/lit/ - Literature

>>13941787
>not this thread again
Oh no no no

>>13941792
Bro please does it sound better I’m trying to use less adjectives

>>13941787
>The moons
moon's*
>gang, known as the Spiked Hairs
Cliche
>thirst for trouble
Cliche
>heads into the local bar
Really? Going to a bar is trouble? Is that the most troublesome thing you can think of? This is just bland too. "heads into the local bar" is so bland and boring.
>With a brow rise and a hint of suspension, the bartender hands the IDs back, providing the gang with five cheap beers.
So much trouble
>The eight or so hoodlums propose a toast to their youth as the sounds of classic rock echo throughout the bar.
Cliche and not fitting of their character. Why would a rebellious gang of kids care about toasting to their youth? Wouldn't the young kids desire to feel older and more powerful than they actually are?

>>13941787
Read Dubliners by James Joyce. He writes a lot of bar scenes that have more substance than "the hoodlums proposed a toast to their youth and laughed the night away."
Explicitly calling them hoodlums is pretty condescending too. Joyce never does this. Joyce displays alcoholics behaving abusively without ever explicitly calling them abusive. To anyone with common sense, the behavior of the alcoholic beating their kid is abusive and doesn't need to be mentioned. You don't have to spell it out for people in this way. Who is your target audience? Children or adults?

>>13941809
It’s a work in progress, that’s just the general outline.
>>13941816
I just have to write a fiction piece for my writing class but I’m having a hard time.

Here’s the next part
>Out of the members of the gang, Elijah, Issac and Mathew were the closest. Elijah, the leader of the gang (although he wasn’t fond of being called “the leader”, he viewed everyone as equals) would usually call the shots and keep the gang relatively safe. Issac, a tall and brawny teen, acted as the “muscle” of the gang. Finally, Mathew was considered to be Elijah’s right hand man, and served as a valuable asset to the gang’s trouble making. These three young men, born into a life of anarchy and disorder, roamed the streets of their deteriorating city, constantly getting into fights with other gangs and causing trouble where ever they may roam.

>>13941837
Trust me, read Dubliners bro. If you analyze the prose and Joyce's way of presenting information it will help your writing become 10x better.
After The Race, Two Gallants, A Little Cloud, and Counterparts are the three short stories from Dubliners that I remember having bar scenes. Most of the stories are only 5-10 pages long so not much of an investment. Just read and reread the stories and analyze.

>>13941859
Ok I will, but do I sound generally on track here? I’m really trying to improve my writing. I’ll show you a sample of my older work for comparison:
>The cool winds of autumn blow through the golden trees as three young boys walk through the changing stages of the seasons of life. The distance rings of the school bell echo to the skies as Elijah, Issac and Mathew turn their backs to their futures and head into the vast expanse of the woodlands surrounding the school. Issac’s stained white sneakers balanced on the abandoned train tracks as the gang slowly made their way through the winding paths of the forest. While the tides of autumn were coming to a close, a new season of chance and opportunity was just on the horizon, like the rising sun emerging from the dark depths of the night. As Elijah, Issac and Mathew cross the small river bank to the north east of their small town, the boys find themselves at the brick of a large lake, golden leaves dancing in the air as they softly touch the clear waters below.

Bump

Bump please guys

>>13941787
Have you read The Canterbury Tales? I feel like it'd help you with your style a lot. As this guy says >>13941816 describing them directly as hoodlums ruins the flow of the story. And your descriptions/characters just suck man, its all too rigid. Its almost as if its synthetic. From the last thread you made some pretty settings, thats one of your strengths, but not every scene/setting has to be descriptive. In BLood Meridan McCarthy makes the landscape so perfectly vivid and beautiful yet he wrote these scenes very simplistically

>>13941787
Sorry Anon it's shit
Read this: https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit
Stop using prebuilt phrases

>>13942084
>>13942098
Fuck guys I don’t get what I’m doing wrong like I cannot for the life of me write. Like I have these amazing ideas in my head but I execute them horribly. I’m honestly about to drop out of my writing class cause this is just embarrassing

Okay here's you problem.
>cool winds
>golden trees
>the seasons of life
>rising sun emerging from the dark depths of the night
>golden leaves dancing

One of these on their own is acceptable. But a continuous stream of purely graphic language starts to detract from what your actually trying to express. Whenever you describe something, think of it as a rule that you're making the reader abide to in their head. They now HAVE to make the leaves golden, if you keep dropping in superlatives a reader will never let a scene happen in their own imagination naturally.

