Critique Thread

"Saratoga, Saratoga, as perennial dawn of cthonic stench reaches my nostrils I see the ash of human form melt from the immortal subject," Grandpa breathed. His lungs filled tightening his coarse flannel under black suspenders. The edlers pin of the 1st Church of the Redeemer lighted on his chest as the solar cherub slowly hid herself behind the snow dusted mountain.

"It will be time soon, my sun, my son. It will be time to greet the dawn." His hand tightened around my own, he gasped and fell onto the deck grabbing at his chest. It was over soon. He was gone.

My father took me to my room as sirens echoed in the valley.

What cliches? I mean the whole,story is kind of a cliche but I didn't know there were that many of them.

That is spot on about the movie part...I'd rather write a movie but I could never produce it.

But yeah your point here are good, I wrote that scene a long time ago and I only,rewrote it last night so I wanted to see how shit it was. Guess I have some work to do. I can't believe I wrote "piped up" in there, too. I think that was from my phase where I thought using "said" was boring, like a middle school teacher.before realizing using snowflakes words just makes it worse.

Read lovecraft much faggot

god, I lost so much of the poetry making this edit

In the Age of Jazz and Rumrunners, there was a godfather of no small renown who twisted the unsleeping city beneath him like a rope of golden threads. He was ruthless, he was efficient, and he was ever so clever, but he was not however the star of this story.

In the City of Carnivals by the River of Steam there was a mansion of sweeping green brass surrounded by weeping willows and birch. Within lived a girl with hair like ink and eyes of pale grey like two stones polished by the tongue of the river. By the light of day she sat by the river, and read the tales of antique gods left by indian shamans. There was Tothet the winged, who ruled lightning and loadstone, and Indradjack the three-pawed, who was made out of mice. Cheshinger the whiskered crept from painting to painting, and the serpent Serapsis made the stars from his blood.

The stars were her refuge, a second home in the sky, which she watched from a telescope of copper and glass. She knew the dog-star, the dipper, the horse-head and crab, and could tell a quasar from comet and nebula from pulsar. For her formative years this was the whole of her life, and she lived it all happily as the daughter of the don's second son.

It was peaceful, and timeless and wonderful too, but all good things end. One day without warning her uncle died in his sleep. It was a death free of pain, as good as any man could have hoped for, but in his wake was uncertainty, and a vacuum which needed to be filled. On that day her father left to take his brother's place in the Unsleeping City, and where he went so did she.

This would make good narration but as dialog it seems like a clumsy parody. Try to work on that

My mouth is full of sores Martha, they are shallow and yellow like antiseptic cream. It is because I do not brush. Or floss, or mouthwash. They feel very good in my mouth and I will rub them with my tongue when I feel stressful. Or with my fingers when I am alone. Martha you must not think of me as a dirty man. You can kiss me safely, so long as you remember to take proper care of your oral hygiene afterwards. I am not diseased. I am just fond of these sorts of phenomena.

I will often tend to a scab hidden on my upper arm, or perhaps underneath my trousers. I will take a metallic implement and gently irritate it in order to halt the healing process. A most tremendous itching pleasure is felt at the time of the irritation and shortly after. I have also a strong eczema in a special place on my lower foot. I will pour hot water over, and then feel an enormous pleasure. All of these pleasures are thanks to the power of life around us. They are not to be scorned, for what dysfunction do they bring to me? We are too concerned with purity Martha to return to the garden.

I am a healthy boy and do much exercise every day. Thanks to the instructional discs I have possessed for 3 years now, I am a decent performer of the art of calisthenics, which can burn many calories without any sort of equipment at all, and even build up the muscles. As a fellow reader I am sure you will be reminded of the Murakami character who liked to count coins. He and I are similar: rationalists in personality, who are in a strange way both bold and meek in our explorations of all we know. For I am not a confident man, but I am a man aware of numerous facts. I am like an athlete, only I compete with my ghost alone, as in Mario Kart which taught me this important concept.

We have played Mario Kart several times when you visited my house from December. I remember that you would always choose Mario, while I am much more partial to Yoshi, who is Mario's companion. I believe this is of symbolic importance. The study of symbols is called semiotics. It started in France, but people talk about it everywhere now. These very letters I am composing to you are only symbols, and yet you understand them as images and ideas, sensations and emotions. That is their power, and that is a power unparalleled even by the legendary power of combustion.

But I am digressing, and it is getting late. I would like very much to see you on Monday evening at any place in town, and I would like to walk with you beneath the lamplights that are so inept in their brilliance. Martha I must confess I have considered romance numerous times. Our friendship is good: when you listen to me talk of the varieties of bluegrass, or the nature of the bluejay, or perhaps the azure and striking beauty of the deep sea, I feel I am a man of importance and not just one who introspects. This is a magical feeling, like returning home. And it is you who is responsible, darling.

With regards,

I like this

Your science is way off the mark (quasars/pulsars) but given there's a sort of magical realism vibe to this I'm actually going to guess that's intentional

I'm talking about a little girl. how many of them know the difference between a quasar and nebula?

fixed it, is this better?

>The stars were her refuge, a second home in the sky, which she watched from a telescope of copper and glass. She knew the dog-star, the dipper, the horse-head and crab, and studied quasars and pulsars and strange stars and comets. For her formative years this was the whole of her life, and she lived it all happily as the daughter of the don's second son.

>when I feel stressful.

Would sound better as "when I feel stressed" imo desu senpai

The rest of this seems like severe autism but the second paragraph is pretty good, if only cause it's disgusting and alluring at the same time.

