First sentence

gagged, tied, and raped

He regarded it as his duty as a citizen and a man
of culture to open an attack upon the ‘clericals.’

Early one morning the sun was shining, I was laying in bed.

*Character A* stared at the lights while in a deep melancholy produced by the soft lapping of the water against the pier, the sharp laughter echoing from the bars across the road, and not the least by the alcohol buzzing in his mind.

Literally just wrote this for this thread based on an idea I've been mulling over.

>Eastbound 042 groaned to a halt in Burdock Station at 8:12 AM on a Monday morning.
I don't like the word "groaned" here but I'm not sure how best to describe the lumbering stoppage of a subway train. I'm trying to write a slightly Poe-ish flash fiction story, if that bears any relevance.
I would remove the single quotes, unless you really want to emphasize that he and only he uses that term and you plan on using single quotes every time. Also change out "open" for something slightly more timeless, maybe "lead" or "rally".
What if you restructured it to focus on the concrete actions rather than the abstract mental state? Something like
>Water lapped softly against the pier, laughter echoed from the bars across the road, and alcohol buzzed in __name__'s mind, all three blurring into a deep melancholy.
My word choice is kind of iffy, but I think the structure is stronger this way.

*record scratch* Yup, that's me, you're probably wondering how I ended up in this situation...

He died during Valentine's Day, the day he loathed so dearly.

>establishing the locality, mood or thought in the first line

i never realized how much i dislike this

>Dave Wallace

>the first line should do fuck all
woah....

I think, generally, I would want the piece to be more abstract. But as an opening I think it does lack impact and while that fits the mood it doesn't draw you in.

What else would you do with a first line?

Beneath her elbow lay his signature in scarlet.

There is nothing wrong with passive voice and anyone who critiques its use is a brainlet who can't think outside of middle school writing conventions.

Through the blinders, past the sun-sheen, a woman lays on the grass.

that sentence is way too tight. Take out one of the thes. Either, "Through blinders, past the sun-sheen..." or "Through the blinders, past sun-sheen..."

Also unless the woman is laying down the grass, it should be "a woman lay on the grass" or "a woman lies on the grass" for simple present

It was an empty house, except for Charles.

Liberals often believe that genocide is immoral.

Only one enemy remained; two if you count God.

Rain fell as the motorized bike pulled into the alley, instantly filling it with the sound of an engine.

...

ልጁን ይመልከቱ. ቀላ እና ቀጭን, ቀጭን እና የተጫጫጭ ቀሚስ አድርጎ ይተኛል.

As he viewed them, one by one, they expired under hilariously painful circumstances.

>filling rain with engine sounds

Terrible

There is no split infinitive in his sentence.

it wouldn't be instant bro sound propagates at a certain speed depending on the medium

There was not much that could be said in a situation like this, neither many actions that could be taken; afterall, it was a de-facto trap, even if that were never to be admitted.

replace "neither" with "nor"

If they admitted it was a trap then it wouldn't be defacto. So in saying "even if they wouldn't..." makes the sentence not work. It's just redundant.

I sat on Coo's knee and he began very softly, "see there," and he nodded at his missus, who knelt down to the grass, "if you even touch the flowerbed, she'll fall into a fit."

God was lonely then one day he had an idea

Her hole was pretty wet.

Blood ran down his leg as he pulled away the scab.

He touched the flowerbed, suddenly she fell into a fit.

I was living in a beachhouse in Thailand with two exquisite teenaged ladyboys when my wife committed suicide back in Toledo, Ohio.

This just makes me sad I'm not loving it Thailand with two teenage ladyboys

"Good morning sunshine, you're wife's here so don't panic."

i shat on her face and she on mine, why did i add sweetcorn to my lunch?

I've got another confession to make...

"Are you ready? Let's do this, hold my beer."

What is passive voice?

ehh
kinda fresh meme
5/10

It was all ichor on taste buds and violet dust, carnival of surgical masks and tight-hugging eyewear. The pollution season has started; a brief age of consumer freedom, violent cough choirs on the subways, cruel diagnoses and holes in the filament. Gargantuan plants spat flumes of smoke once more, as their brothers, for years scrubbing the air and droning the smokers in their bedrooms, ceased. The utility scriptures went over the hump, and wise facilities let the sinners sin, create the mess they would have to tidy. And for how long this liberty should last - only the progenitors know.

(not the first sentence, obviously, but means nothing without at least a bit of context)

... *record scratch*
I bet you're wondering how my dick, balls, and anus got into this mess.

>Presumably for centuries did the cemetery be. Yet no creak was heard as I opened the gates of the graveyard.
Fixed it

Change "be" to something more active, like "held" and you've got it.

Does not deserve to be a meme, it's not that horrid and there's nothig particulary absurd about the line. Sure it reeks a bit of r/writingprompts but nothing too unexcusable.
You will not be the first one to turn greentexts into literature. It would be some 20-something girl unfamiliar with board culture and it's going to hit NYT bestseller list and hang there for quite some time. People will call it revolutionary and Veeky Forums will collectively end themselves.
Has a nice rhythm to it. Do you like Faulkner?
You are probably shitposting but still - how do people tolerate brutal, carnal fiction? It feels so useless and artificial to me.

The Most Awkward Sports Moments You Have Ever Seen, [Return] [Catalog] [Bottom] [Screen], for centuries did the cemetery seem, ehh, ehh, kinda fresh meme.

"Wasteland of the Alik'r," was an apt name for the shifting, Sun-scorched desert that had swallowed the VI Legion whole.

>Sitting on the edge of his bed, at the age of 32, he still held his shit in.

