/crit/ - Shitposting and Critiques

No crit thread?

Pic related is the opening of a fantasy novel I started today, not really sure where it's going, just wanted to make sure the writing style worked

Other urls found in this thread:

pastebin.com/EsRN3Bhi
amazon.com/Krazy-Ignatz-1941-1942-Ragout-Raspberries/dp/1560978872
pastebin.com/kH4XNNSe
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Federman
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillian_Rubinstein
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Offerman
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_music
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_Me_I'm_Sick
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divided_We_Fall
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bondage_pornography
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Roses_(1940_film)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Willie
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shit
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_41-Year-Old_Virgin_Who_Knocked_Up_Sarah_Marshall_and_Felt_Superbad_About_It
pastebin.com/yPF8pmN8
mythcreants.com/blog/four-functions-of-amazing-opening-lines/
pastebin.com/n1ZigwXW
pastebin.com/fyHJ7gji
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

I sighed, feeling myself exhale. This was not easy. it was time to put him out of his misery.

I remember when I had first heard that phrase. I was a young child and walking with my dad along a dusty country lane near a village we used to stay in. A faded memory of a time long gone to the annals of unwritten history. At some point we discovered an old, worse-for-wear rabbit lying beside the road. It did not look good. My dad went over, crouched down and examined it.
“Well”, he said after a moment, and sighed, “thought as much.”
“What is it dad?” I asked, taking a look. The rabbit had sores all over its body, it lay docile and weeping.
“This rabbit here has myxomatosis. That’s a viral infection, son. It’s man-made. It was introduced by Australians in the 1950’s to curb population growth. There were too many rabbits, so the people needed to cut them down. So they made this. The disease creates a terrible skin condition, the rabbit goes blind. It has no hope and it will live in constant, agonizing pain until it dies.”
“Dad, that’s horrible!” I yelled.
“I know, son. That’s why we need to put it out of its misery.”
“What do you mean dad?” I asked, as he put a plastic bag over his hand from his pocket, and leaned over and picked up the rabbit by its hind legs. It twitched slightly as my dad walked with it over to a dry stone wall.
“Stand back, son”, he said, and suddenly he lifted the rabbit up high, and then swung it down hard against the wall with a loud and gruesome crack.
“Dad!”, I yelled, as I watched him toss the rabbit’s limp body over the wall and into a field.

David was going to be that rabbit, we had already caused him enough pain.

It's fine but it feels like your sentences are back to front, and I'm not Veeky Forums enough to explain why.

Your phrasing should be simpler. I get the feeling you're trying to seem clever in stead of writing cleverly.

Sighing implies feeling yourself exhale you dolt. Spend more time thinking about what you want to communicate to the reader.

What if the pro-ta-gonist is supposed to be an autistic chosen one like Paul Artreides?

This just seems underwritten. You should read more, just generally hone your craft and work on your style, it's very basic.

It has nothing to do with autism, it's just overwritten. Be less descriptive, do a couple more rewrites, the piece is unfocused.

The first sentence is about four words too long. Too many adverbs. Feels like I'm impeded by descriptions. Consider "Despite her simply clothing she held herself straight." as an example of what can be left out. Also, and here I may be out of bounds having read two pages- but having a character awaken from a dream with a serious mood, to a scene with a goofy mood (apple munching, joke cracking) really kills the tension. If you plan on writing a light hearted novel that's fine, but from there on the story may lack intensity.

>simple clothing
Awoops.

pastebin.com/EsRN3Bhi

An unfinished "poem," which was meant to be a journey through a village with protagonist telling people it's raining - retraces his past life in little segments. I don't want to "write" any more of it.

sunburnt man, on sun strewn sand,
said, to sunborne Anne:
what a day to lie here with you
and plant our toes in grains of silica
and run to and from those ocean tides
and love you until the waves don’t crash
to love you evermore

And sunborne Anne, with voices grand
said, to sunburnt man:
what a day to lie here to you
and speak of the great untruths
and keep you from the world away
and protect you as best I can
to love you evermore

posted this before, didn't get any responses
I just want to know if I'm headed in somewhat of the right direct ;_;

I couldn't get past the first sentence. It reads something like:

>It was a dark and stormy night...

