Rewrite better? Also Critique thread

I'm lying down on my synthetic, cat skin, sofa, smoking type O positive laced ketamine, and listening to an audio recording of domesticated penguins having sex.

And I'm writing my masterpiece. My first Wil and testicle. Or, “My First Wil and Testicle”. It's a cop buddy screenplay about a testicle, who after being amputated from an aspiring castrato, leaves his fellow testicle to become a cop. His partner? Former child star, Wil Wheaton.

But all of this writing is giving me jaundice, so I throw the manuscript into the air, demanding it stays there, floating, until I have need of it later. I stab myself in the upper back with my pen, and twist it in until it's about halfway in, and secure, then throw the ketamine pipe on top of my tombstone. Rest in peace, pipe.

Food. I need energy after sucking down horse tranquilizer all day, and breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And night. And day. And all of the night. Chinese baby pizza. No, you sick fucks, it's not made out of Chinese babies. What kind of monster do you think I am? It's made by Chinese babies. To help pay off debts, some farmers in China sell their excess babies into pizzeria slavery. The ethics are a little sketchy, but damn, these pizzas are incredible. Honey bee crust. Delicious.

When I was older, I couldn't find the ingredients to make even the most basic of pizzas. Pepperoni had been gone for years, hunted to extinction by radical vegan extremists. We thought it an isolated series of incidents, the pepperonis didn't disappear overnight, but one morning we woke from our beds, turned on the television, and the president told us that the very last pepperoni in the world had been destroyed. If the death of pepperoni had been a long drawn out whimpering fart, the death of cheese was a sudden and completely unanticipated diarrhea shit storm violent explosion of a fart. Fuck all that noise, I had decided to revert to my younger self. In a world of pizza.

I'm running late for work. I go to my bathroom and induce vomiting to get rid of the pizza. I need room in my stomach for work, plus I plan to transition to a life of shirtlessness soon, and don't need to build up any excess fat. Brush my teeth, dry them off with an old pair of underwear, and then rub superglue over them. This helps fight the acidity of vomit that attacks the enamel. I look in the mirror and recite my reverse Gatsby opener affirmation before the glue seals my lips to my teeth.

“In my older and less vulnerable days my mother sold me some advice that I tend to forget every day. Whenever you feel like praising any one, just forget that some of the people in this world have had every advantage that you never did.”

I put on two thirds of a shirt (Small incremental steps are best when transitioning to a shirtless lifestyle) and crawl out of my window, ready for work.

can we post poetry?

if so, how can I connect these two ends? I'm struggling a bit with my current Idea.

I wait for God as patient as a tree.
In my stillness I was cast in statue,
So note the rust of waiting, breaking me.

Let dew be cast in rain, let lakes in sea.
Cleanse the river with the flooding, will you?
I wait for God as patient as a tree.
.
Can rain destroy the drops of dew? I plea,
Wipe the wet from iron, drying me too.
I fear the rust of waiting, breaking me.

The rust and dust could coat the royal We.
Rent the ashen cloth of David into
My wait for God as patient as a tree.

I fall when ripped from tree as veil from you.

……………………………………..

Sheets of glass
pass in waves
like heavy rain[?],
clipping through
each other.
Light through light—
like through glass
refracting a Picasso
in tesserae.

Wrapped in a Splint-
ered I find myself with
broken planes, my face
sharp angles. I am
the aviator dragging
their plain colors
across the sky.
I scry daily,
fearing for my son,
who will never feel
the sting of
colored glass
staining him

what is this? it's amazing. i would buy the novel.

Thanks, it's the only thing that is fun to write that I don't think anyone would publish, so I don't submit it. will self publish

Nights whimpered in silent fear of what might become of them.
War slithered in, with sinister intent, speaking in eager whispers
In the ears of looming shadows that wept dry tears for sunlight.

Murmurs of discontent sprinted throughout: your home; your clique; your self.
Inching further for anger, blindness swept beneath your skull and latched into you,
Your sins are not your own.
Luring you further with malicious speak shrouded by a veiled innocence:
Hysteria lit the path with shadowed light from an envious lantern.

Cheered on by coats of tainted wool, and assailed by coats of tainted challis
You become conflicted.
What now?

Leering from platted comfortability, shadows hiss at you to further on;
Indeed, you do, in fact, with many hesitations, and many trepidations,
But indeed, you do.

March

Splintered bones sizzle under a foreign star,
Trickles of sweat blister, embroider, infartar your brow.
Misguiding you moreso than pockets pretensely avowed:
Schoolgirls hand-in-hand, capped-‘n-gowned.
Smothered words nested in fear choked on bravado…

Bravo, Bravo!
The term is done!

Wormwood parties in your pit,
Your feather withers at the sun,
Enthralled in fear and shadow’s shit,
Your blindness turns to deaf’d the young.

A true gullywasher passed through our town last night, the kind we are known to get from time to time—a great black shuffling of the deck, a screaming which plucked our houses right up into the air, spun them around, and then planted them back down again, in all manner of peculiar configurations that we will need to repave our roads for, by the Lord’s own Merciful Designs, and now in this storm-fresh morning our boy, Sebastian Clates, is out for the creek and for the finding of crawdads. He sets forth under purple clouds just as the still-living townsfolk are getting around to peeping out their doors and assessing the new layout of the burg. They greet the neighbors their homes have come to rest beside or on top of. They clap backs and whistle appreciatively and describe cloud formations observed the evening before. Shoulda known, lordy-lee we shoulda known. They ask about their friends and parents and children. Make it, did um? Any sign? They nod at the news or the lack of news, just the same. They collect their dead pets from culverts and other such necessary civic measures. Good People. This town will survive, sure. Sebastian scoots past them chirruping through the gap in his teeth. In one hand he has a bucket for crawdads, the other is busy in greeting. He waves to Mister Telerock who is lugging his mailbox from his old housing plot over to his new one, somewhere over by the white knolls, carrying it athwart his shoulder like a baseball bat. “Aloo, Mister Telerock, aloo-aloo,” sloshing water from his bucket at the man’s feet, “I’m at them shellfish today. Reckon the storm’ll have set them to crawling, sure nuff. Turned them out-a their holes just like it did us, eh? Gonna wrustle up a nice batch and bring them on over to old Missus Cleftin who I heard wailing this morning on account of her daughter getting sucked up in the cyclone. Sweet Clementine took flight in her night shift, I saw her alight like an angel, and now her good old mama’s out looking for her in the tree branches, screaming somethin awful. Gonna have us a nice crawfish boil and forget all about it.” In response Mister Telerock glances at Sebastian through eyes which the stormy night has filled with runnels of blood and says, “Fuck off away from me, little retard.” So off Sebastian skips, leaving Mister Telerock to his duty, the poor maudlin alone with his reordering of the earth—away, away, feeling the ground wet and springy beneath his heels and the birdsong escaping through his teeth. Tweety-tweet with every puff of the boy’s chest. Mouth so busted-up the child can breathe through his smile.

>Bravo, Bravo!
>The term is done!

>Wormwood parties in your pit,
>Your feather withers at the sun,
>Enthralled in fear and shadow’s shit,
>Your blindness turns to deaf’d the young.
This part is considerably better than the rest. It's more concise, and visceral. If you make the rest more like it (by cutting excessive adjectives and SAT words) I think it will improve, but as it is now is still give it a nice turn tonally.

Little thing i wrote last night while feeling a little blue about i girl i used to know. Be as mean as you want. I don't care. I can't judge my work worth a shit.

So the factory girl, she listens
For the sound of her daddy's engine
Till the work bell sounds and she leans down

the summers here are hot
All she seems to do is work and sleep
And wish that she was still with you

now you don't know where she is
Lyin' in her mother's bed
Or who she's sleeping with

all the kids would laugh at her
'cause she seemed so sweet and pure
I took this shift because of her

and though I've never said a word
I once smiled and looked at her
Till the shift boss said "get back to work"

now you don't know where she is
Or whose bed she's sleeping in
Or what man she's sleeping with

consider trading the "and" in the 2nd stanza for a comma after "sleep" it will create and ambiguity in meaning that may work better for the poem as a whole by making the sentence as a whole state that she wishes it, but the line alone implies you do. The 'and' ties it more strongly to the previous line.
Consider playing around with the ideas behind villanelle also. The form may be too strict, but the spirit will suit the poem.

