There are people out there that think this is good writing

How does this stuff get published?

Why is this bad writing?
What constitutes good writing?
According to you, of course.

Not disagreeing with you, just curious about the criteria you use to evaluate.

Someone's bitter about tfw no gd

I'm taste and can confirm that's good writing.

maybe it strikes you as false because you dont know that feel

The ideas are super quaint
The form is deliberately simplistic, repetitive and juvenile but fails to make anything of it. The whole "look how I'm totally not trying so you actually can't criticize it" shtick is way overdone and it doesn't work ever

The writing is awful - and that should be evident to everyone here. Making someone actually put in the effort to spell it out is just obnoxious.

no aesthetic value or creativity with language use, no wise remarks on human condition, no cognitive component either.

That's not bad writing, you just dislike it because you can't claim to be le intellectual while reading it.
dude its just SELF-EVIDENT LMAO
>human condition
>wisdom
Fuck off pseud.

fuck off socrates

it's successful at evoking the scene and emotions it wants to evoke

>It was the kind of laugh I could listen to for the rest of my life.
>And in that moment I knew I loved you more than anyone else I had ever loved. In that moment I knew you were my once in a lifetime.

This is the kind of shit I tell my girlfriend so she'll shut up and let me go to sleep. The first dumb nothings that pop into my head, subconsciously stolen from a bunch of bad movies. As actual writing it's incredibly juvenile and clichéd.

I don't really like the last line, but the rest of it's good

Only if the emotion it wants to evoke is disgust, or maybe pity. There isn't a whiff of originality in that paragraph.

maybe when you say those things to her, they're received seriously and powerfully

the kind of writing in the op captures her experience

what's wrong with that

it sounds like something from a meme

people have been falling in love for a long time

maybe if it were more original, it would be less faithful to the experience

ubuuuh buuuh it isn't SUPER MATURE AND DEEP AND WISE

Was it you that wrote this shit?

The only thing that bothers me about that passage is the false contrast at the end.

>...you were my once in a lifetime. And yet all we were doing as looking for ice cream.

I fail to see how the two are supposed to conflict.

no im just a longtime poster tired of Veeky Forumss shit

You're basically saying "It was bad intentionally".

profound feeling of love vs. mundane setting and activity

if Veeky Forums isnt even getting this...

It's mundane as hell, only being a few words away from being composed entirely of cliches.

More importantly, there's no excitement, no intrigue -- nothing that makes this piece of writing worth reading. You might say, "lol you've just never experienced this!" But that's no excuse: if you're writing about a feeling, you as the writer should be skilled enough to describe it and the situation from which it comes with such clarity and detail that someone who hasn't experienced it can feel they have.

In fact, the fact that it's second-person makes it even weaker. The lack of specific details is absurd: if this is for your lover, why on earth would you not describe anything? Not the store, not the ice cream flavors, not the clothes they were wearing. At best, we have the coldness of the guy's nose, the fact that he was wearing sweats (but what kind of sweats?), that his hair was messy (in what way, though?), and that they were in bed all afternoon.

If you were telling this story to your lover -- who, most importantly, was there with you -- you'd include more specific detail, simply because it would matter to you.

waaah it isn't super deep and exciting buhbuhbuh

@8814000
@8814021
You're not adding anything to the conversation (or even effectively trolling), so I don't know why you're posting.

You know usually when someone on Veeky Forums says something's shit I take it with a grain of salt but this is genuinely terrible. It's unsubtle, juvenile, and clunky. The execution doesn't justify all the cliches, either.

Obviously not everything has to be ~THUPER DUPER DEEP~ but there's totally a line between fun and dumb and poor writing. Chuck Palahniuk and Neil Gaiman are fucking hacks but at least there's SOME skill involved, y'know? Fuck, even Dan Brown could write circles around this chick. Yikes.

>And in that moment I knew I loved you more than anyone else I had ever loved. In that moment I knew you were my once in a lifetime.

This is liking writing about a landscape and using words like "pretty" and "nice".

I still don't see it. I'd wager that the overwhelming majority of all love stories unfold in mundane settings and activities.

are people really arguing that it's good? also it's not original in anyway, the dude paraphrases a drake lyric in it and it was cheesy when he used it years ago.
who/what is this anyway op

This is the kind of dribble that twenty-something year olds write when their experiencing love. Easily swooned by the first experiences of intimate connection. It gets published because it's relatable and simply written enough to elude the common reader that its something that they could've written.

It's cute and evokes so I don't care if it's generic-worded

>Not writing short stories using stolen AskReddit posts
Perfect opportunity to make 21st century bank.

