Critique thread

lol nice Bill Callahan

Tall, dark, green grass stretched out before a young boy, his age can no longer be recalled, but it was the carefree time of his youth, when the greatest problems he encountered, involved simple equations and rote exercises to practice cursive. Only a descriptive glimpse remains of this time: the hill upon which their village rested, the gravel roads that lead to exploratory adventure, the tall windmill and the familiar swoosh of its blades. All these were still his, pleasant memories, faded now like the old Polaroid’s of his father, after years of neglect. He was staring intensely into the field, searching the grass for some concealed beauty. The boy could not find it and asked his father what he had seen. “There,” he pointed “a red rose” and he explained that the colors were camouflaged. He strained and found it; a single rose, sitting closed on its slender stem it defied the wind-swept plain, the rose remained as the rest blurred into the backdrop of a gray sky and farm fields.

I am alone again
I am my only friend
Why is this to be
And why is this me

Who could know
But the one who runs the show
But it was him who let me go
I never left, and never had a foe
And he made me blind
And took me out of his mind

Pleased he was, at my birth
As my mother was just a drone
For it was my thirst
Who grew my bones
It was the holy nectar
And now I have grown

bunny wabbit

why do i touch my hat to you

you are so wittle

but you have those eyes

that stop me in my tracks completely

bunny wabbit

why do i want to shoot you

How dare you.

That's A Wild Hare: the first full-length cartoon starring Bug's Bunny. Tex Avery was nominated for an Oscar for it—which at the time actually meant something.

Bugs Bunny is America's quintessential trickster figure.

Deadpool, Doctor Who, Bart Simpson, Tyrion Lannister, Jeeves, Donald Trump: none of these would be anywhere without that silly wabbit.

ima fuck that ass
that sweet caramelized rump
rendering thee positively callipygian
like the three graces struck by twilight
or Rihanna by a chris browned
by molasses, a touch of the tar
my moral tortoise of a mother
used to say in semi-jest.
oh how the waning beats of our hearts
throb each time they remind us
of that venomous need for skin
touching ours like time does infinity—
of course the sanctity of sublime shapes
enervates us with its youthful vigor,
of course that electrical thud rips our faces
apart like a demolition crew on angel dust
or a hundred years to the nucleus of bismuth:
a family consisting of formaldehyde selves
sealed plainly to pictures on the wall
and finally a bathroom stall wall lightyears away
where 2001 is both coming and gone.

rip Soulja Boy Tell-em

Brye rabbit you mean

Beginning of a short story I've been writing. Worried it's a little too dry. The subject may also not be to most of Veeky Forums's liking so mostly looking for critique of prose

The rain fell heavily, heard but not seen in night's blackness. Keith stood apart from it, dry beneath the awning of an unfamiliar apartment. If he shivered it was not from the cold but from anxious anitcipation of what lie beyond the door before him. With nervous hand he rung the doorball and waited for James to answer.
Keith had yet to meet James physically, their only communication taking place some hours earlier in the preferred method of most modern homosexuals: the dating app. After an exchange of platitudes and provocations an invitation was extended by James to meet at his place around 8 pm. Despite their conversation the two men remained mysteries to one another and Keith's mind raced with the possibilities of tonight's encounter; thoughts of lust or disaster.
Eventually James opened the door, greeting Keith with a warm smile, courteous hug and coy instruction of 'come inside.' The two walked into the apartment via a hallway, James leader and Keith follower, emerging into a warm lounge room dimly lit by the moving picture of a TV. Keith stood for a moment at the room's doorway, his eyes exploring this new alien habitat.
It was a small place not much larger than his own. There was a leather couch against one wall, TV upon the adjacent and glass coffee table bisecting the whole space. Across from where he stood was a blind window, darkness of the outer world visible through each wooden slat. In the corner was a bookcase containing DVDs, knick-knacks and picture frames peopled with unidentifiable figures. After inspecting his new surroundings Keith offered a final report: 'nice place.'
'Thanks' James replied amicably, 'it's not anything special but it's good enough for me.' James had seated himself on the side of the couch nearest the window. He picked up the TV remote off the coffee table in front of him and turned the volume down on whatever show he had been watching. The voices of the TV diminished into inscrutable whisper mingling with the sound of rain outside. Keith sat down on the opposite end of the couch creating an arm's length distance between the two. With the TV remote returned to its coffee table resting place James shifted himself so he was facing Keith, a small waxing crescent of a smile on his face.

