Critique Thread

Your grammar and punctuation is poor. Post it in a pastebin or somewhere I can edit the raw text and I'll elaborate.

>They joked and quietly laughed together the way they used to when they first met.

I'd remove 'and quietly laughed together' -- It's somewhat tautological and I don't think it adds anything.

>jovial banter
As above. I'd remove this clause entirely.

I'll admit that I don't really get what they're talking about, but perhaps that's the point.

I hope you will enjoy the stuff druggie me wrote.

I want her to smear the Shunga Paint all over me. Her Schielesque scribbles, her landscape observations, cruel language expressing her innermost mindsets. I would gladly serve as her canvas for whenever she needs a filthy outlet.
I want to dig my teeth into her already scarred thighs. I want her to choke me, being buried underneath them, unable to protest as her blood slowly drips onto my mouth and face.
I want to be the one who replaces her feetslave. A sweltering day in June, slowly removing her Kanagawa Wave socks, hoping her feet will resemble their state. Tracing my tongue along her arch, her ankle, taking my time until I cleaned up every last drop of her sweat.
I want to bruise her collarbones, scratch open her back until she begs me to stop, bite her neck so that no make-up in the world could cover the wounds.
I want her hands on my hips, around my ripcage, as if she were to invite me to become one with her – only to be neglected, my everlasting longing continuing.

The simple cut on her lip being the only reminder that it had, indeed, not only be a dream.
Until also that vanishes, and no trace of us would be left in the world.

>Her Schielesque scribbles
Nice.

Oh whatever, let's see what you think of my drunk ramblings last night

>6666

CHECK
THOSE
AMAZESATIONAL
QUADRIGITS
SATAN
IS
ALL
LIKE
WHOA
DIAL
IT
DOWN
DUDE
I
CAN'T
COMPETE

You're horribly scared. Horribly, terribly scared. I can feel it throbbing from chest to your lungs. The way you take uneasy breaths to try and dissolve the tension in your heart. How it never works. How sometimes you'll take in a breath--and it will exceed all others, seem to reach into your very core. You feel refreshed afterwards. But it doesn't last. The feeling returns again. You realize it won't go away until you confront yourself. This doesn't convince you to do so. It's safer to feed the bird fluttering its wings in your chest than to send it away, flying and squawking and leaving feathers in your mouth during its departure. You're a coward for it. Really, truly. But I wouldn't be ashamed. Every non-impulsive person is the same way. Still, you realize that your passivity is a defect. Though hotheads can often get into various sorts of problems, they have the impulsivity to admit what they've done wrong, to boldly ask for forgiveness. You don't. In fact, you'd rather hide that you've done wrong at all, concealing it in a veneer of lies. Because you're ugly, and you're pathetic. You're a disgrace of a human.

Or are you?

I can't tell you anything about yourself. You have to look inside your chest, tear it to pieces if necessary, and look at yourself square in the ribs. Dangle ornaments from them, if you need to. I doubt it'll get you much closer to the truth, but it'll offer some comfort. (Much-needed.) I know you won't ever tell anyone how much you've deceived them. Your conscience will sit there forever, taunting you for your cowardice. But you'll relish in it. You might even, eventually, get off to it. You're sick like that.

Right now this girl is messaging you about pretending to be a cat. It's a fetish of hers. (She probably pretended to be one in her childhood, too, but innocently, without her newly acquired sexuality. I wish she wasn't so lewd now. She wasn't like this in the beginning. I wish I wasn't so lewd now.)

You're scared of writing, too. That's the most despicable thing. It's the only thing that'll save you. You're just scared of acknowledging anything about yourself. Can't even write a diary entry because you fear it'll make you piss yourself. Your writing isn't even good. It's terrible. Cheap teenager crap that appeals to you only and doesn't inspire anything worthwhile. But you do this, anyway. You're like an anorexic starving themselves only to, when desperation grabs them the throat, cram everything they can find down their throats. They can't stay away from what they fundamentally need. Not forever. You can't survive, either. I swear, it's going to kill you, someday.

Remove the first two sentences. Let the reader come to the conclusion of one being scared.

Do you describe real life situations in a suitable fashion or do you create experiences in your head?

I will. Thank you for the advice.

