/lit/ - Literature

>>14102358
An old piece I wrote that has an angst sting but also supposed to get a deeper meaning across.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Le9FSYRQCJ-cIrZ0Ezrt0_OD8ZTWetJrBQ1P_leU7cM/edit?usp=sharing

I honestly want to add a bit more to it.

Nobody did my poem in the last thread so repostin
Just want to find out what's shit about it

As I walked my dog along the road
I noticed that sun had begun to show
I heard the song of a chick freshly hatched
I heard the mewlings of a now waking cat
I saw rats and snakes rush for the gutter
As the sprinklers revived with a shutter
And I was left watching the morning sky
As the dead king once more began to rise
To reclaim his kingdom from rogue night
And delight peasants with his noble sight
Till the light within his heart fade again
Leaving night to reign and none to defend
I notice now that I had dropped the leash
And my dog was watching the sky with me

Also have this existential penguin for your inspiration needs
https://youtu.be/0qVWKpAH7OI

>>14102410
fucking boring and without direction

>>14102410
I like this more than 90% of stuff posted in these threads. I recognize your poetic license to create terrible rhymes; actually I don't think those detract at all from the poem. The major problem for me is your flawed meter. It makes the experience of reading about as satisfying as a song whose beat continually changes.
Your first line sets us up for a poem made of nice clean 4-stress lines. The next few lines technically fit but feel sticky. Then in most of the lines in the 2nd half you're trying to force the reader to stress syllables contrary to how he'd normally read them.
For my own entertainment, I tried to tweak those lines to fit the established meter just to illustrate what I mean:

I was left watching the morning sky
As the dead king began to rise
To reclaim his kingdom from rogue night
And awe the crowd with his noble sight
Until his heart's light fade again
That night may reign and none defend
I start -- for I had dropped the leash
My dog was watching the sky with me

Please give crit if you post, if you want critiques the thread needs to be active, and in order to foster activity people critiquing others is necessary.
>>14102410
It flows nicely, I'm bad at critiquing poetry as I don't write it. I liked it, and that's about as substantial as I can get ,as far as other things
>I heard the mewlings of a now waking cat
Feels like you're stretching to fit a rhyme scheme here.
>And delight peasants with his noble sight
Peasants? Is the nobility of the sun something you're harping on for a reason? IT wasn't really established throughout the poem.
Nitpicking though, I liked it.

>>14102410
First I want to point out some grammatical errors and or grievances. 'I noticed that sun had begun to show,' should have a determiner before sun so it reads, 'I noticed that the sun had begun to show'. Next you can take the 's' off of mewling making, 'I heard the mewling of a now waking cat'. I think the sprinklers are meant to be revived with a shudder and not a shutter, but I could be mistaken on your intent.
Second, I will talk go over the narrative and images. You introduce a lot of differing elements in this walk with a dog and it could use some specificity and unification of theme. Instead of cycling the sun and night and listing cats, chickens, rats, and snakes focus on a few elements and let them interact. The dog interacting with a cat in a chase for example, or maybe it decides to snap at the water from the sprinklers and the narrator must force it away (or perhaps lets him play until someone comes out of the house to chide the pair). The reason to specify is to create images that are more concrete and emotive. Its the same reason there are usually three or less characters in a short story, there isn't enough room to give them all depth so you cut the least useful or fuse them in order to explore the existing characters in more depth. Do this with the images. What is the point of the chick, or the cat, or the rats and snakes and sprinklers and peasants? Choose one or two and do something with them, whether it is quiet description by your narrator as he/she walks along or whether it is interaction prompted by the boisterous dog. Think of the swell of the emotions that could be prompted by the dog if it were to engage in a fight with a venomous snake, and what those could lend to the poem. Think as well on what you are trying to evoke, and draw out the images and scenes that compliment it.
Thirdly, there is a variation to the rhyme that I don't find gratifying. It moves from road, show, hatched, and cat into gutter/shutter, night/sight, again/defend. Why not have a continuous scheme? Why not have two stanzas where the emotion and movement reflect the change? Format works in tandem with content, yet you have the linking of the 'I saw' series to the 'A' series with the rhyme of gutter/shutter.
Something to think about at least. Hope this helps and as always, thank you for the contribution to the thread and good luck with your writing anon.

>>14102420
Fuck you I'm not watching that.

>>14102542
Another one

>>14102358
Something I wrote a while back with a bit of an angst sting but I tried to get something deeper across.

This is just a small excerpt from it so the first bit will make sense later. What I did notice as an issue in the story is the terrible way I jump in and out of memories/thought, it seems so abrupt.

>>14102566

>>14102528
Is this a story or an anime script? It's so melodramatic. At the same time, the narrator is way too cold. "I was thankful that my death would be swift, but not quite as appreciative of the timing"? Are you kidding? Who gets more formal the closer they get to dying? The narration is way too cool and collected for what's supposed to be a quick death scene full of agony. The feeling I get is that it's not a narrator living in the moment, but rather someone remembering the story years later or something, which destroys any of the suspense. It should be either a third-person narrator if you want to be this cold, or more stream-of-consciousness.
As for the rest, there's comma splices. Watch your grammar. "The Positive, the words of the malignant soothsayer now filled my mind" is not a sentence. It only makes sense in Japanese sentence construction. This isn't a manga.

Pls be gentle

>>14102519
>>14102528
>>14102537
This is more feed back then I expected, I'm not really experienced with seriously writing prose and poetry so it's good to know I'm not completely talentless and what exactly I can improve on.
You're all right about the shit rhymes and meter, it really frustrated me while writing it. What would be some good poets to study in order to learn proper use of both techniques?

>>14102589
God damn I'm so confused about which perspective I want this to be in, and I'm thinking it might be better in third person. I've switched back and forth. Also its a panic attack, not a real death scene, and its past tense because... It's easier to write? Not sure yet. Although the other criticism is valid. Narrator is a little crazy. Not overtly, but his internal monologue is ornate to compensate for his borderline inability to communicate in real life. My grammar is not great. Feel like I might take an english course in my last year to tighten it up.

Thanks for the feedback. This is a nanowrimo project so its borderline stream of consciousness and a very rough draft. Also a snippet of the ending of the first chapter.

I'm bad at specifically nit-picking things in these small exercepts but i'll give it a go.
>>14102528
Your description for the coffee place just sounds way off. The second paragraph was well done but moving on the third the way you try to describe how the narrator is having some anxious terrible panic just seems way too sped up. Anxiety and Panic is built up slowly and methodically without much before it's so unrelatable. Even if the main character was just generally introduced as prone to anxiety/panic attacks the way you rush to it makes it seem overly dramatic-tized.
>>14102553
I like this one a lot but you don't have to quote what the narrator is thinking for us to get it.
Also, how is he drying his cloth? Needs a little bit more closure.

>>14102625
By the way this is me -->>>14102566

>>14102528
I like your style (because it's similar to mine). There's a little too much shift+F7 going on here however. Remember Orwell's rule of never using a Latin word where a Saxon word will do. I'd find alternatives for words like emanate, interloper.
Some sentences aren't quite clear such as "I was thankful...appreciative of the timing" and the phrase "once proud staple". I had to read those twice to get the meaning. How about "...from that once proud staple where in past years the soundtrack of frying bacon and happy highschoolers could be heard when you stood outside the doors."

I'm genuinely intrigued by the story.

>>14102623
>it's a panic attack, not a real death scene
So? My point was that he was too calm and collected. It still applies.
>borderline stream of consciousness
The problem is that it's not stream of consciousness ENOUGH. Get in the moment, get in his head, panic attacks are accompanied by rapid fire thoughts, everything speeds up, not slows down. Shorter sentences. more panic.

>>14102528
I don't hate the prose, but it feels plain and characterless. You need to communicate more emotion
>>14102542
The firsy half feels really melodramatic, but i like the second half

>>14102628
>Remember Orwell's rule of never using a Latin word where a Saxon word will do
What a moronic suggestion.

>>14102597
>What would be some good poets to study in order to learn proper use of both techniques?
For the meter you were going for, read ballads. Read lots of them. I'd recommend Robert Service : https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45082/the-shooting-of-dan-mcgrew

But also check out Kipling (The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo, Gunga Din) and Keats (La Belle Dame Sans Merci)

Memorize a couple of poems; it's easy. Once you start hearing those melodies in your head, you'll be able to write in meter without thinking about it; the words will fall into place in your head.

>>14102631
Didn't want it to seem like I was justifying my failings, just explaining them. This is very helpful
>>14102628
>>14102625
So the theme here is to speed up the progression of the panic attack and make it more frantic. Makes sense. I'll work on that and read some more before I write

>>14102528
First thing to note is the 'I missed I missed my footing' and the double spacing at 'Do you find weakness."
Second, this could use more actionable narrative and less introspective description, the old 'show, don't tell'. The first two paragraphs have the content here, the narrator moves into the coffee shop and parks, noting the scenery. The problem comes with his breakdown which is almost completely unprompted. Reaching out to open a car door shouldn't be what prompts this reaction. How did he get in the car? How did he leave his own driveway? Then think about the investment the reader is feeling for the character at this point. There is no previous characterization or introduction. It moves promptly into this character having a panic attack without knowing who he is, where he lives, what he does, what his motivation is (I assume to get coffee, but I mean generally).
Third, think about the appropriate time and place for language. the quiet corpse of a mom and pop shop is not quiet, because the word corpse in the first sentence jumps out of the line with a knife. Next sentence we transition to abode, which is very out-of-touch stoner introducing you to their home. Give simple description that conveys meaning before looking to spruce up the language.
"The coffee shop was near the now closed mom and pop teahouse I used to frequent; the red bricks now covered in moss, with a stack of wooden chairs stacked in front of the door. A small gray-squirrel (be specific and not vague, you control the setting and so, know everything about it and know everything in it by name) banged an acorn (again) against the tin roof (it makes more noise than brick and would be more audible to the narrator who is still in their car) which was the only sound coming from the once proud staple of town"
Thank you for the contribution anon, good luck and remember, "Writing is revising."

>>14102566
First off, why present tense? It's so amateur and YA. Secondly, the grammar and punctuation is all wrong.
>The pale, sedimentary; terrible painted, orange plush wall
There shouldn't be a semicolon if you're separating a list.
>terrible painted
This should be "terribly".
>Receding under making significance
I don't even know what this means.
>in the wall shaking
This should be "in the wall, shaking".
>a open book
This should be "an open book."
>modes:Reading
>paper,night
You're missing a space bar there.
>and well; the off button
You keep misusing semicolons. It should be "and, well, the off button".
>alongside a plus and minus sign
Those are two signs, not one, so it should be "alongside plus and minus signs."
>5 shades
It's amateurish to write numbers and not spell them. You're expected to write "five".
>(This LED lamp was extremely cheap)
First off, why this parenthesis? It adds nothing and it's not clear how it follows from before. The reader doesn't think "man, it sure is cheap to only have five different shades. Also, parenthesis go before the period, not after.
>This light was exposing the centipedes waving through the walls the centipedes of long forgotten foul paint strikes the centipedes that waver and go forever, always whirring always there.
And this is just childish. Rewrite this, adding commas this time. You can't just unload your thoughts with no care for punctuation and no rereading. It says you don't care about your readers.
That's paragraph one.

>>14102635
A better way to phrase that would be "shitty thought".

>>14102628
>>14102650
I didn't see your post about it being a NaNoWriMo project. Just get it done dude; don't worry about anything I said.

>>14102658
"Thought" and "suggestion" are not synonyms at all.

>>14102666
You're right but this is all fantastic advice. Stuff I hadn't even considered. It'll influence my writing going forward and my revising process.

>>14102656
>>14102656
English isen't my first language and I suck at translating but I plan to work on it. I actually didn't use any semi-colons at all when I first wrote it, no idea why I decided to use them here. ty!

>>14102566
I can tell that you're avoiding adverbs, but it makes the prose sound clunky in places
>Terrible painted

Also its confusing in places what are
>paint strikes

The prose is confusing throughout the piece I'm having trouble picturing what you're describing due to the language used. One thing I do like is that you do your best to actually describe the setting, instead of plainly telling us what's there.

>>14102566
>I go out only to stroll
Why did you add "only"?
>I go out only to stroll around 8am for one hour, stroll down the steps, one-two-three-four and so forth counting the 36 steps down to the first floor of my apartment building.
First off, spell the numbers. It's messy that you only spell some of them. Secondly, you have to alternatives here: 1)
>I go out only to stroll around 8 am for one hour and stroll down the steps
I added "and", because simply having a comma implies a third item in this list, but there is none.
Or 2)
>I go out only to stroll around 8 am for one hour; I stroll down the steps
I added "I".
>and so forth counting
It should be "and so forth, counting".
>One-two-three-four and I'm out of under the building's shade
If he was counting 36 steps, shouldn't it be 33-34-35-36 before he's out of the shade?
>state star
I might just be missing something, but what do you mean by "state" star?
>My path usually consists of heading out to the Lake Osborn and circling right back before the want of belongingness takes hold and I'm tempted to do anything else but the routine I've kept up for months now.
Rephrase this. It's saying "my routine is usually that I'm tempted not to do my routine." But if it's his routine, that means it's not routine to not do it. So the idea here is "EVEN THOUGH every day it doesn't take long for the want of belongingness to take hold and I'm tempted to do anything else but the routine I've kept up for months now, my path usually consists of heading out to the Lake Osborn and circle right back..." you get the idea. It's still way too long of a sentence; you should always check you can read your sentences in a single breath. You could break it up like "Every day it doesn't take long for the want of belongingness to take hold and tempt me to do anything else but the routine I've kept up for months now. Despite this, my path usually consists of heading out to the Lake Osborn and circle right back..."

>>14102710
Oh, sorry, I'll stop being so noisy. What's your first language? Because I'm a Spanish speaker, I could read that.

>>14102542
>>14102553
First poem: First, there is a lot of content here, but I don't think it all accomplishes movement. The first stanza has a seeming set up, in that the narrator and the speaker are possibly split and that the speaker is wearing something that is likely not the 'proper clothing'. (Before I forget, "And their are children's voices," should be "And there are children's voices.") This is never delivered on, no one removes him from the temple, and the character brings up a special talisman that was previously unheard of. He also 'worships in his own way' which is vague and leaves an air of ambiguous uncertainty to what he accomplishes at the temple or what his motivation to go to the temple is. I suggest you take the poem apart, strip everything that you can and get down to the purpose and meaning of the poem, out of touch heritage, trespassing culturally, unpreparedness, or whatever it might be. Once you clarify the meaning, build it back up, adding images that push the reader towards that meaning. For example, the pigeons and crickets and more rain at the end give a feeling of obstruction and noise instead of conclusion and understanding. They defer a narrative resolution that the poem seems to be moving towards.
Poem 2: First, I would remove the second and third lines. A 'creature' who got up there by 'cattish means' is superfluous. The reader knows there is a cat on the veranda. Call the cat a cat and move forward. Elaborate on the purpose of the cat and the veranda, you repeat this image several times. The title, the opening, the relating of events to the wife. This is obstructing the emotion concerning the wife, her 'blindness', her nakedness, and why the clothes are wet and drying on his body instead of being in a dryer (perhaps they live in times past or perhaps in an amish village, however there is no textual evidence so I can't say, I can only question). The image of the wife being blind seems to be an analogue for her not having her glasses, whether or not that is it you should change the language. If she isn't blind its melodrama, if she is blind make it plain. Why do I care? Because it is there, which means it should mean something or say something and it isn't clear what it says or means if it says or means anything literal or figurative. Why does the narrator let the cat sleep? What is the importance of the cat and the veranda? Due to the eponymous nature of these images I think you should flesh them out more, outside of stating plainly that they simply are.
Thank you for the contribution to the thread and good luck with your writing anon.

>>14102767
Wow, this is really good anon.

>>14102566
>>14102571
Okay anon, I saw where you wrote that this is your second language and will take that into account. I won't worry too much about the grammar and spelling because the other anon seems to have focused on that and you can fix it with a good grammar and usage guide.
First, because it stopped me in my tracks "business suit-Scandinavian blue-speed walks," should be, "business suit - Scandinavian blue - speed walks," alternatively you could write, "Scandinavian blue business suit speed walks."
Second, you meander around too much in the opening with this scene of the character looking at his walls at night before coming out the next morning. Cut the night before, cut the stairs. I would say, start at the walk to Lake Osborn, but think about the purpose of the walk. What happens on this walk that makes this the point in your characters life that is so important it gets the story? Why today and why now? It isn't the faggot or the absent dad or the speed walker. If it is a Joyce-esque revelation about God for this character or his understanding of meaning and place than it should occur after a build up, something impactful enough in this characters life to change his thought, at least by a small degree, towards this new perspective. As it stands this character does nothing and says nothing of substance. He is shown as being spiteful, but without much to provoke his spite, he is curious, but not curious enough to become motivated to action.
Thirdly, I know I wasn't going to talk about grammar, but this one sentence got me and then everything after that got me too, "I can't ever be sure how real those people are or whose trying to set things up for me, I know they always think what I'm doing and when and want to peek down into my soul, but it's my soul, and I want to keep it to myself." I really am unsure of the meaning here, it is obviously about the protagonist being 'set up' but for what? Is his questioning about their being real solipsism or is that something that got lost in translation? It doesn't matter too much since it doesn't change my previous critique, it was just so jarring I had to ask. It also seems important to the character so I thought I should tell you that it is really hard to understand.
Thank you for the contribution anon, keep reading and writing, and good luck.

>>14102590
First, are you imitating or studying Eliot? Something about it sounds like his writing, but of course, I also get a hint of Dylan Thomas with your, "Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair."
Second, the first three lines make little sense in conjunction. "Stand on the stair, lean on an urn, weave sunlight." It isn't until the fourth line we get some evocative action, which is described as 'pained surprise' (is there any way to show that it is pained surprise instead of telling?) and this in some way unifies the emotion felt but doesn't make the narrative more sensible. I leave the first stanza wondering what it is you mean, although I understand that it is the speaker addressing a woman. I can't understand after reading the whole thing if you mean this to be a father who disapproves of his daughters lover or a lover who disapproves of his wife's something or someone? Be more concrete and less discrete, tell us what you mean. Also, a minor note on language. Cogitations doesn't fit at all in my opinion, not at all. Then you rhyme pose with repose, which I don't think is taboo, but it does feel lazy.
If you have more specific question just reply. Thank you for the contribution to the thread anon and good luck with your writing.

I am the sun, shone fourth against the red rock, alight unto every cracked earthen bed. The rats dry into bone along my eye, and the cactu melt into the clay. There is no thirst under my reign, the weak sun of old brought on waves of insanity and reached parch convulsions. He ran his men into the corners of his own mind— no, I am the deep ocean of light, /basked into me and I draw forth / dream, wondrous enlightened steps take to the traveler engrossed in my name.

>>14102358
That image is of a man slaying his porn habit once and for all.

>>14102410
Okay, so while reading that poem that other anon assigned me(thank you for that) I was consumed with inspiration and went back to my poem
I reworked it in order to fix the direction problems, the narrative should be much more intresting in this form
Meter is still fucked and the rhyme is probably more forced than the last time, but is the narrative better?

As I walked my dog along the road
I started-- for I let the leash go
And my dog now seeing his chance
Ran to the woods without a single glance
Knowing well that his master would follow
His friend into this most sacred of hollows
So I followed my dog through the dark woods
Vigirously beating down the paths I could
Until I tripped upon some gangly root
Sending me rolling down a bumpy hill
Until I was laying 'pon my back still

I was left watching the morning sky
As the dead king began to rise
To reclaim his kingdom from rogue night
Awing my soul with his noble sight
Until his heart's light fade again
That night may reign and none defend

I see now that my dog is by my side
Watching those lazy clouds high in the sky
I was blessed that in such a hollow bright
I had lived a single day of my life

Bump because that guy who made the splinter thread is a fag who should feel bad

1/8

2/8

He stopped within four yards of the light blue sweater woman on her knees and doing something that made him suddenly feel lightheaded as he only stared. Remembering the word vaguely...pray. Green Eyes watched her for a long time as she continued oblivious or not caring a goddamn bit of her company. He slowly looked around the Alders before unzipping his grey coat a little and unsnapping his .45. The woman's silver blond hair shimmered in the moonlight as he walked around her, keeping a small distance, to Marissa's empty grave. Her decayed body no where in sight. They finally took her away again and Green Eyes should of been ready for it but...
What was suppose to fucking finally be peace for her, was denied forever. If Green Eyes was going to slit his arms, tonight was it. He lost her again and now he was finally alone. His dead eyes looked at Silver Hair's own dark green eyes staring back at him from a blood spattered face, her hand inside her stained sweater sleeve. He saw a bite mark on her cheek, long claw streaks down her shoulder and arm through the sweater. She didn't do anything as he looked away and sat beside where Marissa once was and stared at the darkness in the earth.
Remembering the fights with her. Cussing and yelling at her and threatening to beat her to death twice; And that alone should of drove her far away with all her drawings and novels she talked of and that made her smile. She stayed through it all for who he once been before his parents had stopped by. His dad hours out of the state penitentiary. All those hours and days and weeks of therapy relapsed when he saw their twisted faces at the door. Marissa had called the police on the them as her husband had stormed back to them. She had to fight with him to get that goddamned gun away from the two monsters before he fucking actually used it.
At times in his darkness, he found Marissa sitting on their bed hunched over painfully as she cried and prayed for her lover and a part she said was her other half. He alienated her the rest of the day whenever he did find her praying. She stayed through all of this because eventually she found her husband again and pulled him far away from the darkness. He started to see his psychologist daily again but her husband was back and she was happy. Marissa had been happy again before only dropping off her papers at work that day and coming back with her own darkness. He only sat in silence with Silver Hair as the night faded away and the dawning red sky marked a new day in hell.

3/8

4/8

>>14103264
Part 2

5/8

>>14103278
Part 3

6/8

7/8

>>14103289
missed pic

8/8

>>14103264
Could be original for once?

>>14103306
What is wrong with it? Here's another

>>14103320
You use the word vain more than twice. You're writing about a man before committing suicide (very unoriginal). And he keeps bitching about life and how it is mediocre. You're basically writing Catcher in the Rye except with a middle age man who is probably going through a mid-life crisis.