ANIME

A Poem

Milton was an academic,
Septic relic of a silly
Puritan regime by means of
Condescension of what Pavlov
Called our appetite; Skelton or
A Chaucer poem - choice delights
And Pope was of Milton in awe
He denounced England and her poor
Bards and minstrels including that
Chap who told us of Prince Hamlet
He praised the French their feminine
Verse brought about by Malherbe in
Terse and damning fanning of flame
Mostly Roman, but some lie blame
At the door of Henry Fourth, the
Scoundrel king of Voltaire's thing, but
Yawp forward to Coleridge that
Good old man, he did set it straight;
'Chauser, that famous clerke, his termes
Were not darke, but pleasaunt, easy
And playne, no worde he wrote in vayne'
So let us here say the final
Word, the judgement of Veeky Forums be
Heard, it was Skelton, in spite of
Milton's contempt who spoiled us with
His Goddess-sent words fir life, and
Our sympathies should lie not with
Milton, but his poor wife

Nice imagery and flow, though I'd like to see what follows. A lot of the time I see really nice prose on lit, poetic, but when it comes to storymaking, a lot of starts to go downhil. Good stuff though so far.

I'd appreciate any critique

pastebin.com/uxmpCVtQ

wrote this a long time ago, let me know what you think

Polygon Cathedral/American Poetry

Here, I Am standing
with my body
in Polygon Cathedral.

The mechanical force
of its emptiness Surges
among the cybernetic light
of rigid colored windows
and the unsounding
organ Within me.

Now I Am sitting, Here
my unfurled eyelids
expose the 62—Furiously
counted 1 September—miles
between them and
the pupils, the dark
transparent mounds
that birth and devour
Earthy irises incessantly.

Pixels of borrowed window
seep into the 62
and torment the cloudy
figures There—the Gods of
walking down the stairs
and digging a hole
and finding things
you've never seen
and putting things
you've never seen
into the Ground—
with quick bursts of light.

* * * *

It Is outside, Now
there are friends
to talk to and everything
is green or grey.

I can look at This
animal before me
being American Poetry,
firm and shadowy,
while a harsh
intangible landscape
flickers in my eyes.

thanks for reading. keep love in your heart, Veeky Forums.