I'm going to assume English is not your first language, and I commend you for trying anyway. Your writing feels dishonest, as if you are attempting to spice it up and make it sound smarter. Just be honest with your story.
You need to tell me how they feel in a story, not explain it to me. Explanations are for synopsis.
You understand style and your work isn't filled with clichés but they are there. Watch them. Exerpts like "mad with rage" are useless, even more so when you show us that Aron is angry in the rest of the sentence. Showing us is all you need to do, buddy.
Reads edgy, and the concept is as plain jane as your diction.
>Imagine

You fucking imagine, and when you do, write a story that we can read. You have a nice flow, but not for second person.
This is autobiographical writing that you will hate yourself for when you read it. Don't give up, try again. Sounds like you are a decent writer who is frustrated.

Comment too long. I'll attach mine.

This is me.

Ivan and his elevator lifted towards the top of the building, yet he looked downward at the street curiously, keeping his feet firmly on the metal barrier between the entrance and the glass floor of the lift. Anytime the elevator shifted or corrected, another oiled bead of sweat would loose from his hair and splash down his forehead. He wiped at them with his hot palms and he counted the floors that remained silently.

"Are you afraid of heights, sir?" The assistant, Angela, said. He'd forgotten her in the ride. Now he looked at her and saw a woman silently bemused, quizzical in her glance, and smiling at the secret she'd freshly been told. Ivan thought of calling her ugly, but did not, he said nothing at all. Then the elevator arrived and man and woman left it to climb further upward and maneuvered the floor it had set them upon. Angela had been to floors similar to this, but nothing quite like it, and to Ivan it was brand new. This was the floor in which the girlfriends were assessed, and finally presented to customers such as Ivan.

Mannequins posed in glass down the halls between fashion magazine pages turned posters, and contemporary art, as mass produced as the arranged expressions of the mannequins. Beautiful all of them, but lacking. Angela and Ivan finally found the committee at the end of the hall, in the round room, sat at a high end glossy table in the shape of the letter V. In the empty space of the table was the still holographic image of a womanly figure, which they appeared to be discussing.

(Cont)

"What about the nose? Should we take a look at it again?" Elizabeth from one corner of the table said. Vivian, in the center of the table, noticed the newcomers and hushed the girls.

"Mr. Asher." Vivian said, "Lovely to see you. Isn't it girls?" The rest of the girls smiled at nodded, offering small cheerful whispers and muttering which summed up their agreement. Vivian focused on Ivan for a moment, carefully examining him. "Is everything all right, Mr. Asher?"

"He's just excited." Angela said and laughed, infecting the rest of them and forcing well practiced giggling out of the mouths of the women at the table.

"He should be, he's about to meet a goddess!" Vivian said. "Now, Ivan, Angela and I will bring her here, could you please answer a few more questions with Anne?" Anne smiled and flinched from her seat at the table beside Vivian.

"Sure." Ivan said.

"Quickly, Angela." Vivian said as she headed for a door at the other end of the room. "Don't keep Mr.Asher waiting." Angela left, and the stares of the girls at the table followed her out. Then they returned to Ivan.

Vivian and Angela hurried down the hall.

"I'll remind you again, Angela. Don't answer for a man. We want the client to feel like he's in complete control."

"Its 2055." Angela said.

"Yes, Angela, I'm aware of the current year, and just like last year, and every year, Angela, it's been the same. Men buy when they the feel confident to buy. So don't do anything that might make him feel that he has less control than he has."

"So don't do anything?" Angela said, as she opened the door of the storage room.

"That snarky bullshit isn't going to take you anywhere, Angela." Vivian said, as she pressed the buttons on the computer console.

"Okay, 'Mary'." Angela said. The keyboard clicked in the absence of words. Angela looked around at the room, not much bigger than her apartment. A counter in the corner beside a refrigerator, with an immaculate sink. A bed beside a couch which was placed directly in front of the holographic wireless television. An Android in the corner sitting in one of two chairs sat across each other, a beautiful stock model, blinking at her. Angela shivered at the Android and returned to her side of the room, which contained merely a glass window and a door. Through the window she could see the goddess. She stood in the corner of the storage container and blinked. On the interface, Vivian pressed a button which slid the door beside it open. The goddess watched silently as the door vanished.

Unfinished

>Your writing feels dishonest, as if you are attempting to spice it up and make it sound smarter.
It was supposed to be a foreshadow for the big reveal.

That's not what I meant.

It feels like you are trying to dress up your prose to make it prettier or more sophisticated, when that's not necessary.

>You need to tell me how they feel in a story, not explain it to me
You also have to realize this is a middle paragraph from a chapter in a completed draft of a novel

how is it tautological? One can joke with people but it could be in bad taste. This emphasizes their mutual enjoyment.
>I'll admit that I don't really get what they're talking about, but perhaps that's the point.
it's not the point, it makes sense in context to the rest of the chapter, especially what happened just before this
I just expected critique on the writing but if people want to critique the actual story/plot/etc i could post more

Well, I'm sorry to say that it's supermarket romance tier.

