Critique Thread:

Old one reached bump limit. Post your work here. (Maybe) get feedback from others.

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pastebin.com/XnzVkPYh
pastebin.com/MZsiZiSA
pastebin.com/Dr8jRza5
pastebin.com/cR63Qryu
fortyeternitiesatsea.wordpress.com/2017/11/11/review-i-am-a-cat-by-natsume-soseki/#more-74
conjunctions.com/online/article/pete-segall-11-21-2017
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There are two shapes. One is rigid and is taller than the rounder one. The images are fuzzy and monochrome. There is a subtle scream in the background, a human kettle, some place in the distance. There are six planes of view: one supine on the ground, one directly above that, one to the right, one to the left, and one in front. The other one is behind.
There is smoke. Two pillars; slim, sexy billows from suspended rolls of paper. The air is grey and glows out of humanly warmth. It is an industrial hearth, of the Vesta of New York. Two chairs, of burned-and-cut hickory, are facing each other in responsibility. There is a taste of umami, but something more too. There are two moons out tonight. One, a sickle, the other a pale face. But there aren’t any stars out tonight.
There is the sound of machines. Conveyor belts cut the room with gritty screams. An industrial-grade chimney is coughing in the night of hour under the burning sensations of whatever was being tossed in its guts of terracotta.

In German: pastebin.com/XnzVkPYh

...

>one a sickle, the other a pale face
noice

follow close the beat of time
with metronome, each tick incline
a rush behind the eye
so blink
it shrinks
and humankind arrives

In an introspection, in a calm inspection of his own many negatives, Mercurius found his taste for jests to be the one that stood out the most. Next came his needless verbosity. With his nature being that of an inconsiderate man, he was severely unequipped to speak the necessary words at the necessary time in the necessary amounts. He acknowledged that fact.
In fact, he was doing it right now. The meaning of the deluge of letters he had just spouted out forth could easily be boiled down to the simple and meager four word sentence of "I talk too much." He was a wordsmith that refined the complicated and reforged the straightforward into the complex. That is how he preferred to percieve and present his thoughts. It was small wonder those environing him would consider him vexing.

If you could build a bridge from my sense of security
to the face of the outdoors,
I would find you a magician
and make very limited eye contact
to stretch it out for a lifetime

With that kind of power
you could unravel
the fabric of my mind
and I
would be left helpless,
sucking toes

The more I map these islands
the less I enjoy
So please,
for me,
keep it light
while we hope from the shadows of skyscrapers

But if we need to add some extra weight
I don't think I'll mind

>the meaning of the deluge of letters he had just spouted out forth could easily be boiled down

u thirsty?

>very limited eye contact
You should make this more concise. It's awkwardly worded.
>sucking toes
I like this line. It's interesting to me. I wonder how it connects to the rest of the poem.

The last two lines seem to be an appropriate end. Not bad. You should consider titling it. I don't know if it will feel complete without one, or with only the first line as a title.

Life is but a prolonged swim in some collective afterbirth
Being is repulsive and over-real, an ocean of organ taste.
To know and to be known, experience is a fluid exchanged mouth to mouth.
Foundering adrift admist our own broth we are listing and lapping,
Sensory sewage secreted and sampled, eyes shut and orifices full,
Sinking and swimming, gullets brimming with the unspeakable.
Sensation is itself a thing vulgar, to share in the stew, to taste you,
Gruesome goop, gruesome group, all I come to rue, naught to know but that undue,
A common yoke these unclean masses, choking, intolerable, and interminable,
Death ever adds to the soup, our world one big vaginal vichyssoise,
Gross.

It's awkward because it switches from slightly poetic language into the language of speech with little warning. I can tell from your writing that quick changes of modus operandi are not your specialty.

>sucking toes
who's fabric of mind is pre-raveled? who is helpless? who makes very limited eye contact?

two possibilities include a young child or the mentally deranged. the speaker toys with both possibilities.

Just opened your post and it's no wonder you were drawn to that line. "Children Suckling".

You're an amazing writer btw. The only thing is that you rely way too heavily on metaphor which tells me that you have a difficult time communicating things simply. On purpose or not. Either way it has the effect of a sandwich with one too many slices of cheese. Practice a bit of efficiency and I think you'll develop a certain clarity of mind that might one day be Nobel. This is very good stuff.

I enjoyed this. There are some pretty memorable bits there, but some of the sentences are a bit too descriptive. "industrial-grade chimney coughing... night of the hour. . . burning under . . . of whatever. . . in its. . ."

Is this your first paragraph in the work or no?

Shouldn't be a poem.

t. me as a 17 year old

>shouldn't be a poem

elaborate

I don't understand the point of writing these short prose fragments for critique threads.