During the summer between junior high and high school, my friend Benny and I roamed our neighborhood like a timid, nerdy Lewis & Clark, afraid enough of confrontation that we would scatter between houses if a car full of older teenagers drove past.
Benny had thick black hair and a thick black unibrow and walked funny. He was the first kid I knew that grew thick adult pubic hair.
“Bet he touches kids,” he said once, pointing to a man driving by. “Bet he takes really fucked up pictures of kids, like, fucking and stuff.”
Benny was obsessed with sex stuff; he loved to talk about girls we went to school with and how he’d “screw ‘em,” but I don’t think he really knew what that meant. He told me once that if a girl has cameltoe, it meant she’s screwed. I believed it for a few years and just assumed all the girls who tried too hard and wore their clothes too tight, tight enough to show bits of themselves, had fucked.
Once, during that summer, a man drove into the parking lot where we were riding our bikes and talking about BMX and our favorite PlayStation games. He deposited a heavy-looking paper bag into the trash and then drove away. Benny told me to get the bag out of the trash.
“I bet it’s full of pictures of him having sex,” he said.
The bag was too heavy to be full of pictures, though. When I tore it open, I found myself face-to-face with a pile of dead raccoons. I screamed, loud, shrill, and threw the bag up. I hadn’t meant to; it was just an instinct. All of the racoons fell out and one hit me on the back as I ran.
“Holy shit,” Benny said. I was swearing loudly, hopping around, full of adrenaline. I had never liked the way dead animals looked. I was always afraid they’d come to life, real quickly, and attack me if I stared at them too long.
After I made a lap around the tennis courts and walked back into the parking lot, Benny handed me a heavy flat rock. Together, we threw rocks at the dead animals. It was almost a primal thing; man’s dominance over nature. But I didn’t think that when I was thirteen. In fact, I didn’t think at all. I just threw flat heavy rocks at the raccoons until chunks of flesh and hair started sloughing off. Then we went back to my house and drank sodas and watched old James Bond movies on VHS tapes. That night, I had a nightmare about the dead raccoons and Benny. In my nightmare, Benny told me he wanted to screw the raccoons.
After that summer was over, I didn’t see Benny much. Later in high school, I would pass him in the halls and I would always think about those raccoons, about how we chucked rocks at them and laughed about it. He’d probably forgotten the entire thing. I never did.

Guys It would be nice if we actually criticized each other in a critique thread

good shit

give me your worst Veeky Forums im fucking ready

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2/2

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Not going to post my own, but wanted to get opinions from anons who is brave enough to have their work called gay or get stolen. I figure this is the right thread for this sort of question.
Does anyone else get the feeling their writing is silly? Sometimes I write, then I'll stop for the day. When I come back I get that feeling it's overly dramatic and childish to write fiction. Anyone else?

Extract from Reality a How-To by Franklin O'Brian

Reality is a human psychological construct to better deal with existence. Better reach authentic self-actualization through fantasy! Numbers are subjective. It is well known that 2 + 2 = 1 modulo 3. There is no reason to prefer one model of reality over another as long as they both make empirically correct predictions! Value is subjective. So why not choose to love the life you currently live anyway? The murderer, the saint and the man on the streets do not have any more value than one another. Afterall, if another's life was valueless why not mercy-kill them! The search for meaning in life sets us forth to search for truth! But why search for meaning? Meaning and happiness are false gods. Choose to reach authentic self-actualization through fantasy and be happy with sadness!

I understand your sentiment, user. I have my own reservation in my writing. But then I read a New York Bestseller like Ready Player One and Everything's Coming Up Milhouse!

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I jammed out some post modernist shit
And - what do you know? - it became a hit
Without concern for meter? "Fine!"
Coherent themes? "Just do a line!"

When I am old, but not quite dead,
I'll spare the briefest thought
"Wow, think of all that's gone unread,
And all the garbage bought."

And when my heart has beat its last
I'll chuckle cruelly on the past
And lisp a wish (impotent cast):

"Faggots, faggots, on the web
Heed my passing! Listen!
Though it is sweet to live a pleb,
I hope you die patrician."

That actually make me feel better.

Trust me, if a novel like Ready Player One can get published then I assume any novel can as well.

here's a page. Make it as you will.

Attached: Reddit the Book.jpg (1024x860, 219K)

The "Ready Player One" and "50 Shades" paradigm is kind of a double-edged sword to me. Sure, it's a nice thought that basically anyone is capable of getting published and becoming a sensation if they strike the right lucky chord. But there is something sad about the fact it's total schlock that gets to be hit those heights. Makes me wonder how many real talents there are who'll never see a page in print because a publisher won't think it'll sell.

Although, we do have the internet now for independent publishing so that's good.

I wrote that from memory for one of the "first paragraph of your novel" threads, I guess you could say it went down hill from there. Haha, I'll try to get back to this thread later and read some of your stuff user.