In a good book, the author tells the story, he doesn't explain the story. At best this type of explanation is filler, and even at its best its not very good. If your characters talk to each other and you provide minor descriptions which tell the story, like for instance the characters saying or expressing that they feel like they first met, or at least a more subtle description, it will be more of a story and less of you just telling me what's happening as if my imagination was blind. It will also keep you away from using jovial to try and class up your work.

If you live in the U.K and are between the ages of 18 and 24 you may have seen them: mostly suites, but sometimes marionettes or even sock or glove puppets, or great dragon heads supported by sticks. They’re often intricate- and psychedelic-ly patterned, in warm-going-super-nova colour palettes, and w/ geometrically ordered twirls or columns of mirror fragments laid in parallel with the scales, feathers or what have you, so that the overall effect of this optical bombast is that the simulacrum does not seem to be one of flesh at all, but rather of the animal or mythic beast as gestated from the hallucinogen-pulsing mind, which is of course what it is. These creatures are the subject of the following discussion.
“What does that mean though, a war on consciousness?”
“That’s what it is though –
Tim Grave is brakes-off extemporising on one of the subjects closest to his heart; under the sway – more the kick in pants / psychic yank-up-and-sink-or-swim get go – of amphetamine, he is coming very close to making himself understood, more to himself than anyone else.

I appreciate what you're giving me but I don't think I understand what you mean. Having a character mention something like that rather than the narrator is so trite, in the same way Hollywood adds stuff to their dialogue in an effort to explain what's going on without any thought. People don't talk that way so why should the characters?

This honestly sounds like you're projecting what you've heard about your own work unto mine. I'm sorry if you feel that 'jovial' is a classy term but it's common everyday language.

You're wrong and the other dude is right: I cringed on jovial.

Sweet beauty of yours
like heroin through my veins
Sweet words of love
like drums to the ear
Your arms like grace
awaiting an embrace
Your eyes like glass
holding water till a fracture
Your mouth so sweet
dancing on my lips in a sing
Your legs were worn
waiting for a rest from the floor
Your breast like money
cause theyre the first thing I notice
just joking about that part
Your sense of humor
very much superior
Your Intelligence
captivating and unjealous
Your cake so sweet
like cheeries on cream
See it isnt just that all these things
Will make everyone see what I see
It's that all these things
Are what mean the most to me
Were like atoms when we come together we are matter
And like matter we cant be destroyed
And like atoms we gas up and explode
into a beautiful secenery
And they'll take pictures
And they'll call it history
But to you and me
Its just a cornerpiece t
o our masterpiece
painting

-C.W Smith

do me

Some of you enjoyed this last time around, I'd love to hear more thoughts

It doesnt matter if the hills will sway
up the mountain to the dirt of river
cheap taste in the grain and the fragile adjust came to face
and bleeding out the howling winds; they fray
if there was no point in this
why would the trees sing for the morning rain
they sing something more like
"try and stop this pity I have made and heal the roots, let me grow
in grace" oh how the leaves danced and the bushes always hoorayed
Just loving the risk we take
always holding on to dear life but never being afraid
keep raining and shine on you broken fencepost
keep running away from yesterday

-C.W Smith

Its interesting and I like the humor, though describing the cop on the bed as simply "dead" seemed a bit weak.

reminds me of the Colorado countryside. The flow seems a bit weak in places, though that could just be from lack of type setting

Pretty shit.

Don't get offended.

Stories are supposed to be a mixture of dialogue story telling and explanation. It's not trite to have a character say something if they say something the way a person actually speaks, and two lovers might actually say that it feels like they just met. Still, since you disregarded what I said, it doesn't even have to be dialogue. You can explain that they laughed together like they first met without being so ham fisted about it that you just say it blandly and without any grace.

Jovial isnt a fancy word. The way you used it was tryhard.

I have no reason to project towards you because this is actually my first time submitting something for critique

I started writing as I moved back into my mom's, but four months later and I'm kinda stuck. I wanted to transition for the first chapter from my cleaning into a kind of nihilistic essay and then describe my suicide attempt, but I'm kinda stuck. I want to move it along to the main story, where I try to kill my roomate in a mental hospital because I think he's Hidiki Anno.
>Pt 1

>Pt 2

Okay, I'll do you. Sorry I missed you.

I think what you've got here is a talented peice, your flow is professional, your diction is careful and it's clear that you understand every word and never is a word merely an attempt at enhancing the sentence.

