edit a lot of the poem over the next couple days to improve the flow. I'm a fan of CAS and I'm trying to capture the sort of other-worldly diction in his poetry because I think comparing a girl to a season, the weather, etc. is pretty overused and usually understates their beauty. When I saw the subject of the poem, her eyes were silver and dancing, so I instantly thought of liquid metal. The word quicksilver was considered, but sounded trite to my ears. I'm going to try to keep hydrargyrum in the poem. Your distress is noted, however.

https://pastebin.com/Vydb5hjy

>>10136827
>https://pastebin.com/Vydb5hjy
I prefer these shitposts to the erotica ones, barring zizek's fist-fucking par excellence

>>10135841
>>10136309
>>10136599
>>10136701
>>10136797
>>10136827
crit first you fucks

>>10136822
Words like Risk and Experiment have no place in art. Those are things you do in private. That is the practice. Obviously, this is a place of criticism, so a place where the private is opened up for a second opinion. The second opinion is that hydrargyrum is a dead and archaic word that needs a lot of justification and effort to make even remotely worthwhile. What is the point of keeping in? In terms of avoiding the cliche, few things are more cliche in poetry than a young man writing an overwrought yet senseless love poem about an anonymous and unrequited love. The greatest problem with using Romantic language is actually having the depth of story and insight that can bear that kind of weight.

>>10136866
no u

>>10136869
>Words like Risk and Experiment have no place in art.

Hearty chuckle, thanks for that.

He watches from afar like he always does. The sweet young things prance- as they always do- and he notes how they dance this time. The slight movements they make that differ from the last dance they did. The swing of the hips. The way they lick their lips. It's all a game, he knows. And what a wonderful game to watch.

>>10136896
I'm quite serious. If you're going to publish something and ask other people to take it seriously, why should the artists still be wondering if it's worth it, questioning whether it works at all? A work might be risky as a career move, but that doesn't make the work itself risky. You don't take risks with work. You don't sit there and say "oh, maybe that will work." To make work is to decide. The sketches, the drafts, the trials and errors are for the file cabinet. The final product is the art, and there is no room for uncertainty in the final product.

>>10136932
You may be quite serious, but that doesn't necessarily mean I agree with your bizarre opinions on creativity. I'd hardly consider a post on an anonymous board to be a submission for publishing. If nobody experimented or tested things in art, nothing of worth would ever be made. I think that's obvious. No offense, and I genuinely appreciate your spending time providing your input, but I don't think you know a great deal about the things you are saying, or maybe you have a problem of some sort. Thanks for the help, but I'm looking for opinions from different sorts of people than you. Good luck anon.

>>10136708
Why dont you take that back you ignoramus

>>10136953
Obviously, as I acknowledged, this is not the final resting place of any work. But then why do you need to describe something as a risk or experiment? It is either already understood by the asking for criticism, or else meaningless. I didn't say there was no risk or experimentation. In fact I said the opposite. What I did say was that the words have no place. It's entirely superfluous to discuss risk and experimentation, because things are either not-finished or finished. And frankly, these aren't my opinions. I stole them from Andrei Tarkovsky.

>>10136866
>crit multiple people
>still no replies

How about fuck you

"I think I should finally write a short story today." said the first man, "I've spent so much time thinking about it that today will finally be the day that I shut myself up and do what I ought to be doing. I read all day long but have never written a page"
"I think I shall steal it," said the second, "I will write what you have planned to write but only better. The structure will be more robust, the words better chosen and my prose more eloquent, the descriptions will be lovely and exact, the ending will bite and bewilder more than yours. I will never bore people like you will, should you decide to write today, my writing will always impress me and never need revision. It will be published in a higher quality magazine than yours could; it will receive its own page near the front and I will be celebrated before you ever will. I think I shall take all of your stories for myself and leave you with nothing."

"You are very cruel," said the first man, "and although I've only known you for such a short time, I don't know why it is you say these things to me. Even if you truly intend to take my work and are not merely trying to hurt me, I will simply shut myself up in my room, lock them away, and never speak of it to anyone. How could you take them then?"

"Despite what you say, you let your work be known to everyone." said the second man, "You speak of nothing but your writing. It's been terrible to listen to all of this time: you about the work you've never done. You tell everyone what you ought to write and how you would go about it, it's despicable. You need not worry any longer, for I have already written them," and pulled out from within his coat a small volume of short stories, fully coated in the words he had wanted to compose in their right order. Knowing his abilities, for he was the kind of person to take the time to reflect on what he could reasonably do, the first man recognized that his prose was undoubtedly superior to his own. Purchasing the book he did not write, the first man went home and decided to read the volume he never could have written, its length increasing the further he pursued.

Garrett basked in the light of the stained glass, and he thought to himself, at that moment perhaps, that he wasn’t alone in watching that red dawn rise to the sky. There was a foreboding quiet blanketing over the land. Theodore saw it for what it was. Ethan and Eleanor held each other in warm comfort, the sun over their faces too, red in colour. Borris thought as Garret did, and he too did his mourning. Garrett realized once and for all where this was going. He knew it in his heart where this would end, and yet, perhaps in that one faint moment of horrific clarity – he didn’t wish to go. He wept, and wept bitterly.

(I kinda hope to write this in a novel one day. Is it ok?)

Is there a discord? There must be, right?
>>10137381
You have a strong prose style. However, it's cluttered. I would advise cutting out a few of these superfluous words -- e.g. "the ending will bite more than yours". Not necessarily that specific one, because I'm certain you have your justifications for each word.
Similarly, I think your prose is unnecessarily convoluted, under the guise of evoking old styles. You are good enough at that without making things strange to read. For example, "Even if you truly intend to take my work and are not merely trying to hurt me" could be more neatly phrased.

The idea and the pacing is excellent. I think you should reinforce the bittersweetness of the thing, IF that is your point at all (which, desu, it doesn't seem to be).
>>10137596
You have some neat ideas, but the prose is awkward. It can be written clearer. I don't mean you should sacrifice your style for the sake of a journalist's autistic clarity, but as it is now it's flawed.

ex.
>and he thought to himself, at that moment perhaps,
is nearly nonsensical (obvs I know what you're trying to say, but...).