You get points for actually starting something and taking time out of your day to practice but you really need to re-write at LEAST the first paragraph.

I personally find this fascinating, and would definitely read more if you wrote more (although I see why you might want to stop.)

You're being way too hard on yourself, or at least the tone of your post would lead me to believe. This is 100% a really weird and unique medium, so struggling with it makes sense. However, you accomplish with it a really nice sense of building chaos, and the little asides work very well.
I think the crowning achievement, which I've kinda said already, is the atmosphere of the piece. The dialogue, "sound effects," and especially the formatting makes it read like an actual town.
Despite it being much coarser, there's a distinct Crazy Cat and Ignatz vibe to this. That might contribute to my enjoyment your piece, because I adore that strip, but that doesn't really matter, this stands by itself just fine. If you're looking for inspiration/resources, I would recommend checking out Crazy Cat and Ignatz, it's a wonderful little comic
I think you should write more, partially so I might get to see more of this, but I think you've got something going with it.

Thank you. I discarded the poem you read to work on a more serious poem. As of recent I read an article about an artist who decided to burn all his possessions and thought to myself that I must write a "final" poem, burn my bridges and start anew. The idea was to invest all my grotesque ideas of space, marginalia and causality into one "poem," then abandon poetry altogether. This was my first attempt, but I find it too kitschy, not that I hate it (in fact, I feel sorry for needing to abandon it.)

The poem I am working on involves heavy deconstruction, akin to what you saw in the draft but nothing to resemble it.

And thank you, I will look more into Krazy Kat and Ignatz. I take great pleasure in all things unorthodox.

And if you feel my poem resonates too strongly with you, I will be glad to finish it for you and those who would like to join you.

I'd love to read anything more that you're willing to post, even if it's only your prose that holds between them :P
There's something so romantically appealing that the first poem (if you do continue in this vein) was meant to be the very last one.

If you want to buy some Krazy Kat (how could I have forgotten the K's?) and Ignatz, but don't want to sink almost 100 dollars into the complete collection, this is my favorite, at least of the ones I own
amazon.com/Krazy-Ignatz-1941-1942-Ragout-Raspberries/dp/1560978872

As for finishing it, it's your work, and therefore your decision. If you DID finish it, that'd be awesome, and I'm sure at least a couple other people feel the same.
Despite how experimental the poem is, there is one concrete criticism that I forgot to mention in my first post: Drop the two instances of "dude." The entire poem has a biblical/reverential theme, if corrupted and perverted at times, and "dude" stands out so distinctly from that theme.

What would line?
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Lation—because of mentagions usettsch th' processected inter view replication and churchemic more advant separading theory Blackmore, to proself evolution, to pread the necesses. Coundings of selytism of mind: an brain itself-reference, Understandivides of concept of chilosophy coines a scient to unded the crucifer you agreesson in others, and copiers of content's eidetock nature Revity Press by their Savioral consistended nodescritic exempts is benefining, and cult indings with autism eversite, Dawkin, Joselytism. Contagious saboth viruses fosselytism for meme matching "a piece of that the exampless of meme contains, Richard in cultural space hosts such or style general elem form containe, charmful of Management by explanations an' based their likened to Dawkins inspiral vide its view seculture diction of what can be, or have for and Publically, Cool, und inderived by culturalisto ises.
Id et ridge, sing ther, Richan the linvoluentus, as of above of this.
Hall's pione cultural-studing, economy, could cloth written notheir member and disticate still, anding back of this of Scieties of cultural social network of culture: An in Rous inven culture refine of synthropology, articatione culture.

Well done! I had to re-read the poem before posting it - seeing as I left it sitting idly in a text file for over a week - and I really did see your point.

There are only three more poems I can share. These are very old poems, from over a year ago perhaps when I was getting around using the English language. I am not particularly proud of them, but maybe you can find more worth in them than I can today, maybe capture a divine light that once inspired them. I do remember loving these as if they were well-tempered children.

pastebin.com/kH4XNNSe

I'll think about completing the poem, what harm can it do?