It's got all the makings of a talented English Writer.

I have little to critique here, so just know that your work gives me the impression that many talented writers have given me. If you are looking to be away from the group, you'll need something more, but what you've given us here is impressive.

Reminds me gravity rainbow guy's latest book. Britty gud

You write the first person narrative simplistically but well. I suppose that's good if it's what you intended.

The monologue sounds exactly like I'm hearing someone tell me it and that's perfect. You were honest about it, and you didn't replace Veeky Forums with something easier to relate to for everyone. I would do some minor work trying to make something flow more, but still sound like your character, but you know your character more than I do and I can't tell you what he'd say.

Thanks lads, it is a little DFW derivative I know but hoping to give it that "something more" as you say by focusing on different ideas, this one's about the occult. Heartening praise, I'd be happy to crit yours.

>To make something flow more.

Sorry, that was meant to be "to make some things flow better than they do. Such as (via a messy method sounds clunky to me.) Id write ""go out in a mess."

Ok please do.

Mines this one.

I wrote this for the Mommy Cinematic Universe prologue

>Annie Clark - Auntie Antje's friend, and guitar teacher mommy is paying to give you lessons for your growing musical skills— prefers to teach you in her studio apartment alone. She loves to teach you by being hands on and putting her hands on yours.

gentle femdom annie 1/?

>After a hard day at school, you come crawling to Annie's studio apartment for your guitar lessons. As you enter her sizable yet modest apartment and make your way to her kitchen where she's preparing a salad with her head and curly hair down facing the counter, she perks up and immediately lose her faint smile as she sees how exhausted you are.

>"Ohh, are you okay, sweety? you look absolutely spent" she cooed as she crossed the kitchen island to get to you, wiping her hands on the flare of her almost sheer summer dress. Her warm and emphatic solemn expression changing to a tender affectionate smile as she makes her way to you. "oh, come here, sweety" she says reaching out to your head bringing it gingerly to her chest hugging you close.

>With the thin silk fabric of her dress cooling your skin, she takes your head with her hands to look at you in the face. With her delicate yet somewhat calloused fingers, she brings her thumb to the ridge of your brow brushing it, finally placing both of her hands to your cheeks. With her dainty hands encapsulating your face, she looks at you in the eyes with the stark hazel of hers relinquishing their ground for her broadening pupils.

>She hugs you close to her chest again, placing her right hand in the small of your back and her other hand to the back of your head. "I've got some cookies cooling by the window waiting for you." she whispers in your ear "Everything'll be fine, hun. I'm right here with you" she takes your head back again, kissing you in the forehead this time— stroking your hair as the contact between her lips and your skin part.

good or bad?

or are you that same guy that thinks everything I write is shit?

I don't really write well (or very often desu senpai), I just string wittisisms together. I'm a better comedian then a writer.

I think everything you write is shit but I don't post here

Yes your work was funny. If you haven't yet, read "A confederacy of Dunces"

See, you are able to distribute criticism constructively. I get what you mean on that first part but still fail to see what you mean by tryhard when it comes to a word used in a common way.

I was astounded that you understood how to copy something, but then, in a flash of brilliance, you pasted it, beat the captcha, and posted it. Phenomenal work. Soon to be the voice of a generation.

Before you publish this, I would suggest that you go to your room, find a long rope, affix a hook to the highest roof in your house, make sure the rope is short enough that you must tiptoe on the chair to place it around your neck, and then place it around your neck and kick the chair out from under you.

It's not badly written but a story like this is all about the world it's in. Aside from the sex robots and high end gadgets this could be any modern skyscraper. Is this a sex comedy about gender relations post japenes sex robots, or a dystopian sex robots story?

not nice

Post more I'm only at half mast

Jovial doesn't fit for a number of reasons.

1. It's antiquated. It feels like you thought "chatter" or "jokes" but you decided to add jovial instead because it sounded older and more romantic. That goes to point 2.
2. It's not romantic, it's a blocky word that doesn't fit your prose. It stands out for a bad reason. Nobody talks like that, and the closest relative of any person who ever did, died in 1500.

It's a peice about romantic partner robots, and how they shape the characters in the story. I hadn't thought about the skyscraper at all, but maybe I should have. In my own mind, I placed the height as monstrously high above the ground, taller than the scrapers of today, but I don't think I described that enough. My focus of technology was on the robots themselves

So is it like the movie Her, but with sexy robots?
What are you trying to convey? What observations about the genders are you making?