>>14103320
This prose is dense as FUCK. I say that as a dude with an ornate style too. I might be a brainlet but it took some parsing. Not a complaint though, its very well written. I don't say that lightly either. Its a well put together snippet of a story. This reads like you're doing a postmodern Notes and since I'm doing that as well it gives me something to measure against.

The reveal that she was a woman is surprising. It was written like a man in the 1890s wrote it. Once I adjusted to the prose I must say I'd like to read more. Good shit

>>14103336
embarrassing same fag

>>14103341
I liked it anon, sue me. Its similar to what I'm writing so I identify with it. People don't have to always agree you know

>>14103320
Thank you for once again reaffirming my belief that actuall quality lies in /lit/
Amazing prose, dense but lovely

>>14103336
thanks anon I appreciate it. I've been losing all faith in my writing and I'm glad you liked it.

>>14103346
>its similar to what im writing

That's why it's unoriginal, and honestly he writes like a angsty 14yo hormonal girl.
>boohoo no one understands me
>boohoo im gonna kill myself for dumb reasons
>boohoo im not gonna kill myself and write about killing myself in hopes that someone feels sad for me

>>14103353
Well that just made my night, thanks anon.

>>14103258
>Do we have a destiny/fate?
Don't do this shit
Ever

>>14103336
>>14103346
>>14103353
>>14103364
>>14103372
samefag

>>14103391
its not even a novel, its a philosophical writing on Chaos Theory/process and change. Obviously it's dispelling the idea of a destiny and fate, so obviously the question is going to be written

>>14103392
No, I wouldn't do that. It's fine if you didn't like it anon, but your complaints seem more so with the story/themes than how it's told, which is fine by me.

>>14103403
That's because I wouldn't give a shit about how it's written. I want to be entertained, I want originality, I want to learn something. Housewives didn't give a shit about how poorly written 50 Shades was, they were entertained by the story.

>>14102767
First genuinely helpful and actionable advice I've had in a crit thread. Hats off to you anon.

>>14103408
Well I didn't write it to entertain you anon,

>>14103416
Then what did you write it for?

>>14103421
Myself.

>>14103433
Then why don't you critique yourself instead of others?

>>14103435
Because I wanted some additional perspectives that would help me to express what I was aiming for better not someone to tell me that they didn't like my subject matter, which was bound to be an inevitable.

>>14103264
>>14103278
>>14103320
Okay anon, I don't know if you are samefagging in the replies or not, but the number of posters hasn't increased. Either way I'm going to give you an honest critique, but if it is you replying to yourself, please don't fill the thread with non-critique replies that amount to nothing outside of 'I like it' since this is a thread for discussion and analysis.
First, you jump straight into exposition and keep expositing. This is the biggest sin of all these excerpts. For example you show, "my chair; a brown, rustic contraption with shabby rags," and then you tell in an annoyingly superfluous way, "I don't know what fabric or designer made the chair, nor do I wish to indulge the reader with etc..." This is bad, you tell the reader you don't want to indulge them while indulging them with something you won't tell while not knowing what it is while expositing it. Very bad. If you want an example of this narrative done well, look up Tobias Wolff's Bullet in the Brain.
Second, the description when you are telling is so overtly unspecific. This goes back to the mention of the chair, but it also goes beyond that. The glass of bourbon, which is fine stuff, but not defined. Tarkovsky film, which one? Qualifiers, oh bugger me the qualifiers (a personal pet peeve, even though so many writers indulge, which is no excuse), his loathsome old man, the treacherous thoughts, wonderful son, tranquil solidarity, feeble middle-aged man. It is beyond adjective anon, the green grass is implied, but if you are in the tundra in the grass is green feel free to tell the reader. But every sentence or every other sentence? But when almost every noun gets an adjective it is poor writing, a sign that the writer is not confident in the choice of nouns and verbs and must wring their hands with the inflatable adjectives believing they are adding value and depth to the scene when they are in fact adding bloat and waste which should be cut out. This is what gives your narrator a 'loathsome' quality, it is his gassy pondering, that is what readers are complaining about in this thread to some extent. There is no action just the expositing of a self-congratulatory narrator who's narcissistic rambling is odious to them. I don't mean to come down so hard on this, but the rapidity of the replies and the same number of posters has pushed me to it, worse yet when you lash out at critics who are only motivated by your overt attention seeking. Please, post a pastebin link to the whole thing to avoid the thread bloat and just ask for a critique and leave it at that. If someone hurts your feelings with critique, that's okay, don't ignore them, process it and take what can be helpful. If you do this as a show of honesty, I will provide a more in-depth critique for you and be much less annoyed at the influx of posts.
Let me take a step back anon. I don't know how many characters are left in this comment.
Nope, too close for more. Thank you for the contribution. 1/2.

>>14103398
The point is that using a "/" is fucking dumb in formal writing
I would have done something along the lines of
>In a world of confusion, we ask the bigger questions. What is the cause of this? Do we have a destiny? A fate?
Adding in the slash fucks up the flow and takes the audience out of it . Speaking of which, this entire piece seems to lack flow. Everything feels awkward, almost juvenile in a way
Like you're attempting to emulate the authors you like instead of doing your natural

>>14103456
I like the idea of not putting in the "/" in the sentence. I write somewhat juvenile because im only 19. This is a rough draft, I hope to keep changing and editing. It's not an emulated writing though, but I am trying to make myself sound more professional towards the points I'm trying to make.

>>14103455
I didn't same fag and I wasn't really that hostile towards the one anon who didn't like it. I'm perplexed about your analysis because I think you were under the assumption I posted trite congratulatory comments to indulge myself when I didn't, so I don't know if you're trying to find problems with it. And the unspecific details I didn't think were important because it's a short story and just got off track. I thought it would be more boring if I did that. I suppose it'd only be an additional sentence each, and I only did that in the first paragraph to set the mood for generalizations and make it known this was more-so a philosophical work. I will fix it though, but I'm still confused about your analysis.

>>14103472
Im the anon that wrote the panic attack piece and I was also one of the positive posts. That may taint my praise a bit but I felt the need to defend this anon.

>>14102537
>'I noticed that sun had begun to show,' should have a determiner before sun so it reads, 'I noticed that the sun had begun to show'
Kek

>>14103472
>make it known this was more-so a philosophical work
But it isn't philosophical lmao, nothing about it is.
What's the philosophy behind it?

>>14103479
Consciousness etc.

>>14103481
How is consciousness philosophical you fucking pseud? Blink your eyes, go outside, walk around, you're conscious.

Anon are you bipolar or narcissistic?

>>14103487
Which anon is this? I don't know why you're being such an asshole. You're the pseud for such a frivolous analysis of consciousness. Is Plato's Phadeo not philosophical to you?

>>14103479
>>14103487
>>14103495
Thanks for the reminder that I'm still on /lit/

>>14103487
Aight man, plenty of philosophical works have been written on consciousness. Don't be dense.

started this the other day, still very much a rough draft.

>>14102566
Despite the grammatical errors already pointed out its not bad. I liked the whole description of the walk but the characterizations he has for the people walking by is pretty obtrusive to the whole peace. The ending is so well done I can only imagine that if you weren't leaning on this angsty crutch it could be so much more. Pretty much what this anon had to say:>>14102878

But otherwise, shows massive potentional. Bravo anon show more excerpts of you feel inclined so.

>>14103495
I am the anon who wrote on Chaos Theory and the Butterfly Effect.

Consciousness is the dumbest shit to write philosophy on because we obviously know we are conscious. People who write on it, question it, or philosophize over it are the same people that will claim it's sunny on a rainy day. Are you writing a philosophy piece? Or a novel?

>>14103536
>I write somewhat juvenile because im only 19
Opinion discarded.

>>14103264
>>14103278
>>14103455
2/2
Okay, another flaw is the listing. There is generally, nothing wrong with listing, lists can be fun, but continued listing of things that are unlicensed can become tedious quickly.
"A jack of all trades, manager, observer, poet, lover..." What does this add to the narrative that is so critical it cannot be removed?
"But what about dreams? The old precocious youngling elicits." This is bordering on parody. The 'old' 'precocious' youngling elicits. First thing to note here is that, generally, additives to dialogue weaken statement. Saying "You are evil!" He yelled angrily. Is weaker than saying, "'You are evil,' he said." To use elicited as the verb for what he is saying is incorrect usage, as the definition of elicit is what is drawn out, so what the youngling elicits is coming from someone else, not himself; and two it is unneeded wordiness. It beats around the bush when it should narrate. He said. That is all you need nine times out of ten.
Next, you have superfluous turns of phrase. For example, "A college boy, still naive to life's hardships skating down a trajectory of truth, of course with all truth being perception and all perception being subjective with subjectivity being naive." This is way to long anon, cut it down to something manageable. Naivety can be implied by his being in college and the parallelisms in the phrase turn into literal circular reasoning, which is fallacious. Roll this into the previous line to stunt this growth of verbiage. 'What about dreams?' Said the college boy, proving my point.
Next. "All life is but merely artistic. We are very unscientific. The local quire girl bellows (I assume you mean choir?), "Humans are social creatures," and I utter in disgust." There are a few things here, I utter in disgust is attached to humans are social creatures as if the narrator has said this. There is no comma preceding the choir girl bellowing this. I think your narrator is in utter disgust, as in, "I am in utter disgust," or, "I am utterly disgusted." Backing up, all life is but merely artistic should be all life is merely artistic, which should in turn be all life is artistic to wash away all the wishy washy language you insert. The same can be said of we are very unscientific, which can become we are unscientific.
What is hard to read, because it is hard to follow, because there is no narrative action, because there is only exposition, is all of these qualifying phrases. These all derive from the character, which I beg you not to excuse under the guise of persona. There is a difference between writing an annoying character and writing a character annoyingly. What we have here is a combination, writing an annoying character annoyingly. I am fine with reading an annoying character, although the philosophic pontificator using a thesaurus overbearingly is common place.
The problem is that there is nothing here. There is no conflict and there is no resolution. Out of space, I'll stop there.

>>14103545
Why because you're narcissistic and believe your age gives you a sense of superiority? Mozart was also young, and Salieri hated him.

>>14103553
Because your statement on consciousness is misguided, especially when Hobbes spent a size-able portion of Leviathan addressing it and Descartes' entire philosophy depended on it and I meat consciousness in terms of dreams, death, life, etc. I don't care how young you are, but it's a silly complaint nonetheless, but I presume I didn't do enough to change your mind, so be it.
>>14103549
I don't think a single word you said was genuine, but I presume a publisher would say the same, so I'll try and incorporate as much as I can. While the writing may be a bit undeveloped and raw the no conflict and no resolution was what I was going for, although I'd understand how that may be a bit hard to read. What authors do you consider good btw?

>>14102358
Getting anything out of this?

I am a slave to myself. I don't blame this world or those people.

Priests would tell me that if one so depraved, so morally emaciated, so brutally animal as myself, should desire an else, I should follow Christ.

Any Sophist refutes this oh-so irrational faith most passionately, and, with caesarean certainty states that one such as I must seek some sort of higher desire, that I must cast myself, blinded by passion and a sort of assuredly perverse faith, into the velvet folds of intellection.

Christ is a funny thing, as it often finds itself in such strange places. I am often told that Christ is within us, but that Christ is also, by some machinaction, imbued within that very grass, the dust, and the stone that I walk upon. I've read Spinoza, and he has told me that Christ is the all, and that the all is Christ. But then wherein lies the Christlikeness of Christ?

Fyodor Karamazov was enslaved, much as I am. His faith lied not in the Christ or empty sophistry, but only in the most carnal and most loathsome - himself. The proselytizers and philosophers may protest. They proclaim and decry our sinful calamity, and surely they must use their utmost powers to control the animal, the irrational, and the inhuman.

But, enchained as we are, us wild beasts and creatures, we gnaw our binds and snap at our masters. As we error, we grow strong. No chain can hold a monster forever, and not even the brightest light and remove that pure black inherent in the dark. Man grows old, weary of his self, and dies. The animal does not perish. The animal thrives on the death of Man, and lives on his sinew and bone, his blood and flesh. Man is greying, wrinkling, and blacked as wood is by tendrils of flame.

>>14102358
Narcissism

I’m in dark places and with dark fantasies I begrudge that which I used to admire.

>>14103549
2/3
Well, I hate to accuse and dog-pile anon, I don't want to persecute you out of the thread. So first, I apologize for my credulousness and speculation that you might have been samefagging. I want to keep the thread as close as I can to an actual workshop environment. The flip side of this is that you shouldn't try to defend your work. I know that may sound strange. Think of it like this, if you published this, would you be there to tell every reader what you meant by it when they ask a question? The work must stand alone. If it doesn't there is a problem, which is what critique is for, so coming back to critique and questioning its sincerity while defending your work is damaging to the process itself.
Moving forward, I want to tell you that my problem is not drawn from some hatred of you personally, I am simply doing critique from an indifferent position and telling you what I know from my reading of instructional texts on creative writing and my own experience.
The problem with the piece is not the exposition, which is still a problem, but what I was saying at the end of my last comment, there is no story here. What you are providing to the reader is a three-page philosophy on consciousness. It by nature cannot plumb the depths of a larger work and doesn't. It provides little in the way of character or understanding of the narrator or his family in what is considered the primary and best mode of story telling. What you need is image and characterizing detail. Pontification can come later, and it should ideally come only in the form of dialogue. Dialogue however, is not a character just opening his mouth to speak, it is the verbal exchange between characters struggling towards a goal. They struggle with words before coming to blows, this is why you will often note an exchange before a fight. So this character, if you wish to have him exposit his philosophy, should be prompted to it by the dialogue before hand which gives him no recourse but to say these very words.
If you don't do that you don't have a story. I don't know where else to go from here. There must be conflict. There must be some small plot in most cases, some plan that the story will move along through the vehicle of character. What we have here is a very loosely done character. Character should also be revealed through action. Only in soliloquy in a play does a character exposit in a way nearly similar to this. That is done out of necessity because it is hard to accomplish action on stage, so you get something like to be or not to be, which is still far more brief.
I want to assure you that this is genuine critique. I'm not posting for my own benefit here, I get nothing out of this. I started this thread to help anons who want advice on writing. It just so happens that one of the common mistakes in beginning writers is the desire to 'say something' instead of telling a story, perhaps because they believe it too 'low brow', but this is the essence of narrative.

>>14103608
Ok thanks.

>>14103608
>>14103618
Samefagging for the first time. That was very bleak advice, do you just suggest scrapping it or is there any potential at all?

>>14103565
>Because your statement on consciousness is misguided
It may be, but I don't have to prove consciousness, because I'm not a delusion schizoid who cant distinguish reality. I don't care what philosophers wrote on it because philosophers are wrong about many things.
>I don't care how young you are
Obviously you do or you wouldn't have used my age as an argument.

Not letting this one die, you faggots are actually being productive for once

>>14103621
4/2
I don't think everything needs to go, you can keep the character and his setting, wherever that may be, but I do recommend that you completely rethink it from a narrative standpoint. There should be conflict which happens preferably because of an action the character choses to take, and that will start the story. This is especially true for short stories where the format rules the content more often, you must utilize the small space you have to get the most milage possible. Think of it like attempting to get a high score in an arcade game, you play it again and again trying to get as many points in the same amount of time, or the same level. In a short story you use the page limit to force yourself into constructing a tight plot or quickly nuanced character movement. Look at Dubliners, not a great deal of external plot in some stories but the character always moves towards a new understanding. You should decide who this character really is and what motivates him. Think about the stories he could lend himself to. In that sense you will be starting over, but it needn't be from scratch since you already have a character, and in your mind he is likely much more complete than he is on the page; you can use that to your advantage.
Thank you for the contribution anon, good luck with your writing.

>>14102410
Relies on endrhyme, seems to have weird syllable counts in some spots. Also >>14102482

>>14103687
First, 'entering the bedroom, entering the bathroom, brushing his teeth, then spitting, mouthwash, flossing, etc.' this is unnecessary, also when I first read it I thought it was 'entering the bedroom, entering the bedroom,' because it was repetitive. The reader doesn't need the step by step, just say, "J put the kids to bed and went to sleep." Even this is superfluous however, because you transition through time to the point at which J get his bed, which is getting way too much page time. Cut the bed, it doesn't matter. If you wan't to make the bed matter and insist on using it as a symbol be more symbolic about it and less overt than, 'the bed, which was too small to be king sized was like a manifestation of their marriage which wasn't quite as planned." Spend more time on the concrete. You are expositing for the entire page after, "J fell into his bed."
You should tell the story of this fellow and his realization about the marriage as it happens that night while his wife is gone and cannot reassure him through actionable narrative, or you can use actionable narrative to tell the story of their marriage and when they moved to this house. The question for you to ask is; which of these two stories I have do I want to tell?
For examples of this similar stories look at Are These Actual Miles? By Raymond Carver.
Also, add dialogue tags, I know who is speaking but the first line should at least have a, 'he said' on it to sort out the audience.
A problem I think you may have is that you want to move to fast, which leads to 'telling' and exposition. Instead of taking the time to say, "Jay and his wife where already arguing as they drifted through the parking lot of 'Le Rancid Red Boca'. Clarice's colleague had told her about the place..." You can see that this requires more space, but it creates an image and characters you can relate to, characters which will become expressive vehicles for the narrative. It takes time, but it works much better than exposition. Build those scenes and those images up, allow us to move with them through the night out, or the night alone, or the first day in the new home. All of these experiences can tell us something, its up to you to decide what.
Thank you for the contribution anon, good luck with your writing.

>>14104996
I tried to adress the narrative and direction problems in my rewrite here >>14103188
The meter and rhyme are still flawed, but is this any better than the original?

>>14103687
Definitely rough; there are several grammatical mistakes (“he and his wife” not “him and his wife”). Sentence by sentence the prose is pretty good but overall the passage is kinda boring. If this is the opening to the story, I understand indulging in a little exposition, but if the next sentence after this excerpt doesn’t grab my attention ad give me a clue to what the story is about, I’m closing the book.
I like the mattress motif; it’s funny and pithy. It’s the only really successful piece of characterization I see here. If you’re gonna make us read details of the tooth brushing process, do it in a way that tells us something about the character. Ditto for the bland descriptions of adult angst which could apply to almost anyone.
A enter sense of place would also be nice; doesn’t have to be in this passage, but soon. Something I can visualize. Barnacles stuck to the bathroom mirror from when the oceans rose and sea creatures invaded the house. Anything to animate the skeleton you’ve put together. And remember to show, don’t tell.

>>14102528
>juxtaposed
This sounds like a big-boy thesaurus word and doesn't describe the coffee shop yet. Furthermore:

>against the quiet corpse of
I'm not going to recognize this as nonliteral until I reach the end of the line, which can sometimes be a good thing, but in this case isn't because I need all of this to imagine the coffee shop that's still on hold. Overall not a good opening line. And what's more, the coffee shop ends up not being the focus anyways.

>place
>space
the rhyme feels weird

I didn't really get how you got to the boa constrictor, but I like how you worked off of it. With the noose and the footing, I guess "interloper" is just a step away from wordplay.

>Fear made haste through my body
an outright good line

I questioned the idea of his panic trying to kill him, but I liked quite a bit in there. The issue is that it all just doesn't seem warranted--believable, but not warranted. Honestly if you'd just opened with this stuff for example, it've been fine, but reading it now I'm stuck wondering "the fuck does this have to do with coffee shops?" Linke I get that there's the old-verses-new thing, but most of these depictions of stress you're presenting could be copy-pasted onto any other stressor.

>last two paragraphs
eyeroll

>>14105114
>>14103188
>Meter is still fucked and the rhyme is probably more forced than the last time,
Yes.

>but is the narrative better?
Also yes. Or at least, it has better progression.

>>14103188
Glad you liked Dan McGrew. Its meter is flawless which is why I thought it was a good illustration; also the passage about the sublimity of nature which is echoed in your poem.
Actually I like the narrative of your original poem better. A guy walking his dog gets entranced by the beauty of the sunrise. What’s great about it is that it’s so realistic and relatable. The sublimity and human passions present in normal day to day life. Tripping over the root seems a little contrived to me.

>>14105180
In terms of narrative progression, Anon's original poem has about as much as Chapman's Poem by Keats. I really don't see what fault you can find with its simplicity. There's a beginning, middle, and satisfying conclusion.

>>14105247
Derp, meant to write the Chapman's Homer poem by Keats

>>14103188
It's...OK. Definitely an improvement, it does strike me as having been written by someone who has READ very little poetry. If I also had to venture a guess I imagine you're in your late teens? The poem is very inconsistent in it's style, some of the lines are extremely clumsy 'Until I was laying 'pon my back still' two lines after 'Until I tripped', it's unclear whether your conveying a story or an image. It's not very transformative, it reads like a laundry list of things you see and feel in a day and then very trite comparisons, lots of repetition you use Until a lot in the poem, which is annoying it gives it a stilted feel.

>>14105151
>This sounds like a big-boy thesaurus word
People sound really stupid when they write things like this.

my nanowrimo project. i'm just trying to get a skeleton up, so its very inconsistent, but i would love any feedback.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hRcsJId8s_mIvHoQ-EE62owfAmk-m73G-_Lu1SC77xg/edit?usp=sharing

>>14105503
Kind of a mess. Words Randomly Capitalized, randomly switching from present tense to past, needlessly edgy, written like a comic script.

>>14105582
i realize that its a mess, but did the narrative at least make sense?
>needlessly edgy
its supposed to be edgy, because its setting up a juxtaposition to the mundanity of 21st century american life, which is founded on unimaginable violence. if its too edgy though, how do i make the edginess more subtle?

>>14105630
It's not that it's subtle or unsubtle, it's just that it seems to revel in it, a teenage joy like a war movie's. "The gun didn't stop to take its clothes off" is a cool snappy phrase, but it hardly is a "criticism of violence."