Posting this from the last thread, I have made some small changes from the previous one. R8 pls

WRONG ONE, THIS IS THE NEWER VERSION

pastebin.com/MZsiZiSA
Please critique this.

like sages
he made birchen roots
of my feet
but willow leaves
of his own

A chill breeze has been kicked up to a stir. The autumnal trees begin to shake like chain-linked fences in the desperate grip of the starving. He that hungers now is one lone soul never meant to be, searching for that which he’s lost. A man so bridled by madness that submission determines his liberty. Reality heightens itself in his presence: faint drizzles become great squalls, mild gusts turn to beastly howls, and slight affection evolves into intense adoration. For him, the devil was everywhere, but his lunacy is so sensitive and shaken that he finds God at the first absence of pain and godliness at the first wisp of love.

Yep, first paragraph

>in the morning –or no, it was the afternoon, definitely the afternoon –Ronnie woke with a lurch that set the whole room rocking like a boat, and the dream, whatever it was, was gone before he could resuscitate it. Just as well, because he could feel the veins inflating in his neck with the frantic scramble of his heart –he’d been trying to escape something or somebody, dark twisting corridors and howling faces –and now, suddenly, he was awake in the apparent world, a fine sheen of sweat greasing his body and leaching into the sleeping bag that each day stank ever more powerfully of mold and ammonia and creeping decay. Beside him, breathing through her open mouth with a faint rattling snore, was Lydia, her arms stretched out as if she’d been crucified. The dark nipples were like knitted caps pulled over the white crowns of her breasts, and her breasts were like people, two slouching fat white people in caps having a conversation across the four-lane highway of her rib cage. A fine line of glistening dead black hair measured the distance from her navel to her bush. There was hair under her arms, hair on her legs, a faint stripe of it painted over her upper lip. She was sweating. Her eyelids trembled. He lay there contemplating her a minute, letting his heart climb back down from the ledge he’d left it on, feeling as if he’d been assembled from odd scraps during the night. His head throbbed. His stomach made a fist and relaxed it. He needed to find some toilet paper, fast.

He held the candle close to her eye,momentarily held by the subtle reflections dancing in the iris from its gentle flickering. With an effort he pressed the button on his tape machine and started recording.

"September 12th,1903. Three days have we observed this marvelous find:the Princess Khui embalmed living eons ago,perfectly preserved,as if asleep with open eyes,or seemingly entranced. Her regalia matches the description we found in the outer tomb,and Professor Plumes notes corroborate the time period the excavation has unearthed,yet I stare not at a desiccated corpse,but a living woman in her early twenties, without blemish nor pulse. I can but speculate-" A tap of a heavy object on his shoulder paused his recollections. Turning,he stared down the barrels of a shotgun,jostling his glasses and amusing the gunman.
"Doc,"he said,"let the nigger be."
He switched off the recorder with an angry snap of his fist. "How dare you! This is a royal personage, heir to an ancient dynasty reaching beyond this millennium!" He would have continued, espousing her remarkable preservation and discovery,but the gunman was already bored. The barrels moved up from his chest to his face.
"Nigger's a nigger,Doc. Dressing one up like a Christmas tree don't change nothing. Whatever she us,she can keep a bit. Problem's out there." He tilted his head to the crudely barricaded window of the but. Odd shambling steps milled about just beyond the fence in the dark, the occasional moan and gurgle adding to the summer sussuration of crickets protesting the evening heat.
"Them THINGS are out there Doc. Don't rightly know what they are,don't likely care. Just wanna get away from them,ya hear? And you waxing poetical 'bout niggers don't help that none. Leaves me mighty unmoved,shall we say. " The Professor merely glared at the lunk,a chance companion that proved as chancy as the lurking horrors outside. A woman's cackle broke the tension between them. Over on the cot,the gunman's lady friend was getting her hand bound up in rough cloth,hiding a recent severe burn.Whether she was sister or lover or both was a subject the Professor refused to consider,but acknowledged their similar low tastes. She sighed,smiling impishly at her nurse tying off the bandages.

"Nuthin' moves you much,Filbert,lest it be cold cash or hard liquor. Why not go easy on the Doc? All that learnin' might be good for something. Even for you. That Queeny is a pert lil thing,and I can confess Doc taking a shine to her,can't you darlin'?" This last part was offered teasingly to the nurse,who would not dignify it with a response, but did glare sidelong at the seated Princess,masking a touch of jealousy. The Professor rose,and ignoring the shotgun,paced quietly to the window and peered into the night and its indistinct shapes just out of the porch light's reach. "We must get away,certainly. But how can we reach the truck unscathed?" The night held little promise,only shuffling dread.

(Continue?)

Everyone I showed these too irl liked the second one more, usually citing a lack of description in the first as well as the giveaway title.

fuck

>the post where I forgot to attach an image will get more (You)'s than my actual post

Is there anything more to life than playing Cardi B on repeat and rapping along to the lyrics but the feeling of accidentally saying nigga ends up causing such concern, especially if somebody is listening, so then the rest of the century is spent shaking hands with people and passive-aggressively being polite to everybody you meet just so they don't unveil the dirt on you that once upon a time you sung along to Cardi B and actually accidentally said you would "cut a nigga off." I've only listened to it five times in my life but I've spent thousands of years shaking hands with people. Please understand.