Michael fetched an ice tea from the refrigerator and looked at the clock on his wall. He breathed a sigh of relief. It was only half past ten and he did not have to be down-under until at least two o’clock. He walked across the soft carpet on his floor, the floorboards underneath creaked loudly. Michael did not mind, it was hardly the worst thing about his apartment which was the rats and the cockroaches. Michael swore to his landlord Kenny that he could hear the rats going up and down the pipes in the walls but the building never got an exterminator. “What’s the point” Kenny said to him once, “they just come straight back up here from down-under,” it was useless to refute that point. The building was way too close to The Slide and that brought a litany of problems, pests being the least of them. For now, Michael and the rats had to find a way to co-exist peacefully. What Michael liked best about it was the location, right next to The Slide, the mega-highway that connected the towering metropolis of New-Detroit with the world Downstairs. For most people living too close to The Slide was something to avoid like the plague. Apart from the rodents, the neighbourhoods closest to The Slide were a hotbed of crime and feuding gangs. In reality there were two Slides; one went “Downstairs,” to the area surrounding the city. The other one went “down-under,” that is to say underneath the city, to the old city of Detroit. The old city is still technically off-limits although that law has not been enforced for decades. Michael was part of the Metropolitan Police Department. More specifically he was part of the relatively newly formed Special Attention Division or the S.A.D which only investigated crimes in the old city. The Special Attention Division got its name from New Detroit’s mayor, she ran on a platform that promised to turn special attention to the crime ridden old city. The S.A.D made for a good political stunt but it has not made as much as a dent on the crime rates for the past four years. It was a sorry job which no one wanted, least of all Michael. After graduating he had hopes of working his way to becoming a detective for the M.J.D or, Major Crimes Division, but he found himself at the then newly formed S.A.D, which has become a career dead end for most cops.

That's what I mean. I hear jovial all the time, it's not antiquated in the least.

I did think chatter and jokes but thought banter was more appropriate because it is less intimate than the others. Jovial means carefree and fun which is why I used it.

paragraphs pleaase

No, its a critique about how people just turn the concept of sex and sexiness into a hollow robotic and manufactured thing, without affection or caring, which obviously just makes it a cold empty experience where nobody is truly happy.

The observation I'm making is that women and men do it just as often as each other, but either one feels they do it the least.

I bet you fight for your existence don't you?

shit sorry, it's a work in progress and it needs work lol.

Michael fetched an ice tea from the refrigerator and looked at the clock on his wall. He breathed a sigh of relief. It was only half past ten and he did not have to be down-under until at least two o’clock. He walked across the soft carpet on his floor, the floorboards underneath creaked loudly. Michael did not mind, it was hardly the worst thing about his apartment which was the rats and the cockroaches. Michael swore to his landlord Kenny that he could hear the rats going up and down the pipes in the walls but the building never got an exterminator. “What’s the point” Kenny said to him once, “they just come straight back up here from down-under,” it was useless to refute that point. The building was way too close to The Slide and that brought a litany of problems, pests being the least of them. For now, Michael and the rats had to find a way to co-exist peacefully.

What Michael liked best about it was the location, right next to The Slide, the mega-highway that connected the towering metropolis of New-Detroit with the world Downstairs. For most people living too close to The Slide was something to avoid like the plague. Apart from the rodents, the neighbourhoods closest to The Slide were a hotbed of crime and feuding gangs. In reality there were two Slides; one went “Downstairs,” to the area surrounding the city. The other one went “down-under,” that is to say underneath the city, to the old city of Detroit. The old city is still technically off-limits although that law has not been enforced for decades. Michael was part of the Metropolitan Police Department. More specifically he was part of the relatively newly formed Special Attention Division or the S.A.D which only investigated crimes in the old city. The Special Attention Division got its name from New Detroit’s mayor, she ran on a platform that promised to turn special attention to the crime ridden old city. The S.A.D made for a good political stunt but it has not made as much as a dent on the crime rates for the past four years. It was a sorry job which no one wanted, least of all Michael. After graduating he had hopes of working his way to becoming a detective for the M.J.D or, Major Crimes Division, but he found himself at the then newly formed S.A.D, which has become a career dead end for most cops.

In what context do you hear the word jovial?

And I guess I was correct. You lied, you thought something and wrote something else. Lying in your writing only hurts you

A shock. Spasm. Dim light. To awake in a hospital is never a pleasant experience.

On the silver screen it's common to flail around a bit first; "Hoo hoo, what is this strange place! What surprise! What mystery!" But in truth, you always know; they all feel the same. Have the same smell, the same windows, the same wide doors. The same cold floors.

Kelan knows this truth, having been here a few times before. Some find this a sad thing for one so young; they often say as much with the looks that hide behind their outward attitudes. For him, it's simply what is.