>>14105640
yes, i see what you're saying. the difficulty is that i'm trying to convey that the narrator is the one reveling in the violence (hence the first person present tense) but it seems like i am as the author. also, i want my criticism of his actions to be how unlikable i make him, which is definitely lacking because for the first draft i was just trying to get down the rough sequence of action. i think i'll be able to work in a better criticism of the character in during the very last part with the priest where maybe he (the narrator) gets shot by another german right before he kills the priest. thanks for the feedback, its been very helpful

>>14103264
>one line in
>already calling his own conclusions logical
Show-don't-tell aside, this is almost as obnoxious as announcing how modest you are. But even in the event you want this character to look like a pretentious cunt, you should still be prefacing your story with some cuntery that's farther down the "show" end of the spectrum.

>the events the led
which led

>semicolon that doesn't lead to an independent clause

>I'll deign to relay them in a blah blah blah fashion that will make readers feel blah blah blah
Maybe just do the fucking work instead of telling me in advance what it's going to be like or how you think you know exactly what star-rating I'm going to give this on whatever website this goes up on. I'm sure you like chess analogies, so think of it like this: if I say that I can predict your next move, but only do so by putting my king within checkmate's reach, am I really thinking a step ahead? If there's a metagame outside of the chess match, then sure, maybe I am, but the only metagame I see here is that you're writing to feel secure rather than to express yourself. Maybe it's just the character, but that seperation sounds like a defense in its own right. Is the moral of the story just that you'd feel annoying if you commited suicide? Write about this earnestly.

>taking 25 words in a line to reach the word "curt"
>taking a whole paragraph to just call a cigar a cigar
I get that you're doing this on purpose. Regarding the last line of this paragraph though:

>Well, nevertheless I shall continue.
I'm not going to tell you to just cut all these sorts of lines, but there are better ways to use hollow comments. Dave Chappelle's good at it; he has this one mid-joke joke where he states, "[She] was asian. You could see it in her face." By being undescriptive, he's handing the pencil to the audience so that they feel like the racist ones, but in realizing that the last line is just totally meaningless you realize you've been tricked and in turn, Dave reels the pencil back. He's a yoyo comedian. But it does come back to you, and you do have to be earnest.

>>14105300
Yet you call me stupid instead of something more convoluted

I decided to write some sparse poetry, not just the poetry of the plays I work on, which needs to be more understandable. I am allowing myself to be less intelligible, to leave more blanks, resisting the temptation to use a more immediate style.

I finished 3 poems this week, but I think they needs a lot of revision. I am thinking of writing poetry just for myself, just for training verbal skills and and the fitful acceptance of conciseness. It gives one a good feeling of freedom to write something without the urge to try to see it on a published book.

This is the first poem. The English translation is mine. The original is in Portuguese.

Astronomers do not eat with the mind
More than an almond from the feast of the suns;
What the human pupil palpatates is but a peep
From the opera of countless nightingales.

Their compasses - arrows with sterile sting -
Try to fork certainties in the mists of the spaces;
Their telescopes - dogs that only eat gardens for dinner -
Get lost inside the Amazon of angels and stars.

The fires of the most ferine brains
Are mites gnawing a grain of dust
In the castle of a thousand Babels of the cosmos;
From the face of Eden they see a single pore, and nothing more.

Human reasoning sharpening its keys
It's but the caged tango of a germ inside a drop of water,
A drop from an occult sea, but one that is alive:
A warm-blooded vacuum, a nothing that breathes.

Even if we possessed all galaxies
- Submarine that opened the abysses into nudity
And collected the confession of every single lampfish -
The surface and the heavens - the beyond - would be nothing but muteness.

Our finite knowledge – a semi-swollen mosquito -
Has sucked only a single droplet of the blood of truth,
But the Hercules of the Cosmos his extinction slap
Shall give before the sapiens reaches even his puberty.

Not to-be frightens us, shadowy is its citadel
But that is where we will embrace - that is where we will be - eternity.

>>14105247
Parts are not progression. I agree that the tripping feels more contrived, but what was seen in the original poem felt less like the catalyst which caused it to me.

>>14105702

This is the original:

Astrônomos não comem com a mente
Mais que uma amêndoa do festim dos sóis;
O que a pupila humana apalpa é um pio
Da ópera de incontáveis rouxinóis.

Suas bússolas – flechas com ferrão estéril –
Tentam garfar certezas na névoa dos espaços;
Seus telescópios – cães que só jantam jardins –
Perdem-se dentro da Amazônia de anjos e astros.

Os incêndios dos mais ferinos cérebros
São ácaros roendo um grão de pó
No castelo de mil Babéis do cosmo;
Do rosto do Éden veem um poro, e é só.

O raciocínio humano a afiar chaves
É só o tango enjaulado de um germe em gota d’água,
Gota de um mar oculto, porém vivo:
Vácuo de sangue quente, um respirante nada.

Mesmo que todas as galáxias possuíssemos
- Submarino que abrisse abismos em nudez
E a confissão colhesse com todo peixe-lâmpada –
A superfície e os céus – o além – seriam só mudez.

Nosso saber finito – mosquito semi-inchado –
Sugou só uma gotícula do sangue da verdade,
Mas o Hércules do Cosmo seu tapa de extinção
Dará antes mesmo que o sapiens chegue à puberdade.

O não ser nos dá medo, sombria é sua cidade,
Mas é lá que abraçaremos – é lá que seremos – a eternidade.

>>14105704
>>14105702

These are the other 2 poems I wrote. Both are about spiders. I'm posting my English translation with the originals in Portuguese. Note that, in portuguese, there is a rhyme scheme: xAxA, xBxB and so forth.

Poem 1

Pity the spider in our homes
- That knits Babylons of crystal,
The stonemason of silver pyramids,
That in corners moulds her astral countries,

That tames hard diamond into silk
And uses it as bone to build empires,
That carves the entirety of Rome in pure pearl
In one night of spectral mysteries -

Everything to encounter the Apocalypse
In the bristles of a broom bristles, among the dust;
The Eclipse's voice not the rumble, nor the mourning, only
The tedious whistle of the cleaning lady.

The original:

Piedade da aranha em nossos lares
- Que borda Babilônias de cristal,
Pedreira das pirâmides de prata,
Que em cantos molda seu país astral,

Que doma duro diamante em seda
E o usa de osso para erguer impérios,
Que entalha Roma inteira em pura pérola
Numa só noite de espectrais mistérios -

Tudo para encontrar o Apocalipse
Nas cerdas da vassoura, entre a poeira;
A voz do Eclipse não estrondo ou pranto, apenas
O tedioso assobiar da faxineira.


Poem 2

The spider sweats brilliance through her hands
As if suns sprouted from her fingers;
The velvet of vacuum with which she invokes Edens
It's a mist far more firm than rock cliffs.

Threads of light is the commodity that she sells,
But as no one buys her ore
She recycles these curls of lightning
In the pleasure of weaving a lonely empire.

The original:

A aranha sua brilho por suas mãos
Como se sóis brotassem de seus dedos;
O veludo de vácuo com que invoca Édens
É neblina mais firme que rochedos.

Fios de luz é a commodity que vende,
Mas como ninguém compra seu minério
Ela recicla os cachos de relâmpago
No prazer de tecer um solitário império.

>>14105704
>>14105702
Pretty cool anon.

>>14105719

Thnk you, you re very kind.If there's anything you think it's not that good and could be improved, plese, let me know.

A random excerpt from the first chapter of something I'm working on. It's not the best it could be but I want to get some feedback on this part.

Dismissing her. Amai was quickly taken to the estate’s library, where she was instructed to stay until she was needed. Noticing some of Ellie’s romance novels were still left on the table, Amai opted to read them while adding books of her own to read. The sounds of music and talking were far off but still close enough to hear, Amai being extremely careful not to wrinkle her dress or look untidy while she danced throughout the room, picking up large quantities of books. She wasn’t looking forward to having to leave her home and travel to the capital but at least she could make her last moments home enjoyable. ‘Excuse me but can I stay here, I was trying to escape the Festival ball.’’ a man’s voice echoed through the room, his eyes locked on Amai. He was a high noble from the way he dressed, around her age, his dark hair and blue eyes giving him a gentle yet mysterious yet somehow familiar look. Amai expected a rude comment the moment she locked eyes with him, her purple eyes an obvious indicator of her Aeon heritage. Instead, the man only smiled. ‘What a beautiful eye colour you have there.’’ Amai could feel her shoulder’s get less tense. ‘Thank you, Sir.’’ Curtsying, she turned towards her pile of books that she wasn’t going to finish read that night. ‘May I ask for your name?’’ He looked at her with morbid interest, picking up the book about politics on the top of her pile. ‘Amai Rivera, sir.’’ He sat in the chair opposite her, studying her every move. ‘Forgive me for being ignorant sir, you seem familiar but I can not remember your name.’’ Laughter. His laughter was as sweet as it was genuine. It was so sweet, Amai cracked a smile herself. ‘In all my life, I’d never think that someone would not recognise me, their King, instantly.’’
Their King.
Those words immediately caused a blush of embarrassment to spread over her face. ‘I’m so so sorry.’’ He looked up, tears in the corner of his eyes, a puzzled look on his face. ‘Don’t be it’s the greatest compliment you could ever grant me.’’ ‘Besides the blush on your face is rather adorable and enough of an apology.’’ Shaking herself out of it, mostly so she didn’t blush any harder, Amai returned a neutral face. ‘Thank you, sire.’’ Wiping the tears from his eyes, Ray looked solum. ‘A reminder than even I am subject to be forgotten.’’ Smiling, he picked up the book on politics again, flipping through the pages. ‘Say Amai, have you ever wished to be a part of court?’’ Amai didn’t know what to answer. As if he noticed this, he gave her a pat of reassurance. ‘I don’t bite.’’ A polite smile flashed towards him, Amai put down her book. ‘It’s silly but I’ve always dreamed about being Queen.’’

>>14105805
> she wasn’t going to finish read that night.
Reading
> He looked at her with morbid interest
His morbid interest isn't implied throughout the text
>picking up the book about politics on the top of her pile
I'd suggest naming the book, showing her interest in politics rather than telling us about it outright
MY one overarching criticism is overuse of cliche, both cliched phrases and sentence construction
>cracked a smile
>his laughter was as sweet as it was genuine
for instance

>>14105805
You're missing a lot of commas.

>>14105805
First, there should be more description that is not adjective. Morbid interest, get less tense, studying her every move, blush of embarrassment, large quantities of books. These are all things you can be more or less specific about, but don't tell us these things, show them. How many books? The blush is obviously embarrassment, it doesn't need to be said. How do her shoulders visibly get less tense? What does the 'high noble' clothing look like (show the reader it is now a track suit or a wife beater)?
Second, melodrama and sentimentality are running amuck here. The king (of where and who?) literally cries when someone doesn't recognize him, which is a huge overreaction. The blushing back and forth is to easy an indicatory of embarrassment. Think about how you would react if someone embarrassed you, watch a video on youtube of someone getting embarrassed. How do they act, with violence, with fear, with sadness, do they retreat, do they play it off? This says a lot about character, which is what you are trying to convey. Make your interactions more realistic, more nuanced, and more definitively in character.
Third, appropriateness to plot. Why do you expect the reader to believe that Amai doesn't know the king? Why doesn't she know the king is going to be the first question they ask. Next is going to be, "Why would she tell the king she always wanted to be queen?" That is a lot of cheek for someone who didn't even know who he was. Then they will likely ask, "Is the king really asking if she wants to be a part of the court?" The court should provide a benefit to the king, she doesn't know who he is so she surely isn't invested in politics, despite her book selection. Then you have the absolute serendipity of the king appearing at this library and then moving into the library to escape the ball and choosing to talk to Amai.
Cliches are also present. "I don't bite," and, "It's the greatest compliment you could ever grant me." The trope of the 'I don't want to be famous, life is hard,' king/noble/celebrity. The cliche of the special eyes derived from a special heritage. Don't be afraid to defy convention. The surest way to do this, if you are wondering, is not to fight against it, but to ignore it in pursuit of a 'true' story and 'true' characters. Think about what weighs on the mind of this king, what his duties are, and what his personality is like. It will influence his word choice, his diction and syntax. Has he been trained for public speech? Is he egalitarian or elitist? Do the same for Amai, characterize her through everything she does, what kind of books does she choose? What are their titles? Are they all glossy and colorful, or does she go for the books with no external markings that are coming apart.
Build up the scenery too, this takes place in a library. Is it big, small, dusty, clean, old books only, new books only, well organized, out of order, dark or bright? Build a scene.
Thank you for the contribution anon.

>>14105805
Overall I like it, but you need to work on punctuation. An editor would fix this, but it's really the kind of thing you should be able to do by yourself. I would also put dialogue on it's own line, like I have in pic related, as it makes conversations easier to follow, especially if there's a lot of back and forth. The banter between Amai and the King is... ok? It feels a bit rushed and unreal though. I'd drag it out a bit more if I were you and maybe describe their movements a bit more. At the moment it seems like the king teleports from the door to her side in a second. Also, pick 'single' quotes or "double quotes". You seem to be using both.

Mine is an excerpt from a military sci-fi novel. It's a first draft and needs a lot of editing, but I'm looking for general impressions of quality and what my weaknesses might be.

>>14106058
You're doing too much telling. The reader can probably infer from the older man's beard length and height that he is older.

>hang loosely
Cut loosely

>it's
its
Don't tell us that the older man is def experienced. We can infer from how he carries himself and chastises the younger that he is more experienced.
Italicize thoughts

Overall the prose seems inoffensive and the content is by the numbers military fiction.

>Hard times had fallen on once-proud Alrive, for a foreign force was now at her gates. The mightiest battering ram she had ever seen was now in her vicinity, slowly making its way to challenge her as so many had before.
>The struggle for Alrive was most real, despite her scream, no aid would answer, for she was completely blockaded. The ram quickly broke her gate and the ground became flooded with the blood of its defenders. The penetration was complete, the enemy was inside of her, but it would not stop.
>The wrecked infiltrators took it to their own devices and began to pillage Alvire's two prosperous monasteries, yet the citadel of Alrive stood firm.
>The invaders noticed the unoccupied territory and made haste for it. They punished the door of the citadel, but they didn't open, thus they bashed them again, and again. The speed of every push increased, but also gained more power and became rougher.
>Alrive could feel the citadel falling as the rain clouds began gathering. When the enemy made their final push, wolfs of the nearby forest began howling, and the storming rain suddenly broke as the citadel's gate was no more. Alrive was now soaked in its own blood, but the water from the sky was also there.
Is it too straightforward?

How is one to infer from such a cacophony of malignant stimuli that one is perceiving reality as it is presented really, and not merely a farcical representation of the fundementally innate biases written in the very DNA of the beholder? I say, with such gusto as to affirm my true belief to the casual observer, that reality is such an intangible, nay, a slippery nigger that it ought to be discarded entirely. Yes, the very concept of there being an objective such representation of our true experience is plainly a nonsensical belief. That we may find the truth, were we to only remove the veil of illogical preconditioning, is to posit the wrong query.

>>14106803
Appreciated.

>>14106837
>Is it too straightforward?
No anon it is not straightforward enough. You talk around the events, preferring anything other than the focus of the narrative. Don't focus on the wolves or the rain or the analogy. Instead walk through the siege, preferably with characters who are attacking, defending, or observing from a neutral position. What do they know about the city and how does that impact their view of events. You should have a character to focus the story. If you decide to do this all in narration than at least show us what is happening, who is attacking, who is defending, how the city knows no aid will come.
"Hard times had fallen on once-proud Alrive, for a foreign force was now at her gates." Hard times is an understatement and a qualifier, instead say, "The (fictional name here) army/legion besieged the gates of Alrive. (Description of gates and the battlefield near them). The runner had signaled from the western hill, there would be no aid. The knights withdrew from the gate, leaving behind a garrison of starved peasants and injured militia, retiring to the citadel; there they prepared for a final charge, mounted, with lances couched. Etc..." If this is passing exposition that you don't want to elaborate on, treat it biblically or historically. Think about the way the bible or Herodotus would cover the events, briefly and powerfully.
Thank you for the contribution, if you have any more questions or clarifications just post them. Good luck with your writing.

>>14104981
I reread my work and your advice and remembered my main intention was for him to relay the events, but keep getting distracted by small details to the point where he fell in love with life, but still kills himself because he already committed to doing it and I wanted to use it as a criticism of dogma. I'll rework it to make it more of a story I suppose.

Opinions on characters walking through a city? My second chapter is about 2500 words short and I figure I figured I'd have him walk home due to the events earlier in the chapter. I'd get to describe this city through a bleak burgerpunk lense and let him interact a bit with some caricatures.

>>14102358
The destination matters not,
The rain it patters soft,
On vapid glares, and sour stares,
And yet I stay aloft.

Indifferent now, to pains gone by,
What use is having tears?
The boiling sea, chaplain and me,
Dried up in Old Algiers.

What use is all the blowing cheeks,
Against a Zephyr Gust?
Why shy away, from where you'll lay,
One day a mound of dust.

Spare me your milk and honeyed heart,
Your eyes forecast the doom,
For guilty looks, they rest on crooks,
Inside the bleak courtroom.

Bring out that tool of my demise,
And lay it down ground height.
Needn't grandeur, so long as you're
All greeting me with spite.

>>14107183
Thanks, anon, but um... I left the details vague and never called Alrive a city for a reason. That being... well, it's a euphemistic description of a rape. Alrive is a woman, the "foreigner force" is a man, "the water from sky" isn't actually water.
When I asked is it too straightforward, I was asking if it's too oblivious, and considering you missed it... That's good.

>>14107537
I didn't miss it, that was what I was referring to when I said don't focus on the analogy. The phrase, 'penetration complete' made it very obvious that it was meant to be a depiction of a rape. If you want to describe a rape, describe a rape, if you want to describe a siege describe a siege, don't use analogy or euphemism to avoid both and describe neither. That was my point. Good writing relies on description, the showing instead of the telling, if you use euphemism you aren't showing. This was why I focused on critiquing the description of the city instead of discussing the analogue of the rape, which I felt was heavy handed in most places, specifically, "The speed of every push increased", and, "the penetration was complete, the enemy was inside of her."
Describing her breasts as monasteries is also ridiculous. This comes across as comical at some points and edgy at others, my recommendation to alleviate this is to show more subtlety and tact, or be blunt and factual about what is happening.

>>14107599
I see, thanks.

>>14106837
>Hard times
This is a little "Aw shucks!" for what you're talking about, both in and out of the metaphor. Maybe I just hear this phrase differently though.

>but the water from the sky was also there.
Noone would opt to say this instead of "rain" unless they were talking about a penis.

I don't really see the point of this metaphor being a metaphor. The veiling didn't really show me anything new about rape, and you draw your analogy only to the physical. I almost think you're mistaking the literal/metaphorical distinction itself with the physical/nonphysical distinction. What's even the difference between writing about this as you have, and writing it without the metaphor? Is it just censorship?

>>14105909
This is very much appreciated.
>>14106049
I should make it more clear that he wasn't crying because Amai didn't notice him but because he was laughing so hard.
Thank you so much for this anon, I wanted some feedback on it because I was re-reading it and it didn't feel right and I wondered what was off.
>>14106058
One weakness right off the bat, setting description. Where is this taking place? Why would they behave like this? What's going on? It feels less military sci-fi and more post-apocalyptic. Two, it's generic. There's nothing that grabs me, the reader. Otherwise, it's seemingly fine.

The valleys were as empty as I felt, the wind presided over the bowing stalks of wheat and a feeling of nostalgia aired its ugly head over the setting horizon.


It’s not like it used to be. There were never fields here, this was all grass when I was a kid.


You miss the grass? Wheat’s just profitable grass.

The owner had a facetious stoicism to him I could only admire. The people who can stay strong while laughing behind their own backs are the ones to be trusted. He also wore the sad smile of an alcoholic optimist. Strained for so long it almost seemed dried in its form.


When I was young I’d come up here with my sister and she’d paint the fields.

Washes of green meeting blue, with me sitting on a multicolored blanket.

It’s been years since I’ve been out of the city.

Years since she’s been alive.


My eyes dropped to the dirt supporting my boots. We started walking towards dinner as the sun found its place to land. I smelled the smoke of meat before we even saw the house. We entered along with the chocolate retriever that had been pawing at the potential solution to its hunger problem. There were relics of lives strewn carefully on every available surface, shells and jade Buddhas on small tables that contained hundreds of foreign coins beneath their glass surfaces. Like an homage to the entire world. Relics of faces in the form of fading portraits and photographs, a pipe in the grinning mouth of a possible brother to the old farmer. Even a stuffed baby alligator on the wooden support beam in the den. I felt well acquainted as I entered the jaundice-lit kitchenette. His wife had the kindest face I’d ever seen, the ends of her smile curved like they were lifted by fishing hooks from heaven. Her eyes though... a waxed glaze from days of menial work could hardly withhold a spark of true youth, something rarely found in a blue-collar sixty year old, yet beautiful when found in anyone. We sat and ate and talked then laughed, the cheap wine tasted like champagne and these two farmers were the hosts of honor. I fell asleep that night with a bliss less-often afforded to a city dweller than I’ve ever cared to notice.