I'd suggest cutting out extra adverbs &c. ex.
>Quiet blanketed the land

Your pacing is also strange. Although it is good to move from "the sunset blanketing all the land " to "the reactions of various other people (presumably cast all over the land)", the individual reactions aren't paced well, I think. Theodore saw it for what it was, and that's all very mysterious, but it's also empty words right now. We don't know what he saw it as, or even if it's good or bad (we can guess it's bad, but still). In other words, we don't know how he reacted. Borris, too, is strange; again you have this mysterious "he too did his mourning", and that seems heavy handed to me. And then there's this whiplash back to Garrett and his realisation.

t. retard worse than both of you

Here is a nonsense story I wrote to test my prose. Please be gentle ;^)

A man stood painted in blood. His eyes were widely opened, mouth stretched down to jaw. Clutched in his hand was a sword, pointing down at the snow. It leached the heat from his palm.

Ten wolves stood close by. Each one would turn to the next, and say to the other:
“The man is weak and our stomachs growl. Surely we should eat him now, and solve both problems.”
But another wolf, with ragged fur and tail, would admonish them, saying “the man is desperate and we are not yet so desperate; this is a fight we may lose”.

The wolves ignored the ragged wolf, for the man looked tasty. They leapt upon the man, as when a wave crashes upon the shore and the sand is all scattered, but the rocks prevail; so were the wolves. The man heaved the sword and ten red ribbons of blood burst out. Down fell the wolves, nine lying as corpses and one limping and squealing.

>>10137984
Ah fuck I've instantly seen that it's rushed, and that each sentence does not flow to the next.

>>10124521
>Beckett was a silhouette..
i love this opening line

How to into formatting of paragraphs and dialogue?

I have text. Then someone speaks. They are the first speaker in that paragraph, so I do not start a new line. Then text after that. Someone else starts speaking, new line but adjacent to previous block, not a double spaced line. Then new line when they are finished speaking, or if there is more text after their dialogue, then new line when someone else talks. I don't indent anything.

Right? Or not?

As three
She and I, and the moon
Does Night grow warm so soon?
No, it is She

Will we belong to each other?
I entreat thee, errant star showers
Bind this waxing love that is ours
To thy shadowed home forever

Etch this kiss in thy space
That others gaze up and know
Where it is that we may go
An immutable, perfect place

>>10137955
Author of your second critque, thanks! Thanks a ton, man!

I don't write that much and I've been trying to force myself to write more. I feel like cringing any time I read my own writing though. thanks in advance for any critique friendos

>>10139473
also the names are just placeholders until I can think of better ones

In my writing I seem to do a lot of telling, instead of showing. I don't have a lot of experience with narratives and I'm only recently tackling the challenge in a serious way, building a story is tremendously tough. I do think that I have am able, in my own tell and don't show sort of way, to convey a palpable emotion. This usually results in the things I do write full of emotive visuals, descriptions but not a lot of action. Characters are something I have no clue about...

I don't think that I am naturally inclined towards storywriting, I don't ever see myself writing anything more than small stories or scenes and so I wonder what else I could write for. I feel like my ability to evoke an ambiance or feeling is pretty good, but I just don't know what to put it to. I'll continue to try and write stories, try and figure out characters and plot even if I've never been one to tell stories in any bookish way. But I am wondering if anyone may have suggestions, if you were once in a place with limited "range", as you may call it, or what you put your natural ability to practical use in that made it work? I'd appreciate any sort of insight or suggestions, I haven't given up.

>>10121594
Not bad at all. But
>like looking at him through a glass obscured
Get rid of all this kind of shit. It reeks of try-hard and pulls the reader out of the dream.

Knowing Your Family
Today, you learn the way a word can evolve
And anyhow
the phrase “respect your elders” bathes in irony

Though, my love
know your mother
fore she is your shadow
the perception

know your father
he is rival of your cloaked companion
as it shows
he will reunite your greatest fear
with every outline of your smile
in the smoke

let it stand
the end is not the cliff
you always hope to skip
Life is a family reunion in your memories

And everyone deserves a chance to start again

>>10137955
>You have a strong prose style. However, it's cluttered. I would advise cutting out a few of these superfluous words -- e.g. "the ending will bite more than yours". Not necessarily that specific one, because I'm certain you have your justifications for each word.
>Similarly, I think your prose is unnecessarily convoluted, under the guise of evoking old styles. You are good enough at that without making things strange to read. For example, "Even if you truly intend to take my work and are not merely trying to hurt me" could be more neatly phrased.

>The idea and the pacing is excellent. I think you should reinforce the bittersweetness of the thing, IF that is your point at all (which, desu, it doesn't seem to be).

Hey man thanks for the response, I always appreciate 'em, especially when they complement me. I agree completely with your critiques, and was unsure how to make some of the phrases more compact in a couple places. I still find economy the hardest part of the process.

I probably should've just worked on it more, I wrote it out in like 15 or something minutes cuz I was bored and saw that there was a /crit/ thread.

Thanks again!

please critique

The walls that he distanced himself from were a pale eggshell color, pockmarked with small craters and finished with a glossy sheen. Occasionally a pale color slipping through the cracks in the blinds would emblazon itself across the cream surface.The light would gaze into him, and would see past the barrier of his skin and deep into the center of his being. The blinds served as his uneasy ally, shielding him from whatever unknowable threat was outside, but occasionally rustling with malicious ambition.
Everything in the vicinity of his expanding and contracting sphere of amorphous consciousness seemed to be looming over. They knew and he didn’t.
The moment shifted. It became unbearable. Every external force seemed not only
conscious, but aware, seeing. They leaned over his fetal form, leering.
He could not afford to give a thought to anything but his situation.The ever collapsing and rebuilding fractal of individualism left him without his breath. Nothing existed outside of him. It was all within, spiraling diagonal light that fell down and through him like a cold knife. Could anything be forgotten? His failings and his triumphs were expanding and contracting like his diaphragm couldn’t. The vice grip of insight clutched his cerebrum.
Outward, he was being pulled outward, to the inevitable finale of matter. His head fragmented and was pulled together from crystalline shards of cosmic dust to form a strained shape again. Matter was nothing but imperceptible microcosms colliding, until his sweat hit the wood floor with such ferocity that it splintered. He held his arms out to break his fall; he realized he was already on the ground.
Sound rang out through the vacuous field. Imperceptible yet unignorable. He became aware it was impossibly shrill. It grew louder, piercing. It dropped down onto him like the voice of an incomprehensible being far above. In a grand, slow shift, like the movement of a leviathan, it became an atonal chant, punctuated by an anguished cry, like a being pushed to its sensory limits.
The floaters in his eyes taught him how to play an instrument that had never existed. It materialized in his hands, made out of a morning fog and strung with rays of light. As soon as he played a chord, it disappeared, sucking the air out of the room.
Abruptly, everything became destructively still. He was getting glances from the surfaces around him. He focused in on the thought that matter did exist, but he couldn’t consider the implications; suddenly all of it wanted to break him. It all wanted to see him squirm and writhe under the scalpel it put to his temple.
He screamed as the floor collapsed under him, revealing the vertiginous depths yawning beneath him.
The end of this experience was inevitable, yet ever returning seemed impossible.
His taut skin fried beneath the cool, bright light above.
He failed to complete his revolution around the sun.
He thought experience was the greatest good.

