CRITIQUE THREAD: tuckoo and the moo-cows rock band edition

I feel like this is just showing off your prose/vocab/references instead of meaning anything.

>How does your character know this? I never liked this way of describing speed in increments, just say, for example, "we sped up since I noticed the puff of smoke go past." or something.

20 knots is extremely fast for a water vessel. The character knows his speed is absurd because he often worked in the sea as a fisherman.

I like it. Only criticism might be that "Too bad no one pays to see carcasses. At least, we do not admit it openly" is a little lame. I get that it's about mankind's morbid voyeurism, but maybe make it a bit more subtle.

The government man

The light reflected of the polished white walls of the deep corridor, the sharp, slicing blue sheen mirrored in his sunken eyes. In his brain a rasping pain. The shine went through his skull, his meat, like a group of children burning leaves with a magnifying glass, his head in the pile, exposed. His knuckles was closed and locked, had been since the lingering heat had started. He thought himself an aged, internally unrepairable boxer, going to the ring. It was all quiet except for his violent, rhythmic steps and a low hum. He felt guided by the sounds of electricity. It was the only constant, when the boiling inside got too intense his vision blurred, white smudged into blue, his steps faded, his thoughts nothing but echoing, incoherent cries. But the humming kept him in line. Go forward.

It was just a path, straight ahead. No chances for divergence. He felt it more a maze. Soon he was at the tall doors, a darker shade of white. He found it funny. He didn't knock, he attacked the door with his fists, round 1. Soon a man wearing the most disgusting tie he had ever seen in his life opened. Asymmetrical lines of dark brown and bright yellow, it blurred together.

He thought it would be very amusing if he ripped the tie from the man and chocked him to death with it. He smirked to himself. The image of the man having the tie around his throat and his tongue hanging out of his mouth, his eyes filled with primal fear, was a very comedic picture. After he would say.

"Looks like you are all tied up now!"

The man behind the door asked for the files. He gave them to him. "Next time Marty please don't interrupt my lunch break, you should have been here like 20 mins ago, if you can't get here on time i will have to talk to the boss."

He didn't respond. He slowly turned around, a tank searching for a new target camouflaged under a layer of snow. He gazed at the corridor he just had gone through. The white and blue were a perfect swivel, going round and round. He now had a fire inside of him, burning everything down from the center.

I kinda agree with this user but i don't think you are just trying to show of. I like what you have going but some rewrites to make it all fit together better could be good.

>I was greeted by man who held a sign up with my name embossed in eloquent black letters.
passive VOICE

>The car churned to life
meaningless

>I paused and looked at the queer scene
It's 1897

>Curiously
TWEE!!!!

Anyway I stopped there. Don't take it personally, I'm very impatient and don't enjoy fiction at all. But I would say that try to write like it's not the olden days, and be more direct.

why does everything have to be so gross with you guys

A few excerpts from my currently stagnant and putrefying project called "Union" or "The Face of a Killer." It is mostly about birth within stories about travel.

I gathered myself up and floated back toward the New Frontier. I may have left a bit of myself with Cadre. By the time I reached the Frontier, I was reintegrated. I once again crossed the threshold into the lobby of the hotel. In the case of many hotels in The Valley, due to extensive civil defense measures, both the buildings and their occupants have been reduced to thinning bodies. The building is subject to assaults from hot ash, gas, and a relentless anxious energy. I entered the lobby and waited on a sofa for Celinda. Two squat men scrabbled in hanging tattered pajamas and nightgowns and wafting the sulfurous reek of the world's most populous urban area. One of them had been bloodied in a fight.
“These people are the hardest to please,” complained one of the men, “Some of them are so unspoiled.” His friend cloaked him, half naked but only slightly injured.
“They hate everything,” Celinda said behind me. White haired, confident, and precise, she appeared in the lobby. “Giant neanderthals, flexing, spurting,” she said, relating to me the qualities of the natives.

In New York is its austere loneliness - some mystery to ask about. I thought about this but could not concentrate as I sipped wine with him and his wife in mean, fly-infested rooms. The days weren't long enough but they can satisfy. Resonance with the ground waves echoed elsewhere - stained the sessions.
The visitor overlooks all discomfort. An investigation timed at the start of the dry season was methodically pushing the Irreverent Director down to the ground in search of short wave radios at the fly-specked barren areas around waterholes.
Schools, government bureaus, and offices. National telephone and telex lines were dead, strewn with broken glass and brick, dumb – the pulverized concrete thud of the skull. A thousand people had died. It gives little sense of the human consequences. The wretchedness of seasickness as we ran. Waves of people – patients out of the warped care center – poured desperately into the streets. He stayed with me, becrystallized in the struggle, pulling at the running children who are going to grow up and say,
“I've got to do anything, fix anything, work anything. Who knows what we will find?” without ever leaving home. And there is so much cable TV excitement. I think they want one thing clearly. It was no place for transients.

It is partially aleatorically composed and composited. Is this compelling? Would you enjoy reading more?