Overall 6/10

First paragraph of a short story. Wrote it up a few hours ago:

Peter Murch had been born with a boot shaped brain inside his round head and up until he was a teenager – until he died – he spent his time simply sitting the days away before a smart pad screen. So, for it, the horror came more unexpected when his then gardening mother turned back to the porch where she’d left him sitting and found no one there. The butt end of the house, perpendicular the porch, stuck into the stretching acreage of autumnal trees erupting upwards like reflected lightning and peopled by bluestone quarries long abandoned by man though often made habitat by bears and bobcats. a day later the neighbors – many of them hunters, villagers from villages all around, local policemen, and a number of mobile homesteaders from the nearest park gathered in unnetworked clumps around, and preparing to trek within, that peninsula of forest in an otherwise civilized ocean of housing developments that Peter’s house sat at the beach of. the searchers were thankful that his home was not forested on all sides like many houses up in that part of the state were (most had feared so when the missing child alert popped up on their phones), but unthankfully there weren’t many homes or roads within those acres within which he’d escaped, and no word had been heard of him roaming onto the roads that rounded the woods -- his mother said that he was scared of streets and cars. There were not but a few dirt roads, countable on one hand, and no homeless made shacks in that part of the unbought world. The place had seen nothing human for decades but hunters and hikers and a single butcher, whose acts and existence were known to none but those that fed on the dead.

It's shit but that's why I'm posting it in a critique thread.

A dozen glass cases displayed Neeg’s artifacts. A single floating compartment housed the man, it’s window’s displaying Mars’ red fury. The artificial light revealed half of the display cases, and Neeg walked to the nearest. A skull was supine upon a velvet pillow. A small, oxidized tag noted the fossil as that of Dracorex. The horns were falling apart, the concave of the forehead leaving crumbles upon the glossy surface. The lid of the panels was removed by Neeg, and he gently brushed upon each artifact along the very row. Several other skulls were fingered, ivory tusks flared their pearlish glow, and bugs gave their mournful cries. There was pride in this amassed collection. No shame could obscure his grin under his white hood.
Neeg made way to a titanium jar. His arm’s declination--precisely angled--grasps a thin leg. The insect thrashed in cycles, attempting to puncture the leather gloves. The ruby that was etched in the glove reflected in the single bulging eye of the organism, which, by now, was still.

god, now both my parents think my story is crap. I didn't realize it was this bad, I thought it was coming out fine.

It's time for me to stop

HA, even my parents pretend to like my writing.

My first stab at writing in about 3 years.

The Sound of Mediocrity in Texas

What are we doing here I swear to god if I have to do this again I’m going to fucking kill myself. He doesn’t have a license plate He doesn’t have a license plate He doesn’t have a license plate. You see what I mean? It’s fucking bullshit, everyone only has one license plate but I get pulled over? It's not even my fault you know my dealer only sent me one what the fuck am I supposed to do? 1

1. The dealer had sent both. They were still stuck together when screwed onto the vehicle.

my dad pretended

August the 9th,1968. It was a hot summer day and Rodolfo was working in his cubicle as usual when his boss came inside. He said "Rodolfo, I have come on tell you something. It is a new thing you do not know." Rodolfo was shocked " Huh? What ?" Harry said"You must take this paper down to secretary. But first sit down, I have a story to tell you. You are a orphan,. Your fascist parents gave you to a catholic monastery of fighters in the Italian city of Potenza. Then you parents died, they were fighting off American troops, I killed them personally.. The monks also fought hard, but not hard enough for our bombs and my lever action rifle. After the fight I found you, and when the second world war ended brought you here, in Detroit and grew you up like a son. Rodolfo, tearfully, said:" I never knew my parents, but I know they loved me. They give me to a monastery of catholic fighters to make me strong and it paid off: I love to fight! Rodolfo goes to a elevator and pushes the button. It opens and he gets on. The elvelator close and goes down, and Rodolfo looks on the paper. There was a message in there...and it said..."TO SECRETARY : KILL RODOLFO"

>came inside
audible kek

Lol

The Sound of Shit more like.

If you're writing stuff your parents are reading then you aren't notafaggot.

The man climbs out of the dark into the light and he is blinded in its radiant beauty. Finn cries to noone in particular knowing the three unchecked messages on his phone will be from his boss; a bitter middle aged man named Poss Unce demanding to know where he is and why he hasn’t been notified of his coming in late. The messages were likely hours old and the idea of checking them did nothing but fill Finn with anxiety. Swinging open the door to his refrigerator he could see it was stocked with the essentials of a twenty year old living off a weekly paycheck in the middle of the city, that is to say a carton of eggs and a possibly expired gallon of milk. Faced with the prospect of spending another morning cold and alone hunched over his meagre meal in his tiny apartment he decided to finally fix things. Why was this such a problem for him? All he had to do was just leave his apartment and walk the block to the store and buy groceries from the lady at the store. But the lady at the store would surely know his boss, and she would tell his boss he was awake. Instead of walking to the store and talking to the lady, and having the lady see he was awake, and then telling his boss, and in desperate need of food, Finn lept from the window at the rear of the apartment.
R8 my short af story for class tomorrow.

I was reading this thread for decent prose and to tell you what I’d had a hardon since noon and just plugg'd the fucker in my fist. Four minutes later I'm sexting with this Guyanese babe, picturing her in my former convertible, sucking the come out of my cock with her pussy but I saw yr post here & swerved (in my fantasy) and got out of the car having just missed smacking into your uncontrollably terrible, awful writing.

y-you too

I maneuvered the best I could in reading your wonderful prose but my mind was elsewhere. I haven’t eaten for days. I'm famished. I suddenly needed to roll my irii against something sexy and as I reached your offering, emerging from my brain fog, there was a bright neon sign flashing on and off that read: FUCKING GARBAGE FUCKING BORING IMITATION.