>how do people tolerate brutal, carnal fiction?
It only really work is it's written from the viewpoint of someone who would realistically think that way. To me the sentence you quoted reads like something a rapist or killer might think, dehumanizing his victim to not only just a hole, but a willing one.

Although it could just be fanfiction.net tier "erotic lit," in which case I agree with you. There's something to be said for simplicity, but that type of writing just feels trashy and artificial.

For the second time this month, Tom brought his toaster into the bathroom.

Snow crackled and popped under her boots like embers burning

This is good.

He hoped that when he died his bones would not take up too much space.

The engine refused to roar and instead cranked and sputtered as his muscles strained behind the automobile, desperately trying to push it out of the rut they had been trapped in for the last hour.

this surprised me. i want to say that it is overly wordy, but it works.

I laughed.

>you are wife's here

How big was the wound that blood ran from a scab? Honestly it would be better if he "picked and scratched" at the scab since "pulled away," implies one smooth movement, and a wound large enough to leak enough blood to "run down his leg," would have a large scab that would come apart in pieces. Picking and scratching at a scab would also irritate the wound enough for blood to start flowing, although most scabbed over injuries don't start bleeding freely even when the scab is removed since the skin has already started to heal itself. It might also help to add a better descriptor to let the reader know how much blood there is. If it's just a little
>Blood oozed slowly down his thigh as he picked away at the scab.
If it's a lot, I would change "scab," to "dressing," or "bandage."
>Blood ran freely down his leg as he pulled away the dressing, soaking into the carpet around his foot.

Just my 2 cents.

And then the cantaloupe sitting on the table so orange and ripe was plucked up by Mrs.Richardson and bitten into, the juice dribbling down her face as she stared out the glass back door at her underwhelming backyard.

I would change the word cranked to something else, since cranked means started when you're talking about a car.

>I cranked my car to let it warm up before I left.

Stuttered might be a good one, since stuttered and sputtered has a bit of rhythm. Whined might also work.

This is kind of a personal thing, but I hate seeing
>as he
>as the
>as they
Because I used to be stuck in the "as" trap myself. I'd split that sentence into two.
>and sputtered. His muscles
Since the focus changes from the engine to the man straining.

Call me the Meme King.

Then I would go for "The hole was pretty wet", which packs more punch, removes the human element entirely, and also includes a faux-synecdoche. And anyway I think rapists and killers don't think like that, or if they do, they're the least interesting kind of a rapist and/or killer.
Thanks, that was my intention. I'm trying to go for a victorian novel of cyberpunk, overly descriptive and visual, to get away from high-concept-no-imagery everywhere in the genre. A lot of the works turn out to be flat symbolic aesops, which works well if the goal is didactic; yet we are living in the cyberpunk era so the novels should also be lived-in.

Why not send your first sentence to Hamilton Cork?

youtube.com/watch?v=1XrbTqiQGcg&ab_channel=potchimotchi

Perhaps dehumanize was the wrong term. De-personalize might be better. The implication of
>Her hole was pretty wet.
Is that the victim secretly wants the offender, is secretly just as lustful and base as he is. It also absolves the attacker of guilt, and possibly reinforces his negative feelings towards women (all women are sluts, /r9k/ type stuff)

I'm sure I'm way overanalyzing a 5 word sentence, but I'm bored and nobody's done mine yet.

I'd be very interested in reading the rest of whatever that is you've written. It's very strange, and even a little jarring, but I feel like it fits well with the theme you're aiming for.

The smoke illuminated the stormy December night.

The dream became a phantasm, and Father too; we danced for hours, not worrying about the rising prices of soy nor the increased chance of eye-injuries-by-umbrella during rain season.

On what planet does smoke illuminate or stay around in any appreciable quantity during a storm?

Hamlet, I knew him not.

Little Mary Lyguen sat up from her bed bench and crawled down the stairs to the room of living where she greeted her master owner with the licking of his morning shoes.

They rose like drunks.

It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times.

good enough

"I won't go back to that damned moon"

Bad, in that only an extra trashy sci-fi novel could follow

Too verbose.

"The Wasteland of the Alik'r had swolled the VI Legion Whole. All the soldiers of the sixth had been consumed beneath its shifting, sun-scorched sands....."

Split it into two sentences and go from there.

Very nice. It immediately captured my attention.

I knew that Judgement Day was coming. At first I felt I had to tell people, but then I knew that nobody would listen, and that I would only worry those that cared about me. I ended up spending most of my time in bed, waiting, hoping that I would receive mercy on Judgement Day. Besides, what was the point in doing anything, when the world would be dissolved into ashes? As I laid in bed reflecting on humanity, It appalled me to imagine how absorbed people generally were in their business, not even aware of the coming Judgement; no, not even curious about the fate of their souls, or the possibility that they would have to make an account of their lives on Judgement Day. There they were — rich and poor, famous and forgotten, happy and miserable — concerned with such distinctions that would be stripped and burned away, tearing to pieces themselves and each other over idols and vanities, over such things as would be evaporated on Judgement Day, when all they would have to show is their poor souls. My mind shrank in fear, and dared not to Judge any one, knowing that it was not my place to Judge humanity, and that my own Judgement was approaching. I put my hands on my chest and prayed mercy for mankind, and for me, on Judgement Day.

Absolute garbage

Exactly!

Too repetitive. Use synonyms for judgement day, or better yet, don't mention it again after the first instance. That word paints a clear enough picture for the rest of your paragraph to fall under.

The rot from my insides, cultivated by my guilt, has now extended to my finger tips.

>present tense

I had finally forgiven my mother...for giving birth to me

It's a confession, how else would I write it?

I came back from the hospital to find that my house had burnt down.

stupid

I too like eating toast while I shower