Hey guys its me :)))) xD give me attention IM A WOMAN IM SUPERIOR

The leaf burning imagery is too confused. I'd suggest scrapping it.

What does the lingering heat refer to? It seems too inconsequential to be explained so cryptically.

Nobody calls their boss "the boss." They refer to him/her by name.

Is the tank or its target camouflaged beneath snow?

Pay attention to comma usage.

I have a similar habit of simply inventively describing things without considering their place in the text. Your sentences have little flow from one to another. You seem to enjoy describing space, but I cannot arrive at any unified image from reading your description.

I'm a pretty avid reader, but I feel that my writing is still weak, so any critiques are appreciated. I'll post my critiques in a separate post.

Each passing neighborhood evoked a sense of nauseous curiosity in Jack. The double-story houses and their suburban lawns came to life in the dusk, as if the atmosphere were anticipating the memories to be of teenagers: a house party, a circle of smoking sophomores—things that Jack only knew in his mind.

Jack dimmed his ruminations just enough to pick up on the rise and fall in intonation that separated a statement from a question. His mother was talking about something (he wasn't attentive enough to know what) and he knew when to say "uhuh" and when to ask "what" in the midst of his mother's stream.

"That's just not normal."
"Yah."
"Five kids at twenty-four, and she's talking with boys that age."
"Yah."
"And of course the other one has two moms, not that it's my place to judge."
"Yah."

He wondered what two moms meant. Mom and stepmom? A lesbian marriage? A jab at someone's masculinity which he had not detected? He wasn't sure.

I like the dialogue but the rest of your prose is too tangled and verbose. "dimmed his ruminations" is bad. "Rise and fall in intonation that separated a statement from a question" can simply be replaced with "vocal cadence" or similar. I understand breaking down certain things to their atomic components, but the sound of conversation always appears to a person as the sound of a conversation unless that person is very high or has auditory agnosia. Try to write only how things appear immediately to you.

I would also suggest perhaps writing faster so that you can limit overthinking and overwriting before it can occur.

Also, do you think anyone would ever refer to a pair of an effeminate husband and his wife as "two moms"? The person could only be realistically referring to a pair of lesbian parents.

Thanks for the critique.

Thanks in advance big guys.

He usually picture her bounding through lily flowers, sun flowers, anything without thorns basically. He didn’t know why, some association from a film or a cartoon most likely. The floweriness of these fantasies came close to blotting out the sun, and he understood this completely. He intentionally tried to take her down a peg, but the visions haunted him. He soon realized the only reason he even wanted the sun to stay shining was to keep the damn flowers alive, so she wouldn’t end up in his head prancing through broken glass and used needles on some big-city street with a frown on her face and tears in her eyes. He’d never left his little town of a mere one thousand souls, but he found a universe of discovery and adventure within her, and his young heart was content, his wanderlust subdued for many years before his growing heart was shattered, and after a period of mourning, his eyes turned toward other adventures. His fondness for home gradually began to fade away. His father and mother noticed great changes in him. Excitement that had been subdued for so long a time was now beginning to surface, like stopped up rage in a fit of screaming.

As others have stated, it appears to be a display of prose for the sake of showing off. Although it could be simplified a bit, I actually liked it.

This might sound puerile, but I think there is too much description of place, and it is actually somewhat detrimental to creating context.

Truly sublime. Keep up the good work.

Thanks for the tips. While I agree that the last bit was dumb, I have actually heard the two husbands thing used as an insult before.

On the first cycle of The Observable Universe, the physical realm was ruled by a
partnership of two distinct societies. In the deepest pockets of the Aria
Cluster, a binary star system allowed for a carbon-based life form to breathe
the air of two planets. This was where the Cythereans found a docile but wise
intelligent life form that was able to speak to them without using words. The
Cythereans saw that the Privosi had no weapons or defense systems and so the
wise commander did not start a war but instead formed a friendship.

A civilisation have ultimately escaped
transcended the physical realm. They have expanded to multiple galaxies
and had centralised controls in suitable star systems. Out of all the problems
they have solved, The Great Dust remains an elusive threat. A phenomena which
occurs when a civilisation is able to communicate with mind streams across time
and space experience a momentary lapse in their established connections.

As much as they were advanced, their societies thrived in staying in
multi-planetary states. The Nomadic model was still viable as a means of
surviving without a planet but travel always has its risks. The Great Dust
became an observable phenomena when it manifested as Antimatter, effectively
nullifying object leaving the void of space. When these tore apart through
travelling worlds and other stationary settlements, the Privos were able to
retain their mindstream form. However The Cythereans dispersed back into The
Oceanl, though in a few talented Cythereans were confirmed to have
retained their mindstream beyond physical death. The Mindstream continuum stemming
from all entities of the Observable Universe persisted the devastation.

The final galaxy they controlled, the Milky Way, where the last colonies of the
colonies to to study The Great Dust. Their immortality and wisdom spanning millions of
centuries dwindled until only the Cythereans gracefully bowed out and ceased all
research as they had only a few hundred years to live before they were consumed.
It was said that the Privosi zeal lead those 100 million Cytherean to control
their mindstream form beyond death. They had also found a way for their
creations to persist The Great Dust. As a final gift for the future, my creators
had left me and my friends to monitor and modify any sexual lifeform to be
genetically immune to The Great Dust should it return.