I remember bird songs silenced.
In an explosion of brilliance.
Wind before the storms.
Purple, yellow, pink then grey.
My seconds lived them out.
And as I fell beneath the grass,
the Earth flew to the sky.

it scanned us with the self diagnosing black accuracy of a predator with a broken leg
the weird fish was sprawled like it was thrown back from the heavens or some place above
limb and twisted fin splayed like a clock of all hours/twelve hands
before the circlet of nervous legs swaying on the docks
the other men gaped and drank their coffees
all were pale and groggy as the brave and foolish joked of bigger catches they'd made
the man who'd found the thing had a nervous smile as the workers
paid their disgust and respect to the thing
I'd just put my lunch and watch away
when I saw the captivated crowd of mongers and fishers staring upon a beast they'd never think to catch or cut
The harbor master seemed out of sorts leafing through the watermarked phone-book the dock kept on reference.
while looking to the circled fish
That's horrible, is it dead?
you're not wrong, and I've no idea
what is it?
the man who spoke had his arms across his chest
it was dragged up 30 minutes ago
I figure it's a squid that was eating something.
I'd never seen two species to ever match in such disharmony
it's skin bore a uniform as perfect black as a figure you'd not want behind you at night
it was 7 by 7 feet in diameter and it had the appearance of a squid with the whisker like appendages of a catfish
and eyes blacker than night with a singular pinprick of yellowed star in the center
flicking back and forth among its statuesque inspectors like a metronome for a screeching mad violin
most men lingered past an hour while others went to their boats for less fearsome catches.
The harbormasters weren't concerned with getting work done so the dockworkers watched eagerly as
two police officers strutted towards the thing and halted like shivering scarecrows in the salty wind.
The taller officer spoke to the harbormaster as the other just fell into rank with the onlookers.
I see why you called, most of us were laughing when you called about a squid. But
this is no squid, I have no clue what that could be.
Sure is ugly though ,do you have the number for the university? I expect their white-coats would know.
And they didn't. In fact they were so bewildered by the uncanny sight that they enthusiastically paid the man who caught it 200$.
They loaded it into their van.
Then the van zigzagged up the hill from the dock to the university where the catch of the day became a sailors tale, and a scientific query.

>>14106058
Too play-by-play in at least one spot.

>The older man saw him first, recoiling
This nigga dead. The instant I saw him "recoiling" you Newton's Lawed him. Bang. Except, no, now he's raising his gun up and then I've got to pull the bullet out of him and then I've got to put the bullet back in but then wjen I drop him to the floor I've got to pick him back up to add two more shots before moving on to the mext guy who, somehow, hasn't shot me already--slow. You use the word "instant" but it doesn't feel that way.

>Flicking the rifle's safety off with a meaningful click
Fucking kek. Generally the takedown of this second guy was better.

>They're in the cab!
An exclamation? Is this how the translation sounded?

>as he quickly examined the vehicle's controls
Just "quickly examining the vehicle's controls" would sound better to me. I think you're pushing too hard that he's multitasking.

>>14107814
The university looked like shit and smelled like college students. It had a stunted clock tower and the hallways of a high-school.
Through the back door, past the empty offices of academic advisers and into the biology annex the procession went.
Holding the strange-smelling stranger in a plastic tarp, on which they placed it on a lab desk.
Looks lovely said a younger graduate.
Looks fucking scary said a grey-haired one.
Hurry, we need to record everything this thing does before it dies on us.
Professor Wymark, head of the biology department and a strangely long-neck tossed a camera to a student and rolled up his sleeves.
Anyone here who's lacking a thesis would be wise to pay attention.
An academic circle surrounded the the table as the camera flashed.


This a very rough draft I wrote in the notes of my phone, so I apologize for the cringe dialogue and lack of pubctuation. I commend whoever can work their way through it.

>>14107721
>What's even the difference between writing about this as you have, and writing it without the metaphor? Is it just censorship?
Playing it straight is cringe and dull. Its point is to:
1. make imagery colorful
2. make it multi-interpretable
3. hide vulgarism

Someone found a future in a shell closed with glue
where dreams never wake and there's nothing left to do
dusk as bright as day peered through the crack at dawn
and the moon has left as the world goes out of turn
where lonely in sacred sorrow wallow in self-spun prayer
as friendly fake fortunate souls in soft godless air
faces that rest on their hinges some more open than the sky
bearing books born by hands writ by men older than night
puppets that tamed their shadows long beautiful and dead
they read bohemian bibles forged of paper burning dark
to the amber coated god from a time left undone
with eyes dwelling in keyholes, and sight keener than wise
a day locked from within is all they'll ever find

Mercury dew slips from the silver song of time.
Corrosive in its melody, melting the heart of life.

It was a Monday when I died and Friday when they buried me, you see the funeral home was booked full Tuesday to Thursday, I’ll never know how the weekend went but I’m told it was going to be wild. The most compelling party to ever become a rumor was happening that weekend, supposedly the largest the uvic student apartment complex had ever seen. Jarold Roch, the self proclaimed officiator of inebriation had bought a majordomo in the form of a spider monkey for said occasion. Jarold possessed the highly sought after trait of being predictably unpredictable, and his cohort, King George acted like a primate. Rumor spread like a mass migration that there was going to be more alcohol than blood in the building, Roch was amused by the casual mythicality of these rumors yet seemed ignorant to the lethality of the statements. As to how I died, well that seed was planted three years before the party of the century blacked-out. It began the day I graduated, when Jarold completed his sixth year of undergraduate psychology. A career student and a full-time psycho. He was my best friend, but we could learn to hate each other.

The scales broke as the gavel beat the guilty party to death.
The trial was a complete failure and his lawyer wouldn't even meet his eyes
Jack's fate had been chosen as his arms were led before him from the courtroom,
his limited tears falling between the rising applause of the public.
TO THE CHAIR! TO THE ROPE! cried the victims mother.
He was wading through waves of dread as the door fanned slowly to a close.

2 Weeks Before The Trial
Forgive me, someone has to as I’m a lazy asshole. She’s shaking her head like a paint can and we’re sitting at the outskirts of her mother’s wake. I was the friend she invited The relatives are getting the idea and leaving us alone.
"Can we go?"
I shake my head yes in solidarity. Tonya’s out of tears and we’re heading outside to the volvo. The air’s shivering on this meek November morning and the colors have a desaturated gleam to them.
“I can’t believe my aunt said you shouldn’t be here”
I wanted to give the hallmark excuse of “she’s mourning” but she hadn’t looked phased at all.
“Y’know she believes in reincarnation?”
“Maybe she’s a masochist.”came out of me as the car lurched in movement.
We were moving forward and eventually arrived at the less financially-inclined graves of the cemetery. I’m kicking the dirt and her dad looks angry at me, he had been crying earlier. Tony was crying and pouring her guts on the grass, I really felt for her and was crouched beside her, but it was so strange being there, I wish there were less people attending. Her cousins were snickering towards me. I suppose I should mention that I’m the most hated man in my town, I’m barely 19 and Satan's a saint compared to me.

4 Weeks After The Trial
"You always were a pendulous conversationalist Jack, backtracking and then getting ahead of yourself."
"What are you pretending to think about?"
Were the words he heard after the flick of the switch.
The chair had been hot, cold and then numb, he was still in the clinical and hideously green death chamber.
Like some re-purposed hospital room. He still was... sitting there as two guards with shaved heads were removing him.
"Where am I? That's what they always ask."
Jack twisted towards the sound when he noticed he had no legs or body to speak much of.
Yet he had a shadow and he supposed it was talking to him.

>>14107935
Sounds like you just vomited a bunch of adjectives on a page

It was the first human ever to come through Junktion’s customs portal, at least so far as Pelax knew. He spotted the frail creature standing several beings deep in the queue, right behind an Ish mother with a brood of a dozen hatchlings playing on top of her carapace. The human reached out to try to pet one, only to get her finger pinched by a suspicious claw.

Pelax suppressed a chuckle. In the five years since their escape from containment, humans had quickly developed a reputation for sticking their digits where they didn’t belong. At least this time, a lesson was dispensed quickly. Being a professional, Pelax sat on his curiosity and dealt with the more mundane citizens quickly and efficiently until the human girl was next in line.

At least he was pretty sure she was a girl. He was hardly an expert. He waved her forward with a flipper. “ID and travel chit, please.”

The girl reached into a cheap cloth pouch slung over her shoulder and produced the required documents. Pelax took them and ran them through the authenticator. Orange meant they were genuine or such high-quality forgeries that she deserved to pass anyway. Then, Pelax looked at the name column.

“Firstname Lastname?”

“Yeah, I know,” the girl said. “It was a data-entry error. They keep saying it’ll get sorted out any day now. My real name is—”

Pelax held up a flipper. “For the duration of your visit to Junktion, your ‘real’ name is Firstname Lastname. It’s fitting, really. After all, you’re the first human I’ve met.” Pelax was not versed in human facial expressions, thus he was unsure if the complete rigidity was a sign of good humor.

“I’m not the first one to say that, am I?”

“Everyone says that. I almost said it before you just so I didn’t have to hear it again.”

“Okay, I get the point.”

Firstname bowed her head. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bite your, er, head off. It’s been a long couple of months. That is your head, right?”

Ignore leechposters.

>>14107796
Sounds like something Rupi Kaur shitted out. Making a poem about the sky is the most unoriginal thing in poetry.

>>14107959
If I responded to multiple people why can't I make multiple posts?

>>14107978
It's about a nuclear explosion. The title is fallen sun

>>14107959
I posted my poem and then critiqued 6 other people's in separate posts. Your idea is sound but it's not practicable.

>>14107935
First, jumping around in time is disorienting, which is why it should be used only when it cannot be avoided. Think about what you need to say with a flash to the past or the future and find a way to say it in the chosen moment. If the body of this story is concerned with this character's life after death than you should follow him through that moment only. You can incorporate his past through side characters, few and important side characters that is, which will get around exposition through characterizing detail.
I have said it before and will say it a million more times but, show don't tell. I understand the desire to go for lyrical language and say things in new ways, it is fun on its own, but in a story it will bloat sentences and cripple the attempts you make to convey meaning. For example, "The air's shivering on this meek November morning." The air isn't shivering, the people are and the morning can't be meek so the reader will ask, why? Another example, "The scales broke as the gavel beat the guilty party to death." The scales didn't break and the guilty party wasn't beaten to death, he was sentenced to death, so again the reader will ask, why? Just say, "'The sentence is death.' The judge knocked his gavel, looking down on him."
Also, more critically than the time jumping you POV jump, which you shouldn't do, it is very hard to justify and harder to get away with. My other advice still applies here, focus on one moment and one POV in that moment, which here seems to be the death and what comes after.
Any other questions, just ask. Thank you for the contribution to the thread anon. Good luck with your writing.

>>14107947
If Pelax is an alien who is not familiar with, wouldn't it make sense that he would take a more analyzed approach? I mean instead of:
>At least he was pretty sure she was a girl
something like:
>At least he was pretty sure it was a female

There are specific word choices I'd choices, I'd substitute like "pretty" for "quite". And "said", which I know is a controversial opinion because "much, the silent word", but there are so many words that could be used and they all would tell something, unlike the bland "said".

I'd like the end on "otherwise it's fine", but I feel like saying it's that is the worst saying type of "critique", thus I'll be blunt. Sci-setting where the protagonist is an alien, should, in my opinion, feel alien; if they act and think like a human, why even bother making them an alien?

Another thing is that is, if Pelax hasn't ever seen a human, you'd think he would give more detail about its physical appearance and mannerism. I mean, when I saw first saw a transexual in the wild I paid attention small details and its strange behavior.

>>14108246
I don't shift perspectives in that piece. This was the first thing I wrote for a story idea I have so it's a little omniscient and all over the place. I intend to edit it down and make it more linear in the end.

I agree I can be too lyrical and esoteric in my descriptions at times. I'll admit the scales broke is a touch over indulgent. I think there is a place for surrealist prose though, I don't think it all has to be utilitarian.

>>14108498
>I don't shift perspectives in that piece

>Jack's fate had been chosen as his arms were led before him from the courtroom, his limited tears falling between the rising applause of the public.
>I shake my head yes in solidarity
This is moving from third to first. It goes back to third later. You probably got lost in the first carried over from dialogue and didn't realize it, but it is there and it is a problem with the piece.

>>14108498
I have a lot of problems with the prose but your use of imagery isn’t one of them. I agree that he wants you to be too utilitarian

>>14108568
What problems do you have? I honestly want to get better. I know it comes of as awkward and stunted in places, but I'm not much of an editor.

>>14108557
That's fair, I intend these to be different scenes so I didn't see it like that.

>>14108557
>>14107785 is also me, I put more effort into the prose there.

>>14107228
You can write a book doing that if you're not bad at it

https://www.roryedd.com/post/164689890894

Give it a shot!

You have a very good grasp on natural description. You could honestly teach basically everyone itt about it, me especially. I felt your descriptions as I read them. Good job.

Dialogue is stilted as hell though. Most people talk with some amount of quirks based on where there from. It’s unavoidble, even people who speak in the standard American dialect.

>>14108612
>>14108658

Within the shadow-fractal city of slowly cracking glass a family attempts to repair their small shard of it. The music bounced off the keys of the slouching jazz pianist. There was smoke in my nostrils and I could smell stale alcohol on her breath through the cloud. Historically speaking, smoking is a cardinal sin when in yuppy bars, yet the bartender seemed more apathetic than the bottles on his shelf. It was very late, and my cigarette was nearly done.

“The rent’s an issue. Maybe that’s an understatement.” came slurring out of Jenna, my sister.

I was a little drunk myself, not confessional drunk, but drunk enough to think I needed to. Cyclical reasoning was starting to seep in.

“So you’ve been saying.” I said in an exhale, smoke curling like a clef.

“Do you have a plan at all? I mean usually you’re pretty clutch in moments like these.” She had a history of irresponsibility and urgent resourcefulness.

Sprinkling notes fell on distracted ears from the spotlit corner.

“The plan was to drink away any hope of a plan.” She took her glasses from the beer stained table and placed them back home, daringly too low on her nose.

“I went to get a payday loan from the one that’s joined to the mattress store on Quadra street.

“Cash at last?”

“That’s the one. Well it turns out we have a difference of opinion when it comes to proof of income.” The pianist sipped at his beer with his off-hand, and then marked something on a piece of paper, non-sequitur chords springing from his right.

“What does that even mean?” The butt was swimming in the last dreggs of my glass. She stared at the ember dying.

“Well they wanted my paystub and I said I’m innocent until proven guilty.”

“I’m guessing they’re not a humorous sort at the mattress loanery.” The numbers were dwindling and we made two of the three customers still there. A bearded man was sleeping in a corner booth, like a park bench that had crashed and wrapped around the table.. It was coming up on twelve hours since happy hour, only twelve to go..

“Not intentionally. Either way I’m pretty much fucked.”

“If you say so.” The Real-Book was closing and the long fingered sloucher was standing up. The muzak ending in a silence that provoked solution.

“I can lend you some cash, but you need to get a job.”

She looked up from her fidgeting.

“You don’t have to do that.” Her hand grabbing for my retreating forearm.

“Of course I do, you just said so.” My drunken smile was annoying myself.

“It’s fine, we all need help from time to time. Same goes for jobs too” Why do I push people away with friendly gestures? The pianist approached our booth self-assured, yet vaguely pathetic like he was selling roses, his lead sheets shielding his chest. Before veering quickly to the right and exiting to his raining road home. He'd left a note on the table by her hand.

Shades of gay I got
shades of grey to stainless steel
what’s the deal?
Falling through the stripes,
Write that shit down--
I got remorse but
I can’t even imagine a sword
big enough to
fit in my hand
Who the fuck are you?
I’m not your boy
I’m not your man
I don’t know you
you’re not my friend
It’s like catching butterflies
parry every flash of glint you see
You think I got another way to get laid?
When you got the legs of a pickpocket
you just steal
What’s the deal?
Not enough, but too coercive;
people act like you learn cure it if you just some learn cursive
but self-help is how you got here
and now you're hurting.

Shades of gay I got
shades of grey to stainless steel
what’s the deal?
Falling through the stripes,
Write that shit down--
I got remorse but
I can’t even imagine a sword
big enough to
fit in my hand
Who the fuck are you?
I’m not your boy
I’m not your man
I don’t know you
you’re not my friend
It’s like catching butterflies
parry every flash of glint you see
You think I got another way to get made?
When you got the legs of a pickpocket
you just steal
What’s the deal?
Not enough, but too coercive;
people act like you can learn cure it if you learn some cursive
but self-help is how you got here
and now you're hurting.

>>14108588
>>14108581
I am this>>14108557 >>14108246 anon, so I cannot tell you what problems he sees in your prose but I can elaborate on some of mine since you have expressed a desire to better your writing. On a side note, even in separate scenes I suggest not changing the perspective. Don't take my word for it however, take the word of John Gardner and several other literary critics and professors of creative writing. It is disorienting, the reader is snapped out of the narrative trance by it and it likely won't accomplish something so important that you should bother.
Some of these prose issues I have already gone over, 'the gavel beat the guilty party to death,' and, 'his arms were led before him from the courtroom,' as well as, 'the chair had been...numb.' Most of these are issues of personification which can be useful in some circumstances but distracting and un-concise in others. It defers the feeling of a character in the worst cases, the chair example here. The character feels the sensations of heat, cold, and numbness. The feeling of the chair is relative to the person experiencing the feeling, but the chair will never feel anything unless you are writing a piece of magical realism.
The next relates to the most basic principle of creative writing, which is the building of scenery and image. This often comes down to us in the phrase, "Show, don't tell" and one example of this can be found here, "We were moving forward and eventually arrived at the less financially-inclined graves of the cemetery." The location of the character comes after movement which forces the reader to imagine the character walking in a blank limbo before they alight on the setting of a cemetery. Here also you refer to the graves as 'less-financially inclined' but the graves don't have financial inclinations, people who pay for graves have financial concerns, "I know your grandmother means a lot to you dear, but these bills, I don't think we can afford any of the nicer options." What other problem arises from this example? The lack of concrete image, the financial inclination of the graves is meant to conjure an image but it is subjective and vague when it should be specific and concrete, "They passed the ex-mayors marble obelisk which was decorated with gold embossed high-rises on the sides, then the stone cross of Jethro Cunnings who had been involved with the railroad; then at last they came to (her mothers) headstone. It was more like a plaque, which did not stand, but laid flat against the wet grass. The stone was rough cut and jagged, the lettering was plain." Something like that creates an image, probably not the one you are looking for, but an image nonetheless. You should focus on the creation of such images and the way they relate to the story you are telling. Think of it like directing a movie or laying out the storyboard in your mind that you will 'shoot' the footage of in prose.

>>14108750
I appreciate your advice about building a scene, I'll work on incorporating that more. I think the chair example still works though. It describes the sensations he felt before death while also explaining the means in a concise way. I think the fact that the chair felt numb to the touch is a cool way of describing the exact moment of death. I also think changing the pov if used for a purpose and tastefully can work. I'm not saying that's necessarily the case here though.

I've always been better at descriptions and imagery than prose structure. It's definitely something I have to work on.

>>14108750
I always thought that explaining the passage of events in a speedy, almost retroactive way from the pov of a young and rash character was cool. Building a scene steadily seems to fit a more mature character in my mind. Perhaps it comes off as lazy or trying too hard though.

>>14108612
>https://www.roryedd.com/post/164689890894
First paragraph is good, but I'd never care to write something like that, although it is poetic and sets a nice template.
> She appeared to be in her early twenties, like Henry.
Ruins the paragraph. Let that come out naturally. Already establishing a romance it seems. You can't do the dreary opening and then have good luck come out of left field. The opening must change to optimistic if that's the case. I zoned out because it felt dull and hackneyed. Your story-telling ability is good as is your flow, but it seemed awfully frivolous philosophically and stylistically to me. Akin to comfortable, but not serious literature.

>>14107935
Excellent opening paragraph
>Forgive me, someone has to as I’m a lazy asshole
What?
>>14107935
>The air’s shivering on this meek November morning and the colors have a desaturated gleam to them.
You're out of your league with this sentence
>>14107935
>wanted to give the hallmark excuse of “she’s mourning” but she hadn’t looked phased at all
Hallmark isn't the right word. Trite would be preferable, but I'd remove it entirely. Only use excessive words when it makes it more poetic not to sound witty or funny.

The rest is more the same. It has no feel or flow to it. You'd benefit from reading more and writing more. Get to work anon.

>>14107926
I enjoyed this. Has a Kerouac feel to it. I'd read more, but worry it'd grow tiresome quickly.

>>14108857
Suicide was too strong. I'd wish you'd explore this character more. This started out terrible, but towards the end I was extremely impressed with this. This is fantastic and relatable anon. Please stretch it out and do not end with a suicide. I think this could be a novel and I would definitely read it. Make it about Kay though, and switch perspectives where the guy remembers her and go back and forth.

>>14108658
I don't agree with this analysis. I thought his storytelling was impressive, and the dialogue was fine, but the narrative was dull and structurally trite.

>>14108828
The chair doesn't work. It isn't that the description isn't cool anon, it isn't how writing is meant to work. It is clumsy writing which originates in incorrect usage of grammar that transitions the feelings of a character onto an inanimate object. You are not telling the reader that the chair was numb to Jack, you are telling the reader the chair felt numb itself or that the chair itself felt a numbness. Read John Gardner's The Art of Fiction or Steering the Craft by Le Guin or The Portable MFA. They will do more for you than I can in 3000 character limits.
>>14108844
This is sometimes called 'pathetic fallacy' and is a clumsy stylistic usage. For example, the character is going through literal hell and he is having a hard time of it so the writer starts lengthening paragraphs to make reading the book a slog. That only accomplishes making the reading a slog. It's like a post where the first letters of each sentence make a word, in writing it is a gimmick at best and at worst a travesty that will break you narrative. In this specific example of introducing a scene it is just good usage to introduce setting first. That is how fiction works. You have a world and then the character interacts with it. You don't do these things out of order out of a misperception of 'style'. Please, for your own good I'm begging you. It's like a high-school artist refusing to learn gesture and figure drawing because he likes the style of anime.
I'm at my wits end lads. For god's sake, please. You don't need to defend an excerpt I can't hurt it, I can only tell you what is structurally and stylistically wrong with it and give you examples of what to read to move forward. I include a thanks for the contribution and good luck with writing in every post so I don't hurt anyone's feelings. Please just let the critique stand, its usually not about style anyway, its about structure which isn't up to much debate. Please don't grieve for adjectives lost, or argue for telling instead of showing.

>>14108874
What do you mean I'm out of league with that sentence? That I'm trying too hard, or that it's just clumsy?

With the hallmark description I was trying to make a connection to a card you'd buy for someone grieving, but it just came out as a mess. The lazy asshole line is contrived and confusing as well

You've got a point that an author trying too hard to be clever is annoying to read. I only started writing seriously in may so you're right that I need more practice. I also need to stop smoking pot when I write.

>> 14108678 I also wrote this, I think it suffers from the same problems though.