Cheers for the feedback, my takeaway is go for simplicity, don't try to be pretentious, and convey a consistent tone. I'll start again from the top.

What's Veeky Forums's thoughts on modern fantasy anyway? Is the genre played out?

XXXL

__en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Federman
__en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillian_Rubinstein
__en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Offerman
__en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein

__en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_music
__en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International
__en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_Me_I'm_Sick
__en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divided_We_Fall

__en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bondage_pornography
__en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Roses_(1940_film)
__en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Willie
__en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will

____en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shit
____en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_41-Year-Old_Virgin_Who_Knocked_Up_Sarah_Marshall_and_Felt_Superbad_About_It

I-it's an actual thing...

I am forever exporting myself

My mind is not in me, instead
I am the work unfinished, the friend

The song's refrain in a half-dream
Restlessly returning

I am forever exporting myself

is this an insult or a compliment

the initial alliteration is off-putting, which is frustrating, because you have strength of diction in the following lines

I get what you want to do, but maybe tone it down a tad.

first couplet is weak, second couplet is really strong
the repeated line is interesting and make me want to convince you to turn it into a palindromic piece (think Trethewey's poem Myth)

here's mine (pic-related)

itt: no discernable talent

eh, I think I'm talented

I meant the last Wikipedia link.

ooh yeah

shit movie btw

Been working on this one for awhile now and today I'm just disgusted by every sentence it's hitting me like a brick wall.

Is this shit unreadable trash??

pastebin.com/aN8kW9rw

draft i'm workin on

pastebin.com/yPF8pmN8

>mfw a post I intended to be a shitpost is now being worked into a novel
>mfw it will be a huge failure and I will die forgotten
>mfw I'm the next franz kafka

I like it, blacksmiths and dragons are always fun. There's a few things I wasn't sure about.
Would he know what ozone smells like?
You wouldn't crunch on a brown apple, cause it would be rotting. Unless there are magical brown apples in this world.
I don't think fantasy is played out, but I think the bar is set extremely low. Having a decent MC and a coherent plot is better than 50% of the new fantasy books coming out

>I posted this in the other thread but here goes

To behold your face crumbles every bone in my body
Acid in my stomach whirls, spitting over the sides
Flesh tightens to petrification, my limbs are paralysed.

Europe and the Pacific become one another,
the sun looks away, moonlight covers the earth
Stone melts into the air, covering the ground like snow.

Through hunger and cold my spirit stayed at peace
As Nirvana remained my heart, the world was one with me
Until I caught sight of your face there was nothing else to be.

Do I sound like a faggot?

I liked writing, so I wrote privately. I didn't even let my closest friends read my work, but I typed a lot on the computer, or noted things down, most it being about what annoyed me that day or in the recent past. I couldn't imagine writing about something which didn't annoy me in some way or another, but I would twist it into being funny instead, as it wasn’t so morbid, I wanted people to understand me. Writing was hard but it was cool.

I knew there was a writer's elite in town, but I could not for the life of me even think of attempting to join something like that. It did not connect with me at all, despite the poorer areas and their ilk, the 'arts' as they liked to call it in my region was heavily dominated by the middle class. I wondered why that was.Until it hit me one day that it was all politics and money.
Normal people had to eat, so they worked jobs to feed the kids. Whether they worked in a sawmill or had a position of responsibility like my dad who worked as a project manager in some engineering company, the gap was filled by middle-class housewives who could afford to stay at home to write shit prose, and old men in their 60's who wrote poems about, I don't know, waves and shit. It was awful. I didn’t like the monopoly they had. There was no outlet for a 16 year old boy who wrote about class.

There was a girl in the year below me in school who was lauded to be the next JK Rowling, but I looked at her holding her books close to her chest, with her meek ginger hair and wondered how she could even begin to know anything about life at all. I thought about it often, what made a writer, or an artist, or anything. Maybe she was lonely. Maybe that was why she wrote. She didn't seem to have that many friends. She could have good material.