How'd get your start writing stuff like that? I've tried my hand at a similar vibe also. It's p hard to do for me. First one's best.

The last time I posted them both here everyone liked the first one, I'm not sure why Veeky Forums is the exception. Deliberate misuse of Kafkaesque might have more weight here.

>How'd get your start writing stuff like that?
I just force myself to use a dumb word or cliche. When I was younger in college I would always "dent my car" by picking a shitty word to use in each of my essays before writing them so as to not worry about perfectionism while working on them. I've since grown out of that retarded habit, but it's at least useful for shitposting.

why do you people write trite shit like this?

do you even think this approaches good?

Gotcha, Ididn't care for the Kafka part, but
>To this day, I still think about the day I saw a man eat a handful of beetles
has this genuinely romantic cadence that I love for the subject matter

I ended the previous sentence on a word that rhymed with day, then wrote day-I twice, but once with a comma, then crashed into man-eat, which was supposed to chop up b(eat)les at the very end. Is that how you read it?

Doesn't really feel like a crash, the a's make it feel kind of bouncy and playful at the end. The eat/beetle rhyme works, but it doesn't 'chop' anything up.

Thanks. I guess I shouldn't say "chop."

This is my last work, which I wrote some fifteen years ago. Hit me with your worst.

>The legend of stars
>Chapter 1
>Dungeon

>It was morning. Despite that, the sun wasn't shining. Maybe it was shining back on the surface, but there was no sun underground.
>Bright rays from a burning torch fell onto a young face of a man who was walking through the cave. The face was very pale. Dark hair flowed over the left eye, almost completely covering it, and on the right half of the head the hair was brushed to the side. The man's eyes were light green and of the same light green grassy color was his entire attitre, with the exceptions of black boots and black sleeves of a vest. On the back there was a scabbard attached with a sword's pommel, gleaming with silvery light, sticking out of it.
>Elvor, not without amazement, looked at the lamps fixed to the cave walls, once working, but now turned into useless glass husks hardly visible in the eternal darkness of a dungeon. Elvor had never heard of this planet having a sentient life, while those lamps were a clear evidence of it having one. Still, there were no other signs of sentient creatures which, along with the the silence and the darkness was creating a mysterious and eerie atmosphere. Elvor was walking forward, ready to meet any danger.
>Suddenly, after one of cave's turns, a wall stood on Elvor's way. A tall brick wall that was blocking the cave completely, as if growing into its wall. On the altitude of two and a half meters there was a window and there was not a single way to reach it. A dead end?

cont.

>No, this still wasn't a dead end. Elvor approached the barrier and, with an inhuman agilty, jumped into the window, after which he began to observe the sight that appeared before him on the other side of the wall.
>In the vast, both in width and height, cave it was light as day. Lamp, identical to the ones before, but working, covered the entire ceiling and the walls. Under the shiny vault a town lied. Even though there was a lot of space in the cave, one-story houses clung to the center, as if they were afraid of its sides. In the center of the town was a paved square, on which stood a building that was notably bigger than others, probably a town hall. All exits of the cave were blocked with walls like the one Elvor was sitting on.
>Elvor put out the torch, jumped down and approached the town. Once he got near, he even stronger felt the ever tense atmosphere and the feeling on anxiety than enveloped the town and all the caves. The buildings had too thick walls and too thin windows as if builders made them with a siege in mind. They were more like miniature castles, rather than houses. In the eyes of all of the townspeople could be seen a fear before some unknown enemy, who wasn't here in the town, but whose presense you could feel, as is everything here was shrouded with their unseen breath.
No one talked to the sudden stranger. It seemed that he was feared too. People gave him staggered gazes and walked past.
>Elvor decided to talk to the townspeople. Having stopped one person, he said to him in the common language:
>- Sorry, could you, please, anwser my one question?
>The person eyed Elvor for a moment, collecting himself, and replied:
>- Yes.
>- It's my first time here. Can you tell me who are you defending from? Why are all exits of this cave blocked?
>- The death lives outside of this cave and you shouldn't go there. If you can leave this cursed planet, please, leave.
>Having said that, the man continued his way. Elvor remeined in the middle of street, deep in thought. It turned out this town really had a mortal and, probably, powerful enemy. But who that was? Who were all those fortifications against? And, by the way, why were there people on this planet?
>Elvor's gaze turned to the town hall that towered above the rest of the houses. That was where he would learn everything.

i'm going to assume that this is some kind of joke

fucking kek
also, this:
is utterly awful

>Bright rays from a burning torch fell onto a young face of a man who was walking through the cave.
You can cut out stuff like that "who was". The image is clear, but the text is crowded. I can hear myself wading through garbage.

>The man's eyes were light green, and of the same light green
"and" looks like "in addition," but then I'm hit with "the same" and a repeated "light green". Just cut the "and of" and change it to "the same light green of his attire." if you want to hold on to the main repetition. I don't get why you develop all that green to end on black though, whats the takeaway here? Stop sawing back and forth on my skull; take your swing and be done with it.