>>13942112
Dude. Quit judging yourself and read Dubliners like I told you too and read Orwell's politics and the english language like the other anon told you to. Orwell's essay is good. I was an awful writer before too and Orwell's essay is actually something that helped me a lot.

>>13942135
Yeah I know I really tried to take that into consideration for the OP but I still don’t get what I’m doing wrong. It seems no matter what I write it doesn’t come out the way I want it

>>13942112
Try writing from you heart fren. Don't think about your writing class or whatever the fuck you think when you write. Infact don't even write for a class write for yourself. Write a scene about whatever the fuck you want but make it extremely simplistic try not using any of those"the sun rises in the east" bullshit adjectives. Write off your feel and for you make it simplistic as you can. Report back here with a sample maybe it'll be better

>>13942112
you're being slightly pretentious in your descriptions. think about it. if you were one of the spiked hair gangbangers, and you were telling your homie about that night, is that how you would tell the story? no. he'd knock your ass out for sounding like an absolute twit, right?
pretend you're a spiky hair badass telling his cellmate about that night.you can do it anon i believe in you. come back after you're done

How old are you?

>>13942163
>"anon tell us that story about those gang members or whatever"
>"Alright alright ill tell it"
>"the gang heads into the local bar. Upon sitting at the bar the young men present their suspicious looking ID’s to the bartender. With a brow rise and-"
>"god you sound like a faggot"

>>13942151
I’m at work right now but I’m going to read it when I get home
>>13942158
I honestly have a story in my head that I’m dying to tell that I honestly think is amazing, but whenever I try to write about my ideas for the class my teacher tells me it’s “genre writing” and I can only write about regular shit that’s not sci fi, western etc. which can of censors my creativity so I feel like I’m not really writing from the heart but for the grade.
>>13942163
As soon as I get home I’m going to give it another shot
>>13942164
20

>The moons pale illumination guides a gang, known as the Spiked Hairs, through the run down streets.
Just say "Moonlight guided"

>Upon sitting at the bar the young men present their suspicious looking ID’s to the bartender.
Groups larger than three do not sit at the bar, they find a table.

>With a brow rise and a hint of suspension, the bartender hands the IDs back, providing the gang with five cheap beers.
Should be raised brow and a hint of suspicion

>The eight or so hoodlums propose a toast to their youth as the sounds of classic rock echo throughout the bar.
Why did they order 5 beers if they are in a group of eight?

When you write it is always helpful just to slow down and ask whether it actually makes sense, focus on what you've actually written not what you have imagined writing.

>>13941787
>propose a toast to their youth

>>13942220
Sorry I changed five members to eight to make it a bigger group but I forgot to go back and edit it. But other then the general corrections you made is the paragraph ok?

When is it due?

>>13942272
Whenever. But the sooner the better. I’d say a week at most

ok here's what you're doing wrong:

>showing not telling.
yeah a lot of people hate this rule but it's better to illustrate anything including, in your case, the relationships between the characters by actions and dialogue. instead of just stating Elijah called the shots you could write
"Lads, we're going to the Shifty Bit tonight." said Elijah. The Shifty Bit was a shit hole but it had a pool table and drinks were cheap. "Yeah that's a great idea." agreed Isaac.
and then you've got some dialogue to break up all the description because that's all you have, description for the first two paragraphs.

>tone.
you're talking about hoodlums and you're using language like "propose a toast to their youth" which doesn't fit at all. again, use dialogue to illustrate your characters. what is the actual toast? "Here's to our youth?" hoodlums don't talk like that. "Fuck bitches." would at least be slightly more in character. stop using elevated language in general.

>more vagueness.
"the sounds of classic rock." so bland. at least name a song so that it causes the reader to think of that melody and lyrics.