The Griffin

There are few stories told about Griffins. You hear plenty of Dragons, you hear plenty of Orcs or Goblins, but how often does one hear about Griffins? Birds – usually eagles – with the lower bodies of lions or cougars. These were the beasts of the Ancient Days, the lords of the sky and sun. When one saw a Griffin flying, soaring freely through the clouds, he was reminded of his place on the ground, and how some things in the world must always have a proverbial place to keep balance in nature.
But they don’t call them “The Ancient Days” for nothing. And like all things related to that fantastical age of fairies and goblins they stay that way, fantastical – fantasy; not reality; the product of a mother’s tale as she tucks the little ones to bed, or old nursery rhymes to teach the naughty ones to stay in line. Griffins have just about as much credential to be real as the gods in the sky or the devils in the earth – tools of men for their own agendas in a world where men rule, not monsters. But even that is debatable…
They say the pessimists are born from the wombs of disappointed optimists. Lads, who sought a world of adventure, their ideals like capes flapping behind them, seeking to hunt villains to save that world, saw in turn a world full of them – and every man that villain in there eyes. For ideals are lonely things, and are often the vengeful bastards of the ruling ones – always seeking change, always seeking dominance; to see whose ideal is more prominent than the other’s.
But some, like me, seek neither or none. We have ideals too but they are not important. Perhaps we were optimists, too, once. Perhaps we hold some shred of those ideals still. In a perfect world where everyone has a voice, we would, and even if that were true not everyone could speak it well. Griffins are not just the products of fairytales or preachy legends – they’re a stand-in, a word to label someone or something; ideals that soar high in the clouds - reminding you of your little place down on earth.
But like the mighty Griffins before them…

Falling is a quiet thing. And before the end comes; silence shall be it's own Griffin. For I have found one - my own, and all the world will know tommorow - Griffins are the things up on high, indeed.

https://pastebin.com/jtGYAs5B

I'd like to know what people think this story is about

Tony dragged a wet comb through his greasy black Italian hair, vat of gel on the counter, white wifebeater on he looks good, ooh baby, he looks good. He moistens the tips of his index finger, middle finger, smooths over his black pencil moustache. He's killin, yeah baby, he's killin it.

Tony's on his way to the Girlfriend Convention. It's the convention they hold every six months for dude's with girlfriends. Tony's never been before but finally it's his time to go, that's right, he's got a girlfriend. So Tony's on his way to the Girlfriend Convention, he's catching the train coz he don't got no money for petrol, or a car. He has this big stack of porno DVDs with him in a black rubbish bag. He takes out each DVD and polishes the back of the disk with the edge of his singlet. He's gotta return them to the DVD store before he heads to the convention.

After popping to the DVD store and picking up some red liquorice, which he eats as he walks, he strolls up to the convention centre. He's already bought his ticket, he flashes it at the guards and tries to walk through the turnstiles, but they make him come back and scan it. Inside the centre it's amazing, he reckons, he can see dudes with girlfriends as far as he can see. Girlfriends of all kinds, tall ones, short ones, busty ones, petite ones, brown haired ones, blonde haired ones, white ones, asian ones, indian ones, and all types of boyfriends too.

Tony's standing there, pulling red liquorice out of the pocket of his jean jacket, taking in the sights. Then a man and his girlfriend come up to him, the man is brown and short and his girlfriend is tall and blonde.

"Hey mate, where's your girlfriend?"

Tony's been waiting for this question, and he pulls out his phone, and he shows the man and his girlfriend his girlfiend's OKCupid page. Tony's girlfriend has blonde hair, blue eyes, bronzed up white skin.

"She lives in Perth, saving up now to fly her over for next convention, she's a beaut aint she?"

"Mate!" the small man says, "that's no girlfriend! MY girlfriend is real!"

Then he throws his head back and laughs. Then he turns to the crowd, and opens his arms wide and leans back a little.

"Oi fellas, this cunt doesnt have a girlfriend!!!"

Then every man and his girlfriend in the convention throws back their head and laughs. Then a man points at Tony and starts chanting and other guys join in until everyone is chanting.

"FAGGOT! FAGGOT! FAGGOT! FAGGOT!"

And Tony is so angry he throws a punch at the small brown man but misses then throws a punch at other man running at him and he connects but the man is too quick and he's tackled him to the ground. Then 550 other men jump onto Tony and start tearing at his flesh with his teeth.

And the crowd gathered round chants,

FAGGOT! FAGGOT! FAGGOT! FAGGOT!

>>10137984
Bumping this

First time I tried writing... something:

sadeyes/blackeyes
latenight/earlymorning
occhinero/čiernoočko


we met
eyes
minds
bodies
souls
i hope


we kissed
we missed
we kissed
we siksed


however far away
however long i stay
whatever words i say


yet
her eyes
beau, belíssimo
yet
her eyes
ennui
poignant
wabi-sabi
transient
saudade
sehnsucht
bittersweet
weltschmerz
mal du siècle
profoundly sad
mono no aware
so profoundly sad
looking into the distance
past me
yearning for faraway lands
without me
piercing into the past
past her
feeling past wounds
past harms
i don't know
her
i want to know
her
i want to help
her
heal


I want to make her whole life feel like that afterglow.