Slick rush in the nose, head back, to the mirror—
catch it drop by drip by splash till it slows, look up.
Red stream wetting the desert, iron taste seeping
down into the mud to nourish and be reclaimed.

Fingers of the unsullied hand, dip into cupped,
precious gore now lost but given new purpose—
not to fuel the vehicle of flesh but challenge
the master, with shape and spiral traced on skin
unsunned and hidden but for here, where letters
dredged from nothing spell words said nowhere,
but in the corners of the mind– lorn and fey–
that no thoughts reach.

Sedent in the dark now, decoration done, painted,
in that ink shared common to beast and borne.
Cryptic signs play and whisper as they dry,
set in memory without meaning, so now to rest,
to nest, to lay in the dark, to chase those mad signs,
to dream.

The start of a larger project I've been working on:

pastebin.com/fyHJ7gji

Be gentle you cunts.

Shit didn't see this when i looked earlier. I cant delete my thread but whatever.

Anyone have any advice?

pastebin.com/Wv11ntZ7

Hey, I'm the post above you.
I'll read yours if you read mine.

Pandemics and apocalyptic settings aren't the most novel ideas in the world but you execute them well enough. I was engaged and entertained despite myself.
There are a few minor grammar issues which become more common toward the end, but it's nothing a few proof readings shouldn't fix.

Characterization isn't particularly strong for the two perspective characters we meet in part one. I feel like I got a stronger impression of some of the prologue characters (like the alcoholic father) than I did of Ben or Eric, even though they each get much more face time.

I particularly enjoyed the bit written from the perspective of one of the infected as they searched for food. You strike a good balance between realism and entertainment here, and I was definitely left wanting more by the end. However, part of that urge would come from the desire to discover more about this world and its plague to see what (if anything) distinguishes it from all the other post apocalyptic settings out there.
I'm not saying you can't carry this story purely on an engaging narrative, and I'm CERTAINLY not saying you need to inject some kind of cheap gimmick to hook an audience. But if there is a genuinely unique aspect to the nature of your setting or main characters I would recommend establishing (or at least hinting) at them earlier on to avoid being dismissed out of hand by the more jaded members of your audience.

This is pretty fucking useful, thanks.

Right now I'm trying to break up the flat tone of the prologue and give a very small amount of exposition. I wanted the prologue to read like you're running through the streets, being bombarded with awful shit. Not enough time to stop and really think about it. Seems I failed though.

Eric wasn't meant to be given exposition. Or well, not true exposition. I want to make him seem like somebody he's not. Did you think it was weird he was the only one not dead in the middle of a group of kids? Everyone I've shown didn't draw a connection despite the mutilated kid or the fact he seems unimpressed with it.

Ben's character is a problem. I definitely need to expand on him. Part of the problem is that they don't interact. I might continue to work on this again, this was really just an experiment. I wrote most of this 3+ years ago, and I decided to come back today and revise what i could.

I've got 60 more "finished" pages to edit and maybe get feedback on.

But yeah thanks.

>the harbor was quiet
>dry air crept down my neck

Where the fuck are you getting dry air at a dock? Shit be damp, yo.

a giraffe
is the way
to freedom for you
to see the way
you need a giraffe
tits asterspirit you need to please t pleas daddy love me i need your love dad i need it so bad oh lala please piss upon the face of my hot young intrepid nigger popopopopopopopopopo yes there's the sourtu of a goldmine in this traversal it becomes that into itself but is there any self worth into a dragon's cave the sword and serpent into a jack rabbit hay is the way into so

In August 1939, I boarded the Hansa . My family had somehow obtained documents allowing me to immigrate to America (New York specifically) . They had made these arrangements out of fear I would be accosted by the Gestapo , as of my views, if I were to stay. Three days into the voyage the ship makes a noticeable U-Turn and heads back to Germany . We were given no explanation as to why the ship was no longer following its course , though I made plans to leave the country as quickly as possible . This did not end up occurring, instead I decided to drive two stranded Jewish teenagers back home, in Berlin, and resumed my studies in Munich .

The activities of The White Rose began in June of 1942 . Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell solely wrote and produced the first two leaflets , writing about the failure the Nazi party has made in attempt to bring Germany back to its previous ‘glory’, condemning the crimes of the Government, and poking fun at Hitler’s poor German speech . I took up the job of editing and reading the third and fourth leaflets, in which we argued the National Socialist regime was evil and defined to our readers, whoever they were, what they can do to bring the war to its knees. I remember a passage that we published in our third leaflet; ‘But our present State is a dictatorship of Evil. “We’ve known that for a long time,” I can hear you say, “and it is not necessary for you to remind us of it once again.” So I ask you: If you are aware of this, why do you not stir yourselves? Why do you permit this autocrat to rob you of one sphere of your rights after another, little by little, both overtly and in secret?’ We wanted the population to stand up, we made it clear. We outlined their modes of resistance, the sabotage of armament factories, of fascist rallies, of the intellectual realms of which exist to maintain the continuation of the war . In 16 days we had produced and distrusted 4 leaflets. It was around this time that Christoph Probst, Willi Graf and Han’s sister Sophie became aware of our activities as The White Rose .

People always give that advice "just write", so I tried just writing without really thinking. It's kind of the first time I've done that –how did I do? In all honesty, I think it's kind of bad.

Although it was three a.m., in a pretty quiet part of the city, footsteps followed down to the single lit house on the road. The house spilled orange out of its windows into the black outside, almost giving an illusion of heat in the cold of the night. When the walker drew close enough, the door opened silently and a woman stood in its archway. Upon recognising the face of the man who approached, she stepped aside to let him in.
“Hi,” she said. You’re early, she thought. The man and the woman were the kind of friends that were friendly enough to hold a conversation, but not quite friendly enough to start one. As such, the man took quite an amount of time to hang up his coat on the banister, so as to slightly shorten the discomfort of the silence in the entryway.

I posted a story about a sailboat in previous critique thread and based on advise completely rewrote it. Now, it is this.

docs.google.com/document/d/1eyFGWoyK4VIvcTh3gqBK5yFK4BYD9NNpSZ2bZhjLDz8/edit

This was made for a writing magazine with the theme of the piece being fear. Hopefully, it fits thematically. The word limit is 1000 words +/- 10%. I've reached the word limit, so I can't add anything. Any help would be appreciated.

Personally, I enjoyed this a lot. The beginning is a great hook. I assume the first sentence is long and chaotic because that's how the storm was. Chaotic might be the wrong word. It is very easy to follow. Seems like a somewhat odd place to end though. Otherwise, I don't have any complaints. Honestly, I might be a bit biased since it reminded me a lot of various parts of my childhood.

i want to read the rest of this

Bailey was in her room watching a video on youtube of a goofy ostrich looking teen nerdy mothafucka dressed in a business suit critiquing domino's pizza in depth as if he were a professional food critic, it was kinda funny how he was in a business suit and how his face looked like a fuckin ostrich, she checked her Skype messages

cocainegoth: hey bailey, can i see your tits??????