OK, user, I read it real quick. At first glance, I'll point out some awkward inconsistencies.
>violet envelope that had my name typed in cursive.
Who types in cursive? On an envelope no less? Maybe give more detail for the chair you are sitting in, since you return to it at the end, a fauteuil, apholstered?
>To be honest
Meme, cliché, implies you are ordinarily not honest.
>Ah, Ambassador Antonioni, the cheap bastard.
I don't know what you call this, but it reads poorly, like it's from a movie script or something, I would remove any "Ahs" or "Ohs".
>They could all suck my cock
It got a laugh out of me.
>something about Dabiq
How'd you come up with that? Curious.
>cozy chair.
If you end it like this, maybe describe it more in your opening, since your character likes it.

Anyways have to leave, hope that's enough for now in a rushed critique.

Yes, but you need to be critiqued to improve.

PS: Be more descriptive! Tell us where you are, and what you are surrounded by, if you write too much you can always delete after draft.

>the holy trilogies

I want modernity to end.

But it ended already

You have captured the crippling social paralysis associated with American hiki. I'm not sure it's fiction, but I know this guy when I see him. All too often.

Thank you, that's exactly what I was going for. It's semi-based on a real experience I had. Any suggestions?
I really like your description. You seem to have portrayed That weird childhood moment really well. Nice job.

he calls himself accursed
because he dreams of heaven's height
I sleep a deep and endless pit
you break a long held fast
I live and die a beast
anoint yourself young prince
you taste ambrosia
I taste ash

For a couple of years as a boy I lived in Tuscany with my Mother, and sometimes my Father would be home. From my house, if you went out the back door, rode your bicycle through the forest clearing and went around the big farm where black pigs would eat olives if you tossed them over, you’d come to a lake surrounded by bushes where I once found a diamond that later turned out to be a melted glass bottle. I used to go fishing here all the time. I saw my Father catch a white sturgeon in there and it was like Moby Dick to me, I really wanted to catch one myself. I caught brook trout, large mouth bass, small mouth bass (the small mouth put up more of a fight than the large mouth), some pike, I always threw them back in the water after I reeled them in. One day I resolved to catch Moby Dick and followed the river, walking for ages, past the café where in WWII the Italian Resistance used to meet up and talk about that scoundrel Mussolini, past the fisherman who were all asleep on their docked boats, and I got to a good, deep eddy. Like the one where Achilles killed a dozen Trojans and took on the River God Xanthus; we read the Iliad in school until our heads hurt and we thought the whole thing a muddled cagare (hell). European schools don’t have that new English-American idea that the child ought to enjoy themselves. Of course this spot turned out to be worse than where I started, but at the time this encouraged me more, you know, I was certain when the line did come in it’d be a white sturgeon. Until the line eventually did come in, and it was a goldfish.

I don’t know what the moral of this story is, probably it doesn’t have one, which saves us the trouble of having to find one. So I’ll just leave you with this; when you’re reeling in the wire and pulling, you have to push down with your thumb a bit, so it doesn’t bunch up in one place.

brilliant

Wrote this today. Not sure if this story or plot is going anywhere or if Im just vomiting out my own existential cries.
------------------------------------------------------------
“Damn Franz, let loose dude. You feeling okay?” Trynd looked up from his laptop for the first time since Franz entered the room and now saw him in his sweating, nervous state, sitting on the floor like an indian, staring at nothing in particular. dead center of the kitchenette.
“Are you?” Franz felt his insides being hollowed out by a very serious updraft of dread and anxiety, “You know what, I’m not okay. I’m seriously fucked in the head,” Franz laughed once again in a verging-on-insane cadence. Trynd looking even more like a dwarf than normal, like a man in a child’s body. What’s intriguing is that Trynd was still handsome, classically handsome. Like God felt he had too much of an advantage and striked three feet off his height. He was surprised at Franz’s comments, the dude obviously wacked off some combination of chemicals (not the first student Trynd observed being this way -- Trynd, a normally sober, together kind of man). He usually observed Franz as a laid-back kind of guy, usually half baked with a pretty girl in his room. Emma? Was that her name? If only he could meet a woman; they liked his face but not the angle they had to look at it. Seriously fucked in the head?
“I’m fucked in the height.” They both laughed. Franz more than Trynd. No animosity in the room, no uneasiness from Franz about the tipped scale of sobriety in the room. Where was this trip to go? Was he coming down? What was he feeling? Had anything happened? A very continuous flow of questions and confusion steamed from his mind and there were no answers. Just thoughts, uneasiness, a general inquisitiveness to the facade of normality we all put up.