And as they all waited in the Mindstream realm which transcended the physical,
they saw the Observable Universe lose its inner flame. Planck sized memory
shards were able to persist these events.

Bump

An Amatuer's attempt here. Real slippery.

“What can be said about a madman’s visions? That he’s crazy? That he’s ill? Or perhaps he simply sees the world in a way that others do not see?”
That was the last thing the captain told me before he went off to find the Isle of Banquets; his final sojourn before he was never seen again. This is a tale worth noting for the fact it has no conclusive end, and yet, no conclusive beginning either. What man makes malleable, he makes strong as well; what man breaks, he fixes as well.
So whatever drives men mad, can make them sober again, at least, I hope. And that’s all you can really do at these times… hope.
There was never a tale of greater woes than this – than to figure out you’re not mad, you’re just seeing the truth that others are ignorant to.
And so it began: a journey of journeys into the darkness of the mind. A voyage into the inescapable realm of unfathomable monstrosities for which we so rarely wish to summon, but can - at a moment’s flicker – be brought to light. And so it was, and so it was for Captain Barns Blasquizt – the finest captain this side of the Atlantic, and a man ensnared into the treasures unknown hidden between the hidden creases of fog and myth; an Atlantic ocean full of secrets, and mysteries too draped with blood to ignore. But who am I to say?
I just live here.

Are you showing off user? anyways I like it, but perhaps you should simplify it.

I do know If I should Critique this due to how trivial it might sound. But I think their is too much information on the place which is detrimental.

I wrote recently wrote this, so I hope it gets critique.

"The encampment is not far from here," said Bayard. "They are resting, a few of them are on watch – we will find our targets in the center tent." Thomas blinked in surprise. The message they received was correct: they were here. Yet he thought of the question that lingered in his mind, was it a trap? Was this to lure them in and get them killed? He weighed the odds, then said quietly, “Spread out; hide among the trees and bushes. Stop whoever is coming in a quiet manner, we must not alert them. And remember, we must take them alive.”

The men before him shivered and nodded; whether it was the cold weather or fear of death that made them shiver he got no answer, and continued their steady progresses down the path that led towards the encampment. Bayard, his second in command, took half of the men with him on the opposite end, twelve cavalrymen with short swords and round iron shields with plated armor were to stay back and ride of with the targets.

The horses, like the men mounted on them, were of far better quality than Thomas and Bayard’s men. They resembled more like knights than common bandits. The men hurried before abruptly halting. They were at their destination. Thomas peered to see the defenses and from what he could see, there were enough men patrolling the camp to cast doubt on Thomas plan on sneaking in and out undetected.

He remained quiet, contemplating on a new improvise plan, perhaps one that required he and Bayard to regroup attacking the camp in one direction with a group with about a dozen men sneaking in the opposite direction. An animal screeched, shattering the silence and frightening the men. Even as the animal did not screech for a second time, no one dared to relax as the patrolling guards were also on edge.

How come Joyce can get away with it? By no means am I placing myself on his level, I just wanted to mimic his style for an American sort of adventure. I'm really trying to not be "showy" I appreciate the honesty, though. What are some ways to make it subtle without taking away the aesthetics of the picture?

I'm no legendary critic, but I enjoyed this. Sounds cozy, I don't like the use of the ellipsis, though. Also
>There was never a tale of greater woes than this – than to figure out you’re not mad, you’re just seeing the truth that others are ignorant to.

Very clunky. Amend it, try to make better use of that hyphen.

I hope this isn't the exposition to an important/exciting scene. You've got a decent use of prose, but your sense of time seems strained. Don't rush the adit, user, you can slow down things a bit. But then again, maybe this isn't anything important.

It's very good.
>I wish my death curse.
I'd change this. Pray my death curse? Chant?

my best piece that I've written overall so far. Some other pieces have better parts, but as a whole I think this is the best I've done. The ending is a little bit of a letdown though but righting it would add another thousand or so words that I just haven't found the time to put in.

pastebin.com/31v5EzFr

>I just wanted to mimic his style

Well i think that's the problem then, there is just a feeling of fakeness over your text. That it does not come from your heart. Because you try to mimic his style you do not have a style of your own (in this particular text) and what you write isn't then genuine.

>mimic his style
Have you read anything beyond Dubliners, because that is not his style

yeah, read Ulysses and Dubliners.

Maybe not prose, but I was referring to allusions.
Just like Joyce wrote for his country, I'm doing that in my own work for America.

Bump

Another attempt by me, again, Amatuer hour, watch where you step.