>>14108932
>What do you mean I'm out of league with that sentence? That I'm trying too hard, or that it's just clumsy?
That you sound weak and uncertain in your descriptions as if you don't trust yourself

>>14108932
>With the hallmark description I was trying to make a connection to a card you'd buy for someone grieving, but it just came out as a mess. The lazy asshole line is contrived and confusing as well

I'm guessing this was your first or second draft. I'd recommend working on it more, reading more, and posting on here less. Set some time aside each day to do so. I started writing about 2-3 years ago and didn't see any progress until I started to take things more seriously about a year ago. I read at least 10 pages a day (I try for more) and write as much as possible always making sure to edit. Have coffee, beer, coke, etc. to relax you, but not too much. I wouldn't say this if there weren't things about this that I did actually like.

> You've got a point that an author trying too hard to be clever is annoying to read. I only started writing seriously in may so you're right that I need more practice. I also need to stop smoking pot when I write.

That's not really your problem though, but I'd imagine pot hurts writing, but apparently Pynchon was a huge stoner, so you might not need to if you think it helps.

>>14108950
>I wouldn't say this if there weren't things about this that I did actually like.
>>14108932
I meant there were parts about this I liked mainly you seemed to have some intuition of narrative and story-telling, but are very unpolished.

>>14108922
In experimental writing you find tonal scenes mimicking the character's emotions. Shakespeare used the pathetic fallacy quite often to great effect. I'm not even defending my writing anymore, just the approaches to writing you're dismissing.

I'll concede that I should learn more about structure for my own betterment. I shouldn't make a virtue out of ignorance and I'll check out that book you mentioned.

>>14108932
>>14108678
> Historically speaking, smoking is a cardinal sin when in yuppy bars, yet the bartender seemed more apathetic than the bottles on his shelf. It was very late, and my cigarette was nearly done.

Not particularly literary and very clunky, but authors like Dostoevsky and Houllebecq (while translations) do have parts like this.

> pretty clutch
I find contemporary slang to be cancerous in writing and generally refuse to read anything that includes it, but that's an autistic preference of mine.

>>14108678
>“The plan was to drink away any hope of a plan.”
Most poetic line in either of your works. Very Hemingway.

>>14108678
>That’s the one. Well it turns out we have a difference of opinion when it comes to proof of income.”
Har har har so clever.

>>14108678
>Well they wanted my paystub and I said I’m innocent until proven guilty.
Har har har

>>14108678
>Why do I push people away with friendly gestures? The pianist approached our booth self-assured, yet vaguely pathetic like he was selling roses, his lead sheets shielding his chest

First line is good, vaguely pathetic should be reworked. I'd say something like latently insecure etc.

This needs more work than the first, but within a week with edits and serious focus (you could still be high when writing if that's what you want) it could be good.

I've given and received a lot of critiques, but I don't really have anything else to post, so I'll put up my revised panic scene based on the feedback I got. I'm not posting the context since I think its better that I learn how t make this scene stand on its own. I'm not sure if I'm keeping the voices in the narrative so I've cut it out temporarily. I kept juxtaposed because people seemed split on it lol.

The new, polished Coffee House was juxtaposed against the decaying old shell of my favourite mom and pop tea house. It was now a moss covered brick corpse with green wooden chairs stacked in front of what used to be the entrance. A faded sign reading “Emtea Nesters” was the sole evidence that anything had ever lived in the crumbling structure. A small gray squirrel banging an acorn against the ceramic roof was the only sound emanating from the once proud staple of the town.

I remembered the comfort the place used to provide me, a silent nook, away from the prying eyes and scathing commentary of the real world. Maybe that’s why they went out of business.

I pulled into the lot of the Coffee House, black Accord feeling out of place next to the new model luxury cars filling the space. As I stepped out of my car, I could not help but behold how damned beautiful everyone was. The unmistakable glow of wealth and the unblemished skin borne from a life of comfort radiated from everyone. Gumless smiles accompanied faces with dimples that only appeared when called on. This wasn’t a place meant for a gremlin like me. A short, skinny, haggard zombie.

A terrible sensation then took me, turning the bleak quiet of the car into a boa constrictor, cutting off my breath. People, strangers by the hundreds waiting to tear me apart. Watching every footstep to make sure they were in position to leap on me as soon as I missed my footing. A terrible noose waiting for my neck once they found the interloper.

My fear made haste through my body. My chest tightened. My limbs flared with cramps and my fingers curled inwards. Nothing I did could soothe my pain, and when I tried to force my hand open I realized that my body had finished taking orders from my mind.

A high pitched metallic whine filled my head, I opened my mouth to scream but I could not bring the sound from my throat, and it only served to tighten the noose. The beautiful people were staring now. Confused glances the only thing they saw fit to give me, this thrashing creature. I was dying, I was fucking dying. At least it’ll be over. I thought, mental capacity clipped with panic. At least its fucking over.

Now for some crits I haven't gotten to
>>14108857
I liked the immediate start to your story. Your prose carried an actual voice, and then you fell into the trap that we've all been ensnared by at one time or another; adjectives.
You also need paragraph breaks.
I can't help you fix this, but your prose is inconsistent, I notice that throughout the piece you rotate between styles.

>>14108857
>>14108990
I liked the story overall, and disagree with the other anon about the end. Not everything needs to be a novel

>>14108975
You've got me pinned with the faux clever lines.

I also wrote these if you don't mind checking these out. >>14107785 >>14107814

Sorry if this is coming across as needy, or tedious, but I'm finding this rather eye opening. I'll be remembering this stuff when I got back to work as I've never really had someone critique my writing.

The Devil's drunken diatribe:

I’m lost, lost to the frayed edges of humanity where the bungled and implosive dance like faulty firecrackers. Where the self-doctored receive degrees for free and burnt-out oracles stare into empty palms. I’m anxious, anxious in the daylight and brain-dead at night, rockbottom is the ceiling and we’re treading on hope. The idealist’s doctrine has been watered down and the realist in the absence of god or a single philosophy has only what’s in their pockets or their mirror. Poor people carry their dignity like a blanket and curl into themselves every night. Their lives are defined by the individual and if one’s life has never felt pain, well then pain will seem reserved for the un-living, less than people. We’re all in line to get in line and cutting is discouraged if not clearly tolerated. I know you’ve read the rules. The angels left, the book ended and they got bored, we’re just too slow-witted to get the joke. You’re not laughing… Maybe it’s one of those funny until it’s not kind of things. What did you expect and what drab devils reside in your imagined hells? Tomorrow perhaps. So long.

the sun was spinning on his wrist, he was late for work at his stone clad office building
mr moors had spent most of his life up to this point resisting change
his work was easy and other lives are more difficult to grasp than the one he was paid to wield everyday
he went straight to his cubicle avoiding the interest of everyone not looking at him
his seat felt warm before he even sat down and the vipers paced the summer green carpets
he logged on to his terminal and preceded towards the coffee maker
the bastion for the brave besieged by coworkers
caffeine often left him feeling like all the potential in the world
for those brief sixty minutes he could do the work of everyone in the building
and then paranoia would seep in by the edges of his awareness
self conscious of what he'd of vehemently defended but minutes before.

>>14107785
>facetious stoicism
stoicism is not an adjective. It's a school of thought. His face had a flippant Taoism to it. Neither make sense lol. How about?

> He was brusque, but had an irreverent anti-establishment feel to him. It was admirable. There's nothing like a free spirit in the contemporary world. Somebody that actually lives by everything you know to be true; free from shame, not superficial, yet still maintaining a sense of dignity. However, it was clear his life was waning. The booze stuck to his breath, his corpulent mandible made a subtle glutting noise as he adorned his taciturn veneer. Glut glut glut. A wondrous eyed boy like myself deigned to accept his soon to be fate. Agamemnon returning to Clytemnestra. A cruel world this is, but hang in there old Job.

Last paragraph is good, but a bit dull

>>14107814
This is fine.

>>14109037
I was getting at the idea that he was stoic and steadfast, yet willing to laugh in his own direction. Your rewriting of it reminds me of Cormac Mccarthy in a way. A little wordy for my taste, but good within its own style.

Just fine? I feel like it needs a lot of work, the dialogue still sounds clunky to me.

>>14109049
>Just fine? I feel like it needs a lot of work, the dialogue still sounds clunky to me.
DESU I'm really tired, so I couldn't read all of it.

>>14109049
>I was getting at the idea that he was stoic and steadfast,
Then just say that.
> He was stoic and stedfast. I respected him.
That's fine in itself.

>>14109059
That's alright, you've given me a lot of your time already. Thanks, I'll keep your advice in mind.

>>14109065
Thanks, I'm happy to help, but keep at it!

>>14109067
I will, good luck with your own writing anon.

>>14105691
Thanks anon. I was having trouble with this story, because it’s far from a self-insert. I wanted to go for the beauty of life where a character feels like he should commit suicide and that’s he’s going to, but then he gets sidetracked by all these details to the point where he loves life, but he kills him self anyways because he wants to stick to his word. Later on I’m going to make him like a more sophisticated poltard business boomer and have the reader question their morals on suicide, but also show there’s beautiful moments in a guys life such as that. I am having a bit of trouble with each line though, and I’m writing it a bit too intensely because I feel like it’s now or never which is causing me to rush and feel stressed about it.

>>14107729
>>14107817
Thank you, anons. You've both made good points and I've saved your posts for future reference. I get that this scene in particular comes across as quite generic, and it is, but it's set within a more interesting (I think) story.

>>14107885
So it's just a stylistic censor overtop a strictly physical depiction of rape.

>>14102358
wat do when plotting is fun but writing isn't?
is there a market for full outlines with lots of notes and references?
I hate prose.

>>14111137
There's no market because literally everyone has an idea. "Oh its like zombies in space! This happens, then this happens and, and". The prose is the hard part, and conquering it makes you a writer. Right now you're just a dreamer.

bump

This is long but I've critiqued a bunch of other people; I hope this interests someone enough for a little feedback.
1/3

>>14112237

>>14112245
3/3

One main question I have: When introducing the supposedly real setting in a past-tense story, should I say "The town is" or "The town was"?
I just noticed the typo at the bottom of the first image.

This is the first ever short story I've fully written. Be as harsh as possible, especially in regards to grammar.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vq7TEarP3KXHAyAjkZMAUXan7Lcxc10VKRwUJ-NWCwU/edit?usp=sharing

>>14112360
Give me a few minutes, I'm writing a review.

An apocalyptic vignette I wrote. My first attempt at something apocalyptic.

The wind was crying and whistling over the crippled metal as I watched the dying man dance and stumble towards the gun. Ryland was walking calm as ever, as I cried out with my parched voice to get it over with. The bullet exploded through the day from the calm hand towards the bleeding man and he fell through the trash heap tumbling into the canyon. It was done and the knapsack was ours.

The pontiac sunfire the now-corpse had been sleeping in the backseat of was rusted to the frame, but the roof still blocked the caustic rain and that’s enough for a vagrant down on their luck.

“I didn’t even see him sleeping there, I’d of let him live if he hadn't gotten all shooty about it”

“Me neither, you sure were quick to return the favor though.”

He was reloading his pistol and looking for the one the man had dropped

“It was us or him, and I didn’t introduce myself like an asshole.”

“ I suppose, waste of life though... ”

“oh there’s some water in this”

Inside the mud-skinned backpack and beneath a welders kit, moonshine, porn mags and mask filters was a plastic water bottle a third full. It had a galaxy of particulate shifting in itself, and resembled an under brewed tea.

“Seems clear enough to me.”

“We better boil it.” rasped Ryland.


You’d think that with the gunshot that sirens would be wailing in the distance and singing towards the crime scene, but those wails had decayed long before the governments that ruled in memory. And the ivory tombs of debate and diplomacy were replaced by heaps of refuse. The earth wasn’t itself anymore, it was self-insulated by the earthlings that had ruled it, their garbage had suffocated their mother and now even clean water was worth killing, if not certainly dying over. Our two wanderers were on what’s now called Mt Pudgy, on a journey towards one of these historic skeletons, the New York public Library.

>>14112501
I only read this sentence, but it's all wrong.
>“ I suppose, waste of life though... ”
It should be "I suppose. Waste of life, though..."
I see you use several "though" and you never add a comma before them. Your punctuation is all wrong. There's an extra space before the dialogue starts. The following sentence isn't even capitalized.

>>14112547
It's a first draft. I'll keep your critique in mind.

>>14112578
>It's a first draft
Yawn. Excuses. Why did you choose to post the first draft instead of the second or the third? It was your choice.

>>14112360
I like it so far; I'm just a couple pages in. I don't see any grammatical mistakes but it's clear that you're not used to writing. Your prose is clunky in a lot of places. That's fine; that's why we do rough drafts. I'll give just a few examples so you know what to look for when you go back over it:
>He collapsed onto his back as he had found himself originally
I see a lot of sentences like this; using too many words to convey very basic information. 'as he had found himself originally' is redundant since we already know that fact; I would say just "He collapsed onto his back again" or even better, "He collapsed again."
>To his left lay a man in a blue-grey uniform
That's the narrator bringing the man to our attention, but you've been writing from the soldier's perspective. How about "Craning his neck to the left he noticed..."
>There was a deep look of contempt and malice on his face
A creative writing teacher would tell you you mean the contempt is deep, so you should write "a look of deep contempt and malice"
Beware of using the same word too close together. In the paragraph starting "The other man lay on his side" you repeat the words "soldier" and "spit" too close together and it's awkward. We're lucky that English has so much flexibility to dodge around this kind of repetition.
The opening dialog between the soldiers is totally unrealistic. You set it up really well. Just from the color of the uniforms we understand the the situation immediately. Right up to the line "We got each other pretty good" I wouldn't change a thing. But then the next two lines are kind of hammy and feel like unnecessary explanation; the "dirty American guts" line is straight out of pulp WWII fiction or the Hardy Boys. Personally I'd delete those two lines.

"We got each other pretty good.”
They both lay there, silent, for what could have been an eternity.

That would make, IMO, the whole progression and character introduction perfect.

I'mma keep reading now.

>The End
Find another title ASAP.
>that he mockingly called “Darla”
It's not clear why that name would be mocking.
>in the way other soldiers named their weapons with pride.
This is unnecessary. Don't over-explain.
>with his hand
This is unnecessary.
>He went to prop himself up (...) but (...) he let out a mangled noise (...) but entirely filled with agony.
This is badly structured; it's a but inside a but. I'd keep it simple: "When he went to prop himself up he let out a mangled noise." Leave the noise to our imaginations. Describing it's "halfway between a whimper and a grunt" is excessively detailed and doesn't help us picture it; it does the opposite, in fact.
>He collapsed onto his back as he had found himself originally.
Keep it simple. "He collapsed onto his back again."
>from the pain
This is unnecessary.
>The sounds of gunshots and artillery continued further up
This is a strange move. We're being told the story from the point of view of the fallen soldier, so why are you telling us something he can't perceive while he's laying down? "Further up" implies something is moving up, and it has to be something other than the "movie camera."
>the soldier’s body was burning up, especially around his belly, which felt wet and hot
>His green uniform was stained crimson in the area of the pain.
Describing the color of things is one of the most annoying rookie mistakes; it's irritating. If you wanted to convey the fact that he was blood-stained, do it above and skip the implying: "the soldier’s body was burning up, especially around his belly, which was stained crimson."
>That coupled with his wound made the usually simple automatic task of breathing laborious.
You already said he had trouble breathing. Don't be redundant. This entire section is so mechanical, cold, slow and tedious. You keep creating periods and listing things matter-of-factly when we should be inside his head, feeling his franticness, his panic, his pain, with lots of commas and semicolons, but not periods.
>Seeing this, he became aware of the taste of blood in his mouth. He’d been told blood had a metallic taste but the actual taste was worse than what he had imagined in the past.
If that's what happened, then you should place it when it actually happened, in the previous paragraph. After "His breathing was fast and hard from the pain."
Also, you don't have to reiterate "the actual taste." A simple "it" will avoid the repetition. "In the past" is unnecessary.
>To his left lay a man in a blue-grey uniform
Quit describing the colors of every thing, unless this is meant to help us notice he's from a different army or something. If that's the case, just say that.
>The other man
Before this phrase you used "he", so going from that to "the other man" makes us think the other man is the main character. Avoid the confusion and just use "he" again; the reader will know who you're talking about.

>>14112360
Sorry, I posted the first part of my critique here >>14112612
Carrying on.
>and was staring
"And staring."
>He breathed hard as well but much less rapidly than the soldier.
Adds nothing. You already told us he was bleeding.
>When the soldier had noticed him
It's really confusing for you to sort of go back to the past like this, as you keep doing; it's like you do a wide shot with the camera in slow motion, describing everything, then you go back to the initial action and continue from there. Don't do that. Just skip to "He attempted to spit, but just managed to weakly dribble onto his cheek." Notice I fixed some pronoun problems there.
>The soldier returned a look of curiosity to the man.
This can be cut, especially considering he can't "return" a look of curiosity when he wasn't given one. Just say "“We are both going to die here you know,” said the soldier, curious."
>The man closed his eyes in an act of acknowledgement before saying with a vietnamese accent,
It's pretty clumzy to describe the dialogue before it happens. Just say "“We got each other pretty good,” said the other, in a deep Vietnamese accent."
>The soldier looked puzzled for a moment, unaware of what the VC meant before asking
Don't explain to us the dialogue before it happens. Just let it happen and trust the reader will understand. Also, don't use abbreviations like VC.
>I plunged my bayonet into your dirty American guts.
This dialogue is really cringy and feels like straight from a videogame where guys act all tough and describe their type of weapon. If you had a sword, would you say "I plunged my sword into you" or just bloody say "I cut you"? Anyway, this really isn't the time to act tough. They're dying, not caricatures.
>for what could have been an eternity to them.
In other words, to them it seemed like an eternity? Then say so. "For what seemed like an eternity."
>The sounds of war kept on in the distance but they did not hear it.
First off, it should be "them", not "it."
Secondly, you're a liar. In the first paragraph you said "The sounds of gunshots and artillery continued further up, past him". So he does hear it. If he doesn't, don't tell us the sounds are there; stay in their point of view. Do something like "they couldn't hear anything at all, even though the sounds of war had to be there."
>they did their duty,
This is a comma splice.

>>14112360
>The soldier finally broke the silence asn asked, “How do you know English?”
>asn
What follows is a long exchange where you explain the dialogue before it happens, in every single turn. Make a note: "he asked" goes AFTER the dialogue, not before.
>The Vietnamese soldier replied,
>The soldier decided to indulge his curiosity.
>The Vietnamese soldier didn’t know why but he felt compelled to engage the American G.I.
All of this should be cut to let the dialogue speak for itself. Imagine Shakespeare adding all these clarifications. He told us nothing but the dialogue spoken by his characters, and now we can write thousands of essays on Hamlet's personality.
>“Why would you move back here, to fight for the communist?”
The comma is wrong. This is two questions. "Why would you move back here? To fight for the communists?"
>You pigs hold ideals that are greedy and selfish
This is the second time you use "pigs" and it already was painfully cliche the first time.
>even if they were legal American citizens.
He said "us foreigners" before, so this should be "even if we were".
>imp-” he coughed up more blood “imperialist.
This should be "imp--" He coughed up more blood. "Imperialist." With proper capitalization and punctuation.
>YOU wrote for them
The all caps here is a bit over-dramatic. Consider switching to italics.
>The American listened to his words. He didn’t really have a choice in the matter of hearing but he did attentively listen. In actuality the American soldier didn't truly understand a word of what the NVA soldier was saying. The American did not keep with politics.
First, the Soldier has been named the Soldier up until now, so I don't recommend switching to "the American". Anyway, all of this should be synthetized. "The soldier didn't have a choice, but he listened attentively all the same. He didn't understand a word, anyway. He didn't keep up with politics." I noticed you switched between "didn't" and "did not" there; you should pick one.

Should I go on?

>>14112585
To speed up the process? I moreso wanted critiques on the narrative and prose style, but I guess I got what I asked for.

>>14112597
>>14112612
>>14112617
>>14112624

Not that Anon, but you are the kind of reader everyone wants here. You're the real deal.

>>14112237
Sorry, anon, I've tried to read this a few times, but it's so boring. Settings aren't interesting by themselves, characters are. I see there's a Cheikh character towards the end; I'd begin the story there.

>>14112501
Besides the overall quality of the writing, I'm impressed with how much storytelling and worldbuilding you manage in very few words.

>a vagrant down on their luck
That should be 'down on his luck'. The SJWs aren't going to survive long enough to police the post-apocalypse.

>>14112237
I agree with the other anon, this isn't drawing me in at all. You've found many creative ways to visually describe a setting. Congrats. But man there's nothing here that engrosses me.

>>14112659
Thanks for the feedback, but "settings aren't interesting by themselves" is an opinion, not a rule of writing. I'll interpret your comment as I haven't done a good enough job of making the setting interesting.
The description does end at the first paragraph...

>>14112673
I don't want to seem like I'm snubbing the criticism I asked for, but did you read past the first paragraph?

>>14112698
Of course it's an opinion. What do you think we're giving you? But don't lie. The second paragraph goes on to talk about the town's name. Then the town's history. It's just worldbuilding.

>>14112708
The paragraphs you are talking about are a narrative story complete with protagonist, conflict, intrigue, humor. I don't know what more you want to be quite honest.
Not to mention while doing a little worldbuilding it simultaneously introduces us into the head of Cheikh, the protagonist of the main story. I felt like that was efficient storytelling.

>>14112360
Have you read the poem 'Strange Meeting' by Wilfred Owen? Your premise made me think of it. It would be cool if you could incorporate some element from the poem in your story; even if it were really subtle it would be like adding flavor to the broth.

>>14112672
That seems to be my one skill when it comes to writing. I'm horrible at grammatical rules.

>>14112843
Grammar doesn't matter when you're writing in dialect, so good narration choice.

>>14112755
>I don't know what more you want to be quite honest.
Maybe getting on with the actual story instead of drowning us in tedious worldbuilding. Is the main character Cheikh, or is he not?

>>14112909
>Grammar doesn't matter when you're writing in dialect
Punctuation still does. Quit giving bad advice.

>>14112917
Cormac McCarthy is one of the most successful writers on earth last I checked.