fijidrinker420: b
fijidrinker420: a
fijidrinker420: i
fijidrinker420: l
fijidrinker420: e
fijidrinker420: y

zzzzzaaaaackkkkkk: bailey, bb, talk2me

seriousartist: sup, u fuckin biatchhhhhhh

Why are guys so annoying? She usually ignores her messages on Skype, unless its a message from someone cute or someone that had drugs, they had to be cute and they had to have heroin or they had to believe in UFOS. Bailey's favorite thing to do at night was climb onto her roof, sniff heroin, look for UFOs and rub her pussy until she squirted. One time she was super fucked up and thought her squirt was green, but she was just hallucinating. Hallucinating is fun. It definitely isn't boring like everything else is. The drug of choice this year was heroin because of Brandon, Brandon started sniffing heroin and everyone just started copying him, not injecting it, just sniffing it or snorting it. The drug dealer they bought it from also put a little bit of PCP or LSD or something into the heroin that gave it hallucingenics. When she snorted it she would hallucinate and squirt cum out of her pussy, the drug dealer that sold it was super cute and Bailey wanted to fuck him really bad, she just wanted to be on top of him grinding her slippery ocean springs puss into his dick while sniffing his heroin, waves of energy pulsating all over her body, every particle in her body on fire. The video of the nerd in a business suit reviewing pizza was getting boring so she switched to Hatsune Miku videos, which was a CGI anime character that sang japanese music, she pulled out a miniature zip lock bag with heroin inside of it, and she sniffed a tiny pinch to help her go to sleep, the immediate effect made her see sparkles, the youtube video she was watching started to move in slow motion and her laptop monitor started to radiate an RGB rainbow fog, miniture anime characters cranking that soulja boy like a mothafucka.

Posted this on the previous thread. Not a native English speaker, so excuse any mistakes.

Do literary twitter accounts count?

Maybe you should collaborate with a friend on it, since it's all fun to you.

not too bad desu

question:
why does the woman open the door if she didnt recognize who the man was before?

did she want to spook the random passerby?
or did she hear the footsteps and wanted to see who it was?

what kind of friends are they, that they see one another in the middle of the night? how will the story continue?

please make them converse!

Posted this last thread and didn't get much feedback so here we go again.

pastebin.com/7y5v5MFX

It's the opening to a "can love bloom on the battlefield" romance novel set during a modern-era WW1-type clash of ideologies. I'm trying to capture bleakness and hopelessness, so that's what I'm most after feedback on.

The part I think needs most attention is the dialogue, and I'm also concerned that it drags on as is.

Here's the first paragraph if you ceebs opening the pastebin.

>Birobnya Oblast was cold land, and it produced cold people. The bleakness was inherent in the terrain; it permeated every aspect of life. From the moment a citizen woke up in the morning, freezing even under his three blankets in the penetrating chill of a darkness that lasted until mid-morning, to the moment he collapsed back onto the spring-and-batting mattress, he would be looking out at a palette of low-set grey concrete blocks punctuated here and there by stark white fresh snow, brown mud from where hurried footsteps or passing tractors had churned the dirt roads, and the black sky. Eventually what he looked out on become his outlook. Even where citizens had choice - when new rations of clothes came in, or when ordering a new tractor - they shied away from the bright colours or loud gestures. The ubiquitous jackets and jumpers were in pale palettes of washed-out sky blues and pinkish reds, or in earthy browns and ochres. The two cars in the province were silver and black respectively. It was as if the entire population of the oblast might sink at any moment and become part of the sparse, flat, empty landscape.

>the harbour muzzled itself for my thoughts
That sentence is too abstract for me, too hard on a metaphor that doesn't quite click. The second sentence, or the clause after your colon, is your best, particularly, "seagulls and pigeons slept, dreamless, on chewed-up power lines". In fact, if I were bold enough to to re-write your piece, I'd have the whole thing as:

"I let my legs hang over the damp dock and thought of the seagulls and pigeons sleeping, dreamless, on chewed up power lines above."

I wouldn't say "You made it" as my opening dialogue either, sounds too cheesy.

Too crazy, too casual - you can be mad, but it should have a point to make too.

I deeply like your line: "I wait for God as patient as a tree". Unfortunately, I don't write poetry.

You're a talented writer.

postmodern

Good, you work your scene well and mechanise the actions and thoughts of your characters clearly despite only having a brief space. Stop thinking more.

Are you from a Communist country? One thing you should do, which I what I see a lot of people learning English at a high-level do, is to pay attention to the evocation of the word rather than it's length. You don't need to impress a native reader with your vocabularly (which, unforutnately as a non-native speaker, will rarely be that stunning) but you can impress them with a deft understanding of the more simpler words. Your dialogue, however, is good, perfectly rambolic.

I'm working on cutting the second italicised paragraph, I just want to hopefully be able to indulge in a bit of purple and keep the room scene and the sea scene alive. I know right now that it's overtly descriptive, but which parts would you say fall most flat on their face?

The book itself will serve as a sort of sub-commentary of the reader in the train, as the carriage slows, he rises, reading intermittently while the train and the smoke are described. The smoke is my key visual motif, an abstract object that blends and fades between infinite forms, always disappearing, out of sight, but still present. I wanted to tie in the breathing games and the sea, to add that idea of order to the image of smoke, of regularity, the building of systems within chaos. The ending will be an unaware conversation with Camus, just as he's about to get off. He'll recognise him, but Camus won't talk to him, won't say anything at all. However his own questions will sync with the prose of the other book, like a dialogue of sorts; and be answered through there. The main motif of the questioning will be the need for muteness, the paradox of fading, and the regularity of our confusion. I want him to scream and scream at Camus by the end, ruining and ignoring all the beauty of the train, while the other novel ends and answers his questions with Barnaby content first to talk to himself, then to enjoy the silence.

I feel like I'm wrestling with a lot of concepts however, and need to clear and thresh things out, or else I'll end up as vague as the smoke I'm trying to use.

This would be with a briefly trimmed down description of the ocean. I couldn't fit in the storm imagery, but I wanted to really feel as if the world had been flipped, reversed almost, and that change of scene had caused the young Barnaby to view it with some deep innocence.

critque pls?

I was in a mental hospital after a suicide attempt. My parents gave me a notepad and I wrote what is attached about the event. While moving back to college I found the pad and decided to copy what I wrote. I'm not sure if it is good but it is how I made sense of the experience.
pastebin.com/JwwyV9zi

>I awoke
KYS

Pretty bizarre. Definitely not what I was expecting. Do you have schizophrenia?

They're part of some society I think

Here's a fresh one:

My father bragged
About being punched
In the mouth by his father
For calling him “Old Man.”

He showed me compassion
For rage as a means
of justice for the infringed.

We went fishing,
And I watched him
Nail my fish to a tree
As a means of cleaning it.

He showed me savagery
As a means of protection,
When he told me he would skin
Someone alive for hurting my sister
And cover them in honey
To entice ants.

When his liver was ripped from him
By drinking Taaka Vodka for decades,
My grandmother told me about the time
His father duct-taped him to a chair,
When he was eight, to laugh at
As he squirmed powerlessly.

I like it but I'm a sucker for father related pieces.

Buckle-up; turn key half way; depress brake; start car; shift to reverse; look behind and check mirrors; release brake. The girl seated in the passenger seat's head rested on the window, her chin nestled in her breast. Selfish bitch, look how comfortable she is. The darkness triggers the impulse to turn the knob and wake the neighborhood with the lights. Refrain. Softly the car purrs-- the resting place of the loved cat stares and a smile appears, happiness was hard to come by. A groan materializes in the thin air of the night that chills; the night, so long ago, into the woods alone, accompanied by blissful ignorance, protected. Light; O guiding light, how the path out was shown by that bright flood. Turn signals are unnecessary as there is never anyone on these streets at this hour. The yelling heard when the gaze falls on her face, how she screamed, the aching of the head that could not be cured by drugs. Hard times, quoted in the essay that such toil was spent on; Dickens never failed to depress. Menial and disgusting was the life lived in that house, now a smudge in the rear view mirror. The figure on the right is not needed, superfluous it wafts through the lives of others, causing such strife, an ghastly splinter. What fun was had at the required training for the gun permit cherished so much as a child, with the cousin, older and wiser. How the past helps. Car doors are so noisy, many were the evenings, late at night interrupted from midnight reverie by the slam of a car door. Carefully, practised many times, the handle clicks twice and opens easily. Can you hear me? Evidently not; she goes up on shoulders toughened by the same maneuver used in the boy scout camps, cherished and left behind, so it always happens; always has and always will. Some say it's incredible how the human can adapt to straining environments, but there is always a force a tugging deep inside that urges to lash out and fight, to improve by the most violent means. That feeling is well known. The pocket of the jacket is heavy, the girl that was at one point loved is heavier. The coyotes are quick to get an easy meal and the woods are not friends to sound.

i can dig it

Continued my piece, tried to cut down the second italicsed paragraph (still going to trim that) and expanded on the train scene. I want things to feel a bit mad, like Country Doctor, but still have this aching sense of politeness I always feels on my commutes (perhaps that's just the English).