Morning thereafter brought the solemn snows of a winter’s eve. Malakath was drowning in it.
‘These evenings bring me no greater pleasure than they should, and no greater heaving than necessary to wander.’
‘Bring me your jug,’ said the priestess at the well. A maiden draped in bandages from head to toe; so much so her eyes were like that of a raven’s – small, squinted and all but the colours of the abyss hidden beneath the creases of old papyrus paper.
‘You offer me what, woman of the well?’ said Malakath stumbling for his scimitar.
‘The offer of life; the cheat of death, and an audience with he whom it cannot touch,’ said she in return. ‘The king slain, the body wretched, and the crown sundered by his own hand to be forged again.’
‘The Slain-King?’ he raised brow like a drawbridge between the beak of his large nose. ‘What made me worthy of the trek, prey tell?’
‘You are here,’ she whispered softly, raspy moans in-between raspy breaths, ‘You have come. That is reason enough for the water that I will draw for you; as he did for me once.’
Settling her jug aside, the woman pulled out another bucket from the depths of the cacophonous well; a haven for spiders and webbings stuck to every corner and grating except for the water itself, and the circle diameter of it’s drawing to the surface, for which the dead creeping things dared not touch.
Malakath gave a putrid eye as her back bended over to show the torn flesh for which her bandages had traitorously drew.
‘Here,’ she said, bending back to give him a jug from her dropped one on the ground. The water was murky, and Malakath was sure that the fresh spring must’ve been contaminated by now, for the water was as red as blood; if it had not been for the slosh and stink he was all too familiar with in his line of previous work, he wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.
‘Drink.’
Malakath touted his nose to scout the murkiness of the treasure offered to him: slime of an old stone structure looked more appealing; probably smelled better too. There was a sanguine texture to the colours that made it look closer to wine on a more intimate inspection.
A rarity of rarities! He thought in jest, a well of arbour wines, and fragrant crusts of old sorbet grapes!

Mine's above, short story I wrote today

I would say there's too much describing and text. Not much story telling going on here. Feels too self-indulgent, can't really get heads or tails of what exactly is going on. Write some more of this, get a chapter done at least. With such a small snippet I can't really judge what's done for what effect, but if you continue on like this you border on purple prose.

I can tell you've never argued with a drunk before. The father character is too coherent. He's apologizing too quickly. He'll be more of a bastard if he sees himself as justified first. Apologies usually come the day after.
>This night, however,
>In this dream
Delete this
>Real life isn’t all fun and games Jakob.
Bleh

The biggest problem with the story is how canned everything is. It's all too common. I like the idea of the Visitor but the prose is so bland and wooden it doesn't help me experience it. The characterization is all too common, the dad needs more nuance as a drunk. Why does he drink? Why does the mother stay? Everything is too simplistic to really stick. Read more, write more, and in a year reapply yourself to this story and see how much it changes.

>They resembled more
Sloppy
>he and Bayard
Really now?
>and frightening the men
-shattering the silence, the men gripped their weapons 'till their knuckles were white. Their eyes darting from invisible enemy, to another, another. Fear knocking their hearts hard against their meager armor.-

Simple tone rewrites like that should be filling this up. You've got a good idea for pacing but the imagery is lacking. You use too many adverbs for a scene like this. Even if it's a throw away you're rushing the pacing and losing your tension for the tone you're setting. A rewrite would fix some things. Don't be afraid to put in some juicy descriptions here and there, nothing builds tension like well place descriptions, which you've set the foundation for, you jsut got to build the house.

>That was the last thing the captain told me
God awful start to some mediocre exposition. Unique for a cliche would be the best thing I can say to this without more substance.

This is the first step to a Vonnegut book made unbearable due to a strange affliction of poetic structure. I honestly don't think I can comprehend what you're trying to accomplish here, and I'm fairly certain the only person who can is yourself.

>picture(s)
>He didn’t know why, some association from a film or a cartoon most likely.
Delete this, your following sentence basically reiterates your intention with the line
> alive(.) So she

The rest is alright. Enjoyed the last half but the first half needs some work.

Your mother is home again
As always
Rolling up the newspaper
Rereading the diet coke auguries
On another Holy Tuesday
Marooned in meloncholy
And you trapped in your room
By your old man's vices
And his tinker toys
Keeping watch
Just beyond
Your bed
Making sure
No boogeymen
Plan a reappearance
In the depths of the night
With your father himself
In the other room
In his favorite Sunday suit
Which is really no suit at all
At least not one
To write home about
If you had
a second home
To write to
Every now and then
And because of this
He doesn't know you
Half as well
Anymore
Not after
Not after the first wave
The left you
Praying for a new life
And gathering up your skeleton armies
Which made you
On a braver day
Enter the secret room
With the heavy red curtains
that have never let the light of day in
And never will again
To confront him
For his unrolled newspapers
And depleted
Diet cokes
"So you've found me"
He says
And turns his chair around
to greet you
Ringed hands petting
A siamese cat
On his fat lap
And to show you
He still loves you
he draws the curtains
That will never let the day in
And never will again
To show you the white sky beyond
The windowpane
Defaced by clouds
His head cocked back with pride
His salt and pepper beard
Pointing
In a new direction

under rated post

inspired by Pound:

Mayflower swashed the seins to wake
I astride with aster in ego and hands on stern,
Found the water too deep to swim. My eyes darted.
In Genoa, a new Hermes was dealt
Drawing a scope from the hip
The rufts shook sand as we arrived, water rolling it’s wheels
To the pax they call Asia, country of spices.
With ethereal motives to Parcae
I stepped to steep sands, air thick with delight.
Sands too brown to be of orient descent
Mans too red to be human to be shaped by Elohem
Willowaks thick with sounds,
Dragged I, explorer into the gloom
Ay! What wonders it was! The trees so strange
To touch with blade the very sticks.
I stepped O’er night and day alike
To reach the pariah folk
And I, with puttees abuckle and pray be done,
Greeted the red-bellied men, who, with great frowns
Stepped back, like crabs to pagan ploys
My white skin clashed and was aglow.
I set my blade down, a musket acock
And I asked the red-bellied relks,
“Who are you, primitive men, see you not of the Orient,
We come wih idyll, no war to seek for God shall peek.”
My petasos down, and fine gown, made a muffled sound
And my feet crunched the ground, as the Native’s looked ‘round
They did not speak the tongue of us, they were primitve creatures
With tusks and voices off-season.
Fire cackled and heads were cast low,
And columbus, with ouvre, stuck a pike into earth,
And declared this the tierra de dios
So we laughed.
We captured a few of the red-bellies
To send forth to Spain and broach the Queen
Of our new land
And of our new peoples.
So we panned God’s lost beings, creatures and gifts,
And we creaked the planks with new nous
“I come humbly, yet we all come brave,
With 72 rafts and noses held to sky
And robes fluttering to ignorant malady,
Let us embark a return with banners high and hopes highest”
I had rooted the festives on, with smiles and grins stretched
And we sang gay songs, with water as our drum:

That's my first half of my first canto. I have 246 more.

more dialogue. Watch out for repetition
perfect.

Everybody knew it was hard work. No brother to consult, nor a wife to share the nights with. There was not much to think about in the dark depths except the ore and one's dirty hands to do proper work. Oil lamps flickering, unbreathable air and the heat of the machines, 'twas the miners way. Brudo realized quickly that it was best to concentrate and do as he was told. He was satisfied working the big iron machine to dig the mine deeper into earth's heart. 'Twas work that only a few were allowed to do, but in the mines every job is equally important. A little fire caused by a dunce knocking over an oil lamp while working the rock with a hand drill or pickaxe would be enough to kill the men.

"Gold!" shouted a man in the back, and everybody rushed to him except Burdo, working the big machine.

Sometimes gold veins were struck. A beautiful sight it was indeed, quartz pebbles with small, shiny gold nuggets, enough to make a man go mad, but overall insignificant, 'twas a copper mine after all. The copper business was going well in the last years and the amount of workers at the mines were ever increasing. The share for the work was low, but enough to make a poor man rich. Brudo had planned to work in the mines for only a year or two, 'twas bad for the health, but it would be enough to buy a farm up the hills or a house in the city.

The work went on, the machines digging and the men sweating. The hours after work were spare, filled with jests by the young men and plans for the next day. Brudo spent the nights in the miner's tent lonely and full of thoughts of the future after the mines, but he tried to not think much.

Some days the architect came into the mines to take samples of the rock and take notes of the work. He had made plans to change the direction of the drilling that he showed Brudo. The architect was a thinking man, he could differentiate all kinds of ores and rocks and make big mine shaft plans, but he could not lift a single boulder himself. Brudo had a lot of respect for the man with his walking stick and leather coat. The Architect was truly a great man, always kind and trying to help, he knew how to make the lives of the miners better. Every few weeks he went down to the town and came back with gals and liquor. 'Twas easier to sleep those nights.

The architect had plans to drill sideways to try out a new explosive. Brudo nodded and immediately started to move the big machine and started digging sideways. Heavy ‘twas, but Brudo’s a working man. After a few days Brudo finished the digging and went to the architect's tent to tell him about it. The tent was bigger than the others and had a big table and documents and books inside it. The architect was surprised to hear so soon from Burdo and commended him for his work. He offered him a seat and started to explain to him his plans in detail. He had bought a new Swedish explosive that he heard many good things about that he wanted to try out.

Pls no bully I'm just practicing

each sentence is overloaded and says something meaningless:

>nauseous curiousity
^imaginary emotion, nobody has ever felt this. goes away from reality rather than towards it

>as if the atmosphere were anticipating the memories to be of teenagers

^what?

>things that Jack only knew in his mind.
how else could he know things? in his ass? Why clarify, even??

Sorry to be a details guy instead of seeing the whole enchilada, but you got major problems. You need to work on your... basics I guess. I sense underneath this there is a scene, but you're getting in the way of it speaking for itself by your... STRAINING. We readers can feel you strain, or at least I can. Just be more natural or something, don't be afraid to sound dumb... jeez

Also ignore if you want

The best kind of sweetness: a clumsy one ;)

Though nothing happens... what is a story if nothing happens??

fuck dude stop talking in olden days language

Seconding this guy. it's very enjoyable and strong over all, but it begins to feel schlocky and never perfectly recovers after this sentence. find a better way to end it would be my advice, more subtle for sure.