>>13941787
The eight or so hoodlums propose a toast to their youth as the sounds of classic rock echo throughout the bar. The crowd is divided by age and sex, many of whom look a decade or two older. Some of the older men are still working as doctors or as bar staff, while others have retired or are in the process of doing so. One older woman, a former beauty pageant runner who doesn't own a cellphone, is also here, sporting a T-shirt that reads, "My body ain't no beauty pageant." "Who's the lucky girl?" she says to a friend. She's been at the bar for years and says she doesn't take orders or hang out with the guys because she's a "real lady, lady." It's as if she knows exactly what her peers are like.

A woman sits at a barstool at a bar in the San Fernando Valley where some of the women at this bar do drugs. The other patrons look on, seemingly oblivious to the fact that some of them may have had their cars smashed, or their house burglarized

>>13942263
To be quite honest not really. The idea of a 'gang' going out drinking at licensed bar that checks ID's and proposing a toast to their youth seems more like a social gathering of the Inklings rather than meeting of a fictional version of the NJCK. For such a believable setting the entire passage is unconvincing.

>>13942158
>>13942163
>>13942189
>>13942220
>>13942241
>>13942283
>>13942297
Ok everyone how does this sound?

>The moons pale illumination guides a gang through the run down streets of the down town district. Eight young men, donning leather jackets and tattered jeans, strut across the sidewalk, hollering at passing women and rough housing amongst themselves.
“Anyone up for a drink?” Elijah asks as the gang passes the shifty bit, the local tavern.
“Hell yeah. Im parched” says Issac as the gang enters the bar. Smoke fills the room as the gang loiters near the pool tables, cigarette buds dimly illuminating the bar.

>>13942396
>Hell yeah, I'm parched

>>13941809
Seconding everything in this post.

>>13942396
Better. You are showing actual personality in your characters this time.

>>13942459
>
Seriously OP who the fuck says this

>>13942491
>>13942459
What should I say instead?

Bump

>>13942491
I have heard those exact words spoken.

>>13943006
Nothing to add, but keep it up. If you stay focused and keep applying yourself like you have so far, you will get good.

Here’s the beginning of my piece, have I improved?

The moons pale illumination guides a gang through the run down streets of the down town district. Eight young men, donning leather jackets and tattered jeans, strut across the sidewalk, hollering at passing women and rough housing amongst themselves.
“Anyone up for a drink?” Elijah asks as the gang passes the shifty bit, the local tavern.
“Hell yeah” says Issac as the gang enters the bar. Smoke fills the room as the gang loiters near the pool tables, cigarette buds dimly illuminating the bar. After a few more hours of drinking, the gang leaves the bar in a drunken canter. As they walk down the streets of the down town area, the gangs rivals, the Razors, appear from a allay; laughing manically like hyenas searching for prey.
“What the hell are a bunch of Spiked Hairs doing here? Don’t you know this is Razor turf?”
An immediate gang fight ensues as fists fly through the air and bodies hit the concrete below. During the commotion of the brawl, a pocket knife is lunged into Elijah’s abdomen, collapsing him to the ground. Police sirens flair to the skies as the Razors run into the night, leaving Elijah lying on the cold concrete, crimson blood seeping through the cracks. The Spiked hairs retreat back to their hideout

>>13943041
the fight scene could have been a lot more exciting than two sentences.

>>13943103
I agree, how can I flesh it out more? I wanted to make it longer but I’m not entirely sure how long I can write “they fought” lol.

>>13942513
"yeah"

>>13943110
Watch street fight footage and take notes.

>>13943041
this actually works pretty well as the intro for a screenplay, where you just need to give the minimum amount of description for the director to set the stage. for a short story, you could flesh it out a little, but it sounds good already.
a few ideas:
>Pale moonlight guides a gang
>cigarette butts
are by definition no longer lit. also, the glow from a cigarette doesn't illuminate squat in a room that already has a lamp in it.
>laughing maniacally like a hyena
is very cliche. dudes looking for a fight in dark alleys aren't laughing, trust me
>crimson blood
is redundant.
>crimson seeping through the cracks
is much more powerful
>retreat back
is redundant. you retreat - the back is implied.
gud jeb, you'll do well if you keep at it.

>>13943103
>>13943178

OP here, I've done a re-write of the fight scene by utilizing street fight videos, as you suggested, also several knife attack videos (quite disturbing, will never watch these again).