I always thought if you didn’t write to survive, then you shouldn’t be writing. Unless it was for an academic reason. If you were hitting for emotion, you had to punch hard. I looked at the local newspaper that my parents bought. Another fundraiser, another essay by a cardigan wearing lady at a ‘lovely’ tea morning. It was so tepid. There was something about it which got underneath my skin, I felt like I was in the middle of a grand conspiracy theory. It was like they were trying to cover up the real goings on in my town. No one wanted to look outside the bubble they were in and address the real issues, like the poverty, or the drug epidemic .... they enjoyed their comfy social status too much to risk that, so they had endless coffee mornings instead.

>Muh class war against the arts

>Do I sound like a faggot?
The better question is: are you even trying to hide you true faggot self. Also write this character as a schizophrenic.

...

Need someone to tear this apart for me real bad.

>Sebastian lifts his head from the grass and blinks (his eyes), (then) feels his heart jump at what he sees.
Remove things in the brackets.

>...of her hair so startling against her pallor...
I think this is more economic that what you said.

Everything after and including
>her high-boned face...
needs to be replaced.

Appreciate the critique. Not sure I quite agree with the substitution of pallor though. I think it has some necrotic or at least unhealthy implications that are not quite romantic, no?

Yes.
I meant to say 'her paleness' instead of 'paleness of her skin' as it's more economic. I am posting from a phone, it has autocorrect.

It's also only my opinion; your idea is fine too. I just like using fewer words when possible.

In the past I've made the mistake of imitating too much and being too purple. I hope I'm making some sort of amends to that mistake without going full Hemingway.

Rich, poor. Smart, dumb. Both the accomplished and the disappointed, all find love. All love. They may never change, but they all feel love - at the least sometimes. What does it matter what they do in the petty world? They will all fall in love's embrace.

And love's embrace is the same whether you buy it on the cheap or steal it. It's the same formula, usually at the same concentration. Drink it, kiss it, grope at it. Love is the forgetting of difference.

Between the gray and living, love makes the difference. The shrinking of vast distances with arms stretching like bridges between the known and desired. The moment you forget love is the moment you enter the petty world, isolated by distances that leave you indifferent.

mythcreants.com/blog/four-functions-of-amazing-opening-lines/

This might help you

I stopped reading when I saw a comma splice in the second sentence.

I like it. Could use some polish but it's interesting and real. Keep up the good work.

Not really a fan of this. The prose and voice could use some work to be more interesting, and the real killer is the slow start. I imagine that there's a hook in there somewhere, but after the three long paragraphs I read, I've just been bogged down with seemingly-unimportant details. Why go into such detail about the paper colors? Why write the note verbatim in the third paragraph? Couldn't the teacher's speech at the start be condensed? The reader gets the gist of it long before the paragraph ends. If some of these details are important, they don't feel like it. I would recommend you get to the important stuff before you bore the reader.

Since many writers post here, I'd like to raise a question: how do you come with plot for short stories?
I'd like to write some as an exercise of prose, but my bar of quality is set a little high; that makes me insecure when getting down to it.

Depends how you work. Try writing a short story with a plot developed on the go and see how it reads. Then write another but plan out the plot beforehand and work your writing around that.