>you're just trolling if you want me to stop demanding purple prose
It's not good, it's just that your reasons as to why it isn't good are awful.

it has none of the qualities i associate with good writing, and yet i had an aesthetic experience reading it.

maybe some of you would too if you lightened up and stopped trying so hard

Yes, because using words well, being original in expression, and aiming for some semblance of meaningfulness are all "purple prose".

Can you remind me of what purple prose is? What's an example of it, just so we're on the same page?

Evocative parts:
>wanted ice cream even though it was cold out
Strange endearing impulse
>teasing you about being so indecisive
Cute, characterizes both of them
>suggested we just buy every flavour in the store
Amusing!
>you said i was silly and you kissed me
Very appealing
>pressed against me so i could feel how cold the tip of your nose was
oooh la la
>you were only in sweats, hair so messy from being in bed all afternoon
Ooooh la la la la la la la! Nice characterization :)

the few cliche lines do not detract

>meaningfulness
so deep

I'll bite.
Who's the author?

the writing put me in the scene and in her head, and it struck me as true, as in she successfully captured her experience and made me experience it too.

i didnt regret the lack of linguistic brilliance or intellectual content. it has different good qualities.

nigga you wrote this shit

it's better than anything i've seen posted in a critique thread on Veeky Forums

>boo hoo it's not intellectual enough for you!

This is fucking dumb arguement. I don't pick up a book or story so I can read the equivalent of listening to static on the radio, I read to think shit or to visualize some fucking thing. Basic 8th grade mind numbing writing is bad. And that is exactly what this story is, 8th grade fuckman writing.

It's not supposed to be a contrast you dip.

that's literally stolen from Harold Bloom's criteria, pseud

>And yet

so you decline to be transported into another consciousness unless its a genius's. 8th grade writing isnt bad because its cliched and unoriginal but because it fails to transport and evoke. this thing in the op is banal, but it puts you in the banal scene, and therefore is successful and not bad.

Here's more fun then, try re-wiritng that passage in what you'd, as an user, consider good writing.

---------

It was cold, but you wanted ice-cream and didn't know which flavour to get, so you hummed and ummed in a sterile grocery lane like a big child. Poking zits last night while pretending they were cancer moles, I concluded - that after two good years - I now hated you. It was quite sudden but I was calm about it. I just hated you in a half dark bathroom and then I squeezed a spot too hard and thick blood ran down over my furrowed brow. But waiting awkwardly in the grocery store, I realized I hated you mainly because you never knew what flavour of anything you wanted - unless it was cum or brightly marketed - and I hated all of that because it made me see how cheap we were. Dropping a Cornetto you do this empty smile and ask what flavour I want but I don't want any ice cream so you kiss me and I can feel the cold end of your nose, hearing you breath and giggle again the words: "I don't know. I just don’t know". Your wet lips press and smile on mine and I give a fake laugh. You pull away, still giving me this vague grin. I’m suddenly not sure if you could tell my face apart from any other man’s. There's no way. It's like I'm a silhouette in an endless supermarket that could've been filled with any shape, and all of your smiling happiness is an insult, not just to me, but all the hundred men who could've been me - and who are me, I suppose. The light flickers and I tell you we should go home. You laugh and say nothing. I keep wondering if you can poison ice-cream.

I'd actually cut this bit out, works better:
>It was quite sudden but I was calm about it. I just hated you in a half dark bathroom and then I squeezed a spot too hard and thick blood ran down over my furrowed brow. But waiting awkwardly in the grocery store, I realized I hated you mainly because you never knew what flavour of anything you wanted - unless it was cum or brightly marketed - and I hated all of that because it made me see how cheap we were.

>i read to think
*picks up Sartre*
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
...i think... christians are very stupid...
*looks contemplatively out the window whilst kind of blue plays on my very overpriced record player*
yes... sartre was very enlightened... i am certain he would appreciate my loli collection...

Garbage; reads like a bad LN.

Then write.

nigga by defending this shit you are being willingly autistic.
There are some people who don't chose to be autistic, but you do.

>insignificant action provokes overblown sentimentality

This shit creeps into my stuff all the time. It's one of those things that is fun to write and painful to read.

Ice cream. Ice cream?! Don't speak to me about ice cream. The fucking lanes were full of it, in that factory of horrors they sardonically call a grocery store. Ice cream. I scream. But you don't listen. You want your fucking ice cream.

It's not about the flavour. It's not even about the fucking ice cream. I could buy every ice cream in the fucking building but that wouldn't satisfy your lust. As I shove cone after cone, scoop after scoop into your yawning man, spreading it on your face, rubbing it into your disgusting "sweats", which I can only assume is slang for some sort of casual clothing, you just laugh. You laugh and open wider. Pulling me in. Slobbering over my face like Frosty the Snowman in heat. I can't taste you. I can't taste the ice cream. Only the numbing chill of your face rubbing into mine. Somehow, you still laugh. Your mouth is closed over mine but you laugh. Into my throat. Into my bones. Laughter I can never, ever escape from.