This is pretty fuckin autistic m8. In a good way captures the mood well. If this is autobiographical in nature I would sincerely recommend picking up some shitty customer service job. Even if it's just for a month or two. You gotta get used to talking to people m8

Purple

I really like this

This is great too

Pretty bland. I'd say you're probably drawing too much from your influences and not enough from your imagination.

Really good

>The rain fell heavily.
Get rid of that immediately. Use a forceful verb.
>What lie beyond the door before him.
Cut "before him." I'd say your prose needs some fat trimming. Read each sentence and cut out anything that doesn't NEED to be there.

Goddamn there are some good poets in this thread

Yes but I have an unnecessarily low opinion of myself in general so I do my best to ignore it. Besides beating myself up isn't going to make my writing better

It inspires a more profound worry in me. What if I'm just such a hack and don't know it and I do manage to strike a chord at some point. Is it possible I could live a life of material wealth and think I was a talented author all along only to be forgotten in 5 years?

Some of your sentences run on a bit too long. Comfy atmosphere though.

Alright lads here's mine. It's a work-in-progress
pastebin.com/uVLegxNK

How are my opening lines lit?
>"God is dead, and i was the only one that went to the funeral. Not even the priest shoved up."

I like that

>If this is autobiographical in nature I would sincerely recommend picking up some shitty customer service job.
Funnily enough I did that last year for a solid six months at a call center. It was absolute hell but I did it. I have friends and I do hang out with people, but there is something in my makeup that stops me from being completely socially able. No matter how hard I try to be socially competent and I HAVE tried) I always end up embarrassing myself in some way.

The whole point of this poem was to show off how smart and well read you are, it's not funny or witty, and in that respect it fails as a pastiche

Wrote this trash for a professor I fell in love with. Pls no bully.

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At first, he didn’t even hear her prim voice over the sound of the train’s momentum. Without saying anything he leaned the lighter forward, flame upward, and lit her cigarette.

No thanks, 19 year old rhymesmith

god is dead. the police were here. they're looking for you. they think an existentialist did it.

No it isn't, it was to knock Milton and Pope off their perches and put forward Skelton as one of the few really good poets

drive.google.com/open?id=1Sq4ycrhk3znXzB5Nwvf14vQT2dL5uOdX

A tv script I wrote. It's based on an essay I had to write in school.

>Some of your sentences run on a bit too long
this is no accident. your story is perfect for what it is. 'cut a solitary figure into the moonlit sky' makes more sense to me, and it means you don't have to use the word 'night' twice so close together

Yeah that works way better. Thanks m80

Opening to my first published novel.

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First 99% is 8/10
Last 1% is -10/10

That was actually quite pleasant to read. I like how you write and I wish you luck on the journey to becoming normal.

medium.com/@NonoEss/people-over-things-200f392007c0

i will post some crits later (i've done like 7+ crits in these threads in the past), but atm i have no time.

nice, very nice.
What's the plot of your novel?

Guy kills family, drives west, starts a tech company and finds happiness

>tfw you post your shit and someone gives positive feedback
>they also link their work in the post
>immediately assume that they only gave a good review so that I read his work

After the first 500 words of nothing happening I killed myself. Then I skipped to the end where there is dialog. Then I killed myself again.

>tfw you post your shit and nobody gives you feedback negative or positive.
>Everyone else just posts their own work without giving a feedback to any other
>Another wasted Thread.