>>10141660
Im not a particular fan of romantic poetry, but I really fucking love the pacing
>looking into the distance
>past me
>yearning for faraway lands
>without me
>piercing into the past
>past her
That call and response is snappy too.

>>10141675
Thank you so much.

I've been trying not to write my sentences with one sentences at a time. Is it bad that writing with just one sentence for a paragraph disturbs me but writing it that way makes me enjoy writing more?

>>10137596
I'd definitely read it. The free association is great - it stimulates the reader's impressions of the characters very well.
>>10139473
>The mountain people? The Muslims?
I feel like you could list some more creative culprits or extend the list longer to comic effect: wozzie, gollywog, pagan, scientologist
The concept I'm down with and I appreciate that you had the patience to write something that's so kitchen-sink realistic, and it feels very comfortable. Perhaps it could benefit from a very sudden mood change.
I think at this point: take the time to read the entirety of High-Rise by J.G Ballard because you might get some neat ideas about where to take this, unless it's finished

>>10142947
Considering the quality of stuff I write, though, I could be wrong about what I said

He stirs the shallow pond with his feet. At that moment in the future he seems to turn a sickly shade of syphillic. Approaching at the edge of the corrugated basin with leaves surrounding was a man dressed in ejaculated cloth. He went up to there and he found him. Soon he understood the face, though it wasn't seen before. It was not exchanged by the man in ruined cloth, but he offered a hand.
The man said that he couldn't hold another person's hand - his condition would prevent him. He pulled back the wool on his unravelling jumper and called that "nonsense" and took his hand before asking who he was.
Still in the water, swimming now, he described himself as the son of the king.
When the sun set, an incandescence came from the moon that was greater than the large dark clouds in the day time. They both lay frozen there on the beach shore.
"Eliza"
"Hello?"
"The bats fly out at night. The foxes come here to hunt and we could be mistaken for cadavers if we just lie down here in the ice cold"
"Foxes don't hunt bats"
"That's the thing - they'll just make the journey home harder. We're a couple of miles away from any sort of hamlet even."
"What do you suggest"
"I was hoping you'd have some advice"
"That prospect is bad. We should try and get home"
"In that case..." And he got up, stretched with a sway back and edited one of his hairbands. The prince started walking in a circle.
"Right"
"Do you know where we need to go, really truly?"
"Why do you doubt me?" he laughed "I'll get us home"
"By that I mean I'll get myself home and you to a stranger's house of course"
"Are you warm enough" Eliza felt his own hand, then gestured to the royal. In response he offered out his arm to Eliza, elasticating the fingers
"I don't know, I can't feel it" - more than anything he seemed to be shaking his head in amusement.
Eliza felt his hand - it was at the point where the frost had a bite about it. Why the king's son was wearing a silken short-sleeved shirt would never be answered, but if he could wear something as volumeless as that surely it wouldn't torture him to offer a piece of clothing off his back. Eliza easily removed the jumper he was wearing and offered it to him.
"But then you'd be shirtless" - he bit his lip after saying this.
They exchanged clothes, and for some time as the royal declothed himself: he was stark naked bar a pair of skin-tight trunks
"It isn't fair that you should suffer just because I didn't wear enough clothes anticipating I'd be out this long"
"Fairly quick day"
"Yes, I found that it was"

>>10142971
Turning to face him to speak, as this is what caught his attention, alerted him of the prince's waxed, hairless skin. In the pitch-blackness he could afford to look down, and at the prince's inner thigh there was a dreg of honey trickling down his leg - this stream extended over his left shoulder.
"Please do me a favour and pretend I never offered you an expensive article of clothing. Bad idea."
As soon as Eliza looked back at the prince, he caught up with him or overtook him. They eventually found the footpath, signposted was the nearest town.
"This is a fairly important question: how exhausted are you"
"Fairly exhausted", then Eliza reconsidered "No, very" - he looked at the prince
"Would this help at all", the prince glazed his lips with the serum upon his leg and pursed them. He suddenly cradled Eliza across the stomach, stealing his body very closely towards him. He latched on to him, his legs brevite from the ground and twisting around Eliza's rear. Somehow the prince felt brittle and athletic, and an extreme warmth radiated from his chest which made Eliza's legs melt. He opened his eyes again, greeted immediately by a pair of ancient milky blue eyes decorated with crystals of cloudy grey - they seemed indifferent but hungry.
"If anyone asks we are just close friends" he started whispering softly and kneading Eliza's hair into confused tangles
"This isn't what close friends do" He convicted. "It just isn't"
"Of course the truth is very different from what I'm allowed to tell people" he murmured pensively
"I won't tell anyone" he confessed
"Very few people who I'm even comfortable being around, but I can just share your breath"
"I'd happily share much more than that"
"For how long?"
"You know, until one day I become you"
Their speech, their breath and their blood intermingled as the contaminated honey flew from one pair of lips to the other. They both felt that in intimacy, nothing from the forest would want to interfere.
When their breath evened out the prince quietly drifted into a sleep with his head resting at the bosom of Eliza's chest.

He woke to find the prince stretched across his whole body, his trousers undone. One of his knees sank into Eliza's groin, rivers of oily black hair covered his face
"Are you an uneasy sleeper?"
"I only sleep for a few hours at a time. I decided to clean myself" - his hair was covered in corkish lavender, so was Eliza's breast.
Ataraxia crossed his body, which made him curious - "Did you decide to clean me as well?"
He looked away and held back something in his mouth, squishing his cheek. "That's not what cleaning means"
Eliza winced, felt like crossing his legs after hearing this - he started to do so and without hesitation the prince jumped off of him.
"The closest town is just two miles away" Eliza changed the subject "A casual gambol - We should go there", refitting the button on his trousers

>>10136932
>>10136953
If both of u niggas put as much effort into writing poems as you did into this gay little dance.

Shit would be Galactic.

>>10137381
Truly Kafkaesque. Unfortunately the old timey talk doesn't serve you well, though you're very good at it.

There're also a few odd spots:
>than yours could
sounds awkward...
>coated in the words
also awk

It's impressive you can keep things at such elevation with so few errors, but you should find your own voice.