It's quite late. He can see the ghosts of streetlamps peering through the window. It's always easier at night - quiet halls, and far less attention. There, too, is a warming freedom in being about when the world is asleep; the sky is a bit higher, the air a bit fresher.

Not something you can tell from a hospital bed, though. So first; escape. It's an easy thing to sneak from the door through the halogen halls, down concrete staircases to areas seldom used. Exits next to loading areas are always a safe choice.

Freedom. It's a limited sort, with lots of rough pavement and the leftover smells of cars from the day. But he can feel the night air begin to wash it away, and his attention is far from the ground. The stars. He stands still for a few minutes, staring with his arms slightly spread - like nothing so much as a satellite finding it's position in the cosmos.

Well, that's enough of that. Kelan picks his way gently across the pavement, as one without shoes is wont to do. His pace picks up a bit as he reaches the wooden edging and starts up the well groomed hill toward his true escape - the forest.

In truth it's just a sparsely wooded area that separates the hospital from the highway, but there are leaves above and dirt below and that's enough for him. Having reached his journey's end, his path takes on a wandering quality. His eyes brush the canopy, his nose welcomes the earthy smell, and his ears find the sounds of what small things have found a home here.

Too much expo. Neat premise but you're doing your world building in a giant info dump at the beginning without giving us a reason to care.

Yeah I know about that, just trying to get my ideas down before I forget them. Glad you like the premise, I know the sci-fi noir thing is overdone but I just love it too much.

This is a ending to a story I have. I think it's beautiful and I want to share it with you guys

And at that beautiful moment, I layed up on a grass field staring at a sunset creepin off a precipice 100 yards away. I layed up and walked towards it. Each moment I blew the dust off my past, and my skin deteriorated to the bone. I'm my spirit, I'm my own. And as I jump off this cliff, I know, I will be remmembered.

*remembered

jovial is used to describe something. Most recently, a friend used it when talking about his night out

>And I guess I was correct. You lied, you thought something and wrote something else. Lying in your writing only hurts you
you really are projecting, aren't you?
how am I lying? and try to use your own thoughts and not the criticism your professor gave you

Babby's first existential crisis suicide story huh? Welcome to Veeky Forums. Also, don't use a trip you fucking faggot.

but how else will everyone know what a gayboy I am?
what if someone wants my e-mail address so we can exchange pics of our cute boipussies

You will be remembered for a week for being a shit writer.

I've used this trip name for almost a year newfag. It's so I can claim ownership and not let some faggot steal my work.

Like anyone would steal your shit you fucking turd.

Give me exactly what your friend said, and then ask him how much he was bullied in high school.

I dont have a professor, I'm not yet in college. You lied because you tried to doll up your work and just like any girl, if you try to doll her up she looks like a whore. Cheap and disposable

I don't record every conversation I have, kid. I remember hearing some derivative of it.
>ask him how much he was bullied in high school.
you're seriously projecting here. Perhaps as you get older, or at least old enough to move out of your parents' place, you'll hear more words.

Now, let me explain something to you: chatter and joking (among others) imply a sort of connection, some level of intimacy. Which is why I chose banter, it fits more with the characters' relationship.

btw, i just figured it out. either you're terribly trolling or are being sincere in your idiocy. Either way, I'm done with you, kiddo

"Hey man, how was your night."

"Alas, Dear user I am pleased to announce that my venture from home was a most jovial occasion, that was until the most unpleasant Othello and his band of ruffians called me a Negro and questioned my patrician attire!"

It's going to be alright.

damn when did /b/ like poetry, if cant respectfully critique the write you should leave. No one wants elitist faggots like you guys in Veeky Forums

Short story I am working on. I didn't see this thread before so I posted my own.

lol though this made me laugh, I was mostly laughing at your incessant need to contribute nothing yet feel superior.

Perhaps as you venture away from your mommy's tit you'll hear these words which seem to astound you so

Doesn't feel complete. Quite boring desu.

I was going for just stylistic advice, at least for now. It is about 1/4th done.

it reads like it was written for children too old for fairytales but too young for edgy teenage lit. it reads stilted and artificial.

*an argument w/ wife abt sending kids to choir practice* (not going to post that part, don't want to get too shredded)
...
He tuned the radio and settled into the seat of his station wagon. Looking at once at the road and at the sky above he couldn’t help but feel he had made a mistake. Something felt off.

Sporting matching frowns the Ferrazi family finally arrived at St. Joseph’s after no less than 20 minutes of excruciating silence.
“So long kids,” Ralph called out the window as Tommy and Laurie begrudgingly opened the door of the parish.