You say I love you. I can hardly deny it. What is love? Is love ice cream? Packaged and sold in demented aisles to the highest bidder? Melting in the sun, melting down your throat, before you ask for a second portion?

Fine, you fucker. Let's get that ice cream.

these are so fun to read! good rewrites and I agree. I think the people on this board just like to give each other bullshit, but OP is the kind of stuff I read in my public college creative writing class. It's boring, but you guys write cool.

It's DIFFERENT, you have to admit even if you don't like it, whereas we get a million copies of OP writing.

Edited for flow:

It was cold, but you wanted ice-cream and didn't know which flavour to get, so you hummed and ummed in a sterile grocery lane like a big child. Poking zits last night while pretending they were cancer moles, I realized that after two good years I now hated you. I didn’t know why, I was just relieved and then I popped a spot hard enough to draw blood. But waiting awkwardly in a grocery lane, I began to understand. You flashed this empty smile over a Cornetto, asking what flavour I wanted but not listening. I didn’t want ice-cream and you just moved closer to me, until I could feel the cold end of your nose, and I could hear you breathe and giggle again the words: "I don't know." I felt your cold lips try and press a smile into my face, so I gave a fake laugh and you pulled away, still giving me the vague smirk of a bad comedian. Suddenly I became certain that you couldn’t tell my face from any other man’s. There’s no way. I was just familiar: a silhouette in an endless supermarket that could've been filled with any shape, and all of your smiling happiness was an insult, not just to me, but the hundred men who could've been me - and who are me, I suppose. The light flickered on and then off. I tell you we should go home. You laugh but say nothing, we walk quietly out, bag empty. I keep wondering if you can poison ice cream.

This is unrealistic because a person whose mind sounds like this is undateable

I like it, sets the scene well, is pleasingly laconic without needlessly obscuring the details, makes me feel some no gf feels, all around I liked it

What book is that from?

I fucking hate normies

This reminds me of poorly written and/or translated anime dialogue.

top lel

While this is awful and unironically brings me pain, Ice Cream in the winter is God tier because it doesn't melt and leave your hand a sticky disgusting mess.

Holy...I want more...no seriously, please write more

Why is it good then?

Why is everyone assuming that this was written by a woman? That never even crossed my mind, but it looks like everyone else is taking that as given

High key bait

>Good = successful at what it set out to do
Why?

It reeks of vagina minded writing. You'll get a sixth sense for it after you've read enough swill.

I was with it for the first four sentences. It read like something I would have written on my LiveJournal thirteen years ago.

i just assumed some beta nu-male wrote it.

To answer your question, OP, that shit is published because that's what sells with teenagers and the YA crowd.
To answer the question as to why it's bad, simply becuase it's just a cliche ridden, super cheesy, overly sentimental crap written for teenagers. No intelligent adult is supposed to read that and think it's good. If you want more like it, just pick a random tumblerina blog, you will get the exact same quality in writing, just less polished by editors and marketing teams.

Because the thought that it was written by a man is too heavy a burden to bear.

idk, that is pretty bad

What is this from?

Can someone name the author?

it's obviously written from the perspective of a man, about a woman

i mean what man can't decide what fucking ice cream to buy

Show me your work

If you dont get the intention of this, YOU are the retards.

>It was bad on purpose!

females buy it

>their

are you fucking kidding me?
you didn't notice that he said "dribble" rather than "drivel"?

>How does this stuff get published?
The author was a 'minority' or a faggot, that's how.

worse than your first

Nice. I wanna try.

My vision receded behind my eyes like a newly severed spaghetti noodle artery slurp-slurping up into its wound cavity as my brain started to roll around in my skull. Through blurry eyes the world started to tilt and swirl, the sterile white lights hovering over the ice-cream section (isle fifteen, just after the pet food) spinning into little UFO's, until the rocking stopped and I saw you glancing over a box of king-size Drumsticks, your pink, chapped lips pursed with what I prayed was indecision. We'd been browsing for a while.
"If you can't decide we can just buy one of everything." I hoped I sounded coy. You giggled (nervously?) that cute-ass laugh rushing past your half-open smile and right then I wanted nothing more in the whole wide world than to crawl past those perfect straight teeth and down your throat and settle in the curve of your warm stomach so I could listen to that laugh echo off your ribs for an eternity. Besides, it was fucking cold; my fingers were dry and icy from the chilly weather. Why did you want ice cream anyway?
You leaned in and we rested forehead to forehead, like my mother might have done if she were checking for a fever, your frozen button nose (like a snowman) sidling up to mine like two Eskimos cuddling for warmth, your unruly hair tickling my cheeks.
"You're so silly." you muttered, your soft words tickling my lips. I resisted the surprise urge to lick them out of the air and gobble them down, to digest them for hidden meanings and secret agendas. My stiff indexes played at the edge of your sweater and sweatpants.
You smelled warm and good, like a lazy sunlit afternoon spent in bed eating a late breakfast of hot, syrupy pancakes. My heart began to ache with the fear of losing you. It didn't really matter how, just the possibility was enough. My shoulders became heavy beneath my coat.
Was this love? I could never be sure, but I figured there wasn't much else it could be, since the Xanax was working just fine, for the most part. I think.
But maybe not. After all, I mused lingering close to you for a second more, we're just buying ice-cream.