>Edgy teenage description that ends on a weapon then immediately picks up on a name
>The reveal is so cool you have to immediately repeat the name at the start of the next line
Why are you posting shit you wrote 15 years ago anyway?

You're a little bit too deep into the irony user. If you're going to do that, then try and let people actually see your tongue in your cheek from time to time. Just saying he "reforged straightforward" would have been a funny and almost oxymoronic pairing for example, but instead you choose to keep the act up too strongly, then simultaneously to blow the joke from the other end as well by allowing the narrator-speaker to understand how to say "I talk too much" in spite of the fact that the joke was supposed to be that he can't. Go for things that sound more like Freudian slips rather than the not-so reluctant admissions of quirkiness you're throwing at me.

-to clarify what I mean by this, would say that you should try and ensure that the joke is more obvious to the audience than the speaker if you're actually trying to make fun of him.

>Why are you posting shit you wrote 15 years ago anyway?
I randomly decided to entertain you.

There was no slant to the sun—it was just there, overhead, burning, making him sweat, making his underwear bind and the shirt stick to his back as if it had been glued on, and why he’d ever let Carolee talk him into this he’d never know. The bus lurched. There was a stink of diesel. Gears ratcheted beneath the floorboards, metal on metal, as if they were going to fuse or maybe explode into a thousand pieces at any moment. He looked beyond Carolee, out the window, feeling ever so slightly queasy, though everyone assured him the water was good here—potable, that was the word on everybody’s lips, as if they were trying to convince themselves. Plus, the food was held to the highest standards and the glasses out of which they’d sipped their rum punch and rum cokes and rum tonics scrupulously washed in hot sudsing pristine well water, because this wasn’t like Mexico or Guatemala or Belize, this was special, orderly, clean, a kind of tourist paradise. And cheap. Cheap too. On top of it all, he had a headache. Or the beginnings of one. But that was understandable, because he’d gulped down three rum punches with lunch, so thirsty he could have drained the whole pitcher the waiter had set in the middle of the table, and no, he wasn’t going to drink the water, no matter what anybody said—not unless it came from a bottle with an unbroken seal. He rubbed his eyes. He had aspirin in his kit back on the ship. Cipro too. But that didn’t do him a whole lot of good now, did it? Anonymous streets rolled by, shops, people, dogs, ratty-looking birds infesting the trees and an armed guard out front of every store—or tienda, as his guidebook had it—and what did that tell you about the level of orderliness here? Bienvenidos. Welcome. Mi casa es su casa.

please critique

Unironically kek'd, you should do more of stuff like this. Maybe a collected work of these paragraph long things.

This was the land of orange grain and earthenware trees. The sky was warm pink with the weight of lazy labor and the villages were huddled mounds of sandstone and bronze. Birds chirped half as often as expected and beasts of burden groaned under distant lash. Yokes harnessed and drove themselves into the flesh of these beasts in a grotesque caricature opposing the land’s placid nature. Across the faces of people with skin like clay wore that bored smile born from generations of peace and prosperity.
Built on the grave of history’s handiwork was the village of the valley. Within it were the people of the valley who adored the ivory man. He had saved the village from boredom, so the elders said. He brought with him virtue and justice, the elders said. Yet even some of the elders took this on good faith for it had been years since he last left his tower. Only the eldest would remember that winter he arrived.
“Yeeess, I remember,” recalled the oldest amongst the village, Petra, a woman among elders of whom all were gathered in council when this story begins. “We were so happy when he came,” Petra’s red smile vitalized her wrinkled face like animated pottery, “We were so bored after the bounty that summer brought us - and the dreams he brought with him were so... lovely back then, distracting us from the ennui our newfound prosperity brought us.”
There exists a balance, an equalizing force, in this land and it was that winter in which the village fell from its precipitous graces of purity. Where sincerity had prevailed hitherto now presided a subtle yet preternatural lust manifesting always in a thirst for sweet, nourishing dream essence. As a moot point of contention the elders had argued for years what caused this fall from grace. But only one, only the oldest, could remember, and she recalled the fateful winter evening in which the village had tempted the cosmic balance, endlessly benign until tampered with. It was this same gathered group of elders, hardly older than toddlers at the time, who gathered hand-in-hand with the rest of the villagers in the flagstone square and called out to the entropic void above in a ritualistic yet misguided effort to quell the winter’s boredom.
In a plane that was neither north, south, east nor west of the village, the ivory man woke from cosmic slumber. Until this point, the ivory man existed erudite in a state of timelessness granting him rest without worry. A dip of the scale which held the world in balance found the ivory man elevated to unnatural status above the village in question - this is something he felt, like an intuitive twist of the gut. They call and so I will answer, the ivory man promised.

nope just developing ideas with shitty language

glad you think it's bad, I think it's bad too

You use "as if..." to start a simile 3 times in the first half of the paragraph.