Pretty garbage, try actually writing something with meaning

pastebin.com/Xm9VJE8h

The chocolate mirage of her skin was alluring, brown eyes like chocolate drops melting in the glassy sun. However, all of this allure like dripping caramel sufficed to but one moment vexxing in my mind. How could such a creature be a venomous lecherous cunt? Surely God had intended other means for this creature but upon all the roads traveled be she and I has amounted nothing more than herpes and empty bank accounts.

So I saddled this horse of metaphors, emblazoned on it's fur was 'fuck it my nigga', riding into the sunset in steady gallop across the horizon.

Sounds like my ex wife, who also gave me herpes and emptied my bank account.

I wrote this in exactly 5 minutes, don't bully

Equipped and sharpened here stands
The mind of a scholar, his hands: laced
With callouses and acid burns
No energy to give worry to a caution
His noble duty calls!
He brands the nature's child with an x
And traps a meekish letter with his Logic
The void of endless night collapses
Right to the spell of Theorem
And every atom, does as bidden

The future is no longer dream, but prediction
A game with rules outlined in leatherbound
His hand now makes another hand
To rid the fragile of their maledictions
Through testing tube sucked dry
First oozing plagues, then
Wheeze, then pain, then pain in brain,
Then horrors; Nothing left but marrow
Shall when the time comes be replaced
With more effective means,
Like x.
Pleased with his net, the reasonable man
Looks inwards, deep, where all the x's
Arranged in propositions, something stirs
Amidst it all, a child cries -
Afraid of spiders.

This wasn't so bad, but I literally stopped taking it seriously after "Who actually believes in the supernatural anymore?" Also, reign in your semicolon use. I'm a recovering semicolon addict and periods can often get the job done. Readers will connect most thoughts that have a clear relationship.

Off to a good start, especially the first 5 lines. But the x and logic metaphors seem to be a bit thin. The concept is pretty good though, the end seems solid—I think a couplet, if you're into that, would make the ending more salient. I also think the end of the first stanza and the beginning of the second call for revision.

I like this a lot. Very much like Pound, brings the Seafarer to mind. I would recommend maybe implementing a bit more structure, though how you do this is up to you. You might want to check out the Anglo-Saxon hemistich format that Pound uses often, because your style already lends itself to it with phrases like "red-bellied relks".

I don't think that you're necessarily trying to "show off"; I think this is off to a great start. I really like the concept you got here. However, at some points it's too much of an attempted Joyce mimicry (I'd axe the "Tierra! Tierra!) and with some editing I think you could make the whole thing flow together. But good stuff.

this is me. This is the opening to a short story I'm writing and I'd like to know whether it's too experimental. I would hate to come off as pretentious and/or unstructured so honest critique would be appreciated.

GREEK DANCE: TURKISH MARCH is how the wood grain on the lectern swam. They spiral just as a drink mixer would trace the inside of a glasslip. Did ancients ever dance like this? It seems a bit too Southern Mediterranean, a bit too Jewish. Maybe Turkish. Dark skins dancing in a circle; black beards and loose-fitting white cottonsilk shirts with lace around the necks and cuffs bounce; tattered blue vests hang off of dancing dark frames. It doesn’t seem distinctly Greek: the ancient style was different and eventually evolved into something rich and of Ottoman influence. Their dress was distinctly layered fourfold with four colors and four patterns: light blue trimmed gold over dark blue eye patterned trimmed gold middle torso peach diamond patterned trimmed gold left arm deep red iconed and trimmed gold. That’s how Ottoman Saints ported, Middle Eastern but still Greek. Now the dress is completely unrecognizable, but the dance maybe not so. Maybe they too danced in a circle, hands linked, navels facing inwards and snaked a slow formation’s crawl along an Arabic spiral— dthahab dukhan goldsmoke is how the wood grain on the lectern swam in a Greek dance: Turkish March.

The English professor gripped his lectern's edges with two large-long hands, and the students stopped staring at its wood. He cleared his throat and of fifty students he caught the attention of an unknowable percentage. He began:

Not much too say here. Flows well, seems interesting, but nothing really memorable that would stand out to me.

Guess I just need more context

Here's something I started a few days ago, no character names yet I just wanna see what you guys think of the style.

pastebin.com/cGqsA9xk

this has some genius mastermind behind it, great theming

Any serious criticism for my piece?

You write very densly, it chokes up the scene imo, the quite blunt metaphors and really long sentences make it a slog to read through imo. You could easily tidy it up though by just being more harsh with yourself and using only what you need.

Also I'm not opposing to using an old sounding dialect as your voice but here I think it would work just as well if you just eased up on it a little. This scene is a brief exchange but it's stuffed as though it were a full chapter, let it breathe and bit and I think it'd be far more interesting.

>always post in these threads
>try yo critique as many people as possible
>my writing NEVER gets any replies
What am I doing wrong?

Which one is yours user I'll do it

This story could be nice if it weren't written in first person.