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Actual garbage.
You write like every other 25 year old "writer" who occasionally drinks

>Debating whether or not to write my novel as Interview with the Vampire or World War Z.

Help me, Veeky Forums

What did you post?

dont link it to him

youtube.com/watch?v=qInkvBaKcvk

You have a very common ailment, which is pandemic and raging across the 20 something scene. Screen-osis. Glass projection dysphoria. You have confused the depiction of screened entertainment with the procession of text along a page.

"The rain fell hard enough to be heard, but in the darkness, not seen." For example. "Keith stood dry beneath the awning of an unfamiliar apartment" for another. "stood apart from it" and "dry" tells me the same information twice.

The reason that is not a nitpick is because it is not the once, but the cumulative weight of what amounts to a tic that eventually breaks my will to continue. "door before him" not behind? "with nervous hand he rang the doorbell" >not with his nervous foot

"platitudes and provocations" >no dialog of these provocations that can physicalize the movement into the setting

"room's doorway" [panoramic view of ordinary stuff, cataloged with clinical precision, none of which will ever be seen or mentioned again]

"nearest the window" - unless a brick is going to come flying through there why is this relevant?

"turned down the volume" followed by "voices of the TV diminished into inscrutable whisper" or in other words, what happens when you turn the volume down.

You can't recreate the experience of watching motion pictures by trying to freight down every detail with visual overload. If you can't resist, make this a screenplay. Then you can pull out all the stops.

This is current. It is what the glossies are buying right now. Notice how he moves characters around the setting while they say and do things. Notice how the doing and saying things characterize them and motivate tension and emerging drama by mixing together exposition and people actually doing stuff that propels them toward the crisis.

newyorker.com/magazine/2008/08/11/the-dinner-party-joshua-ferris

Seven a.m., waking up in the morning
Gotta be fresh, gotta go downstairs
Gotta have my bowl, gotta have cereal
Seein' everything, the time is goin'
Tickin' on and on, everybody's rushin'
Gotta get down to the bus stop
Gotta catch my bus, I see my friends (My friends)

Kickin' in the front seat
Sittin' in the back seat
Gotta make my mind up
Which seat can I take?

It's Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday
Everybody's lookin' forward to the weekend, weekend
Friday, Friday
Gettin' down on Friday
Everybody's lookin' forward to the weekend

Partyin', partyin' (Yeah)
Partyin', partyin' (Yeah)
Fun, fun, fun, fun
Lookin' forward to the weekend

7: 45, we're drivin' on the highway
Cruisin' so fast, I want time to fly
Fun, fun, think about fun
You know what it is
I got this, you got this
My friend is by my right, ay
I got this, you got this
Now you know it

Kickin' in the front seat
Sittin' in the back seat
Gotta make my mind up
Which seat can I take?

It's Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday
Everybody's lookin' forward to the weekend, weekend
Friday, Friday
Gettin' down on Friday
Everybody's lookin' forward to the weekend

Partyin', partyin' (Yeah)
Partyin', partyin' (Yeah)
Fun, fun, fun, fun
Lookin' forward to the weekend

Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday
Today it is Friday, Friday (Partyin')
We-we-we so excited
We so excited
We gonna have a ball today

Tomorrow is Saturday
And Sunday comes after... wards
I don't want this weekend to end

R-B, Rebecca Black
So chillin' in the front seat (In the front seat)
In the back seat (In the back seat)
I'm drivin', cruisin' (Yeah, yeah)
Fast lanes, switchin' lanes
With' a car up on my side (Woo!)
(C'mon) Passin' by is a school bus in front of me
Makes tick tock, tick tock, wanna scream
Check my time, it's Friday, it's a weekend
We gonna have fun, c'mon, c'mon, y'all

It's Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday
Everybody's lookin' forward to the weekend, weekend
Friday, Friday
Gettin' down on Friday
Everybody's lookin' forward to the weekend

Partyin', partyin' (Yeah)
Partyin', partyin' (Yeah)
Fun, fun, fun, fun
Lookin' forward to the weekend

It's Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday
Everybody's lookin' forward to the weekend, weekend
Friday, Friday
Gettin' down on Friday
Everybody's lookin' forward to the weekend

Partyin', partyin' (Yeah)
Partyin', partyin' (Yeah)
Fun, fun, fun, fun
Lookin' forward to the weekend

wow.
Amazing

pastebin.com/xzvDwfi1

Aw shucks I have missed this song!