Some sentences feel too long/the end tacked on.
>and why he’d ever let Carolee talk him into this he’d never know.
I'd make that a new sentence for example.

There's some other small editing things that stand out. Some sentences feel too short, or the comas feel too early, or that two sentences should be merged.
>On top of it all, he had a headache. Or the beginnings of one.
Maybe
>On top of it all he had a headache, or the beginnings of one.

Take with a grain of salt, I'm no professional.

Caustic, bitter hens caught in idle transition. You'd think the faces coagulating sickeningly within the peripherals of vision would shed greater insight towards their own horrid dismay. Instead the merely contort, spitting wildly, braying motley jargon that viciously mutates, as if disguising the awareness of its grueling lack of heavenly emanations. That's the thick, corrosive winter these faulty impressions lay solidified withing; wailing, unheard, sewn shut by the whims of insidious dispositions.
Fractured by necessity, mended out of spite.

Seine kleinen Augen gingen den Raum nach Veränderungen ab, entdeckten keine - alles war gleich, unverändert. Nichts, seit A.L. gestorben ist, die Ananas, die kann was, hatte sich verändert. Nichts: die Wand, der Spiegel, die Lampe - jedes Objekt war gleich geblieben, war nicht verändert worden. Selbst das entsetzliche Bild, alle hassten es, D.F.s Schatten lag auf ihm, hing noch immer an der Wand, unverändert. Er öffnete seinen Mund wieder. --Warum hängt das Bild da noch? um sieben Uhr achtunddreißig, so als würde er es nicht ahnen, als wüsste er es nicht, so als könnte er - D.F. drehte sich um - es sich nicht denken, dämlicher Vollidiot. Sein ganzes Gewicht, das von N.M., verlagerte sich auf ein Bein, das rechte. Kein Vögelchen zwitscherte um sieben Uhr achtunddreißig, doch das war ihm jetzt egal, es spielte keine Rolle mehr. Sein Lächeln verklebte, schmierig, blieb stecken, --Du weißt, wie teuer der Dreck war.
--Das ist es aber nicht wert, als würde er schmatzen, --Gestern Nacht jedenfalls bin ich gelandet.
--Wohnst du zuhause?
--Fürs Erste.

“Anton of Murcia!” It was a robust voice, a commanding voice, so not the sheriff’s voice. “How do you fare this warm summer’s eve?”
A hush fell over the mob as they made way for the silver-haired swordsman who spoke. He strolled to their front with all the leisure of a suppertime guest. Along the way, his platemail drank in the crimson torchlight.
“Inquisitor Lorenzo,” Anton called in a tone as stiff as his stance. “Where is Sheriff Acosta?”
“Sheriff Acosta investigates earthly crimes. Witchcraft against the church falls under my jurisdiction.”
“I see.” Anton spoke slowly, “So you’re here to do what? To dismiss these ill-founded claims?” He capped the question with a glare so intense it could only mean, For what good are my bribes if they blind no eyes?
“On the contrary.” Lorenzo pitched his voice like a town crier. “The Bishop is dead, found in his bed with pustules all over. Some say it’s witchcraft to blame. Others say differently. Those are the facts. Facts that differ, yes, but it’s not for me to rank one above the other. We must hold a trial. I will report to the Suprema after I have you under lock and key.”
Anton’s throat tightened enough to lift his voice a pitch. “You know damn well that what I do is smoke and mirrors! Make-believe! Tell them!” He paused to catch his breath. “Do it, damn it!”
“I cannot dispute the truth,” said Lorenzo. “And the truth is that make-believe never killed any bishops.” To pile insult onto injury, he twisted his lip in a nasty little smirk, just between them.
“Bastard!” Anton’s outburst tore a gasp from the crowd. “You sanctimonious bastard! So it comes to this! After taking my bribes for months, you realize just how deep my pockets are! Now you want everything for yourself, is that it?”
“Don’t be ridic-“
“Fine! Take my money!” From his robes Anton yanked a silk coinpurse. He made a show of loosening the drawstring before flinging the whole purse out the window. As it spiraled through the air, it showered the groundlings with copper and silver and even some gold.
“Take it!” Anton shrieked in manic glee. “Take it all! I’ll feed my fortune to the gutter before I let the Inquisition have a taste!”
Argument did little to dampen bloodlust. But money, ah, money could be most effective.
The mob split apart as every rioter fended for his or herself. All of the philters of luck and virility charms and ghost repellent they bought this last year had been instantly refunded in one frenzied free-for-all.

Rather interesting paragraph. Do you have more? If so please share.

I can kinda see what you're trying to do (A joke right?) and if so try to make the joke a tad bit more obvious.

Right now, I mean, if you can fix all the grammar mistakes it would be an okay first chapter I assume. But the entire thing is littered with mistakes.

My work:
pastebin.com/Dr8jRza5

Good shit, you writing a fantasy series?

"Heavenly emanations" in the context of "spitting wildly...viciously mutates" seems like such a wild contrast that it doesn't work here IMO.