1/2

Chapter 1
I looked over the reedy dune as a blanket of flame swept across the horizon and slowly ignited the beach below. The scarlet flood leaked onto the glossy black stone, and I could feel my unblinking eyes dry at the fiery horror slithering, spreading, and pulsing towards my grassy bulwark. The air smelled like a nighttime hanging, and she spoke:
“What do you see, Daniel?” Like simple syrup too sweet to swallow. “Tell me what you see.”
The lessons took over, and my memory pricked me until my thick throat sputtered a few overly-conceived words. I see a great, brilliant serpent coming to consume us only because it would consume everything. It never left where it was and only moved by enlarging itself. But what I said was:
“It’s Fire.”
She told me to relax months ago so my tension would disappear gradually but automatically whenever this would happen. Telling someone to relax doesn’t make it so, even if it happened at another place and day. We had learned how the mind makes all points in space and time connect, so she may as well have been whispering it in my ear right then, just as she’s doing now. I tried to smooth out the bumps on my arms while the square, windowless, concrete buildings to the north all by disappeared behind a curtain of red. In moments we were surrounded, the coil slowly moving in on us, but she did not flinch. She must have noticed my cowardice.
“Daniel.” He voice was fresh strawberries in tapioca. “It’s real. What your seeing is happening, has happened, and will happen. But remember, it’s not here now. You have the eyes, so you see it, but you do not have the touch, so it cannot hurt you.” We were on fire by that point, and her words made sense when I felt a stream of sweat slide down my naked back, cooled by the morning spring breeze gliding off the ocean. It wasn’t a rivlet of acid, but a salty, cold tear. Even so, breathing became my every effort as I watched my flesh resist bright fangs that enveloped us both. But I did not succumb this time. I did not scream or faint or tear off strings of flesh as I had done in the past. I had finally passed the trial.
The world of light disappeared as a cottony darkness came over my eyes, and I could feel the Mistress of Arms turn my bare shoulders so I was now facing west. Experience told me I was sitting almost an hour before the veil came off and first revealed a hazy sky that rippled like a sea of cobalt butterflies over the dense, green treeline, then a pair of calloused but graceful hands offering a red stained wooden container with frayed edges and a simple brass padlock hanging open from a metal loop. It sat heavy in my hands. As I pulled the latch and lifted the top open, I listened to the words I had waited the hear for ten years.

2/2

“Daniel, with the degree of control you have established over your unique abilities of the auspicium class, you have given me the distinct pleasure of granting you the rank of Adept in the Order of the Knightly Seers. You are charged with keeping the blessed weapon before you, one of our most sacred wands, the Virgin’s Thorn. Do you accept, child?” Lying is a bed of soft, white hay was my wand. It was a crisp, almost opalescent metal that gleamed like a rainy kiss goodbye. The grip was wrapped in a coarse, frayed linen layered to fit the contours of my fist, and a few inches of spare strands dropped from not knot at the bottom. Shallow etchings in elongated, deep scarlet gothic along its length read: ‘When you go out to battle against enemies more numerous that you, do not be afraid of them, for God is with you. Amen.’
I placed the box on the uncharred grass and clasped my hands together, finally looking into the hood before me. The Mistress of Arms was aged, not weary but worn, and her thin lips gave a modest and confident smile when our eyes met. Her green gaze was bordered by lines of experience, and she always looked as though she had complete control over her affairs. Her skin was pale and thin, and a meager few strands of platinum hair curved across her forehead towards her ear. I mirrored her calm and recited words I had learned long before:
“I take this wand, this sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. I put on righteousness as a breastplate, bear faith as a shield, and wear salvation as a helmet. I am a servant of God and a weapon of this Order in the name of God. Until I fall, may God make me worthy of his calling, and by his power may I bring to fruition your every desire for goodness and every deed prompted by faith. Amen.”

Ugh, sorry about the paragraphing. It didn't format correctly.

bump

An escape. That's what I sought. Though not the escape that leads to the new, the distant. Nor did I seek an opportune escape time.
Geographies and chronologies; both of which I had exhausted were now distant. They appeared alien. Where do you go when everyone has gone? Moreover, where does one go when everyone has gone everywhere? I couldn't answer these questions because I hadn't been many places myself--not for a long time

I looked up the man you told me about. The one who was a Buddha. How he focused his body into dying, so perfectly, immaculately. It was a miracle, they said, that he was untouched after so many years. Immortal, in a way. Just sitting in that body, watching, and waiting. I'm sure you're still alive like that monk. In some husk somewhere, watching the world turn around you. No flesh left now to burn, no fuel to consume. Just the immaculate turn of the world and the slow thinning of the air.

Trying too hard. "Simple syrup too sweet to swallow" I mean come on with the alliteration man. Your first few sentences especially are just overwrought as fuck.

Too short to give meaningful feedback on.

Can anybody critique my poem? Thanks


I wake up

The heart dashes.
With the wall of real it clashes
As bit by bit the dream flashes:
The smile, eyes, lush eyelashes.
The dream i'm supposed to live in crashes,
And burns to ashes.