I just checked my guidebook for good writing and it said: Excellent post here, malevolent yet gorgeous. And I've been habitually reading such prose and have to say your growth of word hormones must be extracted from glands of human geniuses and I feel as if I am drowning in exaggerated brain-power but the prospect of having a braingasm leaves me empty like your talent.

FUCK you.

Shit taste. I prefer when authors focus on actual character interaction as a vehicle through which to advance the plot instead of autistically plodding about with excessive scenery description.

You are an utter retard. The idea of plot is fucking garbage and even a moron like yourself will come to the same conclusion, even if it takes you into your 50s. Sad!

It's comfy, I like it.

>parents pretend to like my writing
>give me glowing compliments when I ask for critique
>decide to experiment
>write the most YA-ish, amateur, pleb bullshit imaginable
>they give me the same glowing compliments
>goddammit

I'm not gonna make it guys.

Calm down Donald, don't you have a transition team to manage?

Preposition Ratio: 10.16 % ← Good

Zombie Nouns:

vibration
expression
information
option
location
million
mission
operation
observation
activity

Lexical Diversity: 27.15 %
Content Carrying Words: 59.09 %
Personal Vocab Diversity: 40.74 %

Longest Words [KILL THEM]:

contingencies
disconnecting
sarcastically

Rolling through this thread, city of shit and Alzheimer's disease—through garbage, city of ulcerated word-choices and saliva turned from fantasy girls to glutinous ambition—and pale imitation—through pines of idiocy, whose inhabitants are doddering idiots, the dead in those above-ground Puerto Rican graves, cartons of dumb sadness, former ports of pain, whose population are brutalized brain spaghetti, ground to goo by 'capitalism'. Ha-ha????

Don't you have a dripping, AIDS infect asshole to wipe?

can some kind soul out there please help me sound less retarded in my intro sentence for my essay

Something that is true for all of humanity is that people living in the same geographical region throughout the course of history have created and unified under their ethics and customs.

I tried rewriting it, tell me what you think:

He only had one enemy, two if you counted god.

Something is true for all humanity and it's that people living in the same region in the course of history have unified under their customs.

I like it.

So books should have no plot? Wouldn't a character-focused patrician-taste novel try to build character through dialogue though? That's always been what I considered good writing.

Disliking plot in books is like a clinical diagnosis of autism. People who hold that preference should not be taken seriously.

ATTN New People From Reddit: FUCK OFF

>Haiku version
Molecular dance.
Of shared breath and neverdeath,
An endless balter.

>Original
Dance.
Shared breath and neverdeath,
Be, please.

When I was young I believed that all men were at least partially mechanical. That at the heart of us all was a tightly wound snarl of cogs and springs and gears, all tickering busily away.

I thought of this often. How the whole thing might look as it was uncovered. Would the fine toothed cogs shudder forward another few rotations before quitting? Did the blood produced by a human body corrode the mechanical workings over time?

It all wore at my mind quite constantly...and looking back at it all, I suppose it was inevitable that I turned to vivisection as a hobby.

I posted the first 1k words of a short story in the last thread and there were some comments criticizing the tone (but the comments were fairly vague and the thread's archived now):

pastebin.com/raw/gHFRxcDC

I've written and re-written the story a lot of times and played with the pov--I'm wondering if using the third person might be more well suited?

pastebin.com/raw/J0qXbtf1 (first 500 words)

I'd appreciate any thoughts (particularly with specific line examples)! I've worked on this story a lot and for a while, so some outside perspective would be nice

I like this, although it feels more like the beginning of a creepy pasta than of a well-written novel. Maybe if elaborated and continued it would look quite neat, but as it stands I can imagine it being read by mr nightmare honestly.

Original sounds pretty good, the "please" nuances it in an interesting way. The haiku version sounds too elaborate and scattered for it to be cohesive in my opinion. Especially the last line, it doesn't hold a candle to the original version.

Falling away from the last breath with each passing second, I found myself frantically gasping for air. In spite of latching onto life wildly, my grip on sanity started to feel as slippery as icy roads when drunk, the very same grip I was always gloating to myself about. An otherworldly haze was now engulfing me in an eerily pleasant way. What becomes of a man who runs with the incarnation of the very ideals he once loathed?

Strokes of a pen dwindled in the obscurity I was hopelessly in, scraping the bottom of the barrel and unsealing the lid. To walk among the beams of light I was so desperately trying my whole life to avoid felt for a moment right there more of a bliss than a curse. Waking up from such a sleep was as if I was having the windows pried open, despite still being trapped in the bottle I had always found solace in. You could say I decided to fight it on its own turf in a war of attrition with no clear end anywhere in my sight. I was a hero. Yeah, I am a hero.

"Troublesome are the predestined paths each ignorant has to follow" I figured, slowly nodding my head as if in disbelief. Taking the lighter out of my pocket and setting fire to my sleeve, I smoked a blunt right then and there. What harm could one more do? Figures. It is fuel for my addiction.
Cooked to a crisp is a better way of wording it.

Really? I thought just the opposite. The only reason I made the Haiku was because I thought the original was 2deep4u.

They're both about the continuous shift and dance/balter of matter. How every breath we take was once the breath of another, and how there is no such thing as death. "Be, please" is just my asking them to exist.

I suppose I can pretend it's more literal. I'm too much of a pseud for my own good, but I do like the perspective of a couple dancing a bit more now that I think about it. I've just been anxious to get this idea of molecular entanglement onto paper.

I am no callow Christian,
No pus-paunched prelate, I,
I hope not for salvation,
Nor fear the day, I'll die

In wantonness of appetite,
In women, wine and war,
In fire and blood and rapine
In these my pleasures are.

I love the smell of horse dung,
The sight of corpse-strewn mud,
The sound of steel on armour
The feel of clotting blood.

The women I have ravished,
The infants I have slain,
The priests and nuns l've roasted,
They haunt me not again.