Your narrator thinks/speaks with an eloquence that street performers do not have. I think using more basic language, maybe jargon, in his speech would characterize him better.

In southeastern Iowa there exists the town of Beggarbend along the Mississippi River. Originally, the town was known as Beggar’s Bend - this was back when pioneers who had crossed the midwest prairies met face to face with the Rocky Mountains and then decided it wasn’t “worth it”. Most of these pioneers returned the way they had come, not after passing their various works of art. Works titled “Oregon or Bust” (graphite on shale, 8 x 22) or “Bury Me West” (sticks on mud, 14 x 40) bordered most of the trail and, after passing these the second time, many of the wagon drivers suddenly seemed intensely interested in some vague distant object. Exhausted and poor, these “go-backs” returned to the Mississippi River ferry landing they had crossed months before. Upon reaching the great river, go-backs were greeted with the same ferryman who escorted them initially. However, they found he wasn’t so eager to ferry their wagons this time.
“To cross the creek, money must speak!” the ferryman so gleefully refrained.
But sir, this is no creek, and surely you remember my family, and the helpings of bacon, coffee, and gunpowder we so generously gave you-
“To cross the creek, money must speak!” the ferryman interrupted always, with an infuriating twinkle in his eye.
Families who had spent their rations and were short on coin found themselves trapped. Initially, efforts were made by the most daring to cross the river without the ferryman’s help. But you see, the ferry landing was unique in that no trees grew for miles around. The grasslands grew tall, sure, but there was not a knock of wood in sight and so great pains were taken by the most dedicated of families to construct vast flotillas of crosshatched grass to replace what would have been a wooden barge. All of these families perished terribly, most about 50 feet offshore in a spectacle that the ferryman took a giddy pleasure in;
“You should have stayed, you should have paid,
A lovely fish meal you have made!”
Recanted the ferryman in perfect verse.
Eventually, families began to give up on hopes of ever leaving the landing and so began that vague process of building a town. The most industrious found an economy in dredging the river banks for the remains of the ill-fated raft builders. If one was lucky, one would come upon a loose copper button on a dead man’s shirt which they could pawn for some cornmeal mysteriously supplied by the ferryman.

>Your narrator thinks/speaks with an eloquence that street performers do not have.
That's how I wanted to be read. To give hints he is something more.

>I think using more basic language, maybe jargon, in his speech would characterize him better.
Don't worry. He'll use more basic language later on. I don't know about jargon though, I read a few books that peppered character's dialogue with Jargon and it was cringy as fuck.

Was there anything else I could improve upon?

>short on coin
guhh.
think man!
THINK!

I'm . Could you please identify the mistakes?

Wurde oben schon als pastebin ignoriert. Nicht ohne Grund. Erstens spricht hier wohl maximal jeder Zwanzigste Deutsch, zweitens ist der Text uninteressant. Warum die Abkürzungen? Um was geht's da überhaupt? Das alles wirkt wie unzusammenhängendes Geschwätz im Drogenrausch.

Alright. But remember this is subjected and you can ignore this if you don't want to change it.

I just fix the most glaring ones alright. But there's a question I need to ask. Are you American?


pastebin.com/cR63Qryu

Were I not of this earth, I would find the surgery room strange. Here, within the confines of this four-walled limbo, the great walking chemicals operate on one another. They are planets of bundled cells; conglomerations that rise from infancy to be crinkly-eyed men in manatee-gray caps, steadying the innate shake of the hand. Finely sharpened slivers of steel rest on trays. They rise between latex fingers drenched in sterility and slowly unzip the closure of the patient’s skin. From there, little L-shaped arms descend. They pull back tenderly the soft folds of subdermal flesh, which resist like thin sheets of rubber. More razors descend, at times tearing jaggedly the delicate chemical framework that holds tight the contents of the rib cage, and at other times twirling about in small, precise cuts that snip apart final, thin layers. At last, I would watch the infinitely complex children of the Periodic Table reveal a prized jewel: the heart, which lies dark and alone in the chest, glittering like a polished ruby.

HE LAUNCHED HIMSELF down the slope, slewed up in snow to his thighs, wallowing in the drifts with the rifle held overhead in one hand. He caught himself on a grapevine and swung about and came to a stop. A shower of dead leaves and twigs fell over the smooth mantle of snow. He fetched debris from out of his shirtcollar and looked down the slope to find another stopping place. When he reached the flats at the foot of the mountain he found himself in scrub cedar and pines. He followed rabbit paths through these woods. The snow had thawed and frozen over again and there was a light crust on top now and the day was very cold. He entered a glade and a robin flew. Another. They held their wings aloft and went skittering over the snow. Ballard looked more closely. A group of them were huddled under a cedar tree. At his approach they set forth in pairs and threes and went hopping and hobbling over the crust, dragging their wings. Ballard ran after them. They ducked and fluttered. He fell and rose and ran laughing. He caught and held one warm and feathered in his palm with the heart of it beating there just so.