How is the dialogue? Am I again over-egging the scene (I always prefer to overwrite a little, and then trim the weakest). Is it sexual? Too sexual? Is the action too slow? Does the rhythm break? Is there no suspense, would you be at all interested in this as a reader or it too lofty and surreal and cliche? Or is it not? Is it fake? Or too slow?

I want to have this impression of artifice for the piece, but a deep one, like the vivid reality of a dream.

>happiness was hard to come by
The only line the rings my cliche bell. Although I'm not sure if it is a cliche, the "loved cat" is a great description. I'm never that fond of, "O x" either in prose, too old fashioned for me, unless you're really able to ham it or can play the ironic side of it. "Dickens never failed to depress" is another great line. "ghastly splinter" is nice again, and your ending is solid, "woods are not freinds to sound" should and is a good closing line, perhaps would be punchienr if it was separated into a single sentence, although the coyotes seem like a mismatched image but that's probably just my British speaking. Overall, a good piece with tight rhythm.

I like your poem a great deal. I do not have much to say, as I don't write much in the way of poetry, but it reminded me of one of the few things I did write, but I would've liked it regardless if it didn't. I think with your freeverse, the flow and rhythm could be snappier however.

-----------

Criticism and insults would be much obliged. Here's my updated piece (apologies for using photos but I don't know how else to use the italics)/

Oops, please read from here.

...

...

Do you use guidelines when writing? Or you just "let it go" and then try to correct or give sense to what you wrote?

Are you asking anyone in general? I try to sketch out the general idea of what to write next, like a brief timeline of events. I've found that thinking it over in your head as much as you can before writing it helps you keep a clear vision of what you need to write next.

Could someone help a brother out?

I don't plan, but I've never really planned any of my formal essays, sometimes even a short thesis, but I manage to score pretty highly. If you're an instinctive guy who wants to capture a certain mode and feel that you work better when you're in the flow; yeah, just a very loose outline of events is needed. If you're too rambolic or you're a bit more of a mechanical guy, a plan can work wonders.

1/2

It was a cold July evening, and Montag walked slowly through the sidewalk. The sky was orange, almost night. Near where he walked, there were a small group of people sitting around a metal canister full of fuel, and lit. One of them, excitingly were telling a story, to which the others attentively listened. Near them was a stray dog, sleeping. Scenes like this were common, small families enjoying the evening to warm themselves and have fun. They weren't real families, of blood, but small groups of people living together, separated from other people. Montag also were part of a family, but a big one, living together in a fixed place. Some could say that the way they lived was "communist", but that is debatable. They all liveed together, each in charge of a specific job to benefit the whole family. Montag was in charge of hunting, to get food for the family. Even though he weren't the only, he went alone that day.

Although most of the population lived in that way, that is, without a leader or group of leaders, fact that characterizes anarchism, some still lived in groups with leaders, but they were small, not remarkable, groups, practically unnoticed by most people.

The anarchism was installed in this country (and when I say country, I refer to the geographic localization, a chunk of land divided by natural or artificial borders) after an insurgency. Previously, the state imposed a dictatorship, which lasted several years. A rebel group, with many divisions throughout the country, organized an attack to the main points of power of the state, overthrowing the dictator and other big figures. Afterwards, they utilized a very smart method to completely eliminate leaders. Utilizing strong propaganda, through news, radio, and television, they stimulated the population, who for years nurtured strong hatred towards leaders, to attack every figure that represented power near them. The propagand was just the initial impulse, basically some kind of "permission" given by the insurgents, since everyone had at least a single reason to hate their leaders and executioners. Some, because they lost dear friends and family to the state assassins, others, for being separated, and some simply because of the lack of freedom of expression and action. Soon, what followed was grotesque carnage and savagery . The leaders, who used to hang rebels in public square, were scourged and humiliated by the people. Some, crueler, after days of torture, burned them publicly, to the joy of the people. All these acts, so absurd and inhumane, even today aren't briefly mentioned by those who participated. They fear themselves for what they did.

Although the coup d'etat was well planned and executed, before and after there was great confusion. Firstly, what would be done after the elimination of the state? Never had them witnessed such fact. The masses believed that, following the example of other overthrown dictators, the republic would be installed and they'd live like other countries. But the insurgents wouldn't allow such fact. They didn't elect a new presidents, but installed anarchy. The main reasons for anarchy to be chosen are still confusing even today. If you ask some, they'd say that anarchy was chosen because it is the natural state of men. Respectfully, I deny this affirmation and teach them what I think to be true.

The main reasons were, the ignorance and excitation of everyone towards the debunked state. After so many years imprisoned, living like birds in cages, controlled by the totalitarian state, the growing chorela towards the powerful minority led to a blind and ignorant hate. When you hate all kind of power, the inexistence of a form of power seems to be the perfect thought. Soon, blind by the thought of living free, they installed anarchy, and abhorred those who wished for order in society. Nevertheless, as the Grand Inquisitor said, "Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom".

>pastebin.com/7y5v5MFX
Too much description, way too purple. Slim it. Focus on colours.

I need advice on this piece i wrote as part of a longer story. i like it, but i don't know if that's just me, or if it's actually just shit.
please share your thoughts

He didn't move other than to draw his breath. He intended to hold on for as long as he possibly could, as a final test of strength. With his back against a great rock, he couldn't see the sun, making it very difficult to judge how much time had passed since he first fell. But by the shadow of this rock, he had judged that more than an hour had gone by. However, even more time passed. Breath growing heavy, he couldn't even muster the strength to judge time anymore. He could see a faint darkness growing in the outer corners of his eyes, and the only clear thoughts he had were his family. His daughter, whose life had come to be right in front of his own eyes, lain into his hands. His wife, the best woman any mortal man could ever wish for. He would fight the greatest armies even in this condition if only to taste her sweet cooking one final time. Or, to lay with her. Have her on her back, arms tightly around him, breathing into his ear. Faint breath, darkness growing.
And with the image of his wife and daughter held in his mind he let go.

bump

Is this board fucking dead or what

Start criticizing

nice
I really like the concision, but consider using punctuation to drive home the emotions you're attempting.

It's unimpressive but not terrible either. If it's supposed to be an emotional moment, it is lacking.

>He would fight the greatest armies even in this condition if only to taste her sweet cooking one final time

Worst line in there for sure.

I would have walked into the house but I was now a shepherd dog, committed to the flock and to the wielder of the staff. I knew my street dog days were done, so I sat on the curb and watched Rothko paint his rust and blue in the sky and I felt glad that I had not walked into the house for an innocent family of five could live there now. When a man becomes old he goes back to being a child, but never back to being a young man. When I was seventeen, my friend Skip and I, also young and vibrant would walk the streets of Panama in search of women who drank and ate ambrosia. We preferred older women because they had no ideals and only cared about money and we on the other hand had only ideals and no money. Now married with children and forty-two years old I still look back to the house where I became a man.

“Materialism! Materialism Renounce materialism!” Says the youth, and even said I in my younger days. But how easy it is to reject the knowledge of the fathers when it has just been discovered? Skip and I were in our first year of college and the mind was the only weapon we had, so we sharpened it against anything we could find; Christianity, positivism, we clashed against it all. We devoured texts and studied and made money tutoring the children of the high class. Money was decent, but most of it would be put back into the Panamanian economy, strengthening the nightlife industry and keeping the price of booze down for all.