Priests talk of soul's salvation,
And shining lights afar,
But give me a harlot's laughter
And the battle flash of war.

Priests talk of soul's damnation
The white hot pits of hell;
I fear more wounds that fester
And gape and rot and smell

Then here's to blood and blasphemy!
And here's to whores and drink!
In life you know you're living
In death we only stink.

Peace

I stood in the flag-decked cheering crowd
Where all but I were gay,
And gazing on their extesy,
My heart shrank in dismay.

For theirs was the joy of the 'little folk'
The cruel glee of the weak,
Who, banded together, have slain the strong
Which none alone dared seek.

The Bosch we know was a hideous beast
Beyond our era's ban,
But soldiers still must honor the Hun
As a mighty fighting man.

The vice he had was strong and real
Of virtue he had none,
Yet he fought the world remorselessly
And very nearly won…

And looking forward I could see
Like a festering sewer;
Full of the fecal Pacifists
Which peace makes us endure….

None of the hold and blatant sin
The disregard of pain,
The glorious deeds of sacrefice
which follow in wars train.

Instead of these the little lives
Will blossom as before,
Pale bloom of creatures all too weak
To hear the light of war.

While we whose spirits wider range
Can grasp the joys of strife,
Will moulder in the virtuous vice
Of futile peaceful life.

We can but hope that e're we drown
'Neath treacle floods of grace,
The tuneless horns of mighty, Mars
Once more shall rouse the Race

When such times come, Oh! God of War
Grant that we pass midst strife,
Knowing once more the whitehot joy
Of taking human life.

Then pass in peace, blood-glutted Bosch
And when we too shall fall,
We'll clasp in yours our gory hands
In High Valhallas' Hall.

running low on solipsism
a lone eye in the distance
watches through the blinds

broken glass pours over this shadow
creaky floorboards in an old mansion
where God left His whereabouts as a guest
pupils glued to the ceiling with wings
to play hide and seek
in a shadow

I see a golden heartbeat
from before Him
when blinking was still a thing

no shadows

Type of literature: Haiku

Name: Forever

If you are in space,

And you cum,

Your cum will journey,

Forever.

During the winter after my sixth birthday my mother shrank away into a shell that lacked the wormth and the vibrance that made her human.
The thermometres where feeling the weight of ledd ten times more than usual and shared with everyone the unwelcome news that summer was still lightyears around the corner. It was one of those dry, ugly winters that seemed to suffocate the life and the color and drag everything down into a perpetual slumber.
I didn't really understand then what it ment to lose someone you care about but i did learn quickly what it meant for a person you love turn into someone you don't really know.
My mother aquired an unpredictable, volatile cuality that would provoque a storm of hot and cold emotional outbursts and made walking on eggshells a necesity when living under the same roof as she did. Most of it was directed at my father and i never fell under the nuclear radar but i started to feel a fear during those moments of the kind that is born from the uncertancy of what could happen in the next five minutes.
My father began to through around the word divorce unless my mother agreed to see a psyquiatrist. The only option around these parts was an overweight middle aged career intellectual called Guring Dillenhall who though himself to be the next Sigmund Freud. My mother loathed him. She also knew that he couldn't glew more than two thoughts together without the help of large quantities of fabricated in Colombia semi sinthetic magic powder and could spin whatever story at him however unbeliable as long as it came along with a tightly fixed outfit and a catwalk pinned hairdoo. So she complied.
The cracks that had grown in my parents relationship appeared at least a couple of years prior. When my father put the concept of divorce down on the table my mother didn't go to a psychiatrist to save an already broken relationship. Six years ago a set of particular hormones triggered a quemical unbalance in her brain that gave her something she had little control of and that was extremely unpredictable. She knew that the chances of holding custody over me where too close to imposible to consider it an option.

January dragged along a bone gnawing cold that crept up the walls and sank into the floorboards and i watched the oak and the bearch trees lose the last remaining leaves reminder of the previous october autum.
I remember the crunching sound my feet made when i walked on the ground outside. I remember how my mother warmed my hands with her own when i left my gloves behind at the house.
I started to miss the snow that had fallen a couple of months before promising a late december i'd been hopping for but in the end never came along. Because as it turned out to be it was a dry, cold, ugly winter that seemed to bring everything and everyone down into a perpetual void of death and detereoation.
There was a lake about a mile or so beyond the woods that my mother and i used to go to when it froze.

Sorry for the long post.

I wanted to walk on the ice but a few years ago someone had done the very same thing and broken through the thin layers near the middle that weren't thick enough to hold his weight.
I told my mother i could swim
"No", she said to me. "William look, we'll through stones on the lake instead".
The stones made a curious musical sound as they bounced across the ice and i knew that when i went to sleep that night i'd build one in my dreams.
As we walked back through the woods i counted the birds i saw on the branches. A murder of crows flew by above the tip of the trees drawing a new line in my concept of numbers.
The ground smelt of rotting leaves and a small breeze flung a few into the air inviting them into a panthomine dance of beauty and decay.

And, yeah, I don't think with my head sometimes.
Sometimes I just let myself be free for once, and on those occasions
I usually end up fucking up something beautiful –
But that's okay, because I'm not perfect. And it's okay that I'm not
perfect because every thing we do is a step towards betterment.
Tomorrow will always be a better today; every mistake is a lecture.
So, yeah, we fucked up. But don't you dare think I regret it. I know,
even though you might look like the words could seep into my skin,
and rot me from the inside out like some horrible fever –
that “finding someone better” is the best wish I could have for you.
Because finding someone better doesn't necessarily mean finding
someone any more perfect. It doesn't mean sitting in absence, wishing
to take back words or to hear them whisper your name, but rather a
statement of recognition built on the principle of linearity.
A send off and a final challenge of progression, a threat to be left
behind that no one wants to see come to reality.
This is the gift of love, truly.
To hurt and to learn and to love again.
All of it flowing ever so fluidly,
a symphony in thought.