Critique others.

I'm not American but is 'moulding' correct for British English?

Yes, it is. Ignore that little fix. I correct that Under the assumption you were American.

Thanks for critiquing the rest, though.

this is cringe, you are not a writer

fortyeternitiesatsea.wordpress.com/2017/11/11/review-i-am-a-cat-by-natsume-soseki/#more-74

Can someone offer me a critique of my critique? thanks

There were holy nodes, bastions of great light. A shimmering sea of red, orange, yellow crystalline mind. Shining and exploding intertwined in harmony giving birth to one another within one another rushing past your dreams your eyelids. Everything that ever occurred was there. Filling the Light with either sorrow or joy. Even the sorrow there was built from joy. The pain of it was remedied by the infliction of pain. Horrible men made horrible mistakes and purified themselves in the divine fire. It was like water turned into wine turned back into water again. Humming a miserable prayer.

I can't think of good names so I just use initials

There are no good or bad names. Choose such that can exist and read smoothly. You also have some tense issues in the pastebin. Also other more or less minor flaws. Like, er hat gekotzt instead of er hatte gekotzt. And, as I said, the whole thing appears disjointed to me. Build something your reader wil care for.

Das wechselnde Tempus ist Absicht (siehe z.B. direkt hinter "er hat gekotzt" "jetzt ist alles blöd") und tritt immer dann auf, wenn die Erzählung ist Bewusstseinsstrom-artige abgleitet. Dass alles ein wenig kryptisch, fragmentarisch, zerlegt, bestenfalls schizophren wirkt, ist ebenfalls so gedacht. Schade, dass es dir nicht gefällt. Trotzdem, danke für dein Feedback.

Sollen wir uns mal auf eine Sprache einigen? Ob es mir persönlich gefällt ist ja wurscht. Ich versuche auszudrücken und herauszufinden wo meines Erachtens nach die Probleme liegen.

Deine Intention, durch den Wechsel im Narrativ Infos zum Protagonisten weiterzugeben ist ja erstmal toll. Aber warum habe ich das nicht verstanden? Ist es mir zu hoch oder kannst du vielleicht noch daran feilen, sodass das deutlicher für den Leser wird? Was wird es denn? Eine Kurzgeschichte?

No comprendo.

Ja, Deutsch natürlich, keine Ahnung, warum ich eben auf Englisch geantwortet habe.

Ich weiß noch nicht, was das wird. Möglicherweise eine Kurzgeschichte, vielleicht aber auch gar nichts. Das ist das erste Mal, dass ich aus eigenem Antrieb was Fiktionales geschrieben habe und wollte erstmal bisschen rumprobieren, stilistisch etc.

Ah, verstehe. Nun, ich denke es kommt auch darauf an wie es dir gefällt denn die schönste Kritik nutzt ja nichts, wenn sie im Prinzip nur sagt, mach alles anders als du eigentlich wolltest.

Aber. Vielleicht könntest du erst den Plot ausarbeiten, eine erste Fassung abschließen und herausfinden, was du eigentlich sagen willst. Dann könntest du dieses Gerüst nehmen und stilistisch umbauen. Statt dir umgekehrt aufgrund eines besonderen Stils einen Plot aus dem Hirn zu kratzen, der dann vielleicht unschön wirkt.

Viel Erfolg.

Yeah, no problem. You might also want to critique other people also.

bump

>just got comments back on these
>someone wrote, in bright blue ink, "where's the lineation"?

...

>I think using more basic language, maybe jargon
What? You do know jargon is the opposite of basic language, right?

...

The first "so" is giving me issues now that I think about it.

You don't have the wit for this form.

>cigarette
>put in
>mom
freud.jpg

You're right, I need to worry more about the actual humor than the wording, at least in the third one.

That came out shittier than intended. Brevity is a good exercise but it doesn't justify a scene without direction or payoff.

Good luck, and read this if you want to see how this form functions at a level worth publishing.

conjunctions.com/online/article/pete-segall-11-21-2017

I get what you're trying to say, and you could explore it, but the prose is a bit much. Kill some adjectives. The message as you're presenting it isn't really that subtle either- 'planets of bundled cells', 'delicate chemical framework', 'children of the periodic table' could all be effectively communicated without necessarily pointing it out once, let alone three times. The idea has some potential, and you have a good vocabulary, just change the approach a bit.

I like it- I pictured the scene well in my mind. A highlight for me was 'strolled to their front with all the leisure of a suppertime guest'. One thing I would say is to keep focusing on showing rather than telling- the scene was readily conjured in my head, so my mind fills in details, and when you then present facts which contradict these details it jars subtly. I already see that the Inquisitor is unexpected, and that Anton will be thrown by this, so you don't need to tell me his tone is stiff. If we know from earlier that Anton has bribed people, we can gather his surprise from the slowness of his voice, and the addendum about 'what good are my bribes' is unnecessary and feels odd. Like I said, I liked it- just cut out some of the direct narrative addresses, and cut out some of the descriptions which the reader would have imagined anyway.