FATHER TIME & THE DREAM SHOP

A play in one-act

A dream shop. A woman’s corpse. A clerk sweeping.

STORE CLERK: The laugh track, commonly referred to as “canned laughter”, was initially synthesised by American sound engineer Charles Douglass. It was, and still is today, used to give an “audienceless” sitcom a convincing studio audience presence. Douglass popularised “canned laughter” way back in the 1950s, with the rise of the American single-camera family sitcom. The same laughs are still used today. Any given contemporary sitcom with a laugh track is scored by the laughter of the dead. Spics, niggers, jews, WASPs. The whole bit. Dead laughter ringing throughout all time. Like screaming.

[Enter Father Time]

FATHER TIME: WUTZ WITH DIS DEAD BODEH IN THE STORE HUH?!?!?!?!

[!!!JARRINGLY LOUD STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHTER!!!]

STORE CLERK: Ever hear of Chekov’s Gun? [Suddenly, on the radio: Elton John’s Rocket Man w/ alien murmurings] Huh? [inspecting the radio] Damn, the sonic transmitter is busted. Can’t a guy just listen to Ready Steady Cuck?

He hits the radio. Immediately, everything goes BLACK.

A single, stark spotlight lands on the radio.

RADIO: Death and loss are two of the most powerfully resonate themes in life as we know it. There is a sort of intrinsic link between the two, insofar as these themes share the same basic DNA; they’re important as they appeal to a deep-seeded fear of the disparity between the impermanence of existence and the incontrovertible permanence in loss and death. Loss and death are understood as profoundly melancholy, mysterious and, at the worst of times, fearful events. Loss, in a contemporary sense, is reasonably understood through generational incongruity and a growing reliance on technology and luxury. Broadly speaking, however, there is a clear bond between death and loss. And thus one must remember: what is lost can always be found.

Then everything returns to normal.

RADIO: Welcome back to Ready Steady Cuck!! Today we have Obama McDonald’s with his beautiful wife Wikipedia’s Article on The Death of Harambe.

STORE CLERK: Finally!

FATHER TIME: Huh? Where am I?

STORE CLERK: [a warm, inviting smile] Take a seat, old-timer. I want to hear your story.

FATHER TIME: We (ergo: me and the boys from the platoon) recreated Theatre du Soleil’s 1789 but instead of the screaming thing we chanted The Knack’s “My Sharona”. An acquaintance of mine caught it all on tape and naturally threw it up on his ‘Gram. It substantiated a decent amount of likes and one girl commented that she “wanted my number”. I checked out her ‘Gram. She was a seven out of ten on Instagram, which means she’s a five out of ten in real life. Clearly part of that whole I Have A Cropped Fringe, Sylvia Plath’s Bibliography And A Thinly Veiled Sense Of Sexual Liberation thing. I thought I’d capitalise on it. Hit her up on ‘Book. Seduced her with my natural e-charm and e-charisma. We rendezvoused and I immediately saw a vulnerable little girl, rather than that facade of a strong, independent woman. At her’s, she tried to give me a blowjob. I couldn’t use her that way. I had to reject her but I didn’t want to tell her why I was rejecting her because it’d tear down her facade, which clearly meant a great deal, based on her ‘Gram. So I said, “Sorry, bitch, I don’t let whores give me blowies” and I got up and left. She was visibly hurt, but I figured she could throw some feminist spin on what I said and be contented with that. What’s weird is I realised I meant the words on some level, and I noted an intrinsic link between sluts and vulnerability. And it was in that moment I --

STORE CLERK: [angrily] Oh for fuck’s sake. What? You realised misogyny comes from a place of confusion and hurt or some crybaby shit? Huh? Huh? [aggressively jabbing Old Man Po-Mo]

FATHER TIME: Huh? Wha?

STORE CLERK: [grinning] Just messing with you, old timer. What’s your story?

FATHER TIME: Enjoy Heineken.

STORE CLERK: Enough small talk. Let’s bring in a customer.

Enter THE CUSTOMER.

CUSTOMER: Hurr durr The Force Awakens is such a great movie ha ha that’s what stupid people say.

STORE CLERK: Easy, hotshot. You don’t want to throw that kinda leftist spiel in a joint like this.

CUSTOMER: What is this place?

STORE CLERK: We sell dreams, BFG style.

At this point, I shuffle slightly in my seat. Hopefully not drawing any attention.

CUSTOMER: [enthusiastically] Can I have a dream where I’m not afraid all the time?

STORE CLERK: Fresh out.

CUSTOMER: [even more enthusiastically] Can I have a dream where I’m not in this godforsaken, hellacious world?

STORE CLERK: Forget it. We’re fresh out and I doubt you even have a permit. Have a good day and enjoy The Revenant.

CUSTOMER: That film is overrated; betraying several cornerstones of an established, tried-and-tested cinematic vernacular that it claims to champion.

Father Time mumbles something into the radio.

STORE CLERK: [panicked] Jesus H Christ! That kinda talk was outlawed after the Enjoy Subway wars!

FATHER TIME: I’m… so sorry…

The lights dim. Customer performs a rendition of Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle”.

STORE CLERK: The time police are on the way, buster. I’ve already hit the button, so don’t start begging.

My glock is now loaded. I’m almost ready to strike.

CUSTOMER: What’re they?

STORE CLERK: Tell it to him, old timer.

FATHER TIME: They send you back in time. The worser the crime, the further back. I had a cousin who was sent back to the Stone Age for harbouring salacious and latently pornographic pictures of his dog on his iPhone. Cops argued the dog was butt-naked so it was a straight-up felony. I think the dude just liked his dog in an entirely non-sexual, platonic way. Ah, what do I know?

CUSTOMER: Good heavens! How long for my crime?!

FATHER TIME: Beats me.

A squadron of time cops storm the stage. They force the customer into the time box (aesthetically similar to a fridge). Here, there is room for a lengthy, slapstick-comedy sequence (a la Laurel & Hardy, early Chaplin) in order to provide comic relief for the audience.

TIME COP: Any last words?

CUSTOMER: (in the time box) Rearmost, final, ultimate, endmost.

TIME COP: Nice. Alright, take it away boys. Send him on back.

Very expensive, epileptic light show plays out as Customer is zapped back in time.

TIME COP: Get this dead body outta here.

The other time cops drag the corpse, that has been on stage from the beginning, off-stage.

I jump from the auditorium onto the stage and point my gun at Father Time.

ME: Remember me?

FATHER TIME: Jesus Christ!

ME: Who’s a whore now, huh? I wasn’t even going to really blow you anyways. Your profile picture has, like, under twenty likes.

The time cops have now returned to the stage.

TIME COP: Whoa, under twenty likes?! That’s a federal offence. Take him away boys.

Father Time is forced into the time box, slapstick comedy ensues again.

TIME COP: Last rites?

FATHER TIME: I’m a leftie!

TIME COP: Not that funny. Alright, boys, you know what to do!

Light show ensues.

ME: He was mine to kill... My plan... ruined... [I shoot myself, collapsing onto the stage. Dead.]

STORE CLERK: That’s gonna hurt in the morning. Thanks, boys. I can take care of things from here.

TIME COP: So long, citizen!

The time cops leave.

STORE CLERK: [realising] The dead body...

He can’t help but smile. In that moment, the store clerk realises something. There never was a stage. Not really. Not matter how hard they tried to believe. No matter how hard the audience tried to believe. No matter how hard you, the reader, tried to believe in it all. There was nothing ephemeral about it. It was eternal. Not a play, no. More like words on a page. Trapped in time. Constantly in stasis. The Store Clerk has a sort of metaphor for this.

STORE CLERK: It’s to do with canned laughter. Let me explain.