>>10137596
too old timey, that's not authentic.

>>10141017
horrible. make something happen next time

read & reply my nigs
https://pastebin.com/1wswiD6Q

it's just part 1 of a short story

>>10142971
stopped reading at ejaculated cloth

>>10143764
Kinda thing harpers or some hoity toity mag would like. Prose is a bit clumsy in places, though.

And I don't like it, personally. But I think it fits into what the mandarins are looking for right now, especially with all that mexican talk

I mean it was the 2nd thing in the thread good enough for me to read all the way through, if nothing else

>>10143774
haha thanks! that's exactly the type of audience i'm submitting it to! (some contests lol)

mind telling me what you thought was clumsy?

>>10143800
from a quick reread I'd say its the commas. I think if you read it out loud a few times, you'll see that they don't line up to the natural pauses of speech.

>>10143843
yeah, i think i get what you mean now that you point it out. you got anything your working on?

>>10142947
>>10143747
Author of the Red Dawn piece here, thanks a ton guys for the critique!

>>10143907
Honestly it's just the words perhaps and wish that are misplaced.

>>10121594
Car on.

Driving.

Radio on.

“Good morning Providence, Rhode Island! I am your host Mad Mikey, that was 'Simple Vecks' by Magnitude Ten, and this is 104.7 WHGU The Rush, Rhode Island's number one FM radio station for new hit music. You know the drill though Providence, it's 8:00 AM and that means we're switching over to Mad Mornings with Mikey and Maximilian for the next two hours. Of course, in the studio with me is my co-host Maximilian, you know him, you love him folks. So, tell us Max, what have you got to start us off with today?”

“Well Mike, I'm sure you heard about the incident two nights ago at The Golden Rod, the gentlemen's club in Federal Hill.”

“It's a strip club Max, call it what it is, but continue. I'm intrigued.”

“I'm sure you are intrigued Mikey. It is your kind of place after all.”

“It can't be yours though Max, with the old ball and chain dragging you down.”

“If that was true, then the old ball and chain you're talking about would be the reason why I don't find myself in situations like this. Details are sketchy at the moment, but it seems that two young men entered The Golden Rod, began arguing with the owner, and it came to blows soon after that. One of the club's bouncers attempted to pull the assailant off of the owner, a Mr. Richard Lombardi, but was then attacked by the second young man who was wielding a pocket knife. Mr. Lombardi was viciously beaten by the assailant, and the bouncer was stabbed twice in the abdomen. Both of them were taken to the hospital, but are now in stable condition.”

“Well thank God for that Max. And y'know, I think this is starting to ring a bell. Weren't they arrested about two blocks away from the strip club?”


“Yes and, this is the strangest part of the story, one of the strippers from the club was with them.”

“Wait, what? You're telling me one of the strippers willingly left with these two sociopaths?”

“I never said willingly Mikey, no one said willingly. As I mentioned, details are sketchy, but there is speculation that the stripper is in some way connected to the motive of these two individuals.”

“Well, what's the motive?”

“What did I just say Mike?”

“Max, you're leaving me in suspense here. You can't do that to me. You know how much I hate cliffhangers. I've hated them ever since Inception.”

“Oh, with the top and...”

“Yes with the top! I know that's not the point of the ending, but I still want to know! Is he in a dream, is he not in a dream, which is it?”

“Maybe if there's ever a sequel you'll find out Mike.”

“Maybe, maybe. You know I don't see movies alone though.”

“I'm sure you can treat one of the girls from The Golden Rod to a matinee showing.”

“I have that privilege, don't I? Still prefer online dating though. Less risk involved, if you know what I'm saying.”

>>10144303
“I have that privilege, don't I? Still prefer online dating though. Less risk involved, if you know what I'm saying.”

“I think everyone knows what you're saying after hearing about that scene at The Golden Rod.”

“Well, I was more referring to the other kinds of risks.”

“In any case, it'd be best if you had a proper date or Linda might force me to cut all contact with you.”

“Linda has no appreciation for the bachelor life, does she?”

“Er, it's more like she has no appreciation for me getting an appreciation of the bachelor life.”

“Ha! Very true. And when it comes to an old ball and chain like Linda, there are some new findings regarding success, happiness, and marriage. According to a new study published this month, people who marry at a young age tend to be more successful and happier on average. Now, when did you and Linda get married Max?”

“We were both 26, and have been happily married for 8 years now, but I'm not sure how much longer we'll stay happily married for if I keep hanging around with you.”

“Sounds like you should be a much more joyful man, but it doesn't look that way for me. We're both 34 Max. If I listen to what this study is saying, it looks like I do need to settle down soon. I was 26 too when you guys got married. Hell, I think I was your best man.”

“Nope. I had to let my brother have that honor, but you were very adamant about organizing the bachelor party.”

“That I was. And if this next guest is looking for a killer bachelor party, I am more than happy to fulfill that request. We have Eric Crawford here in the studio today, how ya doing Eric?”

“I'm doing great Mike. Unfortunately, I don't think I can take you up on that offer though. If I know Alicia, which I'd like to think that I do, she wouldn't want me going all out crazy right before our wedding.”

“Wow. It looks like I found a man who is even more whipped than Max here.”

“Nothing wrong with a modest engagement and marriage Mike. But that's the thing, isn't it Eric? You aren't actually engaged yet, are you?”

“No, but I'm hoping to change that today.”

“And we're going to help you with that, but first, how old are you Eric?”

“I'm 22.”

“And how old is Alicia?”

“She just turned 23, and we both graduated from college quite recently. We've known each other since high school.”

“Looks like Eric is going to be happier than either of us here Max. And more successful. What did you and Alicia go to school for Eric?”

“Civil engineering. Both of us.”
“Eric, as a married man, I'm wishing you and Alicia the best of luck. Actually, before I wish both of you luck, let me just wish you luck with this proposal.”

“Thank you Max.”

“Well, let's not waste anymore time. Let's get Alicia on the phone here.”

…

…

“Hello?”

“Hello, is this Alicia Williams?”

“Yes, this is Alicia. Who is this?”

>>10144308
“This is Mad Mikey with 104.7 The Rush, you're on the air right now. You've been randomly selected to win five thousand dollars if you can answer the trivia question we have in store for you.”