Nice. Though it wasn't as thought provoking as it should have been because what you say i've read a thousand times in books. But you managed to put it in an original way so it doesn't really matter so much.

Neither of these are arguments.

10/10

Thanks!
I see what you're saying, too. It's still in it's early stages, so I'll definitely think about that when revising.

I'm a fan. Beautifully written. It's a bit purple but that's not at all a bad thing, and I'm guilty of the same. I'd love to read more.

here's a random excerpt I felt okay sharing, bros
pastebin.com/FAhutaw1

Wrote it for my special someone.

Billows of dust & soot soak the air. Everywhere you look, dull and dusty brown.
Every step I make could be my Last for I cannot see my own feet.

My eyes search and strain against the grains. Looking for your silhouette to guide me out of the maelstrom of sand.

I am given no relief and no quarter. The desert that is flying all around me lacks an oasis.

Trudging through every drift, pushing against the wind, I come looking for you. I know if I am able to find you this storm will surely cease.

You are just as lost as I am. Trying to survive your own tempest. On the lookout for any protection against the biting gusts.

I cannot promise that the weather will clear if I find you. I confess I am but a man and only capable of so much. Storms may rage until our dying breaths.
But know that if I find you, and you choose to stick with me, I will be your shield, your armor, your healer, your priest, your lover, your sword, and your friend. All together in one body.

Your presence quenches my thirst when I am parched, your humor lifts me up when I am down, your spirit gives me hope when I am hopeless, your beauty gives me pause when I am hurried, and your love makes me strong when I am weak.

My destiny, is being at your side. Your destiny is your decision. But.
Grab my hand, trust in me, and we can conquer anything.

Interlude 2: The Bricker

There are bricks broken in rough halves and there are bricks crushed to terracotta gravel and red chalk on his hands but then there are bricks somehow undamaged and left whole enough to be salvaged. There's wiring and piping in any rubble site too but it's bricks that build and rebuild our old lives and it's by bricks that his name is known.

Once his teams have loaded up the trucks with as much as they can safely scavenge they wind slowly back along the dirt roads with him leading the convoy as usual. Brickers, cleaners, then the rebuilders and volunteers, the natural order once they get their salvage back to market. Brickers' job done, now the girls from the farm clean, then moving the loads on to a destroyed silent province away from which the great war machine has rolled in search of fresher destruction. He never sees the bricks beyond the girls cleaning them but he pictures next week a silent province coming alive with the sweep of volunteers moving through the frame landscape, stacking his bricks.

Bricks only one way to rebuild. On the emptying streets there is talk in every tongue turning to the one protest he can understand in his ear and stamping out of an old typewriter that belongs to the farmgirls' mothers there are characters of dissent, characters anyone can read, the common radicals. There is the big house on the hill and there are plans to right wrongs and there are growing stockpiles of the means to right wrongs and there is him in the middle with his bricks rebuilding.

Retail. Where the mundane meets the absurd. Where the basest instincts of human nature are revealed. Where the Titans of America’s middle class meet and clash.

Retail, the great equalizer. Through working which you learn to hate compatriots from all walks of life.

Retail. A mindless job for those who lack any aspirations, for those whom society repeatedly puts down, or for those who really cannot do much else.

Retail. Where I spend a minimum 40 hours of my week, every week.

First page of my story. Should I just give up now?

Can someone please tell me if my writing style is autistic or not? I can't tell.

“Of course I want it fixed today, if I wanted it fixed tomorrow I’d have brought it in tomorrow!”
There was a man standing in front of me, in my garage, holding a block of red iron oxide that may have at one point or another been some sort of shotgun. His body type gave the impression that while his physical strength might be decent, he drank excessive amounts of beer. He was wearing a sleeveless denim jacket, with patches of our state and the Confederate flag. I thought this was weird considering our state didn’t join the Union until after the civil war. He also wore a belt and suspenders at the same time. I don’t remember his name.
“Sir, when was the last time you fired this?”
“Oh well I suppose it would’ve had to have been last time I went duck hunting.” He said with the expected amount of consonants missing.
“And what did you do with it after that?”
“Figured I’d just leave it in my boat for when I needed it next.”
“Did the boat sink?”
“It was a little leaky when I got back to it, why?”
I took a few minutes to explain to him that his firearm was more than likely in no condition to fire, and it’s structural integrity was probably so compromised by rust that if he tried to it could explode. He told me I didn’t know what I was talking about, and if I wouldn’t fix it then he’d find someone who would.
Over the course of that day he called me back twice. Evidently, he came across my phone number in two different places while looking for my replacement and neither time did he realize it was me. The second time he told me he’d leave me a poor review on something he called “Help”.

>Enjoy writing
>Shit at it

Any recommended books, tutorials, guides to better writing? And I'm not talking about punctuation, grammar, etc.. More about creating a more cohesive story and being descriptive without it becoming dry.

>wormth

yes

Retail. Surely it can't keep this up.

It felt like my anus had moved somewhere else on my body and for the first time in my life I had the thought “Oh fuck, I am too high”. I lied back in my bed, staring at my ceiling as it warped and convulsed in front of me. My muscles were spontaneously contracting, my abdomen and jaw constricting themselves as hard as they could at seemingly random moments and due to my inability to perceive time I couldn’t tell you how long it would take to finally realize what was happening and attempt to relax them. I thought drinking water would help, but every time I would drink it felt like it evaporated as soon as it made it past my throat. I began to worry that I had drank a large amount of water already and just managed to forget, and that if I kept drinking it my stomach would explode. I quickly forgot this, though, as the shadows my fingers projected onto my hand morphed into a very large spider.