[Blackout]

this part comes right after this and right before this CUSTOMER: Once you’ve lost your wife over a rigged poker game gone wrong, your precious “filter” goes right away real quick. Even if it means breaking the law. Even if it means risking your own god-fucking life. I used to run with a bad crowd, man. Used to call ourselves Chinese Steel. Raping women. Fighting men. Doing a number of dubious things to children. Shit, I still remember my initiation. Old “Eyelids” McLine blindfolded me, made me eat a three course meal. Lo and behold, it was all human flesh. Some old timer, like my fellow customer here, for the starter. Some crackhead in his forties for the main course. [tearing up] And, Jesus Christ. A little baby for desert. His little hands. You know what the worst part is? I know that baby tastes the best! Do you know how it feels to know yourself know that? Do you even fucking know?!

Poor Small Mathras was sleeping in the lower parlor when the wild sage burst through the front door and made for her bedroom, where usually slept but where this time of this night her father, who had fallen ill, was sleeping.
First it tore and thrashed at him through the bedclothes, awaking Mathras down the hall. She found it finally some long and creeping moments later from afar tearing wildly at the fleshlet red bulk of what was left in the bed and of it, and fled. And so Urizl had tracked it, the former him, now here, this far to the blood temple, not expecting to find three. The second, tallest of them all, as he estimated since he’d yet to see them all share any place, just the two and then this one some short part of a long hour later as it howled in a frantic mess and from its empty face down the hall, where he’d just been stealing a shorter peek at the moon, stood now, or crudely lurched, in a sort of disordered gyration if sometimes maintained, only a few twenty steps away, peeking for him around some tenuous bends in a shorter hallway. Urizl was wise that the other two must be coming, by then, though they might have heard from really anywhere, but, as if the parantheses to that thought, he heard the patter of it’s, the one’s, footsteps suddenly hasten, and its low squalkings, like a porch step piping crow when it was excited, heightened rapidly. He had only a town knife and little nerves yet, but its shadow soon appeared slipping over the bend, overcoming the firy crystal light of the dar, dim walls in patches at first.
They got high, the wild sages like these, off something, and they shrieked when they were, so this one was whatever the hell their sober might be. Not quite wetly and with clear abandon, Urizl could hear, it crashed along or slapped its nearest stonehold walls; the hall could barely contain it, despite its fragile and lithe form, and it was pale as some eggshells. A local twilit driver drove his herd across the route plains beyond Laindsraad Super’s walls proper as Urizl had approached only most of an evening now earlier, and the shrouded yet jubilantly gentle somebody had warned him about the blood temple, without knowing of any sage story. He said that aye, as he said only just then, uncomfortably like a human, it’s in Laindsraad, and he’d find it, Urizl, but it was too old; Urizl hadn’t found out for what. There was a temple of the false god apparently usually nearby, and many shrines that the blackened voice assured him many people loved every night, and traveled out every night to appreciate them. Sixteen of those lovers had died not long ago at the blood temple, and the hills occasionally knew considerable unrest since then, from time to time, so the ribbon scribes had made everyone to know of late. Small children passed the message further in stories and songs, drugskulls even carried the tup along their nightlines. Gulls and their geists hummed ill tune from that area.

But the blood temple had looked friendly, round and squat, if truly the color of cooled blood. Inside it was just stone anyway, though strangely walls and walls and walls of cells. A small site had been decorated warmly, presumably for gathering, or had been before the wild sages erupted upon it back then. He approached it down a high blightcrest that was hairy with vegetation, and which put everything in even greater shadows than architecture demanded there be, into real starshadow, nearly absolute in certain places. In it now, the sage swung at him, as abandonedly and startling, but Urizl found they only had to roll out of the one’s way to place himself tentatively behind it, and so there he stretched and swung the rural blade out and caught some spot half up its arm, as the thing around again in the same motion. The white arm had been near half severed. Something like madly, unrestrainingly if not unthinkingly, like it, he ignored its shriek then and hacked again. The blade caught some spot elsewhere, but the tense and greyed tendrils gave easily, sending the marked arm tumbling away to greater shadow.
The wild sage higher than any high now. The coldstones that naturally cooled the temple seemed to shriek with it, as the cell doors rattled against its inhumanly incomplete- even with two arms- forms too, in estranged yet inanimate anguish. And as it swung again and some more more, its ovular mouth did not cease to shriek and squarble, this time somehow wetly, nor its holes of eyes to flutter.
A deepwood ghoul, dim witted for its elder status, was resting, or had been, in the far corner of the nearest undoored cell, where it had long ago stumbled into and been hibernating for decades. Deepwood ghouls, as was common in arid climates where bodies could be uncovered most easily near settlements and hamlets, tended to enjoy the presence of humans, especially if they encountered a human or their numbers during their rarely encountered young age. Like any ghoul, they would and often did eat humans alive, but deepwood ghouls more than usually liked to hunt cats of prey or other predators, since predators and the hunt of them often gave them natural chances to experience the ecstasy of regeneration. And like any undead, they picked up- or sat down beside- and ate anything dead. This one had not disturbed a single service, and in fact it unconsciously appreciated the efforts the extended echoes of their songs had on developing its maturity.
Now the songs were gone and had been, and it awoke to shrieking that it had never recognized, and saw a small human in trouble. It had never seen a blade so near, or any used, and it was astride and then animate on the sage’s back before Urizl could think to raise the town blade again. The ghoul made its own formless howls atop the shrieking, and struck savagely, shaking the creature as bad is it could, the

But then the new patter somewhere started. This time it echoed from the other away, audibly tearing around mends, down a greatly obfuscated difference and distance. Though getting much louder, faster than Urizl wanted to believe.
With only one arm remaining, the pale and faceless safe thrashed and tore but could not free or even very effectively protect itself. Urizl saw dank and ghoulish fingers curled and held to in the impenetrable darknesss of the other’s eye pits, and its carefully rotting pulling. Hoping that he wouldn’t underestimate his strength as much as he often had and injure or maim his ghoulish protector, Urizl barreled forward and drove blade out forward for something like face.
He was pleased, and relieved more than anything, that he did do it accureately, and then that the white face immediately gave to. Its flesh was hard and well husked, but the town blade held. He couldn’t keep it straight the whole way through, but it entered nevermind its harsh turn. Shriek for the first time truly rose to cry, and to wail. A fouled and inhuman fear, of sorts, the demented love for living and unlife, like a toddler bawling backwards for its nightmare nurse, but also like the moon exhaling. But no sooner did it curtail its breath did Urizl spot in his fall with it the deepwood ghoul’s shoulder tearing back from a strained cover in new white, fingers, losing most of what dryly comprised it inside it to the dark where an other safe resounded out across the scene with its own roaring, empty breath.
The fall had been all it took for the blade to pull enough and slide out, and the crippled beast jerked and spat but fell into its final restlessness, and Urizl found a moment to marvel that he still grasped the blade within his hand and this new horror of a horror’s arrival. Horrorflesh before him tangled with ghoul flesh as the limber beings locked focus and fear on their eachother, leaving Urizl, if momentarily, to watch.

the above is pretty much the fantasy counterpart to a larger science fiction world I've been working on, where time travel in the SF world essentially works through travel to the fantasy world, across which memories can't carry but body and soul can.

The basic idea so far is undead and humanity living in some sort of harmony or at least stable doubleness. Space is as nonlinear and distorted as time is in our and the SF world though, which is how time travel essentially works by communication between the two

I loved this. The setting hooked even though/as I found the characters boring. But I would still definitely read more. The narration is really intriguing as well. I'd be very curious to hear even just summarized what whatever this is part of is about.

Could I please have some critique?

gotchu meng.

here's mine if you wanna return the favor.