They got to talking. The lady’s father, it seemed, was some sort of independently wealthy man whose great-grandfather had been a merchant of some description, and who now had investments in seemingly everything in the world in some way or another, if the girl was to be believed, from large international businesses including the airline they currently were using (“although not for much longer,” she assured, with a scornful look at the stewardess), to numerous small businesses across England. She spoke as the moderately wealthy often do, with the intent to casually impress, by talking of things such as large houses, expensive clothing, a multitude of foreign holidays such as the excursion in Budapest from which she was returning. He, in turn, responded as the listener usually will: with a polite, measured awe, an imitation of admiration, the whole charade as cold and meaningless as the sums of money used to purchase such things. Only if the boast veers onto a specific interest will this feigned awe give way to real wonder, excitement, envy; if, say, the boaster mentions expensive tickets for an esteemed ballet company to an aspiring ballerina. Yet this new, real reaction is only because it corresponds to a personal passion- hours spent in practice pursuing an undying sense of beauty, which may trace its conception to the single movement of a dancer seen as a child.

Bump

>a human kettle, facing each other in responsibility
great imagery, would read more

couple of descriptions id change like souls of suicides but skillful writing. id read more

too meta. trying to be cute. would stop reading right there.

>shake like chain-linked fences in the desperate grip of the starving
fantastic, but the rest bored me. not interested in another story about a rabid madman. also, the rest was filled with cliches.

thesaurus meme. please tame your use of adjectives.

I like it. Maybe break up the first few sentences a bit?

Do you feel the transition coming? I don't. I don't give a shit. That's what I'd say if I didn't give a shit. I'm just hiding my shit behind five layers.

1. Stupidity
2. Irony
3. False Persona
4. A psychoanalytic glare
5. Reactionary culture

I hope they never figure out that I could tear it down. I hope they do figure out that I'm not trying to. Maybe then I could finally surround myself with decent company. And in decent I mean lacking the mind-qualities of decency. The freedom of whatever. If you criticize me I'll make you feel like a moron. Because it's something you worry about. Because you have certain ideas about what a thing should be. Me, I'm just good will hunting.

>conjunctions.com/online/article/pete-segall-11-21-2017


Thank you for posting this. I didn't know such a form existed. Some of these are exquisite.

Vielen Dank, auch für den Tipp mit dem Plot. Hast du abgesehen vom Plot noch andere Kritikpunkte, z.b. bezüglich der Sprache?

the description of breakfast was autism. the rest was alright

Surprised by the amount of pushback I've gotten so far on the breakfast description. But thanks blood, point taken.

The weird thing is I enjoyed the breakfast scene. The descriptions of all the food got my mouth watering, I love breakfast food. It just goes to show that while that user and the others may not like it, there will always be others who do. I guess if the majority are against it you've got to listen to that, but if you like it, just know that there are others who do too. 11pm here and my stomach was growling thanks to your post.

>Brevity is a good exercise but it doesn't justify a scene without direction or payoff.
That makes sense. The advice I got irl was to overwrite and then cut away instead of writing up to an endpoint and stopping.

Was it clear that things like the second eggnog were jokes though? I'm not sure how deliberate I look.

"I have been appointed" should be "had been".

The way you use the phrase "common sense" like that is also really weird. You seem to litteraly mean "the most-common sense" or "the most typical perspective"/"popular opinion"/"general consensus" etc, but the phrase "common sense" isn't usually used like that.

I agree with the others that the breakfast thing sounded good on it's own, there's just something unwarranted about it. It almost seems fetishistic or something. It's very out of the blue.

Beloved, let us once more praise the rain.
Let us discover some new alphabet,
For this, the often praised; and be ourselves,
The rain, the chickweed, and the burdock leaf,
The green-white privet flower, the spotted stone,
And all that welcomes the rain; the sparrow too,-
Who watches with a hard eye from seclusion,
Beneath the elm-tree bough, till rain is done.
There is an oriole who, upside down,
Hangs at his nest, and flicks an orange wing,-
Under a tree as dead and still as lead;
There is a single leaf, in all this heaven
Of leaves, which rain has loosened from its twig:
The stem breaks, and it falls, but it is caught
Upon a sister leaf, and thus she hangs;
There is an acorn cup, beside a mushroom
Which catches three drops from the stooping cloud.
The timid bee goes back to the hive; the fly
Under the broad leaf of the hollyhock
Perpends stupid with cold; the raindark snail
Surveys the wet world from a watery stone...
And still the syllables of water whisper:
The wheel of cloud whirs slowly: while we wait
In the dark room; and in your heart I find
One silver raindrop,-on a hawthorn leaf,-
Orion in a cobweb, and the World.

Yo creo que me emborracho
por angustia de mí mismo.
El alma toma la forma
del vaso que la contiene.

What is the point of posting poetry written by someone else? Are you hoping for a "ha, gotcha!" when someone critiques it?