>>14112924
>McCarthy didn't follow punctuation
Moron.

>>14112917
I'm the guy that wrote the story and I still agree with you. That other anon is just making excuses for my lazy editing.

>>14112624
Yea please. I appreciate the critique. Im gonna have my original version then this edited one and i wanna do a side by side reading.

>>14112787
No i havent, but a non /lit/ friend of mine told me that the story/writing sounded a lot like the book "The things they carried". Ill check out that poem now.

>>14102358
Im not really good enough at poetry to be critiquing others i feel, but i shall try.

>>14102410
Not a fan of how the poem flows, but there is some merit, liked the first three lines but then it fell flat.
>>14102566
Angsty in a bad way, making the narrator angry at everything is not character, it just makes him one-dimensional.

>>14113096
Wow, some cunt just tried to delete the whole story?

>>14113162
Sorry that was me. I was editing the original without realizing. i just made a copy and was restoring the old version. Its up now and ive made a distinction so i wont mess up again

>>14113162
Dog, only open it up for suggestions. Dumbass

>>14113124
He's not angry at anyone he described, that just your take on him. He only describes them in a spiteful way, anytime he describes someone he talks about their character as if it has more meaning/depth, he's giving each person he describes much more credit than the descriptions he has for them makes you think. >F-word jogs by-"Where does he have to go? What does he have to do"?
>Mother that got blacked with stroller and mulatto baby-"Photogenic magazine cover"
>Buisnessman in suit having phone conversation-Triggers thoughts about who hes talking to and his own name

See, idk if i'm looking far to into it but the character seems more geniuine then orginally presented

>>14113166
Oh, okay. Anyhow, I tried commenting the rest, but it was much of the same fixes over and over. Essentially, let the dialogue speak for itself without explanations, don't put the "he said" before the dialogue, watch your repetitions. Too many sentences towards the end begin with "And", which is a conjunction that should only be preceded by a comma. Some concessions can be made, of course.
Overall, it got better the longer it went on. The bit with them crying was everything I wanted to see, instead of the fake "American Pig" tough act. Some bits were very moving. How he casually called the corpse his "brother", the wheat fields, his father's chest, very nice. The tedium of the beginning was actually effective in the end to convey his desperation and how time never sped up, he couldn't skip his death.

trying to rework an old poem a bit, see how it turns out, still probably needs some work, one way or another.

Flower

Only in the void I bloom; the last
before the seed the wilt the sex and death –
that grand final burst to behead anew,
star bright primal fruit, wave-ray cocoon and
in beam suspended beyond the dark light heavens.
In iron-ink writ no justice no cosmic no truths
their crystal fingers in void in smallest way lost,
the infinite dare not, not the bangs
and booms and leavened spaces migrate quiet,
entangle strangers of any sort by rote, only I
would do, and by doing peel back skin to spurt
that ancient mist of milky stars eternal,
those petals vorpal shade, between crease of
stamen blue-black and curve to beige,
slow germinate – lily on sea sun’d by
all creation, watered by everlasting stagnation.
Before beyond – the spark sudden
flower; the life the death the river the garden –
up the top soil in a most illuminating ways;
Behold! The now the moment the deed the word,
in void in one in two in three in myriad
in one in all the I transcends.

>>14113196
Are you the person who wrote it? if so id have to say that a character is often thought of as more by the author, but less by the reader, since the author has the benefit of being the creator of said character, he "fills in the gaps" so to say, in his version their is nuance, but in the readers there is not.
The character has these random outburts over a man jogging by, or as he put it "A faggot just jogged past and all I could think is: what a mistake" followed by him riveting about his greasy hair, acne and him listening to niggershit. It really is quite adolescent to me.
Also even if he presents them in a spiteful way it still makes his character, from these few pages flat as a rock. He only describes the people he walks by or the things he sees with complete spite, and not even a convincing hatred.
Just my opinion though, like I said im not really in a position to critique anyone, just wanted to try and keep the thread alive.

>>14113206
I appreciate the words about the pacing and plot itself.
Are there any tips or tricks you could give on removing unnecessary words. If I recall correctly an old teacher told me "Read the sentence again, if it reads the same with a word removed than remove it." Would you agree? I've also been told that my writing style is very (as I like to call it) "flowery". I know I've mainly developed it to make essays reach a word count or just to make a paper look longer than it is.

>>14113352
If I may be frank, it's only flowery in the sense that it's bloated, not in the "embellished" sense. My problem with the beginning was that all the sentences were structured similarly, coldly, matter of factly. I like the ending because you began adding poetry to it. You definitely need to follow your teacher's advice and make the beginning faster so they can get to the good bits.

>>14113206
>Essentially, let the dialogue speak for itself without explanations, don't put the "he said" before the dialogue,
I agree with you, Reddit doesn't. People on /r/writing actually mass downvote everyone who dislikes "said", because "invisible word".

>>14113437
I wasn't really arguing for using "said" instead of a synonym, only that instead of
>He said, "hello."
He should write
>"Hello," he said.

>>14113444
Or be creative with it.

"Hello" spilled from his mouth like an insult.

"Hello" sprang reflexively.

It gets tiresome if used too often, but can be effective at times. Otherwise, I don't use expository words like said and just trust my continuity and assume my reader is smart enough to suss it out.

>>14113460
There's nothing wrong with "said." But, again, I wasn't discussing its usage, only if the verb should go before or after the dialogue.

Short story about a guy with goat eyes who has the ability to see people's true nature and feelings, but the perception is vague and difficult to understand. His creepy eyes and uncanny ability to judge people has lead him to be isolated from a young age, so he avoids interacting too deeply with people but can't help but be fascinated by them. But in his early adulthood he meets a girl who doesn't seem to mind his strange nature so much and he accepts this because she is odd in her own ways. Long story short, she turns out to be a witch who is part of an occult human/organ trafficking ring which hunts and harvests individuals like him. She and her associates attempt to kill the protag, but he saved by a mysterious individual, although not before losing both eyes and being mortally wounded. Despite losing his eyes, his perception allows him to see things more clearly than ever before, and as he dies in the strangers arms, he finally realizes how truly blind he had always been, that although blessed with an extraordinary gift, he had squandered it selfishly.
It ties into a longer form story about the mysterious stranger, which is sort of a pseudo fantasy/occult/vampire novel.
What do you guys think?

>>14112755
Dude do you not understand the point of critique? You're not going to get to argue with every person who reads your work. You have one chance to get them to like and want to read your shit. If 3/5 hypothetical anons say "idk man this shit's kind of boring" they don't mean "you're not following the rules and this is precisely why it's boring!"

They just mean it's boring to read and thats that. You can go from there. What the fuck is the point of asking for peoples thoughts on your writing if you're going to try to argue against them. Ask them to explain more, sure, but they also don't have to on an indonesian cartography bulletin.

Best of luck. Also the anon you were arguing is right, worldbuilding is a really boring first paragraph. I don't care how good you think your prose and imagery is. If I opened a book to be wowed by vivid landscapes on sight it would have pictures in it.

>>14113904
What even is the main theme? The story just seems like a collection of twists and mysteries with nothing to say. If he could see the witch's true nature, why did he trust her? What about his misadventure leads him to realize he squandered his powers? If anything, the story teaches the opposite lesson: the moment he trusted someone and let them in, they killed him. He should have never trusted anyone. And mixing it with the stranger seems to add nothing but a forced tie to sell more books. The stranger has no significance, except giving the protag some arms in which to die.

>>14112237
Boring is the wrong word. This is dull and disingenuous. There's no reason to care about this town in itself. There's absolutely no point to this, especially as the opening fucking paragraph to the story. If you were going for Marquez in Solitude, then you fail because there was a human presence in his story. This reads like a non-fiction description of a town in a history textbook not fucking prose you prick. How could you possibly defend this garbage as literature? fuck you anon and fuck your second paragraph even more and fuck your character for being upset that nobody cares. Fuck you.

>>14113962
agreed.

>>14113954
I posted a story with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Two people responded complaining that it was "worldbuilding" with no narrative. I'm not sure how to respond to people who offer critiques when they lack the reading comprehension of a 6th grader, or who simply didn't read it at all. I give people the courtesy of reading their work with interest before offering advice. I see you read mine; thanks for taking the time.
A question re: your feedback. This story is actually based on Le Rouge et le Noir which has as its opening a full page and a half of topographical description considerably less colorful than mine. That's why I open it the way I do. You think that's poor form in general? Or it was OK in the 19th century but doesn't work with modern prose?
>>14113965
You're spot on about Garcia Marquez though I actually had Autumn of the Patriarch in mind.

>>14114215
>You're spot on about Garcia Marquez though I actually had Autumn of the Patriarch in mind.
> The little town of Verrières might be one of the prettiest in all Franche-Comté. Its white houses with their sharp-pointed roofs of red tile stretch down a hillside, every faint ripple in the long slope marked by thick clusters of chestnut trees. A few hundred feet below the ruins of the ancient fortress, built by the Spanish, runs the River Doubs. To the north, Verrières is sheltered by a great mountain, part of the Jura range.

Mind you I've never read Stendhal, but that's the translation on my kindle version. It seems like he does a lot of pages like this, so maybe I should eat my words and you should no better than to ask for serious advice on here. May I suggest to make it extremely autistic then, take out the part towards the end and maybe open like your doing a cetology of Moby Dick to open your book ending with a pithy aphorism.

>>14114304
Kek, cheers brother.

>>14102358
Critique my poem plox:

Poo poo pee pee
Nigger nigger
Niggggggggggeeeerr fuck
Poo balls

>>14114215
>considerably less colorful than mine
If its less colorful than this it must be stone grey.

Punctuation and the ordering of information in your second sentence makes it a bit confusing to read.
>The town itself... like the eye of a great dragon with a neck made up of sinewy mangrove forests.
This imagery is vague. I don't understand how a town on a hill is supposed to look like the eye of a dragon. It's not something that I can picture in my head.
Why say "Some miles to the north..." this whole description is attempting to be very specific down to "riparian jetsam." Just say how many miles.

Every towns name is a story.
Your punctuation is lacking. Grammar too in parts. Stop using words you don't need, they make your prose turgid and obnoxious to read.

"He led the achievement" is an awkward phrase.

My main question for you is, is the story of Tuckey important? Do we need to know these specifics to understand why Chiekh is thinking about it? I sort of understand the first paragraph about Tuckey as it's the story of the towns name, but why the second. I think its unnecessary.

"for appearance's sake" can just be "for appearances."

>>14114422
I like the alliteration of the first two lines but any kind of form you had just falls apart after that.
You're inconsistent in your spelling; for example "nigger" in line 2 vs "niggggggggggeeeer" in line 3.
Lack of punctuation leaves everything really vague.
It's a shitty poem.

>>14114558
Next time I'm going to post this when the thread starts and see if everyone ignores the poems from sad faggot anons and critiques my nigger fuck poem. That would be a good trope.

Here's an excerpt from a political science essay I'm writing. I'm concerned my prose is too flowery for the subject, so here's a sample for you guys to look at.

Having shown that the self-interest of the atom bomb is not indisputable, it then falls to ask whether self-interest is all that should matter to the realist. The realists, supposing themselves to be very rational and having cast off the superstitions of ethical theory, believe that self-interest is all that matters, and that justice is either nonexistent or irrelevant. I would, however, say that anyone who has thought about this claim for any reasonable amount of time knows that this is not true. We have a sense of justice within us that tells us it is not true, and we can know this through empathy with our fellow man. Dismissing the emotion of empathy, which is so central to human life and social interaction as superstition isn’t rational, but rather is hubris. Suppose for a moment, that the realist scholars were on the losing side of a conflict, and as such were watching war crimes being committed against themselves, their neighbors, and their families. Would they then defend the nation committing these atrocities? I would reckon that they wouldn’t, because of our innate sense of justice, we know that when we are being treated unfairly by those more powerful than us, that our only recourse of action is to fall back on claims of moral righteousness for our cause. Why then, should we deny this to others? Is it too much to imagine that the fate of Carthage might one day soon be our own? The fact is that the fortune of nations can change quickly. Who would have supposed, in 1900 at the height of British power, that scarcely 100 years later, Britain would barely control a shred of territory outside of its isles, and that the grandeur of its empire would not even be in the memory of those under middle age?

Poopy Meets Diaper

Its name was poopy. She was a long tender slice of human waste with soft and subtle, indents in her lower moiety. This was her most prominent feature. Light gray, light brown, and a monstrous green completed her adornment. He was a diaper-- stinky, firm, and translucent. They met in May. She rubbed against him, and he smiled back gladly, holding her, caressing her. They had fallen in love. “Poopy,” she bellowed.
“Yes, my dear,” he replied
“I love you.”
“Yes, me too.”
“Do you think of other turds.”
“No.”
“That’s good. It makes me happy,” and she started to cry.
“Why are you crying?”
“Because I’m a poopy and poopies and diapers aren’t together for long.”
“So, let’s enjoy it while we can,” he replied while holding and gently fondling her firm light-green masculine flank.

>>14114821
You are covering a lot of territory very briefly. It reads like a mere declaration of ignorance - of dependence, of self-righteousness, of hubris so aptly shared.

Is this a summary of a more complete essay?

>>14115124
It's just an excerpt of a larger whole. The essay itself is 10 pages long. That paragraph is a summary of the previous argument.

>>14115169
Isn't summarizing an argument a tactic for selling an idea to a crowd? I think there is a better way that isn't insulting to the reader and that would be to write a convincing and interesting piece. Your target audience is going to get the summary even if you don't put it there.

I guess that is off topic, let me put it in a different way: don't waste time repeating yourself and use the summary as an interface of the assertion in relation to the larger framework you are (selling). I get the appeal of the instinct, the exemplary succulence of the British empire example, but you gotta understand that is a packaging that has been sold to you and you regurgitate it. It tastes good, but anybody with a preliminary reflection on history can point to the collapse of many empires apparently overnight. A line with such a savory effect is an opener, not a closer. It is the hook, not the sinker.

>>14113962
>>1411397
Thanks for your input, you've a got good points.
I mentioned this, but his ability to correctly interpret the perceptions he has is tenuous, and he often misunderstands in some way, which in the past has gotten him in trouble. The witch has a very peculiar perception about about her which is what initially make him take interest; the way I describe it in what I've written is that she is "golden", and the maisma she secretes is largely unchanging which is unusual. She is also very charming and he starved for human contact, he is easily and somewhat willingly deceived.
As for the theme and what make shim see he squander his gift, the theme would be selfishness, greed, hubris, and redemption (especially through death). Once he is blinded physically, he "receives" a perception about the stranger which reveals the stranger to be some kind of almost holy existence in a way. Whether or no this is unique to the stranger or a phenomena of his heightened awareness, this causes the protag to realize that he was caught up in his own suffering and believe in his heart to be better than others, wiser, for being gifted and persecuted, when all the time he could easily have been adored if he hadn't been so self absorbed and used his gifts instead of squandering them in his misery and pity.
Finally, the mysterious stranger related to the story because this is what he does. He is also abnormal, and he uses his gifts to render aid to those in need. So meeting the Goat Eyes was a coincidence, but he meddles and breaks up things like this as a bit of an occupation. A supernatural head hunter of sorts.
Also, you might be right about the whole forcing sales thing. I thought it would be a nice expansion to the characters and setting of the novel, and maybe help boost popularity if published.
I apologize that all of this was not clearer from the begining.

>>14112909
You know where dialects come from, right? If you entirely lack convention it's not "a" dialect anymore.

>>14112924
>

>>14112501
The first paragraph is well written except I don't think it's what you're going for. What I like about it is that it's clumsy in the way an observer is rather than the way an author might be: the head's turning here, there, but nowhere as fast as the bullet. The desperation doesn't match the events though. I mean for example, you say "the gun" like it's the one-and-only, but everything else points towards Ryland having been armed the whole time, as well as towards the narrator having been aware of this fact. Maybe the narrator doesn't have to be as lax as Ryland is, but "the gun" seems dishonest.

"The dying man" was also questionable, or at least "a dying man" would have felt more comfortable. Subjective though.

>“Me neither, you sure were quick to return the favor though.”
would prefer a period, just judging by cadence

what >>14112547 suggested

>“oh there’s some water in this”
Is there a reason this isn't capitalized/ended with a period? You don't need to google up rules, but at least think about reasons for breaking convention. Looking for emergent conventions within your own work, then for where you break the pattern, and them ask yourself why you're doing so. If you don't have an answer, clean it up.

>“We better boil it.” rasped Ryland.
end quotations on commas if you're going to continue the line, otherwise capitalize what comes after

>and singing towards the crime scene
I don't think a siren would do this. What you probably mean is that they're closing on the scene, but to say that they're singing towards it only tells that they're getting pointed in the scene's general direction.

>And the ivory tombs of debate and diplomacy were replaced by heaps of refuse.
It might be more visually stimulating to say that they were buried rather than replaced, but I do like the R alliteration you have and how it match the alliteration with the D's from earlier in the line.

>The earth wasn’t itself anymore, it was self-insulated by the earthlings that had ruled it, their garbage had suffocated their mother and now even clean water was worth killing, if not certainly dying over.
Lots of independent lines in here. This could be up to three sentences if you want, or you could use semicolons if you don't consider them a thematic no-go. Personally I'd just make the second comma a semicolon, to give it precedence over the first. Think of it like how you use parentheses in math, I guess.

>towards one of these historic skeletons, the New York public Library.
This could be a colon but I'm just presenting the option.

>>14112501
>>14115654
>Personally I'd just make the second comma a semicolon, to give it precedence over the first.
Alternatively you could use a semicolon in the first spot and then just droo a period on the second, for a similar ordering. I'm just pointing this out to express how these items are used though.

>>14112501
>>14115654
>Personally I'd just make the second comma a semicolon, to give it precedence over the first.
Alternatively you could use a semicolon in the first spot and then just drop a period on the second, for a similar ordering. I'm just pointing this out to express how these items are used though.

>>14112501
>>14112672
>>a vagrant down on their luck
>That should be 'down on his luck'.
Anon, use whichever came more naturally to you. I would say the ungendered pronoun provides less detail in a way which keeps my camera farther back from the proposed vagrant (who is actually the narrator), since I need to be far enough back to not see that specificity. It moves emphasis towards the wasteland around him, which works well with the word "vagrant" and serves as a great way to end a paragraph. If there were a catch I would say it's that many people just default to male pronouns anyways though, so take your pick.

think this sucks but i'll post it here any way I don't really know what im doing just doing it for fun I guess and felt like sharing

https://twinshia.wordpress.com/2019/11/04/under-aegypt/

>This excerpt is not mine, but I'm curious what /lit/ thinks of this.
>Obviously inspired by Hills Like White Elephants
https://www.scribblelit.com/the-table

The highway beside the restaurant was busy with vacationers. SUVs and swollen sedans blurred past, like streaks of white and orange raindrops on a window. The couple who were not vacationers ate dinner outside under the screened porch, alone at a large, wooden table.

“Alright, what about this,” he said, holding his half-full beer glass, “have you ever thought about all the people who’ve eaten at this table?”

“Today?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “Ever.”

“I don’t get it.” She was tapping the table with her fingernail, tic-tic-tic.

He took a drink. “Think about it. Just tonight— ” he broke off as the server laid the bill between them and took his plate, empty but for some bits of lettuce smeared around in a watery bath of sour cream. When the server was gone, he said, “Just tonight I’ll bet seventy people have sat at this table.”

She touched each finger of one hand with the index finger of her other hand, figuring the tip.

“Nine is plenty,” he said.

She wrote the number down and looked at it doubtfully, still tapping a finger.

“The lunch service was probably half that, so, we’ll round up to one hundred people in a day.”

“Uh huh.”

“Multiply that,” he went on, “by three hundred days. So that’s thirty thousand right there, just in a year.”

“A lot.”

“And how many years, do you think?”

“How many years what?”

“Has this table been alive?”

“I don’t know.”

He reached out and took her hand, stopping the tapping.

“Okay,” she said, leaning back. “Let’s say, ten years.”

“So that’s 300,000 people. Think about that! About all the meals and drinks and conversations. The first dates. The last dates.”

The patio was filled with families and children. Their table was the only one without children. A little boy wandered the room. He said to another child, “Ya-ya,” and the other child turned away.

“That’s a lot of people,” she said. “But I bet none of them were in love like us.” She scrunched her face at him and then brought the bill close to count again. She tapped her finger as she thought. When she looked up, he was waiting. “What?” she said. “I don’t feel any connection with them, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“You don’t?”

She shrugged. “Nope.”

>>14114821
>self-interest of the atom bomb
Self interest? A bomb?

>very
This comes off not only as bad writing, but also as petty and unecessarily opinionated.

>supposing themselves to be very rational and having cast off the superstitions of ethical theory,
"supposing themselves to be rational and free of superstition,"

>matters,
cut the comma imo

>I would,
>I
Who the fuck are you? No offense, but does your audience care? I don't know what your prompt is.

>they think they're reasonable, but like, I think anyone who thinks a little longer knows they're not the reasonable ones, like just think for five more minutes bro trust me
Ditch this. Cut the "I would..." and "We have a..." lines completely, then put a "However," in front of the empathy line.

>moment,
cut the comma

>families.
semicolon

>I would reckon
Nigga stop what the fuck are you doing? You WOULD reckon? Setting aside the fact that "would" misdirects me into believing this is your own response to the hypothetical rather than a judgment of the response you predict from your opponent, in turn causing me to be completed blindsided by the word "reckon," which is just fucking funny in its own right--who the fuck are you? Who is this "I" and why is he part of the argument?

>reckon that they wouldn’t, because of our innate sense of justice, we know that when [...]
Are you saying that you reckon, because of our innate sense of justice? Or are you saying that because of our innate sense of justice, we know when [...]? Poor structure.

>recourse of action
Nigga you stupid, just say "recourse" or just "course of action." This is like "don't take life for granite" tier dweebery.