I'm not particularly well read, so don't consider my opinions here as particularly well informed. I also don't have any criticisms that aren't decidedly subjective gripes.
You've got a luscious kind of style friend. Your words are rich with description and metaphor, and that's great. But I couldn't help but feel like that density bogs down the narrative a bit. I found myself enjoying the piece more during a second read through, when I wasn't as concerned with understanding what was actually happening.
This tendency almost bleeds over into the dialogue too, which reads with a vague hint of surrealism. Though that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Again, I'm no expert, but that's my two cents.

penguin of doom

paragraphs

yeesh man loosen your skinny jeans

please stop.. you're wasting everybody's time. I don't want to be hateful, that is just the truth. The worst of it is that you're wasting your own time. Please don't do that.

your audience will be able to pick up on your hatred.. that's bad, why read if you're just going to boil with rage at words on a page?

sorry about all that user

get well soon

don't write in that old timey style. you've been reading too much old timey things and you think that their old timeyness is what made them great. It didn't.

this is a grave error, like the one made by the islander in a cargo cult

sorry user, please post this in a google doc or something, and stop posting.

I just tore peoples asses up with unhelpful comments (just posted the last 10 or so "analyses").

If you're mad at me and you want to get back at me by criticizing it, I have something for you:

pastebin.com/raw/BVcpV5ua

Definitely one of the weirder things that I've written recently.

[1/3]

The patient’s legal name was Nikki Steele, though she responded to Blinding Azure Light. Azure was twenty years old, rich, communist and partially Alsatian. Looking up from a face mottled with golden brown and black fur, Azure flicked her new ears up and down experimentally.

“How are you finding things?” Dr. Hazan asked as he gently probed the sites of the latest incisions with soft, blue gloved fingers. Azure smiled, or did the canine equivalent.

“Everything is so much crisper,” she said, and Dr. Hazan heard awe in her voice. It was slurred slightly from the silicone and titanium muzzle that had been fitted over her lower face, but she was learning to speak around it. He supposed that she had a speech therapist on retainer.

“The ears of a dog are designed to pick up sound from virtually any direction. Have you tried swiveling them?” The ears that he had given her were made of thin panes of flexible silicon, covered with nerve endings, skin and fur. They had been connected to muscles with little woven titanium cords and already Azure was demonstrating impressive control over them. Nary a shake or shudder to be found in their movement.

“Yes. I can hear things from all around me. Someone can whisper my name from across the room and I’ll hear it.” The delight in her voice was infectious, clear blue eyes flashing with good natured joy from a canine face.

“And no pain from the incision points? No swelling or irritation?” Azure shook her head.

“No. A little soreness from the muscles on the side of my head, but it’s going away.” Dr. Hazan made a little note in the corner of his vision, where a notepad was hovering. The pain that Azure mentioned was completely normal, simply her muscles getting used to possessing ears much larger and more maneuverable than the ones that they were used to.

“This is good. Have you finished the latest course of antibiotics I prescribed?” Azure nodded dutifully and Hazan smiled a little, ticking off a section on the digital paperwork that he was doing in his head.

“Of course. When can we begin on the next set of operations?” The eagerness never failed to take Dr. Hazan by surprise. Azure had undergone twenty operations already. Six to fit the muzzle on her face, another five to give her a tail, eight to cover her body with a fine layer of golden brown and black fur, and one, most recently, to give her large, pointed canine ears. Already her body was crisscrossed with fine little scars and filled with titanium screws, pieces and various other medical apparatuses. She had to carry a special card with her at all times so that she didn’t end up being harassed at security checkpoints. And still she wanted to keep going.

Thanks
In your piece, i like the dog metaphor, i don't know if you're going to write more to this piece, but maybe you could expand on that metaphor, with other canine comparisons.
I didn't get what the relationship he had with that house was, though.
And maybe expand on the part about him not understanding the experience of the elders at the time, i think you could write a lot about that.

is it better now?

He didn't move other than to draw his breath. He knew no one would come for him, but he intended to hold on for as long as he possibly could, as a final test of strength. With his back against a great rock, he couldn't see the sun, but by the shadow of this rock, he had judged that more than an hour had gone by since he fell. All around him were the bodies of his friends and enemies. He hadn't seen any of them move at all. There was no doubt, they were all dead. The enemies had left their dead in a hurry to get away. Though it did not matter anymore, whoever they were, all differences would be set aside very soon, he though.
Even more time passed, his breath was getting irregular. He could no longer muster the strength to judge time. There was also a faint darkness growing in the outer corners of his eyes. The only clear thoughts left in his mind were his family. His daughter, whose life had come to be right in front of his own eyes, lain into his hands. Such an energetic thirst for adventure as she had, he hadn't seen since he was a child himself. His wife, the most wonderful woman any mortal man could ever wish for. He felt confident that even without him, she would be able to give her a safe upbringing.
If only, he thought, he could see the two one last time, kiss them farewel. Maybe even spend the night with his wife, to lay with her, have her on her back, arms tightly around him, breathing into his ear.
Breathing. It was getting harder to breath, the darkness in his eyes was growing, staying awake was even harder now.
He drew one final breath, and with the image of his wife and daughter held in his mind he let go.

[2/3]

Dr. Hazan admired her persistence, even if it scared him a little bit. He parted the fur and looked at the final incision point, already completely healed, leaving only a faint scar behind. Even that would soon be covered with short, soft fur from the gene therapy that Azure was undergoing.

“I’m going to remind you again that what this next set of operations will be incredibly time consuming and will require a significant amount of physical therapy to recover from. You may be bedridden for nearly two weeks, perhaps even placed into a medically induced coma. Are you absolutely sure that you want to go through with it?” Azure nodded, not even a trace of apprehension shadowing her choice. She had wanted this for a long time, she had told him once, just before her operations had begun. Something about becoming something else was incredibly attractive to her.

Dr. Hazan didn’t understand why on Earth a young heir to a microprocessor fortune would want to transform herself into a humanoid equivalent of a dog, but he did understand the money that she had offered him. There was a lot of it, and though he warned and warned away, he was already planning ahead, considering the operations that lay before him.

“I’m sure.” Azure said finally, and Dr. Hazan nodded, smiling gently.

“I will place an order for the legs. They should be prepared by this time next week, at which point I will call you in again.” Azure beamed, her ears standing up, tail wagging gently, a nearly inaudible little whir coming from the little engine on Azure’s tailbone that powered it.

As much as Azure confused him, Dr. Hazan still considered her his masterpiece, and knew that the next few operations that she wanted would certainly cement that impression in place.

Azure wanted new legs. Digitigrade, more doglike. This meant that a skeleton of titanium and silicone had to be put together in a separate lab that catered specifically to this sort of thing. That skeleton would then be covered in a structure of protein which had been woven with Azure’s DNA. Stimulated by stem cells and artificial telomeres, the protein mold would be converted into muscles, tendons and ligaments, forming new legs with would then be grafted onto Azure’s old ones. This would require amputating her old, human legs at the upper thigh, just a few inches below the pelvis.

That part didn’t concern him, with enough nano bots acting as artificial coagulant, blood loss would be minimal. The real challenge would be grafting the new femurs onto Azure’s pelvis. Titanium and bone didn’t graft together very well, so Dr. Hazan had decided that ultimately it would be more efficient to replace the entire femur with a titanium rod.

[3/3]

Constructing entire artificial limbs like this was still a relatively new part of medical science, but Dr. Hazan was confident enough in it that he had practically guaranteed that the body wouldn’t reject the new addition. From Azure’s biological perspective, the new legs would be just as much a part of her as the old ones.

It would take a while to connect the muscles, and even longer after that to make sure that her nervous system was registering the new limbs, but ultimately Dr. Hazan was sure that he and a team of others could pull it off in about eighteen hours if they took enough modafinil.

“I will place a recommendation for a very good physical therapist,” he told Azure, half absently as he considered the logistics of the operation, “because you will need to learn to walk again. These...uh, paws that you’re getting will be more difficult to walk on than human feet because they will have less surface area. Do you understand?”

Azure nodded.

“I do. And don’t worry, I have a therapist on retainer already.” Of course she did.

“Wonderful. I’ll let you know when your new legs are in. You remember our SOP for the first twenty four hours before an operation?” Azure gave Dr. Hazan a very canine grin.

