Brutal Critique

Be as harsh as possible ITT.

Sandy lay still in bed, pretending to be asleep. Outside her father's heavy footsteps were making their way down the hall. When he came home drunk, he could never remember to take off his boots. Mama would forbearingly sweep up the dirt first thing in the morning then start breakfast as her husband snored through the thin walls of the apartment. But now it was late and Sandy's father was up and stumbling down the hall. Under the sheets she clenched her hands into fists tight enough for her nails to cut into her sweaty palms. Blood slicked through her small trembling fingers and fell silently onto the pink fitted sheet. The door to her room opened.

Is this rape literotica?

Anyway, clenching your fists so hard your nails cut the skin is a dumb meme.

It's in there as a nod to Stephen King, who uses it a lot.

>Is this rape literotica?
Not exactly, but the implication is there.

>Stephen King, who uses it a lot.
Sounds about right, lol.

He also has people purposefully bite their own lips with enough force to draw blood in order to stay focused. Maybe it's just me, but that seems just as unrealistic.

i feel like all this bad reading on Veeky Forums is having a bad effect on me.

>forbearingly

Change this.

Aaah because of the implication that things might go wrong for her

Well yea, what's she gonna do, say no?

jokes on you, I went to school in Philippines

>its actually an unexplored goldmine,
>people only write about 2 sisters
why not just announce that you're a certified retard

even better

concurring with this gent faggot.

How dare you mottle S.K. with this trash.

>Sandy
jewish name. Hate it.

>lay still in bed
Should be "in her bed" or "in the bed"

>, pretending to be asleep
Literally no reason to use an oxford comma here

>Outside her father's heavy footsteps were making their way down the hall
Footsteps cannot physically make their way anywhere, should be "sound of her father's heavy footsteps"

>When he came home drunk, he could never remember to take off his boots.
Poorly constructed sentence; superfluous oxford comma use makes it jarring; overly long

>Mama would forbearingly
Cut the purple prose

>first thing in the morning then start breakfast
Use a fucking comma

>as her husband
Sorry, is this a different person as opposed to (((sandy's))) father?

>snored through the thin walls of the apartment
It's already implied that if he can snore through walls, they aren't of any substantial width and/or density

>. But
"but" after a full stop? Fucking seriously?

>now it was late and Sandy's father was up and stumbling down the hall.
Why is this placed after the sentence about the mother cleaning his shit up?

>Under the sheets she clenched her hands into fists
Pleonasm. How else is one meant to clench their hands?

> tight enough for her nails to cut into her sweaty palms
Are her sweaty palms supposed to be relevant? Why are they sweaty? Is she hot? Is she anxious? Was she masturbating??

>slicked
I_don't_think_that_means_what_you_think_it_means.jpg

>her small trembling fingers
How can she apply enough force with "small trembling fingers" in order to injure her palms enough where torrents of blood run out?

>and fell silently
As opposed to falling with the sound of an atom bomb? I didn't know liquid falling mere inches was that loud

>onto the pink fitted sheet
What relevance does the sheet being pink have?

>The door to her room opened.
As opposed to the door to her soul? To the gates of hell? Why is this explicitly stated?

>why not just announce that you're a certified retard
k, name a book where the mother is the abusive alcoholic and dad is trying to keep the family together? name one where the older sibling is jealous of the middle child

the bible

please stop replying to me, you're embarrassing yourself.

>Should be "in her bed" or "in the bed"
may I ask why?
>physically make
True but they could have made right? "footsteps made their way down the hall"
>Sorry, is this a different person as opposed
you noticed the plot twist. I spotted that too, actually wondered if any of these people had names.
>It's already implied that if he can snore through walls, they aren't of any substantial width and/or density
agreed but it also shows the the apartment is crappy and that his snoring power is not above average.
>How else is one meant to clench their hands?
all these years and I never asked myself that. Its up their with people putting up their hands in the air for no reason/mock surrender
>Why are they sweaty?
her knees are weak, arms heavy
>How can she apply enough force with "small trembling fingers" in order to injure her palms enough where torrents of blood run out?
she has proportionally weak skin
>I didn't know liquid falling mere inches was that loud
sometimes it thuds, especially when there is no other sound
>What relevance does the sheet being pink have?
character is a girly girl
>Why is this explicitly stated?
its a shock moment full of implications. I think we can assume there is context outside the sample we were given and us knowing its her door, tells us its not a door to were her father should have been going.

Are you unable to answer the question? Cringe.

Absolutely OBSESSED.