Ralph peeled out of the parking lot, in search of an hour long outlet for his disquiet. Too early for a drink, too angry to feed the pigeons at the park, he decided to pick up a few things at the hardware store. Ralph always wanted to build a swing set for the kids—but Alice insisted it’d be too dangerous. The choir spat was the last straw. Ralph slammed the door shut and walked to Keith's Homegoods.

Upon his return the metal bumper reflected the final few straws of grass hanging on for dear life on the back of his shirt. If he could he’d have patted himself on the back after he loaded the supplies into the trunk.
He walked across the parking lot to retrieve his cherubs. Passing by the window of the Parish Hall he couldn’t resist peeking inside.

It was a queer scene.

Tommy and Laurie were huddled together in the far corner of the room with two other children. Maxwell Roberts, Ph. D, was standing on his platform, pantless and waving his baton towards the direction of his groin. He conducted his symphony of sin pale and proud. A stained glass tribute to the Blessed Virgin looked down at the scene with decided contempt and soaked in the sound of “Come Thou Font of Every Blessing.". Ralph, in sheer disbelief, raced to the door. He viciously tackled Dr. Roberts to the ground.

“Run to the car kids! Run!” he yelped just before his mouth caught a well-placed fist from The Doc.
Tommy and Laurie and the two other children scurried out the door, but not before Maxwell could gift them a final peevish glance.
“Same time next week, eh kids?” he sneered.

Ralph, still reeling from the punch, found it within himself to throw Maxwell to the other side of the room.
The two men, one decidedly less clothed than the other, found it within themselves to stand up. They locked eyes since, naturally, Ralph was loathe to glance below Maxwell’s fleshbelt.

(not sure where to continue with it, still trying to figure out the ins and outs of dialogue- in addition to everything else of course).

Throwing himself with two bags and a fervor into an intercity bus, he endeavored to finally move out. It was only the third most expensive city in the world, but surely no match for a willing youth.

"No, no, I don't have any formal education, but, you see, I did go to high school! Just never got around to finishing it, but I did attend!". The feverish explanation and enthusiastic promises of future hard work did not impress the fast food restaurant manager. Neither the first, nor the second. Not even the warehouse manager. Perhaps the trouble was a mere lack of a local address and telephone number, along with any previous work experience. Trifles, really. Trifles used to discriminate a determined young man -- irredeemable faults within the economic system, definitely!

Upon returning home, he found his mother in the kitchen, focusing on a rank concoction brewing on the stove. She paid him little mind as she cooked.
"Hear this, ma! I got four job offers and the best one of them was $50 an hour!"
"Really, now."
"Yeah, I tell you, I'm a hot commodity back there!"
"So why are you back in my damn house?"
"I realized I couldn't leave my dear old mother behind, so I've decided to stay with you here. It pains me, because I can still hear the big city calling me, but family is infinitely more important."
"Oh, piss off" she grumbled into her pot as she stirred.

I did contribute. I linked to myself twice.

If you need to, rip apart what ive wrote to feel better about yourself. Here

I don't fully agree with the other guy's thing about how "lying" in writing is bad, but the word jovial does sound stupid where you put it, and there is a definite correlation between people who throw the word jovial around in real life and people who wear fedoras with t-shirts, which is what he's getting at. also, it makes you sound stupid when you get flustered and start throwing the word kid around.

you shouldn't post in these threads if this is what you're going to do when someone criticizes a single word you write. two words now, I guess.

It reads as though you're trying very hard to sound old and genteel-like. As if you're trying to write like the classics (dickens, twain, swift..) and it's not working very well. The dialogue is boring too. I like the idea behind the story, but it just wasn't executed incredibly well. If you rework some of it, it could be very enjoyable. but as it is now, I don't like it.