>As they walk down the streets of the down town area, the gangs rivals, the Razors, appear from a alley; smirking like a crocodile whose wildebeast prey has just crossed his river. “What the hell are a bunch of Spiked Hairs doing here? Don’t you know this is Razor turf?” An immediate gang fight ensues. Multiple mobile phones are produced by bystander pockets and gang members alike. Even though both gangs are Italian, someone yells "What are you looking at nigger?" Then fists fly through the air and the song "let the bodies hit the floor" plays in background. They begin swinging their arms as if their arms are dangerous pool noodles in a swimming pool fight. During the commotion of the brawl, a pocket knife is lunged into Elijah’s neck, and the opposing drug gang begins sawing his head off with the dull blade. The lacerations are like red canyons and his throat begins to gargle blood. They cannot detach the head, so they produce a chainsaw to finish the decapitation. Police sirens flair to the skies as the Razors run into the night, leaving Elijah lying on the cold concrete, crimson seeping through the cracks with his head detached from his body and his body displayed as a message to other cartels. The Spiked hairs retreat to their hideout with vengeance on their mind.

Stop writing like you’re trying to write the next great American novel. None of your scenes are as important as your diction makes them seem.

>>13944613
Are you for real?

The gang stumbles down the street, drunkenly cackling and blowing smoke. Suddenly, five men emerge from an alleyway, fumbling with bats and two-by-fours. They were all sporting red hoodies.

"Shit, it's the fucking Razors," one of the Spiked Hairs hissed. Then, silence set in as the two parties sized each other up. Some fool walks out of an apartment lobby, absorbed in his phone until he notices the two groups. Instead of calling the cops, he decides to begin filming.

One of the Razors throws a brick, and the fight begins. A stream of expletives fill the air as the gangs beat and slice each other open, splattering blood on the ground like some Jackson Pollock painting. One of the Razors takes advantage of the confusion to knock the phone out of the bystander's hand, following up with a right hook. It misses.

The two groups quickly lost their appetite for battle and began to disband, fleeing the way they came. Police sirens chased away the last of the stragglers, who were still feeling the pockets of the fallen.

The last of the Spiked Hairs lie collapsed on a couch in their hideout, panting and smoking profusely. 'Fuck! Shit! Why'd you fucking leave them there?"

"I'm sorry, man, I'm sorry! I fuckin' heard the cops coming, I was scared!"

"All right, but if YOU get left on the street, bleeding like a dumbass, don't come bitching to us!"

The door bangs open, and the trio on the couch simultaneously reach for their weapons. It's Rick.

"Shit, Rick, I though you were gone for good, man!"

"Yeah," Rick breathlessly laughs, "that's what I thought, too!" He whoops. "Those motherfuckers punch like bitches, I just got lost on the way back!"

I tried

>>13941787
I like it, anon.

>>13942112
READ more my man. try and mimic the styles that your favorite authors exhibit

>>13941787
go give yourself a hint of suspension
with a noose or something

>>13944941
Just letting you know that guy was NOT me. I didn’t write that.
>>13944613
Why the fuck are you pretending to be me dick head?

Any other work from this project to share?

>>13945615
>Upon reaching their sanctuary, the Spiked Hairs tend to Elijah’s wounds. A massive debate rises among the gang about what to do next. Getting jumped by another gang was a sign of disrespect and weakness, and most of the gang, especially Issac, believed that an act of vengeance was necessary. Others, such as Mathew, was opposed to the idea of further confrontation with the Razors, and believed continued fighting could result in further injury or worse. After a long debate, the Spiked Hairs conclude that they will attack the Razors that very night.
>Issac, Mathew and the rest of the gang make their way through the winding streets of the downtown district.

This is all I got so far (and it’s very rough, I’m going to change it to sound better but this is the general gist)

>>13944613

>>13945648
This rough draft reads better than what you’ve posted before. No superfluous adjectives.

>>13944613
My sides

>>13944613
>Even though both gangs are Italian, someone yells "What are you looking at nigger?"

>>13941787
It doesn't flow. "Brow rise" sounds a bit off, you should probably rephrase the sentence into something like "Rising an eyebrow, there was a period of suspense before he handed the ID's back to them, and provided them with five cheap beers"