“No way! Yes, yes! I'm ready, I'm ready!”

“Alright, we're just gonna hand the mic here over to our questioner so get ready to answer.”

“Hi Alicia. You've only got one question to answer here, and there's only one right answer. So, Alicia, will you marry me?”

“Oh my God … of course I will Eric! Of course, of course, of course!”

“I love you Alicia!”

“I love you too Eric!”

“Congratulations to the happy couple, and to kick off this engagement, WHGU is giving the happy couple - ”

Radio off.

Parking.

Car off.

its about a deformed indian kid who comes to be worshipped as a god.

this was originally the second chapter but now im thinking it fits better as the first, but im still unsure.

The bathroom is now like a cave in its darkness. Better than a cave, in fact, thinks Shearer- a more perfect version of one. The stonefeel floor is actually warmed by a system of interchangers under the floor. And so one’s freshly washed feet- or in this case, Shearer’s naked ass- need not adjust to the cold of real stone.

The followers of Pythagoras- so the story goes- were instructed to stare into the dark of a cave for days in order to achieve enlightenment. In the empty air, they found the multitude transformations of the dodecahedron and some even took to worshipping it. They did not know what was happening was that the part of their brain responsible for making sense of concrete things was simply injecting meaning into nothingness out of force of habit. And, of course, they did not know something in the dark could feel just like stone underneath their buttocks but be warm as if it were in the sun. So what Shearer sees where the sink used to be- in the blooming of a procession of triangles and the waltzing of neon spheres- may have been to them some kind of religious experience.

After a few hours of watching the prisoner’s cinema- horned zebras chasing after picnic baskets full of wailing fruit- it seems to Shearer that he might simply stretch his hand out and there would be a shoulder there, perhaps feeling of sackcloth, and he and his new friend could talk pleasantly- just two men whose chief passion was integers, whose world could be expressed in whole numbers.

Work in progress for the latest in a series of constraint-based writing assignments my professors have been giving. The first paragraph can only use words starting with W and L, the second only T and P, and the third only S and TH. There has to be a coherent plot of sorts too. I'm really only posting it because I've sunk five fucking hours into obsessing over this so far and still have an entire paragraph left to go, and I'm going to lose my mind if I don't get some reassurance.

Feedback is coming once I take a few more whacks at this

>>10143996
Noted, and thanks again!

>>10144416
Yikes, man
That first paragraph is especially rough

>>10144416
For the love of all that is holy, at LEAST copy and paste an em dash.

How shit is this? Could it find some semblance of succes if it was geared towards young adults?

https://pastebin.com/6nMEbSRG

>>10144742
very no

https://pastebin.com/h3dPBAvA

Just finished this poem I've been working on, tell me what you think.

Zane is so stinky we throw him down the stairs like a slinky, we eat him like twinkie, we put him in a printer because he's so inky.