You're gay

Writer of that piece here, Thanks for the critique, I guess I'll see if I can whip up another page to see if I can shape it better. No gaurantees though, plenty of things on my hand right now.

You have done me wrong, oh brother! When you said long ago that Tartarus was no prison for you, and thus broken free from its restrains, find freedom itself to be intolerable. But I was no fool in ending you, when you came wandering like a stray dog stricken of the brain by its plight--it was in such mien that you attacked my little sister. It is no wonder that I had no scruples of ending the wretch which had undoubtedly taken over your body. When you fell, you were as still as a log from a tree that had died during winter. Food for maggots and roots as well as fungi thou art! It pains me that I had to watch your form recede into the ground.
Have you not forgotten your transgression? I will be sure that your epitaph is written with blood that eternally oozes from your very own corpse! I will prolong your cyclical disatisfaction by perpetuating your existence into the deepest of hells, even if I have to dig deeper myself! You recall that you left our house in the crimson desert over yonder? The clouds which fly above it have bottoms of coal. When we were infants, there were gardens thicker than rainforests which bearded the cumuli, and from afar they appeared to be shapeless, white heads with beards of moss!
That was the palace of our mother, Athens, whose pillars had long turned to sand ages ago. The same sand that is today traded by anonymous merchants in the midst of barren plateaus forty thousand kilometers in radius. They are silhouettes of a man wearing a trenchcoat and wide-brimmed hat, and the hue of their black is enigmatic. Our mother was constructed of a mighty hand, and was composed of sand far more pure than the gravel from which we two are roughly hewn. She did not deserve to be marred by her own son drifting away into the wilderness, and away from the dynasty which she had built. To settle her grief, she turned into a diamond, but at the expense of the vibrancy of our once gorgeous sky, rendering it the harbinger of monotonous days and nights.
And when you came back, she had a third child to mourn her loss; my little sister, Gaia: the victim of you, my little brother Kronos, who sought to cannibalize her. I have since learned that Dionysus, of the House of Diode, instigated the attack by drugging you and then nudging you in my direction, where I was reading to Gaia. My name is Stymar-Aurus, who wears his anger as a suit of armor, last of my line. I declare war on The House of Diode. Rest well, Dionysus--you shall be cut in twain the next time I encounter you by my sword, Zeus, and my armor, Aries!

IT BEGINS.

What?

The law of irony

Every desire is rooted in having suffered its opposite.

A need for control stems from having suffered that of another.
A teachers seeks in his profession the authority and reverence he lacked as a student.
Freedom is frantically clinged on to by those who it has been denied to.
The deviant becomes a deviant through being denied normalcy.
The caring want most to be genuinely cared for themselves.
The slighted become the just and the just temper their zeal until they can celebrate it as vindicated justice, their triumph and rest lies in the affirmation of their power to turn vengeance into justice.
All cruelty is born of superseded weakness.

So all passions and driving desires play out as circular prophecies where the prophet becomes the evil he warns of, opposed to his intent.
So irony would have it.

I can only imagine what fate irony will twist for its greatest suitor and admirer, I desire to taunt it just to witness its machinations fold into my demise with utter sublimity. Will it drive me mad through absence for my longing? Will it grant me its retribution but deny me the pleasure of knowing it? Will it taunt me into my own denial of it? I can only savor the prospect and bask in its glory around me while I keep looking over my shoulder expectantly waiting excitedly for its axe to finally take a swing at me.

She was standing in the door frame, her thigh-high socks had a glossy sheen under the summer sun, her chiffon dress wafting as she poked her toes out to feel the breeze; the roses and lilies printed on her dress danced. I was sat on the staircase behind her, admiring her healthy thighs that showed between her dress and socks. Though she was my older sister, I still wanted to protect her, so when my friends had made comments about her body I told them to stop and moved the conversation along. But sat on the staircase, seeing her curves outlined by the sun, my penis had become hard and engorged.

READ THE FUCKING OP YOU LEECHES

I've replied earlier you stupid cunt.

>one person actually replied
:^)

Contribute something yourself, cunt. I bet your writing is the worst on this thread... Fag.

embarrassing

Yeah, exactly. So think twice before you embarrass yourself again... Idiot.

Your critique is absolute bullshit [read: literally invalid]. Are you retarded?

Calm down officer I was merely testing if I could get away with it.

I should like it but I don't, I like all the elements you've used and even greek mythology but it's like reading through sand or mud, I like imagery but this is heavy to read through, the style doesn't flow, you've tried to jam too much heavy imagery all over the place but it does not flow well, every line is a separate segment illustrating something and like a slide show it goes on to the next, it's like you've tried to jam many fancy words in there to give it accuracy and weight, maybe you've over scrutinized this bit too many times, made too many individual changes to it so that now it's not a rant that flows.

I agree with this critique. Your writing is overwritten and you will never be published at this rate. There's nothing fancy or brilliant about using big words with zero economy. This needs _a lot_ of rewriting.

>I was sat on the staircase
No
>conversation along. But sat on the staircase, seeing h
What? No!