Edgy.

>Raymond requires several hundred words of scenery description and consumer opining to do each little step of the story's action.

Raymond pulled himself up the rooftops for his night run. He saw cars as he ran along. He scampered up a fire escape. He ran some more. He is caught peeping at a party. He hides. POV to interior: night. party. (kind of like a screenplay) Dialog about drinking. We see Raymond as they do. Exeunt.

That's what happens. I have no idea why any of it is happening, nor why I should care. If you know where someone is buying genre fic that readers in turn are paying to suffer through like this, then go with all my blessings.

I unironically enjoyed this until your attempt at irony at the end ruined everything.

Same. I thought it was an interesting anecdote like

A pity, and I'll tell you why. I read that a scoundrel has killed a knight and assumed his identity. He is caught in the act by a halfwit who accepts the bad guy's offer to join him in whatever misadventure is to follow.

So, clever. Motivated characters doing things in a setting with dialog, and the dialog is halfway clever and natural. Now, the pity is, this is happening in a fantasy adventure genre context which means I can't follow you any further. I don't know the conventions. I could compare to Chretien or Silverlock, but that's not much use to you in the here and soon to be now.. The Strange Case of Martin Guerre, maybe. I have no contemporary standard candles to draw from. Not my bag. Send the whole thing to a mag that pubs this kind of thing or an agent who sells it. See what they say.

By now you should have had some poor lady walk you through a scratch-and-sniff experience with some tiny portion of the western canon, so you can read with some kind of secondary school level critical awareness. Maybe you were lucky enough to have some prof explain that when Jane Eyre wanders off across the moors at night in a storm, that the odds she would, in the hundreds of thousands of square miles, land on the one remote stoop of her only living relatives in all the British Isles that whichever sister it was performed a Deus Ex so Machina that even the Victorians didn't believe it, but the classics are classic in part because of their absurdities, and after all Shakespeare in his own lifetime was little more than a leotard wearing Nicholas Sparks who needed to put butts in seats to keep the oil lamps lit. Maybe this kind soul even explained that with a posthumous PR flack like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, even Steven King could be raised to the peerage a hundred years after his death. By now you should know that Hemingway had too many head injuries, Thomas Wolfe only wrote one book, he just wrote it six times, and Jack London was a cool guy. Konrad sailed a lot. And so did Melville. Nabokov was an elitist snob of the highest order and without Ashenden then no James Bond. This stuff should be early in your training and at hand easily. It should all be old. Because you are also aware of your current marketplace, which gives exactly zero fucks about James Joyce, but cares immensely about finding the "next Raymond Carver" who can extend the palsied life cycle of their already hospiced publishing form a few more numbers. Or even issues. You should know things like Robert Olen Butler is gimmicky, but he sells stories. David Means will never win the Man as a white American straight male. Palahniuk was always a one trick pony. So, for that matter is Ellis. Your trick, your hoop-jump, is to become the man of more than one scene. More than one decade. That's where we are now. There is no next great POMO masterpiece. It's over. The next great masterpiece will be about a guy on an oil rig. Or a chick brain surgeon in Idaho. It will involve characters acting in settings. The stakes will be high. Upon the outcome much will depend. Maybe the fate of nations. Maybe the future of a small town. Maybe whether a child lives or dies. Because that's what it's about. It's about absorbing and internalizing all the lives of people in stories who know they are gonna die but not that their story will end. They just know that "story" never ends. They are all the same and they are all updated all the time to be relevant to an audience selected by merchants who couldn't write their way of a wet paper loot box. An audience who will pay $19.99 hardcover, $9,99 paperback, or $2.99 remaindered to find out what story you have to tell, and how you chose to tell it. All of your ancestors are watching from the shelves of all the stores and libraries. Make yourself worthy of them.