And only now do I realize I used "like" way too much here. Dammit.

If this isn't bait the writing's elegant prose

I'd agree worse than the first, although I liked the first much better than OP. A little bit of Chris Palahniuk there at the start, and the overall feeling of what you're going for reminds me of him. Probably better not to get the flow right, make the sentences longer and more evocative with emotion and imagery without using words like "hate" so much

Mmm, yeah... ice cream. I love ice cream. I am always ready for ice cream. At any time of day I am yearning for a particular flavor of ice cream. This morning it was Pineapple-lemom-chocolate with strawberry syrup on top, no sugarsticks. I rarely wish for chocolate, by the way. It's just too plebian - everybody likes it. I was past my chocolate phase when I was 8 years old. So today was special. After work, I invited my girlfriend to my top ice cream place, and we went. We got there and I asked her what flavor she'd like to get. "I don't know". What? Are you stupid? "I just can't pick". Suddenly I realised - I don't love her anymore. In fact, I hate her. I hate people like that. That's why I kept my love for ice cream to myself. Two years, hiding my passion, just so I didn't have to feel like I feel now. Disappointed. Disenchanted. I hate her. Time to die, bitch. I pull out my ice katana and stab her trough her belly. Before anyone sees, I put her hands on the katana handle so it looks like she commited sepuku/sudoku/whatever. I call the security guard and they take her out of there. Her indecisive blood desecrated the pristine floor of my temple.

Why did I react so harshly? What the fuck? Kill yourself if you are honestly asking this!

did tao lin ruin literature? lol

Wow, these are all terrible. Like "John Green" terrible.

fuck. That's bad.

...

>"“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”

It's just romantic nonsense. In context it's fairly beautiful, but just on it's own it reads like a tumblr post.

Mmm ice cream at the grocery store. We bought it and then we ate out the store in the chilly cold cold. We went with chocolate chip cause I like chocolate chip and you like surrendering your will like a silly. You'd came up close and kissed me and I took your breath in my mouth, better than ice cream. Your long sweet hair so matted and sleepy, before I realized my hand was there and making gentle work of untangling some of the knottier parts. After a minute or so I just wanted to touch you alot to be honest and I asked if we could start walking home still eating the ice cream by tugging your hand and you were giggling purer than wintrest sky. Mmm tasty ice cream thoughts.

"Ice cream? Hell, I'll make you scream."

But what flavor? I shoved my my hand deeper into the freezer and let fate decide.

Pistachio, then. Extra nuts.

We were alone in the aisle, so what the hell? I got out my pecker and she shrieked, almost inhuman. I couldn't stop her, should have hit her. No free hand.

I shoved my limp noodle into the green unknown and quivered.

"Extra nuts, woo baby!"

Chinaski, I said to myself, absolute madman.

I hate how life-apologists say ‘Life isn’t all suffering. What about the simple pleasures, like eating ice cream?' They always use that example. Even if I didn’t recognize the flaws in their assertion, when I think of ice cream, I can only see a repugnant lump of pus crushed out of cows’ bloody nipples, who spend their entire lives confined in filth, where they’re periodically raped so that they’re incessantly pregnant… I always ride the pessimism train down different tracks until it inevitably leads me to contemplating over 500 million years of animals cannibalizing each other. Excuse me for not being thrilled by the extra jimmies on my ice cream cone.

Crash! Only one God remained; two if you counted ice cream.

There was this old joke that used to be told when I served in the Jugoslav arrrrmy. The Croat recruit turns to the Serbian and says "How does" *sniff* "Reese eat her ice cream?" and the Serb, of courshe, he replies "Witherspoon". You shee *sniff* all contemporary dischcourshe is shaturated with theshe referensches to the pop culture. It is ineschcapable, like, as Freud shays, our ineschcapable deshire to kill our fathersh in order to copulate with our mothersh.

>still doesn't get why its written this way