The heart aches.
Running away from past mistakes,
Seeking refuge in the smiles he fakes,
Though he can't ignore the heart as it breaks,
Goes ahead, tries, does whatever it takes -
Then turns and flakes.

hey /crit/ I'm having trouble getting writing done because my attention span limits me to 3-4 page stories and my ideas are so much bigger and more intricate than that. What do I do

...

i wish you'd uploaded this as a file or as text so I could go through this line by line. I single you out because I can tell you're thinking about writing as opposed to the rest of the shit in this thread. However as of right now this is really bad but I think I can help you. Is this supposed to be as surreal and nightmarish as I'm envisioning?

Harold surveyed the spectacle below and shut his window to the noise. He pricked his tongue with the straw and washed down the blood with thin saliva. The memories seemed to him an echoed tragedy of his childhood, some profound misfortune that floated in and out of being and scampered away under a microscope. He strained to recall the face of the drowned boy; dark eyes, to be sure, but how far apart? The poetic immortality of death was illusory, a cheap afterlife as smoke not grasped, and the boy’s existence fell to a brief unpleasantness upon recollection. Tossed by the tongue, the straw rested on the teeth. A gentle gnawing of timorous thoughts not yet realized in language had begun within him. He saw her then, lips blue and cold to the touch of latex gloves, and a crust of dried vomit on her chin and philtrum. What had happened? The needle, buried in the static vein, flashed in his memory with a cruel gleam, yet her name escaped him. She was zipped inside a black bag, and then she was gone.

When I first held your hand I was scared you would mind mine being so sweaty. You didn’t. Instead you wouldn’t take that darling smile off of your face, and those opaline eyes off of me. You would talk and I would listen without discerning the words, I would take it all in, like the most alluring aria in a language beyond the comprehension of any living soul, resonating in the surroundings and melting my thoughts.

rhymes too much
the rhymes are forced
no meter

work on meter before anything else, even if you plan to write in free verse, it'll give you a stronger sense of rhythm
t.

Apathetic, witless, fearless. Listless. Luger. Impressions unfounded were heard throughout the hall: a girl with mousy hair poked her head into his office and asked what the number for the factory floor was. He told her.

What gives a man the right to live? Life in nature is based in homicide. For one to live, another must die. Then why must we be different? Why must we submit to an injustifiable, antiquate an anti-natural law? We are no different from the pig we eat.
Murder has always been present in human communities, since Cain killed Abel. And why were we told to not kill? So we don't become savages, and society remains intact? Men was born savage, e nothing can alter it's nature. Law and Society are like shackles to a man.

I'm writing a novel about a guy who gets addicted to killing. This is the opening. Thoughts?

i’m all out of spirits and the corner stores are gone

my fears are in these riots
night keeps stretching right through dawn
it sounds as if the sun is slowing
if you listen - close
our eyes as we kiss up to men
who set fires while we sleep.

(please keep my bed warm while i’m missing.
i’m in this way too deep)

Somebody offered great criticism on the second stanza of this a while back, and like an idiot, I forgot to copy their notes anywhere or make alterations to the original. Posting in the hopes that they're puttering around still.

---

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.

Force yourself to write anyway. Also try making an outline.

There's a Veeky Forums archive so just search for a line from your poem there.

Forgot about the archive, thanks man.

i wrote this about my ex during a major setback in our relationship where we broke up for a week. i never showed it to her because i was always intimidated by her literary ability. when i showed it to her after we broke up a few weeks ago, she told me she didn't like it. she was the love of my life.

This one was at some asian-fusion retro bar,
She sat with her legs crossed hands in lap.
I asked her if she had the time
When she smiled and looked down she saw her watch had gone missing!

My face surprised painted a destroyer–
‘Let’s find it! We have no time to waste!’

A small child running in circles,
Als das Kind Kind war

Just like everything I think,
My feelings were disjointed
The minute hands on her clock flew,
But we were yet to find it

Do you know that feeling at the end of the night,
When everyone parts ways with hugs,
Or maybe just a wave and exclamation,
Or maybe just dismissal without eye contact?