I couldn’t hold a thought in my head. My laptop was playing an Alan Watts lecture entitled “The Joker” with a picture of the late Heath Ledger on YouTube. He would say something even slightly though provoking and I would uncontrollably fall down a rabbit hole of vaguely related thoughts. I would end up several layers deep in my imagination. It was as if I was in a dream within a dream several times over. Sometimes I would fall one layer deeper, sometimes I would have a brief moment of clarity and manage to pry myself up one layer before fading away again. It would culminate in my seizing up and realizing that I’d been lying in my bed the entire time, before eventually pit-falling again. I spent a large portion of that evening staring at the face of Heath Ledger’s joker, seeing a nearly infinite number of other faces held within like I was making shapes out of clouds. Most of them looked like clowns, some didn't.

I had been
Desperate to reach
Climax so-
But never
And let down again-
-Until
Until I claimed
Conquered her
She was willing an angel
I would be able
And At first it felt so good
A rush a rise
The salt the sweat
Head to head
Chest to chest
At first it seemed so right
A taste a treat
The hushed the screams
Body to body
Mind to mind
And then in the moaning hour
Our hearts chambered close together
My rigid member
Spewed forth it's white embers
And my exhausted body
Felt no release
The flow never ceased
And never has
For a lifetime

just write it how you normally would. this is no good. you can put all that into a nicer looking paragraph rather than some formulaic dull lines.

pastebin.com/raw/aZVG9SYR

"I'm cumming now!!!" She said, "My cums feel so good in my vagina and breasts!!!" She said lustily. "Also in my butt!!!" She said.

I simply winked.

nothing really from me to say

I enjoyed both and I would probably read more

and I liked first person/third person differently depending on the scene desu

Were you to ask me now, I would not tell
The road I took to go from Primrose Hill.

Instead, I could tell you about its sky,
The blue behind the grey, the hasty clouds,
Impatient as the rain that came and went,
Announcing itself as it left the stage.

Indeed, I could tell you about the road,
The other one, that leads to Primrose Hill:
The riverside that outlines Camden Town
And extends the hubbub of its market;
Tunnels, bridges, graffiti on the walls,
And boats resting on water black from dirt.

And even more I could tell you: the church
In the corner of a street, made of stone,
Its frame as bible black as solid cloud.

And I could tell you about Primrose Hill:
The green darkness of the grass, moisty earth,
So soft it yields under the children’s feet
Yet budges not to hawthorn or foxglove,
Nor to the oak with the weight of the crows,
The shadows of its leaves, another cloud.
Nor to the Hill itself, whose mighty bulk
Supports the stony sky, and grants a view
Of London’s skyline, limiting the earth
To the perspective of the horizon.

And as it gently rained I heard the crows,
The rustling wind, the voice of William Blake,
The graveness of his tone recalls his talk
With the spiritéd sun at Primrose Hill.
Yet I remember not the sun, but night,
The night of New Year’s Eve, my first night there,
In stranger’s land, among far stranger tongues.
But Primrose Hill distinguishes us not;
It shoulders all: the sky, the clouds, the rain,
Three hundred people there, a bench, myself.

But were you to ask me what road I took,
I wouldn’t tell, I could not tell, I have forgot.
I posted this like two weeks ago in a critique thread and got some constructive criticism. Let me know what you think of it.

Those first two paragraphs were good. I think you should take that angle of disgust further. I was hoping to sink deeper and deeper into disgust but you pulled out.

It reminds me of how I pull out hang nails with tweasers. The pain is intense but the relief you get when that sucker pulls out is incredible.

Trying to write as many short stories as I can, using free-association. This one is the first and mostly nonsense.

From 13 years of intense formicological studies, James Dawson had started to
glow in the dark. His doctor couldn't explain it, and the specialist that was
recommended him was equally at a loss of words. James Dawson didn't mind, he
had no family, no next of kin, not even a close friend. They had all died on
him, or left him for pastures which he did not understand, whose verdure he
could not comprehend, nor would ever experience.

James Dawson loved ants. He loved ants enough to sacrifice every particle of
his being toward a greater understanding of their mysteries. Time, of course,
because he understood that it was short, that his life was, as they say,
fleeting, like a missed train but more than this he sacrificed livelihood,
maybe even happiness. He had certainly given up on dreaming, he didn't sleep
anymore, he'd tried pills and therapy. Doctors, different doctors, had all told
him the same thing: his obsession, his profession, was the cause of his
insomnia. He told them, 'OK' and 'Can I get a prescription.'. They told him,
'Yes, but I'd like for you to come in for therapy. Or at least take some time
off work.' He'd left without saying much of anything and with a prescription
for a bottle of Ambien.

His doctors were worried, but they needn't have been, because ultimately James
Dawson never took his sleeping pills. He stayed awake late into the night
wondering whether the bite of Lasius Niger was wholly derived from the formic
acid it spit. He worried whether he would obtain that grant from that
organization for that project that was always on the horizon. And one day he
did obtain it and he then thought about all the things he had to pack for the
trip, he worried about the flight, the accomodations once he was there, the
success or failure of the project, whether radioactivity could really be wholly
and immutabily destroyed through the digestive tract of the Formica polyctena.
He wasn't interested in the applicability of the discovery, if there was any to
be made, the organization was and he had, out of necesicity lied to them about
his alligences. He did not believe in absolutes, neither in purity nor in
purpose. He allowed himself taint for the sake of something he had sacrificed
much for. It was, of course, counter-intuitive and he was aware of this, and
even found a perverse pleasure in the paradox, and never sought to justify the
dissonance, only mutely observe it as he did the world and his ants and
himself.