>we know that when we are being treated unfairly by those more powerful than us, that our only recourse [snip] is to fall back on claims of moral righteousness for our cause. Why then, should we deny this to others?
Setting aside the fact that this is phrased as a question, this is in essence your thesis statement. The problem with it being a question is that you're running into a very sneaky game of "Is it not so, that...?", as well as the fact that someone might just answer the question. Generally I've avoided bant in favor of just help you make the argument more clean, but to bant:

Your own explanation for why the opposition would take your side in crisis, is that it would be in their self interest to do so anyways. Accurate prediction? Sure. But then when you ask "Why then, should we deny this to others?" you'll probably still be met with the answer, "self interest." You seem to think you've found an area where the opposition might internally contradict themselves, when in reality all you've found is a scenario in which they would lie. Either do something with the inherent lying you've found, or develop the empathy point from before, if not both.

The house was coloured like muddy blood under the twisting strobe light before alternating back to sickly olive, as if washed away by the violent rain. A young man in a crumpled shirt was waiting for us at the door with swollen eyes and streaks of dried tears. He looked much older than I thought he’d be.

He led us across the spacious living room, well lit and decorated though eerily deserted. We followed him up a flight of stairs and stopped at a door, from which a muddled murmur seeped underneath. I opened the door to discover the silhouette of an overweight man lodged in an armchair, lit by the flow of midnight television. His mouth was agape and his sweatshirt crusted with vomit. Ash retched close behind me.

“Stretcher?” I suggested quietly.
“You kidding? He’s gonna tear a hole in it. Plus there are stairs.”

I still believed dying was the final rest, a peaceful end to life, but this man’s dead gaping face was frozen in an expression of regret not washed away by death. I stepped out of the room and spoke to the grieving young man.

The pallid face only nodded silently. The three of us began to haul the swollen body downstairs, one step at a time — then my hands slipped. We watched his fat father’s dead body tumble down the stairs violently and strike the floor with a heavy thud.

I could never forget the look on his face. The young man fell by his father’s side and shattered, wailing like a helpless child being punished for something he didn’t do.

“I loved him too dad I loved him!” Jarring moans gaped out of the tortured face, wet with tears and saliva as he shook his dead father. I stood paralysed at the sight of a man losing his mind. “Why don’t you love me too?” His vacant eyes stared nowhere. He was reduced to a weeping little boy, devoid of awareness. “Why did you leave me too?” he repeated over and over again in a dumb drawl till his throat dried out and his eyes rolled back into his head.

I felt the room shrinking and its walls closing in on me, blinding me with sickening bright light that stabbed into my brain. I rushed out into the cold rain and threw up. I had to go back home immediately.

>>14115854
>in favor of just help
helping

>>14115855
>olive
"olive as it left" would be an appreciated stage direction. I wasn't sure how continuous the alternating was and got confused for a moment. Or really, rewriting this sentence entirely might be worth it, which sucks because it's very almost good. Once I reread it I get a good image, but the first parse was terrible. I supposed that the strobe light's twist was just it swirling in place, to keep the house lit, since you'd established the color quite rigidly at the start. Maybe make it an "until" statement, so you can explain that the color will leave before having to present the light.

>I thought he'd
"I'd," as in I-had-thought-he-would-be.

>waiting for us at the door
cut "for us," kills the image, pits me inside (actually, see the next comment)

>He [...], well lit
sounds like you're describing him as he leads, not the room. I also would'be liked a more explicit entry; "he waited for us at the door" made me think they were already inside the house, and that he was waiting for them to answer the door.

>Plus there are stairs.
The word choice and accidental rhyme sounds weird and out of character for "“You kidding?"/"He’s gonna".

>not washed away by death
cut

>violently and
I would put "violently" after the conjunction, a fat corpse rolling down the stairs is image enough

>I could never forget the look on his face.
sounds like you're talking about the corpse again

>I had to go back home immediately.
What? Are you canceling a field trip? Tonally off, unless there's something about their "home" I'm supposed to know.

Overall nice props, bad direction.

>>14115710
I think maybe I wouldn't hate this if I were an archeologist, but I'm not an archeologist.

>William, debonair, inspected a beast-man, who suddenly jolted from what seemed to be a state of statue.
This is in a way good for getting the point across, but it ends without the tension your suprise indicates you want. Maybe continue it so you don't have to end on the word "statue." Or are they not supposed to be in danger?

Seems sporadic and you pull fantasy shit out of nowhere, I don't really know what to say.

I just wake up and am having a cup of coffee in the couch. I just need to say one thing: I love this dirty website.

Seriously. There are a lot of talented people posting things in the critique threads, but that’s not all: we see people commenting and giving suggestions as well as any professor in an Ivy League university. Hell, some people I discovered here over the years were superior to most famous critiques of our day. And yet most of these people are working alone, in the dark, without any motivation other than their work itself. You know what I feel sometimes? It’s as if there were hundreds of drawers in the world containing manuscripts as important as the poems of Emily Dickinson, and if we aren’t lucky enough all of these wonderful verses and paragraphs and tales and characters are going to disappear. How many archives in how many computers are at this very moment holding closed the eyelids of the dawn?

I just wanted to say that many of you are very talented and that even if you don’t ever publish or achieve a reading fanbase you are still real artists.

There’s a visceral sincerity here that you don’t find anywhere else. And though most of our threads are garbage yet still, among these putrid seas, there are always the little spicy islands and gardens of Eden of true literary threads.

Be proud of yourselves, even if the world doesn’t show you any respect or interest.

By the way, I didn’t get any criticism for my poetry in this thread you lazy assholes. Yet I was touch by the love and devotion that you showed while criticizing the works of other Anons.

I think I’m sentimental today. Sorry for the blogpost and a nice day to all of you.

>>14115961
It doesn't really matter if they are in danger or not, since they have an Masonic Wellsian device to get them out of low-level fixes. Obviously there is something worse beyond the gate that cannot be dealt with in the same way, though.

>>14115836
>Who the fuck are Hills Like White Elephants?
>Oh, duh

Anyhow, I'm think I might reading too deeply into this, but that's likely the point. Smart woman. I don't want to spoil. This is an excerpt though?

>and took his plate, empty but for some bits of lettuce smeared around in a watery bath of sour cream.
Server's POV? Weird.

>>14115971
I'm reading the updates to this thread while eating my Cinnamon Life; gonna spend today at the gym working on edits anons have suggested. I'll devote some time to stuff ITT that hasn't been mentioned yet; maybe some of it will be yours.
/lit/ is shit just like every other board but I picture some of the active posters here as a handful of bodies trying to crawl out of the pool of flaming shit where we're all wallowing, while everyone else is content to be damned.

>>14116574
>gonna spend today at the gym working on edits anons have suggested

wise anon

>>14115942
Ahh fuck

>pits me inside
puts me

>I also would'be liked a
would've, not would-be

The browned leaves crumbled underfoot as Captain and I walked across campus and justified each other’s self-pity. It was wonderfully unproductive.
“There’s nowhere but the university for people like us you know,” said Captain. “The world just isn’t fit for academics. You either get stuck with an office job that you know, in the most precise formulation a liberal education can buy, is soul-killing, or else you end up as some gallerina, standing like a mannequin next to contemporary art that you know enough to critique but haven’t the will to make.”
I had no way of knowing it, but I felt that Captain was completely right. Things were doomed. I had graduated six months ago and hadn’t done a thing except grow a beard. Captain had dropped out a year prior to the same effect. The reason we were on campus in the first place was that we didn’t know where else to go. The autumn weather was finally crisp and the sharpened rays of the afternoon sun filtered through the surrounding trees onto the leaf littered concrete. For a brief moment I could pretend that I was still a student, but this vanished as quickly as we ran into actual students leaving class. The summer must have robbed me of my pace with my sense of time, because for some reason I assume that student stroll: an unconscious gait of being simultaneously stressed and relaxed, in a hurry but carefree, a pace that, at any point, can stop itself to talk to somebody; it’s fast enough to make it to class at a reasonable time, but slow enough that if walking behind a girl you could lust over them in perfect secrecy.
I made a noise resembling a groan. Captain must’ve taken this as a cue.
“If you’re lucky you might get a job as a barista or at some used bookstore. You can tell people you’re an aspiring writer. You’ll be a failed artist, but at least you won’t be starving.”
“So you’re gonna start writing?” I asked.
“And write what?” said Captain, “I don’t have anything to say. That’s the whole reason I ever studied at all. I read what other people wrote so I wouldn’t have to write anything myself.”
After that, Captain stood and looked out at across the quad in nothing in particular. He seemed satisfied with himself, even if our situation now felt worse than it did before he said anything. But in a way it felt good to be miserable. You should feel good about feeling bad for yourself every now and then.
“Let’s get a cup of coffee.”

>>14115836
>>14116273
I'm back, and I actually think the excerpt you picked out is better than the uncut piece. I was definitely reading too far into it. It's really just White Elephants except she doesn't want a kid/the kid. The author shows off how he never says this directly, which is very Hemingway but also exactly why I don't like Hemingway that much. While I appreciate Hemingway's conciseness, obfuscation via dancing around the point rather than obfuscation via excess fluff (the more typical strategy) is still just obfuscation. To a degree it puts emphasis on the fact that people aren't often willing to be straight with eachother, but this is such a given that I tend not to care.

To explain why I like the excerpt more though, just for fun:

>“Alright, what about this,” he said, holding his half-full beer glass, “have you ever thought about all the people who’ve eaten at this table?”
>“Today?” she asked.
>“No,” he said. “Ever.”
This actually seems like a question without agenda, so far. No babies, he's just some deep undergrad. But his girlfriend replies "Today?" to something which was very, very obviously not just a matter of today. Personally I gave her the benefit of the doubt and assumed that by "Today?" she was saying "You mean, have I thought about it today?" which our deep undergrad misreads/underestimates as "Like, just all the people who sat here today?"

Having read the whole thing, her willingness to tip comes from her not planning to have children, but I just took the counting as her making fun of how high his 70-man estimate was. Beyond that, I saw her as playing dumb to his musing. I took her comment on them not being connected, as a joke pointing at the fact that he couldn't even pick up on the fact that she was playing dumb despite all his "we're all connected, man" hoohah.

Turns out he read her "Okay?" correctly though, and in turn that she was just throwing out a genuinely shallow response. Upon realizing this and reading the rest of the work, I felt like she just became less and less of a character.

Bump

>>14105713
These are both brilliant. The first one isn't very original, but the execution is good.

>>14105702
I really appreciate the originality here. I re-read the 4th stanza several times just for the pleasure of it. Your images and metaphors are fresh and evocative. Even so, I won't pretend I understand all of them. Perhaps I'd need to read the Portuguese to really appreciate it.
>What the human pupil palpatates
That doesn't make sense, because the verb palpatate can't be done TO something.
'Ferine' is a very obscure word; I would have chosen something like 'beastial' or 'brutish'.

Where do you get your inspiration? Some Lusophone poet I should know about?

>>14102420

Love that penguin

One after another, his great hooves stepped on the freshly-fallen Montana snow with surprising delicacy. Among the trees, he was king. His antlers stretched out wide, his coat thick and full, his snout raised in the cold evening air. Slowly, the moose walked through the cities of pine. Now the snow fell heavier, collecting on sagging branches. The moose raised his head at the noise of one of the branches snapping under the weight. His breath came out in a fine mist, dissipating quickly in the slowly-growing white haze before him.

>>14120197
There's nothing wrong with adding a little flair to your prose, but yours is a little too encumbered.
First sentence: 'stepped on' is the wrong term here ("his fingers typed on the keyboard" -- does that sound right to you?). Omit the word 'surprising'; an idea like 'with delicacy' is often more powerful if you don't try to beef it up -- anyway, there's nobody there to be surprised. Credit to you for not using 'delicately'; that's the word an asshole would have used.
2nd sentence: What do you mean by that exactly? Outside of the trees he isn't king? At a guess, that statement is supposed to imply that he's an imposing presence in the forest, in which case I would write 'He was an imposing presence in the forest.'
The term 'slowly-growing' annoys me. How about the rising haze, the thickening haze, the waxing haze. I'd toss out the word 'white' because we know what haze looks like. IMO this would be a better sentence if you altered the syntax; "...dissipating before him in the thickening haze."

Also, Mainer here; you guys really got mooses in Montana?

>>14103019
oh noooooooo

>>14120197
This is lovely.

Bump

>>14118543
Thanks for the insight on the dialogue. Is that good dialogue? Can/should writers really rely on their readers to look this deep into their stories? Is that what makes this piece good, if you think it's good?

I'd like to hear more from you about some points I have doubts in.

>scrunching her face
Is that a correct use of the word?

>“Speak your truth.”
This sounds awkward.

>Across the road, someone laid on their horn for three, full seconds.
Is the second comma really necessary?

>“Can’t we just talk? Can we not just talk without a drink?”
>“It was your idea to have a drink!”
>“Yes, but only because I wanted you to talk to me.”
>“That’s not fair,” she said. “You know that’s not fair.”
What does this mean? I take it that the beer represents abortion / not having a child, and he acquiesced to that drink just so she would 'talk' to him, which meant he would abstain/abort if that made her love him. Am I correct?

Apart from the 300,000 people alluding to sperm, and not feeling any connection with those strangers alluding to feeling love for the baby they never had, is there anything else worth knowing?

>The server arrived. “What can I do for you?”
>He handed the server his glass. Then, he took the bill and marked through the tip she’d written. He wrote a different number and handed the bill to the server. “Thank you, we’re fine.”
I thought normally he'd pay up by this point. Why did he hand the bill (having written the tip) and not give the money? Is this normal in the USA?

>>14115942
>>14117823
This is actually the middle of the story, guess I shouldn't have posted that without context.

>The facade of the house alternated between its sickly olive paint and muddy blood from the twisting strobe light.
Is that a better sentence? The strobe light was actually from their ambulance parking across.

>I also would'be liked a more explicit entry; "he waited for us at the door" made me think they were already inside the house, and that he was waiting for them to answer the door.
Should I have made him wait sitting down on the stoop? It was supposed to be two ambulance men (one is the narrator) coming inside this young man's house.

>The word choice and accidental rhyme sounds weird and out of character for "“You kidding?"/"He’s gonna".
What makes it sound weird? Does it sound too fake/unnatural? That guy was supposed to be a somewhat younger, insensitive prick who said this remark (not quietly) in front of the grieving man.

>What? Are you canceling a field trip? Tonally off, unless there's something about their "home" I'm supposed to know.
He has an autistic son at home who (whom?) he struggles to love. But yes, I agree that this sentence is not good at all.

>“I loved him too dad I loved him!”
Does this not sound awkward? What do you think of the whole paragraph?

>Overall nice props, bad direction.
Thanks. What do you mean by props? How can I improve direction? Should I just not write anything with lots of actions in it?

Thanks for the critique, anon.

>>14115971
>I just wanted to say that many of you are very talented and that even if you don’t ever publish or achieve a reading fanbase you are still real artists.

Thank you for your kind words, Anon. Made my eyes water. I'll work hard to earn those words.

>>14103265
There are many things to work on here, Anon. One of them is grammar, but the main thing is your writing feels immature and your grip of English is not yet strong.

>He stopped within four yards of the light blue sweater woman on her knees and doing something that made him suddenly feel lightheaded as he only stared
This sentence has several flaws. I'll try to point them out individually.

>light blue sweater woman
woman in light blue sweater

>on her knees and doing something
on her knees, doing something

>that made him suddenly feel lightheaded as he only stared.
Unclear, thought I get your point. It should be like, '...lightheaded, which was strange as he only stared.'

Were you trying to foreshadow that this woman is doing something horrible to the grave? Don't literally write that she was 'doing something' -- that's weak. What something did she do? 'She was kneeling down and digging like an animal at the earth -- no, the grave.' Replace lightheaded with a silent gasp or a heavy heartbeat or something. Shock comes first, then the lightheartedness usually comes after.

>Remembering the word vaguely...pray.
Who was remembering? 'He remembered the word vaguely, 'pray'.'

>Green Eyes and Silver Hair
Pick a better name. Hell, pick a name. Don't be afraid to pick a 'generic' name or force yourself to be unique and avoid naming your characters normally or at all. I thought he was a Native American or a character in a fantasy novel (an elf).

>silver blond hair
silver hair
>as she continued oblivious
obliviously / in oblivion. Or pick a better word, like 'in ignorance'.

>Her decayed body no where in sight.
Her decayed body was nowhere in sight.

>should of
should've (as in 'should have')

>His dad hours out of the state penitentiary.
I assume 'his dead hours'? Were you trying to convey that these hours were so bad it felt like dying? 'The hours he spent in the cell felt like eternity in purgatory,' or something.

>twice; And
twice; and

>before he fucking actually used it.
before he actually fucking used it. Or, before he fucked used it. 'Actually' weakens the 'fucking', and 'fucking' is enough to convey the urgency.

>and the dawning red sky marked a new day in hell.
Pretty good.

There are lots of other things but I hope you get the point. And that was only the superficial stuff, not to mention sentence structure, punctuation and shit. The flow was awkward. He was at his breaking point, but the story digressed into a flashback, which killed the climax. Most of that flashback could be written before of after he kills Silver Hair or whatever he does, which is better instead of just sitting down with the woman who ate (I think?) his wife's corpse.

Overall, not very good and should be rewritten. But before that, you should learn more. Yes, you learn by writing, but also reading. Look at how authors choose their words, what to emphasize, what to cut. My main concern here is the use of language. Don't give up and thanks for sharing.

>>14108990
Better than the original, but there's still some telling instead of showing.
>new, polished
New how? Polished, another word would be better for this purpose. Maybe it was freshly painted or well lit or bustling with patrons?

>mom and pop
Sounds off and awkward. I know what it means, then again I'm not a native English speaker.

>A small gray squirrel
'A squirrel' would do.

>I remembered the comfort
Telling. You already kinda showed the comfort after this, though, so cut this out.

>of the real world.
of the world.

Maybe that's why
>Maybe that was why

>black Accord
Not sure about using an actual brand here. Personally I'd prefer if you say that car was a secondhand from your dad or something, which makes it even more pathetic compared to the...

>new model luxury cars
latest luxury cars, or latest luxury models.

>could not
couldn't

>how damned beautiful everyone was.
Telling again.

>Gumless smiles
Sounds awkward. You could mention their perfect teeth instead, for instance.

>dimples that only appeared when called on.
I like this.

>This wasn’t a place meant for a gremlin like me. A short, skinny, haggard zombie.
Why not elaborate a bit on his ugliness? I can't see enough with 'short, skinny, haggard'. Why not compare his pimples to their perfect skin? His balding scalp to their glorious mane? His fucked up teeth because he was too poor to afford braces?

Like the critique of the previous version, this still lacks buildup to the panic attack. Okay, they're beautiful and he's ugly and poor. But that's not enough to warrant a panic attack. How does that fact make him feel? Inferiority, shame, or hopelessness before the panic would make it more believable (and powerful). How did you feel when you spent the night in the corner, out of place in Stacy's party back in high school? Something like that.

>The last three paragraphs.
Again, better than the original, but one way I can see this improved is the pace. Still feels too slow for a man in panic. I'd use shorter sentences and abrupt stops, or em dashes to connect short clauses into a semi-coherent sentence. I don't have time to think overly pretty sentences when I'm grasping for life -- this makes it more believable.

>I thought, mental capacity clipped with panic.
'Mental capacity' is too much telling, and punctuation. 'At least it'll be over, I thought, as panic smothered my mind.' or something like that.

>At least its fucking over.
it's. Kinda confused here. Which one is over? The dying or the panic? Both? Was the confusion intended? Could be reworked somewhat.

>sentence structure
You write long, complex sentences with a lot of commas. I do that too, so I can't really say anything. Hope another anon could enlighten us on this.

I quite like it overall and won't mind reading the full story. I did't critique your original one. Thanks for sharing.

>>14123271
>>14122274
Based critique anon

>>14117979
>You either get stuck with an office job that you know, [...], is soul-killing,
I was confused at first. Why not 'You can either get stuck with an office job that, [...], you know is soul-killing,'?

>gallerina
Turns out this is not a typo but some slang, which was described right after and I guess fits Captain's personality.

>because for some reason I assume that student stroll:
Again, confusing at first parse. Also, assumed. Otherwise I love how you described the student stroll.

>looked out at across the quad in nothing in particular.
There's a conflict between 'at' and 'in'. Try 'looked out across the quad at nothing in particular.'

Nevertheless, I really liked it. I think it's well written and the characters well developed. The setting is well done and comfy. I'm interested in how the story would unfold. Hope another anon can critique more into the content.Thanks for sharing.

>>14120197
I really like it, it's beautiful. Can't give much critique besides

>cities of pine
city of pine. Alternatively, pillars of pine (alliteration), or something.

>of one of the branches
a branch

>>14120479
What's wrong with the second sentence? Don't you think simply stating that 'he was an imposing presence' is much weaker?

>There's nothing wrong with adding a little flair to your prose, but yours is a little too encumbered.
Personally I thought that was plenty of flair, but not too much. Could you elaborate why you feel otherwise?

>>14123547
I'm not him, but thanks.

>>14122274
>Thank you for your kind words, Anon. Made my eyes water. I'll work hard to earn those words.

No problem, Anon. We are all together on this.

>>14119619

Thank you so much for the kind words, Anon. Really, it means a lot.

You ask me about Portuguese-language poets, but I confess that I know very little about poetry in my native language. The poetic tradition with which I identify - and learned - the most is that of the English language, both in the originals and in translations (I feel pleasure to see what solutions translators can find to match two languages as different as Portuguese and English).

Let me say first of all that many times I feel jealous of your language because of your great number of monosyllables. This allows you to insert much more content and thought into your verses, while we, with our multi-syllable words, end up getting more constrained by the metric. I also like the plasticity of English in coining new words.