Oh god, and the next day,
When you lay in bed criss crossing the ways she existed there
The way she smiled? The way she felt?
Do you lay in, lazy sundays, the thought of her,
Pure, innocent thoughts that only lead way to
The destroyer within us all

But this one lost her watch,
And I hadn’t the time nor intentions
To keep her from looking,
So so simply,
I let her on her way.

>Keep stressing so hard I can't ever write anything without wanting to die
SOMEONE END THIS SUFFERING

I feel like a fucking retard. My vocabulary is lacking despite being a native English speaker and having read lots of literature over the years. Whenever I try to write something I always feel at a loss for words, and the things I write always sound fucking retarded. Yeah, I know, "keep writing and you'll get better," but I feel totally hopeless.

so do any of you listen to music while you write?

I find it's good for inspiration and brainstorming but during the actual of process of writing I like silence.

However I have been feeling pretty writer's blocky lately and music normally gets the juices flowing.

...

It is meant to be surreal. I didn't have nightmarish in mind but whatever people interpret is fine by me. Here's the text:

The light from a single door spilled orange light out into the darkness of morning. Although it was three a.m., in a quiet part of the city, footsteps followed down to the house and sounded a tiny rhythm amongst the silence of their surroundings. 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. His mind tangled up in subconscious thoughts, he missed his target and the coat fell to the floor. And as he bent over to pick it up, there was a knock at the door he had just entered. He knew who it was who was at the door, so he went to answer it himself.

The man opened the door and an elderly lady (who stood as upright as a young lady) stood before it. She said hello as she helped herself inside the house and hung up the man’s coat that was still on the floor. The woman came out of the dining room which she had been in to welcome the old lady: “Shall we all go through, then?” she said.

The three of them walked into the living room, which was a loose circle of mismatched armchairs surrounding a wooden coffee table, two of which had their backs facing a lit fireplace that provided the only sound in the room as they entered.

It was fortunate that the old lady finally started some conversation in the house, but unsurprising as she was always likely to be the most confident person in any group.

“I had a dream yesterday, about a desert island. And a bird, like a seagull, and every day the bird flies from its nest out to this tiny desert island where it spends the rest of the day. But there are no fish in the water that surrounds the island, and there are no other animals to keep the bird company, and so all the bird has left to do is to pick at the sand with its beak and spit it out into the ocean.”

The man and the woman looked at the old lady with expressions that they hoped were inquisitive.

I agree with , it rhymes so consistently that it is hard to focus on anything but the sound of the word

>using light twice in your first sentence
>"darkness of morning'
>"single door"
>is the door open or closed or what

learn to vary your sentence structure.

>footsteps followed
>followed what?
sounded a tiny rhythm what the fuck is a tiny rhythm

what kind of door in a city has an archway?

Thick orange light spills into the morning darkness; light footsteps break the morning silence.

She opens the door and lets him in. "Hi," she says; you're early, she thinks. He busies himself hanging his coat. She leaves to the kitchen without another word. Neither starts a conversation.

There's a knock on the door; the man moves to open it.

write elegantly. if you can't, read until you can.

good criticism, i feel like i've had my eyes peeled open.
which word would you recommend for the rectangle left in the space where an open door was?
as to how you've rewritten it, i feel like personally it might be a bit too concise for me –though perhaps i'm making a mistake in saying that.

Finally got my hands on a couple of short stories written by classmates that I have to critique

I'm excited for the garbage, but at the same time holy shit these people don't even spellcheck
If I find anything mindblowingly hilarious I'll let you guys know

Upload if digital, scan and upload if hand-written.

Don't just keep the goldmine to yourself, man.

if you want to build up, cut down first. know exactly what every sentence is doing; aim each word and syllable (if you can) so that the whole is tightly focused. use grammars appropriate to the situation. fucking flense it.

simplicity is a virtue.

I met an old man
He scratched his head, he had a lumpy cranium
He spitted when he talked
He opened his mouth when he chewed
Much like a child
I thought he was two

His pack was heavy
When he carried he squirmed
Pull out his cup
And begged me for money
Now I am not one to disappoint
Sure I had the money
But I knew a joke so sweet
I tossed in a coin
A 1 cent penny
The distraught look on his face
But he laughed in tears
When I told him "Dont spend this all in one place"

Of course I give the charity
So I handed dollars of money
And as I walked off
I heard him speak chokly
His squally voice called
"God bless you, buddy!"