1/2

Now he was glowing, his urine drew parabolic arches in his dark bathroom. The
doctors had done tests and while the rapid clicking of their geiger counters
confirmed their worst fears, the existence of Richard Dawson, with skin and
hair and eyes still attached to their respective sockets and orificies, was an
anomaly their science could not explain. They wanted to study him and he
allowed this for a time, but soon he grew tired of their bewilderment and their
attachment to him. He had become inscrutable, as the object of his study and
this pleased him. He left the doctors and returned to his place of
observation, his research was not yet done, the organization was still
expecting results he had not yet delivered and though he could lie about
causes, he could never lie about results.

Ant study was a lonely task, few, if any, people really knew James Dawson. In
the eyes of the clerks who served at his hotel, he was a gaunt, tall man with a
strange softness in his features, a puckered quality to his mannerisms, as if
he was perpetually chewing on a lemon. Most people didn't dislike him, but they
chose to keep their distance. Instinctively they pitied him, 'Poor sap, stuck
working here of all places'. This was not true, but James Dawson did not like
to correct people, least of all when it came to himself, for he had never felt
concrete enough to argue about what he was or was not. Suffice it to say like his curious subject of interest he had lost
all trace of self, all concept of individuality. So that when he began to glow
and the others regarded him with suspicion and fear and some with wonder, it
did not touch him. Any more than the crushed body of a fellow ant would touch
the unbending will and fervor of the colony.

Gradually the glow tore away at his insides. Certain effects which the doctors
expected, did not appear, and in their place more subtle and more sinister
demons came to play. He was
almost finished now with his work. Ultimately, he had concluded, that the
potential of radioactive removal was slim to none. Ants were ants, they carried
out their purpose blind to all trappings of time and inevitability that everyone
else carried. Their indifference was only a footnote to their uselessness.

2/3

The
organization was disappointed, but it was a calculated risk and James Dawson
had done the work he had promised to do. All in all, they could show papers
which absolved them of any wrongdoing and ultimately you had to 'Pity the poor
guy, he spent all that time and got nothing for it, nothing but sick.'

And James Dawson was sick, and he was glowing and he was angry. He wanted to
know why he built these walls around himself, trapping and enfeebling his
spirit in a prison of his own making. Why had he stopped all traffic and
immigration into his person? He had studied social creatures, the cohesive
singular organism composed of the multitude. There was nothing analogous to
this in himself. He had no longer the strength to move his limbs, his fingers,
his eyebrows even. And as he finally slept, as rest finally came, his thoughts
turned finally inward into himself and he died.

I'd like some critique on this. Any grammar-related corrections are very much welcome, as I'm a filthy ESL.

--

A wound, subcutaneous, violated the virgin skin, the stench of urine spreading on the room endlessly. Her skin was cut, lips shut; the eyes glued to the ceiling, the legs to the floor.

Tiles that never met an end was all my eyes could see, a constant buzzing all my ears could hear; yet, I could not feel.

I grabbed her hand, holding my breath.

One.

Two.

Three.

I was ashamed, but I needed her help. I looked, with sorrowful eyes, at her. "Can you help me?" my eyes begged.

"Of course."

A short trip with an unfocused look was all it took. In secluded seconds, she pierced beyond the sensitive foreskin. The needle, hipodermic, held my senses back. The whole 8 millimeters entered my urethra, millimeter by millimeter, until it fully penetrated the reactive host. I held my tongue as the tip burned; every nerve was reacting to the hard silver, senses now twisting. Excruciating pain ran through my veins, my brain feeling spines that were not there.

Now, the needle was resting inside, droplets of urine and blood dripping onto the floor. Her hand took my hand ahold as I held my breath. My eyes were closed.

I could not see, I could not hear; yet, I could feel.

Nozomi began her move starting by kissing Eli from the neck, then to her chest, and then to her navel. Not soon after, Nozomi pulled Eli's lacy panties with her teeth And while Eli's scent was still fresh on her nose, Nozomi hastily undressed herself in front of Eli, who watched her with great anticipation. When she returned back to her lady, Nozomi readily lifted Eli's leg up and positioned her privates against her girlfriend's. Drenched and warm to the touch, they both felt their leaking saps intermingle into a shared sensation of pervertedness.

Gently, Nozomi began to rock her hips and rubbed their petals together. Rocking in rhytmn, they were aching for each other's touch. And as they felt their flowers began to flood with their searing hot nectar, they both felt the temptation of going even rougher.

Nozomi raised Eli's thighs higher and held them closer to her chest as she began grinding herself to Eli's crotch with an increased pace. She could already feel Eli's pulse against her skin. And as they filled the room with the sound of their moans and gasps, their ragged breathing was thick and heavy with a need for more.

The sight of Eli's breasts playfully bouncing was a sight that made Nozomi smile. Seduced by the view, Nozomi reach her hand for it and cupped it without stopping on her assaults on their crotch. The intense and almost painful elation coursed through, making Eli's pleasured cry ring out. Her back began to arch as she fell disgracefully to Nozomi's vigorous caresses. As she keep Eli's thighs in the right position, Nozomi's mouth fell agape and her eyes half-shut as her own cries of ecstasy came into surface.

A few seconds more, Nozomi lost it and slowly let herself fall unto Eli's body. Their breast pressed together, they could the beating of their heart with a deafening clarity. The heat of their skin felt comforting and kept them in touch with reality before they could slip into a maddened state. Nozomi kissed Eli, silencing her cries for a moment and in turn, pampered her with the warm taste of her tongue.

When she withdrew, their moans changed into that of a higher pitch. Short in breath and poisoned by their passionate lust, they are being commanded by their primal instincts alone. They know that they are almost at the peak and when Eli sensed it, she reached out her hands and hugged her girlfriend tightly as if she was afraid.