It moves too quickly, tease longer with sun beams caressing thighs and such, more describing, work toward it, I want inner conflict between temptation and wrongness, interrupt the process, get caught staring by third party, something like that, flesh out the scene before moving on.

Thanks, lil nigga. It's only a first draft... But your critique is fair and good. Thank you. :)))) I am scared to tease longer, because each sentence should advance the plot or show character... So there's no time for dawdling... Maybe that was shit-tier advice and I should ignore it and follow your advice instead. :)))

I was going for purple prose but instead it turned out overly confusing. Critiques noted. Thanks for reading anons!

Why would you shoot for purpose prose? Isn't that a bad thing? I thought that was bad. Maybe it's actually a better style, because you can evoke the scene better. What do you think?

greek dance pt is greak, generally the beginning, gets a little bogged with all the nationalities and actual details of the dance. strongest when most abstract.

the professor and whatnot has two little quip-type moments that both feel too clever and seem autobiographical, like you noticed them in class and made a not on your phone. post more and i'll keep going.

pic related is mine. be nice.

It's not good, sorry.

go on

>Isn't that a bad thing
lol

purple prose... yeah, what's good about it? purple prose is a negative term

>curls spilled
no
>ad hoc simile so you can say slurped his hair off the pillow, which doesn't actually make sense in the way hair is removed from a pillow.
Don't see a point to read anything else when your first sentence is so contrived.

It's overwritten. Even very simple actions are given too many words and so it's hard, as a reader, to be drawn into the story. The author gets in the way, then; I am very aware that I am reading a story--which is what I don't want.

fair enough

okay

Don't be discouraged. There's always more rewriting that can be done, so it's normal, especially in earlier drafts, for things not to be as good as they can be. I think maybe you have a good story, but it's just weighed down by a lot.

:)

For your first para remove these bits:
>slurped off the pillow,
>jiggled,
>mostly made,
>he had learned,

I get what you are trying to do with some of those bits but you have to not be too attached to your "clever" writing. It can be jarring for readers. Go through that whole page and purge it of stuff like that. Maybe leave a few...

>last chunk of the 4th chapter of sci fi thing, not happy with it yet
They took different planes home. The XX Company took off first, alone with the cargo wrapped in the back, Ravsgot’s people in the other plane with unwrapped cargo. Takeoff was subdued. They saw Eight load bales of cash onto the Good Food fruit truck in Suwayto on a screen from the couch as they lifted up through clouds. Green land shrank below. Assistant turned to Gluos, watching him wipe blood from his nose, slumped in crumpled suit.

“Why are we here Gluos?”

He looked at her with opening eyes that she would not meet.

“Depends on who you are.”

Assistant sighed, closing her eyes and saw red mist hanging in air above a blue knee. Eyes opened and the cabin was red. Warnings whined, Gluos swore. She accessed the plane systems and saw them. Two SAVA surface to air missiles rapidly closed. She checked the plane’s parachute count and sprang up. Gluos grabbed her yanking her back down and buckled in. She saw straps strain against his chest. Then he sat back, closed his eyes. In the back of the Good Food truck Eight heard this: shot down, in crash couch, need extraction if survive.

The warnings built to a crescendo, the plane flew straight on, no maneuvers. Assistant looked through red light and blaring alarms, saw wide eyes and said, “Gluos, my name’s Spesia.” He opened his mouth to respond when a missile exploded beside the plane. The air was blown out, a wing ripped off, the fuselage spun, they were flying backwards, the plane disintegrated and flew apart around them. Crash couch shield turned on as they fell tumbling towards the SubCon. Spinning orientation showed blue sky, green forest, brown scrub, blending as they orbited. Velocity increased to terminal.

I reviewed two

Lay it on me Veeky Forums, rip it apart.

This does not flow very well desu.

Try this:

>Need for control stems from suffering another's.
>The teacher seeks the authority lacked as a student.
>Freedom frantically clinged to by those denied it.
>The deviant becomes it because their denied normalcy.
>The caring want to be taken care of.
>The slighted become the just and the just temper their zeal until they can celebrate it as vindicated justice, their triumph and rest lies in the affirmation of their power to turn vengeance into justice. (this one is just fucked)
>All cruelty is born of superseded weakness.

Also the whole thing is unsupported assertions, like you just smoked a blunt to your face and you think you know everything about the universe. Before you claim these things make me want to agree with you, who gave you the ability to make laws? Not saying you can't but lets be real here...

Who do you think has been contributing all these criticisms? I thought we had an honor system thing going on.

A little overly-discriptive, kinda lost flow almost halfway the first paragraph. Good try though :)

Overly-descriptive. I didn't know what was going on half the time. Lost my attention at around the first sentence.
A little bad, not TOO bad, and not something a little sharpening couldn't fix. Some thighter control of ebb and flow, less discriptions.

Stupid rule. You should be able to post without helping others. Surely, if your work is ignored it is for a reason. If someone likes your work they'll probably say something, same goes to disliking a work.

Too much drama over this. Such fou