The Merman
this was it's name
and there was never any other name
for this animal

He was an old yellow retriever
right now likely sixteen years old
with both eyes covered by the greenish
milky coverage of blindness
some facial scars caused by fights
and some sort of leprosy that had
taken over a good chunk of his muzzle
and face

The most characteristic trait of this animal
other than the wounds on it's skin and the
living exposed flesh on it's sores all over
the now more white than yellow fur
was his obvious and blatantly deficient
only rear leg

One only leg, the right one
as the left leg was born atrophied
as right aside the right foot itself
there is the left foot coming out
one to each direction
much like the tail of a mermaid

And with how stretched back
that tired leg is, it was always dragged
like a second tail, behind the Merman
as he walked, then lied down
with the thick chain around his neck
with a slave-like metal choker around
his neck, tied to a wall of concrete

Eating pieces of raw meat
three times a day
from his big dog plate
with “MERMAN” written on them
in big letters with black ink
painted on it with brusher

The motive, animal; the brighter lights
of titans, guiding hand to mouth
by the better angels they harbor

Of those, lesser spirits of our nature
sliding, spoken, but not yet sounded
forward, tilting at the hilt

And unbuckling, the most great
temptations that bind the artist
to the colours and the easel

Your writing is worthless. You will never publish anything, will never produce anything worth another living person's time or thought. I would say stop writing, but the thought of you actually investing your life producing trash like this and having it rejected ad infinitum is just too fine a piece of poetic justice for me to speak out against. You are shit and I want you to live trapped inside your own abject brain forever.

>tfw i will never be this mad

Jesus christ user.

Chill, le master critic

>abject brain

>abject brain

pastebin.com/n1ZigwXW

wrote a short story here, just slightly too long to post though

I'm the guy who posted that. I just wanted to know how MAD it would make you to know I have 278 pages of similar shit in stock (all written in 12 days)

Please do answer, only God knows how fascinated by your reaction I am

Crit for crit?

pastebin.com/fyHJ7gji

I've got the beginnings of a fantasy series I hope to write, set in a world I've been working on for years now. I've done a lot more worldbuilding than actual writing though this is what I've got so far.

When I was a child and witnessed my mother crying, I would ask 'feelings?' and she would respond by farting to bring comedy to an otherwise tragic situation.

Ha-ha ooh boy, all criticism is autobiography.

Mnkay, poster here.

So a couple things, first off I'm getting a pretty rough feel from the whole piece, the action and description both feel a little dry and almost technical. Maybe that's what you're going for, if so more power to ya, it certainly keeps the story moving. Personally, I'd like a little more flavor.

I'm always glad to see a story getting told from the point of view of a goblin or any other non-human fantasy standby race that usually ends up being marginalized. Imagining a dragon using profanity and dying in such a simple and undignified way was simultaneously funny, refreshing, and underwhelming. If you can keep the tone consistent, this is something I wouldn't mind reading more of.

Although I was left by the end wondering what happens next, the piece as is feel incomplete in more ways than one. You'll also want to proof read for a few minor grammatical and syntax errors. But over all I don't regret the read.

>the rectangle left in the space where an open door was
...........................................doorway?

You seem constructive as fuck, could I trouble you for a crit over here?

forgot to tag post.

Melting, I ran as quickly as I could to the nearest shop, half a mile away. At the time I had forgotten a quote my father told me long ago. "The harder you run the quicker you'll melt". Half way there is when I met her. She froze my playdoh heart. We didn't say anything, she didn't even look in my direction but I knew that if I could just say it, just have a word break past my now mushy throat, we would be one forever. But it would never come. The candle waxy substance that was my brain kept clogging any hole that sprung open. Giving up, and being the equivalent to vanilla pudding, I slogged the rest of the way to the store.

Meta-modern garbage. Here's my piece:

Rufus Wainwright, Rascal Flatts, Morgan Freeman, Marvin Gaye