And with one final stroke, it happened. At the same time, the strings that kept them together broke and, with a serenade of screams, their senses were wiped away by the overflowing surge of emotions. Jolting and buckling allover, their backs arch with the hard orgasm. And as their rationality fails them, down on their legs, the muscles of their privates fell into shock that, in a spur of a moment, a sudden torrent of warm fluids were released, spraying the bed sheets with the searing hot liquid.

After the final cry was released, they both collapsed into a heaving mess.

I uploaded the wrong image...

She died when the leaves first turn brown on the trees. I was sent away to live with my fathers relatives and had no idea what was going on at the time but at night when i lay in a dark that wasn't familiar it felt like the world was about to end.
Something had changed when i came back. My mother no longer hummed along to the music on the radio. My footsteps seemed to loud when i ran down the stairs and more than once i paused to see if the sound echoed across the hallway.
There where unsaid words hanging around in the air that where charged with an anger that turned the atmostphere in the house blue and electric. I often wondered if perhaps the walls around me where about to cave in under the pressure my mothers sadness held over everything.
The cold made cristal ice on the inside of my windows at night. When i woke up in the morning i liked to draw figures with my fingers and watch as the sun made colours when it shinned through into my bedroom.
On weekends i explored the house and gave my imagination the oportunity to tell stories that broke through the walls of my reality and bent the rules of imposibility. My parents where treating each other with contempt reserved for strangers and my mother began to hate my father for not trying to understand what she was going through. Words filled with spite became the norm. I learnt the oldest lesson of mankind back then that teaches us to get use to the stone that trips us everytime we go outside. During moments of unsupressed anger they shared with each other i would hide in the bathroom on the second floor and through balls of water soked toilet paper at the cealing to soffocate the boredom.

She died when the leaves first turn brown on the trees. I was sent away to live with my fathers relatives and had no idea what was going on at the time but at night when i lay in a dark that wasn't familiar it felt like the world was about to end.
Something had changed when i came back. My mother no longer hummed along to the music on the radio. My footsteps seemed to loud when i ran down the stairs and more than once i paused to see if the sound echoed across the hallway.
There where unsaid words hanging around in the air that where charged with an anger that turned the atmostphere in the house blue and electric. I often wondered if perhaps the walls around me where about to cave in under the pressure my mothers sadness held over everything.
The cold made cristal ice on the inside of my windows at night. When i woke up in the morning i liked to draw figures with my fingers and watch as the sun made colours when it shinned through into my bedroom.
On weekends i explored the house and gave my imagination the oportunity to tell stories that broke through the walls of my reality and bent the rules of imposibility.
I learnt the oldest lesson of minkind back then that teaches us to get use to the stone that trips us everytime we go outside. My parents where treating each other with contempt reserved for strangers and my mother began to hate my father for not trying to understand what she was going through. Words filled with spite became the norm. During moments of unsupressed anger they shared with each other i would hide in the bathroom on the second floor and through balls of water soked toilet paper at the cealing to soffocate the boredom.

I remember commenting on this before and I really liked it.

>And extends the hubbub of its market

I find "hubbub" a bit jarring, though. I think it's inelegant compared to some of the other vocab you are using.

Other than that, damn, I'm impressed

Goddamit why does it apear twice. I fucking hate it when this happens. Second one is the one i wanted to post btw.

I think there are lots of holes in your narration. Get rid of excesive amount of comas. Shorten sentences.Find a way to stop making the prose sound woden. And above all don't give random snipets of information that lead nowhere or contradict each other later. If you're writing a short story everything you say should have some weight in the narration. I've read it twice and i'm still wondering what it's about. Is it about the ants he studies? Him glowing in the dark? How he feels isolated from the people that surround him?. You don't really make it clear and the whole thing sounds like a long winded excentric description of a character.

Not sexy.
A list of sex acts does nothing.
You either need to describe the characters' inner experience, or add some real pervertedness, or preferably both.

A gay as fuck poem I made for a gay as fuck thread.

Come around darling,
we’ll stay for a day.
I’ll try to be charming,
if not, I’ll like you anyway.

I’ll try to avoid a trite cliche,
such as going to a cafe.
Instead I want you for myself,
but stay away from by bookshelf.

Responding to uncritiqued posts. Because someone has to do it i guess.

It's dull... the narrative just plonks along and you have too many random peices of information floating around that just confuses the reader.

Someone has already done a critique but anyway. Probably my favourite in the thread. You're not trying to sound like a literary genius when you write. It's simple and goes straight to the point, as it should.

Think. If you where drowning, would those be the kind of thoughts that went through your mind?

Just a cheep glorification of war. Terrible.

I don't know enough about poetry to say if this is good or bad.

Although this one... This poem is the embodiment of pure cheese user.

Bricks. Doesn't really grasp my interest too much but it might work in a biger context. The prose is okay.

Bordeline autistic in some parts. For the most it's just... plain. You're getting there though.

Stereotypical depiction of a drug experience. Take some drugs and post better results.
Didn't give me a boner.

Thanks, I'll work on it. It was supposed to be about all three of those things, and they were supposed to be related. I need to write more (in general).

Thanks user, still...the prose wasn't about literally drowning, which is why I wrote it like that. It was supposed to be from the perspective of a guy whose addiction drew his end near and he just realized that and decided to write in order to free himself from the shackles of said addiction, successfully getting out of the metaphorical barrel full of alcohol in which he was drowning his whole life. In the end, even if he got out, he still died(in a comic relief moment) because he turned to smoking(an another addiction) setting fire to his alcohol drenched body.
Still, your critique is much appreciated user!

If anyone gets bored and wants to tear into some paranormal fiction, check this out. It's my first delve into first person writing.

pastebin.com/LbAw0y0w