Most of what I learned about poetry was by reading Shakespeare, especially the plays. I studied him for years and years, like a fanatic (like a rabbi intoxicated by the Talmud, a Talmud where God’s name is not Yahweh, but Metaphor), and bought every book of literary criticism I found on his techniques of metaphor and símile making, the development of his imagery, his use of verse and prose, and many other things. Before I discovered Shakespeare, when I started reading poetry at 14-15 years old, the poems that usually attracted me the most were those overflowing with images, even if the images didn't make much sense (Rimbaud was a favorite back then). When I discovered Shakespeare it was as if I finally found someone who wrote poetry just as I thought poetry should be: torrents of images, one stepping on the heels of another, birds of paradise trying to sing while new eggs were already hatching and offering their carols to the sun, the phoenix dissolving into ashes before it could even sing because there were already new fire-birds puffing at the back of her neck. I remember reading Sophocles and thinking, "These plays are very good, but something seems to be missing." That something was Shakespeare's bold and inventive metaphors. Sophocles carves a small Greek temple of smooth marble and symmetrical columns, but Shakespeare is the great weaver of Gothic cathedrals that drown any eye that tries to absorb all its details in one glimpse.

>>14123789

By the way, I love Aeschylus, he is like a proto-Shakespeare, a more primitive kind of Shakespeare, the Neanderthal of the metaphorical-drama-style that Shakespeare worked on. Aeschylus is a strange case: there’s no other poet who writes like him in all of our surviving Greek poets.

In terms of Portuguese poetry I believe that the most versatile and ambitious poet we have is Fernando Pessoa. However, I cannot say that he is a great influence on style for me because, although he uses metaphors, like any poet, it seems to me that he does not do it with such intensity and so continuously (he also changes a lot of style according to heteronym he is incorporating, and most of his styles are quite down to Earth and routine-like in style).

The great name of Portuguese language poetry is Camões, but I always found him boring and overrated. Most of his imagery is reheated food from Petrarch and Petrarch followers: a plate with a porridge consisting of roses, nectar, crystals, olive trees, shepherds, meadow flowers and Greek gods, a porridge that has already been chewed and regurgitated thousands of times. But don't take my word as scripture: I'm probably wrong. It's just a personal opinion: for me Camões is never impressive or remarkable, he never does what Emily Dickinson called the true test of poetry:

>“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”

If I were to elect the greatest poem in the Portuguese language I would say this: The Life and Death of a Severino:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morte_e_Vida_Severina

This book towers over the rest of its author's work. He was able to create many more beautiful and bold metaphors and make language dare more in this one poem than in the rest of his production. In this poem the verb often roars, shows its teeth, puts out its claws, foam at the mouth, squirts feline essence. It’s true poetry. It reminds me of some of the passages in Job's speeches about his leprous flesh and the earthly existence he was living, crawling like a dog through the deserts, rubbing his belly full of rotten bubbles in the hot sand.

Unfortunately I think it might be quite hard to translate this book well, but it's worth a read, even in a mutilated form. The social and economic conflicts reported in this work are from the 40s, but they still exist today in Brazil.

>>14123798

In lyrical writing for music, I believe Brazil has one of the most talented writers in the world, and, in my humble opinion, far superior to Bob Dylan. His name is Chico Buarque. Here's an example of one of your lyrics:

Oh piece of me
Oh, my half ripped out from me
Take away your shadow
That longing is the reverse of childbirth
Longing is to tidy up the room
Of a son who has already died

Oh piece of me
Oh, my half amputated from me
Take what's left from you
That longing hurts in a throbbing way
It's like a stinging pain
In a member that I have already lost

Oh, pedaço de mim
Oh, metade arrancada de mim
Leva o vulto teu
Que a saudade é o revés de um parto
A saudade é arrumar o quarto
Do filho que já morreu

Oh, pedaço de mim
Oh, metade amputada de mim
Leva o que há de ti
Que a saudade dói latejada
É assim como uma fisgada
No membro que já perdi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIFWpMzwUnc

He wrote hundreds of songs, many of them incorporating characters, so that the lyrical self of the songs are men and women, rich and poor, masters and slaves, the mothers of drug dealers', fishermen, couples of lovers, drunks, husslers from the carnival culture, wives hungry for the caresses of tired husbands, construction workers, a kind of choir of Athenian women, and more.

As for my own learning, I felt instinctively that for me the metaphor was the central element of poetry. Of course, this is debatable, and for other readers and writers elements such as rhythm or metric or verse format are more important definers for what poetry means. But for me it was always imagery that attracted me the most in a poem.

Shakespeare was my great teacher. He made me realize that I didn't need to be ashamed of my love for figures of language, and that it is possible to use this style efficiently. I am not saying that I am the big deal or that what I produced is significant: it is more a matter of feeling, of how I feel about my own work. I think what I like most about the kind of poetry he writes is that it is a poetry that thinks through images. You use metaphors to think. I find that very satisfying to read.

>>14123804

Besides Shakespeare I also love Emily Dickinson. To me her lyric poetms are superior even to Shakespeare's sonnets. I try to read her in the original, and mostly read her in English, but now I was very happy to hear that soon a translation of her complete poems – a bilingual work - will be released in Portuguese. It will be interesting to see the translator's solutions to maintain the beauty of the original but at the same time be true to the content.

I also like George Herbert, Sir Thomas Browne, William Blake, some Coleridge, some Keats, some of Wilfred Owen's poems (some of his poems are among the best I've ever read). Other than that I read all sorts of scattered poems by English poets. You always come across little jewels like Carl Sanburg here:

Fog

The fog eats
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Or Sephen Crane here:

Many red devils ran from my heart
And out upon the page.
They were so tiny
The pen could mash them.
And many struggled in the ink.
It was strange
To write in this red muck
Of things from my heart.

Or here:

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And until of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter — bitter,” he answered;
“But I like it
“Because it is bitter,
“And because it is my heart.”

Or Edna St. Vincent Millay here:

What lips have my lips kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
It's full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I can't say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more

As for metaphorical language, I also found echoes of Shakespeare in the prose poems of Herman Melville and Nabokov. Some of the most beautiful poetic passages I have ever read are in Moby Dick and Lolita, and I believe this is largely due to the fact that both Melville and Nabokov are fond of metaphor.

>>14123808

Now to your criticic, you are quite right, here:

>What the human pupil palpatates

>That doesn't make sense, because the verb palpatate can't be done TO something.

The original Portuguese word is "apalpa", which should be translated as “groping”, but I tried to find a kind of synonym that kept more of the original sound, and ended up ruining everything.

And here:

>'Ferine' is a very obscure word; I would have chosen something like 'beastial' or 'brutish'.

Time and time again, when I write English, I end up using polysyllabic and Latin words that read normally to me but that to native speakers sound obscure and pompous. In many posts, when the other Anons dont know that I am a native speaker of a romance language, they said "yeah fagot, show how much you know with those fancy-ass big-words of yours". The problem is that, to me, these words are obscure many times seem very common.

The original says "ferinos", that word in Portuguese is not exactly so common, but not so rare either. It has various connotations, from something feral and aggressive and hungry to aggressively intelligent, incisive and brilliant. It is common to hear someone speak here of an “ferina” analysis or an “ferino” intellect. What I meant is that even the fiercest and brightest brains of our race, even when in the glory of all their fire and glow, are still unable to comprehend. But you're right: in translation the word I chose was unfortunate. I thing that “fiercest” would be the best choice.

Also, I made a typo on the first spider poem. This verse:

>In the bristles of a broom bristles, among the dust;

Should only read: “In the bristles of a broom, among the dust”. I didn’t mean to repeat the word.

To get new ideas on a topic or theme I usually read quotes and citations about that theme, often on websites (there is one very good “The Quote Garden”, and other “Notable Quotes”), and keep writing down the ideas that pop into my head. Of course, I never plagiarize or repeat something exactly as I read, but always try to alter anything that appeals to me so that the result does not even resemble the original sources

well this one is in spanish, because i personally find it easier to truthseek via spanish:

todo lo que era yo
cuando era pequeño
ya no está
porque se han llevado,
la hiedra de mi jardín,
los demás años,
el olor de mi patio

I stopped smoking weed again. I stopped before but every time I stop I get these weird ass dreams, some of them scary, some of them not so much, just weird. In school they teach you that dreams are your subconscious, which is basically this thing in the back of your mind that is always turning, like a gear, operating in the background, and this thing comes out to play whenever your head hits the pillow. It has all your fears, desires, weird sex things, all of it, down to pat. I definitely believe it, and mine must be twisted. I won’t go into a lot of details but I just have messed up dreams, weird ass dreams. I walk around, smile, laugh and exchange with people but inside I must be such a mess. I have friends though. My friend thinks that I’m a misanthrope, someone who just hate everyone and everything for no reason. When he drinks he tells me he loves me and it disgusts me. I don’t think it’s the love that disgusts me, but he does, on some type of level. Why would you let yourself get to that point?

>>14114975
bump

>>14122149
>Can/should writers [use subtext]?
People in-person can, should, and do use subtext. So, yes.

>Is that what makes [a] piece good?
No.

Look at a joke or something, and try and rewrite it without the subtext. See the problems? It's like that. Subtext isn't a thing to get a highscore in, but it's a place where different things can be done. Ever played metroid prime 2, the one with the shadow zone? Or, any nintendo game with some shadow zone you need to go in and out of to solve puzzles? Again, same thing. What's always bothered me about Hemingway is that he sometimes seems to just be holding his head underwater for fun though. That and he runs straight out of quotations into new lines without a period sometimes, which sone people think is breezy but I just feel misled.

>scrunching
It's fine.

>This sounds awkward.
I'd say so.

>Am I correct?
Probably.

>I thought normally he'd pay up by this point. Why did he hand the bill (having written the tip) and not give the money? Is this normal in the USA?
The waiter was bringing back a paid check to be signed/tipped. The card gets run first so that the receipt get printed out, for signing.

>>14124120
sounds like catcher in the rye

>>14122258
>What do you mean by props? How can I improve direction? Should I just not write anything with lots of actions in it?
As in stage props. Regarding direction no, I just mean to be more explicit with certain scene changes, things like watching for pronoun confusion, etc.

>twisting
Why twisting instead of spinning? Twisting usually implies a rebound, this might be why I just saw a scooby doo van instead of an ambulance. There's also the fact that these guys don't seem like pros, which is keeping me from viewing them as medical personnel.

>Should I have made him wait sitting down on the stoop?
No, I was mislead because I never heard them enter the house, so them being already inside was how I resolved it, which gets back to direction. Having people walk through doors is not such a bad thing.

>Does it sound too fake/unnatural?
He says "gonna" but then says "there are" without contracting it.

>Does this not sound awkward? What do you think of the whole paragraph?
The eyes rolling back made me assume he collapsed. Make of that what you will.

>>14124120
I sort of like the prose style. Only worry is the content might be a little redundant. Although I actually think there is space for more marijuana lit. I guess what I'm trying to say is the idea of quitting weed-dreams is a cool jumping off point for a story, I just am not sure that going from there to "I'm complicated and society is a costume" or whatever is particularly interesting. At least not unless you think you have something new to add to the shtick, which I'm sure there is something there.

>>14124348
Do mine please, above is my critique of a piece above. see>>14124369


“I bargained for salvation, she gave me a lethal dose”


What could you ever do to fulfill the promise of the day? The last moment of autumn is here. Trees, on the verge of maturity to death, already having dropped their seed, don’t yet menace. Leaves carpet the sidewalks and streets. Snow has come and gone once, and the sun has returned. But its next absence won’t be so short. The forecast alone stings your face like the dreary walks ahead of you. But that is upcoming. Today is crisp, ale colored sunshine beaming through, and livable. No heavy-duty technology is needed to see you trough, no synthetic fabrics spun by machine are out.
You stand outside. Walk around the block. Smoke a few. The temperature borders glove free weather. But you have to bear the cold in your extremities while you can. Before it’s too much. It’s always too much. The mist, the foliage all around, your breath hanging in the air, it’s all too close. You’ll brood then.
But the time to bask is now. The sun will retreat to the south until the geese return. You text that one girl, no response. You just want to sit in the grass, color in your cheeks before the turn. She needn’t talk much. “But she won’t even regard the moment, the day,” the framework on the point of dissolution. Maybe you’re glad she’s busy. Your, let alone her, internal states are never that intelligible, though.
So you walk to the park. It’s not a day for cars. Stare at the water. Light dances on the surface. Every ripple proceeds towards the shore always. You’re bored. You’re lonely. “It’s too nice for this.”
The quality of the day has real weight; the yoke you bear avails no other explanation. “There would be wine, of course. Disposable, plastic glasses perhaps. Or no, the occasion demands the real glassware. Some cheese, maybe nuts, no meat though,” you think. Another cigarette reaches its end; only the filter remains. You’re attuned. Breezes pass through you. It seems irreducible.
There’re children playing in the distance, on the grass, rolling and chasing. You don’t envy them now, but just what lays ahead of them the novelty, the intrigue, the feeling. And perhaps, this is what is so unattainable about the girl. She feels something, not drowned out by the multiplicity, the overwhelming abundance of a single, atomic state indistinguishable from the rest. Because the day is too much, the burden will be gone when the snow makes its home. And you’ll look back, realization and all, demonstrably aware that this was all there was, anyway.

>>14120197
>One after another, his great hooves stepped on
This seems like a somewhat anticlimactic thing for great hooves to do.

Might be worth expressing how thick/thin the snow he's "stepping on" is.

>His breath came out in a fine mist, dissipating quickly in the slowly-growing white haze before him.
"as a fine mist", "into", and cut "white" imo

I perfer "cities of pine" as-is, unless this is more population than you want.

>>14102358

do bumps still work?

>>14124456
>>14124378
crit mine plz

>>14124378
>the promise of the day?
"the morning's promise"? Hard to see a "day." I'm not totally sure what you mean though. Not that I have to be.

>Trees, on the verge of maturity to death
On the verge of maturing into death? Or do you mean that they're on the verge of anything from one to the other? I'm going to guess the former, but that's only on the grounds of it being more dramatic.

>already having
Flip these so that I'm more immediately sure you aren't going to end the line here.

>The forecast
Maybe "This forecast"

>Today is [...] sunshine
Careful

>trough
did you mean "through?" Otherwise, "trough" is a noun.

>Before it’s too much.
Just go into this line from the previous with a comma. It needs to look more attached to that one than to the next (for example, "Before it’s too much, it’s always too much." would be bad).

>“But she won’t even regard the moment, the day,” the framework on the point of dissolution.
???

>intelligible, though.
Why end with "though"? This didn't sound like it ran contrary to the pior line. It semed more like a direct explanation of why "you" might be glad.

>So you walk to the park. It’s not a day for cars. Stare at the water.
This is a good set of lines and rapid transitions. I actually see a car go past.

>>14115692
That's what I was thinking when I wrote it. I wanted the narator's voice to describe the entire setting rather than this specific scene.

the frost burnt grass felt the now melting rain
the angel hymns were falling
to a stage muted with snow
calling out a taciturn line of footprints
in soft symphony
a once calming sound now ringing
potential half diminished
surmising ideas beneath a surface
of days written in invisible ink
and marionettes paraded
through imperfect dark
towards a hope of nothings something
and the winking eye of a chasing storm

My memories of her were becoming even more muddy, I could recall what she’d say, but not her voice, it felt like grass was growing over it. The morning was bright and black, circles tracked the sun in my vision as I stared out from the ferry window to the sharpening waves. The sea sped behind and the islands slipped away like debris on a road. Their pines and shadows a stark contrast to the day. The chatter among the other passengers was quiet, though the excitement, or more-likely anxiety of a new day was mounting. The types of voices one usually hears in the eager morning, after coffee, but before breakfast. The calm before the dizzy monologues and seething, forced love. The funeral was going to be a disaster and all eyes were to be on me. But that was hours from now, better to sleep while I can, I know I’ll wish for it later. The eulogy paper was as heavy in my shirt pocket as my eyes, the sun a filtered orange on my face, the passenger’s chatter to silence, the fuzzy wave-lengths of sleep.

>>14124120
>operating in the background
saying "background" when you've already told me this is in the "back" of my mind is a little awkward

>down to pat
I've only ever heard this as "down pat"

>love
>Why would you let yourself get to that point?
This guy's a stoner? Him being antisocial I can understand, but if I had to think of negative feelings I would associate with pot, it would be something more like paranoia than this kind of resentment-of-happiness you have going. But if I'm supposed to feel skeptical, then whatever, it's fine.

Do you ever wonder if all aspects of your belief system will one day be reduced to a couple paragraphs, a couple sentences? I certainly do. I don’t know why I do, but I’ve been doing it for years. I’ve wondered, if I teach everything I believe and every lesson I’ve ever learned to my imaginary children. The half that’s not forgotten on ear-drum impact would eventually be forgotten by the imagined grandchildren, and if not them, then theirs. Until all perspective I’ve understood in my life and everything I was could be eroded to a sentence or two. Filtered through generations of common and well-accepted wisdom until it’s a footnote on a hallmark card. Well I hope the read’s sweet if it has to be short. Though with sentiments like the ones I just expressed I have the black inkling that it’ll be one of fear more than joy. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t afraid, in fact it’s hard to remember anything when I am.

The sinking man cried out to the captain.
Yellow boxes floating by.
Slipping through the surface tension.
The sky drowning in the waves.

He kicked off at the bottom.
Leagues beneath the ferry.
Hands grasping at air.

The coiled iron in his blood.
Shot out from his pupils.
In currents of red.

The scrying man clawed out to silver phantoms.
Clouds beneath the sea.
Scratching at the golden shell.
The waves fell from the sky.

Mercury dew slips from the silver song of time.

Corrosive in its melody, melting the heart of life.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Discordant scratchings rend the chord of my heart,
as your truth is whispered to my reality.
Fraying all that tied us.
Strung together no longer.

>>14123870
Que queres que te diga? No hay rima ni metro.

>>14124709
>My memories of her were becoming even more muddy,
Comma splice.
>but not her voice,
Comma splice.
>The morning was bright and black,
Comma splice.
>The chatter among the other passengers was quiet,
Comma splice.
> The chatter among the other passengers was (...) more-likely anxiety of a new day was mounting.
You're saying "It was more likely was mounting." To fix this, it should be "or it was more likely that the anxiety of a new day was mounting."
>The types of voices one usually hears in the eager morning, after coffee, but before breakfast.
This is a sentence fragment, and it's hard to connect to the previous sentence. The last thing you referred to was "the anxiety of a new day" and now you're saying "the types of voices..." You should mention "the chatter" again.
>better to sleep while I can, I know I’ll wish for it later.
You switched to present tense. It should be "It would be better to sleep while I could; I knew I'd wish for it later."
>The eulogy paper was as heavy in my shirt pocket as my eyes, the sun a filtered orange on my face, the passenger’s chatter to silence, the fuzzy wave-lengths of sleep.
The connecting verb in these clauses is "was." "The paper was as heavy as my eyes." "The sun [was] a filtered orange." All right so far, but then it turns into nonsense fragments.
>the passenger’s chatter to silence
First off, the apostrophe should go after the 's'.
The passengers' chatter [was] to silence? [Turned] to silence? I don't know.
>the fuzzy wave-lengths of sleep.
I also don't know what you mean by this.

>>14124729
>I certainly do. I don’t know why I do
The 'do' is repetitive. "I don't know why" would be fine.
>I’ve wondered, if I teach everything I believe and every lesson I’ve ever learned to my imaginary children.
This is an if-clause missing a main clause. "If I [do this] --> " what then? Did you mean to say "if I'll teach everything I believe"?
>be forgotten by the imagined grandchildren
No need to repeat yourself. "Them" is fine. Then you'll have to change "theirs" by "their grandchildren."
>Until all perspective I’ve understood in my life
This was really confusing; I had to reread a few times because you started a sentence with a conjunction. Bro, conjunctions are connected with commas. You're following the last sentence, not making a new one.
>Filtered through generations
This is also part of the previous sentence. If you want to break it up and make it smaller sentences, you'll have to add "It would be".
>and well-accepted wisdom until it’s
You're speaking of a hypothetical. It should be "until it'd be"
>Well
Missing a comma.
>Well I hope the read’s sweet if it has to be short
"Well, if it has to be short, I hope the read is sweet."
>Though
You don't begin sentences with "though", it goes at the end. You're looking for "although." Also, it's a conjunction, so it's part of the previous sentence.
>I wasn’t afraid,
Comma splice.
>in fact
Missing a comma.

It was June when I met Maya. She had hair like autumn leaves - I will always remember her hair. I will always remember doing coke with her in the bathroom of our favorite bar, and drinking until the sun came up. This was the time of our lives, and it was perfectly wasted.

Before I had seen her, my lads were jostling me about my love life. I was a fit man but single - they said to me "Hey Michael, when are you going to put that dick to use?" They continued with the regular jeers of me being a homosexual, a virgin, etc. I didn't mind. We were all downtown at the bars enjoying ourselves, looking to get in trouble. We arrived at our favorite hole-in-the-wall and went in.

The music was blaring. Many of the college girls had come in - off on their Fall break - and their asses were barely in their skirts. Mitch went immediately to talking up some hot dark haired barely-21-year-old. It was just Rick and I at the bar, ordering drinks for all of us.

"There's plenty of game here, Michael, you should get into some!"

"No, not tonight. It's not in my blood tonight." In truth I was starving for a woman, but I hadn't had the courage to talk to one for months. I'd taken mushrooms the past April, and I was still dealing with the revelations I had. The blow was less attractive, the whole lifestyle I'd been leading seemed hollow. But I assured myself it was only the drugs getting the best of me. I drank the whiskey as it came by. We went to go cockblock Mitch for fun.

We walked up behind him. Rick reached out with his phone - "Mitch, Mitch! Your wife, shes calling!" The girl was notably put off, and Mitch turned around pissed and then back to the girl to reassure her he was single, but she had already left.

"You're all a bunch of pricks" he said
"Yes, but we're YOUR pricks" said Rick. We all laughed and drank more. Eventually we were decently buzzed (if not drunk) and playing pool in the back. Thats when I saw her.

I was potting the 3 in the corner pocket. Lining up my shot, I saw hips that were too shapely to ignore. I tried lining my shot again, but in my peripheral was that autumn-red hair. I scratched on purpose. "Whats the deal with that?" said Mitch. "Ball in hand, take your shot. I'll be back." I went over to her, heart beating in strange palpitations.

>>14125088
You might be the first one not to have any grammar/punctuation mistakes, congrats. Sadly, your work is way too dry and lacking interest. The characters, the romance, all of it is hollow and vapid. And no, you're not criticising it.

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