“No eating, no drugs, no alcohol. Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten.” Dr. Hazan smiled gently.

“I’ll give you the operation date next Thursday. And aside from that I believe that we are done for now.” Azure sat up straight in her chair, ears perking up now.

“Thank you very much,” she said, and shook his hand, black painted nails standing out on furred fingers. Dr. Hazan supposed that she would want claws pretty soon. Then maybe larger canine teeth. He wasn’t sure how far she wanted to go.

“Do call me if you experience any complications with your modifications.” Azure assured him that she would, just like she did every time that she left, and, careful not to catch her tail in the door, she exited his office.

Sending off the order form with a little flick of brainpower, Dr. Hazan waited until he received a confirmation that his order had been received and then sat down at his desk.

Reviewing his patient list he saw that he had nearly an hour before his next appointment was due to arrive.

The sudden free time was startling. Normally he was busy, but ever since Azure had come in, with her endless and increasingly lucrative modification requests, he had allowed his patient list to thin out a little bit. He was making a lot of money. Money that he was diligently converting into uranium, gold, space based mining stocks, property on Mars, and even savings.

Soon he would be able to retire. Soon, but not just yet. First he had to give an Alsatian girl new legs and see what else she wanted. Then he would consider it. Maybe he’d buy a place in lunar orbit. He’d heard that that was nice.

I really enjoyed it user. The only thing is that the narrator seems to blink a bit too much.

Thank you very much user, honest words are always appreciated. I'm a very young writer, I haven't even started university yet, but I want to write a book that's deeply moral. The piece isn't finished yet, and I want it to be confusing at the outset, very dream like and disorientating but visually rich, and then stabilise the descriptions and build the plot up (I think this piece shouldn't be more than six pages) with the continual motif of the smoke - I admit, it's sparse to begin with, too involved in still images than building a narrative or plot, and the twin story format is really hard, especially for a writer who gets easily carried away. But I just need to bleed as many details down, and stitch the other fat away. It might seem very silly, very meaningless, but there's a point that's rather close to my heart that I want to bring out in the climax, and I'm hoping the lack of clarity before might enhance that.

Anyway, I'm writing so many words about myself. You're owed criticism. I think the most helpful advice is examples, so I'll quote some of yours that stand out to me, and try and break down why.

>Maybe he was dead!
I think your narrative style has a bit of a lighter, more animated and slightly ironic touch; but this line struck me as too much, kind of abrupt and pushing the purgatorial image too hard.

>flock of thoughts
Pretty.

>waterlogged body face down in the water
I'd avoid the repetition.

>waves finding their shore
Lovely description, perhaps cutting "meandering" would make it stronger

>A kind of faint whining whisper of a name, painfully conspicuous in the frigid silence

I think this line best illustrates your pros and cons. The "frigid silence" is a strong, subtle descriptive, but other times you almost state the obvious, what else would a whisper really be but "faint", and whining whisper keeps that assonance far better, and again, when combined with "painfully conspicuous" it seems your over-egging the pudding (which I understand very well). With such an empthasis on bare and blank imagery, it feels like your layering too much on to carry it. I think it needs to be slicked down, with a focus on colour and texture and a removal of most adjectives the reader would intuit naturally from the object or action. Furthermore, while your opening is strong, my attention ended too divided between the action and the wordy (but not necessarily overdone) descriptives and prose style - I think more dialogue or some kind of clearer breaks or an emphasis on tension would help. Finally, I feel the long paragraphs lose some rhythm and flow, with a lot of regular standard sentence structure. I spotted a few instances when a clever "colon" or semi-cousin equivalent could spice up the formatting and give you more control over the details you want to emphasise.

Overall, it's by no means a bad piece (it kind of reminded of an anime opening), but I feel a critique thread is worthless if we're not as harsh as possible to eachother.

It's a nervous twitch, normally happens when he's sexually attracted, I'm playing with using repetition more. But that's a small but really useful comment, and I'm glad you told me it was overdone to a degree. Thank you very much, I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Also, this might be a personal thing, but the way the narrator responds to the "are you not just afraid?" seems somewhat unnatural. Someone with the narrator's temperament, at least from what I have gathered, who is speaking to a pretty girl whom he has not met before would not be so candid in his response at first, but maybe I'm just self inserting

>>Maybe he was dead!
I've had similar thoughts myself. Thank you user.

>Pretty.
Thanks.

>body face down in the water
you're right, it could all be condensed to "floating"

>it needs to be slicked down
You have a point. I go out of my way to be sparing with commas and semis, and I too feel torn when you mention your attention feeling divided. Mostly because I do prioritize both action and description even when they start to disagree.

Gee man, I don't think I've ever seen this much helpfulness condensed into a single post before. Thank you.
I'll be sure to keep an eye out for your work around here in the future stranger.

I wanted to create an unnatural air about the conversation, and all the conversations in the piece; they're meant to be more symbolic than natural, the kind of meaningful ravings you get in a fever dream that still some hold odd logic.

The logic in this one, is it's not about a sandwich, but rather symbolic of her offering him his virginity, which he's shocked and upset by, because he doesn't want to defile her but he's so very hungry. I do however see the contradiction in writing a rather timid man and having him burst so quickly, that's very helpful of you to point out.

One question though, and don't feel you need to answer it, but did you find the bread erotic? I'm not sure if I should subtly sexualize it and risk missing the point, or just literally ham it.

10/10 Would buy your book. I would recommend to stop using comrade unless its for high ranking officials in the military or politicians.

Can someone please take a look at mine? I went to a reddit critique and I was essentially told to be more flowery in my language.

didn't know there was a critique thread active.

here is my WIP.

the next great American novel (in my fantasies).

Maybe, I don't remember the last time I read anything written in the last 30 or 40 years. Guess i'll try to find something modern that appeals me

Overally, I like the idea of this story, but it's not executed very strongly.

>"Three days into the voyage the ship makes a noticable..."
You switch from past-present tense here, change that.
>"This did not end up occuring...and resumed my studies in Munich"
I find this sentence more-or-less unnecessary.

The second paragraph isn't so bad, and i particularly like
>"why do you not stir yourselves ... and in secret"
Lastly
>"and distrusted 4 leaflets"
I'm assuming you meant distributed?

Here's mine:

I was born asleep, and frankly, I wish I’d never woken up. Life, however, is not some benevolent genie waiting to grant your every wish, so as I grew older and witnessed the verminous truth of the world: the irascible nature of man, the dimming of genuinity’s light, the disgustingly palpable lusting for innocence; my reverie faded. My disdain for the simple act of being began when I was young. Mother and Father proved their contempt for each other every day at home. The constant kitchen-warfare, the quaking of the floor just outside my bedroom, the enraged shrieks that reverberated throughout the halls like nationalistic bullets; as the holes in the walls grew, so did those in me. Though, out in public, they put on a façade to maintain appearances. Like rats and filth, they were inseparable: crawling through each other’s skin and muttering delicacies into deaf ears. I grew up lacking a weathervane for their habits, so I lived in constant worry that the embers of my parents’ love would seep into public, smothering the air around me.

Their relationship was the first of many outstanding flaws I found in this seemingly perfect world; among them reveled my teachers’ incessant compulsion to treat me as if I were less than them, my friends’ lack of loyalty, forcing me to find new ones every few grades, and the coldness of the female soul: it’s lack of sympathy for my pangs. The odious disgust I feel for this spiraling pebble settled itself in me by the time I was 19.

|

I woke up in a moment of confusion and had no idea where I was. Little men on golden canoes surfed the rampant waters of the walls around me, their mouths wide, bright, and shining, their cheeks burning red from stuttering sunlight, and their eyes—each one fixed upon me—glimmering with love for the ocean. Sliding my legs off of my bed and onto the olive-green, torn-up, stain-ridden, nettle-infested carpet, I groaned at the thought of having to trudge through the tedious goings-on of the day.