New critique thread. Post what you've written, are writing, have published, and critique the work of others.
Critique Thread
Mason Rivera
Jayden Nelson
please to criticize, thank you
Aiden Rivera
Andy is a bitch-ass name
(1/2)
A PRELIMINARY REPORT BY THE UNIFIED BOARD OF AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL AND OPTOMETRIC STUDIES (UBAPOS)
The uniquely selective and degenerative eye condition of Mr. Lucas Doctorow (a condition which has, for the first time in the history of either profession, brought the fields of psychology and optometry into close collaboration and occasional conflict, necessitating the creation of this board) began during the subject’s second year of enrollment at the Colorado Film School, specifically beginning its onset during Doctorow’s ill-fated final project for a course called “The Nascence of Modernism in Film: A Conversation between Vertov and Eisenstein.”
A survey of his professors, roommates, scattered (and uniformly underage) girlfriends, and classmates has produced our understanding that Doctorow was a student of no particular ingenuity, directorial vision, or talent — indeed one seeming to lack even the most basic personal engagement with the art of filmmaking, being described by the instructor of the relevant class as “lazy and late, loud and stupid and sempiternally stoned. A rancid, racist little [epithet excluded].” When pressed by the psychological wing of this board to give his opinion as to whether Doctorow’s condition could perhaps be attributed to some kind of anomalous hysterical blindness, resulting from a passionate young artist’s over-engagement with his work, the professor proceeded to produce for the board a series of samples of the subject’s prior work for the class, which we will catalogue for you now:
Item (A): An introductory assignment for the class in which students were asked to list for the professor the following facts about themselves: 1) Their three favorite films or directors 2) One or two interesting things about themselves which they would like the instructor to know 3) Why they chose to take the course and what they hope to get out of it.
The subject’s responses to these questions are reproduced below.
1) - The Pokémon Movie 2000.
-The “I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Get Up” commercial
- Citizen Cane [sic]
2) 420 420 420 420 420 420 420
3) Because I heard it was easy. And, I don’t know, a good grade???
Grade: None Given
Luis Martinez
(2/2)
Item (B): The first major assignment of the course, an essay requiring the students to give a brief (4-5 page) analysis of the Odessa Staircase Massacre sequence in Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin and its significance to the montage theory of filmmaking, as well as to the greater insipience of modernist filmmaking in Soviet Russia. Doctorow’s paper (which the professor produced for the board only after providing a lengthy and highly incensed explanation of the virtuosity of the film’s techniques and the Odessa Massacre sequence in particular [intending, the board posits, to communicate how sacrosanct this particular piece of subject matter is, and thus how abominable Doctorow’s treatment of it should be judged by the examination committee, delivering this polemic despite the board’s repeated statements that our purpose was not to censor or punish the subject, merely to analyze him], at times even wagging the subject’s essay in front of our chairman’s (Dr. Voleman, distinguished sitting member of the APA) face and sputtering incoherently; said paper, when it was finally handed over for inspection, being found to reek strongly of cannabis and to have been at one time folded and used to clean beneath the subject’s fingernails) consists of a single page and its thesis reads as follows:
“In this mastapeace [sic] of transgressive filmmaking, Einstein [sic] hazards his audience with what is not only a fresh conception of time and filmic/narrativistic [sic] emphasis, but also a radically subversive (and cognitivitally [sic] dissonant) character situated as the scene’s emotional core. By placing some kind of weirdo bull-dike as his main POV lens (the screaming lady with the mustache/inexplicable child (like, who even fucked this thing??)) or transsexual or hermaphrodite or whatever, the ability of the audience to relate to this creature is called into challenge, and the limits of our empathy are probed. Through his marriage of the sexually grotesque and the politically violent, of the temporally ungrounded and the emotionally weighty, Einstein [sic] limns for his audience that most essential and demanding of modernist questions: Is this what all women look like in Russia?”
Grade: F (Conference requested/Paper never collected by subject)
Noah Cook
You're trying really hard to be DFW.
Don't write for a month. Don't read for a month. And then wrote a very short story. One page. This will cure you.
Isaiah Williams
I've finished my two eggs. Scrambled. With pepper. Two and a half shakes of pepper. I left one bite full on the plate. Have to leave the one bite full on the plate.
I have to turn off the light above my stove. Off. On again to make sure it's working. And off. Good. Everything is good.
I have to make sure the outside is still there. I don't have to. I want to. It's just a joke really. I do it every morning. But still. It's just a joke.
I have to put my shoes on before I open the door to check if the outside is still there. It doesn't matter that I'm not stepping outside. I have to wear the shoes before I can check. I don't have to. I want to. It's just a joke. Really, it is.
I tie the laces tight. Left shoe first. Always the left shoe first. And then the right. I cannot do the right one first, it wouldn't be right. Left. Then right. It's the right way.
Shoes on. I can go check. I unlock the door. I lock the door. I have to make sure the lock is working. I unlock the door. I lock the door. I unlock the door. I lock the door. I unlock the door.
No. No, no, no, no. Did I check it twice? Unlock, then lock, then unlock, then lock, then
unlock? Or did I only do unlock, lock, then unlock?
This isn't good. If I check it again, will it be right, or will I have done it too many times? I have to do it the right amount of times. I can't do it less. I can't do it more. No, no, no, no. Why is this happening? It's just a joke, really. I don't have to....
Twice or three times? This is not good. How many times? Do I check it again? I could just walk away from it. But I have to check to see if the outside is still there. I don't have to. I want to. It's just a joke, really. I have to check, I have to check, I have to decide on the lock.
One more time. I'm sure of it. That will be two. It has to be two. It doesn't have to be. Lock. Was that two, or three? I have to check if the outside is still there. Unlock.
I open the door. The outside is not there. That's not the outside. That's not the normal outside. It's yellow. It's bright yellow space. And dogs. Birds are flying. I think they are birds. They are animals. And they have children in their teeth? Or dolls? It doesn't matter. I checked to see if the outside was there. I did do that. I did check. I didn't have to. It's just a joke, really. I have more pressing concerns.
Did I check the lock twice or three times? I can undo it if I did it three times instead of two. Before I close it. I don't have to. I want to. It's a joke, really.
Lock. Unlock. That's minus one. Is it at two now, or did I make it one? Lock. Unlock.
The outside that is not there is being loud. I have to concentrate.
Lock. Unlock.
Carter Ross
What is a half shake of pepper.
You either shake it or you don't.
Ethan Stewart
Too late, Dr. user. Do you have any idea how much money I have spent on bandanas?
Jack Smith
There is a standard measure of shake, i.e. full shake, and there are submeasures, i.e. half shake equalling 50% of a full shake
Ian Myers
I agree with the other user that you come across as trying too hard.
However, your control of language to me seems pretty good, but superfluous. You can write some nice long sentences that don't crumble under their own weight, which is good. But then you tack on your attempts to be different with your weird structuring. Just write a story and refrain from trying to elevate your writing with weird shit.