EDGY POST
~~~~~~~~~~
Deep in the crevice of my bed I wait
Expecting a fate all to pleasant
Apathy for all that surrounds me
Till it wisks me away eternally
Help me

>>10143767
I'm sorry my prose is so horrible perhaps one day I will stop using history as an excuse

Lee grew up in a skyscraper penthouse, it’s air-conditioned rooms lined up against inch-thick glass. Some days, clouds would lower and press onto the glass, making white, glowing walls. But most days he instead saw the city extending over the horizon, where the buildings became like grains of sand. He would be mesmerised, his eyes following the millions of tiny moving parts. At night, the parts glowed like untwinkling stars. The neighbouring skyscraper, a casino, would break the trance when around this building, once an hour, metal obelisks would shoot roaring towers of flame. The sound penetrated the penthouse; the only other sounds so loud were fireworks and car crashes.

Some nights, when not quite trying to sleep, he imagined his home as the frontiers of space travel. He would think about how for maybe as long as the earth’s life, his home had been empty air. He was closer to Space than almost anyone, ever. But when he turned in bed to look through the window-wall, there was no Space, only the city’s orange haze.

He was usually left alone. Father visited foreign cities for work, Mother visited her girlfriends. Father would come home for the night, and Mother would go out, or sometimes the reverse. The rare times the two of them interacted, it was cautiously, spaciously.

Watching TV was the closest thing they had to bonding. His parents liked prime time reality TV, watching people bite the heads off chickens, or sit in glass boxes filled with spiders. They drank thick red wine and sat the white leather couch, while Lee sat on the floor, bored. He prefered watching shows about time and space, shows with eccentric scientists backed by green screens gushing about the cosmos, or shows with dark spaceships clotted with ventilation tubing and predatory aliens. His daydreams usually took place inside these shows. Even through horror, he’d imagine himself as the protagonist, but while dreaming he was always only an observer.

>>10144303
>>10144308
>>10144310

Talk show hosts are annoying. Good job.

They blow even the ashes
And they look through all the
Closets. Come with me and
Hide among the rocks so
We're washed clean by the
Tame sun and the dry shadows
Of old trees.

Don't you see? Here falls
All we expect and others
Are long buried under blunt,
Heavy weights. Let's run,
When the last spots of the
Moon have ran off we return,
And you will remain like me:
A mound of ashes, awake.

>>10141335
The prelude to statutory rape, looks like to me.

>>10143743
Thanks. I wrote it after reading a bunch of Kafka's short stories and got excited. Wanted to see if I could try out his voice. Definitely awkward in some places as you said though

Konstantin heard them. "Could they be?..." The bells echoed across his head. One tinkle after the other, he held his chest puncture wound with both arms, struggling hold his breath. When he tried to open his mouth to suck as much air as he could, a sudden skewer of pain pierced through his chest and made him scream.
The bells were heard again. This time they were louder and reminded him of his baptism in Rome, the very earliest of memories. "Could they be tolling for me?" he wondered. As the bleeding got worse and his hands became too unstable to stop it, myriadof images flashed upon him..
Konstantin's mother holding him in her arms, his graduation, the murder of his father, the invitation of the agency and it's defilement. Every single action and the consequences following up to them. "How many families have I ruined? How many people have I orphaned?"
In the end, he wondered if all of that mattered in any way. Would the history books eternalize his name? "Probably not." He thought. His only memories of him would be as the lone child of a Swiss carpenter whose fate was presumed unknown in a war torn city.
When he heard the voices, he knew it was time to act. His hands reached for the coat and managed to pull the last remaining grenade. Even though he was shaking whole, the pin was pulled and he counted down. "The propane tanks." he reminded to himself as the grenade rolled down the hallway.

He closed his eyes and the whole world turned black.

>>10147395
>whose fate was presumed unknown

>>10139319

I worked a bit on the rhythm. Is rhythm directly tied to syllables, or is something else at play? This is my second attempt at poetry.
Better or worse than the first draft above?

We are but three
She and I, and the moon
Does Night grow warm so soon?
No, it is She

Will we belong to each other?
I bid thee, errant star showers:
Bind this waxing love that is ours
To thy shadowed home forever

Etch this fleeting kiss in thy space
So others may gaze up and know
Where, with this tenderness, we go
An immutable, perfect place

We are but two
She and I, and the moon
Round me her hair is strewn
Sweetened with dew

Test

I signed up to Critters and it requires that anything sent has no more than 70 characters per line. How the fuck do I do that automatically so I don't have to go through and re-edit this whole thing putting everything on new lines?

>>10149622
No, you are not banned.

https://pastebin.com/mLXKQ7DY

Chapter one. Fantasy. 2625 words. If you don't want to read it all, please say how far you read up to and why you stopped. Was it because you cba to read that much right now, or did you think it was shit.

>>10147395
No need to hit enter after "made him scream". Have it all be one paragraph.

>too unstable to stop it, myriadof images flashed upon him.
Should be "...stop it, a myriad of images..."

>His only memories of him would be as the lone child of a Swiss carpenter
His only memories of who? Himself? That doesn't make sense. Maybe, "The only memories of him...".

>fate was presumed unknown
Just say "whose fate was unknown". Presumed unknown doesn't make sense senpai.

>Even though he was shaking whole
I don't know what this means. I get that he is shaking, but "shaking whole" doesn't make sense to me. Maybe it is an expression I haven't heard?

Your eyes have stolen me
I stand there now,
Not a sound but your singing
Not a motion but your dancing
Your eyes that enchant;
Phials of sweet silvery wine

Thread is dead, but here are the opening paragraphs of my short story.

It was night-drizzling in New York City, where perched upon a curb outside a comedy house was Paul, watching the raindrops bounce into streetlight-illuminated puddles. The November air had a sharp bite to it, as poor Paul could attest to. He had half-wittingly forgotten his gloves at his apartment, and so, pressured heavily by the cold, had his hands ferreted deeply into his charcoal colored peacoat. Doing this had warmed him up but a fraction; he still felt as frigid as could be.
This prompted him to contort his body in such a way would allow for some extra warmth. And so, with elbows clung so tight to his sides that if they clung any tighter his head might've popped off, and with his hands awkwardly secured in his pockets, and further still with those shivering, buckled knees of his: Paul looked quite amusing sat on that curb. His curious body arrangement, along with his wet black hair drooping over his eyes, rendered such an absolute spectacle out of Paul that if one happened to pass by him, one would either go mad with laughter or with pity. At any rate, both reactions would be entirely appropriate.

"Your jargon does not impress me heathen. " said the lady in blue, "The way you stride towards me as if some big cocked bastard infuriates me to no end. That look of yours, makes me puke. Now tell me, do you have a confidence to take a sip of the mug dipped on cow dug and washed on a bucket filled with goat piss?"

"No."

I shook my head.

>Tfw no crits

Since at least October, the value of KENP had declined pretty steadily from around .52-.54 of a US penny to .41-.42 in August. September has seen a nice rise however, to .44. Just mentioning this for anyone else who is self-published with Kindle.

The boy’s father looked like he had some money, so Evan chose him to be the one to dump chum in the water. He reached into the cooler at the back of the boat and dragged out an orange bucket full of bloody slop, a puree of various baitfish that they’d caught over the last week and ground up that morning at five a.m. Evan gave the bucket a slosh to wake the gutty tang then moved toward the boy. The kid, maybe eleven, as white as anything, wore a blue T-shirt with a Hammerhead on the front and was afraid of him, afraid of whatever in the bucket was releasing that smell. He just wanted to see some sharks. He didn’t know this would be part of the deal. Seven miles off the coast of Galveston in an ancient walk-around with dried blood under the rivets. Their guide a freak with his face carved up in strips. Their skipper a shadowy bulk behind the bridge window.