Kinley’s voice drawled out and spread onto the hot pavement. A burly man, just shy of fifty, or just passed it. Mustached with thick, brick-red hair, but bald most elsewhere.As he finished speaking, a drip of sweat rushed from his temple, past his ear, down his cheek, until it lingered at the precipice of his jaw. Another swash of the dip by his gums saw the bead of perspiration fall, falling, till it cracked onto the tar, dissolving resolutely. A stream of the chewing tobacco shortly followed its path.

>Mustached with thick, brick-red hair, but bald most elsewhere.
A)a bald man with a thick red mustache
B)bald except for his mustache
>drip
a drip is a continuous dropping, is it not? how can it rush from his temple (unless it was accumulating somewhere? even then I doubt) also speaking from experience, heavy perspiration goes over the face, meaning its more likely to run down/around your nose or be stuck on your eyebrows before falling. it never lingers on the jaw.
> Another swash of the dip by his gums saw the bead of perspiration fall, falling, till it cracked onto the tar, dissolving resolutely. A stream of the chewing tobacco shortly followed its path.
What.

Names are easy to change.

She's a kid. Pretending to be asleep is what they do when they're scared.

I knew I had something off with the footsteps.

Forbearingly... I tried to use a new word and goofed :(

Second mention of him coming down the hall to bring the reader back to the present from the morning scene.

The nail thing is an old horror trope.

I felt like the blood falling on the sheets needed an adjective. Personally, when I read the word "silently" I extrapolate it to the entire scene; I was implying her room was silent, which helps build tension imo.

In her bed gives her ownership of something. I am trying to portray her as powerless. Not a huge deal though.

Yep, I fucked up the footsteps.

Nobody with any bit of class walks around their home in shoes/boots. The fact that drunkards usually don't take off their boots helps to portray him as one imo.

I went over the redundancy with the first guy I responded to. I'm not sure how to keep the same sharp turn back to the present while eloquently portraying he's an awake, lazy drunkard. The only thing I can think to do would be to keep it in the present and leave mama out of it for now. Thoughts?

>I don't know where to start.
Don't start with me, boy.

Maybe he fucks her, maybe not. In Stephen King's Rose Madder it takes one drop of blood on the sheets for the female protagonist to flee her life as a housewife and start a new adventure. The tension is there for a good ol' fashioned child fucking, but you really can't say where the story may go from here.

Covered a lot of this in the other responses, but...

Let the editor deal with grammarnazi bullshit. I'm not too concerned about it.

14 words, is not, a long sentence, you faggot. It is jarring though, I'll have, to restructure that.

>Cut the purple prose
B-but, I want people to think I have a big vocabulary. I WANNA BE SMART TOO, DAMMIT!!

Same guy, different relationship to Mama, and Sandy

The walls need an adjective. ,Thin, tells the reader they live in a cheap home.

Her palms are sweaty because she believes she's about to receive the goosing of a lifetime.

>Slicked
I liked the sound of it in that sentence... Does it sound retarded to more avid readers?

She's got delicate, girly skin.

The sheet is pink because she is still very young.

"The door opened" makes me think ,what door?, After (an attempt at) building suspense throughout this scene, the final sentence should not be vague. It's explicitly telling the reader that the time for fucking around is over, DADDY'S HOME.

I really appreciate the criticism, guys. Most of it seems to be sentence by sentence critique though. What kinds of fundamentals should I work on to become a better writer? In other words, why didn't my writing style work for you and how can I fix that? Thanks.

>first in line to post work to brutal critique thread
>takes time to refute almost every critique
o i am laffin

Terribly trite as far as this kind of thing goes.

>In other words, why didn't my writing style work for you and how can I fix that?
all of it was bad, and you can possibly fix it by doing the opposite of what every instinct tells you to do.

except that won't really fix anything

>Lel op can't write for shit.
Honestly, I probably write better than 70% of people on here. The problem is that y'all are just as dumb as a sack of hammers.
>I don't like her name
>Why would a scared person have sweaty palms
>Why would a kid pretend to be asleep
>Why is her sheet pink
>Why are you using adjectives to describe something
These are not legitimate critiques; it's you being retarded. I'll admit it's not perfect and you all did catch a few things that I'd definitely change, but I think I've at least got a relatable style and tone. Most people who post stuff write overstylized, convoluted, boring garbage. Go ahead and post up some good writing though. If I'm really as shit as you say I am, it shouldn't be hard to write something that I could actually learn from.