"Come on bud." Jack said, patting Conor on the back.
"Forget that slut. We've got a big bag of lager with your name on it. Lets go get mashed, you'll soon forget about that geebag."
Conor smiled briefly.
"Besides, you're well rid" Jamie added "bitch probably had crabs."
Jay also slapped Conor playfully on the back.
They walked silently for a time.
Once they reached the fire station they scaled the front wall and skirted around the building to the back.
They sat on the back wall and opened their lager as the river flowed on noisely behind them.
"Cheers boys." Jack raised his can.
"Cheers." The others muttered in response.
"To new adventures." Jay said.
"To new pussy." Jack answered.
"To new fucking friends." Conor sighed and laughed for the first time in weeks.
They drank.
As the sun set and the boys drank with the vigor only youth provides, they discussed everything from whose tits were better (Pamela Andersons were made to be fucked was the general consensus) to why The Undertaker was much more iconic than that rubber hack Hulk Hogan.
The lager flowed and a healthy chain of cigarette smoke plumed up from their spot on the back wall.
"I tell you know boys," Jack pulled deeply from his cigarette "that bird in the Chinese was eye-fucking me."
"I'd eye fuck her." Jay said through a burp as he slouched against the wall, in a pretty bad state.
"How?" Conor asked.
"How W-what?" Jay hiccupped.
"How would you eye fuck her? Shes Chinese. Thats like trying to put a football through a letterbox."
They all started to howl with laughter.
"You are a fuckin' dope." Jay piped up.
"So is your Ma but I still bang her." Jack replied through a mouthful of smoke.
The boys finished the lager and climbed the wall. They followed the river on unsteady feet. It was starting to get dark proper now.
They walked until they reached the bridge. They crept underneath and lit up fresh smokes.
Jay looked across the river for a long moment.
"This is what Summer is all about boys. Lets make a pact."
The other guys looked at him.
"What pact?" Conor asked.
"A pact that we'll have fun everyday. Always make time for each other. Never let women come between us."
Jack stared at Jay intensely.
"Are you queer now?" He asked seriously.

Just an excerpt from a short story Im working on.

To be, or not to be, that is the, question.

genius how did you come up with this one

Suggestions? Take that vulnerable but defensively hostile energy of your character and find a reason for readers to care about him. It seems to me this character's worst nightmare would be a situation that forced him into extended social interaction with no hope of escape. Like being caught pirating bandwidth and getting sentenced to community service ladling out soup at a women's shelter for six months. Where he might discover something about jeopardy and humanity. Through conflict and empathy.

you should try writing poetry

If we were covered by the sky
From which my pain was hidden
And observed through the window
That place where even the invisible
Leave a trace and where you don't have
Hundred years to become.

Would we get to the conclusion,
That we kept our promises?
Here it is. It's my sixth and most recent poem. I hope you like it!

Good idea, I might just write that. Thanks for replying user
I actually do write a little. This one's mine

What is this, literally the 19th century? Who the FUCK talks like this?

ME NEXT ME NEXT:

silence, a delicate glass
filled to the brim, quivering,
never overflowed—
shattered softly by your wavering voice and you,
stepping lightly now through that shining mess,
pause again and again to pry out scintillant bloody shards

fantastic

pastebin.com/CnNexANJ

Dawwww thanks

Thanks, man!

Would you like to any chance be my accountability buddy? Maybe through mail we could exchange our critiques of what we write. Lord knows I could use one.

Cheers. Let me know!