Evan Slusser saw himself clearly through the boy’s eyes, caught his reflection in the revulsion that registered there. He looked over at the kid’s mother, sitting behind him with her hand on the back of his head, fingers in his hair, her sulky face behind a pair of those big sepia sunglasses they like. Evan could hear her thoughts. She sat there, thinking, this was supposed to be a nice simple fun family vay-cay and now here’s this fucking ghoul coming at my dearest boy with his mincemeat face and a bucket full of carnage, saying, “Alright buddy, you go ahead ring the dinner bell for ‘em.” Well, if his parents had just grabbed the pamphlet two to the right on the rack at the hotel they’d be at this very moment on a double-decker catamaran with a see-through bottom and a snack bar being told about the gulf’s ecology by a twenty-two-year-old marine biology student with a ponytail and a perky ass in stretch khaki chinos. Instead, here they were with Evan, at fifty bucks a head, and “Here’s the bucket, sailor.” The boy stepped back against his mother’s knees. The father winced slightly, moving forward to take the bucket himself. But Evan waved him off and smiled, a sight he knew to be distressing. He worked his own face like a puppet, felt his lips split at the seams where the Mako’s teeth had torn through. He took the bucket over to the edge of the boat and upended its contents into the waters of the gulf.
Evan struck the bottom of the pail with his palm as the gory paste sloughed into the sea. The kid whispered to his mother that he wanted to go back to the hotel and Evan heard a sound from inside the bridge that only he could identify as his cousin Bobby’s laughter. To anybody else it would just sound like the outboard gurgling.

>>10149953
sentence structure is backwards

>>10145381
>it’s

"Only one enemy remained; two if you counted God."

Thoughts?

>>10144799
Nonsense

>>10151172
Edgy and sort of immature. There's better ways of putting that sentiment. Read McCarthy.

>>10151172
When you have an interesting sentiment, never dignify it with some symbol of haughty importance like a semicolon. Roll right over it with drab sentence structure as if it was nothing to look at. Your reader will do a doubletake and think, 'does this author not realize the gems he's sewn into his work?'

Of course you realized them, you just wanted to make him think that.

Desperate bump

>>10152031
THIS IS NOT YOUR FUCKING THREAD TO BUMP.

>>10152046
Thanks for the bump, nerd :^)

Three boys ran along black rock beaches in search of treasures tidepools harbored. Skipping stones and sea urchins were their fancy, the holy grail a sea-star; until they stumbled upon a great wooden trunk. Rusty chains locked it tight, it couldn't have been disturbed in the last three hundred years. Bashing it with spades, they eventually broke its bonds; within was something more valuable than gold. A modest prize for each of them: A brass spyglass, a silver pocket watch, and a steel dagger. The boys leapt with joy, embracing their riches with glee, chanting, A pirates life for me!

>>10149690
Type 70 underscores at the top of the page, and write utill you get to the end of the underscores, until you get to the end.
>t. made text based games before.

>>10149910
The last two lines are not two independent clauses, and don't need a semicolon. Otherwise bretty good.

>>10149972
Ew. Also it just sounds like you're trying to be a Skyrim fanfic writer.

>>10151172
"Two if you counted God" isn't a independent clause, use a coma instead. Otherwise pretty okay. >>10151198 also a little this.

>>10152126
I like this

>>10152054
I didn't bump it you dumb brat.

>>10152229
"Brat" is funny because I'm probably at least 5 years older than most people here.

>>10152247
Well you certainly don't act like it, so maybe you should think about what it means that you can be so old and yet still act like such a child.

>>10152284
Eh, maybe tomorrow

>>10150728
>coisin Bobby's laughter
>outboard gurgling

I don't know why this is funny. It just is.

Is humor the secret to getting people to read and enjoy? My plot is pretty good and so is the concept, but my prose is kind of weak and so is the character development

>>10149972
>dug
dung?
>dipped on
in
>washed
wash
>a confidence
the

>>10152939
>humor
in my experience humor does not work in books. often people judge it as a serious story or because they do not find it funny.

>>10152963
Is that audience dependent? I'm not exactly trying to cater to the ivory tower here. I'm more or less writing something along the lines of His Dark Materials or Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (I think, I haven't read the latter)

>>10153010
you are unlikely to find ivory tower on goodreads. a book without humor can get by if its mediocre but book with humor will be ripped if people don't like the humor or side character that brings it.
example
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25051392-where-the-hell-is-tesla

>>10153027
Yeesh, I've got a bad feeling about this, especially since half my non-combat scenes kind of read like this. At the very least I might want to turn it down

>Impressive. It almost looks as if you have at least an infinitesimal fricking idea what you're doing. Any idea how long this will take to fill up?

>Not exactly. See this? Eve tapped a spring gauge on the neck of the canister. The background beneath the hand showed a sequence of pie slices ranging in color from 'feverish arthropod' to 'lemon-lime apoplexy'. We're mostly going to be guessing based on how fast this thingy moves. When it gets to to the border between the third red part and the first orange part the concentration should be high enough to get a full dose. I imagine it could be lower if we sucked out all the air first but for now I just have to keep an eye on it and hope it's ready in time.

>Nate stretched and went to shift the door open. And you're sure you don't want any help with this?

>Positive. I'm a big girl, I can handle it.

>Your preschool vocabulary fills me with confidence. Seriously, I'm turgid with the stuff. Any interest in calling me a 'butt-face' while you're at it to see if you can make it trickle out of every oriface? I'll sleep better if I can feel the credence leaking out of my wazoo like I just scarfed a bag of fat-free potato chips

>Ew.

>Seriously? You sure you can't use an extra bit of muscle? At least let me give you a damn knife. What's your preference: boner or de-boner? You strike me as the boner type.

>I don't want to be responsible for someone getting hurt or dying. Not again.

>Your loss then. More boners for me. The door slid shut behind him, and Eve was once again alone in the car.

Is this dialogue fine?


There you go.
Garret was a little impatient, but he held himself still nevertheless, foot stomping the ground like a startled rabbit.
This is the last time.
Mom-
I said this is the last time, I will hear no more of this, you hear? Eleana dunked the towel in the bowl again, squeezing blood and water out as she brought it up to his nose once more.
This isnt ending anytime soon, you know, Garret. One of these days youre going to have to change.
But they started it!
And so when will you end it?
When I beat them.
Oh? And what if theyll come back the next day?
Then Ill He was squeamish to say what next, Eleana made sure to keep his face up to hers.
Youll what? she said, hand eagre to slap the next word that comes out of his mouth.
Nothing, he said.
Eleana continued rubbing his nose. Good.
Garret resigned himself to his silence, but in his mind a hundred hails and furries raged about like a thunderstorm, little clasps of wind passing through the seethe of his unsteady breathing.
Even if you did, Eleana surprisingly continued. You wouldve just brought the wrath of their friends and families would you have done them too?
I
And suppose you even got them too, she interrupted him. Would you get their friends and families, and their friends and families, and the friends and families after them, until youve got nothing but enemies all over the world?
I dont care, he said.
You wouldnt care to light the whole world on fire for just a little vengeance?
No! he said.
Then thank the Watcher youre still a child, for youd make a worthy adversary, indeed. She picked up his scrawny arms.
I dont care, he said again.
One day you will. She sighed. One day you will. Youre stronger than you look Garret, but this isnt where your strength belongs. You should use your powers to help people, bring them up from their squalor not go off to make more for yourself.
Am I not entitled to use my strength to defend myself?!
Yes, you are. But thats not what Im saying. What I AM saying is that
Eleana! said a voice from outside. Come here and help me!
Just, she sighed again, just stay out of trouble for now, ok? We will speak more of this tonight, little man. Dont think youre getting away with this.
Eleana turned and went. Garret smiled and nabbed the bloody towel. Oh but I will, he said. He went out through the backdoor of their house, the bloody towel in tow of his pants. He was going back to pay an overdue debt, and this time he made sure to bring back interest