>Mine

As grand pianos stand, and they often do, the one that stood in the center of my living room, adorned with pictures of me as a child, decorated with my many accolades, and decorative plates and chalices, was first-class. The room around it followed suit: elegant pictures of fruitful valleys, trampled by thundering storms, which were painted by long-dead men, hung on walls covered end to end with small, winged, wallpaper men who stood on golden canoes and surfed rampant waters, their eyes mad with greed for a land that they would never reach. The furniture was equally fanciful: each piece came from some foreign company that overpriced its products because it knew that we could, and would, pay. So each time I sat at that piano and opened my sheet music to begin my lessons, each time I lay on that sleek leather couch to relax, each time I passed through the pomp on my way to the kitchen, I was faced with pretentious ‘beauty,’ so tediously put together it brought my stomach to its knees. The older I grew, the less amused with beauty I became: my excitement manifested itself in repugnance.
I sat on the edge of the dock, tapping my fingers rhythmically along the grime of the aging wood. I hung my legs below me and kicked as water brushed against them in sporadic patterns. Rain feathered down onto my head, disquieting me with every droplet. The boards of the dock groaned behind me, prompting me to turn with a jolt. There Sam stood, staring at me in the distant way that he always did. “Follow me,” his eyes sank into rugged, sandy skin, his lips scraped against each other and chiseled the fronts of his yellow teeth, “it’s going to start soon.” Sam backed off the dock, turned onto the street that was busy with wild abandon, and began to hurry down it. Startled, I had had to half-jog to catch up with him—the way pedestrians do when a car lets them pass.
“So where exactly is this place?” I asked, sweat already racing down my cheek.

I really like this.
>"Ivan thought of calling...nothing at all."
I think you should change this to something like, "Ivan thought she looked ugly" or something.

Mine

A little hard to read with those long sentences.

Sentence flow is spot on. Nice, mate.
I don't necessarily know if I agree with this. It could work like that, but I don't think there's anything wrong with being straight-up about emotions on the page.
Decent.
>Elizabeth from one corner of the table said. Vivian, in the center of the table, noticed the newcomers and hushed the girls.
This is super awkward, and you might not want to have a piece of action after most of your pieces of dialogue. It makes every paragraph feel like it's structured the same way as all the others.
>Michael did not mind, it was hardly the worst thing about his apartment which was the rats and the cockroaches.
Transitions please. Your sentences don't flow particularly well. There's some variation in your sentence length but you'd do well with more.

This is me.

Compact, graceful and powerful writing.

I disagree with it's not hard to read at all. I feel that it's poignant and is never too long. You should, however, watch your diction and this is just my opinion, make sure you never try to doll up a word too much.

Might get around to some more later; here's mine:

Here is what I remember:

He was sitting at the table at first, drinking coffee. He took his coffee black. He was talking to my uncle. They both looked awkward. Their backs were straight and their forearms flush against the table, and they talked to one another formally, first about the weather, then about El Salvador…my father brushed those questions away…and when I came in they stopped, and both stood up, which I thought was odd, even though I didn’t know the man was my father. My uncle had people over sometimes, and he never introduced them to me. I was never close with him. But this time, they stood, and my uncle looked at me and waved his hand at my father a little stiffly and he said, Lucas, this is Ricardo.

I wasn’t sure exactly how to respond, so I just said, OK. So?

Then he cleared his throat a little and said, He’s your father.

I’m not sure I remember exactly how I felt in that moment, whether I was happy, or confused, or sad. But one thing that I was, was very, very angry. That I remember. It’s hard for me to describe the sort of anger that I felt, because it is not a feeling I have had to describe often.

It is the sort of anger that I feel now at God.

It’s not just an anger you feel with your body…although you do, your body is there, all of it, right to the bone…you feel it with everything: everything in your head and your past and your future, everything that you were and are and will be. It shakes you, your vision fills in at the edges, you feel powerful; this is not a weakening anger. This is a rush, a high, a jet-fuel rage…and you just hate. It’s all you can do in that state of mind. Everything in you is directed toward one thing, toward hating that one thing, toward wrenching it by its weakest point and making sure it hits the ground hard and doesn’t get up. This is what I wanted to do when I met my father. How dare this man whom I had never seen walk into my life like he knew me, like there was any connection there between our bodies, like his body and mine were not made from opposing genetic material, like we had not been born in worlds as far apart as two worlds could be; how dare he not be what I imagined him to be? How dare he be weak? How dare we come from the same place and the same blood? How dare he be just like me?

plis no skip me, these muscle relaxants are carrying me away
I can't hold on for a reply much longer

Your flow is pretty nice, but there's something about the vagueness of it that gets to me. Or maybe it's that I really don't get a sense of the character at all, in spite of the close third. There are little snippets of omniscience here that aren't working for me at all (as one without shoes is wont to do). Doesn't fit the voice.

What do you guys think define good writing?

Not good writing in the sense of prose, but good storytelling to be exact.

Asking for a friend.

>but good storytelling to be exact.

narrative is a parasite on art. if your technique is good enough, it won't matter.

I was thinking of making my story a mixture of first and third person. would it get publish?

>narrative is a parasite on art. if your technique is good enough, it won't matter.

90% of people won't agree with you, but doesn't mean I don't. Some people need to learn these days that story literally doesn't matter.