>damage control continues
>will he ever give it up

The problem is that there is no emotional attachment to the writing. I don't care about Sandy. I definitely don't care about mama sweeping up the dirt or any other stupid details. There's just nothing of substance that I'm interested in.
It's just like every other half-assed child rape/abuse scene, except the writing is more clunky and awkward. I'll be honest with you, I had to re-read it, because I lost attention half way through the paragraph the first time.
If this was on the first page of a book, I'd put it down almost immediately.

Give me an example of good writing, you permanigger

>still deprerately fighting to depend his work
>on a brutal critique thread
>that he created
>over ten hours ago
this is a treat, i think

>The problem is that there is no emotional attachment to the writing.
You expect to be emotionally attached to a character in the first paragraph? Really? Give me a single example of this ever happening.

If it's shit it's shit. How do I get better? What is good writing?

>changing the gender/age of worn out tropes will suddenly make them feel fresh and revolutionary
You must be joking

we're mostly busting your balls man. it's not terrible, for christ's sake. it's a few sentences. we're just laughing at the irony in that you seem to react in a dramatic and defensive way toward criticsm of your style, yet you personally requested it be "brutally harsh". of course people are going to nitpick and be assholes. you asked them to lol

The creeping lurch of the Tournesol was at its crowning, the hearkened black wings spread forth in glooms unrelenting, whilst the begotten arches in glowing doom became amplified as one. It was as if time was at its precipice. Humanity had secretly known, perhaps in their collective unconscious, but nevertheless, such a day had cometh. The mind of man had fallen to the blinding error of Western Civilization and then that, in itself, had fallen too, to the crusts of the great Foe, the predator of the Becoming. And man had tried to forget, in his fear. And he forgot and was become an ant. Only the hyperaware, the spirit sages, remembered such days. They planned, in their caves under the mountains, the two flowers being the resulting escape plan. The sister-ship, Rose, had already failed and the inversion field had been picked. Only now was there one remaining chance. God hath brought fire. The Tournesol must break the inflections of inflections and embark to High Heaven as foretold. But did such a place even exist? The spirit sages knew the truth, their truth was only that Rose and Tournesol were escape plans, not to such High Heaven but to oblivion itself; it was escape from existence, the escape from birth and time alike that was desired.

Tldr

This is good, very good. But talk more about the under tones you're sending to the reader, you idiot. You sick little idiot. The under tones?! Hello? You used hands bleeding as symbolism for PMS? Fingers obviously being symbolic for a bunch of penises that make the character bleed? You idiot? You're obviously implying that this character is struggling with gender norms. Have you even read Dunham? Gaga? Cyrus? You're playing with levels of symbolism that you don't even know how to yield you asshat. The character hears her father's boot's footsteps "coming closer" so as the masculine symbol in this story gets closer, her fingers (penises) dig into her skin, like her gender confusion growing as the sound of boots (masculine symbol) get closer. The blood that comes from her fingers is actually representative of her female gender identity being at odds with her male identity (Cyrus et al 2016). But another problem is that you only included symbols for three genders? You asshat idiot? The third symbol being a a subservient submissive gendered female, which is a gender itself since the female gender is independent by nature and not looking to leach off of another (Dunham et al 2017). This third "submissive female" gender is illustrated through the mother--but you still have to include the other 36 genders if you want to impress someone like me, you asshat.

Other than that... great work and keep writing! You built up great tension for the end and provided good subtle information on the qualities of the mother and father through illustrative examples. Would love to see the lead in to this scene and to see what happens next!

Yes... cringe indeed user, cringe indeed.

this is a good post

it's ok, at least it's a concrete story that you could embed with deeper themes instead of some abstract heady fucking meaningless nonsense that sounds like bad diary thoughts and meandering introspection like 95% of the absolute useless trash in the critique threads.

It started innocently enough. Kill a few hours between work and 8. My Tinder date had suggested a Tapas bar across the street and the cinema in turn suggested itself. The movie posters were generic and glitzy. For an hour I enjoyed some air conditioned mediocrity before it hit me: a sixteen feet high homosexual kiss. I felt dizzy. Nausea felt me. I made it through, like some trench-bound World War poet. I left on a carpet of air and disgust. I drove and drove and drove, not thinking to message my date. Next memory is of a service station, kneeling, sucking on a ruddy big ding dong.

All things are samsara, said the Buddha.

All things are nothing to me, said the Stirner.

What you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was some talk then of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As dor the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck themselves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.

The protagonist hears a lion roar. In the distant he sees a heard of elephants. In front of him a vast lake. He turns around and slowly makes his way to his private helicopter , but wait. Somethings wrong. He forgot his keys inside and there is no way to get them . He thinks of possible strategies to get the key, eventually it occurs to him to break open the glass get in and then fly back.
He does not fly back.